Fatal Heat Read online

  FATAL HEAT

  A JESS KIMBALL THRILLER

  DIANE CAPRI

  Presented by:

  AugustBooks

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  Praise for

  New York Times and

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Diane Capri

  “Full of thrills and tension, but smart and human, too.”

  Lee Child, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Jack Reacher Thrillers

  “[A] welcome surprise….[W]orks from the first page to ‘The End’.”

  Larry King

  “Swift pacing and ongoing suspense are always present…[L]ikable protagonist who uses her political connections for a good cause… Readers should eagerly anticipate the next [book].”

  Top Pick, Romantic Times

  “…offers tense legal drama with courtroom overtones, twisty plot, and loads of Florida atmosphere. Recommended.”

  Library Journal

  “[A] fast-paced legal thriller…energetic prose…an appealing heroine…clever and capable supporting cast…[that will] keep readers waiting for the next [book].”

  Publishers Weekly

  “Expertise shines on every page.”

  Margaret Maron, Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity Award-Winning MWA Past President and Grand Master

  Fatal Heat is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 Diane Capri

  All Rights Reserved

  Published by: AugustBooks

  Visit the author website:

  DianeCapri.com

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  Publisher’s Note:

  The publisher and author do not have any control over and do not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  eISBN: 978-1-942633-64-8

  Original Cover Design: Cory Clubb

  Digital Formatting: Author E.M.S.

  Table of Contents

  Reviews

  Copyright

  FATAL HEAT

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  More from Diane Capri

  About the Author

  FATAL HEAT

  by

  DIANE CAPRI

  Presented By:

  AugustBooks

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Jessica Kimball

  Marilyn Pleva

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jess Kimball’s friend, Sheriff Marilyn Pleva, rounded the corner of the terracotta truck stop building, covering her mouth and nose as she peered behind the dumpster.

  It had been more than two years since she’d smelled it, but there was no mistaking the stench. Hundred-degree heat and a dead body produced a predictable result, no matter how dry that heat was. This New Mexico summer was nothing if not hot.

  Already, the flies were swarming, and the incessant buzzing made the hair on her arms stand up.

  She steeled herself and, scanning the ground to avoid disturbing the evidence, moved closer to the lifeless form a few yards away.

  When the nine-one-one call came in ten minutes ago, the dispatcher said the caller reported a child victim. Marilyn hoped the trucker had made a mistake.

  He hadn’t.

  She pinched her eyes closed and muttered a string of curses, ending on a prayer.

  One of Santo Christo’s own. A petite girl, smaller than average for her age.

  Owen and Alicia Cabbot’s daughter, Emily.

  The couple owned Sinful Sweets bakery, located about a mile down the road from where Emily’s body had been dumped right next to the trash.

  “Jesus, God,” a low voice muttered from just behind her.

  She turned to find one of her deputies, Brady Colton, standing there, gun extended, his face chalky with shock. For a second, she wondered if he might be sick, but he rallied. She edged closer to Emily as Brady circled the immediate area in case whoever dumped her here was still in the vicinity.

  “All clear,” he said, reappearing from behind the dumpster.

  “Go ahead and call the ME. Tell them to get here ASAP before the hot sun makes things even worse,” Marilyn said, squatting down low to examine the body as the deputy made the call.

  She would wait for the ruling from the Office of the Medical Examiner, but forced to guess the cause of death, it looked like a broken neck. Probably pretty close to instant.

  Marilyn saw no signs of any harm that might have been inflicted before death. She had not been sexually assaulted or otherwise harmed.

  “Animals,” Brady muttered, his eyes bloodshot with unshed tears. “Who could do this to a kid? I don’t understand it.”

  She shook her head. “Let’s not jump to conclusions before we have more facts.”

  Privately, she recognized her cautionary words for what they were. Denial. Plain and simple. In fact, her inability to accept the violence people were capable of was what had caused her to move to a small town. She’d seen too many bodies. She’d wanted to return to helping people, not solving murders.

  For two years, she’d had a break. Sure, a few drunk and disorderlies escalated into domestic violence now and then. The fight over at the Twisted Tavern that went too far had the whole town reeling last Christmas.

  But children murdered? Not what she’d fled here for. The bastard who did this wouldn’t be walking around free for long. Which would be precious little comfort to Emily or her family, even though it was the best Marilyn could possibly do now.

  She resisted the urge to sweep a lock of long, blond hair away from the girl’s heatbloated face and straightened.

  “Tape it off, all the way back the scrub brush. You stay here while I go inside, let them know they’re closed for business, and ask some questions.”

