Thirst for sin touch of.., p.1
Thirst for Sin (Touch of Evil Book 1), page 1
THIRST FOR SIN
Touch of Evil
Book One
KENNEDY LAYNE
THIRST FOR SIN
Copyright © 2021 by Kennedy Layne
Kindle Edition
Cover Designer: Sweet ’N Spicy Designs
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
Dedication
Jeffrey—We begin another adventure with a brand-new series! I love you!
Cole—Never be afraid to try new things, because you never know where the adventure might take you! Love you to the moon and back!
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
About the Book
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
About Longing for Sin
Books by Kennedy Layne
About the Author
USA Today Bestselling Author Kennedy Layne brings you a page-turning thriller that touches evil in a way that you couldn’t imagine…
Brooklyn Sloane works as a special consultant to the FBI as one of the most adept profilers in the agency’s history. She had been recruited at a relatively young age from her career in academics, but her colleagues have no idea the disturbing motive for her success.
While her current investigation into a cold-blooded serial killer garners the attention of the media, Brook is able to discover the unsub’s first kill. When a tragic shooting takes place involving one of the agents assigned to the case, Brook finds herself unexpectedly out in the field searching for evidence that will eventually lead her to a viable suspect.
As Brook moves closer to her target, her own troubling past is breathing its familiar breath down the back of her neck until she finds herself at a crossroad with the very transgression that shaped her moral fiber. As her past and present collide, which one will rid her of the sin that stains her soul?
CHAPTER ONE
Brooklyn Walsh
September 1997
Sunday—4:36pm
The steady rhythm of rain that beat against the bedroom window had become more violent with every passing minute. It was as if the weather had sensed this day was going to be a horrifying revelation, of sorts. The flashes of lightning and ominous rumbles of thunder that occurred seconds later only added to the intensity of the storm.
“Brooklyn, have you seen your brother?”
“No, Mom,” Brook replied, purposefully not looking up from her book. She slowly turned one of the thin pages and wished her hands would stop shaking. She’d never been very good at lying to her parents. “I just got home from Sally’s house a few minutes ago. She gave me a book to read about a boy wizard who just discovered that he could do magic spells.”
Brook hoped that her mother wouldn’t come any closer to the nook inside the bay window of her bedroom. It was her favorite place in the whole wide world. Right now, she’d have given anything to be anywhere else but home. She fought back the tears that threatened to spill, not wanting her mom to see her cry.
This wasn’t how she’d pictured spending the last day of her summer vacation.
The branch that her father had promised to cut down for the last few months clicked threateningly against the window. It was almost as if the tree was reminding her to keep quiet. She didn’t think her mom saw her jump at the frightening sound, but she’d brought her feet up underneath her just in case. Maybe her mom would think she was simply getting more comfortable on the long wedge-shaped pillowtop.
The violent storm had cast dark grey shadows across the backyard. Huge drops of rain cascaded down the multitude of beveled windowpanes projecting colorful prisms into the corners of her room. The tree branch reminded her of long, creepy fingers trying to reach through the glass, ones like she’d seen recently in a scary Halloween advertisement on television.
Was Mother Nature trying to tell her that she wasn’t safe inside her own home?
“Your brother left his bike in the middle of the driveway again. The chrome rims are going to rust, and then I’m going to hear from your father about how irresponsible Jacob is being about his belongings. Is this clean?”
Her mother came closer, picking up the shirt that Brook had changed out of when she’d first reached her bedroom. She held her breath, not taking her eyes off the words in front of her. The printed black letters seemed to have blurred together and were no longer recognizable.
How was she going to explain the stain?
“Jacob is lucky that I didn’t run his bike over with my car.”
Brook tried to swallow around the lump in her throat, but the saliva backed up in her mouth. She was still praying that her mother hadn’t noticed the red smudge.
A promise was a promise, especially ones between siblings.
She had even taken the extra step of pinky swearing with Jacob to prove that she wouldn’t say a word to anyone.
“Dinner will be ready in about an hour.”
Brook didn’t reply.
She couldn’t.
Instead, she flipped another page to mimic the act of reading.
Her stomach was nauseous, like when she had to take a hard test at school or when she had an appointment at the dentist’s office to tighten her braces. She tucked her legs in tighter against her body. She didn’t care that the rubber on the bottom of her running shoes dug into the back of her legs. The slight discomfort took her mind off the fact that her mother wasn’t leaving the bedroom.
Had she seen the red stain on the shirt?
