Title: Sable Quinn Trilogy
Boxed Set
K. J. Dahlen
ISBN: 978-1-62420-255-1
Genre: Mystery/Crime
Excerpt Heat Level: 1
Book Heat Level: 1
BLURBS
The
Darkness Within
When a serial killer comes
home looking to tie up loose ends, FBI agent Sable Quinn must remember her past
to stop him. She alone holds the key to his identity and it’s been locked in
her memory for twenty years. She survived being a victim once, can she save
herself and an entire family by stopping the killer before he claims them all
as his next victims?
Legacy of
Murder
When Micah died Sable
thought her troubles were over but she’s plunged back into her nightmare when
another family member comes after her. He’s not only after what’s left of the
Reardon family, but before he murders them he wants to bring down Gabriel’s
empire. Sable has to fight to keep herself alive and the others. Will she
survive the day of reckoning?
The Unknown
Son
FBI agent Sable Quinn has survived several attempts on her life by
members of the Reardon family, serial killers with a link to her own past. Now
another family member has surfaced, an UNKNOWN SON determined to murder Sable
where others have failed.
But Noah must let Sable live long enough to reclaim a fortune in stolen
money, gold, and jewels. Unknowingly, Sable possesses the key to this fortune:
an ivory handled knife taken as evidence in the murders of her family members.
EXCERPTS
The
Darkness Within
I am just a simple man, living the American dream;
I might be just like you except for the
fact that
I am also a serial killer. At first I
hated that part of myself, I tried to deny the truth for a long time but I
couldn’t deny the excitement that I felt when I began hunting an innocent woman
only to end her life. The more I hunted the better I became at hiding from the
world my dark secret. Over the years I began to crave the rush I got when the
raging beast inside me reared its ugly head. The obsession grew until all I
could think about was the next kill, the next young woman whose life I would
cut short.
Sable’s hand gripped the
pages of what she had just read as she looked up at her boss. “Nick,” she wet
her parched lips with the tip of her tongue.
Nick glanced over at her and
frowned. Sable’s face was pale and there was a quickness to her breathing that
wasn’t normal. “What is it?”
Sable held out the pages to
him and sat down at her desk carefully. She put her hands to either side of her
head and slowly closed her eyes against the shock she felt. She rubbed her
aching temples in an effort to calm her nerves. When she opened her eyes, the
first thing she saw was the plain manila envelope lying on her desk. The
envelope had her full first name Sabella scrawled in ink on the outside of it. This
was the envelope she had opened moments ago. Sable frowned as she reread the
name on the front of the envelope. It wasn’t a name she used and no one other
than her mother ever called her by that name.
Sable opened her desk drawer
and pulled out a large clear plastic bag and carefully tucked the envelope
inside. Looking up she saw concern on the faces in front of her. Without saying
a word she handed the envelope to her boss, Nicholas Ramer.
Nick glanced at the envelope
and compared the writing to that of the letters. Sable’s name was written by
the same hand as the pages. He was surprised to find there was no return
address on the envelope, and it hadn’t been run through the post office. It had
been hand delivered. “What the hell? How did this get in here undetected?”
Nick looked over at the
other members of his team and handed the envelope to Quentin Parks. “Run this
over to fingerprinting and see who besides us has handled it.”
Nick glanced at Brandi
Nichols. “Get a board in here and set it up with the pages. Let’s get a handle
on what exactly we’re dealing with.”
He looked over at Max. “See
if you can find anything on the surveillance tapes from last night. I don’t
like the fact that this guy just walked into our offices without being stopped
along the way. This is supposed to be a secure FBI office.”
Max nodded and left the
room.
Nick pulled a chair up
beside Sable and sat down. “Do you know anything about the pages? How they got
into the office or who wrote them?”
“No,” Sable replied. “I
found the envelope sitting on my desk and I opened it. I guess I really didn’t
think about it.” She looked at Nick and had to ask, “What’s going on here?”
