Catch Your Death

by Kierney Scott

Genres: Police Procedurals; Female Sleuths; Thrillers; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

The scene played over and over in his mind. He only had one choice left. He had to die. Behind the high and imposing gates of a prestigious college, five students have taken their lives. All of them friends, all of them good kids, all of them dead within months of each other. When FBI Agent Jess Bishop is called in to investigate, what she discovers will make her just as vulnerable as the students she’s trying to protect. As Jess begins to unravel the secrets behind the deaths, she uncovers something much more sinister at the school and she is determined to find out who is at the centre of it. Though her team think they’re closing in on the ringleader, Jess becomes convinced they’re going after the wrong person, forcing her to investigate on her own. Desperate to stop any more deaths, she risks everything by putting herself in the firing line. But just how far would she go to save the lives of those around her? An absolutely gripping thriller that will have your pulse racing. Catch Your Death is perfect for fans of Robert Dugoni, Karin Slaughter and Lisa Gardner. What readers are saying about Catch Your Death : ‘ Wow, what a rollercoaster of a read! This book was full of suspense and tension right from the beginning, in fact it had me holding my breath in places… I raced through this book… and read it in record time. That shows how bloody brilliant this book it… I don’t hesitate in giving Catch Your Death 5 stars. It really was a fantastic read. In fact if I could give it more I would. Its easily worth an 8.’ Bonnie’s Book Talk, 5 stars ‘ I absolutely loved this book.’ B for Bookreview, 5 stars ‘ This is really one of the best series on the shelves at the moment… I was left wanting to dive straight into the next instalment.’ Nigel Adams Book Worm, 5 stars ‘ A really clever premise, brilliant writing and a rollercoaster of a read. An easy five stars and so highly recommended. Leaves you wanting more.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘What an amazing read. Very well written and difficult to put down!... Catch your Death is the kind of book that lingers with you. I’ll be recommending it to my friends for sure!’ Beanosfighter, 5 stars ‘Another great book in the Detective Jess Bishop series!!! I really love this series and every book has kept me captivated and up all night reading… You won’t be disappointed.’ Goodreads reviewer, 4 stars ‘ Catch Your Death is an intense thriller, mystery… The action is fast, the atmosphere is tense and the pages fly by.’ Goodreads reviewer, 4 stars ‘I haven’t read a new series that I liked so much since I discovered Angela Marsons’s Kim Stone series… This is an excellent book and I’m glad to have found another series I can love and get invested in.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘ A brilliant read.’ Booking Good Read, 4 stars ‘ A tense action-packed thriller with plenty of twists and turns… A high octane read with a daunting premise and an exciting plot. It held my attention from start to finish as I rode the rollercoaster with Jess.’ Goodreads reviewer, 4 stars ‘ An action-packed mystery… Suspenseful, intriguing and complex. ’ Nightcap Books, 4 stars ‘ The author continues to surprise me with what she puts her characters through and I look forward to seeing what she brings us next.’ Goodreads reviewer, 4 stars ‘An easy read, but has so much going on to keep you hooked, with some great, likeable characters and the impulsive and sometimes reckless Jess. Real escapism and a great read. ’ Goodreads reviewer, 4 stars ‘ A quick, fun read.’ Goodreads reviewer, 4 stars

Release date: April 15, 2019

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 258

Sample

“Stop pushing!” a teacher with a clipboard shouted over the screech of metal grinding against metal as a train came into the station.

Not one of the students listened. They were too busy laughing and shrieking, enjoying the novelty and freedom of being out of the classroom and on the streets of DC. Such a great tradition, bringing classes across the country to see the capital; so much to learn.

He smiled, remembering his first trip here. He hadn’t been much older, and he had immediately fallen in love with the history and architecture. He had known then this is where he wanted to spend his life.

“I said stop pushing!” the teacher screamed at two girls who thought it was a good idea to play tag at the edge of the platform.

She was right to yell. Someone was going to get hurt.

“You better listen to your teacher,” he said to the schoolgirl next to him. “The city can be a dangerous place.”

