Free Beg for Mercy by Jami Alden Page A

rested on the mattress, her bound hands trapped beneath her. Her face was turned to the side. A gag was tied around the lower half of her face, and Cole could see the tufts of material sticking out of her mouth. The killer had stuffed another bandana in her mouth to muffle her screams.
    Blood pooled under her head and had streamed onto the floor below, where it was drying in a sticky black puddle.
    Cole leaned in closer to look at her face. Above the gag, her features were delicate, her nose small, her cheekbones high. Her eyes were dark and deep set, lending her features an exotic cast.
    “She was beautiful,” Petersen said.
    “And young,” Cole added.
    “I’d guess her around twenty, twenty-one.” Pineta nodded.
    Barely more than a kid.
    Cole straightened and caught Petersen’s eye. She quirked a brow and sighed. “So do we call the feds?”
    “Let’s wait until the autopsy is complete,” Cole said, though he knew in his gut he was only delaying the inevitable.
    But she was just like the others. Four in less than a year. With nothing in common other than that they were beautiful and in their early twenties. Two were still unidentified.
    No one seemed to know anything about them—who they were, where they’d come from. Like they didn’t exist until Fate dropped them into the hands of the sick fuck who tortured them, raped them, and finally cut their throats so they bled out facedown on the bed.
    Tension pulled at his shoulders and Cole sighed. They had their work cut out for them. After the third victim, the feds had gotten involved, as it was determined they had a serial killer on their hands. This was the first victim to turn up in his jurisdiction, but Cole had followed their investigation closely and knew full well there had been little progress made.
    He took another look at the beautiful, nameless girl lying dead and shook his head, unable to deny the truth. The Seattle Slasher had found another victim.

    Megan Flynn.
    All these years he’d forced himself to keep his distance, unsure of his ability to control himself if he got too close.
    Tonight she’d been so close, like a gift dropped from the sky.
    His hands shifted on the steering wheel of the car he’dboosted from a strip mall parking lot located two streets down from the trailer park. Blood raced through his veins, euphoria from the kill sending him higher than any drug. But tonight he was even more exhilarated.
    Because of her.
    He almost hadn’t lingered at the scene, knowing it was risky, thanks to the girl who had stumbled into the trailer. He still had been naked and in the process of packing up, about to crack the fucking dog’s neck when the girl with dark, purple-streaked hair had burst in.
    He’d slipped into the closet and watched, waited. A smile stretched across his face and he had to stifle a laugh as he remembered her scream of terror, the way she scrambled out with the stupid dog in her arms.
    He was relieved when she ran screaming, eliminating the complication of having to kill her too. And avoiding complications had helped him maintain a perfect record after all this time. He’d taken on a dozen cleanup jobs over the years, and still the cops had no fucking clue about him. Even with his particular methods and practices.

    But goddamn, he wished he’d had the camera turned on the girl when she realized the image on the television was real. The expression on her face, the abject terror when she realized she was in the room with a blood-soaked body…
    He’d known the smartest move was to leave, but he couldn’t resist the urge to slip into the dense woods surrounding the trailer park and take out his high-powered binoculars and wait for the cops to arrive.
    He loved this part, the Keystone Kops routine that inevitably followed when one of his victims was discovered. Rushing around like morons looking for clues they’dnever find. Nine months and they still had no idea who they were looking for. The press had even given him