1. Jace Holloway

Chapter 1

Jace Holloway

Rain splattered across my office window. It obstructed the glorious view of the brick building that loomed next door. I glanced at my watch. The day had started off on a shitty foot and didn’t appear to be getting any better. The train was delayed by thirty minutes, my inbox had been hit with a series of late bill notifications, and the guy I had hooked up with last night almost certainly tried to rob me blind before leaving my apartment this morning. Another reason why men fucking sucked. Besides the fact that one broke my heart and left me at my lowest.

They were also ready to steal from you even after giving them a mind-blowing orgasm.

Fucking hell.

I was grateful for this job, at least.

It was my first week at the Stonewall Investigations agency. I’d only just passed the state exam last month and thought it would take a bit to find a position somewhere, but I had reached out to an old friend of mine and was told about a new opening. I dropped my name in and was called in for an interview with the owner, Zane Holden, a couple of days later.

It was a break I needed. Desperately. I’d been working odd jobs for the last few years, ever since I quit being an officer. Life had tried its damnedest to break me—and it almost had—but finally there appeared to be a light at the end of the tunnel.

I’d been expecting to work simple jobs at first. Tracking down cheaters, investigating suspicious neighbors, hunting missing packages, that kind of shit.

Instead, I’d been called the same morning I first started with a case involving a gruesome murder. Stonewall Investigations had a strong reputation throughout the city. They specialized in crimes primarily perpetrated against the LGBTQ community, and so when a gay escort was found murdered in his own home, they were the first to be called, and I was the first to answer.

The photos from the crime scene currently filled my laptop screen. A man in nothing but a pink thong lay face down and ass up on a blood-soaked bed. His hands were tied behind his back like a pig about to be roasted. His neck had been slit open, which explained the blood. The lack of signs that he struggled made it seem like the man was unaware of the vicious end he was about to meet.

But the most unsettling aspect of it all wasn’t the blood or posing of the victim. It was the meticulously placed jet-black feathers in both of the man’s shoulders. Like dark wings sprouting out from the lifeless corpse. It must have been done after death since each feather had been individually implanted into the skin in neat rows that fanned outward. There wasn’t a drop of blood on any of them, either. The killer had taken great care to make sure the feathers stayed clean.

I’ve seen death before, but never like this, never arranged as if it were art. How many more nights could I face this darkness before it swallowed me whole?

A clap of thunder rolled through the building. I clicked through, opening the victim’s Facebook profile. It was relatively bare. The man was in his late twenties and didn’t appear to have a large social network. He listed his schooling as “the school for hard knocks” and his employment as a waiter at a pizza place in the Bronx. I had already gone to ask around about him, but apparently, the victim, Franky Montes, hadn’t worked there for over a year. The one person who had known him mentioned getting really bad vibes from the guy, which didn’t tell me much, but I noted it down anyway. When asked to elaborate, the employee simply said Franky had haunted eyes and never laughed.

Not much to go off.

I stretched, kicking my feet out under the desk. The office was still pretty barren and would likely stay that way. I wasn’t one for decorating. For making spaces mine. I was too used to having to give places up to waste much time turning any of them into my own.

My cell phone rang, vibrating against the wooden desk. I recognized the number as one of the officers who’d initially called me about the case.

“This is Jace.”

“Hey, Jace. We have another crime scene.”

I wondered if this officer realized how brand-new I was to this position. There could likely be a dozen other more seasoned investigators who could handle this case. “Same as the last one. It’s in an apartment near Dumbo. How soon can you get here?”

I stood up, grabbing my wallet and keys. “Send me the exact address. I’ll be there in fifteen, twenty tops.”

I would never get over the coppery, stomach-churning scent of dried blood. Especially not when it was nearly a gallon of it covering the otherwise clean white bedsheets, dripping down onto the beige carpet like scarlet rivers snaking through the fabric. The victim, named Ricky Walters, was positioned same as the last: head down, ass up. He also wore a thong, although it was light blue instead of pink.

And then there were the feathers. They sprouted out from his back as if he were seconds away from taking flight. I guessed that, in a way, he had.

“Twisted shit, huh?” Officer Caleb said. He stood near the door to the small bedroom. Again, there hadn’t been any sign of forced entry or struggle. Whoever had done this was invited in and took the victim by surprise.

I nodded as I snapped photos of the bloody bedroom.

“Neighbors didn’t hear anything?” I asked. I walked to the bedside table, where an uncapped bottle of lube sat next to a framed photo of the victim and his smiling parents.

“Nothing. But two bodies like this? I mean—you realize what we’re dealing with here, right?”

I nodded. “A twisted fuck.”

“A serial killer. ”

The room chilled, as if it could somehow become any more devoid of life.

A serial killer.

And it was only my first week on the job.

Fuck.

I couldn’t let my insecurity about taking this case show through. Insecurity—lack of self-confidence. It was a disease that had infected me since I was a child. I lacked any kind of belief in myself. Sometimes there were days when I’d feel flashes of it, when I’d feel competent enough to handle a job at a sandwich shop, and then there were other days when I felt like I was drowning just to send a simple email. Maybe it was the way my mother raised me, spoke to me, chastised me. Or maybe it was simply in my DNA? I tried to fake it, which was likely what had landed me this job in the first place, but that didn’t mean I felt like I’d made it yet.

