Killer Legacy

Chapter One

Saint Paul, Minnesota

The Present

Twenty-one-year-old Sarah Royston was sitting on her couch alone while a thunderstorm was raging outside.

Most people would not be watching a bloody, gory horror show on the TV alone on a stormy night, but Sarah wasn’t most people and she’d seen enough blood and gore to last a lifetime.

As she watched Michael Myers hunting for his niece in the fourth Halloween film, she felt her throat tighten and her heart quicken. She’d watched hundreds of movies, many of them horror, but she never felt more connected to any of the characters in those films except young Jamie Lloyd, a young girl hunted by a killer who just won’t seem to go away.

Watching Jamie Lloyd fell down a flight of stairs with her murderous uncle bearing down on her, Sarah felt the girl’s mounting panic. Just as Myers was about to make his move, a loud shrill rang through the air at the same time a particularly loud roar of thunder sounded outside.

Sarah nearly jumped out of her skin and screamed loudly, just as Jamie’s step-sister Rachel swooped in to save Jamie. She took a deep breath and reached for the source of the ringing, her cell phone on the end table next to the couch. Looking at the caller ID, she saw that it was her father, making his one hundredth call of the day, it felt like.

“Hello?” she answered tiredly. She grabbed the remote and turned the volume on her TV.

“Hey honey,” Adam Royston replied. “Just calling to see how you’re doing.”

“I told you two hours ago that I was doing fine, Dad,” Sarah said, her voice softening a bit as she set the remote down.

“I know, but I also know that this is a distressing day for all of us, but most of all you. I worry about you being home alone tonight. There’s a nasty storm going on right now and your neighborhood-”

“Is a neighborhood with lots of people nearby if I need something, Dad,” Sarah interrupted. “It was my choice to stay home tonight, just like it’s my choice to move out in two weeks. Is the place in New York set up yet?”

“Yes, it’ll be ready for you.” There was a short pause. “Honey, I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. Why the sudden urge to move back to New York? It’s not like I’m not happy you’re moving back, because I tried to get you to go to college out here, but the way you sounded on the phone . . . Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No, Dad, I’m not,” Sarah lied, glancing nervously around the room. “I’m just ready to come back. I have my credits worked out and everything; they’ll transfer to the college I’ll be enrolling in for fall semester.”

“Well, I wish you’d thought twice about staying home tonight and not going out with your friends,” Adam said reprovingly.

“Dad, it’s eight o’clock at night, thirteen years later, and I’m still here.” Sarah rolled her eyes as she stood up. “I think if I was going to be kidnapped and tortured or killed, the Grim Reaper would’ve come for me by now.” She entered her kitchen and went to the fridge and pulled out her half gallon of rice milk.

“Honey, please don’t be flippant about this,” Adam said in a firm voice.

Sarah sighed. “I’m sorry, Dad. But there is nothing for you to worry about.”

“This is the first year that you’re alone . . . Of course I’m going to worry,” Adam said quickly. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until tomorrow morning when the sun comes up and I hear your voice.”

“Then I will call you first thing in the morning when the sun comes up,” Sarah promised.

“But I’m going to get ready for bed. I’ll keep my phone by me, okay? If you can’t sleep, try to get some work done.” She took a deep breath as she looked out the window above the sink at the downpour outside.

“I know I can be overbearing and nagging, but just know that I love you, Sarah.”

Sarah smiled into the phone, turning away from the window. “I love you too, Dad. Good night.” She hung up the phone and set it on the counter before moving over to the cupboard where the cups were stored and poured herself a glass of almond milk. Downing the milk in one gulp, she put the cup in the sink and let the water run to rinse it out as she went to the downstairs bathroom and turned on the shower.

As she was leaving the bathroom, she froze for a moment, listening. She thought she heard a sound, like footsteps. Feeling a chill run through her body, she went back to the kitchen to get her cell phone but found that it was missing from the spot where she had set it on the counter and the faucet in the sink was turned off.

Heart beating fast, she whirled around toward the back hallway where she had just come from and screamed at the site of an intruder standing at the kitchen threshold in a long black coat with a grey skull mask with red roses around the cut out of the eyes and painted red tears going down the cheeks.

Sarah turned and ran to the front door. She cursed as she grabbed the door handle and tried to yank the door open, but it wouldn’t budge and she suddenly remembered that it was locked and she unlocked it in a frenzy and felt an enormous sense of relief as she threw the door open and stepped outside towards freedom, only to feel a hand grab a tight grip on her hair and yank her back inside before the door was slammed shut.

