Defending Cain: The Gemini Series, #2

By Ty Patterson

CAN A SERIAL KILLER HAVE A GOOD SIDE?

Cain, a dreaded serial killer in New York, has murdered several women.

Now, he is dead, and while the city heaves a sigh of relief, Beth and Meghan Petersen's troubles are just starting.

Because Cain, even in his death, has dragged them into his depraved past. They find that the killer was trying to reach out to them for help. 

The twins should back off. After all, the murderer is dead. The city is back to normal.

They don't.

Because even Cain deserved a hearing.

'Intense. The Petersen sisters are best thing to happen to thrillerdom'

'Your thriller reading is incomplete if you haven't read Ty Patterson'

Check out the Gemini Series

Dividing Zero

Defending Cain

I Am Missing

Check out the USA Today Bestselling Warriors Series

The Warrior

The Reluctant Warrior

The Warrior Code

The Warrior's Debt

Flay

Behind You

Hunting You

Zero

Death Club

Trigger Break

Scorched Earth

RUN!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Three Aces Publishing
• Release date: Sep 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386915737

Book preview

Chapter One

The blade slipped between Cain’s third and fourth rib. Effortlessly, like a knife cutting through butter. It punctured his heart and slid out again.

The piercing took just a few seconds. So smooth, so fast, that Cain didn’t know he had been knifed.

By the time his body told him, the assailant was gone.

All Cain saw was a departing back that got swallowed in the crowd.

He knew calling out was futile. He knew he was dying.

Cain looked down at himself. Blood was turning his black shirt wet and sticky.

They got me, finally.

His breath was coming short. His knees were starting to buckle. His pulse was racing.

No. I can’t die like this. I have to meet her.

She was standing at the other end of the crosswalk, waiting for the signal to change.

She was blissfully oblivious of Cain dying. She didn’t even know he was there.

No one knew. No one yet had spotted the blood on his clothing, his faltering steps.

He took a step forward. His knees collapsed. Blood emerged from his mouth.

Noise started to fade. Just as his vision started to blur, the signal changed and she started forward.

Towards him.

He reached out with his arms.

---

He had set out from his hideout early in the morning. He knew they would be looking for him. Everyone would be, not just them.

He was lucky he had one of those unrecognizable faces. You saw it, you didn’t remember it. Dark eyes. Dark hair. Healthy tan. No conspicuous hair styling. Ordinary body.

He dressed in black. His usual uniform when he was at his job. The job that he loved.

He emerged from the depths of Building Twenty Six. Made his way through the ruins, skirted discarded furniture and pigeon droppings and blinked in the sudden sunlight.

He turned back and looked at the building when he was away from it. Maybe it would be his last glance.

---

Building Twenty Six was part of an abandoned asylum in Queens Village, New York city.

It had once, almost a hundred years back, treated the mentally ill. The asylum had been deeded to the city by a descendant of one of the country’s robber barons. In its heyday, it had witnessed hundreds of patients being treated.

Changes occurred during the twentieth century. Medicines improved. Attitudes toward asylums changed. Budgets were slashed.

The descendants of the descendant mounted a legal challenge to claim back the land. A legal battle that moved very slowly.

The result was ruins.

In the busiest city in the world, amidst the bustle of the fastest moving metropolis, stood the abandoned asylum.

No human lived in it. No person ventured in it. Pigeons nested in it. Rats ruled it.

Cain discovered it when he was searching for a home for his hobby.

He had stumbled on the building quite accidentally. One moment he was in the Queens Village, exploring, the next, it was as if he was in a war zone.

Building Twenty Six became his abode. It was there that he practiced his hobby.

No one saw him. No one heard him. The pigeons swallowed any sounds from the building.

It was perfect.

---

It was during one of his experiments that he came to know of the conspiracy. She babbled initially, like the others. Cain paid no attention.

It was when he saw the desperation in her eyes, that he paid attention and listened.

What he heard, turned him cold.

Cain didn’t know fear. It wasn’t an emotion he had ever experienced. However, what he felt on hearing her, came close to it.

He questioned her. She was incoherent. Dying did that to a person. He leaned over her and shouted. With her last breath, she answered him.

---

Cain left the asylum early the next day, when dark hadn’t yet turned to dawn.

He went to Manhattan and lounged in doorways till the city stirred. He kept his face lowered always, knowing he was hunted.

He went to an internet café, paid in cash, and researched briefly. He left when he got a name and an address.

He went to Columbus Avenue and there he waited at the crosswalk. For her.

