Needing You (A Hailey Rock FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 7)

By Rylie Dark

Despite being a rising star in the BAU unit, FBI Special Agent Hailey Rock lives in the shadow of her older sister, a sheriff in their small Midwestern town, and their parents’ favorite. But when bodies are discovered in hoop houses across farm country, Hailey realizes a killer is leaving cryptic clues—and may just be taunting them right into his next trap.

“A brilliant book. I couldn’t put it down and I never guessed who the murderer was!”
—Reader review for Only Murder

NEEDING YOU is book #7 in a long-anticipated new series by #1 bestseller Rylie Dark, whose bestseller SEE HER RUN (a free download) has received over 700 five star ratings and reviews.

A cat-and-mouse thriller with harrowing twists and turns and filled with heart-pounding suspense, the HAILEY ROCK mystery series offers a fresh twist on the genre as it introduces two brilliant protagonists who will make you fall in love and keep you turning pages late into the night.

Future books in the series are also available.

“I loved this thriller, read it in one sitting. Lots of twists and turns and I didn’t guess the
culprit at all… Already pre-ordered the second!”
—Reader review for Only Murder

“This book takes off with a bang… An excellent read, and I'm looking forward to the next book!”
—Reader review for SEE HER RUN

“Fantastic book! It was hard to put down. I can’t wait to see what happens next!”
—Reader review for SEE HER RUN

“The twists and turns kept coming. Can't wait to read the next book!”
—Reader review for SEE HER RUN

“A must-read if you enjoy action-packed stories with good plots!”
—Reader review for SEE HER RUN

“I really like this author and this series starts with a bang. It will keep you turning the pages till the end of the book and wanting more.”
—Reader review for SEE HER RUN

“I can't say enough about this author! How about ‘out of this world’! This author is going to go far!”
—Reader review for ONLY MURDER

“I really enjoyed this book… The characters were alive, and the twists and turns were great. It will keep you reading till the end and leave you wanting more.”
—Reader review for NO WAY OUT

“This is an author that I highly recommend. Her books will have you begging for more.”
—Reader review for NO WAY OUT

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rylie Dark
• Release date: Apr 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9781094395913

Book preview

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N E E D I N G

Y O U

(A Hailey Rock Mystery—Book 7)

R y l i e   D a r k

Rylie Dark

Bestselling author Rylie Dark is author of the SADIE PRICE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER series, comprising six books; of the CARLY SEE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER series, comprising six books; of the MIA NORTH FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER series, comprising six books (and counting); of the MORGAN STARK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER series, comprising five books; of the HAILEY ROCK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER series, comprising six books (and counting); of the TARA STRONG MYSTERY series, comprising six books (and counting); of the ALEX QUINN FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER series, comprising five books (and counting); of the MAEVE SHARP FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER, comprising five books (and counting); of the KELLY CRUZ MYSTERY series, comprising five books (and counting); of the BECCA THORN MYSTERY series, comprising five books (and counting); and of the JESSIE REACH MYSTERY series, comprising five books (and counting).

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

Copyright © 2024 by Rylie Dark. 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 kikerubio_dlz, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

BOOKS BY RYLIE DARK

JESSIE REACH MYSTERY

HIS OTHER SIDE (Book #1)

HIS OTHER SELF (Book #2)

HIS OTHER SECRET (Book #3)

HIS OTHER WISH (Book #4)

HIS OTHER PLAN (Book #5)

BECCA THORN MYSTERY

GONE COLD (Book #1)

GONE DARK (Book #2)

GONE SILENT (Book #3)

GONE HOLLOW (Book #4)

GONE FOREVER (Book #5)

KELLY CRUZ MYSTERY

WHERE YOU GO (Book #1)

WHERE YOU HIDE (Book #2)

WHERE YOU SLEEP (Book #3)

WHERE YOU RUN (Book #4)

WHERE YOU FEAR (Book #5)

MAEVE SHARP FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

WITH MALICE (Book #1)

WITH ENVY (Book #2)

WITH VENGEANCE (Book #3)

WITH RAGE (Book #4)

WITH YOU (Book #5)

ALEX QUINN SUSPENSE THRILLER

FIRST, MURDER (Book #1)

SECOND, DEATH (Book #2)

THIRD, ENVY (Book #3)

FOURTH, LUST (Book #4)

FIFTH, WRATH (Book #5)

TARA STRONG MYSTERY

GIRL WITHOUT A CHANCE (Book #1)

GIRL WITHOUT A HOME (Book #2)

GIRL WITHOUT A TRACE (Book #3)

GIRL WITHOUT A NAME (Book #4)

GIRL WITHOUT A PRAYER (Book #5)

GIRL WITHOUT A PAST (Book #6)

HAILEY ROCK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

BEHIND YOU (Book #1)

BESIDE YOU (Book #2)

AFTER YOU (Book #3)

