Crossroads Revisited, Book 2

CROSSROADS REVISTED

(Book 2)

By

Keta Diablo

Copyright © 2011 by Keta Diablo

Cover art Copyright © The Book Khaleesi

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 both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

About Crossroads Revisited

Private Investigator Frank McGuire is beginning to think Baltimore is a melting pot for serial killers. Another maniac is stalking the streets but this time the killer is targeting gay college students.

When an enemy from Frank’s past surfaces, he sends Rand away for his own safety. He has no idea the serial killer already has Rand in his sights. The clock is running. Can Frank find Rand before it's too late?

* The Crossroads series is scorchingly hot and blends mystery, suspense, romance and paranormal.

* All four books in the series can be read as stand-alone gay romance novellas with the same characters, a happy-for-now ending and no cliffhangers.

Read the other books in the series

Crossroads, Book 1

Crossroads Showdown, Book 3

Crossroads Shadowland, Book 4

Chapter One

Baltimore, Maryland

Present Day

Thomas Kincaid sat up in bed and glanced at the alarm clock on his nightstand. Four a.m. What had awakened him? Something, but his sleep-numbed brain couldn't remember if he'd been dreaming or if he lingered in that twilight stage of sleep between reality and dreams. Snoozer didn't bark, and God knew the beloved mongrel yelped if a leaf dashed against the windowpane.

Ah, that's right; the yipper accompanied his mother to the cabin for the weekend. He wanted to join them but promised his professor his term paper, Human Cloning: Catastrophe or Medical Breakthrough? would be on the man’s desk first thing Monday morning. Guilt shrouded him. He shouldn't have gone to the bar tonight, should've stayed home and finished the damn paper.

He paused for a moment, listening. So light, yet, deliberate, he’d almost failed to hear the footsteps. His heart banged against his rib cage and a surge of adrenaline pumped through his body. What should he do, and where in hell had he left his cell phone? A silent groan left his lips. He'd left it in his backpack on the kitchen table, and the only landline in the house sat on the bureau in his mom's bedroom. She insisted on the live phone for safety reasons. Right now, he understood her reasoning.

He pushed the covers back and rose from bed. With the stealth of a cat-burglar, he walked toward the far wall and plucked his Little League bat from the wall—the one he used to hit the only homerun of his life. Not much of a weapon, but he felt more secure clutching the bat in his hand. He opened his bedroom door one inch at a time, praying it wouldn’t belch its usual creaks and groans.

The bedrooms faced the backyard, and around the neatly trimmed lawn and flowers beds stood a privacy fence. He learned years ago, in his devilish youth, how to scale it. For some reason, he felt certain the noise had come from the kitchen, or perhaps the great room in the front of the house. His choices seemed simple—reach his cell phone or his mother's room. He felt deep down, he had to call for help.

The noise grew louder. Whoever had entered the house seemed emboldened by the lack of response from its inhabitants. He ducked into the hallway and warred over which direction to run, left to the landline or right to the kitchen. He chose the first. Better to call the police and climb out his mother's window. His life held more value than television sets, stereos, or other material items the intruder had come for.

Please God, let it be a thief and not some maniacal killer.

Every muscle and tendon in his body launched into high alert. He drew several deep breaths and talked himself down. Most intruders came for cash, jewelry, or hot items they could quickly pawn for drug money. Hadn't he read somewhere most weren't armed? Even if he hadn't read it, the thought comforted him.

He moved down the hallway toward his mother's room as quiet as a church mouse, his only thought, to get to that phone. Still clutching the bat in his right hand, he slipped into the room, dashed toward the phone, and lifted the receiver with his left hand. He put the receiver to his ear and his heart sank. No dial tone. Shit . . . someone had cut the line into the house.

A series of heavy breaths warned him the burglar stood right outside his mom’s bedroom door. He froze, like a deer caught in headlights, and a heavy rock took up residence in the pit of his gut. This can’t be happening; this sort of nightmare happens to others, strangers one reads about the newspaper.

Damn! The newspapers. The headlines loomed behind his eyelids: Fourth Student Found Dead in Local River. The bedroom door groaned open, the sound reminding him of a scene straight from Friday the Thirteenth. A shadow, tall, dark, and intimidating, stepped into the room. Through a shaft of moonlight, he saw the gun in the man's hand, a nine-millimeter he thought. In the other, the man held a flashlight and shined it in Thomas' face.

"Hello, Thomas."

Confusion stormed through his mind. He'd know that voice anywhere. "You! What are you doing here?"

"And here I thought you'd be so happy to see me."