Three hours later, Detective Marshall Mears pulled up to the curb a few houses down from Sarah’s house and got out of the car. It was still pouring out, but unfortunately, he wasn’t able to park any closer with all the cruisers and crime scene unit vehicles that had gotten there before him so he kept his head down as he trudged up the sidewalk to Sarah’s front porch, which was outside of the house, but was sheltered with a roof. He saw two young women in their early twenties standing off to the far side of the porch, hugging themselves as they wore police windbreakers over their shoulders to get warm. His partner, Detective Oliver Grant, was standing outside the front door, speaking to a crime scene tech. Once he saw Mears approaching, he said something to the tech and then stepped away as the tech went into the house.

“Catch me up,” Mears said as he came to stand next to Oliver, peering inside the house.

Standing side by side, the two detectives could not have looked more different. Mears was big fitness guru, looking like a cross between a footballer and a model at six foot one, two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle with his shoulder length blonde hair pulled back into a little ponytail, to highlight his brown eyes and chiselled, hard bone features, giving him an untraditionally handsome face.

One the other end of the spectrum, Grant was a shorter five foot seven, with a little pudge in the middle due to his affinity for comfort food, and with his black hair in a razor cut, with a thin face that was more plain than handsome. He most likely would’ve packed on more weight, but he had twin toddler boys, and two young daughters that he chased after at home, in addition to his wife’s recent pledge to raise their children in a healthier lifestyle.

“Twenty-one-year-old Sarah Royston was last seen four hours ago by her roommates before they left to go out with some friends. According to them, Sarah decided to stay in because she had to work tomorrow morning and she wasn’t really a clubber anyway. They came home a little bit ago, found the front door wide open, the house a mess, and no sign of Sarah. I’ve got someone working on getting contact information for the family to notify them.”

“Actually, I have the family’s contact information and I’ve already notified her father.”

Mears and Grant turned to see a woman in her mid-thirties walk up the porch steps. She was wearing a brown rain jacket with hood, and a black laptop bag draped across her front.

She came to stand in front of them and pulled her hood back, revealing her shocking red hair and piercing greeny eyes.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?” Mears asked suspiciously.

The woman reached into one of the pockets of her jacket, pulled out a wallet, and opened it to reveal an FBI badge. “Special Agent Jenna Larsen,” she said, putting the wallet back in her pocket.

“We didn’t call the FBI in on this,” Grant said, confused. “The first responders just got to this crime scene less than an hour ago.”

“I know,” Jenna said, nodding. “But I happen to be familiar with Sarah Royston.”

“Is she involved in any active cases with the FBI?” Mears asked, wondering if that was the motive for Sarah’s abduction.

“It’s more than that; Sarah has a very dark past that appears to have caught up with her.”

Westminster, Minnesota

Thirteen Years Earlier

“Mommy! I can’t find my Sleeping Beauty dress!” eight-year-old Sarah yelled as she pulled out the bottom drawer of her big dresser.

Camille Royston’s size six, short stature figure appeared in Sarah’s doorway with a smile on her face. Camille wasn’t generally considered ‘beautiful’ with her long black hair wrapped up in a tight bun behind her hair, and her brown eyes, and round cheeks, but she was considered pleasant and pretty, which accompanied her kind and charitable personality.

Now, she stood in front of her daughter, holding up the missing dress with one hand. The dress had a comfortable knit top, black velvet bodice, and mauve china silk skirt with whimsical detailing, and in the other hand, she held the black satin bow to complete her daughter’s outfit. She had bought the dress as a gift for Sarah to wear on Halloween when she was six and Sarah had been obsessed with it ever since.

“Oh I wonder where it could be,” Camille said in a sing song voice.

Sarah’s head jerked up and she pushed her wavy, shoulder length blonde hair behind her ears and smiled widely as her hazel eyes lit up and she raced to her mother.

“I was keeping it safe for you,” Camille said, smiling as she handed her daughter the bow.

“Thank you, Mommy!” Sarah cried happily, plopping the bow promptly on her head.

“I’ll go start the popcorn while you put this on,” Camille said. She walked around Sarah and laid the dress gingerly on Sarah’s full-size bed, which was covered with a large, pink blanket with the first three Disney princesses, Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. At the head of the bed laid three pink pillows with the images of the different animal characters from each of the movies the princesses were first featured in.

