RESTONHILLSPOLICEDEPARTMENTDetective Mason Sawyer had planned to take off for the better part of Founder’s Day and enjoy the yearly celebration with his gorgeous wife, Alyssa, and teenage son, Campbell, knowing just how important quality family time was. Especially in his line of work, when career obligations and professional aspirations tended to win out over a personal life.
But that wasn’t happening. At least not yet.
As was often the case at inopportune times, duty called, and he had no other choice but to answer.
A report came in of a naked dead woman found in Reston Hills Park by workers this morning as they were setting up the stage for a concert.
With half the staff off and without needing to be asked by his boss, Lieutenant Gloria Schecter, Mason volunteered to scrub his off day—or at least delay it till further notice—and check it out. As he had serious designs to move up to her position someday, it was always important to show his dependability when others chose to put their own needs first.
As he drove his unmarked vehicle down Hepmore Avenue, Mason knew his wife, loving as she was, would understand. Hadn’t that always been true, ever since she chose to take the plunge and marry a dedicated police officer twenty years ago, when they were both in their early twenties? This didn’t make him feel any better. He would make it up to her by taking her out to dinner at her favorite restaurant in town. But his son was a different story altogether. Campbell needed that quality dad time to stay engaged, maintain discipline, and keep himself on the straight and narrow path in his life.
I’ll make it up to you, too, Campbell, if this turns out to be something other than an accidental death, Mason reflected, scratching into his short black flat-top hair, then smoothing his pyramid mustache. His first thought was that the woman’s death could be drug related, knowing that they had a drug problem in Reston Hills, like most big and small towns in the United States. Sadly, overdoses were not uncommon there.
Homicides were, relatively speaking. But he wouldn’t jump to conclusions just yet.
Somehow it felt a bit unseemly to kill someone on Founder’s Day. As if a killer would take that into consideration prior to ending a person’s life.
After he arrived at the park and conferred with the first responder, Jerry Napolitano—an officer around his age and six foot two in height, with brown hair in a buzz cut—they made their way through tall Norway maple and Douglas fir trees to the scene.
Mason took one look at the deceased fortysomething woman and his jaw dropped. Lying awkwardly on her back, her pale white body was exposed for all to see. Blue eyes were open vacantly, her small nose was clearly fractured and discolored, and her full mouth slightly parted as though in total shock that this had happened to her. The long blond hair splayed around her head haphazardly was damp, suggesting she had been there when it was still raining till at least the wee hours of the morning. He noted the reddish-purple marking on her right forearm, which resembled initials.
Mason gulped. He knew her.
Lynda Boxleitner.
They had dated briefly in high school, but she was,quite frankly, more than he could handle at the time, as an attractive cheerleader who had her pick of suitors. It became apparent to him that he was not what she was looking for in a boyfriend for the long term, and both moved in different directions. He’d only spoken to her casually from time to time since then.
Now she was dead.
Mason had a gut feeling that it wasn’t a suicide. She didn’t seem the type to go there, from what he knew of her. And judging by the positioning of the body, it certainly didn’t seem like an accident.
Whether drugs had played a part in Lynda’s untimely death remained to be seen.
As did the precise nature of death, which, at the moment, he had to believe was a probable homicide, making the ghastly scenario that much harder to swallow.
Chapter One
Twenty years later
She felt cold, clammy, maybe a little weird and definitely disoriented. But not so out of it so as to not realize she was totally naked.
She couldn’t exactly remember removing the knit off-the-shoulder top, ripped straight-leg jeans and flats she’d been wearing.
Yet here she was, and in the park, way past midnight but well before dawn—running almost blindly through the tall, thick trees.
And she wasn’t alone.
Someone was chasing her. Someone she knew all too well. And another person, not so much.
They wanted to kill her. To silence her forever.
She wanted to live. But could she realistically outrun them? When they were as determined to catch up to her as she was to evade them with every fiber inside her?
She sucked in a deep, ragged breath—her breathing more and more laborious. Her heart was racing, too, as if wanting to burst through her chest.
What was wrong with her?
What had they to done to her?