The girl’s eyes widened, surprised that a stranger had spoken to her. Her face drained of color for a heartbeat and then went engine-red. She shrugged and turned away but not before rolling her eyes. She mumbled something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like “fuck off.”

He sighed, more sad than annoyed. She was a perfect example of everything that was wrong with today’s youth, petulant and ill-mannered.

Never mind, he had too much to do today to worry about a swearing adolescent.

He gazed over the sea of over-styled hair and pimpled faces.

He stood back as another train pulled into the station, watching, his gaze never faltering. He waited for the class to get on, because that was the polite thing to do. Not that he had much of a choice; they all pushed their way past him, even the teacher.

He patted his pocket before he reached his hand in, wrapping his fingers around the cool handle.

As the whistle sounded, he pulled it out, holding it by his side. He moved slowly through the carriage, brushing past people as he went.

“Excuse me,” he apologized.

He gripped the handle harder. Light glistened off the metal blade as he brought it up.

Then he lunged forward, the blade cutting through muscle and sinew. The tender flesh offered no more resistance than a grisly cut of prime rib. Shame that everyone was wearing so many layers. He really would have liked to see all the blood.

Her eyes widened. Pain, or shock maybe. The girl should have heeded his warning: the city really was a dangerous place.

“Sorry, what did you say?” Special Agent Jess Bishop pulled up her pants and fastened the button. She stared down at the zip of her boot where snow had seeped in between the grooves of the metal teeth. A burning sensation throbbed in her toes from the biting cold as ice settled in the crevices. Only now did she notice she had been standing in snow for fifteen minutes. Funny the way sex could numb pain, emotional and physical. Nothing else worked.

Even her hand didn’t hurt when she had sex. It was the only time the pain stopped. The mottled raised scars that crisscrossed her palm were a constant reminder of what had happened, of how she had fought back and escaped the clutches of a serial killer, and how the others hadn’t. It was a map of her failure and frailties, and it wasn’t going away anytime soon so neither was the anonymous sex.

She took out the bottle of ibuprofen and swallowed two to get ahead of the pain because the endorphins would soon wear off and the emotions would all come flooding back along with the guilt and shame and pain. She’d hoped it would last longer, but numbness was getting harder and harder to come by these days.

“I said that was fun. We should do it again sometime.” He smiled. He had a nice smile, slightly crooked and not in the least bit threatening; that was why she had picked him. He looked nice, not that Jess trusted him. She trusted no one, which was why they’d had sex in an alley behind a bar rather than at her house or even in her car.

Jess buttoned the bottom toggles of her coat. She glanced down as he pulled the condom off and then looked past his bare thighs to the snow behind him. The streetlight cast a warm glow over the white mounds. In the daylight the snowdrifts were dirty, studded with gravel and the snapped twigs of branches, but at night they became pure again.

She didn’t have a response so she remained quiet. She didn’t know his name and she had not offered hers. He had served his purpose and given her a release and a few minutes of feeling numb. That was all she wanted but now came the awkward part where nice guys suddenly became worried about her feelings and pretended that they wanted to see her again. She could write a dissertation on the post-coital discourse of strangers. She certainly had a large enough sample to draw from.

“So, can I have your number?”

Jess sighed. She hoped for his sake the nice guy thing was just an act because she would feel like less of a shit for the next thing she was going to say: “No.” She didn’t follow up with an excuse because she thought women only looked weak by offering justifications and apologies, and she was many things but weak was not one of them.

His smile slipped, replaced by an open mouth.

She walked away, down the alley toward the Metro station. She glanced at her watch. If she hurried, she could catch the last train home. Her pocket vibrated when her phone rang. She snapped around to look at the man she had just been screwing against a wall; for a fraction of a second she thought it could be him on the other end of the line but he was still pulling up his jeans.

Her pulse spiked and then her heart squeezed to a painful stop when she saw the name of the person calling.

“Hello?” She didn’t mean for it to sound like a question, but this was not a call she had been expecting. She had been on a forced sabbatical since the end of her last case, so a call from her boss at midnight on a Tuesday could only be described as unexpected. Officially she was on vacation because she had amassed too many days and the bureau insisted she take at least two weeks, but the truth was an FBI psychologist had ordered it.

