Todd Ritter - Death Falls

Kat didn’t know what she was going to say next. A thousand different responses popped into her head, each more risky than the last. The one on the tip of her tongue, just waiting to be set free, was “yank that mole right off your face.”

Fortunately, she never got the chance. Just as she was about to say it, her cell phone rang, cutting off her torrent of anger. Saved by the bell. Literally.

She paused, breathing hard, as the cell phone continued to ring. She backed away from Burt Hammond, finally noticing just how much he towered over her five-foot-tall frame.

“I think you should go now,” she said.

Burt nodded and said tersely, “That’s a good idea. We’ll discuss this later. Hopefully after you learn to control your emotions.”

He left Kat alone with her pounding heartbeat and her ringing cell phone. She answered it with a rattled “Hello?”

“I’m just outside of town.”

The caller was Nick Donnelly, who had never met a greeting he didn’t like to forsake. The lead state police investigator during the Grim Reaper killings, he was fired after assaulting an employee at the county hospital. Normally, Kat frowned upon such behavior, but since his actions saved her life, she cut him some slack.

“Outside of what town?” Kat asked.

“Yours. I’m meeting a client there.”

When he was booted from the Pennsylvania State Police, Nick started a nonprofit foundation devoted to cracking unsolved cases. His clients were mostly families of victims seeking answers to long-forgotten mysteries. If one of his clients was in Perry Hollow, that meant the crime most likely occurred there, too.

Only there weren’t any unsolved crimes in Perry Hollow. It was a tiny town, a speck of commerce amid the mountains and forests of southeast Pennsylvania. Before the Grim Reaper murders, the crime rate had been almost nonexistent. If there was a cold case buried among the old files that filled the station’s basement, Kat didn’t know about it.

“Who’s the client?”

Nick played coy. “I’ll tell you when I get there. Let’s meet at Big Joe’s in fifteen minutes.”

“Not until you tell me who hired you.”

“I’ll do you one better and tell you who the case is about.”

“Fine. Who?”

“Charles Olmstead.”

The name made Kat gasp. She couldn’t tell if Nick heard it or not. Knowing him, he did. But at that moment, she didn’t care. She was too busy wondering why someone was interested in the Olmstead case—and how Nick’s involvement would quickly and inevitably drag her into it.

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