“Don’t start the movie until I get into the living room!” Sarah ordered sternly as she followed her mother.

“A Disney Princess marathon wouldn’t be complete without my Sleeping Beauty,” Camille gushed as she leaned own and kissed Sarah’s forehead. She ran her hand through Sarah’s forehead and gave a little tug on the bow of her black hair band before she pulled her hand away and straightened up. “I’ll see you in a few minutes, and I promise I won’t start the movie without you.” She turned and walked out of the room while Sarah turned back to the dress and snatched it up, hugging it tightly.

Camille gingerly pulled the cardboard cover off the Jiffy Pop pan and checked to make sure the foil wasn’t penetrated or dented. After the pan passed her inspection, she set it on top of the electric stove top, which she had preheat a few moments before.

She turned away from the stove and moved over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine she had bought at the Westminster Spirits store earlier that day and set it on the counter. Her husband Adam had taken their two sons, six-year-old Joshua and five-year-old Kevin, out for a boys night of camping at the local campgrounds while Sarah had used the opportunity to demand a Disney Princess marathon, something she rarely got to do with having two younger brothers who weren’t interested in anything ‘princess’ whatsoever, so Camille had made sure to pack Sarah’s favorites: Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Snow White, and even though Esmeralda wasn’t considered a Disney Princess, Sarah had demanded The Hunchback of Notre Dame as well.

As she pulled open one of the kitchen drawers to retrieve the corkscrew, she froze and looked up at the backdoor. She thought she’d heard a noise on the back porch.

Taking a deep breath, she reached over to the knife block and pulled out the biggest knife and slowly tip toed to the door. She placed a sweaty hand on the door handle and closed her eyes for a few seconds, counting to three in her head before she opened them and threw the door open. She stepped out onto the porch with the knife in her hand raised and ready to strike, her heart beating faster and faster as every second passed.

She looked around the porch into the yard beyond it but saw nothing besides trees. No movement, no strange sounds, just crickets chirping in the darkness.

As she sighed in relief, she let her hands hang down at her side, with the knife suddenly feeling heavy. She turned around and walked back into the house and shut the door, then locking all three locks before she turned to the counter and set the knife down.

“Jesus, Camille,” she muttered to herself as she leaned against the counter. “She’s gone. The Blood Rose Slayer is dead and she’s not coming back.”

Sarah raced into the living room just as Camille was setting a large bowl of popcorn on the coffee table.

“Popcorn!” Sarah said gleefully as she grabbed a handful and began to stuff her mouth with crumbs falling on the ground.

“Sarah!” Camille said reproachfully. “You’re getting popcorn everywhere! A princess doesn’t eat like a caveman.” She gave her a daughter a stern look before she picked up the DVD remote from the table and pressed the play button.

“I’m sorry Mommy,” Sarah said regretfully. She looked around the floor and began picking up the crumpled popcorn pieces.

Camille smiled as she bent down and gently pulled her daughter up by the arm. “Don’t worry sweetie, I’ll vacuum it up in the morning. Let’s watch the movie.”

Sarah was watching Princess Aurora dancing with Prince Philip in the forest, singing her favorite song, Once Upon A Dream.

“Mommy?” Sarah said, her eyes fixed on the screen as the song ended.

“Hmm?”

“Do you think I’ll ever find a prince?” she asked.

Camille smiled. “Of course! You’re a princess, remember? That’s what your name means. Princess.”

“And his name will be Philip? And he’ll speak like the people from England?”

Camille laughed. “I don’t know if his name will be Philip, or if he’ll speak like an Englishmen, but I’ll make sure he walks and talks like a prince, and treats you like a princess. How does that sound?”

Sarah contemplated it for a moment as she watched Aurora and Prince Philip part ways. “That’s fine. But I want him to look like Prince Philip.” She pointed to the screen. “And he has to know how to ride horses so we can ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.”

Camille nodded approvingly. “You know that Princess Aurora and Prince Philip don’t ride out into the sunset though, right? The movie ends with them dancing the fancy dance in the fancy ballroom on their wedding night.”

“With their mommys and daddys watching from their thrones.” Sarah shrugged. “Both endings are happy endings. You and Daddy are going to be watching me dance the fancy dance. What’s it called again?”

“The waltz,” Camille said quietly. “It’s called the waltz.”

“I want to go to England and do the waltz with Prince Philip,” Sarah announced. She looked up at her mother and was surprised to see a startled expression on her face.

“What’s wrong, mommy?”