So what was the only option I had? To continue faking it. It wasn’t like I was going to give this job up. I needed the money, number one. And number two? I really wanted to help people.

…Maybe that should have been number one. But after almost finding myself out on the streets, money took a huge priority in my life. I didn’t want an excess of it. Just enough to get by. To maybe buy some things I liked on the side. Nothing crazy.

Either way, I had started this job, and now, I was determined to finish it.

That drive to complete things often worked against me throughout his life. I had the tendency to become obsessed with seeing things through. Especially with my time on the police force. I’d latch on to situations like a salivating dog with a bone. If a criminal took off running, I would follow in pursuit for miles on end. As if I needed to prove to myself that I could, in fact, catch them. If I realized someone was withholding information, then I would interrogate the suspect until exhaustion had them collapsing on the table. It bled into my personal life as well. Any kind of projects I took on always had to be completed, even if it meant losing nights of sleep or forgoing lunch and dinner.

This case would be no different.

“The FBI is likely going to have to get involved,” Officer Caleb said. “And if this shit leaks out to the media, it’ll be a circus.”

I bristled at the mention of the FBI. I’d worked with them in the past. Dick-measuring contests mixed with bureaucratic tape never made for a happy ending.

“Let’s keep this tight for as long as we can,” I said.

“I’ll try, but you know that’s going to be difficult.”

“I know.” I crouched down, getting eye level with the victim. “Forensics already got everything they needed?”

“They did. Wrapped up just before you got here.”

The victim’s empty brown gaze was fixed to the wall, blood leaking into the whites of his eyes. I looked under the bed and spotted nothing but dust and discarded sneakers. There was a backpack sitting on a cluttered desk against a window overlooking a dingy alleyway. There was a warehouse next door, with no clear vantage point into the victim’s bedroom. I walked to the closet and opened the creaky door .

A camera sat poised on a shelf, peeking out from between two shirts. “Did you see this?”

Officer Caleb came over and gave a curious “hmm,” answering my question.

“It looks like it’s pointed directly at the bed.” I picked it up and turned it on. The camera was wiped clean except for one photo. The timestamp had it taken yesterday, which must have been when the victim was still alive. It was a photo of a note, neatly written in a feathery kind of font. The note had been placed on the same messy desk against the window. On it was written:

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Marielle

I wasn’t a big poetry guy. Hell, I wasn’t a big education guy at all. I’d bombed my way through school, barely scratching by to get my high school diploma. I enjoyed science, but that was about it. English and history were at the bottom of my list of interests. Caleb didn’t appear to be an expert in poems, either, judging by the stumped look on his face. No matter. All it took was a quick Google search to pull up the reference.

“It’s from ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allen Poe,” I said, leaning against the wall as I read over the poem and was launched back to my high school literature class. I glanced up at the black feathers and realized what kind of bird they were from without needing any results from forensics.

“Think it’s a coincidence that he was a Poe fan and died with feathers in his back? ”

I pursed my lips, arched a brow, scoffed. “No. I don’t. There’s also a change in the poem. The name Lenore is switched to Marielle.”

I air-dropped a copy of the photo to myself before placing the camera back where I’d found it. I searched through the rest of the room but didn’t find anything else of note. It felt like I was an actor in some kind of play. But this was the dress rehearsal. I didn’t know my lines yet, hadn’t memorized the blocking. Could Caleb tell just how far out of my league this was? I straightened my back and tried to give off an air of expertise.

The sun began to set. A floor lamp turned on automatically, casting the room in a washed-out orange glow. I saw movement from the corner of my eye and, for a flicker of a second, thought it might have been a wing fluttering by itself. The sputter of the A/C vent directly above the bed eased my worry that the dead body was about to take flight.

“I think we’ve found what we can here,” I said, removing the gloves and shoe coverings as I stood by the door to the bedroom. “I’m going to do some digging on his past and see if we’ve got any connections to the previous murder, besides the obvious.”

“I’ll hit you up once I get all the forensics in.”

“Thank you.” I reached for Caleb’s hand and shook it. The man had warm, friendly features. Something almost all police officers lost after years working the streets. Caleb must have been relatively new. “Hey, uh, if you’re down, maybe we can grab a drink? Discuss the case some more?”

I cocked my head. Interesting. I didn’t normally find myself getting picked up while standing only a few feet away from a blood-soaked crime scene, but I guessed there was a first time for everything.

“I can’t tonight. If anything does come up about the case, then feel free to call me.”

Maybe it was a little colder than I would have liked, but I didn’t enjoy playing games with people. Especially not when it came to sex and relationships. I kept it simple. Get in, get off, leave. Done and done. It was what kept me from getting hurt in the past, and I wanted to continue with that philosophy for the foreseeable future.

“Right, gotcha. Will do.”

I gave the officer a handshake and went on my way. The night wasn’t over yet, and there was a killer to hunt.