Why had Jacob’s hands been covered in blood?
Brook had been so scared when she’d caught sight of her brother staring blankly down at his fingers, but his face had twisted into a mask of rage when she’d asked if he was alright. He hardly ever yelled at her, and it was so unlike him to get so mad. She’d run away from the kitchen as fast as she could, wanting only to reach the safety of the bay window in her room.
Only Brook didn’t feel safe anymore.
Not in her bedroom, not in the house, and not around her brother.
“Do you have all your school supplies organized for tomorrow?” her mother asked, tossing the shirt into the hamper. Relief poured through Brook over the fact that her mom hadn’t asked about the blood on the sleeve. It was the spot where her brother had grabbed her by the arm as she was trying to pass him in the kitchen. “Don’t forget to put those erasers we finally found at the pharmacy into your new pencil case.”
“I won’t,” Brook reassured her, tossing a forced smile her mother’s way.
Brook was finally able to swallow now that her mother wasn’t asking anymore questions about Jacob. She’d mentioned that he had left his bike in the driveway. He might have simply wrecked it on his way back from the basketball courts, falling onto his hands and getting a bad case of road rash. Maybe he’d been embarrassed when he’d fallen off his bike.
Brook got that way sometimes, too. Her mother constantly reassured her that she’d get over her awkward stage soon enough.
Falling off his bike would certainly explain why he had so much blood on his hands.
Brook’s mother smiled back at her before she walked out of the room, probably thinking about what she was going to make for dinner.
Brook didn’t like to keep things from her parents, but Jacob had threatened to tell them about the time that she’d snuck down to the creek all by herself if she didn’t keep quiet about what had happened in the kitchen.
Had Jacob gone to see the girl who he liked from school?
Their parents didn’t know that he had been messing around with Pamela Murray, but Brook had heard him on the phone asking if she wanted to go to the drive-in movie this weekend. She lived on a gravel road, so maybe his tires had lost traction and he’d ended up on the ground.
Little by little, Brook finally relaxed after thinking about Jacob’s bike lying in the middle of the driveway. It made sense that he would be bleeding if he fell onto a cement surface or crashed on a gravel road. He must have simply overreacted due to all the adrenaline running through his system when she saw him. He probably didn’t want her to say anything to their parents that could get him grounded over the weekend.
“Brook?”
She dropped the book t
Sally was going to be mad.
Brook finally looked up to find that Jacob was standing in the doorway, wearing different clothes from when she’d last seen him in the kitchen. His wavy brown hair was slicked back, and she could tell that he’d taken a shower to clean up.
He wasn’t smiling.
Brook couldn’t stop her gaze from slowly lowering to his hands. She searched for any kind of scratch or cut, but there was none to be found.
“I didn’t tell Mom,” Brook said quickly, shaking her head back and forth hastily so that he would believe her. She didn’t want to get grounded, either. Alice Jacobson’s birthday party was this weekend, and both of her best friends were going to be there. “I swear. Pinky swear.”
“Good.”
Jacob continued to stand in the doorway as if he wanted to say more, but they just stared at each other in silence. It was like he didn’t believe she could keep a secret, not one this big.
She could, though.
Brook hadn’t told their parents about Pamela or that Jacob had been sneaking out of the house at least two nights a week for the past few months. She was honestly surprised that he hadn’t gotten caught yet.
She wasn’t sure what had happened this past summer, but Jacob wasn’t the brother who used to laugh with her during Sunday morning cartoons. He’d gotten moody. He no longer colored with her, he didn’t like her coming into his room to ask questions anymore, and he hated when she asked him about his friends. Scotty and Daryll weren’t coming around the house like they had before, and her parents hadn’t even noticed their absences.
Brook wasn’t sure why the need to cry overwhelmed her, but her bottom lip trembled at the thought that he was still mad at her. She’d kept quiet just like he’d asked, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. His hands had curled into fists at the first sign of her tears. His nostrils flared wide. For a brief second, she thought he was going to break the barrier of her threshold and walk into her room.
Then she blinked, and her brother was back.
Sort of.
The shift in his stance was enough to make her believe that he wasn’t angry with her anymore.
Jacob tried to smile, almost as if he knew she was still on the verge of tears. Unfortunately, the corners of his lips didn’t lift all the way up. The second he turned from the door to head downstairs, she couldn’t stop the tears from spilling down her cheeks.
Something very bad had happened to her brother, and Brook couldn’t tell anyone—not her classmates, not her best friends, and not her parents.
