Chapter 1 #2
And then a call came in that someone had broken into a detached garage of a boarded-up home five blocks away from the party where Max last remembered being.
Max fit the kind of victim Reprehensible thrived on finding.
If this was Reprehensible, they had another detail to add to the case file.
He took his victims to a secondary location, possibly for days before killing them.
Light filled the vent shaft. Abi tensed, waiting for the crack of a bullet.
Nothing came.
The perp was gone.
Could Abi at least get through fast enough to get a direction before he disappeared?
THE LAST MINUTES of morning were ticking by.
At this rate, the perp would be long gone by the time Grayson Chisolm made it around the long strip mall on foot.
At forty years old, he was the most experienced member on the joint task force, which also consisted of a US marshal, a sheriff and a deputy from the border town of McAllen, plus members from Texas State University campus PD, University of Texas at Austin campus PD, as well as Austin PD.
Including him, the number came up to seven.
Sheriff Benton and Deputy Carlson were on the team.
It was a decent-sized team that had been formed a few days ago in order to catch the serial killer dubbed Reynosa the Reprehensible by the media.
Grayson wasn’t a fan of giving this sonofabitch a name, especially so early in the process. Two months since his killing spree had started, and the body count was already racking up. Giving him a name might inflate his ego, which in turn could ramp up his killing streak.
The perp must have some tie to Reynosa, Mexico, since the bodies were found there, but that didn’t mean he was born there, lived there, or worked there like a couple of the task force members had decided.
The location might be a convenient place to dump a body since it was across the border from a small Texas town.
Marshal Remington kept an open mind. She’d argued against using the media dub to name the file, same as him.
They’d lost on that one, but he was relieved to have someone who thought like him on the team.
It was important to size everyone up on a task force like this, to find allies for when the time came to make critical decisions.
Having one person on his side had tipped the scale in his favor more than once, if not this time.
Grayson had been on the job long enough to trust his instincts—instincts honed by years of experience.
The good thing about a task force was being able to pull from everyone’s jurisdiction in order to chase a criminal or make an arrest. A US marshal gave them international networks to draw on.
Grayson’s FBI background gave them access to the US.
And then involving a sheriff, campus police, and Austin PD ensured cooperation and gave them instant local resources.
All of which came in handy when they zeroed in on a perp. It made all the difference in the world when getting close to an arrest of a dangerous criminal and making the charges stick.
Grayson pushed his legs faster. Marshal Remington had outrun him. He could admit he was no Tom Brady despite passing his annual department physical at the top of his age group.
Running wasn’t his favorite activity. What he didn’t have in speed, he made up for in strength.
Panting, he could only hope the perp had made it out the other end and would make the mistake of running around to the front of the strip mall center, playing into his hands.
Grayson tucked his chin to his chest and pushed his legs harder, pumping his arms to give him the little bit of extra momentum in his sprint.
He wasn’t even around the first corner yet. There was a patch of trees behind the building. The parking lot was cracked from the relentless Texas summers.
They’d received a tip this might be the guy they were looking for and had acted on it fast. As luck would have it, both he and the marshal were within driving distance of the location where the perp was believed to be hiding.
Grayson had been farther away than the marshal, so they’d waited for him, keeping an eye on the garage at a distance they’d deemed safe until the deputy walked out in the open in uniform.
The perp had caught on and made a run for it.
This perp was going to be slippery. The ones good at killing always were.
Otherwise, they would be caught after the first attempt.
The general public had no idea how many would-be serial killers out there were caught during the first attempt or immediately after their first murder.
It was probably for the best that way. He, for one, knew he didn’t want his almost-five-year-old kid walking around scared of the world even though it could be cruel and harsh.
It could also be the most amazing place.
Grayson had learned those lessons firsthand.
The same world that had taken his wife during childbirth had given him a perfectly healthy baby boy.
The world took and the world gave. It wasn’t biased. It did the take-give dance with everyone in equal measure.
On the surface, it might seem like some folks got away with gaining and rarely ever had anything taken. But that was a mirage, like water in the middle of the desert. Every person, good or bad, was dealt wins and losses.
Grayson didn’t make the rules, because he sure as hell would have done things differently. That was just how it worked. He’d learned the hard way after finding the love of his life in Michelle and then being married only eighteen months before she’d died giving birth to their baby boy, Collin.
She’d named their son, smiled up at Grayson with the most beautiful glow before closing her eyes and bleeding out.
Collin got his mother’s sandy-blond hair and blue eyes.
He got her bad vision too. Grayson almost chuckled out loud at the thought.
Michelle had called herself blind as a bat.
She wasn’t too far off and had the shin bruises to verify it from being so sure she knew the way to the bathroom without her glasses on when she got up in the middle of the night.
The ouches and swear words that would have made his grandmother wash her mouth out with soap as she banged into the end of the bed proved she’d overestimated her abilities.
Then again, that was Michelle. She was always leaping before she looked. Her spontaneous spirit was one of the things he’d loved most about her. The decision to have a baby at all had been spur of the moment. Grayson hadn’t thought he would be a good father, based on his own family history.
He’d believed in Michelle’s ability to be an amazing mother, though. In the end, that was the reason he’d agreed to go for it.
Collin looked so much like his mother Grayson’s heart squeezed every time he looked at his son. His boy had not only inherited his mother’s terrible vision but had somehow managed to get her overactive imagination as well.
As he turned the corner, Grayson’s blood ran cold. The perp they’d been chasing was at the mouth of the vent where he’d exited and Marshal Remington would come out, and he was hiding behind a trash bin.
Copyright ? 2025 by Barb Han