Once Shunned

Blake Pierce is author of the bestselling RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes fifteen books (and counting). Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising nine books (and counting); of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising six books; of the KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising five books; of the MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE mystery series, comprising three books (and counting); of the KATE WISE mystery series, comprising four books (and counting); of the CHLOE FINE psychological suspense mystery, comprising three books (and counting); and of the JESSE HUNT psychological suspense thriller series, comprising three books (and counting).

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2019 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright sahachatz  used under license from Shutterstock.com.

A JESSIE HUNT PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

THE PERFECT WIFE (Book #1)

THE PERFECT BLOCK (Book #2)

THE PERFECT HOUSE (Book #3)

THE PERFECT SMILE (Book #4)

CHLOE FINE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

NEXT DOOR (Book #1)

A NEIGHBOR’S LIE (Book #2)

CUL DE SAC (Book #3)

SILENT NEIGHBOR (Book #4)

KATE WISE MYSTERY SERIES

IF SHE KNEW (Book #1)

IF SHE SAW (Book #2)

IF SHE RAN (Book #3)

IF SHE HID (Book #4)

IF SHE FLED (Book #5)

THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE SERIES

WATCHING (Book #1)

WAITING (Book #2)

LURING (Book #3)

TAKING (Book #4)

RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE GONE (Book #1)

ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)

ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)

ONCE LURED (Book #4)

ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)

ONCE PINED (Book #6)

ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)

ONCE COLD (Book #8)

ONCE STALKED (Book #9)

ONCE LOST (Book #10)

ONCE BURIED (Book #11)

ONCE BOUND (Book #12)

ONCE TRAPPED (Book #13)

ONCE DORMANT (Book #14)

ONCE SHUNNED (Book #15)

ONCE MISSED (Book #16)

MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES

BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)

BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)

BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)

BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)

BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)

BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)

BEFORE HE SINS (Book #7)

BEFORE HE HUNTS (Book #8)

BEFORE HE PREYS (Book #9)

BEFORE HE LONGS (Book #10)

BEFORE HE LAPSES (Book #11)

BEFORE HE ENVIES (Book #12)

AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES

CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)

CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)

CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)

CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)

CAUSE TO SAVE (Book #5)

CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6)

KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES

A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

A TRACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)

PROLOGUE

Robin’s eyes snapped open.

She found herself lying wide awake in her bed. She thought at first she’d been awakened by a noise coming from somewhere in her little house.

Breaking glass?

But as she lay there listening for a moment, she heard nothing except the comforting rumble of the furnace in the basement.

Surely she’d just imagined the sound.

Nothing to worry about, she thought.

But as she turned on her side to try to get back to sleep, she felt a sudden sharp pain in her left leg.

This again, Robin thought with a sigh.

She switched on the lamp on the nightstand and pulled away the covers.

She no longer felt surprised to see that she had no left leg. She’d gotten used to that months ago. The leg had been amputated above the knee after her bones were crushed to a pulp in a terrible car accident last year.

But the pain was plenty real—a cluster of throbbing, cramping, and burning sensations.

She sat up in bed and stared at the stump under her nightgown. She’d suffered from phantom limb pain like this ever since the amputation, mostly at night when she was trying to sleep.

She looked at the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was four o’clock in the morning. She let out a groan of discouragement. She was often awakened by the pain at this hour or earlier, and she knew there was no chance of going back to sleep while this sensation was tormenting her.

She considered reaching under the bed for her mirror box, a therapy device that often helped her through episodes like this. It involved slipping the stump into the end of a long, prism-shaped box with a mirror on one side, so that her remaining leg cast a reflection. The mirror box created the illusion that she still had both of her legs. It was a weird but effective technique for diminishing or even getting rid of the phantom pain.

She’d watch the reflection while manipulating her remaining leg, clenching and unclenching the muscles in her feet, toes, and calves, as she tricked her brain into believing that she still had both legs. By imagining that she was controlling the missing leg, she could often work out the pain and cramping she felt there.

But it didn’t always work. It required a level of meditative concentration that she couldn’t always attain. And she knew from experience she had little chance of success just after waking up in the early morning hours.

I might as well get up and get some work done, she thought.

She briefly considered putting on the prosthetic leg that she kept beside her bed. That would mean stretching a nylon gel liner over her stump, pulling a couple of socks over the liner to compensate for the shrinkage of her stump, then fastening the prosthesis into place, putting her weight on it until she felt it pop fully into place.

It hardly seemed worth the trouble right now—especially if she got lucky and the pain faded on its own and she could go back to bed and get some more sleep.

Instead, she pulled on her bathrobe, reached for her elbow crutches, slipped her wrists through the cuffs and gripped the handgrips, then hobbled out of the bedroom into her kitchen.