Camille cleared her throat with a little shake of her head. “Honey, why are you so interested in England now?”

“Because they have princesses and princes there,” Sarah said. “And I’ve been there.”

Camille frowned. “What did you say?”

Sarah shifted so that she could face her mother now. “When I was a baby, you took me there.”

Camille shook her head, numbed by a sense of dread. “Honey, I never took you to England. Where did you get that idea?”

“The man at the library.”

Camille looked perplexed. “The man at the library?”

“I met him today. When you were in the bathroom, a man was walking by my table and saw the book you were reading about Princess Diana and Buckingham Palace. He said he thinks you should have some pictures of me at Buckingham Palace from when I was a baby.”

“That I have pictures of you at Buckingham Palace?”

Sarah nodded. “He said, “I remember seeing pictures of you and your mommy at Buckingham Palace when you were just a baby.”

Camille opened her mouth but before she could speak, there was a loud knock on the front door.

Saint Paul, Minnesota

The Present

Grant set two evidence bags on Mears’ desk in their squad room. One bag held a photo of Sarah in bed with another man, while the other had held the same photo, only with a red ‘X’ drawn over the man’s face.

“Forensics had found it after searching Sarah’s room,” he told Mears. “According to Stevens, Agent Larsen caught a glimpse of those photos and ran out of there like a bat out of hell. But whatever. This is our priority. Finding out who this guy is and who took these photos.”

“A jilted lover?” Mears said quietly, pulling the clean photo towards himself.

“Maybe his girlfriend or wife or something caught him cheating with Sarah, or Sarah had a secret admirer. Whatever this is, someone clearly did not want them together.”

“And looking for him is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Grant said with a dejected look as he sat on the edge of the desk.

“His name is William Usher,” Jenna said.

Grant and Mears looked up at her in surprise.

“He’s a member of Scotland Yard,” Jenna explained. “He and Sarah met during a case that I was working on six months ago. The murder of an FBI recruit and her parents in Richmond, Virginia. I called my superiors on my way here. Will Usher is a British citizen, and even more importantly, a British cop. You’re treading into FBI territory now, and you’ll need FBI resources to track him down.”

Richmond, Virginia

Six Months Earlier

William ‘Will’ Usher stepped out of the FBI vehicle in a fog as he stared at the house on Dewitt Drive.

Two hours ago, he’d been pulled into the office of Special Agent Lucas Kirkman, who had informed him that one of the FBI recruits in the program Will was participating in was brutally murdered along with her parents.

Layla Webster had been a fresh faced twenty-six-year-old recruit. She wasn’t considered a conventional beauty, but her looks made her intelligently beautiful. She had a thin face, high cheek bones and big, brown eyes. She had a slender, petite body, and she preferred to dress in more conservative style. She spoke in an eloquent fashion, with a soothing voice and an articulate vocabulary. But what he loved most about her was the energy she put into everything she was doing while they went through the course together.

And now, they were at a crime scene together. The scene of her murder.

He saw two agents coming out of the three story Victorian style house wish ashen faces. He took a deep breath and marched up to the house, but two uniforms stopped him at the front steps, demanding to know who he was.

Special Agent Jenna Larsen, was standing on the front steps, saw him and moved forward.

“He’s with me!” she called to the uniforms. “You can let him through.”

The two uniforms exchanged a look and stepped aside to let him pass and he quickly hurried up the steps and stood in front of Jenna.

“She’s still in there,” Jenna said quietly. “The parents too.”

“I want to see her,” Will said.

Jenna sighed. “If you go in there, you won’t remember her the way you knew her before…” She paused and moistened her lips. “The only thing you’ll see when you think of her the way that sick fuck left her.”

“I see dead bodies all the time in London.”

“London hasn’t seen anything like what’s in that house since Jack the Ripper,” she said, laughing dryly. “But if you think you’re up for it, go ahead. Tell the guys in there I said you were cleared. I need to go get some statements from the neighbors, see if they saw or heard anything.” She patted his shoulder and walked down the steps without another word.

Will looked after her for a moment, and then turned and entered the house.

There was a staircase about six feet in front of the door, going up to the second floor and he saw the second floor landing on the left side. The wall along the staircase was brown and covered with family portraits of Layla and her family throughout the years. She had two brothers and two sisters, who thankfully were not at the house and were spared from the same fate as their sister and parents. Will remembered Layla saying she and her siblings were as thick as thieves growing up, and despite the fact that they were all spread out around the country, that bond never weakened.

