Libra: Murders of the Zodiac, #9

By Paris Morgan

She'd always wanted to be a detective, at least that's what Leslie reminds herself of every day with the Libra killer on the loose.

Each crime scene leaves Leslie feeling sick. The murders are as gruesome as always, but it's the little zest added to every murder that makes Leslie realize they might have a mole on the inside. Ryan's about to become a father and although he's mind is still on the game, he can't help but be a little distracted.

As more bodies pile up in the morgue, it's time to face the fact they have a snitch on their team. Not knowing who to trust, Leslie teams up with Adam hoping to put an end to the vicious murders when the next victim is someone on their team.

Ryan uncovers new information, but knows he needs to trust his team if he's going to share it. The Libra killer is upping the ante and Ryan wants nothing more than to apprehend the killer before his wife goes into labor.

Who do you trust when you can't trust anyone?

In the ninth installment of the Murders of the Zodiac, Paris Morgan captivates her readers with more plot twists, gruesome murders and a leak in the department. With everything working against them, this dynamic duo has to pull out all the stops to stop this month's Zodiac Killer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paris Morgan
• Release date: Sep 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223379829

Book preview

This book is dedicated to Zesty PA. You were there urging me on from the moment I had the idea, and now I’ve made you a killer. Our love of candy corn is real and I’m glad I found a friend in you. Thanks for keeping me on track.

Chapter 1

I glanced over my shoulder, unsure if I’d lost the person pursuing me. Out of breath, I leaned against the brick wall hidden out of view of the street behind the dumpster.

When I’d left work, I had gone to one of my local haunts, hoping to relax with a drink or two before heading home. Someone must have slipped something into my drink, because no sooner had I walked down the street than she had jumped out in front of me. The superhero stood in my path, causing me to think I was hallucinating.

She looked like she had stepped straight out of a comic book, with her black, skintight suit and long black hair. While all of the markings on her costume were Asian in origin, her skin was a golden black instead of a pale white. She held a long thin blade thing that seemed more like a bread knife, but a lot longer.

Going home? It’s a little early, even for you, isn’t it? She flipped that sword thing through the air a few times while giving me a creepy grin.

How do you know what time I leave to go home? I had sputtered at her.

Oh, I know all about you. How you prey on women and take them home to get your rocks off. It’s about time it worked the other way around, don’t you think?

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Yes, you do. Now, run. It makes it so much more fun for me.

Something told me she wasn’t joking, so I took off at a run. I heard her behind me for the first few blocks, but I’d changed direction and headed back to the bar. She’d mentioned that it wasn’t my usual time to go home. Obviously, she’d been watching me, and I wasn’t going to take the chance that she might follow me home, or worse, be waiting for me when I got there.

While hiding in the alley wasn’t exactly what I’d wanted, it seemed the safest course of action at the moment.

I turned my phone to silent and lowered the brightness setting so that she didn’t spot me as I texted a friend.

Got myself into a situation and I need to be picked up. Can you help? I texted my best friend, Travis.

This had to be one of those kinds of vigilante things where the person dressed up as a superhero and tried to exact justice. I mean, I tried to have fun on occasion, but I never took advantage of girls who weren’t asking for it. It was always consensual fun.

Someone must have complained, and this person was stalking me, hoping that I’d apologize.

The phone vibrated, and I looked down at it.

Sure, where are you? Travis responded.

As I typed in the address for across the street, I heard the rattle of a can farther up the alley, but I couldn’t see anything that would have caused it to move. I hit send and poked my head around the corner of the dumpster.

From behind me, the wind moved, and I felt the blade against the back of my neck.

You didn’t get very far, did you? She cackled in delight. I’ll give you credit for circling back toward the bar. It’s something I would have thought of, but it’s too bad you still have to meet justice.

Justice? Take a picture of me on my knees and get it over with. I’ll tell whoever I am upset that I’m sorry, okay? I offered quickly.

Not good enough. An apology isn’t what I’m looking for. She lifted the sword from my neck, and as I turned to face her, she brought the sword down.

As she disappeared into the shadows, my ride drove up across the street and my phone started to vibrate on the ground.

When Travis couldn’t find me, he called the police.

***

Kevin

I had taken a job with the Urban Energy Corporation about six months ago. It was supposed to be an easy undercover job—apply to be one of the tech guys and fix their computer problems while gathering information from the company at the same time.

