Read When Darkness Hungers: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 5) for Free Online Page B

victim saw could help. “Maybe we could go—”
    She stopped talking, her eyes riveted on the morgue photo in front of her.
    “Agent Martin?”
    She could hear the concern in Lanahan’s voice. She didn’t care. She couldn’t look away from the page.
    Because despite the bright fuchsia hair and emaciated cheeks, Alexis knew that face.
Tori
.
    Her stomach cramped, and she had to force her hands not to shake. Her sister had been murdered. Violently. Brutally. And by the very killer that Alexis was looking for.
    Time slowed to a crawl, and it seemed to take foreverfor her to lift her head to meet the detective’s eyes. “I’m going to catch him,” she said slowly and carefully, in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. “I’m going to catch all of them. And I’m not going to stop until they’re all behind bars.”
    She wouldn’t stop until she’d avenged her sister.
    At the time, though, she hadn’t understood what that meant or just how deep into the world of nightmares she’d have to sink in order to make good her promise.

    Images of Tori’s ripped neck and emaciated body had tormented Alexis for days. She worked the case constantly. She didn’t sleep, barely ate, and the other members of the task force started to tiptoe around her, afraid of setting off a burst of temper coupled by a steel-bladed tongue. After she’d yelled at one of the interns for not pulling a fingerprint record fast enough, Gutierrez called her into his office and told her to sit her ass down.
    “I’d rather stand.”
    “Consider it an order, Agent.”
    She sat, but on the edge of her seat. There was no relaxing for Alexis anymore. Nothing but the hard push to get it done, and the damnable frustration that came with knowing she was failing at that one simple task. Failing the task force. And most of all, failing Tori.
    “There are other victims in this case, Agent. Other leads to follow that might track back to your sister’s killer. But you’re too close, Alexis. You need to back off. Focus on another file, another victim. Either that or resign from the task force altogether. Or take a leave of absence,” he amended, apparently seeing the glint of steel in her eyes.“You’re burning yourself out, and that’s not doing anyone any good, least of all Tori.”
    “She’s my sister,” she said, pouring herself into the words. “I can’t just walk away.”
    “I’m not asking you to. I’m just saying that it’s time to come at this from a different angle. She’s one of ours now, the FBI’s. The task force. They’re all good agents, Alex. Solid. You know that. Back off a little. Clear your head. And then you can come back to it fresh.”
    “Sir, I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think—”
    “Or you could consider a transfer.” For a moment the words hung in the air. “You could go to Los Angeles.”
    At his words, her entire body went stiff.
    “The task force is up and running there, too.”
    “I don’t want to go back to LA.” She’d grown up there, but it had never been home. Not after Tori had left, anyway. Now it was just a place on a map. Her childhood friends had all moved away, and even Brianna lived in New York now, having gotten the part in the soap. And while Alexis liked Edgar Garvey, the LAPD’s liaison with the task force, whom she’d met when he’d done a week of training with the FBI, he was undeniably odd with his strange beliefs and wild conspiracy theories.
    Most of all, though, she couldn’t move that far away from Tori.
    “If LA’s out of the question, then there’s always Dallas or Chicago.”
    Dear God, they were determined to get her out of there. Had she really screwed it up that bad?
    Of course she had. Hell, she knew she had. The question now was how to fix it.
    Play it smart, Alex. Screw up, and you’re screwing Tori
.
    She tilted her head down, focusing on her hands, fingers twisted together in her lap. “You’re right about my lack of focus. I owe you—I