She wasn’t convinced by Dr. Cameron’s logic. She very much doubted that she would be over the murder of her best friend after the requisite time out, or that she would have worked through the guilt of her own culpability in her death: the only reason Lindsay had become involved with the case in the first place was down to her. And she was certain that forcing her to take time off would not help her develop coping strategies that didn’t involve screwing strangers.

“Jessica?” Jeanie Gilbert asked. Her boss’s paper-thin voice was laced with concern.

She cleared her throat. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“Where are you? It sounds like you’re outside.”

Jess closed her eyes and sucked in a sharp breath. Jeanie could never know how she chose to deal with life. She wouldn’t understand, and Jess admired her too much to deal with her judgment. “I was just stepping out for some air. My apartment is stuffy. Because I live on the top floor.” She blurted out the meaningless bit of information at the end. If she were listening to this conversation, she would pounce on the unnecessary details, a telltale sign of lying, but Jeanie didn’t seem to notice.

“Okay, that’s nice. Do you have a minute? I realize this is an imposition but if I could ask you a favor—”

“Of course. Anything.” Jess didn’t hesitate. She had worked under Jeanie for over a decade, and there was no one she respected more. In most ways Jeanie was unassuming, easily overlooked, and underrated, but she was the most capable woman Jess had ever met. So much of her career was modeled after Jeanie’s, watching how she commanded respect through competence rather than force. She was the embodiment of bridled strength. Even after ten years, Jess had never heard her swear and she could count on one hand the times she had raised her voice.

“It’s my nephew, Levi. He is my sister Shona’s youngest son. He’s a senior at Gracemount Academy.”

Jess nodded as she listened, wondering what this had to do with her. Was he in trouble? Did he need some sort of scared-straight intervention? She wasn’t sure she would have picked herself to lead an impressionable youth back to the fold, but if Jeanie wanted her to, she would give it her best try. “Okay, what would you like me to do?”

“He’s a really good boy. I know all aunts must say that, but he really is. He’s an Eagle Scout. He is not the kind of boy that gets into trouble.”

If he was a senior in high school, he must be near enough eighteen. That would make him a man so no number of scout badges was going to mitigate the situation if he had committed a crime. If it had been anyone else, Jess would have asked straight out what he had been charged with, but Jess respected Jeanie too much to be that brutal in her honesty. “What happened?” she asked instead. She bit into the sliver of nail left on her index finger as she braced herself for the response.

“There is something wrong. I can feel it. He’s in trouble.” Urgency clipped her words.

“What is it?” Jess pressed. Normally she wouldn’t put credence into a feeling, but in all the years she’d known Jeanie, she’d never known her to overreact about anything, ever. If Jeanie thought there was a problem, then there was a damn good reason why.

“As you may know, I’m in Utah now visiting my family. Levi called me earlier tonight, but I didn’t get it because I was getting my mom settled into her rest home. As soon as I heard his voicemail, I knew something was wrong.”

“What did he say?”

“We’re very close, especially since Shona died, and I could just tell. It’s not what he said as much as what he didn’t say. It was his voice. He was scared. I would go and check on him myself but the next flight out of Salt Lake isn’t until tomorrow. I think there’s something wrong. I’d really feel better if I could speak to him tonight.”

This was the first time Jeanie had ever spoken about her family. She was intensely private and the separation between her personal and work life was complete. Jess had no idea she had family in Utah or a nephew and a deceased sister. Jess only knew she was married because she had met Jeanie’s husband Paul at a Christmas party. Everything else she knew about her, she had pieced together through the years. “Have you tried calling him back?” she asked the obvious.

“Several times. No answer. I’ve texted and called him, but nothing, and I’ve called the school but it keeps going to voicemail. That’s not like him either. He is so responsible.”

“Do you want me to go check on him?” Jess glanced at her watch again. He was probably asleep but Jess would go wake him up and make him call Jeanie if that would make her feel better. There wasn’t a lot she wouldn’t do for her.