Their systems hadn’t been all that hard to work in, and I’d even upgraded some of their security protocols to help keep hackers—like myself—from getting inside. Which probably wasn’t what the FBI had in mind when they’d sent me undercover.

So far, everyone in the company had been really helpful, and no one seemed to know that I had a second agenda while at my job every day. The main thing that bothered me about this undercover work was the fact that I wasn’t able to help Ryan and Leslie when they needed it.

Ryan Fox and his partner, Leslie Boxe, had been chasing a serial killer. Or, rather, serial killers, over the past few months. There was one man who was controlling each of the killers and making their lives miserable. I’d managed to help when the Aries killer was in California, and Ryan had become a really good friend.

While undercover, I had to maintain my cover, and I couldn’t call them for any reason in case the people I was trying to get evidence on were watching.

The Urban Energy Corporation had come up in many of their first cases, and it appeared that the current owner, or head of the company, John Reed, was actually involved in another corporation that was a bank for laundering money.

The FBI had been trying to find a link, or a way, into the banking side of the company for a while, but John Reed had covered his tracks very well. Most of the stuff attributed to him couldn’t be true or possible because he rarely left his home except for going into the big office where only the big, important people met with him.

I’d been collecting the names of those who had appointments from his secretary’s calendar, but so far, all the people who had been listed had legitimate reasons for seeing the head of the company.

Each night when I arrived home, I took out my laptop that I’d connected to the Urban Energy systems and spent hours adding cookies and data, scouring programs to collect information that might have escaped notice floating around in the computer system.

It had taken many nights of digging beneath layers of well-constructed protection protocols to hide the connections between the two companies.

While on the outside, it seemed that they were as far apart as any two companies could be, but I’d come to the conclusion that the Urban Energy Corporation was literally a front to hold all the money for the Gold Money Exchange. It seemed that the energy structure was a money-making venture, but all of the contracts were with front companies for cartels and thugs.

I’d spent enough time digging through things at the FBI that I could easily identify when a name didn’t ring true. Most of the companies that did business with Urban Energy had pretty decent covers, but their business structures had started to bother me. It didn’t make sense.

An energy company that helped with the environment sounded like a dream come true, but most of the stuff people did for this company was honestly just inputting data.

No one from the company would be coming to my house, and I’d taken precautions to back up my work, but I had an entire wall listed with transactions and companies that corresponded to dates when cartels had been paid or had paid in money that needed to be cleaned.

There weren’t two companies, The Gold Money Exchange and Urban Energy. No, it was the same company hidden and mingled together to keep law enforcement from figuring out what they were doing.

If I could just come up with the actual papers and start tracing transactions, proving what was really going on inside of this respectable company.

It was time to make the phone call and get the FBI working out some of the logistics. I could do it all myself, but if we had a couple of agents working on it, it would cut down the amount of time needed until we could serve a warrant and shut down this underground organization.

The flip phone I’d bought for these kinds of calls always made me laugh. It was like taking a walk back through the Stone Ages of phones. Thankfully, the FBI always let me work with some of the best and newest technology since I’d been with them, so I didn’t have to use these phones for very long.

Agent Watson, I’ve got an update. I found the connection between the Gold Money Exchange and Urban Energy. I’m going to need a few agents to help me pull the evidence and connect the dots.

Really? That’s more than we expected to uncover. When can we get you to come in and get started with this?

Probably by the end of the week. I don’t want to give them any indication that I’ve been in their systems, and if we work over the weekend, it won’t be until Monday that any alarms are triggered.

Very well. I’ll make sure that there are a few technicians here on Friday night, but if I’m authorizing the overtime, you’re going to need to tell me what you know.

No problem, sir. I believe that the two companies are one and the same. From what I can tell, Urban Energy is a consulting firm that helps give environmental advice to corporations about where to build, as to hurt the environment the least. I shook my head. It had been right there in front of me the entire time.

Do you have proof? Agent Watson demanded.

Partially. Which is why I need a few others to go over what I’ve concluded, and then help me to put the other pieces together.

This is huge, and I don’t want to take a chance that the courts or their lawyers will get it thrown out on a technicality. We would lose all the work we’ve done, and they would destroy the evidence.

"I agree, sir. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone else about this so that we can have