Bentz listened with half an ear. He didn’t really care about the caller’s boyfriend problems, but he did want to listen to all of the people who phoned the radio show. Even though the producer of Midnight Confessions had assured him that the calls were being screened and recorded, you couldn’t trust that crew to weed out a psycho.

This psycho. Bentz had watched the damned video from the Department of Corrections so many times, he might as well have it on a loop.

The familiar image showed a prison cell. A female prisoner sat on the edge of her cot as a priest stepped inside the cell, the shadow of the bars striping his cassock. The prisoner looked up expectantly, ready to give her confession to the man of God, whose back was to the camera. As he stepped closer, she bent her head in prayer, probably hoping for absolution or some other damned thing. The priest appeared to say something softly to the confessor and then in one quick, sure movement, he reached down as if to bless her, but quickly, expertly snapped her neck.

She slumped quickly and Bentz noted that the priest didn’t use his trademark sharpened rosary beads to kill her. This time his actions were on camera; his image might be splashed on a monitor in the prison’s security hub, and he probably couldn’t risk his slower signature kill. The guards would have been upon him before he could finish. Instead of strangling the life out of her with a rosary constructed of piano wire and sharpened glass beads, he broke her neck, then left the rosary dangling between her fingers, the blood red beads sparkling as he glanced up at the camera he obviously knew was mounted near the cell door. Smiling triumphantly, he revealed himself.

Bentz’s stomach turned.

The sick son of a bitch actually grinned into the camera’s eye before disappearing from the cell.

Bentz’s jaw hardened.

Father John was back.

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

Biting her lip, Zoe tried to figure out a way to save herself. To save Chloe. Somehow. Some way. First she had to get herself free.

While the whack job worked at his bench, she silently worked on the rope that bound her wrists and ankles. She had to make good her escape. Their escape. She wouldn’t leave Chloe. Not ever.

Once again, she tried to pull her hand to her abdomen. The tension on the rope intensified, so she relaxed. That wasn’t going to work. Think, Zoe, think. There has to be a way.

Again she tried to move. Again the bite of rough cord into her neck.

Damn!