Blood Ties

New York Times bestselling author Kay Hooper takes us to the outer reaches of fear in her latest thriller as the Special Crimes Unit finds itself targeted by a monster intent on destroying both Noah Bishop and his people. The elite Special Crimes Unit, the FBI's most controversial and effective team, is a group of mavericks and misfits trained to use their unique psychic abilities to hunt the worst monsters imaginable-human ones. Led by the enigmatic Noah Bishop, the SCU has earned a reputation for pitting their skills and cunning against killers that other cops fear. But this time Bishop and his agents face an enemy who has them in his sights, a trained sniper with a deadly plan-and more than one ace up his sleeve. It starts with an unspeakable series of grisly murders across three states, a trail of blood leading, finally, to the small Tennessee town of Serenade. There, two more brutal killings lure the SCU into what may be the ultimate trap. One of the first investigators on the scene, Special Agent Hollis Templeton, is willing to push herself as hard and as far as necessary. Risking more than her life to help and protect her SCU colleagues, Hollis must cope with her own psychic abilities, which are evolving in unprecedented ways, an attraction to the most complex man she's ever known, and a serial murder investigation that turns very, very personal. In her time with the SCU, Hollis has shown an uncanny ability to survive even the deadliest attacks. But what she can't know is that this killer intends to destroy the team from within. The clock is ticking. The body count is rising. And as Bishop and his agents race to uncover the true identity of their enemy, not even their special senses can warn them just how bloody, and how terrifyingly close, the truth will be.

 
Kay Hooper is the award-winning author of Blood Dreams, Blood Sins, Sleeping with Fear, Hunting Fear, Chill of Fear, Touching Evil, Whisper of Evil, Sense of Evil, Once a Thief, Always a Thief, the Shadows trilogy, and other novels. She lives in North Carolina, where she is at work on her next book.

Chapter One


Present day April 8 Tennessee  

Case Edgerton ran along the narrow trail, aware of his burning legs but concentrating on his breathing. The last mile was always the hardest, especially on his weekly trail run. Easier to just zone out and run when he was on the track or in his neighborhoodpark; this kind of running, with its uneven terrain and various hazards, required real concentration.  

That was why he liked it.  

He jumped over a rotted fallen log and almost immediately had to duck a low-hanging branch. After that, it was all downhill--which wasn't as easy as it sounded, since the trail snaked back and forth in hairpin curves all along the middle quarter of thislast mile. Good training for his upcoming race. He planned to win that one, as he had won so many his entire senior year. 

  And then Kayla Vassey, who had a thing for runners and who was remarkably flexible, would happily reward him. Maybe for the whole summer. But there'd be no clinging to him afterward; she'd be too busy sizing up next year's crop of runners to do more thanwave goodbye when he left in the fall for college.

   Sex without strings. The kind he preferred.  

Case nearly tripped over a root exposed by recent spring rains and swore at his wandering thoughts.  

Concentrate, idiot. Do you want to lose that race?  

He really didn't.  

His legs were on fire now and his lungs felt raw, but he kept pushing himself, as he always did, even picking up a little speed as he rounded the last of the wicked hairpin curves. 

  This time, when he tripped, he went sprawling.  

He tried to land on his shoulder and roll, to do as little damage as possible, but the trail was so uneven that instead of rolling he slammed into the hard ground with a grunt, the wind knocked out of him, and a jolt of pain told him he'd probably jammedor torn something.  

It took him a few minutes of panting and holding his shoulder gingerly before he felt able to sit up. And it was only then that he saw what had tripped him.  

An arm.  

Incredulous, he stared at a hand that appeared to belong to a man, a hand that was surprisingly clean and unmarked, long fingers seemingly relaxed. His gaze tracked across a forearm that was likewise uninjured, and then--  
And then Case Edgerton began to scream like a little girl.   

  "You can see why I called you in." Sheriff Desmond Duncan's voice was not--quite--defensive. "We're on the outskirts of Serenade, but it still falls into my jurisdiction. And I'm not ashamed to admit it's beyond anything the Pageant County Sheriff's Departmenthas ever handled." He paused, then repeated, "Ever."  

"I'm not surprised," she replied somewhat absently.  

His training and experience told Des Duncan to shut up and let her concentrate on the scene, but his curiosity was stronger. He hadn't known what to expect when he contacted the FBI, never having done so before, so maybe any agent would have surprisedhim. This one definitely did.  

She was drop-dead gorgeous, for one thing, with a centerfold body and the face of an exotic angel. And she possessed the most vivid blue eyes Duncan had seen in his life. With all that, she appeared remarkably casual and unaware of the effect she was havingon just about every man within eyesight of her. She was in faded jeans and a loose pullover sweater, and her boots were both serviceable and worn. Her long gleaming black hair was pulled back into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck. No makeup, at leastas far as he could tell.  

She had done everything short of taking a mud bath to downplay her looks, and Des still had to fight a tendency to stutter a bit when speak

---

Excerpted from Blood Ties by Kay Hooper
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.