I F  I  R U N

(A Ruby Hunter FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 1)

M o l l y   B l a c k

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

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

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Somewhere between the bar and home, it got quiet. Back a few blocks, Alannah Danes had been one of many tipsy twenty-somethings spilling out of nightclubs in teetering heels. Now, the street was empty.

She pulled her phone out of her clutch, finding the last number she dialed.

“Make it home safe?” her sister asked groggily. Not only was Sylvia home on a Friday night but she’d apparently gone to bed early.

“Walking home,” Alannah replied, putting her sister on speakerphone. “Will you take me to get my car tomorrow?”

“Sure. What time will you be done with that hangover?” Sylvia teased.

“I’ll be fine. I’m already sobering up,” Alannah said.

Maybe it was the cold, but it was more likely her nervousness bringing her senses back into focus. Her eyes flitted for signs of movement around her. The flicker of something out of the corner of her eye made her jump. Only as the car headlights passed her did she realize it was her own shadow moving across the wall. That’s where she was at. Startling at nothing.

Alannah huffed out a breath, her faith in her awareness shaken. She swore there was a quiet approach of footsteps, but maybe it was just her imagination jumping to conclusions again.

She paused, listening a little closer.

“It's a little late to be on your own.”

Alannah heard him before she saw him, a man in dark clothes stepping out of an alley into the dim light thrown by distant streetlamps. He was easily bigger and taller than she was, all the things she didn’t want to bump into late at night.

“Who was that?” Sylvia demanded.

Alannah said nothing, frozen in place.

“I could walk you home,” the man said.

All at once, Alannah could move again, shaking her head. Plenty of guys had offered her that in her life, but never so eerily. Never without flirtation.

That unnerved her more than if he had leered.

“That’s okay,” she said hurriedly, shuffling past.

“Alannah?” Sylvia tried again.

“Help,” Alannah whispered back. Where was she? She knew she’d struck out due east from the bar, but what streets had she already passed? How many more blocks to go?

“What’s happening?” Sylvia asked.

Alannah didn’t have an answer for her. She checked over her shoulder, looking for something about him she could describe, something more helpful than explaining that a man appeared out of nowhere and offered his company. How threatening did it sound when she put it like that? A man who didn’t sound salacious at all, but something else.

Instead of his identity, all she could pick out was the knife.  The knife and a bone-white smile.

“Help me!” she screamed, breaking into a sprint. Someone would look out one of the glowing apartment windows and call the police. Someone would do something.

Her heel caught in a grate, sending her reeling into a wall. In a second, he was looming over her, flashing the kind of smile that sent goosebumps rising over her skin.

A strangled cry shredded her throat as white-hot pain radiated through her chest. It took seeing the hilt of the knife against her skin to understand, to connect the pain to the blade. As swiftly as it went in, he pulled it out again. Alannah thrashed, sending something skittering across the sidewalk.

It was the knife. He had dropped the knife. She kicked it further away, darting out of reach only to hit the ground hard.

Dizziness hit Alannah as she crawled across the sidewalk. It was nearly impossible to grip anything. Each beat of her heart made her fainter and fainter. There was a hedge ahead; all she had to do was get behind it and wait. Someone would do something.

“Alannah, what’s happening?” he called in a mocking whine.

Alannah curled as small as she could behind the hedge, her vision spinning. This was why Sylvia stayed in all the time. She wished more than anything that Sylvia had just come out with her this one time.

Or that she’d stayed at home with Sylvia instead. Tears pin-pricked her eyes, but she clamped her jaw shut in silence.

Then came the blaring tune of her ringtone.

Alannah clapped a hand over her mouth. She could see it, just out of reach, Sylvia’s name bright across the screen.

A long shadow stretched toward her. The knife was raised like a macabre shadow puppet. He stepped around the hedge, leaning down over the phone to wordlessly answer the call. Sylvia’s muffled voice called out for her.

He raised one finger to his lips and Alannah screamed until her voice went hoarse.

The knife glinted like a slice of crescent moon in the night.

CHAPTER ONE

Ruby Hunter was not much of a mourner, but this was not a funeral either.

It was a cemetery and there was a headstone, but it was long past the time for saying her prayers.

It had been three years since Asher Carnes’s death, and Ruby looked the part of a widow standing among her colleagues. In another life, she might have been a classic Midwestern farm girl, brown-eyed with hair long and wheat-colored. She had always been small, but that had only made her a better gymnast back in high school. All the soft edges Ruby could have had were betrayed by a stiff resolve she hadn’t shaken, even after Asher’s killer had been caught.

That should have brought her peace but an emptiness grew inside her instead.

