Broken

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Book: Read Broken for Free Online
Authors: Janet Taylor-Perry
There was no evidence of a shooter's existence except for a dead FBI agent.
    The team related frigid air just before Swift was killed, but it dissipated within minutes.
    Raiford Reynolds and Raiford Gautier received the news about their friend's death. Both were flabbergasted. They flew to Virginia for Patrick's funeral and had a momentary reunion with other FBI personnel who had become friends over the years. Steve Journey and Lawrence Dantzler greeted the men who had traveled a good distance to pay their respects to a fellow agent. At the interment, Raif cringed as he heard the guns being fired in honor of a fallen angel. He looked at his brother and said, "I told you Chris was only the beginning."
     

    The New Orleans Police department had requested help from the FBI in a rash of violent robberies and vandalism involving female business owners who were beaten, raped, and murdered.
    Agent Steve Journey brought a team into New Orleans to work with the local field agents. He thought it strange the state of Louisiana was having such a great need for FBI teams. Reviewing the twelve cases with dead women and one two nights before in which the victim was still alive, Journey's intuition as a profiler told him these were not random gang attacks. They were too well orchestrated. The animal, or he thought animals, who raped these women wore condoms and left no evidence. Thirteen attacks haunted him and made him hark back to another case in Louisiana that had involved the number thirteen. Journey called Lawrence Dantzler.
    Dantzler agreed, "It is odd. Be careful. I just got off the phone with Swift's team in Baton Rouge. No more paintings have been stolen anywhere. Trista Gautier and Patrick's team talked about cold temperatures."
    "Damn! Just like Latrice."
    "One of his team mentioned the fact that all the other capitals had been field offices. You know, he was shot last month after the thirteenth painting. It keeps getting weirder. Did you realize it was three months to the day since Chris was shot that your thirteenth woman was attacked?"
    "Not quite. Three months to the day that she talked to me. She was actually attacked the night before. I wish I could've gone to Chris's funeral, but I was in Albany on those child abductions. I called Raif. He still seemed broken at Patrick's funeral. You know, they were really good friends. Patrick landscaped the Gautier mansion."
    "I went down. Yeah, Raif is a mess. He always said he would be lost without Chris. Oh, he goes about the motions, but he just seems robotic."
    "Well, if I get the chance, I'll pay him a visit since I'm this close. I feel a little odd here. I mean, I got called in after several others came up with nothing."
    Journey rubbed his neck after he hung up. He just could not shake his feeling that something otherworldly was at work. He had been in the old monastery when Latrice had attempted to sacrifice Larkin Sloan, Raiford Reynolds's wife now. He had profiled the case and suggested a woman was the killer. "Creepy as hell," he mumbled to himself. He remembered the frigid temperatures as the woman chanted an incantation and the sound that might have been angels flapping their wings. A shiver ran over him.
    He decided to go back to his hotel and rest a short time before he went to the hospital to speak to Miss Rivers if she was awake. He left his notes on his desk and an outline of what he planned to do.
    The day dispatcher was coming on duty at the same time. Journey greeted the woman and held the door open for her. He shivered as a gust of frosty air assailed him. He looked around trying to spot something. A bang preceded the woman turning to thank him; she saw blood spew from Journey's temple as he hit the ground, dead. The woman screamed.
    The audacity of the murderer overwhelmed authorities. To shoot an FBI agent exiting the police station staggered the mind. He had done it not once, but twice. Again, the caliber of the bullet was the same as that in both the Gautier

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