Haunted Destiny

Contents

Cover (#u16000c3b-47ef-5b0f-b2dc-2c1ea833065a)

Back Cover Text (#ud9070d95-97a3-5dd1-ad9a-cb22d3064077)

Praise

Title Page (#uc9c5fc63-4867-5412-aef9-ec2423dbc951)

Dedication (#u7cf37c6c-f4f6-55c6-b699-582549e4f7a2)

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

1 (#u7ba54b30-7122-55db-b6f3-c59570f883a6)

They’d started out on foot that morning—not long after the murder was reported.

The murder that would soon bring the Big Easy to its knees; the eleventh attributed to the man the media had dubbed the “Archangel.”

And who had now, apparently, moved into New Orleans.

The perpetrator had already left his mark on other cities. The first two killings had taken place in Charleston, South Carolina, where two women were murdered, their bodies found in churches; the actual crime scenes had never been discovered. That was eight months ago.

After that there’d been a lull. At that time the Archangel hadn’t been given his moniker yet and he hadn’t been on the nation’s radar as a serial killer.

Some people wanted to believe that the killer himself was dead, or that he’d been incarcerated on other charges, the true extent of his crimes never known.

But those first two murders had held a strange signature—both victims displayed in churches with a saint’s medallion around their necks. And most investigators expected the killer to strike again.

Which he did, four months later.

The killer had come farther south, taking two lives in Miami, Florida, and quickly followed by two more, just up the coast in Fort Lauderdale.

Then, for another four months, nothing.

Law enforcement worked day and night, certain that he’d strike again—but not knowing where.

He did.

He’d traveled on to Mobile, Alabama. There, he’d killed three young women and a young man—the boyfriend of one of them, by all accounts. He’d arrived too late to save the last female Mobile victim, and was not at all prepared for the homicidal knife-wielder he’d come to meet. An actor returning home after his show, he’d obviously put up a fight. The young woman had been left on church steps, the boyfriend dumped in an alley. They knew this time, however—from various cell phone calls and messages—that the couple had been attacked at the young woman’s home, a small bungalow in a wooded area of the city.

But despite the disarray and the traces of blood in the bathtub, the killer had left behind no fingerprints, no fibers—no hint of his identity.

The last four had died in a period of three days, all while local law and the FBI scrambled after the Archangel like ants, certain they were getting close. They’d called out the National Guard in Mobile—only for the killer to refuse to strike again.

The one male victim had been dumped in an alley with no ceremony, while the young women’s bodies had been discovered at a church, sometimes on the outside steps, sometimes by the altar. The Archangel had left each female victim laid out as if prepared for burial—arms folded over her chest, a silver saint’s medal around her neck, almost covering the ribbon of red where he’d slit her throat.

Jude McCoy had seen the pictures; practically every agent in every city in the country had seen the crime scene photos of the victims.

And they’d all looked just like this young woman he gazed down at now. She lay before the altar of a church on the outskirts of the French Quarter, arms folded over her chest, a medallion of St. Luke around her throat.

Her name was Jean Wilson. She lay there, in front of the altar, a choir robe draped over her naked body, the telltale blood line around her neck—as if it was a chain for the medallion on her chest. She’d been young and beautiful with long, luxurious dark hair and coffee-colored skin.

Seeing her, Jude McCoy felt a mixture of horror, pity, rage—and helplessness.

He knew that no one in law enforcement was to blame. Not the bureau, Homeland Security or any branch of the local police. There were, according to the FBI specialists and scholars at various universities, anywhere between twenty and several hundred serial killers operating in the United States at any given time. This one, however, had been making headlines and had the entire nation on edge.

No one had known where he’d strike next.

Before this morning, Jude and the other members of his division had already been alerted. They’d sat through lectures by the bureau’s behavioral sciences professionals. What they learned was that this killer was organized, and he was smart. He was either independently wealthy or had a job that allowed travel. He was aware of the need to wear gloves and leave nothing behind. He also had the ability, in a short span of time, to choose and stalk his victims and silence them quickly, although he never sexually assaulted them. They’d all been found in or near churches; murdered elsewhere, their bodies weren’t dumped there, but displayed. They hadn’t been killed in the churches; two, at least, were murdered in the victim’s own home. Under most circumstances, Jude McCoy would have remained with the police and other FBI officers on the scene, since it was apparent that the victim had been moved from the crime scene and that the killer was long gone. He would have walked the church over and over again, making note of any little detail. He would have studied the street and determined just how the killer had traveled there with the body, how he’d brought it into a locked church and displayed it—without being seen.