There was a landing on the stairs which showed the beginning of a hallway on the second level, but he couldn’t really pay attention to that because of the way Layla Webster’s naked body was strung up on the landing.

His mouth dropped open at the sight and he thought his stomach contents might come spilling out.

Her arms were spread out, and tied to at the wrists with rope, and her head was tied around the neck to hold it upright so that her entire face was shown without obstructing the view. Her shoulder length hair was hanging loosely and her eyes had been cut out with a white rose covered in what he suspected was her own blood. Will’s gaze moved down and it only got worse. Her heart had also been cut out, and her left breast was cut out. The lover half of her body was covered in blood, as if it had been smeared on like paint.

Will blinked and walked out of the house and leaned against the railing on the front porch, trying not to throw up.

He took deep breaths as he remembered meeting Layla for the first time on his first night at Quantico. He was in the library late at night, looking up some cases that would be covered during the three-week course and he was so immersed in his research that he almost jumped out of his skin when he felt that light tap on his shoulder and looked to see her staring down at him with an apologetic smile on her face. She had found a book that she wanted, but it was on the top shelf and she couldn’t reach it. So, like a proper English gentleman, he graciously came to her aid.

He had every intention of returning to his books, but when he saw the book that Layla had asked him to grab for her, it piqued his interest. It was a book on the Blood Rose Slayer murders in Minnesota, which occurred twenty years earlier.

He started inquiring about her interest in the case, and they ended up sitting down right at that spot, spending three hours going through the book, sharing their thoughts and opinions as they flipped through it and even spent a good chunk of that time sitting in silence as they read passages and chapters from it together.

And that’s when he put it together. The Blood Rose Slayer.

Layla’s body had been posed like one of the victims in the Blood Rose Slayer book, the book that had brought them together.

Was it a coincidence?

He scanned the front yard noticed Jenna questioning a young woman in front of the house next door on the right. The girl had her back turned toward him and was hugging herself as the wind blew her long blonde hair around lightly.

He watched Jenna put a hand on the girl’s arm and give her a reassuring look and then pulled her hand away and reach into her wallet and pull out a card, which she then handed to the girl, who accepted it. Then Jenna nodded and walked away from the girl back towards the Webster house.

He straightened up and hurried down the stairs to meet her halfway. “Who was that?” he asked.

“There’s a group of college kids renting the house next door,” Jenna explained. “I was just asking her if she saw anything. She wasn’t much help, but I gave her my card in case she remembers anything.”

“What’s her name?” Will asked, staring at the girl.

“Sarah Royston,” Jenna said absently as her phone started ringing.

Will’s eyes widened as the girl turned around to face him and his mouth dropped.

Sarah turned and saw Agent Larsen approach a tall man who looked about ten years older than her and had a brief exchange with him before she put her phone to her ear and turned away from him. She watched his eyes widen and his mouth drop open as their eyes connected.

She took a deep breath and quickly turned away from him, unnerved by the obvious recognition. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised; she’d seen the same brief flash of recognition in Agent Larsen’s eyes when she’d introduced herself.

The Blood Rose Slayer case was one of the most famous murder cases in the upper Midwest and the fact that the only known survivor, her mother, was murdered in a similar matter less than ten years later had brought it all back to the front page of newspapers across the country, along with the fact that her mother’s murder was never solved.

And she knew it would happen again once the press got wind that Sarah Royston was staying next door to the house where the family of an FBI agent was brutally murdered.

Taking a deep breath, she walked back the house. Agent Larsen appeared to be done with her and if she wanted to ask her more questions, she could come inside. But Sarah wanted to prolong the press’ intrusion for as long as possible and avoid getting her picture in the papers.

Feeling on edge, she made her way to the back of the house and went to the kitchen, heading straight to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of pomegranate vodka. After preparing a medium sized glass of vodka on the rocks, she walked to the dining room table and set her glass down and pulled a bottle of Oxycodone out of her purse.

She sighed and popped the lid open and dumped two pills into her palm before replacing the lid and putting the bottle back in her purse.

She took a deep breath as she stared at the two tiny pills in her hands, and the sound of her mother’s voice echoed in her head.

Westminster, Minnesota

Twelve ½ Years Earlier

Camille’s head whipped around at the sound of the knocking.

“Who is that?” Sarah asked.