  “Roger that,” Brady replied, heading back the way he’d come to retrieve the tape from his trunk.

  Marilyn glanced at her watch, swiping a hand over her already sweat-dotted upper lip. Six-thirty a.m. There had been no missing persons reports recently. Which meant that Owen and Alicia Cabbot likely had no idea that their daughter was missing, let alone dead.

  The city cop in her couldn’t help adding a mental caveat. Unless of course, the parents were the ones responsible.

  She let her eyes drift closed as she called up a mental image of the couple.

  Alicia was blond like her daughter, with deep blue eyes and a sweet disposition. She perpetually smelled of cinnamon and baking bread. All of which made her easy to like, al
though she wasn’t much of a talker.

  Her husband was the more social of the two, quick to laugh and always up for a beer and chat session after a long day of manning the counter. Marilyn knew Owen better, and while she wouldn’t have categorized him as the town drunk, he certainly enjoyed his beer.

  In the time she’d lived in Santo Christo, she recalled dealing with him officially a couple times. Once, when she’d pulled him over for a DUI. About six months later, he’d accepted her offer of a ride home after a particularly boisterous football game at the local sports bar left him too drunk to drive.

  Neither occasion provoked Owen to any kind of violence. He was a happy drunk.

  As far as Marilyn knew, the Sheriff’s Office had never received any domestic calls for the Cabbot household, either. Whenever she saw thirteen-year-old Emily and her younger brother Billy, they’d always seemed healthy and typical of kids in town. Emily loved helping out at the bakery. She’d rung up Marilyn’s morning coffee and almond scone more than once.

  Now, she had to go to that quaint little house on Elderberry Lane and tell those parents the worst news any parents could ever receive.

  Who in their right mind would sign up for this job?

  “Pippa is on her way over and Santa Fe OMI is twenty minutes out,” Brady said as he approached with a roll of yellow tape. Pippa Reynolds was a sharp new deputy and Marilyn was relieved for the extra set of hands.

  She headed around to the front to the truck-stop building’s entrance. As she stepped inside, the air-conditioned room’s chill enveloped her. Normally, like every New Mexicano in July, she welcomed the cold. This morning, though, she felt iced to the bone.

  “Sheriff? Was it…” The clerk’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his skinny neck as he swallowed audibly. “Was it what that trucker said?”

  She tipped her head in a grim nod and leaned across the counter to take the teenager gently by the arm. “I’m so sorry to say it was, Nate.”

  His top lip caught on his braces as his mouth trembled. Poor kid had graduated high school a few weeks ago and switched to the overnight shift. Probably never thought he’d experience something like this.

  “What if she was alive out there? Could I have helped her?” The tremor traveled from his face down to the hand she was holding.

  Marilyn shook her head. “Nothing you could’ve done. You had no way of knowing. The best way to help her now is to find out what happened here. Walk me through your shift last night.”

  Having a task seemed to calm him some. She took out her notebook as he began to talk. She jotted down the names of the late-night customers that he recognized and descriptions of ones he didn’t. The whole time, though, one thought played in her mind over and over again as dread formed an oil slick in her belly.

  In just a short while, she would ring Alicia Cabbot’s doorbell, look into her soft, blue eyes, and tell her that her daughter was never coming home.

  CHAPTER TWO

  An hour later, Marilyn squeezed the steering wheel, staring at the small, white house. It looked like it had originally been a ranch, converted to a bungalow by a small airport room on the roof. Probably two bedrooms and maybe two baths.

  “Dammit,” she mumbled. This was the whole reason she’d quit the city—to avoid visits like these…and the nightmares that haunted her long afterward.

  Her stomach was trying to churn the knot in her gut, grinding it down until it was nothing but bile.

  Marilyn huffed out a long breath and forced herself from the hot, black unmarked car. Not for the first time, she cursed the city council for buying the last of the Ford dealer’s sedan inventory a couple of years ago. The cars were dumped cheap because nobody in her right mind would want a black car with black interior during New Mexico’s summers. She constantly felt twenty-six hours in on her twenty-four-hour deodorant.

  Training her gaze on the cheery, bright red door of the Cabbot house, she inhaled deeply, chewed on the inside of her cheek, and knocked once.

  She heard scuffling, low chatter, and the distant drone of the morning news network, which amplified as the door swung open. A bleary-eyed blonde in a floral bathrobe stood inside. The smell of coffee and a rush of cool air wafted out into the sweltering morning.

