1 Chapter 1

Click, click, click—the echoing sound haunted the dark city streets like a spine-tingling nightmare. Each lonely, isolated step continued to crunch along the asphalt until at last a frightened, solitary woman in stiletto heels emerged from a leaning shaft of cold darkness. She rushed swiftly along, darting between parked cars, and then across a rain-washed street. In her haste she stumbled over a crumbling curb that viciously ripped at her hose. With a muffled curse she quickly gained her balance and continued running and staggering, the eerie silence of the late hour causing her to turn and cast an anxious eye behind her. Sheer, black terror gripped her when the massive shadows took the heart-stopping shape of a man’s profile. She could hear the far-off ghostly sound of his shoes as they scraped along the hard surface.

She turned, hurrying away.

Her heart thrashed in her chest.

The shadow man stayed with her, moving when she moved, stopping when she stopped. She shivered when she felt the fog’s misty kiss upon her cheeks, an icy chill on the nape of her neck, and pulled her trench coat closer around her. One by one the lights of the restaurants blinked out, and the smell of burned coffee grounds mixed with rotting garbage, made her stomach heave.

She stopped.

She couldn’t go any further.

Her breathing was heavy and labored as she leaned her head against a cool, wet lamppost. Finally opening her eyes, she found herself looking down into a shallow pool of blood, but quickly realized it was the reflection of the red, garish neon lights on rushing rainwater. Her head jerked upward when the halogen light above her sputtered to a whisper, leaving her standing in total darkness. Dread slowly climbed up her spine like a coiling snake as she looked around for somewhere to run. Finally, she hurried across the vacant street into the lighted park, hoping to find someone to help her. The moment she got past the wide arched opening she stopped, looked around, and even though it looked as if she was alone—she felt a presence close by.

He was behind her.

She could hear him breathing.

She could hear the rustling of his clothes.

She could hear the crunch of dirt beneath his shoes as he moved closer—and closer.

Finally forcing herself out of her frozen state, she turned and saw her stalker. Her eyes widened in surprise at what looked like a hideous mask that loomed dark and ugly before her. As she turned to run, her scream came swelling into the night, but turned to a gurgle when she was immediately grabbed from behind. She felt a hand on her mouth, muffling the gurgling sounds of torment and fear.

The man wrestled her into a dark corner behind a large trash bin and threw her to the ground. Fear surged through her as the cold glitter of a large steel blade danced threateningly before her eyes. Beyond it she could see the madness gleaming in his eyes, and the next thing she knew the cold blade sliced across her throat. She had just enough life inside her to reach up and clutch one side of his mask and tear it away—before everything went dark. 1

Later that evening

The sound pierced the air like a tiny echo in the distance, growing louder and louder until you could see the whirling red and blue lights of cop cars as they stabbed the dark skies with rainbow-like colors. When the vehicles finally came to a screeching halt, the thudding sound of opening and closing of doors filled the night, and uniformed officers spilled out of the vehicles, their guns drawn, and their resolve geared up to jump anything that moved.

Now, as tall, dark, and deadly, I’ve-seen-it-all Eddie Scarlett made his way through the uniforms, he slipped his gloves out, and prepared himself for the job he had to do. Eddie’s main job with the precinct was that of a Back-Alley Cop—a code name for going undercover. They had code names for almost everything these days, but a serial killer was still a serial killer, and that’s what they had on their hands now—a dirty freakin’ serial killer.

As his gaze moved along the ground at the bloody and mutilated woman’s body, Eddie was unmoved. In his earlier years he would have been crying—literally. He would have his hands covering his face, his tears creeping through his fingers as he looked down at the horrible sight. But not now. Through the years his heart had turned to stone. In fact, Eddie Scarlett had been an undercover cop at NYPD so long, and had seen so much, he felt dead inside.

In his dark trench coat, he blended with the night, slithering in and out of close quarters like the most venomous of snakes. He carried a Glock close to his heart, and walked strong, not nervous like some did by always looking over their shoulders for something suspicious. This giant was dangerous to all the street punks, dealers, and gangs in the area. Even when he was off duty his radar was up, and along with the uniformed patrol, he did his best to keep the streets safe, but every now and again a killing of this magnitude would happen, and they would call him in to do a down and dirty examination of the crime scene by collecting any kind of physical evidence he could find. He spent his time digging out the residue from beneath the victim’s fingernails, taking a mold of the killer’s handprints as well as estimating his height and weight by the imprints of body parts he might have left in the mud. If he was very lucky he would find strands of the killer’s hair in the victim’s hand, giving them color, length, and DNA, but in this case he found her hand wrapped tightly around a torn mask. All this added together would give them a starting point in identifying the suspect.