Girl One: Murder (A Maya Gray FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 1)

By Molly Black

12 cold cases. 12 kidnapped women. One diabolical serial killer. In this riveting suspense thriller, a brilliant FBI agent faces a deadly challenge: decipher the mystery before each one is murdered.

FBI Special Agent Maya Gray, 39, has seen it all. She’s one of BAU’s rising stars and the go-to agent for hard-to-crack serial cases. When she receives a handwritten postcard promising to release 12 kidnapped women if she will solve 12 cold cases, she assumes it’s a hoax.

Until the note mentions that, among the captives, is her missing sister.

Maya, shaken, is forced to take it seriously. The cases she’s up against are some of the most difficult the FBI has ever seen. But the terms of his game are simple: If Maya solves a case, he will release one of the girls.

And if she fails, he will end a life.

Maya embarks with an urgency unlike any she’s ever felt. In a race against time, and with her sister’s life hanging in the balance, she must unravel the link between the 12 captives and end the killer’s dark game once and for all. Is this killer toying with her? Does he truly have her sister? Will he ever give her back?

Or will Maya end up sucked too deep into this killer’s twisted cat-and-mouse game to notice that she, herself, is the prey?

A complex psychological crime thriller full of twists and turns and packed with heart-pounding suspense, the MAYA GRAY mystery series will make you fall in love with a brilliant new female protagonist and keep you turning pages late into the night. It is a perfect addition for fans of Robert Dugoni, Rachel Caine, Melinda Leigh or Mary Burton.

Books #2 and #3 in the series—GIRL TWO: TAKEN and GIRL THREE: TRAPPED—are now also available.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Molly Black
• Release date: Oct 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094374956

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G I R L   O N E:

M U R D E R

(A Maya Gray FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 1)

M o l l y   B l a c k

Molly Black

Debut author Molly Black is author of the MAYA GRAY MYSTERY series, comprising three books (and counting).

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Molly loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.mollyblackauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2021 by Molly Black. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright polandinthelens, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

BOOKS BY MOLLY BLACK

MAYA GRAY MYSTERY SERIES

GIRL ONE: MURDER (Book #1)

GIRL TWO: TAKEN (Book #2)

GIRL THREE: TRAPPED (Book #3)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

CHAPTER ONE

Maya Gray of the FBI’s Cold Case Unit sat in her rental car, looking over a small house in the suburbs of Harristown, Missouri. It was freshly painted, with an actual white picket fence. The kind of place that developers loved to sell as the real American dream, even if Maya herself had never really dreamed of anything like it. Number thirteen.

She checked a copy of the case file on her phone to make sure that she had the right address, mentally going over the details of the case. Even for a routine visit like this, it was important to Maya that she had her facts straight.

Ok, so Ben Harrow had been found dead in a woodland ten years ago, in a protected area known for its rare flowers. He’d been stabbed repeatedly. A ring had been taken from him, as well as the contents of his wallet, presumably in a clumsy attempt to make it look like a robbery. Maya had all that already, but she read through anyway, making sure that she didn’t miss anything.

Today, she was due to talk to Timothy Jameson, a friend of Harrow’s. The file said original investigation had talked to him, so Maya needed to go over the same ground, even if it didn’t look to Maya like he would have much to tell her.

Taking a breath, she walked up to the house and rang the doorbell.

It took a while before anyone within answered, although the Toyota in the driveway indicated that someone was home. Maya could imagine Mr. Jameson looking at her through a peephole, or maybe with a camera, trying to judge if it was a good idea to answer.

This was where it helped to look like she did. She was tall for a woman, at almost five feet ten inches, and athletic, but the suit she wore hid most of that, making her look more delicate than she was. Her dark hair was tied back as professionally as possible, but a strand or two always got free. Maya didn’t bother with makeup, but even at thirty-five, her features had a kind of youthful glow to them that could pass for pretty in the right light. Her mouth tended to naturally quirk into a smile, even when there was no reason for it.

She knew she didn’t look threatening, and she found that made it easier to get people to help her. Even so, she wondered if it would be enough to get her in the door today, or if she would be left standing there. One of the benefits of not having a partner was that there would be no one to laugh if the homeowner simply ignored her.

Maya breathed a sigh of relief when a middle-aged man opened the door. He was rugged looking, in that formerly a quarterback but now living too well kind of way, taller than her, with unkempt brown hair, dark eyes, and a frame running slightly towards fat. He wore slacks and a t-shirt and looked Maya over far too openly for her taste.

Timothy Jameson? Maya asked with her best smile.

And you are? he replied.

It didn’t feel to Maya like the kind of suspicion of possible cops she got in some places. Maybe he was worried that she was there to try to sell him something.

Agent Gray, FBI Cold Case unit, she explained.

She took out her ID to show him. He took the time to look it over carefully.

I was hoping to ask you a few questions about the Ben Harrow case, Maya said. Just routine.

You’re looking into that now? Jameson asked, with a note in his voice that might have been irritation, or worry, or both. Maya was no expert, though.

