Every Kind of Wicked. Lisa Black

      

      Books by Lisa Black

      Every Kind of Wicked

      Let Justice Descend

      Suffer the Children

      Perish

      Unpunished

      That Darkness

      Close to the Bone

      The Price of Innocence

      Blunt Impact

      Defensive Wounds

      Trail of Blood

      Evidence of Murder

      Takeover

      Every Kind of Wicked

      LISA BLACK

      KENSINGTON BOOKS

      www.kensingtonbooks.com

      All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

      Table of Contents

      Also by Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Epigraph Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Acknowledgments About the Author

      KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

      119 West 40th Street

      New York, NY 10018

      Copyright © 2020 by Lisa Black

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

      Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2020935637

      Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

      ISBN: 978-1-4967-2238-6

      First Kensington Hardcover Edition: September 2020

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2240-9 (ebook)

      ISBN-10: 1-4967-2240-X (ebook)

      For my brothers, John and Michael

      Everything big brothers should be.

      “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.”

      —Romans 1:29

      Chapter 1

      Friday, 8 a. m.

      “Well, that’s less than helpful,” Maggie said of the snow.

      The white flakes drifted lazily downward, landing on the frozen grass, the bare limbs of the large trees, the bloodstains sprinkled across the worn stones and the very stiff body of a young man who had not dressed well for the weather. Yet exposure hadn’t killed him—he had been dead long before his body froze.

      From the deep red stain blossoming from the center of his chest, Maggie Gardiner assumed a gunshot—or shots—had been the likely cause of death. Something had penetrated his internal systems to leak his lifeblood out across his white shirt and over the stones beneath him, which marked, coincidentally, a grave. But Maggie didn’t say so; declaring cause of death was a pathologist’s job and she worked as a forensic specialist. Her job would be to find the evidence around said death in order to help her colleagues at the police department determine who had walked away from this boy’s last encounter.

      Which would be more difficult to do with each passing moment as the snow slowly covered up the body, the blood, and all her evidence.

      She had arrived at the scene immediately before the assigned detectives, and now felt them standing on either side of her, Jack Renner to her right and Thomas Riley to her left. Renner, tall, only a bit dark and not so handsome, and his partner, distinctly shorter but lighter in both coloring and personality.