“You got him.” Jocelyn Fontaine leaned over to whisper in Ruby’s ear. Joce had been an instant friend, back when they were both starting out. It felt so long ago now, but then, everything did in the division between before Asher’s death and after. Now, Ruby felt distant from her, like they were practically strangers.

But Joce wasn’t wrong. Ruby had caught Vincent Vallejo, psychology professor and the man responsible for 13 murders, including one FBI agent. He was behind bars, away from the general public where he couldn't personally get his hands on anyone else. But if Vincent Vallejo was truly harmless now, they wouldn’t even be standing in front of this new headstone, the polished rock easy to care for. Vallejo may have been behind bars, but his influence certainly couldn’t be contained, his fans carrying out his deeds for him.

Like vandalizing graves.

“He got us,” Ruby replied, turning away from the etched letters, the span of years between birth and death too short. Asher Carnes, beloved son.

Would she have taken that name? How long would it have taken to get used to the ring of it? Or a ring on her finger?

Stupid to think of the possibilities now that there was no possibility.

She’d been so consumed with tracking down Vallejo that Ruby struggled to grasp those old, warm memories of Asher, like it had happened in a different lifetime. Without him to temper her drive, she was like a train barreling down the track with no brakes. Catching Vallejo was her train crash, every messy, shrapnel-laden part of it.

Too shattered.

She came to see the new headstone because people expected her to be there. Ruby couldn’t come on her own, alone with a rock, just a reminder that Asher was underground and she was above it. They hadn’t caught Vallejo fast enough. They hadn’t prevented the crime. So now Asher got visitors a few times a year; meanwhile being in prison had made Vincent Vallejo somehow more accessible to his sick fans. They wrote him letters, requested visitation, and wrote articles about him and his Bundy-esque charisma.

“Everyone misses him,” Jocelyn said, “but we miss you, too.”

Ruby bit back a laugh. Not everyone missed her. The director certainly didn’t, not with the bureaucratic nightmare she’d left in her wake. Who wanted an untethered loose cannon with too much simmering rage and no one but bad guys to take it out on? Not the man who had to handle the aftermath.

They all pretended her little break from the BAU was some kind of self-care retreat instead of a punishment, a threat. Next time, do it by the book or else the next leave of absence will be a permanent one.

“I don’t know if that’s enough, Joce,” Ruby replied.

Before Joce could argue, the deputy director, Warren Bellisario, sauntered up to them, offering Jocelyn an apologetic smile.

“Do you mind if I interrupt?” he asked.

Bellisario hadn’t been a field agent for ages, but he didn’t have the same bureaucratic air about him that so many people in management did. He may have switched to patent leather shoes and a suit, but his office wardrobe didn’t mask his sturdy, capable build. His hair grayed around his temples and, that morning in particular, he appeared world-weary and tired, but he was professional as always.

Jocelyn nodded, retreating back to the agents. Ruby’s chest tightened at the separation, the clear divide between them and her.

Bellisario gave one last glance back at the group before resting a hand on Ruby’s shoulder.

“Could I get you a coffee?” he asked.

Ruby braced herself for a lecture or more unwelcome concern but nodded.

“Good,” Bellisario said, “we should talk.”

CHAPTER TWO

Bellisario ushered Ruby to a table in the back of a hip independent coffee shop. It had that quaint charm of DIY art and mismatched chairs. Compared to the cemetery, it was welcoming and cozy, the perfect place to get out of the cold, but Ruby wasn’t ready to be warmed over. She and Bellisario looked sorely out of place, Bellisario with his clean-cut appearance and Ruby dressed all in black with her blonde hair pulled tightly back into an austere bun.

The coffee shop was meant for relaxed artists and liberal arts students, not for people like them.

“You wanted to talk?” Ruby said, settling into a bentwood chair across from him. She toyed with the lid of her coffee cup. Facing him like this felt too much like an interrogation with her on the wrong side.

“I have something I think might be good for you,” Bellisario said tentatively, “if you’re up for it.”

“Some healthy coping mechanisms?” Ruby asked. “Bikram yoga?”

As if sweating in a sports bra would bring her inner peace.

Bellisario offered her a tight smile.

“Not quite what I had in mind,” he said.

Bellisario brought out a file folder, the familiar FBI confidential stamp on it. His gaze flicked briefly around the café, his shoulders hunching in the lack of privacy. Ruby mirrored him instinctively.

Instead of flipping open the whole folder, Bellisario slid a crime scene photo across the table.

Ruby’s eyes roved over it.

Crime scene photos should have unsettled her more than they did. She automatically began analyzing it, picking out the details gathered in the photos. The photo was of a woman, early twenties most likely, probably out on a weekend. She counted out the entry wounds, the individual penetrating injuries of a knife puncture.

Thirteen.

