Sagittarius (Zodiac Killers Book 13) Read online

  Sagittarius

  Zodiac Killers #13

  WL Knightly

  BrixBaxter Publishing

  Contents

  Find WL Knightly

  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

  Epilogue

  Want More?

  About the Author

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  Description

  The Zodiac killer is after the remaining members of the Zodiac Society, and no one is safe. With the case heating up, Detective Darek Blake, the Zodiac’s Sagittarius, finds himself growing closer to the fire when a piece of evidence can directly link his involvement. Not wanting to be outed, he takes extreme measures to protect himself as his personal life crumbles.

  Bay Collins seeks revenge when he learns the identity of Max’s partner in crime, but will that be enough to stop the Zodiac killer before they kill again?

  Chapter 1

  Darek

  Darek stared down at the plastic bag marked “Evidence” and looked at the bloody spoon inside. It had been used to dig out the eyeballs of his friend, and Darek was pretty sure it had come from his own kitchen drawer.

  “I’ll take that, Detective,” said Havers, who Darek knew from the forensics lab. “Can you believe what some people will do to each other?”

  Darek knew all too well. He’d done unforgivable things himself. “Yeah, there are some sick bastards out there.” And in here.

  Darek’s emotions were all over the place as he handed the baggie to the man. He had no idea what the lab boys would find on the spoon, or how incriminating it would be, since it was Darek’s spoon. The floral pattern engraved on the handle was unmistakable. He had bought the set of silverware when Megan had left him. The design wasn’t uncommon, but nothing in the Zodiac Killer case happened by accident.

  Max and whoever he was working with had planned every murder and crime scene meticulously. His spoon was at Nona’s house for a reason. Either to frame him or to send him a message. He didn’t like either option.

  The forensics guy hesitated, with the bag in hand. “I, uh, I’m sorry. I heard the deceased was a friend of yours.”

  Darek nodded. “Yeah, thanks, man.”

  Darek had been in a daze since he’d found Lane sitting on the couch with his eyes resting like two bloody marbles in the palm of his hand. Lane had been working on the case solo, and the killer must not have liked how close he’d come to learning the truth.

  What was on that laptop, buddy? Darek looked down at the table where the computer sat with a growing pile of other potential evidence. Whatever information Lane had found, it couldn’t have been worth dying for.

  “Where’d your friend go?” asked Lizzy, looking around the room for Bay. “I haven’t seen him in a while. Did he tell you he was leaving?”

  Bay hadn’t told him anything before he left, but it was no surprise that he’d slipped away. After seeing what the killer had done to Lane, Darek hoped he’d gone to take care of Max. “I’m not sure where he went. He said something about his wife calling. Mia’s death is taking a toll on her pregnancy and health, so he’s watching her like a hawk.”

  “I hadn’t pegged him as the doting father type,” said Lizzy. “He seems like the kind of man who cares only for himself. I don’t think I even saw his expression change when those blades went through Mia.”

  Darek had noticed Bay’s anger, but then again, he’d known him much longer than Lizzy. “Make no mistake,” Darek said. “Bay cares about what’s his.”

  Lizzy shrugged and looked down at the evidence on the table. “What were you looking at? Did you see something that sparked a thought?”

  “No, I’m just trying to make sense of this.” He shook his head. “I’m coming up short.”

  Lizzy patted him on the back. “Well, I got a lot of photographs of the house we can look at. I keep hoping they’ll mess up, and they don’t. You have to give them credit, whoever they are. They run a clean show.”

  “I’d hardly call this clean,” said Darek, looking at the blood staining the couch. “That must have been the fatal blow. The one to the back of the neck. The blood really flowed out from that point. His heart was still beating, took him a minute to die, but the rest? That was for fun. At least it was after he was gone, thank God. This fucker likes carving people up for the hell of it.”

  “The eyes were a bit much.” Lizzy turned hers up to meet Darek’s. “What do you make of that move?”

  “Letting us know that Lane saw something maybe?” Darek sighed. “Or maybe it’s not even that. Maybe this person is just trying to send some other message. What? I don’t know. It just sucks. Lane didn’t deserve this. He was a good guy at heart.”

  “Someone didn’t think so,” Lizzy said. “If this is revenge, maybe they saw him as the bad guy.”

  Darek gave her a sideward look, trying not to see over her shoulder where Lane’s body was finally being moved into a body bag. “Then they were wrong.”

  Darek wished he could tell Lizzy about the pain that Lane had endured, and what he’d overcome in his life. Instead, he let the words fade from his mind before they could reach his lips, and that was for the best. Darek still had to protect himself. And now that the killer wanted to put him at the crime scene, he had to be extra vigilant.

  He watched as the others carefully moved Lane’s body to a more manageable position. He wished he’d been able to do something to help his friend, but the only thing he could do now was catch the son of a bitch who did this.

