Dead Wrong

Dead Wrong
Janice Kay Johnson

A chilling blast from the past…Six years ago prosecutor Will Patton's girlfriend stormed out on him. That night she was brutally raped and murdered. The violent act knocked Will's world out from under him, alienating him from his family, who Will believed were responsible. Wrapped up in his own guilt and anger, Will developed a powerful thirst for justice…and was determined that no criminal would ever walk free again.Now he's returned to his hometown, but he is greeted by a gruesome discovery–another body and an all-too-familiar calling card. And once again the victim is romantically linked with Will. In order to track down this serial killer, Will teams up with rookie detective Trina Giallombardo–only to realize that if he falls for her, she'll be next….

Will tried to remember how well Gilly and Amy knew each other

They hadn’t been friends—nothing like that, but Amy was part of the crowd he’d introduced Gilly to. They had looked a little bit alike. Both five-eight or nine, leggy, boyishly slim, naturally blond. Neither blue-eyed. Gillian had had pale, almost sea-green eyes, Amy… He couldn’t quite picture them. Brown? No, not brown. Flecks of yellow and green.

Dead. Because, like Gillian, she was tall and blond and willowy? But their killers weren’t the same man. Couldn’t be the same man. Mendoza was guilty, guilty, guilty. A scum who had no business hitting on Will’s girlfriend in the bar, becoming enraged because she’d rejected him, raping, murdering, taunting.

Had Amy been chosen precisely because she looked like Gillian? A copycat crime required a copycat victim. But who in hell would imitate something like this? Could Elk Springs really have spawned two monsters?

It made no sense. Gilly’s murder by a man who’d hot-wired cars and fenced stolen goods but never committed a violent crime. This one now, six years later. Why Amy? Why now? A stranger, killed like Gillian, would have been bad enough, but Amy! Less than a week after they met again, talked about old times, flirted a little.

He went cold. Was that why she’d been chosen? Because he’d flirted with her? Because she’d once meant something to him?

Dead Wrong

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Dear Reader,

When Harlequin asked me to do a Signature Select Saga story, possibly linked to one of my previous Superromance trilogies, of course it was PATTON’S DAUGHTERS that leaped to mind. I have other favorites among my books, but for some reason the characters in this trilogy and in Jack Murray, Sheriff, which followed, are more real to me than any others I’ve created. The sisters had such distinct voices, self-images and self-doubts. Writing those books, I sometimes felt as if I was channeling their stories, not making them up! In the back of my mind, I’ve always meant to revisit them. And what an opportunity…

Now if only I hadn’t made Meg Patton’s son, Will, such a well-adjusted young man. Note to self: plan ahead. However, even well-adjusted people get a little skewed when tragedy rends the fabric of their lives. Especially when they’re left with a heavy load of guilt. Poor Will! Things have now gone very wrong since you last met him as a nice college student who was close to his mother and father.

I’d been contemplating a book about a serial killer for a while, too. So, here’s hoping you enjoy meeting the Pattons again, or for the first time, and that this particular serial killer keeps you awake a little too late tonight!

Best,

Janice

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

BONUS FEATURES

CHAPTER ONE

GETTING THERE five minutes quicker wouldn’t make any difference. They weren’t racing to the rescue. They were going to view a corpse. Nonetheless, Meg Patton drove fast, with fierce concentration. If Detective Giallombardo said anything, Meg didn’t hear.

This wouldn’t turn out to be anything like the other murder, she kept assuring herself. The detail the kid who called 911 had blurted out would be an aside, something dropped at the scene, not a deliberate choice of murder weapon and staging. She’d feel like an idiot for tearing out here when she was supposed to supervise detectives, not respond to calls. She had already seen the way heads swiveled when she’d stood abruptly and said, “I’ll take this one.”

She’d garnered more surprise when she’d glanced around, choosing young Giallombardo almost randomly. Eenie, meenie, minie, mo. “Are you tied up? Then come with me.” Everyone in the squad room had stared after them.

Butte Road ran yardstick straight for miles between rusting barbed wire fences holding back brown heaps of tumbleweed before terminating at a small volcanic cinder cone. The pavement turned to gravel not much beyond the Elk Springs city limits. Most of the year, their SUV would have raised a red cloud of cinder dust to trail them like a tail. Today, the hard-packed surface was frozen solid.

She drove this road every few weeks. Her sister Renee, the Elk Springs chief of police, lived out here on the Triple B Ranch with her husband, Daniel, and her two young children. Meg barely spared a glance for their gate when she tore by it. Renee would want to hear about the murder, even if it was outside her jurisdiction. Cops didn’t like brutal murders happening in their own backyards. Even if, in this case, that backyard was a whole heck of a lot of empty country.

One of a half dozen in the immediate vicinity of Elk Springs, this lava cone, no more than a couple hundred feet high, wasn’t even dignified with a name, as far as Meg knew. The county had once contemplated using its cinders for road construction, until Matt Barnard of the Triple B made a stink about having trucks roaring up and down his road all day long. After that, it was left in peace, except for Friday-night beer parties and fornicating teenagers.

A lone pickup truck sat in the turnaround at the end of the road. Two heads in it, real close together. Kids, cuddling against the horror they had suddenly understood walked their world.

Meg was careful to pull in right behind them, so as not to further damage any visible tire prints.

Uh-huh, her inner voice jeered. On frozen cinders.

She killed the engine and got out, slamming the door and then pausing for just a minute to take in the surroundings. The bitter cold stung her skin.

Funny how a dead body could give a familiar landscape a surreal look. The view out here was spectacular, with high country desert stretching to the horizon in one direction, brown and stark in winter. The jagged peaks of the Sisters sliced the sky to the west, while Juanita Butte seemed to float to the north like a perfect scoop of vanilla ice cream. A few thin patches of snow clung to the cinder cone and the red-brown soil between tumbleweeds. The sky was a cold, crystal blue, the stillness absolute.