Dead Don't Lie Read Online Free PDF Page A

way under her skin.
    Since her promotion, she and Ryan had been kept away from Sanderson. But apparently their luck had just run out.
Great.
    Kessler glared at her from hooded eyes and motioned for her to sit, which she did. He ran his forefinger over the top of his thumb, picked at his cuticle. Evelyn frowned. She’d picked up that tell during the first month reporting to him. What was making him so anxious?
    “Given your background and your closing rate, the chief believes you’ll be an asset to the case.”
    She leaned back into the uncomfortable chair, its faux leather groaning.
    “And the case is?” She crossed her arms, cautiously intrigued.
    Kessler hesitated. His face was ashen, the calm in his eyes dissipating.
    “Captain?” Ryan broke the silence in the fishbowl room.
    Kessler cleared his throat and, without blinking, answered. “It appears to be a family annihilator case. But something is off....”
    She froze as the term
family annihilator
tumbled from Kessler’s lips. A low whistle came from Ryan as he rubbed his hand over the black scruff on his jaw.
    She balanced on the edge of an emotional cliff, and she knew it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ryan take a step toward her. She gave a tight shake of her head. He stopped, lifted a brow.
    Evelyn straightened. She’d opened up to Ryan years ago, after an interrogation that had shaken both of them. She trusted him, and he’d sworn to always keep an eye out for her—no matter how independent and strong she thought she was.
    But she didn’t need Ryan, or anyone for that matter, to keep her from tumbling over the cliff’s edge. She could manage it herself, for crying out loud. She reined in the suffocating emotions. She was seasoned at corralling her galloping heart—she’d spent years perfecting the task.
    With the help of her therapist, she recognized that emotions didn’t make her weak, but strong. She wasn’t a statistic, but a survivor. Everything she’d walked through made her the woman—and most importantly, the detective—she was.
    Kessler picked up a thin case file off his desk and leaned toward her.
    Swallowing hard, Evelyn took it from him. She knew her partner had noticed her brief hesitation and seen the emotions dance behind her eyes. To most people, she was unreadable. But Ryan wasn’t most people. He read her like an open book. He’d noticed. If Kessler did, he didn’t say anything. Her lips tightened into a hard line as she flipped the file open.
    “Appears?” she said to no one in particular as she studied the photos.
    “Yes. It’s the second such case in the past two weeks—in the same precinct, with similar family units. Those photos—” Kessler motioned to the brightly colored crime scene images “—are from the first.”
    She flipped through the photos. The wife’s body lay at the feet of what appeared to be her husband. The back of his head was missing. Evelyn swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. With each sweep of her eyes she cataloged the grisly images of the husband and wife. She continued skimming through the photos, then stopped. A young child lay on her back, a deep, crimson gash across her throat. Evelyn’s hand trembled. Her throat tightened, rage and grief warring within her.
    “Have either of the husbands recently lost their jobs?”
    “No. They’re both successful in their respective industries,” the captain replied.
    Evelyn tapped the photos on the table.
    Something wasn’t right.
    Men who took their family’s lives fell into one of two categories: angry at their partners and seeking revenge, or hopeless and despondent and believing their family was better off dead. It was usually a reaction to a loss of some kind—a job, a wife. They were typically mid-thirties to middle-age, socially isolated and had been depressed or frustrated for a long time. For many family annihilators, the act of murder was a way to reestablish control.
    At first glance, neither of these men fit that