  “I had Darius notify his next of kin,” said Lizzy. “I wonder what will happen to his restaurant.”

  Darek shook his head. “It’s a waste. All a fucking waste.” Before he could show too much emotion, he turned and headed out to the car.

  Lizzy ran after him. “Hey, I’m sorry. I know this is difficult for you.”

  Darek shrugged it off. He didn’t want to be seen as weak. “I’m fine. This is just fucked up, you know?”

  “I know. You’ve been through a lot with Ethan Cline and now Lane.”

  Darek knew she was just trying to help, but she had no idea what he’d been through over the past year. Most people went through a divorce, and it was traumatic enough, but he’d had to endure that and death ten times over. He was lucky to have an ounce of sanity left, and sometimes he questioned that. “It’s okay.” He knew that she would only worry, and she had better things to do.

  She glanced back to the house. “Hey, I think we really need to talk to Max now. I think his cage could use a little rattling.”

  Darek still had to deter her a while longer. “Look, let’s give it another day. Max might get restless if he doesn’t hear about another murder.”

  Lizzy narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he’s not in charge,” Darek said. “Someone else did this, and since Max isn’t receiving calls and he’s not able to see what his partner in crime is up to, he’s waiting on us to deliver the news to him. I say we drag it out a bit, make him sweat, and see if h
is demeanor changes. It’s not the norm, but that’s what he’s expecting. He knows us.”

  Lizzy lifted a shoulder. “That’s not a bad idea. I could maybe put it off a couple more days, and maybe that will make him talk on his own.”

  Darek didn’t care what happened as long as Max didn’t live another day to run his mouth. If Bay had been serious, the deed was a phone call away. He just hoped that Bay and the guard were good enough not to get caught.

  Lizzy patted Darek’s shoulder. “They’re bagging up the rest of the evidence, and Lane’s on his way to the morgue. I just have a few more photos I want to take, but you could go if you want.” She reached up and brushed his hair back, but Darek flinched away from her hand.

  “You know someone might see,” he said, giving her a half-hearted smile. “You don’t have to cheer me up.”

  “I want to,” she said softly. “I don’t like it when you’re upset. I worry about you. You should go home and rest your mind. I’ll come by and check on you later.”

  “Nah, I want to go through the house again and figure out how the killer got inside. They may have already been in the house. Bay got in using a spare key. Maybe the killer knew where it was. They could have come in and hid while Lane was out getting food or something.”

  Lizzy looked surprised. “There was a spare key?”

  “Yeah, out front under the mat.” Darek thought of how people had always done that as if it was the safest thing in the world.

  “That doesn’t seem terribly safe,” Lizzy said. “Especially for a woman who lived alone. This is Nona’s house, not Lane’s.” She gave a shrug. “I do wish Bay had stuck around. I’d like to ask how he knew the key was there.”

  “I already asked him,” said Darek. He hadn’t asked Bay anything, but it would be better to say he did than to give Lizzy one more reason to want to interrogate the man. “He said he pounded on the door several times and got no answer, so he looked and got lucky.”

  Lizzy let out a long breath. “Yeah, well, it would be the first time this week,” she said, referring to Mia and the horrible way she’d died right in front of him. “I guess that depends on how you look at it though. If his wife had found out about her sister being pregnant with his child, it could have been him in the body bag.”

  Darek couldn’t believe that Lizzy had commented on it, but he didn’t want to relive Mia’s death, which was all he did anytime her name was mentioned. The poor girl had known what was coming, and her pleading eyes were something that would haunt Darek for the rest of his life.

  “You want to follow me in, or do you want to look less suspicious and walk in separately?” Lizzy smiled as she asked it, as if she were trying to cheer him up. It wasn’t working.

  Darek shook his head. “You go on in. I’ll be in shortly.” He needed a moment to message Bay.

  “The offer still stands if you want to leave.”

  “Nah, I’m not passing on an investigation. I’m not Max.” Darek had done his job and would continue to do it. Lizzy nodded and headed back into the house. Darek walked around the car and texted Bay to find out where he was. As he hit send, they shut the doors on the ambulance they used to transport Lane’s body.

  Darek and Bay were the Zodiac Society’s last remaining members. They needed to work together if they had any hope of stopping the killer before they ended up in body bags, too. So Darek was especially annoyed that Bay didn’t respond to his text.

  After waiting for three minutes, Darek decided to go inside. He hoped Bay was too busy killing Max to answer the damn phone.

  “Look at this,” said one of the officers to another, grabbing Darek’s attention as he made his way to the house. The man pointed to the ground near the window and then took a few photos.

  Darek’s curiosity piqued, and he walked over to join them. “What did you find?”

  “Footprints.” He snapped another photo.

  Darek looked down and noticed a small footprint just below a window which was located just around the corner. “Get a cast of that.”

