The Blackest Crimson

He’s known as the Storyteller—and all his tales end in merciless death.

Detective Bobbie Gentry’s hunt for a heinous serial killer is interrupted when the sadistic Storyteller finds her first. Captured on Christmas Eve and held in a cabin deep in the woods, she must survive for the sake of her family. Bobbie cannot leave her little boy orphaned and alone—and she craves the chance to avenge her husband’s murder. But not one of the Storyteller’s fourteen victims escaped his torturous game alive, and he’s obsessed with breaking Bobbie. From tattooing the story of her torture onto her back to violating her in every imaginable way, he’s determined to make her victim number fifteen.

In the depths of winter and the shadows of a rustic prison, Bobbie must make a choice to either end the torture with surrender, or fight like hell for survival.

Debra Webb’s new Shades of Death series is guaranteed to thrill fans. Don’t miss the page-turning prequel, The Blackest Crimson!

DEBRA WEBB is the award-winning USA TODAY bestselling author of more than one hundred novels, including reader-favorite series Faces of Evil, the Colby Agency and Shades of Death. With more than four million books sold in numerous languages and countries, Debra’s love of storytelling goes back to her childhood on a farm in Alabama. Visit Debra at www.debrawebb.com.

The Blackest Crimson

Debra Webb

www.mirabooks.co.uk

There are some stories that simply beg to be written, and once in a great while the characters refuse to be left behind in just one book. When that happens a series is born. I hope you’ll follow Detective Bobbie Gentry’s journey from a broken, shattered victim to a fierce, determined survivor and beyond.

Debra Webb

This story is dedicated to my precious elder daughter, Erica, whose strength and courage continue to inspire me.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Title Page

Author Note

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Poem

Epigraph

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Ryan Ridge, Montgomery, Alabama

Friday, December 24, 6:30 p.m.

“It’s snowing!” Detective Bobbie Gentry smiled, her heart feeling glad for the first time in nearly a month. It rarely snowed for Christmas in Alabama. If they got snow at all, it usually showed up in January or February. She pressed her hand to the glass of the big bay window that overlooked their front yard. All the houses in the cul-de-sac, including theirs, were decorated with twinkling lights and garland, chasing away the darkness of the cold winter night. She needed this Christmas to be peaceful. She yearned for the normalness of family, for the roar and crackle of a fire as they gathered around the tree they had spent the day decorating.

A contented sigh slipped past her lips. The way those big flakes were falling the neighborhood would look like a classic Christmas card within the hour. Maybe tonight would make up for the endless hours of overtime and weekends away from her family she’d put in this month.

Her husband moved up behind her and circled her waist with his arms. “Man, it’s really coming down out there. The weatherman said we’re on the lower edge of the storm, but we could get several inches. Maybe more. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Very nice.” Bobbie leaned into him and covered his forearms with hers. A snowstorm bringing more than an inch or two was nearly unheard of this far south. Suited her just fine. In fact, the timing couldn’t be better. Today was her first day off this month. She’d slept late and she’d been wearing her husband’s Alabama sweatshirt and a pair of lounge pants all day. She might not bother with real clothes until after the holidays. She was so damned glad just to be home. “I really needed this.”

James nuzzled her neck. “I’m glad it’s over.”

Would it ever really be over? The killer was still out there. God only knew where.

For the last three weeks Bobbie and her partner had been working with the FBI on a serial murder case. The Storyteller. If she lived ten lifetimes she wouldn’t be able to adequately clear the horrors she had seen and heard from her mind. The images of his victims... The endless reports and profiles about the unknown subject’s—the killer’s—methodology and psychopathy. The Storyteller was the sickest bastard Bobbie had encountered during her career with law enforcement. If she were lucky, she would never encounter that level of pure evil again.

As rough as the past twenty or so days had been, she was home tonight. She could stand right here for hours and watch the beauty of nature turn the landscape white. When she was a little girl her mother used to tell her that snow was a gift from God to brighten the long, dark winters. Those words had never been truer than they were at this moment.