Camille turned to her daughter, struggling to hide the terror that was rising inside of her. She gently put two hands on her daughter’s shoulders and kissed her forehead. “A stranger,” she whispered. “Honey, I need you to do me a very important favor.”

Sarah nodded silently, jumping as the knocking turned into pounding.

“I need you to go to your room and hide under your bed. You know how you hide under your bed by pulling out the square when you’re playing with your brothers, and you put the square back after you get under the bed so they can’t see you? I need you to do that for me right now. Go under your bed and put the square back in it’s place, and be very, very quiet.”

“Mommy?” Sarah’s eyes started glistening with tears.

“Honey, it’s going to be okay,” Camille promised. “Do not come out unless I say so. Promise?”

Sarah nodded her head jerkily.

“Okay.” Camille pulled Sarah into her arms and hugged her tight. “I love you. Now go!”

Sarah nodded and kissed her mother on the cheek before she got off the couch and ran to her room.

Richmond, Virginia

Six Months Earlier

There was a loud smack and she jumped and looked up to see the screen door smacking as it was being thrown around by a gust of wind behind the main back door. She tossed the pills in her mouth and followed it with the vodka, emptying the glass before she set it down and walked to the back door and threw it open.

She grabbed the handle of the screen door and held it firmly against the wind and halfway turned around to close it when something stopped her and she slowly turned to look out at the trees behind the house.

They reminded her of the trees behind the Westminster house. She used to imagine that the Westminster house was the house in Sleeping Beauty, and that her mother was the fairy Flora, raising her just like she raised Aurora. In the movie Maleficent, the story was slightly different, revealing that Maleficent used to watch Aurora from the woods around the house, having known where she was all along. Now, Sarah wondered if her mother’s killer had been watching them like Maleficent before she struck.

And if he was watching now.

She felt her breath catch as she figured it out what had stopped her from shutting the door; she’d had the feeling that she wasn’t alone. That someone was watching her from the trees.

She took a deep breath and shut the screen door, making sure it was locked before she shut the main door and locked that as well. She closed her eyes and turned, rested her head against the door, taking a deep breath.

“I’m sure the quiet in the back of the house must feel like a relief compared to the front.”

Sarah opened her eyes in alarm and was startled to see the agent she’d seen with Agent Larsen earlier standing in the threshold of the kitchen and the living room.

“Can I help you Mr...”

“Usher,” the man answered with an English accent. “Will Usher.”

“Like The Fall of the House of Usher,” Sarah said. She walked to the dining room table where her purse and her empty glass were sitting.

“House of Usher?” The man gave her a questioning look.

“It’s a story from Edgar Allan Poe,” Sarah replied. She leaned against the table, watching him closely.

“Ah. I’m not really informed in the area of American literature.”

“I see that.” Sarah cleared her throat.

“How old are you?” Will asked, folding his arms.

“Twenty,” Sarah said, looking him in the eye.

“Isn’t the legal drinking age in this country twenty-one?”

She nodded.

“You could be arrested for that then.” He motioned to her purse. “And what was in that bottle?”

“Like I said, it’s vodka,” Sarah said, pretending to misunderstand him. “I don’t know how you say it in British, but in American, that’s how we say it.”

“British isn’t a language, it’s a culture,” Will corrected irritably, recognizing her ruse for what it was. “But we both know I was referring to the party favors you pulled out of your bag. What’s in that bottle?”

“Medication,” Sarah said sourly, folding her arms now.

“Was it prescribed to you?” he asked.

“Not every medication needs to be prescribed to you in order for you to take it,” Sarah sniped, irritated at how this stranger was invading her privacy.

“What’s the name of the medication?” Will asked again. “I already know it’s illegal.”

“Oxycodone,” Sarah said promptly.

“And I bet you don’t have a prescription for that by a licensed doctor, do you? You know that is also illegal.”

Sarah gave him a defiant look and held her hand out with her wrists together. “You caught me. Guess it’s time for you to do your civic duty and arrest me.”

Will said nothing as he unfolded his arms and started walking toward her. He stopped in front of her and pushed her arms down and then gently turned her around and pulled her arms behind her back.

Sarah felt her face burning as she stared at the orange pill bottle sitting on top inside of her purse and frowned when a hand snaked around her and snatched the bottle up.

She turned around just as Will walked away from her and around the table to the sink, popping the top of the bottle off and dumping the contents into the sink. She stared in shock with her mouth dropped open and watched him turned the garbage disposal on, crushing the pills he had just dumped down there.