The revolving door on the glass fronted building turned at eleven am and she emerged. Cain hesitated for a moment. He knew there were two of them.

Yes, it was her. He stepped forward, joined the crossing throng.

It was then that the knife slid into him.

---

Meghan Petersen saw the man falling, on the other side of the crosswalk. She heard screaming.

She hurried over, pushed through the crowd, and knelt beside the man. She had paramedical training. She could help.

His shirt was wet with blood. His breath was labored. Blood pooled in the corners of his mouth. She took in everything in a swift glance. Carefully eased open his shirt.

He’s dying. Too late to be saved.

‘I’ve called 911,’ someone shouted.

The man’s eyes seemed to recognize her. A scrabbling hand caught her wrist.

‘I…didn’t…’ the man squeezed out the words.

Meghan’s breath caught when she saw his hand held a photograph.

The planet stopped rotating when she recognized the face on it.

It was Percy Minter’s sister.

Chapter Two

Meghan reeled in shock; her hand trembled as she took the photograph from the dying man’s hand.

It was Calliope Minter. Cali. That was what everyone called her. There was no mistaking the features. The man reached out to her and tried to say something.

She leaned forward, dimly aware of shouts and screams and the sounds of traffic around her. In the distance sirens rose and fell and grew louder. The man’s breathing grew shallower.

His eyes stared straight into Meghan’s. A hand clawed at her hair. It fell down and grabbed her hand in a tight grip.

‘What’s it? Do you know her? Where is she?’ she asked him urgently.

His lips moved, but no words came as his eyes glazed.

The crowd was shoved apart and paramedics came rushing to the scene. Meghan rose and stepped back, making room for them.

Her hands still trembled.

Control, babe. Get your stuff together.

She breathed deeply as she looked around. The onlookers were still gathered around. Still chattering excitedly. Many of them were snapping pictures on their phones, proof that they saw a killing, or at the least a dying man.

She stepped back a few more paces, going almost to the edge of the pavement and observed people more carefully.

I saw him from the other end of the crosswalk. He was part of the crowd, waiting to cross.

She looked carefully at the bystanders. Most of them were still looking at the fallen man, at the paramedics around him. Some of them were on their phones. A few of them were talking to one another.

A few met her eyes. No one looked away. No one drifted away casually.

No one looks like he could have knifed him. Appearances can be deceptive, though. A killer wouldn’t wear a billboard around his neck.

She searched further, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She brushed her hair back absentmindedly and felt wetness on her hand.

Blood. How did it get there? Was I knifed?

She shook her head impatiently, remembering. The man held my hand. It’s his blood. You’re still not thinking properly.

The spectators moved as if by an invisible force. Cops. Several cruisers squealed to a halt and officers leapt out. Some went over to the scene, others began questioning the onlookers.

Meghan moved towards them when she felt the hand on her shoulder.

‘You witnessed it?’

---

She turned to meet a pair of sleepy eyes which concealed a sharp mind. Detective Chang smiled and waved a hand in the direction of the scene. ‘We were driving past when we heard. It was so close to your office, Zak suggested we swing by.’

He looked past her at a tall man who looked like he had stepped out from a magazine cover.

Pizaka and Chang, First-Grade Detectives who headed a Major Case Squad in the NYPD, were an unlikely pairing. Pizaka was always immaculately turned out and had a very visible public profile. He had written several bestselling books and actively courted the media. Chang, on the other hand, with his rumpled suit and perennially sleepy look, gave the air of an absent minded professor.

Meghan and her twin, Beth, had known the two cops for years.

The sisters worked in a deep black U.S. agency that closed down threats to national security. Terrorists. Stolen weapons of mass destruction. International drug and people running gangs. The covert unit took on all of them.

The Agency, as it was known by the handful who were aware of its existence, was headed by a grey-eyed, ice-cool woman, Clare, in Washington DC, who reported only to the president. The president gave her the freedom to shape The Agency the way she wanted. He had only one demand; he wanted results. She had never let him down.

The agency’s lead agent was Zeb Carter, an ex-Special Forces operative who was responsible for its unique structure.

The agency’s eight agents, including Zeb and the twins, were based in New York and worked in a security consulting firm on Columbus Avenue. The firm advised corporations on personnel and premise security, undertook hostage negotiations, and investigated corporate spying.

The firm was their cover; they did undertake the corporate work as advertised, but only when they weren’t on Agency missions. This structure gave the Agency a near-zero admin footprint and had helped it stay clandestine.

All the agency’s operatives, but for the twins, were ex-Army; most of them ex-Special Forces. Several of them had freelanced as private military contractors, before Zeb had brought them together to form the Agency.