Ruby reeled with déjà vu, understanding why Bellisario had gone so far as to corner her at Asher’s grave to bring this up. They were like Ruby’s personal version of a gruesome constellation, a pattern that had its own mythology.

“Lucky Thirteen,” she said, “like Vallejo’s first victim.”

She recognized the pattern instantly. Ruby had poured obsessively over every detail of Vallejo’s patterns and methods. His case took over her entire life for a while.

“That’s not all.”

Bellisario slid a second photo to her, the location different, the victim dressed in a skirt and cropped top instead of a dress. If the photos had been taken from the medical examiner’s table instead of the crime scene, Ruby might have had a difficult time telling them apart.

“She was found two days earlier,” Bellisario said.

She attempted to read Bellisario himself like he was a file, watching for the details in his reaction. He might have been doing exactly the same thing.

“Vallejo’s fan club?” Ruby probed, watching the deputy director closely.

“Two victims in two days,” Bellisario emphasized.

“That’s too fast a turn around for Vallejo,” Ruby said pointedly, “and he only killed one woman like this, if he is the inspiration.”

If this was a test, she didn’t want to assume immediately and prove that her mind would always jump to Vallejo. Ruby also didn’t want to say that she would need another victim in order to be sure, and that victim would have to mimic Vallejo’s second crime, not just a repeat pattern of the first.

Bellisario took back the photos, tucking them back into the folder, but leaving that Confidential stamp right where Ruby could see it.

“You just wanted to show me pictures?” Ruby asked, incredulous.

“No, I want you out in the field,” Bellisario said, “if you’d rather take a vacation...”

Ruby set her jaw, working over the words before she spoke one way or another. She glanced back at the closed file. How nice of Bellisario to dangle the bait in front of her before outlining the trap.

“Does everyone want me back?” Ruby pressed.

Bellisario shrugged.

“I’m less concerned about people’s feelings and more concerned about young women being killed by a potential copycat.”

Ruby stilled.

“So, you really are entertaining that theory,” she said.

Again, Bellisario shrugged. Damn him. Ruby legitimately couldn’t tell if it was an honest slip, or if the man was very sly at luring her deeper and deeper.

“If it is, I want someone who won’t have to waste time brushing up on the details of Vallejo’s case file,” Bellisario said, “I need you. There is no one who knows that man better than you do, better or worse.”

He wasn’t wrong there, Ruby thought begrudgingly.

“I don’t have a partner, remember?” Ruby said, “the last one didn’t even make it through one case with me before filing for a transfer.”

Instantly, she regretted her snark, but Bellisario just smiled.

“Oh, I’ve already solved that problem,” he said.

Ruby was smart enough to keep her mouth shut this time. For all she knew, the director had hand-picked someone to condescend down to her because she lost her cool once with the man who killed a Federal Agent. There was no one else in the world that could fill his shoes.

“How soon?” she asked.

“Immediately,” Bellisario said, “like I said, two women, two days apart.”

That did not bode well for their potential timeline.

She remained silent, mulling. Doubt flickered in her for just a moment. Maybe the higher-ups were right. What if she wasn’t ready to come back and all she did was make a fool of herself? There would be no third chance.

Bellisario rose, tucking the file folder back into his bag.

“Who are you sticking me with?” Ruby asked.

“You’ll have to come find out,” he said.

He stood over her a moment, a distant sadness shifting across his face.

“Imagine if you could go back in time and stop Vallejo after his first kill, before the media came up with a catchy name, before he got confident and emboldened,” Bellisario said. “That's what this case is.”

Ruby nodded, swallowing past the lump in her throat. It didn’t matter that she knew Bellisario chose to play on her heartstrings like a violin. It still worked, obvious manipulation or not.

There was no time machine she could hop into and stop Vallejo before he started, but there were other killers out there. She couldn’t change the past, but she was in a position to stop criminals before they became just as infamous.

Bellisario waited patiently for her to come to an inevitable conclusion. She either accepted the job now or followed it obsessively from afar, camped in front of the TV watching the news unfold.

There was only one real option.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

CHAPTER THREE

Stepping into the Bureau always felt like home in a way. Ruby had a complicated relationship with it, just as she did with her hometown. There were always rules to follow, and expectations to meet. She was always told she had to get along with others.

People always talked about the comfort of home, never the delicate politics of it.

She turned the corner to see Bellisario stepping into the box of the elevator. He smiled, putting out an arm to hold the door open. It was hard to believe his timing was a coincidence. It was much easier to believe he had waited for her, gauging her reaction to being back in the building.

“So, who is he?” Ruby said as she hit the elevator button.

A smile ghosted Bellisario’s lips.