“Would you mind? I know this is terribly unprofessional of me to ask—”

“Of course, I’ll go check on him. I don’t mind at all. I’ll text you as soon as I’ve spoken to him.”

“Thank you, Jessica. I really appreciate it. I knew I could count on you. You were the only person I thought to call.”

Heat spread over her skin at the small praise. Jeanie was never effusive. Compliments from her were few and far between. Her expectation was that everyone would work to a high standard so they did not need to be told when they were doing something well.

Jess said goodbye and then cut the call before she called a taxi. It was too late for the Metro now, and there was no stop at Gracemount Academy anyway.

Jess pulled up her hood and shoved her hands into her pockets to keep them warm as she waited for the driver to arrive.

Jess opened the door and slid into the backseat. According to the license stuck to the divider, his name was Tariq. “Can you please take me to Gracemount Academy?”

His dark eyes glanced back at her in the rearview mirror. “That’s a fancy school. It is like fifty thousand dollars a year. It’s the most expensive school in America.”

Jess nodded as she buckled her seatbelt. “Is it?” She had seen the all-boys prep school advertised on the side of DC buses, but she had never looked into it further. Why would she? She didn’t have kids and never planned to. The only reason the ad stuck in her mind was because the poster had five students gathered around a single Bunsen burner doing a chemistry experiment. There was one black student, one East Asian, one wearing a yarmulke, one Hispanic, and for good measure a white kid with bright-red hair. It felt like they were trying to make a point: look at us, we’re inclusive. Every time she saw it she wondered if they had gathered up the only minorities in the entire school for a photo op.

“I think it is the oldest boarding school in America too. It was founded before the Revolutionary War. They have sent more kids to Ivy League colleges than any other school in America. And they have produced more CEOs of Fortune 500 companies than anyone else.”

Jess met his gaze again in the mirror. “How do you know all this? Did you go to school there?”

“Ha! That would be a no. My parents didn’t even make fifty thousand a year between them. And even if they did, they would not be throwing it away on something the government should be paying for anyway.”

“So how do you know so much about it?”

He turned his blinker on before he merged into the next lane. “I drove one of the board of governors once. He bragged the whole time like everything that ever happened at the school was his own accomplishment. I mean, he was old but I doubt he was around back in 1744 so he can calm down about what visionaries the founders were.”

She didn’t have anything to add to the conversation but she wanted to acknowledge what he had said so she replied with, “Hmm.”

“He was like one of those football fanatics that think they have bragging rights because they support the winning team.”

Jess sat back and listened to Tariq talk, paraphrasing everything he had heard about the school. Jess was far from social so she normally preferred to drive in silence, but this saved her from looking up the school herself on her phone. It was like having her own private tour guide. By the time they reached the massive wrought-iron gates that marked the entrance to the school, she knew everything she could possibly want to know about Gracemount Academy.

“Should I drop you off here?”

Jess glanced out the window. The school was set back a good quarter mile from the gate and the snow had started again. Just looking at the flurries made her toes ache with frostbite. “Can you buzz in please? I’d rather not walk.”

He turned around to face her. “Do you have a kid here?”

“No.”

“If you don’t have a kid here or work here, they’re not going to let you drive in.”

“Why don’t you push the buzzer and let me worry about that.”

Tariq shrugged and made an expression that said he thought she was wasting time, but he rolled down his window. He had to knock freshly fallen snow off the panel to reach the buzzer.

“Alere flammam veritatis,” a woman’s voice answered after five rings.

Jess silently translated the Latin motto: Let the flame of truth shine.

Jess leaned forward so the intercom would pick up her voice. “Good evening. I’m Special Agent Jessica Bishop. I’m here to speak with Levi Smith.” If having an FBI agent turn up at his dorm to tell him to stop being an ass and making his aunt worry wasn’t enough to make this kid toe the line, she wasn’t sure what would be.

Tariq snapped his head back to face her. His eyes were wide. “FBI? You kept that one quiet. If I would’ve known, I would have had lots of questions. You could have starred in tomorrow’s anecdotes. Now I’m just going to have to guess why you’re here. I’ll make something good up for my next customer.”