Zeb had rescued the twins in a previous mission; in turn, they had pestered him to join the Agency.

They had initially handled the logistics for the missions, but after working closely with Broker, the Agency’s intelligence analyst, had taken over running the intel too.

The eight of them were a close-knit team. They were family.

Zeb and the twins had first come across Pizaka and Chang when bringing down serial killers and terrorists in the city. The cops, who were leads on the cases, got the credit and their careers took off.

Pizaka and Chang didn’t know of the Agency’s existence. They knew that Zeb, the twins, and the other agents, worked in some firm that for some reason exerted tremendous clout.

They are smart enough to not ask many questions, Meghan thought and waited for Pizaka to join them.

---

‘Yeah,’ she answered Chang and gave the two a quick rundown of what she had seen. Chang waved at a couple of cops when she had finished, and summoned them.

‘He’s dead,’ one of them answered his question. ‘Nope, no identification. Nothing on his body.’

Chang thanked him and turned back to Meghan. ‘You know him?’

She shook her head. ‘First time I saw him.’ She showed them the photograph. ‘He was carrying this.’

Pizaka examined it at length and shrugged when he didn’t recognize the woman. ‘Recognize her?’ he asked his partner.

Meghan cut Chang off before he could answer. ‘That’s Calliope Minter. Cali.’

‘She’s been missing for nearly three years,’ a voice said breathlessly, from behind. Beth came from behind the cops and flashed a questioning are you okay look at her sister.

‘Her sister, Percy Minter, came to us about ten months back,’ Beth continued when Meghan nodded at her. ‘She wanted us to find her sister.’

---

Three hours later, Meghan and Beth Petersen were at One PP, where Chang and Pizaka had their offices. The on-the-scene cops had taken Meghan’s statement and Cali’s photograph. It would be dusted for prints, DNA traces, and anything else detectable on it.

The process of identifying the dead body would begin. Witness statements had been taken from the onlookers, but no one had seen or heard anything relevant.

‘Dude was walking one moment. The next, he was falling and there was blood all over,’ seemed to be the common refrain.

Security camera footages would be checked for any identity of the killer. The NYPD’s investigative machinery would kick in.

‘This case’s yours?’ Meghan asked Chang when all formalities had been completed.

‘Nope. Bennett and Johnson’s. Good detectives.’

‘Maybe we should take over,’ Pizaka suggested while polishing his shades. It was evening. They were indoors. None of that mattered to Pizaka. The shades went on his face and he glanced back at the twins and his partner.

‘What?’

Pizaka likes headlines and this one already has the makings of a good story. Unidentified dead man carrying photograph of a woman missing for three years. This case would further his career. Meghan looked at her sister and got a wink in return. She’s thinking the same thing.

Chang considered his partner for a few moments more and thought aloud. ‘Zak’s right. It’s not as if we have anything pressing on our plate. Bennet and Johnson have Cain as well. They’re stretched thin.’

---

Cain. Meghan couldn’t suppress a shiver.

Cain was a serial killer unlike any other the city had known. He had been active for five years and despite the massive manhunt, the cops still had no clues to his identity.

He preyed on women. He grabbed solitary women from the street and disappeared without a trace. Several days later a body would turn up in a garbage bin. Or in a parking lot. One had been found in a patrol car’s trunk.

The body would be horribly mutilated. Cuts and slashes and gouges. Sometimes parts would be missing. An ear. A nipple. A finger. The missing parts were never found. No rape was involved.

He had initially preyed on vulnerable women in the early years. Prostitutes. Bar girls. Those who worked late at night. His success seemed to have given him confidence and he had moved to killing professional women. Lawyers. Accountants. Doctors. No woman was safe. In each case, the victim had been grabbed on the street, when she was alone at night.

The killer never called the cops to take credit. He never made contact with the media. He was a ghost. His mental state was analyzed by talk show heads, by amateur psychiatrists. The NYPD released an e-profile for him.

He still remained undetected. A newspaper gave him a name. Cain. It stuck.

Only one woman had escaped from him. Thirty-two-year-old Caryl Bybee was a cleaner in a theater on Broadway. She had finished her shift after the last show, had shared a smoke with her co-workers, and was walking toward her car when Cain had attacked.

He had come from behind, a rough hand going over her mouth, another across her waist. A harsh whisper had sounded in her ear. ‘I’m Cain.’

She had twisted sharply, had elbowed him in the ribs, and had lashed out with her feet. His grip had loosened and then she was free, running faster than she ever had in her life, yelling loudly.