A pile of papers awaited her there on the Formica-topped table.

She’d brought home a huge bundle of poems and short stories to read—submissions for Sea Surge, the literary magazine where she worked as the assistant editor. She’d read more than half of the pieces last night before she’d gone to bed, selecting just a few that might be worthy of publication while setting the many others aside for rejection.

Now she skimmed through a batch of five especially bad poems by a remarkably untalented writer, the sort of greeting-card verses that the magazine too often received. She laughed a little as she plopped the poems onto the rejection pile.

The next batch was altogether different, but also typical of the sort of thing she often had to wade through while sorting through submissions. These poems immediately struck her as dry, bloodless, obscure, and pretentious. As she tried to make some sense of them, her mind started wandering, and she found herself thinking about how she’d wound up living alone in this cheap but comfortable little rented house.

It was sad to remember how her marriage had broken up early this year. Shortly after the accident and the amputation, her husband, Duane, had been attentive, caring, and supportive. But as time went on, he’d become more and more distant until he’d pretty much stopped showing her any intimacy or affection.

Although Duane wouldn’t admit it, Robin had realized that he simply didn’t find her physically attractive anymore.

She sighed as she remembered how wildly in love they’d been during the first four years of their marriage.

Her throat tightened as she wondered whether she’d ever experience that kind of happiness again. But she knew she was still an attractive, charming, intelligent woman. Surely there was a wonderful man out there who could see her as a whole person, not merely as an amputee.

Still, the shallowness of Duane’s love for her had been a blow to her self-confidence and to her faith in men in general. It was hard not to feel bitter toward her ex-husband. She reminded herself as she often did …

He did the best he could.

At least their divorce had been amicable and they still remained friends.

Her ears perked up at a familiar sound outside—the approaching garbage truck. She smiled as she looked forward to a little ritual she’d developed on such sleepless mornings.

She got up from the table, put on the crutches, hobbled over to the living room window, and opened the curtains.

The truck was pulling up in front of her own house now, and the huge robotic arm clamped onto her bin and lifted it and dumped its contents into the truck. And sure enough, walking alongside the truck was an odd young man.

As always, Robin found something endearingly earnest about him as he followed the truck on its way, gazing attentively in all directions as if keeping some sort of lookout.

She figured he must work for the town’s sanitation department, although she wasn’t sure just what his job could be. He didn’t seem to have anything to do except walk along and make sure the big machine did its job and didn’t drop any stray pieces of garbage.

As she always did when she saw him out there on the lighted street, she smiled, took an arm out of a cuff, and waved at him. He looked straight back at her, as he always did. She found it odd that he never waved back, just stood there with his arms at his sides returning her gaze.

But this time he did something he’d never done before.

He lifted his arm and pointed in her direction.

What’s he pointing at? she wondered.

Then she felt a chill as she remembered the moment when she’d woken up …

I thought I heard a sound.

She’d thought it might be breaking glass.

And now she realized …

He’s pointing at something behind me.

Before she could turn around and look, she felt a powerful hand seize her right shoulder.

Robin froze with fear.

She felt a sudden deep pain as something sharp plunged into her ear, and the world around her quickly dissolved.

In another moment she felt nothing at all.

CHAPTER ONE

The moment Riley plopped down on the sofa in the family room and kicked off her shoes, the doorbell rang. She groaned softly. She figured it was someone promoting a cause, wanting her to sign a petition or write a check or something like that.

Not what I need right now.

She’d just dropped off her daughters, April and Jilly, for their first day of school. She’d been looking forward to relaxing for a while.

Just then she heard Gabriela, her Guatemalan housekeeper, call out to her from the kitchen …

“No te muevas, señora. I’ll get the door.”

As she listened to Gabriela’s footsteps heading for the front door, Riley leaned back and propped her feet up on the coffee table.

Then she heard Gabriela chattering cheerfully with the person at the door.

A visitor? Riley wondered.

Riley scrambled to put her shoes back on as she heard approaching footsteps.

When Gabriela escorted the visitor into the room, Riley was surprised and pleased to see who it was.

It was Blaine Hildreth, her handsome boyfriend.

Or is he my fiancé?

These days she didn’t know for sure, and apparently neither did Blaine. A couple of weeks ago he had more or less proposed to her, then just last week he had said he wanted to take things slowly. She hadn’t seen him for a few days now, and she hadn’t expected him to show up this morning.

As Riley started to rise from the sofa, Blaine said, “Please, don’t get up. I’ll join you.”

Blaine sat down beside her and relaxed against the elderly family room sofa. Riley grinned and kicked her shoes off again.

With a slight laugh, Blaine kicked his own shoes off, and they both propped their feet up on the coffee table.