WATCHING YOU (Book #4)

JUDGING YOU (Book #5)

FOLLOWING YOU (Book #6)

SADIE PRICE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

ONLY MURDER (Book #1)

ONLY RAGE (Book #2)

ONLY HIS (Book #3)

ONLY ONCE (Book #4)

ONLY SPITE (Book #5)

ONLY MADNESS (Book #6)

MIA NORTH FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

SEE HER RUN (Book #1)

SEE HER HIDE (Book #2)

SEE HER SCREAM (Book #3)

SEE HER VANISH (Book #4)

SEE HER GONE (Book #5)

SEE HER DEAD (Book #6)

CARLY SEE FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

NO WAY OUT (Book #1)

NO WAY BACK (Book #2)

NO WAY HOME (Book #3)

NO WAY LEFT (Book #4)

NO WAY UP (Book #5)

NO WAY TO DIE (Book #6)

MORGAN STARK FBI SUSPENSE THRILLER

TOO LATE (Book #1)

TOO CLOSE (Book #2)

TOO FAR GONE (Book #3)

TOO LOST (Book #4)

TOO BROKEN (Book #5)

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

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

PROLOGUE

A farmer’s field in Howell County, southern Missouri

May 30

Midnight

Marlene Walters ran.

Her lungs heaved in the cool springtime air. Her legs ached as she pumped them faster than she had since playing sports in high school ten years before. Her face stung from where she had rushed through some woodland in the dark, and the branches had scratched her. One eye was closed and teary from getting scraped by those branches.

She wanted to stop. She wanted to hide. And still, she ran.

Marlene Walters had left the woodland behind and now ran across an open, fallow field, picking up speed. She dared a look over her shoulder and didn’t see him.

Good. She might have a chance. He was following, though. Marlene knew he was following.

Despite her fear, she could feel herself slowing down. She shouldn’t be this tired so quickly. Was she really that out of shape? She knew she had been letting herself go big time, but she hadn’t been running all that long.

Marlene forced herself to keep going. The night was overcast and she could barely see, which meant he could barely see. She might just have a chance.

Her pounding heart clenched as she saw a white shape ahead of her. A person?

She almost called out for help, then realized he might be close. She didn’t want to give away her location.

Marlene ran toward the white shape and realized it was too big to be a person. As she drew closer, she saw more white shapes. They looked like low domed benches. Gravestones!

No. That was her imagination playing tricks on her. They were far too big to be gravestones. A few more steps, and she realized what they were.

Hoop houses, or polytunnels as some folks called them.

They were long, white domes of polyethylene held up by steel bars, open at both ends and used to cover crops. The sun warmed them up, and the domed roof kept hail and rain away. Lots of farmers used them to protect crops in winter. As a country girl, she should have recognized them straight off.

But she was panicked, and her mind felt cloudy. She couldn’t think straight. What the hell was wrong with her?

Suddenly she fell flat on her face, the impact with the earth knocking the air out of her lungs.

For a moment, Marlene lay face down in the dirt, struggling to regain her breath.

When she finally raised herself up, her head swam. Unsteadily, she rose to her feet. The snap of a twig being trod upon made her spin around, that motion almost making her fall.

She wavered a moment, got her balance and peered into the darkness. Marlene saw nothing behind her, but it was so dark she couldn’t trust her eyes.

Besides, he had been wearing all black, black as the night. Even that big duffel bag strapped across his back was black.

Marlene started to run again and before making it ten feet she knew she couldn’t run much further. Her muscles felt heavy, her movements uncoordinated, and she couldn’t think straight. Had she hit her head when she fell? She couldn’t remember doing that.

Nevertheless, she knew she couldn’t run. She needed to hide.

Marlene Walters stumbled toward the nearest hoop house, hoping it could save her when she herself could not. There was a whole row of them. If she could hide in one, he might not find her. It was so dark outside that he might pass on by, thinking she was still running.

As she got to it, she stumbled again and fell half inside it, landing on the cold, damp earth of the interior.

With the last of her strength, she crawled inside. The hoop house was empty of plants, whatever winter crop having already been harvested.

Marlene crawled further inside, her numb fingers clutching at clods of earth, her sluggish body barely responding.

While her body remained slow to respond, her ears worked perfectly well, and so she heard the heavy footsteps approaching.

Marlene rolled onto her back and looked out the half circle that was the hoop house’s open entrance. She saw a shadow, a vague darker form against the black, drawing nearer.

He was coming.

Marlene kept quiet, muffling her labored breathing with her hands, willing herself to become invisible, hoping against hope that he would pass her by. She tried to raise herself onto her elbows to be prepared to flee, but she couldn’t manage it. Had it been that pill? Was that why she felt this way? The pill had been something else? It had sure looked like the real thing.

But she couldn’t figure it out. Her mind was so fuzzy, so tired …

Footsteps outside. The dark form passed by the entrance to the hoop house. Marlene swallowed a scream.