He let the disposal run for a brief moment and then shut it off and turned toward her, tossing the empty bottle lightly on the table.

“I’m not going to arrest you,” he said with a sigh. “I’m just a visiting officer from England here on an FBI training course. I don’t have the authority to arrest you even if I was inclined to. But if I catch you doing this again, I’ll pass this information on to the authorities who do have the power to make an arrest. You’re a young, beautiful woman and you’re above that nonsense.” He motioned to the pill bottle. “There are other ways to handle your internal struggles.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re a complete stranger to me,” Sarah said incredulously. “You just trespassed into the house I’m staying in and threatened to arrest me even though you don’t have the power to do that, and you’re standing here trying to tell me to find some way to deal my ‘internal struggles’ that you don’t know anything about. I’m pretty sure we won’t be seeing each other again. Get out.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said softly.

“Then maybe you should’ve started with making your presence known instead of standing there spying on me,” she sniped. “You must’ve been there for a few minutes if you saw me take those pills out of my purse.”

“I did,” he replied with a frown. “I said your name but you clearly didn’t hear me. You were staring in your hand like you were in some sort of trance. Or like your mind went somewhere else.”

Sarah cleared her throat. “I was lost in a thought,” she admitted.

“And what about when you were at the door? You seemed unnerved by something.”

“A family was just murdered next door in the middle of the night while I slept soundly in my bed,” she said with a dry laugh. “Why would I have any reason to be nervous?”

“According to the statement you gave Special Agent Larsen, you didn’t have any information to help them find out who did it.”

“Because I don’t!” Sarah insisted.

“But something is clearly bothering you,” Will said slowly, looking at her thoughtfully.

Sarah glanced at the back door before she turned her gaze back to him. “I told Agent Larsen everything I know,” she said quietly. “If I remember anything, I’ll give her a call.” She pulled the card out of her pocket and held up for him to see. “Please leave, Will Usher.”

“Usher!”

Sarah and Will turned their heads and saw Agent Larsen standing there, staring at them disapprovingly.

“I already questioned Ms. Royston,” she informed Will sharply. “No one told you to come in here and question her again. I apologize on DI Usher’s behalf for this intrusion, Ms. Royston,” she said coolly, her eyes glued to Will. She cocked her head toward the front door and turned on her heel and walked away.

Will turned back to Sarah. “Sorry for the intrusion, Ms. Royston,” he said quietly before he turned and followed Agent Larsen.

Sarah stood rooted to the spot, even after she heard the front door close.

Will shut the door behind him and turned around and took a step back, startled to see Jenna standing there, glaring at him.

“What the hell was that?” she demanded.

“I thought I would try my hand at it,” Will replied quietly.

“You’re not an agent, DI Usher,” she snapped. “You had no authority to go in there and question her like one.”

“I let her know that I wasn’t–”

“And I’ll let you know that you just put this investigation in jeopardy! If this goes to trial and she decides to mention your little chat, it’s possible she could accuse the Bureau of prejudice and harassment. Stay away from her!”

She turned around on her heel, but he grabbed her and yanked her back before she could walk away and made her face him. “You think she did this,” he said, frowning.

Jenna ripped her arm out of his hands and stepped to him so that they were nose to nose. “You don’t know anything about this girl,” she hissed.

“I know that she’s certainly not a killer. And I’ll prove it.” He stepped around her and walked away, feeling the heat of her eyes as she glared at his back.

Battersea, London, England

The Present

The loud ring of a cell phone jerked Will out of his dream and back to reality as he opened his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

He felt movement beside him and turned his head to see a young woman pull the blanket back that was covering her head to reveal a face strikingly similar to Sarah’s.

“Would you mind shutting that off?” she asked groggily with her eyes half closed.

Her English accent jerked him out of his reverie and he turned his head as he reached for the phone on his nightstand and snatched it up. Checking the caller ID, he answered at once after seeing DCI Eireann ‘Ann’ Hines’ number on the screen.

“It’s the middle of the fucking night,” he snapped. “I’m not on duty.”

“It’s actually seven in the fucking morning,” she snapped back. Then she took a deep breath. “Will, my superiors just received a phone call from the top brass of the FBI in the States,” Ann said, her voice taking on a grim tone. “A Special Agent Jenna Larsen is requesting a statement from you regarding someone named Sarah uh . . . Shit I can’t remember.”

“Royston,” Will said, instantly alert as he sat up at the sound of Sarah’s name.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Ann said. “The girl has been kidnapped, Will.”

