Excerpt:
PROLOGUE
CRAIG FRASIER BREATHED IT IN BEFORE
HE COULD STOP himself; the bloodcurdling scent of burning flesh.
Human flesh.
Flames still
skittered over the body—an accelerant had been used. As he stood
there in the small dark alley, he heard others rushing in: Mike
Dalton, his partner, and patrol officers. He heard the sirens; the
fire department was coming.
But there was no
saving this victim.
Craig was already
tamping the fire out; an extinguisher would make the work of the
medical examiner more difficult.
But he knew what
the medical examiner would find.
The victim had been
strangled, then the tongue had been cut out. And then the eyes had
been gouged out. Death had occurred, mercifully, before the fire had
been set.
The corpses haunted
his dreams. Burned shells, some flesh and soft tissue remaining,
charred and clinging to the bones, mummy-like. The mouth in the
blackened skull was agape, and those empty, soulless eye sockets
seemed to be staring up, as if they could still see, as if they
stared at him in reproach…
Why hadn’t
they caught the killer sooner?
He heard a rustling
sound. Looking across the alley, Craig saw a shadow moving. Leaving
the corpse to others, he took off like a bullet. He pursued the
moving shadow at a run…running and running for blocks. The city was
a blur around him.
He reached
apartments on Madison, with a coffee shop and a dress store on the
first floor, just as the gate at the street entry to the residential
units above was closing. He caught the gate, and he reached the
elevator in time to see what floor it stopped on. He followed.
And again, as he
arrived, a door was just closing; he didn’t let it close.
And there he was:
the Fireman, still smelling faintly of gasoline, ready to sit down to
a lovely dinner with his family. About to say a prayer before the
meal…just a husband and a father, and a man who looked at Craig and
calmly said, “So, my work is over. But I have obeyed the
commandments given me, and I will go with you.”
Why did you take
so long? The corpse again! In Craig’s dreams, the corpse was
back, animated, flying at him like a ghostly banshee, issuing a
silent scream.
Craig opened his
eyes.
He didn’t awake
screaming or startled—he didn’t jerk up. It was almost as if he
always knew it was a dream, reliving the day the Fireman had gone
down.
He’d had the
dream several times before. But, now, it seemed as though it had been
a long time. Weeks. He’d thought he’d ceased experiencing it
altogether. He’d been doing all the right things: quietly seeing a
Bureau shrink a few times, following their advice. He hadn’t told
Kieran Finnegan, his fiancée, about his recurring nightmare, and
while she was a criminal psychologist working with two of the city’s
finest criminal psychiatrists, he’d made a point of not telling her
or her bosses.
He’d thought he’d
settled it on his own. It was a little strange and sometimes
intimidating being in love with someone who studied the human psyche,
and he hadn’t wanted Kieran worried about him or trying to analyze
him.
Why the hell had
the dream come back?
He felt Kieran
shift against him. He pulled her into his arms and she rolled,
crystal eyes opening wide when she realized that he was awake.
And aroused.
Kieran’s tangle of auburn hair was a wild mass around her face,
emphasizing her eyes and the quick smile that came to her lips.
“Ah!” she
murmured, feeling his arousal against her.
“Your fault,”
he accused.
“Well,
thankfully. What time is it?” she asked with a soft whisper.
He laughed.
“Quickie time, or time for a quickie,” he said.
Her smile deepened,
and there was something so sensual about it that it never failed to
increase whatever he had begun to feel.
In her arms, in the
liquid burn of kisses here and there strategically placed, in the
swift—and intense—blaze of arching and writhing and thrusting,
all else faded.
After, Craig headed
for the shower. He was an FBI agent in the Criminal Division of New
York City’s branch of the FBI. He could be satisfied in having
brought down several killers. But there would be more; a sad fact of
the world and humanity. He was blessed to have his job, his vocation,
and it was time to go to work.
He shoved the dream
into the back of his mind.
Whatever his day
held, he’d already seen the worst that this world could offer.
Little did he know.
THE FINAL DECEPTION
Author: Heather Graham
ISBN: 9780778309437
Publication Date: March 31, 2020
Publisher: MIRA Books
Buy Links:
Social Links:
Author Bio:
Heather
Graham is The
New York Times and
USA Today best-selling
author sold her first book, When
Next We Love, in 1982
and since then, she has written over two hundred novels and novellas
with about 60 million
books in print in
categories of romantic suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction,
time travel, occult, and Christmas holiday fare. Graham earned high
praise for her New
York Confidential
series, including a starred review from Library
Journal which called
it, “Intricate, fast-paced, and intense, this riveting thriller
blends romance and suspense in perfect combination and keeps readers
guessing and the tension taut until the very end.” For more
information, visit her at TheOriginalHeatherGraham.com.
Book Summary:
Witness
the thrilling conclusion to the beloved New York Confidential series,
in THE
FINAL DECEPTION
(MIRA Books; March 31, 2020; $26.99). Kieran and Craig are about to
take on their most chilling case yet as they hunt for a deranged
serial killer who has escaped from prison to satisfy his need to kill
again.
When
criminal psychologist Kieran Finnegan was released from her
responsibility of counseling the brutal serial killer known as The
Fireman, once he was incarcerated, she was relieved to escape the
tendrils of his twisted inner world. The chill she received from her
sessions with him has stayed with her despite trying to leave him in
the past. However, some demons refuse to remain behind bars. When her
FBI agent boyfriend Craig is called to a gruesome crime scene that
matches The Fireman’s MO, news begins to spread that he’s escaped
from prison.
And he
remembers Kieran...
Amid a
citywide manhunt, Kieran and Craig need to untangle a web of deceit,
privilege, and greed. They suspect that those closest to the killer
have been drawn into his evil, or else someone is using another man’s
madness and cruelty to disguise their crimes. When their
investigation brings the danger right to the doorstep to the once
safe haven of Finnegan’s Pub, Kieran and Craig will have to be
smarter and bolder than ever before, because this time it’s
personal, and they have everything to lose.
