Plot Monkeys

NEWS FLASH:

FADE TO BLACK is now shipping from Barnes & Noble!! party: :party:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Fade-to-Black/Leslie-Parrish/e/9780451227485/?itm=1

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The very wonderful–and tres smart–ladies at Smart Bitches are holding a great contest today, featuring ARC’s of the first two books in my Black CATs series! It’s not a freebie, though, you have to work for this one. In Sarah’s own imitable style, she came up with a fun contest playing on my new name. Commenters have to come up with a funny pseudonym for a romance author that somehow involves religion. (Parrish? St. Claire?) And you have to describe the kinds of books this author writes.

It should be lots of fun and three winners will be chosen, each of whom will receive ARC’s of FADE TO BLACK and PITCH BLACK! Check it out here! (Good luck!)

Now, because it’s only TWO weeks until the release date of FADE TO BLACK, and because I’ve posted various excerpts here and there around the Internet I thought it might be fun to have an excerpt scavenger hunt.

If you’d like to read a large sample of this book, there’s a (relatively) easy way to do it. Just follow the breadcrumbs around cyberspace!

You’ll want to start here. This is the prologue. Yes, it’s dark and it’s grim…but then, so is the monster known as The Reaper.

After that, click back and read the excerpt at the bottom of this post–which opens right at chapter one and lets you meet Special Agent Dean Taggert.

When you’re finished, click over to my Leslie Parrish blog. It picks up at the beginning of chapter 2 so you can meet Sheriff Stacey Rhodes (who is probably my favorite heroine EVER.)

Once you’re finished that, click to read Dean and Stacey’s first meeting.

There are a few scenes in between that you’re not seeing, but this should definitely give you a good flavor for the book. And if you want a little more of the dark flavor, check out a scene in the Reaper’s point of view.

Finally, if you want to fill in some of the gaps, subscribe to Eye on Romance’s “A Week of Romance.” Next week, FADE TO BLACK will be the featured book and you’ll get almost all of chapter 3 delivered right to your email box!

I hope this will give you a big enough sample of FADE TO BLACK to convince you to give my alter ego, Leslie Parrish, a try. These books have been getting the best reviews I have ever received in my 10 year career. And honestly, I think they’re pretty damn good myself. I would absolutely love the chance to get you to agree!

Have fun on the scavenger hunt…remember, the below excerpt is # 2 on your cyberspace tour! So don’t peek (unless you’ve already read the prologue.)

Enjoy!

PS: I’m going to be giving away a $50.00 gift certificate to either Barnes & Noble or Amazon to a subscriber to my Leslie Parrish newsletter. It’s easy to sign up on my website or on my blogsite, just look for the light blue box and enter your email address!
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Finished reading the prologue? Okay…here’s the first scene of chapter one!

Seventeen Months Later

During his five years working the roughest streets of Baltimore, and his seven in the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, Special Agent Dean Taggert had seen firsthand just how vicious people could be.

He’d responded to shootings and gang hits. Had put his hands onto gushing wounds to try to save a victim waiting for an ambulance. He’d shot and had been shot at.

But this. God, he had never seen anything like this.

“It can’t be real,” he muttered. “This video is a fake. It’s got to be.”

He spoke more to himself than to I.T. Specialist Brandon Cole, who had pulled him aside and asked him to take a look at something he’d stumbled across on the Internet. Cole, who’d been with the FBI’s Cyber Division for less than a year, was a bit of a renegade, but the kid knew his stuff when it came to computers.

This time, though, he was wrong. He had to be wrong.

“It’s real,” Cole said.

He didn’t elaborate, letting Dean see for himself, waiting for him to concede that something so far beyond his darkest nightmares could really have happened.

Waiting for him to accept it.

He didn’t want to. Didn’t want to even imagine that someone could do such a thing, and then upload it to the Web for others to see, as well. When the final moment came, however, when the poor woman on the screen died without the camera pulling away for a single second, he could no longer deny it.

“Okay. It’s not a fake,” he admitted, both to himself and his co-worker.

Nobody outside of Hollywood could pull off a scene as horrifically convincing as this one. And the video they were watching had been taken by an amateur, not a cinematographer with a multi-million dollar budget for gory special effects.

The crime itself, however, was anything but amateur.

He’d thought leaving ViCAP for a new Cyber Action Team—CAT—would mean never having to work a case like this again. He’d wanted to get all that darkness and violence out of his life so he could be normal. Have fewer nightmares.

Be a better father.

Even in a new type of CAT devoted to solving Internet-related murders, he’d never imagined the hideous possibilities, picturing only money launderers who’d embezzled from the wrong guys or scumbags luring victims via online dating sites.

This? He’d never even conceived of it.

“I recognize that set-up,” he said, swallowing, hard, trying to keep his breakfast down as the video faded to black. “It’s a scene right out of that old movie Hitcher, where the girl is chained to the back of a semi and then pulled apart.”

“Yeah, I think so,” Brandon said. He tapped a few keys to return the digital video file to the beginning, as well as enlarging the image. As if anybody would want a better view of that. Pausing on a close-up of the victim’s face, he added, “I wouldn’t have shown it to you if I hadn’t been sure it was authentic and not some fake snuff film. To be certain, I did some digging on unusual unsolved murders and I found her.”

Smart. Very smart.

“You might even remember the case. It made national news after her remains were found. She was a twenty-seven year old accountant, murdered five months ago. She left her office for lunch one afternoon and was found in pieces a week later in a wooded area outside a small Pennsylvania town.”

“Yeah, I remember it. Sick.”