He vision grew dark around the edges, her eyelids heavy.

No. Don’t fall asleep. You can’t fall asleep.

She didn’t hear the footsteps anymore. Marlene forced her eyes to open. All she saw was the half-circle of the entrance and the darkness beyond.

Then his head poked around the corner, and he looked inside. Marlene was too tired to call for help.

The last thing Marlene Walters saw before she slipped into unconsciousness was him stepping into the hoop house and dropping the duffel bag on the ground. He unzipped it and pulled out a rope.

CHAPTER ONE

A warehouse district on the outskirts of Chicago

7 a.m., the next morning

Despite the hard snap of the cold Chicago wind, Special Agent Hailey Rock sweated under her Kevlar. The heavy body armor and helmet weighed down on her. Trapped inside that bulletproof shell, her heart fluttered like a frightened bird. This was it.

She and the SWAT team waited around the corner from the warehouse where the women were kept. By her side stood her partner, Special Agent Graham Vance, and her older sister Alice. They all wore armor and carried assault rifles. This raid was too important to go in just with their usual 9mm Glocks.

A train wailed in the distance. The only other sound was the soft crackle of a radio the team leader carried.

Back entrance secure. Over.

Monitoring the rooftop. No sign of movement. Over.

Backup team in position. Over.

Hailey took a deep breath. A couple of months before, she and Graham had tracked down a member of a cartel-run human trafficking ring who was an old associate of a suspect in her little sister’s abduction almost twenty years before. The suspect himself was dead, killed in a car accident, but the associate copped a plea and spilled what he knew.

That included the location of a group of trafficked women in this warehouse, a warehouse used a secret brothel.

He hadn’t said what occurred here. He hadn’t needed to and Hailey sure as hell didn’t ask for details.

Now she found herself at the cusp of solving the long, dark mystery of her life. What had happened to Mindy? She had disappeared at age twelve while Hailey and Alice had still been in high school. She had never been seen since. No body or other material trace of her had ever been found. No sightings. Nothing.

A drug mule named Snake Eyes who worked for one of the cartels used to drive through Pleasant, Missouri, their hometown, on his way up north. That same cartel ran a trafficking ring and was using this warehouse. The theory was that Snake Eyes got to know Mindy somehow and lured her into his pickup. She had last been seen that day in a pickup matching the description of a vehicle he had driven at that time.

So now they were here, ready to bust a brothel of trafficked women run by that very same cartel. Would Mindy be here? Would she even be alive after all this time?

Hailey had no idea. Her training told her that the odds were that her little sister had been dead for years, but Hailey had beaten the odds before.

Still, the idea that Mindy was truly gone terrified her.

What also terrified her was the thought of discovering her in this warehouse.

No matter what the result, the chipper little girl Hailey remembered was long dead, whether her body lived on or not.

Ready to go in five, the commander told the lead team.

He was taking point alongside Hailey and Alice. For an FBI agent and a rural sheriff to take point in a SWAT team raid was highly irregular, but the women wouldn’t take no for an answer and the SWAT guys couldn’t bring themselves to argue, not when they knew family was on the line. Many of them had kids at home.

Four …

While Hailey hadn’t seen the entrance to the warehouse directly, she had its image burned into her memory from the surveillance photos.

… three …

The Swat team hid around the corner of an adjoining warehouse. They would have to run across the intervening space and up to a door beside a shuttered loading dock. They’d break open this door and move in.

… two …

There were at least three guards in there, all heavily armed, an unknown number of women, and several customers.

… one …

The customers’ cars were parked behind the warehouse. They’d be running past them as they charged. Running past the cars of people who might be hurting Mindy right this very moment.

Hailey’s hands gripped the assault rifle tight.

Go!

With that one word, shouted by the commander to the team behind him and into the walkie-talkie he had on his shoulder, three things happened simultaneously.

First, a Chicago municipal engineer shut off the power to the warehouse, leaving the interior in darkness and cutting off the security cameras on all four corners of the roof.

Second, the SWAT team rushed for the warehouse from two different points, one section to storm the loading dock and the other team to cover the fire escape.

Third, Hailey and Alice lost all professional control and rushed ahead of their teammates.

The commander may have shouted at them to remain in formation, but Hailey was never sure. She heard nothing, saw nothing except that plain steel door hiding a sight that would change a miserable past into an unknown but certainly torturous future.

The two sisters rushed across the parking lot, glancing at the cars they passed to make sure none of the human monsters who preyed on these enslaved women were inside. No, they had all gone into the warehouse, where they were now trapped.

Where they would meet the full fury of the Rock family.

Hailey and Alice got to the door at the same moment. Hailey tried the door and cursed when she found it locked.

She whirled around and saw the commander and the rest of the team a few paces behind them, the biggest of the men toting a handheld battering ram.

Hurry up! her sister Alice shouted.

From inside,