CHAPTER ONE
Lucy hated the full moon now, hated it more than she had ever thought she could. Just the sight of it above her as she walked made her shudder. Even so, she made herself walk home along the trail leading from the spot where she'd parked her car back up to her cabin. She didn't want to be afraid anymore.
She was walking through the woods after driving back from the theater production she was appearing in, making her way back along familiar trails to her cabin.
Lucy was slender, almost fragile looking, her blonde hair hacked into short spikes, her blue eyes looking out warily over the surrounding trees, making sure that there weren’t any threats there.
Her therapist said that it was important to challenge the assumption that someone would be out to get her every time she went out, that there would be someone waiting to grab her around every corner. It was important to remind herself that she was free, and that she wasn't trapped in the Moonlight Killer's bunker again as one of his "bunnies", waiting to die.
Just the thought of that word made a fresh wave of revulsion travel through her, one that was hard to push back down. It was enough to carry her imagination back to the bunker, where she had been kept as one of twelve women trapped in a deadly game between the Moonlight Killer and Agent Maya Gray.
Thirteen women. Lucy mustn't forget Carmel, who had tried to escape and been killed by the Moonlight Killer for it, her body dragged back into the bunker for the rest of them to see.
Hanratty. Lucy had to remember to think of him by his real name, not by the pseudonym that still terrified her. Michael Francis Hanratty, she had to remember that. Her therapist said that was important, too, to take away some of the power he'd held over her. To remind herself that he was just a man, one who was now safely locked away, where he couldn’t hurt her anymore.
Lucy continued down the twisting track that led back towards her home. It wasn't far from the spot where Lucy always parked, but the walk seemed to be taking forever. Maybe that was because Lucy stopped to stare up at the full moon every so often. Maybe it was because she had to step over a tripwire every so often, or past a motion detector. Lucy wasn’t taking any chances.
She had to remember that the best revenge was to move on with her life. He'd taken her and the others all at moments when they'd been about to change something in their lives, whether it was getting clean from drugs, going back to school, or finally reconnecting with a loved one.
For Lucy, it had been after she'd finally ditched a controlling boyfriend. She'd even been thinking about an audition for a local theater company. She'd wanted
that creativity in her life, but had never dared to do it. Once she'd come out of the bunker, it hadn't seemed so scary. Nothing had, compared to that experience.
So now, she was in a production with a different theater group, trying to make the most of her life. Her therapist had told her to look for anything positive that could come out of her experiences. Well, one thing it had done for Lucy was make her appreciate how important it was to seize the opportunities in front of her. To actually live her life.
Lucy was determined to not let her past define her future, to not let the fear of the Moonlight Killer or any other monster control her life. Still, it wasn’t easy.
She'd been there the night Agent Maya Gray had come to rescue her and the others. Maya had been there to rescue her sister, although Hanratty had taken Megan with him when he escaped the bunker. Lucy had never known the terror of being put up as a prize in one of his games, knowing that Agent Gray had to solve a cold case by one of his deadlines, or she would die.
Lucy pushed those thoughts aside, the way she always did, the way she’d learned to do through many months of practice. She needed to get back to her cabin and maybe focus on tonight's performance. There were still a couple of things Lucy wanted to do differently with the part, a couple of lines that weren't quite perfect.
Lucy kept walking back in the direction of the cabin, and she tried to focus on the warm glow emanating from the building. She liked to leave a light burning as a beacon for her when she came home. As she turned the corner, she heard footsteps behind her. Her heart rate increased automatically, so she tried to focus on her breathing, to take deep breaths in and exhale slowly. She had to remember that she was safe.
Even so, Lucy found her footsteps quickening automatically, because why was there someone else out here, in such a secluded place? The footsteps picked
up too. Lucy glanced back, her eyes flicking over her shoulder, scanning for any sign of threat.
There was nothing but the forest. Lucy hurried back to her cabin, feeling stupid. She made her way past the security measures she kept in place outside, past the cameras and the motion detectors, rushed inside, made herself coffee, set it down on the kitchen counter, cupping her hands around it for the warmth.
That was when she saw him, standing there.
A dark mass moved in the shadows across her cabin, in a section not lit by the small LED lights of her kitchen. She couldn't make out his face, but her imagination supplied the details. They filled in the face that she'd never seen in person when she was in the bunker, the one she'd only seen at the trial and on the TV. His face. The Moonlight Killer's face.
Except that it wasn't the Moonlight Killer coming towards her. As he stepped out of the shadows, Lucy saw that this was a slightly younger man in his twenties. He was taller, more muscular, with short black hair and piercing blue eyes, hidden behind glasses. But the way he held her, the way he looked at her, it was all too similar to the way Hanratty had looked at her through his mask.
She turned to run, heading for the door, her heart racing. But it was no use. He caught up to her in no time, his hand clamping down on her arm with a strength that shocked her.
Lucy opened her mouth to scream, but his hand clamped over her mouth, stopping that too. Lucy had taken a couple of self-defense courses as another way to try to feel safe after everything that had happened. She tried to struggle, to break free, but he was too strong. She was helpless in his grip. It was like a nightmare come to life.
"Did you think it was over, Lucy? Did you think that you were free?"
Lucy felt something jab into her neck, felt the drugs starting to pulse through her system. She kept trying to fight, but now her body wasn't responding, and she could feel darkness starting to close in on the edges of her vision.
"You aren't free," her new captor said. "There’s a lot that still needs to happen, and we're only just getting started."
CHAPTER TWO
It was funny, Agent Maya Gray thought, how quickly a happy ending could turn into a desk job.
She sighed and started to work her way through piles of requisition forms, requests for resources, requests to get warrants, schedules. It felt as though she were buried in paperwork, ready to be crushed under the weight of it all.
She was alone in her office. One of the perks of a promotion out to a field office, except that it didn’t feel like a promotion when there was no one else there to bounce ideas off. Not that the rest of the field office exactly bustled with life. Through the glass wall of the office, Maya could see a couple of agents working on files, but it was mostly empty. She'd opted for one of the closest field offices to DC, simply so that she could get back home to Marco.
When he was there.
Marco didn't work at the same field office, hadn’t been assigned there the way Maya had been. Their superiors had decided that having the two of them working together while they were in a relationship was a potential problem, a conflict of interests that they couldn’t allow, so he still worked out of DC, as a field agent. A part of Maya envied him that, even though his undercover work meant that he often wasn't home. She wanted that excitement back in her life.
In between the endless requisitions, Maya started to look through case files submitted by some of the agents she supervised there at the field office, going through the cases, trying to find any places where there was room for them to learn more. Room for her to make a difference to the cases or point them in a different direction.
Maya sighed as she read through one of them, then stepped out of the door, into the office beyond. She wondered what the few agents there would see as she did so. Did they see the all-action agent she had been? The former military intelligence officer? Maybe they just saw a senior agent, high enough up the food chain to give them orders but not truly to be called their boss. Maya still looked the same as she had. She was still tall and dark-haired, with an athletic frame. But she was wearing rather better suits than she had when she was a field agent, and her hair was tied back in a more severe style than before.
"Lewis, get in here," Maya called out, trying to keep some of the disapproval out of her voice.
One of the few agents there stood up, heading to her office with a look of trepidation. Zach Lewis was a young Black man, shorter than Maya was but broad shouldered and with close cropped dark hair. His expression was that of someone called into the principal's office. That wasn’t a look Maya had ever wanted to see from someone coming to talk to her. ...
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