Not a soul…ever.
CHAPTER TWO
Brooklyn Sloane
November 2021
Tuesday—5:28am
The incessant rain had been coming down steadily for days, making it difficult to tell if it was day or night. According to the weather report on the eleven o’clock news, threatening clouds would continue to accumulate in the sky overhead for several more weeks to come. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the temperature hadn’t fallen into the fifties and the rain hadn’t gained that biting edge.
Unfortunately, there was no stopping the cold dampness from settling into one’s bones this time of year. It was just another precursor of the upcoming brutal winter that was expected to hit the D.C. area sooner rather than later.
Brook pushed aside the real reason that she hated the dreary month of November, expertly guiding the steering wheel of her car so that the tires were even with the curb. The crime scene in front of her was so chaotic that she wasn’t worried the assigned police officers would notice another vehicle in the mix.
As a matter of fact, she was far enough away from the excitement that the distance afforded her the privacy she needed in order to survey the surrounding area without becoming part of the frenzied circus.
Rows of two-story houses in an upper-middle class neighborhood were positioned on either side of what was normally a quiet, residential cul-da-sac. Streetlamps illuminated every other manicured yard, while porch lights shed golden hues on all but a few of the front doorsteps.
In contrast, there were a few pumpkins that had been left out to soften on the numerous stoops, and bundles of cornstalks sagged under the thick veil of moisture that soaked everything exposed to the outside elements.
Halloween had come and gone without too much fanfare, leaving behind only the cleanup and what was sure to be a few stomachaches from the varied collections of sugarcoated treats. Brook didn’t have to worry about throwing out rotted pumpkins, storing away decorations for the holidays, or gorging herself on chocolate.
At least, not for the foreseeable future.
She worked twice as many hours in a given day than she spent at her condo, which was an excellent excuse in and of itself not to decorate for the season. Christmas was right around the corner, and she doubted that she would even have time to put up a pine wreath let alone a tree with all the trimmings.
The rhythmic movement of the windshield wipers did nothing to deter her from scanning the curious expressions of those who were currently huddled together underneath their umbrellas or under the relative security of their front porches. No one stood out as if they didn’t belong in the area, but occasionally it took a moment to spot the odd man out. Often, the killers who she tracked had above average intelligences. They weren’t the average criminal mugging random pedestrians or robbing liquor stores.
Two members of local law enforcement were currently standing in front of the yellow cordon tape strung between a street sign and a streetlamp. The officers were there to restrain the small, gathered crowd from encroaching on the crime scene. The group was most likely comprised of neighbors who’d gotten up early to head into work. They had almost certainly noticed something wrong outside of their living room windows after they’d fixed their first pot of coffee for the day. No one could resist the temptation of getting a closer look prior to departing for their daily grind.
Of course, there would be the random retiree. They tended to hang in the crowd a bit longer, gathering whatever gossip they could for their daily breakfast with their pals at one of the local diners.
Bottom line was that the inquisitive residents had allowed their curiosity to get the best of them. There was no denying that something bad had happened to one of their collective flock, and it was human nature to be curious about any activity inside their small community that involved anything more than a single police vehicle.
They most likely thought one of their neighbors had been involved in a domestic dispute of some sort. Maybe even a burglary gone wrong. People tended to think the worst once the obvious didn’t pan out, but violence thrusting itself from outside of their bubble was usually their last guess. They equated such crimes to the chances of being struck by lightning. No one wanted to believe that their homes could be targeted by an evil presence.
How wrong these folks were with their naïve assumptions.
Lightning was more than just a random encounter.
Brook’s sole purpose was to hunt the very evil that society denied existed in the form of a cold, calculated human being who had evolved into something more than a mere predator. Out of the multitude of cases that she’d worked over the years, only two killers consumed her every waking thought—one who might be the cause of all the commotion in front of her, and the one from her own past.
Who was she kidding?
The one from her past had invaded her dreams every night for the past twenty-four years, two months, and four days. He was always on the edge of her thoughts, and never very far from her immediate future.
If required, she could even count the minutes and seconds from her realization of how her life would ultimately be shaped.
The red and blue swirling lights from the numerous police cars reflected off the wet black asphalt and the windows of every house in the neighborhood, thus highlighting the bystanders brave enough to stand out in the rain. She glanced over at the neon green numbers on the radio, noting that it was going on five-thirty in the morning. It was early to have so many spectators, another indication that there were many more upper-middle class working families in the neighborhood than retirees.