Bobbie turned in her husband’s arms and smiled. “Thank you for taking care of everything while—” she shook her head “—while I was so involved in the case. I was afraid Jamie wouldn’t even remember who I was.”

James pressed his forehead to hers. “No need to thank me.” His arms tightened around her waist. “And, for your information, our son thinks you’re a superhero.”

She searched his eyes, so very grateful for this wonderful man. “Really?”

James nodded. “I told him Mommy was keeping the monsters away.”

How in the world had she gotten so lucky?

“Mommy!”

Jamie slammed into Bobbie’s legs. She leaned down and scooped up her little boy. “Look at all the snow. Tomorrow we can make a snowman with Daddy.”

“Santa help, too?”

Bobbie kissed his soft cheek, deeply inhaled his baby shampoo scent. He was growing up so fast. In just four months he would be three years old. She wished time would slow down just a little. “I don’t know about Santa, sweetie. Tomorrow’s Christmas and he’ll be very busy.”

Her precious little boy had blond hair and gray eyes exactly like his father. Jamie had made her life complete. As much as she valued her career as a homicide detective, this—she smiled at her husband and then at their child—was her world. Maybe one of these days Jamie would have a little brother or sister. She and James had discussed the possibility after making love this morning. They were both ready.

Jamie pressed his forehead against her cheek. “Wudolph.”

She grinned. “Is it time for Rudolph?”

Her son nodded, those big gray eyes twinkling with anticipation.

“Start the movie.” James ushered them toward the sofa. “I’ll put the cookies for Santa in the oven.”

“Santa! Santa!” Jamie bounced in Bobbie’s arms.

“Thanks.” She gave her handsome husband a kiss on the jaw.

He smiled. “Love you.”

“Love you more.”

“Wuv you!” Jamie shouted in his sweet little-boy voice.

“Wuv you, buddy.” James backed toward the kitchen. “Save me a seat.”

“You got it,” Bobbie promised.

As she curled up on the sofa, Jamie snuggled in next to her. She picked up the remote, found the movie they had recorded on the DVR and saved just for tonight, and then hit play. As the credits rolled and the celebrated Christmas song began to play, Bobbie sang along. “Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer...”

Jamie burst into his own rendition of the tune and her heart swelled with happiness. She kissed the top of his blond head and hugged him tight.

A crash in the kitchen had her twisting around toward the entry hall that led from the front door, past the living room and dining room, and into the kitchen. Their home was a traditional, center-hall Southern colonial and she loved it. It wasn’t the popular open concept, but the entire downstairs flowed from one room to the next.

“You having trouble with those cookies, James?” she teased.

Burl Ives’s deep baritone filled the room. Jamie was mesmerized by the classic animation. But it was the silence in the kitchen that held Bobbie in an ever-tightening grip. The fine hair on the back of her neck stood on end while her pulse bumped into a faster rhythm. She eased away from Jamie and moved around the sofa. “James?”

Another clang echoed from the kitchen.

For one endless moment time seemed to stop, even as denial and a hundred explanations that didn’t include what she understood was happening whirled in her head. Her gaze settled on the stairs. Her service weapon was in the lockbox on her bedside table. Seventeen steps up and then ten yards to the end of the hall, the door was on the left.

No time to go for it.

Adrenaline fired in her blood, jolting her into action. Bobbie reached across the back of the sofa and grabbed Jamie. Ignoring his protests, she ran to the front door. As she twisted the lock, her heart slamming mercilessly against her sternum, she heard the clump-clump-clump of rushing footfalls behind her. She jerked the door open and thrust her child onto the porch.

“Run, Jamie!” she screamed, frantic determination and utter certainty of what was coming coalescing into sheer terror.

Her little boy stared up at her, scared and confused, with those precious, precious gray eyes.

“Run for help like Mommy showed you!”

Brutal fingers fisted in her hair and yanked her back. She kicked at the door, sending it slamming closed. She prayed her baby would run to the neighbor’s house for help the way she had taught him. Over and over they had practiced what he was to do if she ever told him to run because something bad happened.