 I’m going back through the files, Maya replied. She didn’t want him thinking that this was a full-scale investigation when it wasn’t. She didn’t want to get his hopes up. We like to review them every so often. But it would be helpful if you could answer a couple of questions for me. May I come in?

He hesitated. Maya had found that even the most law-abiding people hesitated when the FBI asked to come in, usually wondering if they’d left anything illegal lying around. 

Maya hoped that Jameson would let her in, though. He’d been one of Ben Harrow’s closest friends, working with him at the same insurance company for years. Maya found that the more she could learn about a victim’s life, the better, and Jameson was one of the best people to tell her more.

Yeah, I guess that would be ok, Jameson said. Although I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already said.

Sometimes, enough time passing can give people a different perspective on events, Maya said, stepping inside. The house had obviously started off as a neat, well-kept family home, but now it was untidy, with empty pizza boxes resting on the arm of one of the chairs as Jameson led the way through to the living room.

Maya took in the details of the place as she walked in. House plants on just about every surface that would hold them. Furniture worn and leather. There were bookshelves, where the contents seemed to be a random mix of sci-fi, fishing books, and practically a whole case on gardening and plants.

Take a seat, Jameson said. Iced tea?

Thank you, Maya said. Sitting among the plants sipping iced tea was a long way from her usual round of interview rooms and dusty files.

How does someone like you end up working in the FBI, anyway? You seem too… nice for it.

I joined out of the army, Maya said.

He looked at her like he could barely believe it. Maya was used to that. Even her parents had found it strange that their baby girl had gone off to fight, and then joined the FBI. Her mother still asked her when they FaceTimed if she didn’t want to find something safer to do.

I just wanted to talk about the night Ben Harrow disappeared, Maya said, taking the seat he’d gestured towards. Anything you remember might help. Any small detail.

I’m not sure how much I do remember, Jameson said. I mean, I want to help, but going over all of this again is difficult.

I know, Maya said. She knew better than anyone what it was like when someone close was missing or dead. But sometimes time can let you remember things you didn’t before. And the more you can tell me about Ben, the better. What was he like?

He was one of those guys who was always the life and soul of the party, Timothy said. People liked him. He was an outdoors guy, didn’t like being cooped up in an office all day. When he found out that I liked to hike and catalogue wildflowers, he insisted on coming along.

You and Ben used to go up to the woods where he was found? Maya asked.

Hiking, Jameson agreed. He used to like the chance to be outdoors, and I would go up for the chance to check the rare flowers in the reserve. It… it still feels horrible, imagining him lying there among the Western Prairie Fringed Orchid like that.

Yes, Maya agreed, although she wasn’t sure that she would recognize the flower if she saw it. She’d never been a flowers kind of girl growing up. She did recognize the name, though, and something about it nagged at her.

Maya knew better than to try to force the issue. When a thought like that wouldn’t come to her, she found it was usually better to leave it until it was ready. Instead, she kept going with the questions she wanted to ask.

Now, part of the reason I wanted to talk to you was that, at the time, you had some theories about what might have happened to Ben. You talked about him owing money to some dangerous people. Do you have any more details of who those people might be?

Maya saw Timothy look surprised by the question.

Oh, that… that’s a little embarrassing, he said. "You see, I don’t have any details. The FBI were asking me all these questions, because… well…"

Because it came out in the investigation that Ben was sleeping with your wife, Maya said.

Yes, Jameson said. There was a flash of anger there in his voice.

Maya had found that, working cold cases. Everyone thought the emotions would fade over time, but they didn’t. They hadn’t in her life, either.

I know the original inquiry briefly looked at you as a suspect, Maya said. They thought you had a motive, but you had an alibi. So tell them the rest?

I didn’t make it up, exactly, Timothy said, sounding defensive. I had a vague idea that Ben might be in trouble, so I told them. I just don’t know any details of it.

Maya tried to make some sense of that. She had to work out just how much truth there had been in all of this.

Why do you want to come here and stir up the past? he demanded.

It’s my job, Maya pointed out. Cold cases, remember?

Didn’t want to be where the action was? Jameson asked. There was a sharp edge to that, and Maya suspected that he was trying to get her to react just so that he didn’t have to talk about difficult things. She could see him fidgeting in place, playing with a ring that she suspected was his old wedding ring.

Actually, Maya had wanted all the action when she’d joined the FBI. She’d dreamed of charging in on drug raids or taking down terrorist cells. She’d stumbled into the Cold Cases Unit, but then she’d realized that she had the chance to do plenty of good. She could bring closure to families after years of wondering about the truth. She could put away killers long after they thought they’d gotten away with it. It was where she wanted to be.

It’s more fulfilling than you might think, Maya said.

What? Sorting through things where there’s nothing to find out? Jameson asked. He clearly didn’t like her bringing up the affair. His body language had hunched in protectively, so that he looked a little smaller now.

He hesitated for a moment or two. I’m sorry. When what Ben and Dianne were doing came out in the original investigation, the divorce ended up being rough.

No, I’m sorry, Maya said. The feeling of something at the back of her mind was still there. You had an alibi, though.

I was at a camp site fifty miles away, Jameson agreed. I like to camp out. Just me, and the stars, and the wilderness.

