Valentine’s Day was a good day to die.
He’d been hunting for days. When he’d made his plan to play a game with the savvy sheriff of Misty Hollow, he’d thought he would find his first victim quickly. Misty Hollow had only about 28,000 people. It wasn’t a metropolis. But that hadn’t been the case. Now, he watched a lovely woman he’d spotted at the diner get out of her car and kick the tire he’d flattened after hearing her called Ashley.
Not that he had anything against the woman. He’d targeted her because her name started with an A. Why choose her? It didn’t matter who, as long as her name began the game that he wanted to play with the sheriff. A woman who seemed to always be in the newspapers and was hailed as a hero. Let’s see how she fared against him.
He grinned as he strode toward Ashley. He’d enjoy being the villain in this chapter of Sheriff Callahan’s story.
“Need some help, ma’am?” He kept his smile in place, pleased with the flicker of fear in her eyes.
She pulled her coat tighter around her against the winter breeze. “I think I ran over something sharp and got a flat.”
“I can change it for you.” He took a step toward her trunk. “Go ahead and open the trunk. It won’t take me but five minutes, and we’ll both be out of this cold.”
“If you’re sure. I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“I don’t mind at all. My mama would skin me alive if I didn’t offer a hand. She taught me to be a gentleman.” He took a step back as the trunk popped open. Inside were reusable grocery bags and a trunk organizer, preventing him from getting to the wheel well where the spare tire was kept.
“Let me move those for you.” Ashley stepped in front of him.
He pulled a syringe from his pocket and plunged it into the side of her neck. She immediately went limp. He caught her before she hit the frozen ground and dragged her to the passenger seat of his car.
An hour later, he returned to the scene of the crime with Ashley’s body.
It took some work to get her dead weight back into the seat. Once he accomplished the task, he opened her eyes so that she faced forward. Then, he moved to draw a large A in the dust on the hood of her car.
Let the games begin.
- Publisher : Winged Publications
- Publication date : February 17, 2026
- Language : English
- Print length : 276 pages
- ISBN-10 : 196879266X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1968792664