Nick shrugged. “That’s one
of the things we need to find out. We also need to find out if this is real or a
hoax; and if it is a hoax, we still need to find out who is responsible. I’m
not sure I like the fact that someone can just walk in here off the streets and
leave a package on one of our desks then walk out again undetected. If it's
real, we need to find out who this killer is and how to stop him.” He stood up
and held out his hand to her, “Let’s find out what this guy has to say. Let’s
do our job and get him off the streets.”
Legacy of Murder
"I know you’re probably
wondering what I’m doing here," Gabriel began. He had to pause for a
moment then he continued as he laid the envelope on her desk. "I received
this in the mail the other day. I’m not really sure what to do with it."
He pushed the envelope over
to her then waited while she picked it up. Sable glanced at it, unable to
recognize the writing. The letter was addressed to "The Honorable Gabriel
Reardon."
Sable glanced over at him
asking, "May I?"
He watched as she opened the
envelope.
Shocked at the contents of
the envelope, she pulled out a birth certificate, a photograph of a small
child, and a note. Picking up the photo of the child, she looked it over
carefully. The child appeared to be around four to six years old. His hair was
a dark color although it was hard to tell. She couldn’t take her eyes off the
child‘s face. What drew her gaze was the color of the boy’s eyes. Sable glanced
at the birth certificate and quickly read the note. When she finished, she
glanced at Gabriel. "Is this for real?"
"As far as I can make
out it is," Gabriel said.
A sense of dread filled her
as she reread the letter in the envelope. "You murdered my father. I’m
here to even the score so watch your backs because you won’t see me coming
until its too late. Vengeance shall be mine." The letter was signed Sam.
Sable picked up the birth
certificate again and read it carefully. It said a son named Sam had been born
to Abbey Larsen one year after Sable had been left for dead in the dry well.
The certificate named Micah Reardon as the father of the baby. Doing some math
Sable determined Sam was about twenty years old.
Nick and Max were in the
office. She had forgotten Quentin and Brandi were out on another case. They
would be gone for another three weeks.
"Nick," Sable
called out. "We have a problem."
Nick glanced up from the
papers he was looking at and frowned. His tall lanky frame barely fit the chair
he was sitting in. His dark hair was cut short. Some days it stuck straight up
but not today. He remembered the last time she’d said those very words. His
frown deepened when he saw Gabriel Reardon sitting at her desk. Nick pushed his
chair back away from his desk. He stood, walking toward her desk. "What
kind of problem?"
"Oh you know, nothing
big," Sable told him. "It seems I have a brother who wants to take
over where my father left off and kill his entire family."
Nick stopped. The look on
his face was priceless. He snapped his head toward Gabriel as he growled,
"What is it with your family? Are they all nuts?"
"It seems they
are."
The Unknown
Son
With both her life and a fortune on the line, Sable fights her toughest
battle yet. Will she survive the final showdown against the last serial killer
of the Reardon family?
Sable glanced over at the
empty desk in the office and wondered when Max would be back. The bullet he
received from Shawn last week had done a number on him, but he survived. She had hoped the nightmare of her past was truly
over now but even as she gazed at the open letter on her desk, she knew she
might have one more battle to fight.
The letter was from Maggie
Yost and it had come out of the blue. She hadn’t thought about Maggie since
she’d left Chicago a few months ago. She’d disappeared from the hospital
against medical advice after Micah died. Sable tried calling her in Cleveland
but Maggie had never returned. Sable learned
from Kyle Benson, Maggie’s landlord, she had called him and asked him to pack
her things and put them in storage. She would deal with them later. That had
happened a couple months ago. Since then he had
not seen her or heard from her.
Sable was surprised by
Maggie’s letter, but her surprise soon turned to dismay when she read what she
had to say. The dismay turned to dread when she realized her nightmare wasn’t
quite over yet.
This is the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write.