An hour later, Will was in Ann’s office at Scotland Yard, seated in front of her desk as she finished up a phone call with the FBI.

Born in an Irish village of Ashford about an hour south of Dublin, Ann had built up a career and resume on the Dublin police force before moving to London ten years previously and moving up the ranks. She was a headstrong woman who struggled between balancing her personal feelings with the challenging decisions she was constantly making as part of her job title. Will had joined the force around the same time as Ann, though he didn’t have her ambition to move up, and was instead comfortable with his rank of Detective Inspector while Ann revelled in her success as an Irish woman in a leadership position within Scotland Yard, one of the most formidable police forces in the world.

Ann was a beautiful woman with pale skin as white as snow and hair as black as ebony. She had a nice slim, but toned figure due to spending at least twenty hours in the gym every week, though this wasn’t so much out of concern for her looks, but to remain as healthy as possible, and she couldn’t imagine herself slowing down.

Due to her harsh personality, her physical features and the hard stare that almost never left her face, she was given the name ‘Snow White’ around the force, though she had laughed hysterically when Will informed her of this but pretended like she didn’t know about the nickname. She could’ve been dubbed something worse, and she happened to like the fairy tale.

“Yes, I’ll call you back when he gets in and set it up,” Ann said. “Good bye.” She hung up the phone and looked up at him and took a deep breath. “The director of the FBI wants a statement from you. He thinks you were in the States on assignment without the Americans’ knowledge, however I informed him that that is far from the case. But I want to hear from you before they do. How do you know this girl, Will?”

Will leaned forward. “I met her when I attended that training program at Quantico. You heard about the recruit that was murdered; Sarah was staying next door to victim.”

“Okay, but why did you go to Minnesota last month to see her? If it was something to do with the case, you should’ve gone to the FBI.”

“I-I . . .” Will closed his mouth, unable to give her an answer she would want to hear.

But his silence was all Ann needed to hear and she leaned forward in her seat, resting her elbows on the desk as she looked him dead in the eye. “There have been many women to grace your bed over the years that I’ve known you, including some on this force. You have plenty of warm, willing bodies here. And yet you travelled across an ocean to see this one?”

Will nodded. “There was something about her,” he said softly. “Something about being around her just felt right. It felt comfortable, it felt familiar.”

“How did it feel familiar? You just met this girl for the first time six months ago.”

“I can’t explain it. But I had to see her, so I took some time off and I went. It wasn’t about the case, or any case for that matter. It was a personal visit.”

“Will, you know how this looks!” she snapped, slapping the desk. “The FBI does not care about personal, and quite frankly, neither do I. You met this girl, whatever her name is–”

“Sarah,” Will interrupted. “Her name is Sarah. Sarah Marie Royston.”

“You met Sarah six months ago on a case involving a serial killer’s legacy that has haunted her for years. Megan Brooks was a resident of London studying in Minnesota. You, a Scotland Yard cop, meets Sarah six months ago on that case in Virginia, then you visit her again in Minnesota last month, and then last night, she is abducted. Are you really going to tell me that the sequence of events I just laid out for you is purely coincidental?”

“It is,” Will answered without hesitation.

Ann narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ve been a cop for over fifteen years, I’m five years into my current role as DCI, and we’ve worked together for ten years now. You know I didn’t get this job by flashing a pretty smile and leaving my top three buttons undone, I got this position based on my skill and the merits of my work. Now I’m no whanker, and you’re no bloke, so why the bloody hell do you think it’s smart to insult my intelligence? Are you just being cheeky? Do you find this situation funny? Because I sure as hell–”

“Of course not!” Will shouted, jumping out of his chair. “A girl has been kidnapped for Christ’s sake!”

“Exactly!” Ann shouted back, standing up as well. “Damnit Will, a girl’s life is at stake! So, you either tell me what the hell is going on right now, or I’ll call my superiors and have them throw you to the FBI in handcuffs for obstructing their investigation!”

Will took a deep breath. “Fine. I do have something to tell you. But it doesn’t leave this room and it’s for your ears only.”

Ann held up a hand motioning for him to stop. “Did you have something to do with this kidnapping?”

“No.”

“Did you commit a crime that’s been connected to this kidnapping or the murder investigation in Virginia?”

“No,” Will said in exasperation.

“Then as far I’m concerned, it’s none of the bloody FBI’s business,” Ann said quietly. She sat down and motioned for him to do the same.