  Before Marilyn could say anything, Owen moseyed up behind his wife. His slippered feet gently shushed as they slid along the hardwood floor.

  “Alicia…” Marilyn started, but the young mom cut her off, sleepy eyes widening.

  “Hey, Marilyn, what’s going on? Everything okay?” She glanced from Marilyn to her husband, as if trying to read the answer in their faces. “Why are you here?”

  Marilyn could almost see the gears grinding in Alicia’s mind as she searched to find an explanation for the sheriff’s early morning visit that wouldn’t obliterate her life.

  No way past it but straight through.

  Marilyn cleared her aching throat.

  “I’m sorry to tell you that, earlier this morning, I was called to a crime scene,” Marilyn the official words in a practiced professional tone. The best thing was to just say them quickly. “Alicia…Owen…we believe the victim found at the scene was your daughter, Emily. I’m so very sorry for your loss.”

  Alicia’s nostrils flared. She blinked as if she didn’t comprehend. It was a sickening, taut moment that stretched out for an eternity. Marilyn felt every millisecond.

  Owen gripped his wife’s shoulders from behind as she shook her head furiously, his face going slack.

  “No. No, no, no. That’s not possible.” At first, Alicia’s voice was little more than a whisper. But then, she was almost shouting. “Th-the kids are sleeping. This is a mistake. We—” She stopped mid-sentence, tearing away from her husband’s grasp and pounded through the house, the tail of her robe flying behind her.

  She muttered about the kids still being in bed—about how they were sleeping in longer than usual today.

  Alicia raced up the steep stairs to the airport room, opened the door at the top, and crumpled against the doorframe. Marilyn climbed the stairs heavily. She already knew what she’d see when she peered in.

  Or, at least she thought she knew.

  But when the sight of a stacked pair of twin beds—both mussed from sleep, both empty—greeted her, she sucked in a breath. The floor was littered with toys and books. She searched frantically for the eight-year-old boy who should’ve been sleeping in the bottom bunk.

  She saw no blood.

  No broken glass.

  And no Billy.

  Alicia’s low, keening wail cut through the silence. Owen’s face, so white it was nearly gray, grasped her shoulders, pulling her close against his chest.

  Adrenaline shot through Marilyn like an electric charge. She grabbed her radio and stepped away. She called the station and reported Billy Cabbot, officially a missing child.

  She ordered an immediate Amber Alert.

  She told the dispatcher to send a dog and handler along with a small search team to scour the area around the truck stop.

  “The Amber Alert for Billy is already out,” she said when she returned to the bewildered parents. Her phone chimed in her back pocket as if to underscore the words, but the Cabbots didn’t seem to hear.

  Owen held his wife close, both arms wrapped around her, solemn.

  Too solemn?

  Marilyn wanted to comfort them. But she had to focus. Find Billy.

  “I cannot imagine your suffering, and I’m so sorry. I truly am. I know this must be the worst day of your lives, but—” She had to press them now. It was barbaric. But every passing minute was a missed opportunity for Billy. “We need to get Billy home safe, all right? I need to ask some questions.”

  Alicia pushed her face away from her husband’s chest. Her gaze shot to Marilyn. She nodded blankly, swiping a hand over her wet nose and mouth.

  “Okay. Yes.” She turned to her husband, probably in shock. “Right Owen? We need to get Billy home.”

  Alicia pinned her w
atery gaze on Marilyn. “What do you need?”

  “Let’s get some coffee, and figure out our next steps. We need to move very quickly.” …If it’s not already too late for Billy.

  The unspoken words hung in the air. Alicia nodded slowly, allowing Owen to guide her toward the kitchen.

  Alicia sat at one of the high-backed stools in front of the granite countertop, and while Owen made coffee, Marilyn considered the options. If statistics held true, they had about forty-eight hours. After that, the chances of finding Billy alive diminished by the minute.

  Think like the killer. Who is he? Where is he? What’s really going on here?

  But what kind of person would take both kids, kill the girl, and leave the boy alive?

  Assuming Billy was still alive.

  Marilyn pushed the thought aside. She refused to consider the alternative.

  Her best guess, informed by years of investigating child homicide, made the situation worse.

  If Emily’s killer was a pedophile who preyed on boys, why take Emily at all?

  Owen slid a mug in front of Marilyn, still silent as the grave, and took a seat beside his wife.

  Alicia was shaking, letting out little gasps and hiccups as she choked back her tears. But there was a thin wall of strength holding her together. Like the skin beneath the shell of an egg, one false move and she might shatter.