  The officer snapped another photo. “It sure is small. I’d guess it’s a woman’s by how narrow.”

  “I’d be willing to bet that too,” said Darek. “And look at the scuff on the inside sill. Someone definitely came in the window. The windows were checked on the inside, and they were all locked. They had to have locked it from the inside. So, let’s get a print kit in there.”

  “Yes, sir. On it.” The other officer headed out, and the one who fetched the print kit walked over to do the casting.

  Darek went back into the house to find Lizzy.

  She stood with one of the other officers, who held a box of donations which had been unpacked. “Darek, come take a look at this.” Lizzy waved him over, and he glanced down to see the silverware that Nona had owned, which Lane had packed up along with the other donations. “The pattern is different. It’s unlikely that the spoon came from inside the house.”

  Darek shrugged. “Unless it was just one odd spoon. That happens, doesn’t it?” Darek thought he should throw that out there, if only for his own sanity.

  “What do you mean?” asked Lizzy. “Like she had one oddball in the set?”

  “Or she could have gotten hold of someone’s spoon at a potluck or something and brought it home.” He knew where the spoon had come from, but he had to toss out some other possibilities and divert attention from the spoon’s actual origin.

  “Well, the lab techs will take a look at it, I guess,” said Lizzy. “They’ll tell us where it came from. And forgive me, but Lane’s snobbish girlfriend seemed a little too fancy pants for potluck.”

  “Maybe so.” Darek wouldn’t argue. When he got home, the first thing he’d have to do was count his damn spoons. He knew damn well that one would be missing.

  Chapter 2

  Bay

  “Fucking bitch,” said Bay as he glanced over at the photo of Darek’s woman. The detective had refused to believe that Raven was involved, and now he was going to be devastated when he learned the awful truth.

  “Excuse me?” said Marlena, who had come up for air.

  “Did I tell you to stop?” He had put Marlena on her knees, hoping that a blow job would help him think.

  She looked up at him with pouty eyes and glossy lips. “No, sir, it’s just that I heard you—”

  “Are you a fucking bitch?” He looked deep into her eyes, and she shook her head. “Then keep sucking. You’re killing my hard-on.” Not to mention distracting him from his thoughts.

  She turned her attention back to her task, and Bay closed his eyes, not wanting to dwell on the photograph on his desk. He focused on Marlena’s filthy mouth around his cock.

  She had “forgotten her pencil” in his office. They had never gotten around to looking for it. Bay didn’t mind her eagerness, but if she was going to act like a thirsty slut, he’d treat her like one.

  He had to think. Now that he knew who Max’s partner was, he had to figure out how to stop her.

  The woman was much tougher than he’d thought, and as Marlena slurped, he imagined her digging the spoon into Lane’s eye sockets. That had taken balls, and while he knew the woman could be into some wild shit, he hadn’t expected that level of psychotic from her.

  Marlena hit the right spot, and he held her head down on his cock until she tapped out. When he let go, she looked at him with watery eyes and pulled away. “You like it rough, do you, boss?”

  “You could say that.” He was just about to ask her why she stopped again when she licked her lips and cupped her breasts. “Want to titty fuck me? Or I could ride you if you want? I like rough too.”

  Mia’s smaller breasts hadn’t been ideal for titty fucking, but Marlena didn’t lack that potential. “Show me,” he said, feeling like a change-up. “But if you can’t make this feel good, I get to bend you over this desk.”

  She smiled wickedly. “I love this new job.” She removed her top and then unhooked her bra to let her breasts spill out. “I cou
ld pleasure you this way every day if you want it.”

  “We’ll have to see if you pass the test, Marlena.”

  “My friends call me Marley.”

  “But Marlena is such a pretty name,” he said with enough sarcasm to be detected if you had half a brain cell.

  “Thank you,” she said, giving a shrug and then putting her tits around his hard cock. She squeezed them together and pumped them up and down around his shaft.

  Bay watched her work him, and all he could think about was how much he wanted to kill Darek’s whore. Through everything that had happened, she’d been the one playing them all along. And poor Darek. That bastard had a world of hurt coming when he found out.

  Marley got to her feet and spun around. “If you don’t finish soon, my supervisor will come looking for me,” she said with a giggle. “I don’t want to get fired. I like this too much.” She moved forward as if she were going to sit in his lap, but he opened the drawer and took out a pair of Mia’s panties.

  “Put these on,” he ordered.

  She smiled. “You’re very demanding.”

  “You like it. And you haven’t seen anything yet.” He didn’t wait on her to answer before standing up, and she pulled the panties on with a smile on her face.

  “Whose are these?” she asked, holding up her skirt. “Do you just keep panties in your drawer for special occasions?”

  “You should learn to stop asking questions, but since you need to know, they belong to my wife’s sister. She came to my office looking for sex too.”