For the first time in longer than she could remember, she smiled. “I’m fairly certain anything you come up with will be more exciting than the real reason I’m here anyway.”

Jess paid him and shut the door. She looked up at the imposing red-brick building. Six Doric columns lined the front of the darkened structure. The only light came from the streetlamps, which cast an ethereal glow over the campus. It was picturesque, and quaint like a Thomas Kinkade painting.

She pulled out her badge. Before she had time to ring the doorbell, the lights turned on and a middle-aged woman came to the door. Her faded brown hair was cut into a sharp bob just below her pearl-studded ears. A navy-blue cardigan, buttoned halfway, showed the matching sweater below. Her eyes narrowed as she studied Jess and a spark of recognition flashed across her face.

Jess sucked in a sharp breath of air. Her trachea tightened in a painful spasm like someone had wrapped their hands around her neck and squeezed. Shit, don’t let her recognize me. She couldn’t deal with that tonight. Not here, not now. Usually when she was scared that someone had recognized her, she would call her best friend Lindsay to give her some perspective, but Lindsay was dead.

For a long moment they stood in silence while the woman scrutinized her. Jess squeezed her hands into tight fists at her side but she didn’t flinch or turn away to hide her face. If the woman recognized her, Jess would deal with it. She had had a lifetime to prepare for moments like these but it never got easier. And it never would. She would never feel comfortable with people knowing who she was, or more to the point, who her father was.

Eventually Jess cleared her throat to indicate to the woman that if she wanted to say something, she needed to do it now because Jess wasn’t prepared to leave that dagger hanging above her.

“I’m sorry. You just look familiar, but I can’t seem to place you. Have we met before?”

Jess shook her head. “No, ma’am, we’ve never met. I just have one of those faces.” Jess held up her badge for inspection. “Like I said before, I’m Special Agent Bishop.”

“Sorry. Where are my manners? I’m Yvonne Crawford, the house mother for Levi Smith’s dorm. I understand you would like to speak to him. May I ask what this is in connection to?”

Without fail, whenever Jess mentioned she was from the FBI, people asked questions. Normally she didn’t respond, but in this instance, she didn’t want to cause any alarm. “I’m a friend of Levi’s aunt. I’m here on her behalf, strictly in that capacity.”

Yvonne nodded. “He will be asleep now. We have a strict lights-out policy at ten. We don’t even allow reading after lights out. And definitely no electronics. Can this not wait until tomorrow morning?”

“Unfortunately not.” The request to return at a more sociable hour was perfectly reasonable, but Jess suspected Jeanie would not be able to relax until she had texted her to let her know everything was okay.

“All right, then. I will show you where his room is. He shares with another boy so if you could try not to disrupt him, that would be greatly appreciated.”

“Of course.” Jess followed Yvonne when she turned and walked down the hall to a wide stone staircase. Ornate scrolls were carved into the thick balustrade as well as the school motto Yvonne had used as a greeting. The treads of the stone stairs dipped from years of use. The entire building felt like it belonged in a period movie.

Yvonne led her down a darkened hall to a door at the very end. “This is Levi’s room.”

“Thanks.” Jess knocked on the door. When there was no answer she opened the door. She was greeted by the sound of soft snoring. He and his roommate were obviously asleep but Jess needed to be able to say she had seen the whites of his eyes to confirm to Jeanie he was all right. She patted on the wall until she located the light switch.

She glanced from the boy sleeping open-mouthed to the empty, made bed on the other side of the room. “Is that Levi?” Jess asked, pointing to the drooling boy.

“No, that is his roommate, Tom.” Yvonne’s eyes widened at the sight of the empty bed.

“Where else would Levi be?”

Yvonne shook her head. “Nowhere. They aren’t allowed out of their rooms until breakfast at seven.”

It sounded more like a prison than a school. “What if they need to use the bathroom?”

“Every room now has an en-suite. It was part of the refurbishments done in the nineties.” She pointed to the open door.

Just to be sure Levi wasn’t merely taking a piss, she turned on the ligh. . .