Please, please, please keep him safe.

“Merry Christmas, Detective Gentry,” a deep voice announced.

A sweater-clad forearm looped around her throat and dragged her backward. Her gaze zoomed in on the bloody knife in the hand at the end of that arm.

“James!”

The sound of her husband’s name echoing around her snapped her from the strange frozen place she’d slipped into. She clawed at the arm. Twisted hard to get free.

“I should be halfway across Mississippi by now,” the voice—male—said with a snarl. “But I simply couldn’t leave without coming back for you. I’ve done nothing but fantasize about you for weeks.”

Bobbie tried to dig her heels into the floor to slow down his momentum, but he was too strong. She gasped for air as his arm tightened on her throat.

Think, Bobbie!

Relax. Let him believe he’s won. She stopped struggling. Just let him drag her limp body as if she’d lost consciousness. The hardwood floor turned to tile. He was taking her into the kitchen.

James was in the kitchen.

Please, please, please let him be okay.

The bastard yanked her upright, pulling her around to face him, and pinned her against the island with his body. The bloody blade of the knife pressed against her throat. “I’ve never had a detective before. I can’t wait to write your story, Bobbie.”

Oh dear God. This couldn’t be happening. The Storyteller never struck twice in the same place. No one knew his name...or had seen his face.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered roughly. “Even more beautiful than Alyssa or any of the others.”

Bobbie bit back the rage she wanted to hurl at him. Alyssa Powell had been his last victim. The one he’d brought from Georgia and dumped in the Montgomery Police Department’s jurisdiction.

“We’re going to have so much fun together.”

Look at him, Bobbie! Commit his features to memory. Brown hair and eyes. Soft jaw, narrow nose. Five-ten or—eleven. One-seventy or—eighty pounds. Late thirties. No noticeable facial scars or moles.

“We should go,” the bastard said. “That kid of yours has probably alerted the neighbors, who will no doubt call the police. They’ll surround your lovely home and make our escape problematic. Can’t have that.”

This was it. He was taking her.

Wait...where was James? Her heart threatened to burst. Please, please don’t let him be dead.

“Be a good girl now.”

The blade moved a fraction of an inch from her throat and she snapped into action, ramming her knee upward. He pivoted. She nailed his hip instead of his groin. Damn it! She clawed at his eyes. The blade slid across her forearm, slicing through the sweatshirt and her skin. She screamed and punched him in the face with all her might.

He grabbed a handful of her hair before she could twist away and slammed her head against the island’s unforgiving granite countertop. Pain split her skull. Her muscles went lax. The warmth of urine spread down her thighs.

She was falling...falling. Her body crumpled to the tile. She blinked, her vision narrowing.

Suddenly she was moving again. He was dragging her by her arm...moving toward the side exit to the garage.

Leaving.

James...where was James?

Her lids drooped lower, almost closing, but not before she saw her husband on the floor...his beautiful gray eyes wide open, frozen in fear...his mouth slack.

The tile around him was no longer white. It was the blackest crimson.

Chapter Two

Saturday, December 25

Pain.

Bobbie’s eyelids tried to flutter open, but she couldn’t bear the pain of opening her eyes.

Where was she?

Think! It was snowing. Her lips tried to smile. A hot sting tore at her mouth. Her tongue darted out. Busted lip.

What was wrong with her?

Was it Christmas yet?

Jamie.

A frown furrowed her brow, making her head throb and sparking little pinpoints of light behind her lids. What was wrong with her head?

Had James put out the presents from Santa yet?

Jagged images of white tile and black, flowing crimson flashed in her head. Unblinking gray eyes staring at her.

Desolate screams echoed in her ears, burned her throat.

Bobbie snapped her eyes open and listened. She was the one screaming.

James was dead.

Sobs thickened in her throat. Her husband was dead. The bastard had killed him. She tried to move. Couldn’t. Where the hell was she?

