Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [173]
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Lisa Jackson
In each of her gripping bestsellers, Lisa Jackson has brought readers to the edge of their seats and proven herself a master of romantic suspense. Now the New York Times bestselling author of Hot Blooded and Cold Blooded delivers her most powerful novel yet, bringing back New Orleans detective Reuben Montoya as he matches wits with a twisted psychopath whose very presence makes his victims SHIVER…
Detective Reuben “Diego” Montoya is back in New Orleans. Thanks to years of working with the dark side of society, his youthful swagger is gone, replaced by straightforward determination. He’ll need it, because a serial killer is turning the Big Easy into his personal playground. The victims are killed in pairs—no connection, no apparent motive, no real clues. Somebody’s playing a sick game, and Montoya intends to beat him at it.
His only lead is the ex-wife of one of the victims. Abby Chastain is a woman haunted by painful secrets. Twenty years ago she watched in horror as her mother, a patient at Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital, plunged through a window to her death. Abby has always dreaded that she, too, would one day go insane…especially now, back in this town, where she’s begun to feel watched, as if the devil himself is scraping a fingernail along her spine. Something about Abby—her spirit and her honest fear—gets to Montoya. His gut tells him his prime suspect is innocent, just like it’s telling him there’s something significant about the once-grand hospital now decaying in a gloomy thicket of ancient live oaks. Abby Chastain can help unlock the mystery—if only Montoya can get her to trust him enough to face the ghosts of her past.
As more bodies are found in gruesome staged scenarios and the FBI moves in, Montoya’s in a desperate race to find a killer whose crimes are getting more terrifying, and closer all the time. Plunging deep into a nightmare investigation will uncover a shocking revelation—a deadly connection between Abby and Montoya and an asylum where unspeakable crimes were committed, evil once roamed free, and a human predator may still wait. For the past is never completely gone. Its sins must be avenged, its wrongs righted. And this time Detective Reuben Montoya may pay the price….
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
SHIVER
now available wherever hardcover books are sold and coming in paperback in March 2007!
Prologue
Twenty years earlier
Our Lady of Virtues Hospital
Near New Orleans, Louisiana
She felt his breath.
Warm.
Seductive.
Erotically evil.
A presence that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to lift, her skin to prickle, sweat to collect upon her spine.
Her heart thumped, and barely able to move, standing in the darkness, she searched the shadowed corners of her room frantically. Through the open window she heard the reverberating songs of the frogs in the nearby swamps and the rumble of a train upon faraway tracks.
But here, now, he was with her.
Go away, she tried to say, but held her tongue, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn’t notice her standing near the window. On the other side of the panes, security lamps illuminated the grounds with pale, bluish light, and she realized belatedly that her body, shrouded only in a sheer nightgown, was silhouetted in their eerie glow.
Of course he could see her, find her in the darkness.
He always did.
Throat dry, she stepped backward, placing a hand on the window casing to steady herself. Maybe she had just imagined his presence. Maybe she hadn’t heard the door open after all. Maybe she’d jumped up from a drug-induced sleep too quickly. After all, it wasn’t late, only eight in the evening.
Maybe she was safe in this room, her room, on the third floor.
Maybe.
She was reaching for