Bex Wynter Box Set 2 Read online

  Detective Bex Wynter Files

  Box Set Volume 2

  DEATH FOR SALE

  BLOOD LINES

  KILLING TIME

  by Elleby Harper

  Copyright 2019 Elleby Harper

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Disclaimer and Terms of Use

  This book is a work of fiction. All the characters, incidents and dialogue in it are fictitious and drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any trademarks, product names, or named features are only used for reference and are assumed to be property of their respective owners.

  For any inquiries regarding this book, please email

  [email protected]

  Also by Elleby Harper

  Detective Bex Wynter Files

  Driven to Death

  Stolen Daughters

  Courting Death

  Death for Sale

  Blood Lines

  Killing Time

  Victorian Ghost Mystery

  The Undertaker’s Daughter

  Thank you so much for buying my books.

  I am excited to share my stories with you and sincerely hope you enjoy reading them.

  Elleby Harper

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Death for Sale

  Blood Lines

  Killing Time

  Also by Elleby Harper

  About Elleby Harper

  Contacting Elleby Harper

  Author’s Note

  In this series I mix American and British cultures. Essentially, spelling and terminology remain American because Detective Bex Wynter hails from New York. However, with plenty of British characters and a London scenario, you will encounter British terms, slang words etc., although the focus remains American.

  DEATH FOR SALE

  BOOK 4

  Detective Bex Wynter Files

  About this book

  Are some crimes beyond forgiveness?

  When DCI Bex Wynter answers a call meant for her boss, she’s swept up in the hunt for a serial killer. The trouble is, it’s not her case. But with a little girl’s life at risk, she just can’t let it go.

  With little information and even less evidence, can she convince DCI Cole Mackinley this really is a spate of grisly serial killings, not simply a child's nightmare? Or is Bex's intuition leading her on a wild goose chase?

  Then it becomes clear someone doesn’t want this case solved. With the threat of violence comes a tough decision: track down a ruthless killer or endanger someone close to her.

  Chapter 1

  It was a whisper of air that made Fairchild’s eyes pop open.

  She blinked several times.

  The utter blackness of the room was broken at one end by a pale slash of light where her bedroom door was ajar. Every evening her mother would shut the door. And every night Fairchild waited until she heard her mother’s footsteps fade before she snuck out of bed to open it, just wide enough to alleviate the sheer weight of darkness that cloaked the room.

  Her mother said darkness was good. It hid her from the evil that lurked in the world. A world so wicked her parents had to keep her in hiding, until she was old enough to face the world’s badness and conquer it, just like they were doing.

  There was no window in her room to let in the moonlight or the starlight. In fact there were no windows to the outside world anywhere in Fairchild’s home. When she had asked her mother why, her mother turned on the television. Fairchild watched images of one disaster after another where windows in tall buildings were shattered and windows in houses sprouted flame, accompanied by horrific screaming and the wailing of sirens.

  “Windows let in the evil. You’re too young to face that evil, Fairchild. Be patient. Learn what we have to teach you and then you’ll be ready when it’s your turn,” her mother explained.

  Fairchild sat up in bed wondering about the significance of the new air she could taste on her tongue. Could it mean a door had opened somewhere beyond the corridor outside her bedroom?

  Gripping a toy building block tightly in her hand, she slipped from under the soft, warm bedding. Her feet snuggled into her furry slippers. It was always chilly in her home. But when she moved forward she heard the shuffle of rubber soles on the hard floor and knew that she would be heard. She wasn’t allowed out of her room at night. Reluctantly, she removed the slippers. Instinctively her toes curled against the cold rising from the ground.

  Moving to the doorway, she turned her head right and left, searching for the source of new air. To the right, the corridor led to a wet area that accommodated their sanitary needs and a cavernous living area where a wide screen television played story after story of the horrors of the world. From hurricanes and earthquakes devastating cities to strangers invading homes to rape and murder. The television showed lesson after lesson that Fairchild must be vigilant against the outside world. A world where the police struggled, and failed, to tame the chaos.

  The corridor stretched away to the left, curving slightly. Her mother had told her that the walls in their home were curved to deflect bomb blasts in case they were ever attacked. Fairchild had followed the wall once, counting her steps carefully, until the dim overhead light from the flickering neon tubes had faded to pitch black and scared her into returning.

  A shiver of air tickled her cheek from that direction. Her fingers caressed the plastic brick. She enjoyed the feel of the raised bumps. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. She made the decision to turn left. One step. Two steps. She began counting.

  She moved swiftly on silent feet, crossing from light into darkness. A quiver shimmied down her spine and she paused, opening her eyes as wide as she could, but she couldn’t see what was hiding in the blackness. She strained her ears, listening, but she could hear no intruders with evil intent.

