One More Victim

ONE MORE VICTIM A CALLOW AND OAKLEY FBI THRILLER DAVID VIERGUTZ Building a relationship with my readers is the very best thing about writing. I send newsletters with details on new releases, writer-life, deals and other bits of news related to my books. And if you sign up to my mailing list I’ll send you something I think you’ll like, my thrilling novel, Red Mud River - A Callow and Oakley FBI Thriller. Details can be found at the back of this book. CHAPTER ONE Her knuckles white, Genevieve Callow—Callow to her friends, Jenny to a chosen few—gripped the steering wheel of her aging 2004 Chevy Tahoe. The Virginia sun forced its way through the front windshield, cooking her forearms and raising the temperature in the vehicle until Callow was swaddled in it. The road flew by, a superhighway of white dashed lines, with drivers hunched forward in their seats or sipping on steaming coffee from paper cups. Callow’s head drooped against the heavy, comforting rays of the sun. Her eyelids felt weighed down by cinderblocks, and her breathing became deep and rhythmic. Callow was ripped from her stupor by the blaring squawk of a gold Camry as it flew by the right side of her Tahoe. Her stomach somersaulted and settled in knots, her heart rate launched into a breakneck pace, and she was overtaken by a hyper-alertness that only came when a person’s survival instincts were kicked into overdrive. The Camry pulled ahead in the outside lane. Callow felt her face flush and the back of her legs grow warm with sweat. She shifted uneasily in the seat as she waved the Camry’s driver off, hoping the gesture would convey her apology. She’d barely been on the turnpike for twenty-five minutes. In truth, she had faded away for a few moments, lost in some memory somewhere, into a purgatory-like chasm somewhere between asleep and awake. Fighting off sleep was like pulling a snake out of a burrow; as soon as you had a grip, some sense of reality, it wriggled away and left you in dreamland. Callow cranked the volume. Two of the Tahoe’s speakers were blown, leaving only the rear speakers functioning, creating a hollow effect that reminded her of being underwater; like the sound was far away, behind a door. It didn’t help with her exhaustion at all. At Quantico, Callow had learned there were two types of tired: physical and emotional. Physical exhaustion came from lack of sleep or after strenuous exercise. Emotional exhaustion came from great mental turmoil that required focus and calibration to work through and comprehend. Most people who say they need to “work through something” are most likely emotionally exhausted. Genevieve Callow was working through something. She sighed and rolled down the driver’s side window, letting the wind whip through her hair. That would be enough to stave off the nods for now. A plastic bag on the passenger seat fluttered from the incoming breeze. Callow eyed a half-eaten sandwich—the same type of sandwich from the same shop she and her partner, Marcus Oakley, had eaten while on a case not two months prior. Hunting down another similar sandwich was turning into an adventure. The drive was a twenty-four-mile round trip—and the sandwich wasn’t even very good. The turkey was bland and tasteless, the cheese slightly sour, and the bread had an unidentifiable crunch to it. The sandwich was an excuse to drive; the airport, a destination. Genevieve Callow was working through something. But unlike those who manage to decompress from their memories, Callow was trapped by hers. And like the subject of the memory, it had just tried to kill her. Not with its hands pressing the life from her throat, but through the emotional residue it left behind that could peel her attention away from reality in an instant and run her off the road. He can’t hurt you anymore. You caught him. It’s over. But it didn’t feel over. Three weeks ago, Callow had nearly lost her life to the serial killer she’d been tracking. To compensate, her superiors at the FBI had given her three weeks off. She’d taken one. Upon returning to the fanfare from her co-workers, complete with the mandatory cake, balloons, and a medal, she had also been slapped with a new assignment. Callow didn’t buy it. No matter how ASAC Jedediah Gold, her friend and mentor, dressed the position up as an “opportunity,” she saw the assignment clearly for what it was—a distraction. There was a reason Callow had only taken a week off. Her work wasn’t done. She couldn’t focus on a new assignment―not when another unsolved case weighed heavily on her mind. A case where the killer called out to her by name. A dead-end case that only she could solve. Her latest obsession. Callow shifted uneasily in her seat, her rear going numb, and tapped her foot anxiously. With her other foot, she pressed the gas pedal, inching closer and closer to I-77. Her eyes narrowed as rays of orange and yellow sunlight blasted under the sun visor, growing so bright that all Callow could concentrate on was the space between her hands on the steering wheel where the leather was cracked and worn. It was all a bright slipstream. Once her eyes adjusted, Callow looked out over the highway. With the absence of any cars, it resembled more of a deserted runway. There was no Camry. There was only the road. She felt her heart racing again. A wild recklessness washed over her; the same inexplicable insanity skydivers must surely feel moments before leaping from the plane and testing fate. She yearned to feel something. Callow jerked the radio knob sideways until it was five notches from full blast and mashed the gas pedal. Hard rock filled the SUV, but blood pounded in her ears, drowning out all other noise. The highway seemed to stretch into the distance, long and narrow. The screaming vocals over the speakers became unintelligible,