Killer Encore

KILLER ENCORE STELLA KNOX SERIES: BOOK SEVEN MARY STONE STACY O’HARE Copyright © 2023 by Mary Stone All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Created with Vellum CONTENTS Description 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 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 What’s Next? Stella Knox Series Acknowledgments About the Author DESCRIPTION In a psychopath’s performance, revenge is the encore. Moments after FBI Special Agent Stella Knox briefs the Nashville Violent Crime Unit on her father’s murder, the teams’ supportive camaraderie is replaced with horror when a stranger calls to tell Agent Martin Lin he’ll never see his sister again. A trip to Martin’s apartment confirms the situation is real. Jane, who was visiting her brother, has disappeared without a trace. As Stella and the rest of the team try to connect the dots between video footage showing Jane leaving a local liquor store before vanishing, their only clue is a bloody piano tuner. On the heels of their last murder case involving The Pianist, it seems like a bizarre coincidence. But when Jane’s body is found decapitated, accompanied by a grisly message for the FBI, it’s clear this crime is personal. There’s just one question... Who's next? Suddenly hurled into every FBI agent’s worst nightmare, the entire team is soon embroiled in a deadly game of cat and mouse, where one misstep could mean the difference between life and death for the one they love. Terrifying and adrenaline-charged, Killer Encore is the seventh book in the Stella Knox Series by bestselling author Mary Stone and Stacy O’Hare. Hang on tight, or you’ll get thrown down a rabbit hole you never saw coming. 1 Jane Lin stood in East Nashville’s Blue Label Liquor Store and tapped an impatient toe on the chipped linoleum floor. Was this all they had? The store’s wine “section” consisted of six shelves crammed into the back of an outlet smaller than the vape shop under her New York apartment. Nashville’s population was a tenth of New York’s, but it still struck Jane that someone would want more than the four Woodbridge and Gallo wine options on offer. She sighed. She was visiting her brother, and he liked to talk a good wine game, sniffing the cork and scrutinizing the label. She’d seen him go on about “bouquets” and “hints of cedar” to Caleb, his best friend and FBI colleague, but luckily, he knew no more about the subject than she did. And she knew that if you stuck a glass of white vinegar in front of him and said it was a thousand-buck Chardonnay, he’d call it crisp and zippy, saying it was the greatest thing to leave a spout since Aladdin polished some brass. Not that she was any kind of wine connoisseur. As a public defender, she couldn’t afford the exotic vintages her old law school friends loaded into their upstate cellars by the crate. But even her local liquor store had choices—from Chardonnay to Chianti. There was nothing in this store she couldn’t find in the bargain bucket of a strip mall supermarket. Limited displays offered two kinds of vodka, four brands of light beer, all produced by the same beverage conglomerate, and a dozen types of whiskey. Jane pondered selecting a whiskey instead of wine. This was Tennessee, after all. Martin might prefer it, but he’d ditched her tonight for his FBI colleagues. However, she understood the nature of law enforcement, so she didn’t begrudge him too much. Still, she’d come all the way from New York to see him. Forget whiskey. I want wine. She leaned back and called to the clerk sitting at the register, flicking at his phone. “Hey there, you got any Riesling?” The clerk rubbed a palm against his thick black beard but didn’t look up from his phone. She raised her voice. “Hey, pal.” The clerk pulled an earbud from one ear. “Huh?” “Riesling. Got any?” He shook his head. “What you see is what I got.” His Southern accent was so thick, it took him nearly a minute to get the sentence out. Jane rolled her eyes and took a bottle of Pinot Grigio, wiping the dust from the shoulder of the glass with her thumb. This stuff must have been sitting here since the days of the dinosaurs. Wine ages, though, right? The older the better. At least that was what she’d heard. She paid and left, her twelve-buck bottle hidden in a brown paper bag. Jane had tucked her wallet and phone in her back pockets to avoid carrying a purse on unfamiliar streets. Now, with only the wine in her hands, she felt like some kind of wino. The area outside was empty. Every building across the street was dark. The only light came from the store itself, reddened by bottles of bourbon in the window. The glow hit the sidewalk, filtering through a metal grille covering the front of the store. The building opposite looked like some kind of warehouse. A small window was high and unlit, so all Jane could see were three stories’ worth of brick wall. An empty cigarette box crushed in the gutter and half-spilled bags of cement suggested someone was trying, and failing, to improve the place. Her brother’s apartment was about a seven-minute walk away, on a street only slightly better than