The Dying Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

been a cop, as had his father before him. She had grown up as a tomboy, or so she had told him, preferring to play baseball with the boys instead of Barbie dolls with the other girls. Small-boned, petite, and slender, Lindsay should have projected an image of dainty femininity. Instead, with her pale, curly blond hair cut short and very little makeup covering her freckled nose and cheeks, she came across as a no-nonsense, no frills woman. If anyone made the mistake of thinking she was fragile, all they had to do was cross her. Since he had first met her, she had acquired topnotch martial arts skills, had become an expert marksman, and hid the emotional side of her nature as well as any man.
    He liked Lindsay. Respected her. And in many ways had come to think of her more as a kid sister than an employee.
    They had met almost four years ago, shortly after Jennifer Walker’s brutal murder. Lindsay had been partnered with Dan Blake, the lead detective on Jenny’s murder case; and he’d never seen anyone more determined to solve a crime than she had been. At first, he had chalked up her perseverance in finding Jenny’s killer to a rookie detective’s need to prove herself. But as the weeks and months went by, he realized that the case had become personal to Lindsay. Sometime between meeting Judd at the scene of his wife’s murder and becoming acquainted with him as a grieving widower obsessed with revenge, Lindsay had fallen in love with Judd Walker.
    Griffin slid behind the wheel of the rental car, a two-year-old Lincoln. He’d never been to Williamstown, Kentucky, so he’d asked for directions to the hospital before he left the airport. He doubted that, in a town this size, even a direction-challenged person could get lost.
    Three miles from the small airport, Griff took a left on Elmwood Street, which meant he should be less than five minutes from the hospital where Gale Ann Cain lay in a semi-coma, heavily drugged, and teetering between life and death. The former Miss Universe contestant was only one in a long line of former beauty queens who had been savagely attacked in the past four and a half years. By Griff’s—and the FBI’s—count, Ms. Cain was victim number twenty-nine. But neither he nor the FBI could be sure that all twenty-nine murders had been committed by the same person, and therefore weren’t positive that the murders were all connected. Nor could they be certain that there hadn’t been other victims.
    Griff’s gut instincts told him all twenty-nine had a definite connection.
    The victims had not been confined to one city, county, or state, making their killer nomadic, a guy who traveled around in search of the perfect target. But these women had not been chosen at random. Not by a long shot. The common denominator in these crimes was the fact that each woman had been a winner in some kind of beauty pageant—local, statewide, national, or international. Not one victim had been older than thirty-five. And each had still been beautiful.
    Jennifer Mobley Walker had possessed a flashy kind of beauty: Big brown eyes, lustrous dark hair, full lips, large breasts, and long legs that went on forever. And she had been blessed with a bubbly, enthusiastic personality that drew people to her. To know Jenny was to love Jenny.
    No one had been more surprised than Griff when his old friend, Judd Walker, a confirmed bachelor, had fallen head over heels for the former Miss Tennessee and married her less than a year after their first date. Women throughout the state had mourned the loss of such a desirable catch. Rich, handsome, and charming.
    That had been then—five years ago.
    The three-story hospital came into view as Griff neared the turnoff on to Pickler Avenue. If Gale Ann Cain lived long enough to ID her attacker, they would have a chance of catching this guy and stopping him before he killed again. Griff wasn’t sure that arresting the man and bringing him to justice could save Judd’s soul, but it was