  The thin stream of air teased her forward, the steel-lined wall was cold to her touch as she groped her way onwards. In her head she counted out ninety-eight more steps before she turned another curved wall. The darkness was broken by a pencil thin strip of light edging a doorway like a huge letter L. She shifted her hand from the wall to the door, her fingers tracing the lighted edge to the ground. She could feel the wind like a breeze through the crack and enjoyed the play of it over her palm.

  A small rectangular card was wedged between the door and its jamb and was the cause of the door not shutting properly.

  Easing the door open, Fairchild picked up the card. A quick glance was all she needed to automatically record the string of numbers in her head. She barely noticed the accompanying headshot or the words. Carefully she replaced the card to its position as she stepped through a doorway that opened onto a lighted alcove, beyond which the corridor continued and was the source of the moving air.

  The hum of machinery was louder on this side. Normally she wasn’t aware of the air ventilation system filtering their breathing air.

  “It’s a necessity because our home is underground,” her mother had explained. She had bestowed a rare smile on her daughter. “Your father and I will pay any price to keep you pure for your future purpose, Fairchild. You are most precious to us.”

  A metal railing separated the alcove from the corridor and Fairchild peered over it. There was a round opening and steel rungs led downwards to a level below her feet. Sibi
lent sounds bled upwards. Fairchild cocked her head to listen. She was used to the sounds of her home, but these were new noises. People type noises.

  Her heart jerked and for a moment its beat was so loud in her ears it blocked out the sound of the machinery. Her hand clenched over the plastic block.

  That’s not possible, she told herself. Once her mother kissed her good night, she never saw her parents until she woke up. Her mother called that the morning. Her mother had told her that each day consisted of twenty-four hours. Fairchild liked knowing that the day could be broken into a mathematical concept. It was easier to process than terms like “morning” or “night” which had no meaning in her artificial environment.

  Maybe the sounds she heard were from another television? But someone had opened the door into this area and dropped the card. Fairchild knew that mathematically the odds were in favor that a person was making those noises.

  She trembled, cold and fear mingling. Had someone broken into their home from the outside? Fairchild considered her choices: she could continue along the corridor, following the thread of air to its source; she could explore the sounds coming from below; or she could return to her bedroom.

  An edgy, anxious feeling filled her and her fingers scrambled frantically over the nubs on the block. One, continue. Two, go down. Three, return. One, continue. Two, go down. Three, return. One, continue. Two, go down. The studs ran out.

  Slipping the plastic block into her pajama pocket, Fairchild scampered lightly downwards, hands and feet grasping the rungs like a monkey. As her head cleared the opening she was able to take in the view. She paused, clinging to the metal rungs and the shadows that harbored her. The ladder led down into a space cluttered until it was an almost unnavigable canyon.

  Along one wall was a row of unmade bunk beds. No pillows or duvets. No blankets or sheets. Just stained and dirty mattresses flung onto metal frames. Climbing the opposite wall were cardboard boxes, metal chests, wire baskets and large plastic tubs with lids. It looked like a mountain of litter hoarded over years.

  Sufficient light bounced from wall lamps for her to see that the bunks were empty except for one on the bottom. The sight forced a shudder out of her.

  The lights cut across a young man’s abdomen, leaving his face in shadow. She could see ugly black stiches crisscrossing his hairless chest, which left him looking like he had been mangled by something with ferociously large teeth.

  Breath rasped from a chest that rose and fell with a regularity that proved he was still alive. His body heaved and the metallic bed frame rattled against the stone floor. Then he fell quiet.

  Fairchild had never seen a living person other than her parents. Undercutting her fear of this unknown stranger who may have breached their home with his evil, was a fierce curiosity to get a closer look.

  Lightly she scooted down the rest of the ladder and landed quietly. She crept forward, anxiety keeping her closer to the containers than the bunks. Itching to see what was contained inside, her little fingers pried off the top of one of the containers. Inside was a pile of jewelry: watches and chains, rings and bracelets. Her hand raked through the glinting gold and silver. Were her parents rich?

  A rustle from the bunk bed jolted her to turn in that direction, crouching low against the debris packed against the wall. Her heart fluttered as the body on the bed moved and the head flopped in her direction so she could see his eyes, glassy with silent horror. Tears spurted from the corners. Several grunts escaped past the silver duct tape over his mouth. Now she could see his hands were above his head, ziplocked to the bedposts and the same with his ankles.

  Fairchild whimpered as a flood of terror swamped her. He bucked hard enough to move the bedframe, metal screeching against stone. Blood seeped from between his rough, black stitches.

  She shrank further back against the wall, knocking the lid from another box. She glanced down to see a pile of smart phones tangled with the wires from chargers and ear buds and pale blue and pink plastic cards.

  The man on the bed grunted again and again, his eyes wide and desperate and pleading. But pleading for what Fairchild didn’t know. Her glance fell to the glass screens and plastic glinting like fish scales in the dim light. Her eyes skimmed the information on the cards as she soothed herself by concentrating on storing their numbers in her head.