I’ve never admitted this to anyone else, not even myself, but I made a very bad
mistake twenty two years ago and now that mistake is going to kill me. I told
you I fell in love with Richard at the same time your mother was with Micah,
but that wasn’t the truth. Summer had been with Micah earlier, almost two or
three years earlier. When Micah and Richard came back and Micah found out about
you, that’s when I met Richard.
I fell in love with what I thought was his bad boy
image. I didn’t realize what I thought was an image was the real deal until it
was too late. He was a real bad person. I was caught between a rock and a hard
place. I knew if I left him Richard would track me down and kill me. He told me
often enough when he noticed I didn’t want to be with him anymore. I thought he
was becoming lost to his own reality then he was dead. When Micah killed
Richard, I knew I had to run before he could find and murder me. I saw the
fight they had that day and I was witness to the murder. I knew the only way he
wouldn’t kill me is if he couldn’t locate me. I had to run away and that’s
exactly what I did. I moved around a lot so Micah wouldn’t find me.
It wasn’t until weeks later I found out I was
carrying Richard’s child. At first I didn’t know if I wanted to keep the baby
or not, but in the end I couldn’t harm my baby. My baby was the only innocent
one out of the bunch of us. It was hard to be alone and pregnant, but I knew I
couldn’t go home. My family would never have understood my relationship with
Richard, and I wanted to keep my baby. When my son Noah was born, I tried to
forget his father. I had hopes he would become my son and not a reflection of
Richard.
We struggled but we had each other. Noah was such a
happy child and he became the love of my life. After awhile, I guess I had
forgotten about Micah. I thought I dodged the worse but all that changed when
my son was ten. He became secretive and sneaky and he began looking at me with
mistrust. I tried to get him to talk to me but he wouldn’t tell me what I’d
done wrong. It never dawned on me I could lose him; especially not to the one
person I had learned to fear more than Richard. Noah spent a lot of time away from
home but he wouldn’t tell me where he was or who he was with. Then when he was
fourteen he ran away. It was several weeks before I realized he was running
straight to Micah.
Micah sent me a postcard about three weeks after Noah
disappeared. He told me not to worry about my son; Noah was with him and he
would raise him to be a man, just like his father was. He told me he would be
back to settle the score with me at a later date. Every day for the last nine
years I’ve had to live with the fear that one day Micah would just show up at
my front door. I moved from town to town hoping to avoid the confrontation I
knew was coming.
When you found me, I was almost relieved. I’m only
sorry I didn’t tell you the truth, the whole truth but I had to keep certain things
from you. I still had to protect my son. I prayed Noah wasn’t with Micah and
for a moment I thought he wasn’t. When Micah took me to the well, he told me
Noah had become the man he had hoped. He said Noah took to the life better than
Richard had and if by some chance Micah died in the final battle between the
two of you, it would be Noah that would finish his work; Noah, Sam, or Shawn.
I’ve been running for awhile now but it hasn’t done
any good. No matter where I go I can still feel him right behind me. I don’t
know if he’s really there or not but someone has been watching me. Maybe it’s
only my conscience making me feel this way, but the other day I saw someone
standing on the corner staring at me. I came to La Crosse to get lost in the
crowds but I think Noah has found me again. I know after all I’ve done to you,
you have no reason to help me but I’m begging you to please help me. I don’t
want to die by my son’s hand.
Even as I write this letter I can feel him getting
closer. I received a call late last night. When I picked up the phone, I heard
a voice I barely remembered. He told me he was in town and wanted to stop by
and say hello. When I told him I didn’t believe him, he told me I shouldn’t. He
said he was here to tie up loose ends. He said he had a job to finish and Micah
was counting on him to finish it.
“Nick,” she called out.
Nick lifted his head from
the report he was reading. When Sable held up the letter she received in the
morning mail, he pushed back his chair. Walking over to her desk, he took the
letter and began reading it. A moment later he lifted his eyes from the paper
and looked at her. “Are you kidding?”
Sable shook her head.
“Apparently this nightmare isn’t quite over yet.”
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