Unlucky 13 Read Online Free PDF

him.
    She loved him. He loved her. He’d proposed and she’d said yes. Then she’d blown it.
    She vividly remembered the night they’d broken their engagement, on Jackson Street in the rain,after a fight about having kids, a fight they’d had many times before.
    Here was the headline:
    He wants kids. She wants a career. First.
    They both insisted that it had always been so.
    But the imminent lifetime commitment had caused them to polarize their individual needs. At least that’s how she saw it. She hadn’t said that she’d never be ready to have children, but that’s how he’d taken it.

    By then, Mackie Morales had faked her way into the SFPD and manipulated Richie perfectly, even using her adorable fatherless little boy in a scheme to use Richie for her own purposes.
    Richie was far from stupid, but he’d gone for it. That’s how good Morales was. And when she was exposed as a stone-cold killer, Richie’s heart and faith were shattered again.
    File the whole mess under Humpty Dumpty.

    Tonight, when Lindsay mentioned that Mackie Morales had been sighted, an idea with the size and brilliance of a four-carat white-diamond solitaire had burst into her mind.
    She was an excellent investigative reporter.
    She could track Morales down, trade information for exclusive access. A first-person interview with Mackenzie Morales would be a stunning career move.
    By the way, Rich Conklinwould know what she’d done, and he’d be moved.
    Actually, she was pretty sure that he’d welcome an opportunity to see her again.

CHAPTER 9
    CINDY TOOK HER mug of Earl Grey into her home office, facing Mission Street, and got settled in her hydraulic chair with the memory foam seat. She checked her e-mail and returned all work-related messages.
    Then she opened her original files on the Mackenzie Morales/Randolph Fish story.
    She reacquainted herself with Morales: She was born in Chicago, and although unmarried, she had hada child with the infamous convicted serial killer Randy Fish, a boy named Ben, now age four.
    Cindy read up on the three murder charges against Morales, and she reread her own interview with Lindsay, who had witnessed Fish’s last mortal moments and death.
    And there was the quote she’d gotten from the SFPD press liaison: “Mackenzie Morales had confessed to threehomicides and was in police custodyat Metropolitan Hospital when she escaped. She is an extremely intelligent individual and may be armed and dangerous.
    “If you see Mackenzie Morales, don’t approach her. Contact the SFPD.”
    Duly noted.
    She went out to the Web and typed “Mackenzie Morales” into her browser. A second and a half later, a list of Morales-related stories filled her screen.
    She opened the most recent articles firstand saw pictures of Morales being wheeled into the ambulance bay four months ago. The familiar figure walking alongside the gurney was Richie. Rich had been in some kind of hell.
    She stared for a moment, then clicked through.
    After reading all the publicly available information on Morales and Fish, she signed on to LexisNexis, the by-subscription electronic database for legal files and publicrecords.
    The legal files on Fish were extensive. The FBI had linked him to the bodies of eight young women who had been brutally murdered. Fish was a sexual sadist, a type of killer that got off on torturing his victims. The pathology had been documented and studied for hundreds of years.
    Fish had never given a press interview, but as Cindy paged through court transcripts, she found one bitof information that had gotten little, if any, attention. Randy Fish’s father had owned a small house on Lake Michigan in a town called Cleveland, Wisconsin.
    When Cindy went through the tax records, she foundthat the property was still in William Fish’s name. It was not in arrears and it had never been sold.
    This was significant. Morales had been seen within thirty miles of William Fish’s lakehouse.
    Cindy grabbed her mug and held it in