Being so comfortable with him felt really nice to Riley, even if she wasn’t quite sure where things stood in their relationship.

“How’s your morning been?” Blaine asked.

“OK,” Riley said. “I just dropped the girls off at school.”

“Yeah, I just dropped off Crystal too.”

As always, Riley could hear a note of affection whenever Blaine mentioned his sixteen-year-old daughter’s name. She liked that about him.

Then with a laugh Blaine added, “She seemed pretty anxious for me to drive away once we got there. I guess she wanted me to get out of sight of her friends.”

Riley laughed as well.

“It’s the same with April,” she said. “Kids seem to be embarrassed to have their parents around at that age. Well, starting tomorrow, mine will be taking a bus.”

“Mine too.”

Blaine put his hands behind his head and leaned back and heaved a deep sigh.

“Crystal will be driving soon,” he said.

“So will April,” Riley said. “I guess she can apply for her license in November. I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“Me neither. Especially since teaching Crystal to drive has made me a nervous wreck.”

Riley felt a pang of guilt.

She said, “I’m afraid I haven’t spent much time teaching April. Hardly any time, really. She’s mostly had to make do with driver’s training at school.”

Blaine shrugged and said, “Do you want me to spend some time teaching her?”

Riley winced a little. She knew that Blaine managed to be more of a hands-on parent than she seemed capable of being. Her work with the BAU kept tugging her away from the usual mother-daughter routines, and she felt bad about that.

Still, it was kind of Blaine to offer to help out, and she knew she mustn’t feel jealous if he spent more time with April than she could. After all, he might wind up being April’s father before too long. It would be great for April and Jilly to have a dad who gave them real attention. That would be more than Riley’s ex-husband, Ryan, had ever done.

“That would be nice,” she said. “Thanks.”

Gabriela came into the living room carrying a tray. The stout woman deftly steered her steps as Jilly’s small, big-eared dog, Darby, and April’s rapidly growing black-and-white kitten, Marbles, scampered around her feet. Then Gabriela set the tray down on the coffee table in front of them.

“I hope you both are in the mood for coffee and champurradas.”

“Champurradas!” Blaine said with pleasure. “What a treat!”

As Gabriela poured two cups of coffee, Riley reached for one of the crisp, buttery cookies rolled in sesame seeds. The champurradas were freshly baked—and, of course, absolutely delicious.

Just as Gabriela turned to head back to the kitchen, Blaine said, “Gabriela, won’t you join us?”

Gabriela smiled. “Por supuesto. Gracias.”

She went to the kitchen to fetch another cup, then came back, poured herself some coffee, and sat in a chair near Riley and Blaine.

Blaine started chattering away with Gabriela, half in English and half in Spanish, asking her about her champurrada recipe. As a master chef and the owner of an upscale restaurant, Blaine was always interested in hearing Gabriela’s culinary secrets. As usual, Gabriela coyly resisted saying much at first, but she finally gave him all the details about how to make the exquisite Guatemalan cookies.

Riley smiled and listened as Blaine and Gabriela went on to discuss other recipes. She enjoyed hearing them talk like this. She thought it was remarkable how at home the three of them were together.

Riley searched in her mind for the word to describe how things felt right here and now. Then it came to her.

Cozy.

Yes, that was it. Here she and Blaine were, lounging shoeless on the couch, feeling thoroughly cozy together.

Then Riley felt a bit wistful as she realized something.

One thing the situation was not was romantic.

At the moment, Blaine hardly seemed like the passionate lover she’d sometimes known him to be. Of course, those romantic moments had been few and far between. Even when they had spent two weeks in a nice beach house this summer, they’d slept in separate rooms on account of their children.

Riley wondered …

Is this how things will stay between us if we get married?

Riley stifled a sigh at the thought that they were already acting like an old married couple. Then she smiled as she considered …

Maybe there’s nothing wrong with this.

After all, she was forty-one years old. Maybe it was time to put passionate romance behind her. Maybe it was time to settle down to coziness and comfort. And at the moment, that possibility really seemed OK.

Still, she wondered …

Is marriage really in the cards for Blaine and me?

She wished they could make a decision one way or the other.

Riley’s thoughts were interrupted by her ringing cell phone.

Her heart sank a little as she saw that the call was from her longtime BAU partner, Bill Jeffreys. As fond as she was of Bill, she felt sure that this wasn’t just a friendly call.

When she took the call, Bill said, “Riley, I just got a call from Chief Meredith. He wants to see you and me and Jenn Roston in his office immediately.”

“What’s going on?” Riley asked.

“There have been a couple of murders up in Connecticut. Meredith says it looks like a serial. I don’t know any details myself just yet.”

“I’ll be right there,” Riley said, ending the call.