  A sudden clanging alerted her to footsteps coming down the ladder and drove Fairchild to burrow further into the mound of boxes. She heard the murmur of voices and recognized them as belonging to her parents. They would be mad that she wasn’t upstairs in bed. They would punish her and Fairchild knew that meant isolation, no television, no contact for days at a time until she learned her lesson. Hidden between the piles of debris she could see nothing. Her hands rubbed blindly over the studs on her plastic block as she counted to eight over and over.

  “You confirmed the money’s come through?” That was her father’s voice.

  She heard creaking and then several thumps.

  “Yes. All confirmed. The hospital’s on standby,” her mother finished the sentence with a grunt, as though she had exerted herself.

  Wheels creaked and Fairchild risked a peek. Her father and mother wheeled the stranger in a hospital bed towards the dark end of the room. They were dressed in green scrubs, their heads covered by turbans and their faces by masks.

  Fairchild drifted backwards towards the ladder, her bare feet silent. If she could only get upstairs her parents would never know she had left her bed.

  Abruptly, bright lights flooded the cavernous space, open like a vast yawn beyond the debris-littered canyon. The light shone from two massive operating theater luminaires over an operating table. She saw her mother hover over a stainless steel cart filled with equipment. She attached electrodes to the stranger that beeped out a regular red line on a monitor. Fairchild had seen enough images on television to recognize the scene as a hospital room.

  Poised high in the air, her vantage point allowed her to see the instruments on the cart under her father’s hand. Bone cutters and chisels, dissecting knives and scalpels, surgical hooks and scissors. Her father had begun teaching her their names as he taught her how to use them to dissect frogs and rats. He was most pleased when she could hide her squeamishness to follow his directions.

  * * *

  The youth on the operating table reared and flailed so hard against his restraints he almost split the ugly black stitches across his abdomen and chest. He had already experienced the Surgeon’s expertise.

  Standing aloof, the Surgeon watched his wife tighten the straps on the young man. Even so, his limbs twitched and his head thrashed to and fro. Beneath his mask the Surgeon smiled to himself. There was nothing he enjoyed more than cutting into live flesh.

  He hummed the overture to Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro softly while she injected a paralyzing agent into the teenager’s arm. The spasming quickly stilled, his head jerked abruptly before stiffening into immobility. But his eyes remained wide open, pinned to the Surgeon’s eyes as they silently begged, unaware of the torrent of power his helplessness unleashed inside his tormentor.

  Dark thoughts screamed through the Surgeon’s brain. He desperately wanted to smell the scent of blood. It was close to overwhelming, but he knew he had to control himself. First, he must remove the heart, the beating heart from within that chest, and then he could let himself loose.

  Apart from the soft sounds of humming machines and monitors, silence sealed itself around them and allowed his focus to narrow to the blood pulsing under the pale flesh. His breathing intensified. Soon he would release that blood.

  The Surgeon wielded the scalpel with precision. There was the delicious feel of the knife cutting flesh. The blade flashed under the lights as it sliced through muscle and sinew. A fountain of blood gushed upwards and it was all he could do not to rub his hands in it. Beside him, the nurse poured ice cold water into the open torso.

  “Blood pressure?” he asked.

  She consulted her mo
nitors. “Rising. So is his pulse rate and adrenaline.”

  All signs of the pain and distress he was causing. The Surgeon felt a thrill that electrified his penis to throbbing erection. His eyes glittered as lust threatened to overtake him.

  “First, the heart,” she rebuked him.

  He continued to work until the whole chest cavity was open, the skin peeled back and draped loosely over the boy’s form. The violence of his cutting made his own blood sing with pleasure.

  The nurse swabbed the oozing blood so he could have a clear view of the pumping heart. So pink, so tender and juicy a morsel. And such a short window of time for it to be viable. He cut it free from its owner, holding the pulsating organ in his hands for a few brief seconds.

  He placed the bloody mass of flesh into a sterile box, clamping on the tubing that would oxygenate and nourish the heart for up to twelve hours. The nurse took it from him.

  The sight of blood whet his appetite for more. His passion held him in its grip once he loosened the leash. The Surgeon hacked until blood and thick gobs of flesh flew as he tore out the remaining organs. Body pieces fell around his feet. Plunging his arms into the hollow cavity up to his elbows, he squished the gurgling intestines between his fingers.

  He never felt more alive than when meting out death. His life, their death. Finally he buried his face in the cavity, and his world became soaked in red. It was all he could see before his eyes, all that filled his nose. How he loved the scent of blood! That precious, life-giving fluid. His was a sacred job and he was thankful for his skill and precision. He was the Surgeon.

  * * *

  Huddled under her comforter, Fairchild fondled her plastic block between both hands, thumbing the eight studs repetitively. All the terrifying evil her mother said was waiting for her out in the real world had crashed on top of her because what she had witnessed was the essence of evil. The images colliding through her mind were like the worst scenes she had watched on television.