BooksBarbecue
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Chapters (41)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  3. CONTENTS
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. CHAPTER ONE
  6. CHAPTER TWO
  7. CHAPTER THREE
  8. CHAPTER FOUR
  9. CHAPTER FIVE
  10. CHAPTER SIX
  11. CHAPTER SEVEN
  12. CHAPTER EIGHT
  13. CHAPTER NINE
  14. CHAPTER TEN
  15. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  16. CHAPTER TWELVE
  17. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  19. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  21. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  22. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  23. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  40. EPILOGUE
  41. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“It’s what you always want to do.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Avery said. “Seeing her name carved on that metal plate is getting harder, not easier.”

“Why?”

“I got off the junk. And I can’t mask my bitterness anymore. I got free of it. Why couldn’t she do it for us?”

“She wasn’t as strong as you.”

“But she had two kids, for Christ’s sake. If you can’t get clean for your kids, what does that say about you?”

“Like I said, she wasn’t strong. And we all have the potential to break if the right combination is dialed up.”

“You don’t break.”

“Maybe my combination hasn’t been dialed yet,” Jordan said.

Avery tucked the flowers into the small vase by their mother’s name. “You have to make me a promise.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t die.”

There was real fear in Avery’s voice that Jordan had not heard since her sister was really young. “I’m not planning on it.”

Avery looked at her sister. “You think that woman who was suffocated planned on it?”

The image of the dead woman’s face, bloated and distorted, rushed into Jordan’s mind. The victim might have gone with the killer to turn a trick, get high, or both, but she certainly had never bargained for the horrors unleashed on her. “No, I don’t think she did.”

“No one plans the bad stuff, Jordan. But it’s out there waiting for us.”

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

Tuesday, April 13

8:00 a.m.

Jordan was on her fourth cup of coffee when she arrived at the medical examiner’s office. Sleep had eluded her last night, and when she finally put her head on the pillow at 1:00 a.m., her mind ping-ponged between the faces of the two victims and her sister. A nightly replay of crime scenes was not anything new, but tossing her sister into the mix was. Blame it on the cemetery visit.

She showed her badge at the front desk and rode the elevator down to the basement. The routine was strangely rote. Her long hair was always pulled back and twisted into a bun, so it was a matter of putting her purse and jacket in a locker, slipping on a surgical gown, gloves, and a mask before she made her way to the whiteboard on the wall, which stated Jane Doe / Poe was in suite 101. Got to love the rhyme.

When Jordan pushed through the door, her focus zeroed in on the table where the victim’s sheet-clad body now lay. Her vision narrowed, and she forgot everything except the god-awful smell and the outline of the woman’s body under the sheet.