A Thousand Vermilion Stars by Patricia Logan

 

Prologue

 

 

“Leo…Leo.” He blinked awake, then slowly rolled his head on the headrest to find Max staring into his eyes. As always, his lover was the most beautiful man, even when the expression on his handsome face was serious and his pale green eyes were clouded with worry. He’d been looking at him that way for several weeks.

“Where are we?” Leo sat forward, reaching up to wipe drool from his cheek. He’d fallen asleep against the plane’s window as it flew through the night.

“Somewhere over Central Texas. We still have two and a half hours before we land in Miami. Good nap?”

Leo dragged his gaze away from him and turned to the window. With the lights low in the cabin, he couldn’t even make out shapes in the night sky. He looked back at Max and sighed, bending forward so he could take his water out of the seat back. “I guess.” He took a long sip and recapped the bottle. “I don’t get much uninterrupted sleep these days.”

Max reached for his hand and threaded their fingers together before resting it on his thigh. “Do you think I’m not aware of that, darlin’?”

Leo frowned. “I’m sorry, Max. Of course, you are.” The last three months had been one long nightmare, trying to learn all they could about their elusive copycat during the day, and trying to forget all about what he did, at night. Lincoln was finally back at work, heading up his extraordinary FBI team as they worked to shut down the cell Gunter Becker’s Road Knights had controlled. The outlaw biker was currently cooling his heels in a Federal prison after the FBI had refused to sign off on his WITSEC deal when they found Kathy Campbell dead.

Meanwhile, the team had managed to put several of their targets permanently out of business. Between Grant Jacobs, a self-professed copycat of Dean Arnold Corll, and Andrew Wiley, a copycat who took great pride in modeling himself after Dr. Harold Shipman, two less killers had been deprived of their lives. Leo couldn’t say he’d been upset to see either man meet his end. Seeing them behind bars would have been preferrable to writing reports about how neither had survived when they’d been confronted by the team and opted for suicide by cop but that hadn’t been their choice.

“Leo?”

He met Max’s questioning gaze with one of his own. “Yeah, baby?”

“Grant Jacobs and Andrew Wiley…”

“What about them?” Leo cocked his head to the side.

“It’s like…ya know, it’s like they just tried to get themselves killed. They wanted it, right? That’s some kinda pathology, right? ‘Cause, I don’t think serial killers are usually prone to suicide. Am I wrong?”

Leo shook his head. “No. Not usually, Max, but the vast range of pathologies that go with that kind of mind are so huge, they truly can’t be painted with a single brush. A lot of the time they’re extreme narcissists, while they loathe themselves so badly, they long for death at any cost. Most of them fall somewhere in the middle on that spectrum.”

“And the serial killer working with Greg Campbell? The Sweetwater Slaughterer’s copycat? He’s not suicidal, right?”

“We don’t know that yet, Max.” Leo smiled sadly at him. “We only know one thing about him.”

“What’s that, darlin’?”

“He’s not finished.”