The body is dragged to the bank, left near the end of a crushed clamshell path that glows powdery white as the moon flashes down once again like a searchlight-there and gone, there and gone. Its beam illuminates a dark head of hair, damp and disheveled with no trace of the style that had been so painstakingly sculpted and sprayed hours ago; a face, ghostly pale, cheeks rouged clownishly, lipstick smeared, mouth slack, eyes open and staring, unseeing, up at the heavens. Looking for mercy, looking for deliverance. Too late for either.
She will be found. In a day, maybe two. Fishermen will come to fill their creels with bream, bluegill, sac-a-lait. They will find her. But none will find her killer.
Too cunning, too clever, beyond the laws of man, outside the realm of suspicion this predator stalks…
Chapter One
"I'll kill him."
The hound sat in a pile of freshly dug earth, azalea bushes and rosebushes scattered all around like so many tumbleweeds, a streamer of wisteria draped around his shoulders like a priest's amice. Looking up at the people on the veranda with a quizzical expression, he tilted his head to one side, black ears perked like a pair of flags on the sides of his head. A narrow strip of white ran down between his eyes-one pale blue, one green-widening over his muzzle. His coat was a wild blend of blue and black, trimmed in white and mottled with leopard spots, as if Mother Nature hadn't been able to make up her mind as to just what this creature would be. As people spilled out the French doors of the elegant brick house known as Belle Rivière, he let out a mournful howl.
"I swear, I'll kill him," Laurel Chandler snarled, her gaze fixed on the dog.
Rage and fury burned through her in a flash fire that threatened to sear through all slim threads of control.