Brandon nodded his agreement. “The victim’s photo looked close enough to the woman in the video footage for me to contact the locals and get a copy of the autopsy report. It was like reading a script for what happened on the tape.” Shrugging in self-deprecation, which was completely out of character for the young man, he added, “Not that I’m an expert on that type of thing, of course, but it seemed pretty irrefutable.”

Cole, with his obviously bleached blond hair, his brightly colored dress shirts worn beneath his trendy suits, and a damned cocky attitude, was smart enough to be an expert on just about anything. He’d probably never try it out in the field, but the twenty-five-year-old got away with a lot here in cyber crimes because he was pure magic when it came to computers. The FBI had been lucky to get him. Cole could have made himself rich in the private sector. Or in the criminal one.

Finally, when the tension in Cole’s small office reached its breaking point, the younger man closed the video player window. At last able to look at something other than the victim’s terrified face, Dean released the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

“I figured it was time to bring somebody else in once I knew for sure.”

“Next time, how about a warning before you show me a real-life slasher flick?”

“You’re warned.”

Damn. Something about the intensity in Brandon’s voice, and the tense way his body hunched over his keyboard, told Dean there was more to this case. More than just one poor, pretty young accountant who’d met a human savage.

“Why’d you decide to show me?” Dean asked.

“With your violent crimes and Baltimore P.D. background, I figured you’d be the best bet. I didn’t want to take it to Wyatt until I knew for sure.”

Supervisory Special Agent Wyatt Blackstone was their leader, and though the new team had only come together a month ago, Dean already knew his boss was very good at what he did. Not everyone agreed with that, however. As evidenced by the fact that some called the new team the Black CATs, with both humor and a little malice.

The malice, spite, really, was all directed at Wyatt. And everybody knew why.

Exposing a case of internal corruption had taken guts and a desire for career suicide. Despite being highly respected by many, Blackstone was also hated by some. Especially those whose friends had been brought down in the scandal uncovered by Blackstone last year, a scandal that had gone all the way up to the Deputy Director’s office. Dean didn’t know everything, but he did know a couple of convictions had been overturned after Blackstone had brought up the allegations of evidence tampering against several other agents.

“So what’s the matter, Cole? You think Wyatt’s not going to believe you?”

Brandon leaned back in his rolling chair. “He won’t doubt it once he sees all the evidence. But I want backup when I fight for the case.”

“Fight for it?” He tensed, afraid he knew where Brandon was headed. The kid might be a computer genius, but he had joined the FBI because he wanted to catch bad guys. He actually sounded like he thought the Black CATs would be the ones investigating what he’d already admitted was a Pennsylvania murder case.

“You know nobody ever expected this team to really succeed, right?”

Dean simply stared. He’d had his suspicions that the new CAT had been set up for failure to punish Blackstone, but he’d never spoken about them.

“They’ll try to take this case as soon as word gets out,” Cole added.

“You’re right, which is what should happen. It’s not ours, it’s the local P.D.’s. You should give them the file and let them do the investigating. If they want the Bureau’s help finding this sick bastard, they can ask the NCAVC like everybody else.” He glanced at the screen again, noting the ferocity of the crime, doubting they were dealing with any kind of “normal” killer. “Or the BAU.”

The way things went at the Behavioral Analysis Unit, however, they might not get help. That department was over-worked, over-booked and able to assist in only a fraction of the cases local jurisdictions asked them to come in on.

Brandon’s chin jutted out in visible determination. “You’re wrong, and I’m about to prove that. And then, together, we can make sure Wyatt has absolutely no doubt that it’s legitimately ours to investigate.”

Frowning, and not sure he wanted to know, Dean narrowed his eyes. A sudden fear that he understood made him say, “She’s not the only victim.”

When the other man shook his head, Dean felt his legs weaken. He slumped onto an empty chair, figuring he’d need to sit for whatever Brandon had to tell him.

“There are more, spread across four states.”

Damn.

“And every one of them has a Web connection.”

Double damn.

Now he understood Cole’s determination to keep the case, and why he feared they wouldn’t be able to. Getting Wyatt Blackstone completely on board was the only way the Black CATs would not be steamrolled out of the investigation. The videos were aired on the Internet; some would argue that didn’t mean the Internet was actually involved. And that the NCAVC, which contained both Violent Crimes and the Behavioral Analysis Unit, was the better department to coordinate the investigation.

They might be right. Dean couldn’t deny that he wouldn’t mind if it played out that way. He hadn’t clocked in for this. Hadn’t left his secure job in ViCAP to join an experimental team, hoping for a little normalcy, some stability so he could go back into court and fight his ex-wife for more time with his seven-year-old son.

It wasn’t that Dean didn’t feel a stirring, deep inside the determined law enforcement core of him, that demanded the privilege of taking this bastard down. This transfer, however, had been about getting away from that dark shit so his ex could no longer use his position working violent crimes against him. It wouldn’t work if his new job involved hunting down a serial killer who could teach Dahmer a thing or two about causing pain.

It’s what you do. What you do best.

“How many?” he asked, needing to know.

“Eight, going back almost a year and a half. I’m pretty sure I’ve found them all.”

Eight.

Eight victims. Eight people brutally murdered, their last painful moments captured on film. Had they all, Dean wondered, been tortured before their deaths, and mutilated after them, as this victim appeared to have been?

A dull throb began to pound inside his skull and his stomach churned. He closed his eyes, a series of faces appearing in his mind: his sister, his parents, his son. Each of them replaced the face of that woman on the video until he felt almost physically ill.

And finally, he simply couldn’t stand it anymore.

“All right. Let’s go find Wyatt.”

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