She saw that both Blaine and Gabriela were looking at her with concern.

Blaine asked, “Is it a new murder case?”

“It looks like it,” Riley said, putting her shoes back on. “I’ll probably head up to Connecticut right away. I might be gone for a while.”

Gabriela said, “Ten cuidado, Señora Riley.”

Blaine nodded in agreement and said, “Yes, please be careful.”

Riley kissed Blaine lightly and headed on out of the house. Her go-bag was already packed and ready in the car, so she didn’t need to make any further preparations.

She felt a surge of anticipation. She knew that she was about to step out of a world of coziness and comfort into a much-too-familiar realm of darkness and evil. A world inhabited by monsters.

The story of my life, she thought with a bitter sigh.

CHAPTER TWO

Riley felt a sharp tingle of urgency in the air when she walked into Special Agent in Charge Brent Meredith’s office in the BAU building. The daunting, broad-framed Meredith was sitting at his desk. In front of him, Bill Jeffreys and Jenn Roston stood holding their go-bags.

Looks like this is going to be a short meeting, Riley thought.

She figured that she and her two partners would probably be flying out of Quantico within minutes, and she was glad to see that they’d all be working together again. During their most recent case in Mississippi, the three of them had broken even more rules than usual, and Meredith had made no secret of his displeasure with all of them. After that, she’d been afraid that Meredith might split them up.

“I’m glad all of you could get here so quickly,” Meredith said in his gruff voice, swiveling slightly in his desk chair. “I just got a call from Rowan Sturman, Special Agent in Charge at the New Haven, Connecticut, FBI office. He wants our help. I take it all of you’ve heard about the recent death of Vincent Cranston.”

Riley nodded, and so did her colleagues. She’d read in the newspapers that Vince Cranston, a youthful heir in the multibillionaire Cranston family, had died just last week under mysterious circumstances in New Haven.

Meredith continued, “Cranston had just started his first year at Yale, and his body was found early one morning on the Friendship Woods jogging trail. He’d just been out for a morning jog, and at first his death seemed to be from natural causes—a cerebral hemorrhage, it looked like.”

Bill said, “I take it the medical examiner came to a different conclusion.”

Meredith nodded. “Yeah, the authorities have kept it quiet so far. The ME found a small wound that ran through the victim’s ear straight into his brain. He’d apparently been stabbed there with something sharp, straight, and narrow.”

Jenn squinted at Meredith with surprise.

“An ice pick?” she asked.

“That’s what it looked like,” Meredith said.

Riley asked, “What was the motive?”

“Nobody has any idea,” Meredith said. “Of course, you can’t grow up in a wealthy family like the Cranstons and not acquire more than your share of enemies. It’s part of your inheritance. It seemed like a good guess that the poor kid was the victim of a professional hit. Narrowing down a list of suspects looked like it was going to be a formidable task. But then …”

Meredith paused, drumming his fingers on his desk.

Then he said, “Just yesterday morning, another body was found. This time the victim was Robin Scoville, a young woman who worked for a literary magazine in Wilburton, Connecticut. She was found dead in her own living room—and at first, the cause of her death also looked like maybe a cerebral hemorrhage. But again, the ME’s autopsy revealed a sharp wound through the ear and into the brain.”

Riley’s mind clicked away as she processed what she was hearing.

Two ice pick victims in one little state, over the course of just one week.

It hardly sounded coincidental.

Meredith continued, “Vincent Cranston and Robin Scoville were about as different as two people can get—one a wealthy heir in his freshman year in an Ivy League school, the other a young divorcée of markedly modest means.”

Jenn asked, “So what’s the connection?”

“Why would anyone want them both dead?” Bill added.

Meredith said, “That’s just what Agent Sturman wants to know. It’s already a nasty case—and it’s liable to get a lot nastier if more people get killed this way. No connection of any kind has turned up, and it’s hard to make sense out of this killer’s behavior. Sturman feels like he and his New Haven FBI team are way out of their depth. So he called me and asked for help from the BAU. That’s why I called you three.”

Meredith stood up from his chair and growled …

“Meanwhile, you’ve got no time to lose. A company plane is ready and waiting for you on the landing strip. You’ll fly to the Tweed–New Haven Regional Airport, and Sturman will meet you there. You’ll get right to work. Needless to say, I want this solved quickly.”

Meredith paused and leveled his intimidating stare at each of the agents.

“And this time, I want you to do everything by the book,” he said. “No more shenanigans. I mean it.”

Riley and her colleagues all sheepishly muttered, “No, sir.”

Riley certainly meant it. She didn’t want to face Meredith’s anger again, and she was sure Bill and Jenn didn’t either.

Meredith escorted them out of his office, and a few moments later they were walking across the tarmac toward the waiting plane.