Dark Falls (Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 1) Read online

  She hadn’t been able to do it. Neither had her parents. So they’d all suffered alongside her little brother.

  But, dammit, she’d really thought these last five years had seen a turnaround. He’d been clean and four months shy of his five-year chip. But the Dark Falls Police Department had written of Jimmy’s death as just another junkie overdose. Case closed.

  Grace wasn’t buying it. Jimmy wasn’t using again. She knew it. She’d spoken to him just a few days before he died.

  No one would believe her. No one did. Even her parents were skeptical, but she believed. She’d lived with Jimmy, and watched him turn to alcohol at age ten, then cocaine at thirteen, she’d gotten good at spotting the signs. Lots of siblings did. Sometimes parents tried to deny it. They turned their kids away, or they made up excuses and always believed the best. But siblings of addicts had a radar for it. Their investment was entirely different from a parental bond.

  Grace knew. She’d talked about it in Al-Anon meetings. She’d gone steadily for almost two years, then off and on for another handful. The siblings of addicts all had similar stories. They knew. They could tell when their brothers or sisters were using again. Grace couldn’t count the number of times someone had showed up at a meeting with a suspicion, then even several months later said, “I was right.”

  She’d had that feeling about Jimmy before. It happened the first time he’d gotten clean. He’d stayed clean for six months before relapsing. The second time—after their parents had paid to put him through an expensive rehab program—he’d stayed clean a year and a half. But Grace knew that his eighteen-month chip was an excuse to celebrate, to think he’d been cured only to have him slide back. But she didn’t have that feeling. Not this time. The third time seemed to have stuck.

  Jimmy had moved to Dark Falls, something their mother had protested with every fiber of her being. He should be close to home. Part Vietnamese, part Chinese, and gay as the day was long, Jimmy wanted to get out of the South. Grace understood. She’d supported him. They texted daily, and she talked to him just a few days before he died. She did not believe he was using again.

  She’d even demanded a full autopsy. She checked off her mental list as she looked around the room at the various splotches her quick test had revealed. She’d want samples of them all. Jimmy’s death was listed as an overdose. Had there been fresh blood, the police wouldn’t have been able to write it off so easily.

  Grace had only pulled out the Luminol on a whim when she’d seen the dark patches in the carpeting. It could have been wine or cheap beer, but her senses told her to test it. Shit. She looked around behind her, holding the light up. A lot of it was faint, old, but she needed to know what it was.

  She had her work cut out for her.

  After gathering samples from at least five spots around the room—samples that she highly suspected would be all different—she turned off her black light and clicked the regular light back on.

  Surveying the horrible room she didn’t want to be in, she pulled out her phone and called her oftentimes partner, Brad, back home. “Brad, I was right.”

  Click to keep reading Dark Secrets!

  An excerpt from Dark Legacy by Trish McCallan:

  Rhys suspected the victim had been murdered. His instincts had been humming since he’d gotten the call an hour earlier. The location and markings were too damn suspicious for anything else. Unless…unless some malicious prick had found a dead drifter and decided to play a nasty prank on the town.

  He crunched his way across the first perimeter, his skin and chest tightening beneath the constant furtive glances that followed him. Sevier was waiting at the second perimeter tape—red this time.

  “You’re late.” There was no accusation in the comment, instead concern narrowed the light brown eyes studying him. “You okay?”

  The question stopped Rhys in his tracks and tensed the muscles of his back. Fuck…he’d expected the concern…the questions…those little sidewise looks everyone was giving him. He just hadn’t expected them to dig under his skin like slivers of ice.

  “I’m fine.” He kept his voice neutral, his face blank and ducked beneath the tape to join Sevier. “When did you start buying into Cantu’s theory of over sharing?”

  Eric Cantu was Sevier’s partner. He was also the Major Crime units company comic and pop psychologist. Christ, it was bad enough having Cantu mothering the hell out of them, encouraging everyone to express their feelings. Having two dithering hens in the unit, would be two too many.

  Sevier simply shrugged. “The boss fill you in?”

  “About the carvings? Yeah.” Rhys buried his immediate visceral reaction. But remnants of the nightmare slipped through.

  A white face frozen in terror…glazed blue eyes…icy blonde hair stuck to the snow…a dark red X-9 carved into a bleach-white forehead…

  He locked down the corresponding surge of rage and horror. Even now, so many years later—those early, raw emotions dug their claws into him sometimes, catching him unprepared. He’d spent the past forty-five minutes drinking coffee and girding himself to make sure they didn’t latch onto him here…now.

  “Whoever did this…the perp? He’s a mimic. A fucking copycat.” Sevier scowled and blew out a deep breath that hung in the air like a frosty question mark.

  Rhys grimaced. No shit.

  While he’d been a clueless kid when Kenneth Hamilton had been carving up young women and dumping their bodies in this section of the Colorado State forest, he knew many of the detectives who’d been instrumental in catching the bastard.

  Hell, Gerald Osborn and Craig Patel had been the lead detectives on the case back then. They were sharp as needles, methodical, and unbiased. They didn’t jump to conclusions, they followed the evidence. There was no fucking way Hamilton would have been arrested and convicted without a sea of evidence supporting the case.

  The bastard had been guilty. There was no question of that in Rhys’s mind. Regardless of how vehemently Ariel had insisted that her father wasn’t the killer…couldn’t possibly be the killer—

  Rhys swiped a hand down his face. Christ, he needed to get his mind under control. These damn memories were not helping.

  He sighed and pinched the flesh between his eyebrows. This new victim with her blonde hair and blue eyes and the X-10 carved in her forehead had just muddied the Hamilton case significantly.

  Someone was out to fuck with them.

  Click to keep reading Dark Legacy!

  Also by Lori Ryan

  The Sutton Capital Series

  Legal Ease

  Penalty Clause

  The Baker’s Bodyguard (A Sutton Capital Series Novella)

  Negotiation Tactics

  The Billionaire’s Suite Dreams

  The Baker, the Bodyguard, and the Wedding Bell Blues (A Sutton Capital Series Novella)

  Her SEALed Fate

  The Sutton Capital Series Boxed Set (Books One Through Four)

  The Sutton Capital Series Boxed Set (Books Five Through Seven)

  Sutton Capital Intrigue

  Cutthroat

  Cut and Run

  Cut to the Chase

  Sutton Capital On the Line Series

  Pure Vengeance

  Latent Danger

  Wicked Justice

  Heroes of Evers, Texas Series

  Love and Protect

  Promise and Protect

  Honor and Protect (An Evers, TX Novella)

  Serve and Protect

  Desire and Protect

  Cherish and Protect

  Triple Play Curse Series

  Game Changer

  Game Maker

  Game Clincher

  The Triple Play Curse Boxed Set

  Standalone Books

  Stealing Home (writing in Melanie Shawn’s Hope Falls Series)

  Any Witch Way (writing in Robyn Peterman’s Magic and Mayhem Series)

  All In (writing in the Sleeper SEALs Series)

  About the Author
r />   Lori Ryan is a NY Times and USA Today bestselling author who writes romantic suspense, contemporary romance, and sports romance. She lives with an extremely understanding husband, three wonderful children, and two mostly-behaved dogs in Austin, Texas. It’s a bit of a zoo, but she wouldn’t change a thing.

  Lori published her first novel in April of 2013 and hasn’t looked back since then. She loves to connect with her readers.

  For new release info and bonus content, join her newsletter at http://loriryanromance.com/lets-keep-touch/

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