The memory of her body sliding on the cold tile floor, her head hanging like the last pearl on a broken strand, and her arm feeling as if it was being pulled from its socket bobbed to the surface of her confusion.

The Storyteller.

Bobbie yanked at her restraints. More of those screams that welled up from deep, deep inside her reverberated in the air. This couldn’t be happening. Nooooo! Agonizing sobs shuddered through her for long minutes. When she could cry no more, she struggled to pull herself together.

Think! She licked her dry and damaged lips.

What about her baby? A wail rose up from the farthest recesses of her heart. Was her baby okay? Hot tears slid down her face. She had sent him to the neighbor’s house for help. That kid of yours has probably alerted the neighbors, who will no doubt call the police.

Focus, Bobbie. She had to get out of here. Her baby needed her.

Carefully, she moved each limb, tugging and pulling in all directions. She was tied to a flat surface that was not completely rigid. She rocked her body as best she could. The squeak of metal against metal accompanied her movements and the cold, crisscross pattern of it dug into her skin. A minute was required for her sluggish brain to analyze and determine that her restraints confined her to a narrow, probably portable bed, like a cot.

Look around the room and get your bearings. Dim lights. Wait. No. There was no light fixture on the ceiling. There was no ceiling, really, just wood beams and boards. Log walls, too. Rustic. Cobwebs hung here and there as if no one had lived here for a very long time. There was one window. Small. Feeble light filtered through the grimy panes. A hunting cabin, she decided. Deep in the woods probably. Met the criteria of the Storyteller’s MO. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought of all the briefings she had attended, all the crime scene reports, the medical examiner files.

Not one of the Storyteller’s fourteen known victims had survived.

She was going to die.

Her body started to shake. Who would take care of her baby? James was dead. Another sob quaked through her trembling body. Her parents were gone. She had no siblings. James was an only child as well. He’d been adopted at five by an older couple who were retired and spent the better part of the year in a senior community in Arizona.

Jamie needed her. There was no one else.

She could not die.

Renewed determination expanded inside her. She knew this bastard’s MO frontward and backward. He would spend the next three to four weeks torturing her. Images of the other women—battered, raped and mutilated—flashed before her eyes. She squeezed them shut. No looking back. Near the end of his ritual, he would begin what he referred to as his victim’s story. He tattooed their responses to his torture and their pleas for mercy on their backs before strangling them to death.

The nylon rope around her neck abruptly filtered into Bobbie’s consciousness. Like the others, she would wear it like a too-tight, braided necklace until he was ready to finish her off. And then, in order to preserve his prized masterpiece for all to see, he would dump her body in a public place where she would be found quickly.

Except Bobbie wasn’t going to die. She would not allow him to win. Fury simmered low in her belly. She closed her eyes and shut out all stimuli. Ignore the pain and the fear, Bobbie. Just listen.

Something—a branch, maybe—rubbed at the cabin. Definitely in the woods, she decided. The wind whistled softly, building to a weak howl now and again. The cabin wasn’t insulated, allowing the wind to whip through any cracks. Quiet splats told her snow was still falling. The meteorologist had warned they might get several inches. James had mentioned they were on the edge of the storm. If what she heard was snow falling, that could mean she was not far from home.

Was the rope binding her wrists and ankles the same as the yellow nylon currently fitted around her neck—the same rope he’d used on the other victims? According to the ME reports the abrasion patterns were similar. All she had to do was get one hand loose and she could free herself. While she worked at the ropes, she concentrated on the scents around her. The place smelled old and a little like piss. A deserted property helped give the psychopath the privacy he needed.

I’ve never had a detective before.

“Biggest mistake of your life, you piece of shit.” She would make him pay for what he had done.

All she had to do was get these damned ropes loose. Her head throbbed. It felt swollen, as if it was filled with cotton balls. She probably had a concussion from when he’d banged her head against the counter. The pain seemed to radiate from the right side of her skull. Her arm ached. The memory of the slice of the knife blade through her flesh made her flinch. A piece of cloth was tied tight around her forearm in a makeshift bandage. She couldn’t tell if he’d stitched the wound as he usually did those of his victims. The dark curl of fear began again deep in her chest.