There was something about that, too, but it was a little easier to put her finger on.

If you prefer it to be just you, why a camp site? Is that what you would normally do? Maya asked.

Jameson shrugged. I felt like a change.

Maya sat there, feeling like something was starting to shift in her mind. Some sense of things being wrong here was starting to wake up in her. It was nothing, probably less than nothing, but to Maya, going camping in front of other people when he normally camped out alone felt like the kind of thing someone might do if they were trying to establish an alibi.

Then there was his not quite a lie to the original investigation. Ok, so maybe he was trying to be helpful, and Maya could understand someone wanting to deflect attention from themselves, but again, something about it made Maya want to take a closer look at Timothy Jameson.

She’d come to Timothy Jameson as something just routine, but now, she was starting to have suspicions about him. He was certainly reacting more to her questions, with small movements, like he wanted to dart up out of his seat and be anywhere else but here.

"Can you tell me more about anything you do remember from that time? Maya said. The more you can tell me, the more chance I have of finding Ben’s killer."

There isn’t really anything, Timothy said. As I think we’ve established with the fact I missed that my wife was having an affair with my best friend, I wasn’t exactly the best at spotting details.

No, Maya supposed that she could understand that. She took out her phone to glance at the file again, wanting to make sure that she hadn’t missed anything, but mostly wanting an excuse to think for a moment.

As she stared at the file, Maya remembered where she’d heard about the Western Prairie Fringed Orchid before.

The enormity of it made her palms suddenly sweaty and made her want to blurt out what she thought she knew. No, she had to be more careful than that. She had to check that she hadn’t misheard. She watched Jameson and thought that she could see a small bead of sweat forming on his brow.

I’m sorry, Jameson said. Is that everything? I have things I need to do.

Just one thing, Maya said. You know flowers, right?

I would like to think so, Jameson agreed. It even seemed to take away some of the hostility that had come up between them.

What were the ones Ben was lying among again? I can never get these things straight.

The Western Prairie Fringed Orchid, Jameson said.

Those words hit Maya like lead weights. She had to fight to keep her reaction off her face, because inside… well, inside, she was freaking out, almost panicking. She stared at Timothy Jameson, trying to fit the pieces together.

In that moment, she was certain that she was in the room with Ben Harrow’s killer.

Maya knew what she should do. She should leave like nothing had happened and come back with backup. But what if Jameson realized his mistake the moment she was gone? What if he disappeared while Maya was waiting for backup?

No, she had to do this, right now. There was no other way.

Maya nodded to herself and rose from her seat, trying to make it look as normal as possible, in spite of the sudden mix of fear and adrenaline coursing through her. To Jameson, it probably looked like she was getting ready to leave.

Maybe she could have just drawn her service weapon then and told him to get down on the floor, but she wanted to hear confirmation first. Maybe there was another explanation for this she hadn’t thought of.

How do you know that, Timothy? Maya asked. "How did you know that it was there, specifically, and not in some other part of the forest?"

She saw the change in his expression, the sudden realization that he’d said the wrong thing.

Someone… someone must have told me.

It was a detail we never released to the public.

That was standard practice: hold some details back, so that they could weed out all the crazies and the attention seekers claiming to have committed a crime. Have something that they could verify. As far as the public weas concerned, the murder had taken place in an ordinary section of forest.

Maya stared at Jameson, and he stared back at her. She saw something in his expression shift, becoming colder and more dangerous. There was a kind of fury there that hadn’t been there before, barely contained.

Maya started to reach for her Glock, because in that moment she desperately wanted a gun on him. Jameson was faster, though, charging forward with all the speed and strength of a former football player.

Maya had a fraction of a second to make a decision. She abandoned her attempt to get to her gun, because that was a recipe for wrestling over it and just praying that she didn’t get shot with her own weapon. Besides, was she really going to shoot an unarmed man?

Instead, she hit Jameson as he came in with the best punch she could manage, putting all her weight behind it as he came forward. She heard Jameson groan with the connection, but even so, the momentum of his charge was enough to bear them both back into the chair Maya had been sitting on.

The whole thing tipped over to the ground, so that Maya hit with a jarring impact. There, he struggled to come up on top, presumably reasoning that he could beat Maya senseless while she lay there.

Adrenaline cut through the pain of being slammed to the ground, and Maya reacted on instinct. She’d trained for this. She knew how to fight. Even as Timothy tried to rear up, she hooked a leg under his thigh, turning and flipping him over, so that now, she was the one on top.

Even from there, he tried to punch at her, and he was strong enough that when the strikes connected, they hurt; but he was on the bottom now, and he didn’t have gravity on his side behind the blows. Maya gritted her teeth and took the ones she had to, staying on top, trapping Jameson’s arms as best she could.

He tried to buck her clear, but she rode the movement, letting him turn as he tried to stand so that she ended up behind him. She kept her weight on him, ignoring his flailing, grabbing one of his arms and working to wrench it behind his back. He was strong, strong enough that Maya started to think that she might not be able to do it.

She had to pivot her whole body around to manage it, and the moment she got her cuffs on one wrist,