“Not another rookie, I hope,” Ruby continued, sensing Bellisario wasn’t going to give anything away without prodding. He enjoyed stringing her along too much.

“No, not another rookie,” he conceded. “His name’s Gabriel Ruiz. Transferred from the Oregon field office.”

When did Oregon have its last big serial killer? The early 2000s? It wasn’t that Ruby wanted more killers in the world, but she did want a partner who knew how they worked.

The elevator stopped, the doors spreading open. Bellisario gestured out.

“Good luck. You know what you’re doing,” he said.

For lack of something witty on the tip of her tongue, Ruby shot him a quick, playful glare before stepping out onto the floor.

She strode into the bullpen, half-expecting there to be some tangible difference. The only major change was that someone unfamiliar had decided to sit on the corner of her desk to hold a conversation. He continued talking even as she came right up to him.

His skin was darkly tanned with an outdoorsy gradient to it, tan lines peeking out from under the hem of his t-shirt sleeves. Clean shaven, strong jawline, clothes that emphasized his athleticism.

He had a stance that suggested discipline, probably military training, but something about him also gave Ruby the impression of a college jock. Ruby immediately noted the cross around his neck.

“You’re sitting on my desk,” Ruby said pointedly.

The chit-chat stopped abruptly, the other agent offering a wry smile before moving along to do some real work.

Ruby was left with this new broad-shouldered Latino.

“You must be Ruby Hunter,” he said, holding out a hand. “Gabe Ruiz. Nice to meet you.”

“I must be,” Ruby said. “I guess we’ll be working together, Ruiz.”

“You can call me Gabe.”

Ruby shrugged noncommittally before shooing him off her desk. He hadn’t earned the right to his cavalier attitude, perched like a high school teacher trying to be cool for his students.

Gabe got up, backing off when it finally seemed to click that she wasn’t joking.

Ruby looked him up and down, taking stock of what she had been given to work with. He had the kind of build that suggested he aced all his physical qualifications, and possibly worked through his stress at the gym.

“I thought you'd be...” Gabe let himself trail off.

“Taller?” Ruby raised an eyebrow, giving him an easy out. Her reputation must have preceded her, but she didn’t want to know exactly what the rumor mill was circulating.

“Taller,” Gabe agreed.

“So, what's your deal?” Ruby asked.

Gabe cracked a cocky smile.

“Oh, you haven't profiled me already?” he asked.

She resisted the urge to scoff. In a minute of knowing him, she’d inferred plenty.

“Military?” Ruby asked innocently.

“A tour or two, yeah,” Gabe nodded amiably.

Ruby turned that over in her mind. At least she could trust that he could take a shot if he needed to.

“Into hiking?”

“Are you just saying that because I came from Oregon?”

Ruby held back a smile. She just wanted to know that the Bureau hadn't saddled her with another wet behind the ears agent who wasn't ready for thirteen stab wounds on two victims.

“Is that a yes?” Ruby asked. She didn’t need to grill him. There was a case to work. They may have just met, but cursory introductions were all they had time for.

“It’s a maybe,” he replied.

That wasn’t all she figured out. He must have been religious, or at least he came from a religious family. Probably played sports in high school. However, Ruby was more interested in profiling a killer than her partner.

“Local PD are going to meet us at the crime scene,” she said. “We shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

“Oh, I don't get to ask you any questions?” Gabe pressed. “What about you? What's your deal?”

Ruby stilled. She wasn't sure she knew anymore. Who needed an identity when there were killers to catch?

“You don't know?”

Surely if Gabe transferred to Quantico, he already knew some version of events. Ruby didn’t care to waste time rehashing it.

“I know you took down Lucky 13.”

Clearly Gabe had done the minimum amount of homework on her. It wasn’t only Ruby who got to be surprised by this partnership.

“Vallejo,” she corrected, “I don't know what you do out west, but here, we like to call perpetrators by their names, not kitschy media monikers.”

Ruby could think of a few things she would rather call Vallejo, but now wasn't the time to devolve into expletives.

“Sure. You took down Vincent Vallejo,” Gabe conceded.

Ruby fixed him with her steady gaze, not quite the stare she saved for interrogations, but a look closer to what she wore when searching for clues in the bits and pieces of evidence.

“What else do you need to know?” she asked. “Can we go?”

Gabe’s face shifted into a more serious look, turning off his congeniality. Ruby should have revealed herself, instead of letting him try to piece her together.

“Fine, but I’m driving,” Gabe said.

Ruby rolled her eyes.

*

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

Enjoyed this preview? ❤️ Do not stop here!

Read the complete book free online → 🔗

Continue reading now on BooksBarbecue and discover every page!

Love reading? Bookmark BooksBarbecue.com for more amazing books!

Happy Reading!