You will not be like the others, Bobbie.

Focus on the details. How long had she been here? If it was still snowing, it couldn’t be more than a few hours to a day. Was it Christmas? Light filtered past the grimy window. Had to be mid-morning or later. How had she slept so many hours?

Drugs. The Storyteller drugged his victims, presumably to control them when he was away. It was doubtful he would do so when he was with the victim. He wouldn’t want to numb her to his torture.

Victim. She was the victim now. No way to deny that cold hard fact. Agony welled inside her. She did not want to die. Her baby needed her.

Stay in control, Bobbie. Think like a cop, not like a victim.

She inhaled deeply. No scent of a fire, not even the ashes of an extinguished one. Judging by how cold it was, she doubted he’d built a fire. He wouldn’t want to draw attention with the smoke. She shivered as if her body had only just recognized the lack of heat in the primitive shelter.

There was no way to gauge how long he would be gone. Ignoring the pain, she worked her hands harder, straining against the nylon in hopes of stretching it. She listened intently for any new sound. The gentle rustle of the tree limbs, the whisper of the wind and the occasional soft slaps of snow were the only sounds. The gentle pats of snow were fewer and farther between now. Maybe the snow had stopped and the noise was nothing more than the accumulated drifts falling from the tree limbs when the wind blew.

If she was in the woods, was there a road? Had to be. The snow would have covered his tracks even if the search for her had expanded far enough. Pinpointing her location would be difficult. No wonder he hadn’t been caught.

The Storyteller was an unknown subject, or unsub—at least that was what the FBI called him. They had no name or physical description. The profile they had built based on his victimology suggested he was mid to late thirties, white, ritualistic and a true psychopath. He’d likely been abused by a family member as a child. He was methodical and meticulous in his work. The profile concluded that he held a quiet, unassuming job that drew little or no attention to him. He had friends, but kept his social life low-key. One theory was that he stalked his victims via the internet or other media. All his victims had public Facebook pages except her. Wait, there was the department’s page. She and her partner had been spotlighted on the Montgomery PD page a few times.

Newt would be looking for her. Her heart swelled into her throat. Howard Newton had been her partner since she made detective. He and her uncle Teddy, the chief of police, would be doing everything possible to find her.

“You gotta help them out, Bobbie.” She jerked at the ropes restraining her hands. Her right abruptly pulled free. Her heart thundered into a faster rhythm. She reached across her torso and worked on the left. Her fingers fumbled. They were stiff and numb from the cold. She gritted her teeth and forced her fingers to cooperate.

At last her left hand slid free. Bobbie sat up. The room spun. “Shit.” She closed her eyes until the spinning stopped.

When she’d regained her equilibrium, she slowly bent forward and worked to free her ankles. There was a chair and a table in the center of the room, along with what looked like a kerosene lamp. She spotted a kerosene heater as well. So that was how he kept himself warm when he was here. Kerosene heaters didn’t smoke so there were no worries about drawing attention. Kerosene could be bought at most gas stations, allowing for untraceable purchases.

The ropes fell away from her ankles. Her hands and feet were a little swollen. Didn’t matter. She had to get out of here. She swung her bare feet onto the cold wood floor. There were cracks between the floorboards. Icy air floated up around her legs. Had she been wearing shoes? No. She hadn’t. Damn it.

Taking it slow, she stood. A little spinning accompanied the move, but she rode it out. It wasn’t until she got up that she realized her lounge pants were damp where she had relieved herself. The cold, wet fabric made her shiver. When she could move without falling, she staggered to the window. Beyond the dirty panes of glass a blanket of white covered the earth. Bare trees sprouted up from that vast winter wonderland, making it impossible to see anything beyond the small clearing around the cabin. Definitely deep in the woods. No sign of tracks or a vehicle.