Despite her escape, she couldn’t describe Cain.

Average height, white, dark clothing, could fit a few million men in the city.

---

‘Let’s do it. Let’s take on this one.’ Chang’s words broke Meghan’s reverie and she turned to see him pull out his phone and speak into it softly.

She played idly with her cell phone while they waited for the cop to finish his call. Her finger clicked on a button and an image came up.

Cali Minter’s. The picture that the dead man had been carrying. Meghan had photographed it before handing the picture over to the cops.

Why was he carrying it?

‘Done,’ Chang called out from across the room in satisfaction. ‘The Commissioner says it’s ours. I mentioned the Petersens’ involvement. That helped.’

He came to the conference desk they were seated around and looked at Meghan. ‘You never saw him before?’ he asked, yet again.

Meghan didn’t reply. Not directly. She was remembering the dead man’s eyes. The way he clutched my hair. My hand. His lips moving.

‘I think he was coming to meet me.’

Chapter Three

Chang’s eyebrows lifted quizzically. ‘I thought you didn’t know him.’

‘I don’t–’

Beth clicked her fingers and spoke over her sister. ‘Of course. The announcements!’

Meghan suppressed a laugh when she saw the expressions on the cops’ faces. ‘What Beth is saying…when Percy approached us all those months back, we were caught up in other stuff. We couldn’t spend much time on finding her sister. If you recollect, I was interviewed a few times by some TV channels–’

‘Meghan mentioned Cali’s disappearance and displayed her picture in those interviews,’ Beth completed for her.

Pizaka paused a beat for the twins to continue their tango and when they didn’t, he spoke. ‘So you’re saying the dead man remembered you from way back and was heading to you.’

‘Only explanation I can think of,’ Meghan replied.

The skeptical look on Pizaka’s face didn’t disappear. He glanced at Chang who shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me. I’m at a loss. We got this case fifteen minutes ago. I’m good, but not that good.’

The twins spent another hour thrashing out possible explanations with the cops, but Meghan knew they were speculating and with a glance at her watch, she rose.

‘Same rules,’ she told Chang when they were leaving. ‘We share.’

He nodded. It was how they worked when the twins and the cops worked on the same case. Parallel investigations. Sharing of intel.

---

Beth flagged a cab when they reached street level and glanced at her sister. ‘Where to?’

‘Our office. Let’s get our own wheels.’

Their office was on Columbus Avenue, a tall, glass-fronted, forty-four-story building that the eight of them owned outright.

One floor in the building was devoted to their office, Beth and Meghan lived in apartments on adjacent floors above the office. There were more apartments for the rest of the agents to use, though they had their own homes in the city. The other floors were rented out.

The building’s purchase was funded by a royal in a Middle Eastern country to whom Zeb had done a favor. A grateful royal had written a check with eight zeros in it and had handed it to Clare.

She had refused, he had been insistent. She had given the check to Zeb who then had formed an investment vehicle for the eight of them; the building was their first purchase.

---

The basement of the building had an extensive garage in which several SUVS were maintained in a ready-to-go condition. All the SUVs were outfitted with gear Broker had insisted on, gear not available at any dealer. Shatter and assault-rifle proof glass, run-flat tires, Kevlar and titanium reinforced bodies, WiFi, secure comms links…Meghan had stopped listening when Broker had enthusiastically read out his list.

Meghan headed to the nearest black SUV that looked silently ominous, keyed it open, and brought it to life with a satisfying growl.

‘Now, where?’ Beth asked when she had belted herself in.

‘The Minters.’

---

The twins hadn’t looked into Cali’s disappearance in any detail. An Agency mission had come up soon after Percy’s meeting with them.

Karachi had reared its head when the first mission was wrapped up. Karachi had been hot, brutal, and had required the twins to be on-site, to support Zeb and the others.

Beth had called the Minters before the first mission and had given them a spiel about corporate work taking precedence. The Minters had accepted the explanation. Cali had been gone for two years by then. They could wait for a few more months. Besides, the cops were still on the case.

---

Meghan punched in the coordinates to the Minter’s townhome, in Midtown East, not far from the UN headquarters on East 42 nd Street, and joined the stream of horns and fumes that was New York traffic.

She looked right when they were waiting at a light and spotted the pensive expression on her sister’s face.

They were identical twins, Meghan, the older one by a few seconds. They both had brown hair that fell to their shoulders, bright green eyes, and attractive features they had inherited from their mom. Both were tall, five feet seven in their socks, and had an innate confidence that Zeb’s training had polished.

She’s