PRAISE
PRAISE FOR COLD-BLOODED
“Cold-Blooded is the embodiment of a top-notch, great thriller. Lisa Regan will make you thankful for your safe, comfortable bed while you’re hiding under the covers reading this quintessential, calculated, maniacal masterpiece. Cold-Blooded is a mix of gripping terror and tension.”—Dana Mason, Author of Dangerous Embrace
ALSO BY LISA REGAN
PRAISE FOR HOLD STILL
“Hold on tight when you read Hold Still, for the Lisa Regan roller coaster has taken thrill rides to a whole new level! She sends you up that first hill and then just drops you into a twisting, turning maelstrom of breathtaking suspense! Hold Still is one of the most captivating books I’ve ever read!”—Michael Infinito, Author of 12:19 and In Blog We Trust
“Tense, harrowing, and chillingly real, Regan weaves yet another engagingly sinister tale that will leave your nerves on edge right up to the frightening end.”—Nancy S. Thompson, Author of The Mistaken
PRAISE FOR FINDING CLAIRE FLETCHER
“Readers should drop what they’re reading and pick up a copy of Finding Claire Fletcher.” —Gregg Olsen, New York Times bestselling author
“Author Regan keeps the tension alive from the first page. Her psychological insight into her characters make the story as intriguing as it is real as today’s headlines. This is a well-written and thought-provoking novel that will keep you riveted until the conclusion.”—Suspense Magazine, Sept/Oct 2013 issue
PRAISE FOR ABERRATION
“With Kassidy Bishop, Lisa Regan has created a character that’s not only smart, but vulnerable. It’s that kind of complexity that lifts her novels from others in the suspense genre.”—Gregg Olsen, New York Times Bestselling author.
“Aberration is a sophisticated and compelling suspense novel. Just when you think you know what’s next, the story whips you around a corner into shocking new territory and you discover nothing is quite what it seems. Aberration will keep you reading, and guessing, until the very end, when not one but two shocking twists await the reader. Lisa Regan has also created that rarity, a wonderfully original and complex heroine in Kassidy Bishop, who is a tough and bright FBI agent but also refreshingly human. Someone to root for, fear for, and hope we meet again in another Lisa Regan novel.”—Mark Pryor, author of The Bookseller (Hugo Marston series)
NOTE TO READERS
Many of the places mentioned in this novel are real places, businesses, et cetera in Philadelphia. I try to make the setting as authentic as possible. However, sometimes it is necessary to fabricate certain things. For example, Dirk’s Gameplex is fake, and Franklin West, the high school mentioned throughout this book, is complete fiction. I made it up and all of the events that took place within it. Franklin West figures heavily in another novel, HARM, unrelated to this book, which will be released in 2017. It is in that book that the 2006 school shooting mentioned herein occurs. Also, in service of the story, I have occasionally taken liberties in order to move the plot forward. So if you find yourself saying, “That’s not entirely accurate,” you would be right. This is, after all, a work of fiction.
Lisa Regan
Cold-Blooded
In loving memory of Walter Conlen
and for Shilie Turner
Chapter 1
May 9, 2000
She’d gotten a late start. It was a quarter after seven as Sydney Adams jogged that evening along Boxer’s Trail, a path for runners that meandered through Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park east of the Schuylkill River and looped around the outside of the park’s athletic field. But it was May, and the sun still strained on the horizon, not willing to give up the fight, even at this late hour. Soon though, night would descend. She didn’t like to start so late, but her grandmother had made breaded pork chops, and Sydney had gorged herself until she felt bloated and lethargic. She’d almost skipped the run. Track and Field season was nearly over. What was one practice run?
But she needed to think. She needed to be alone.
Columns of sunlight filtered through the thick copse of trees on her left. The air had cooled since that afternoon but only slightly. It had been a nearly ninety-degree day, and she’d sweated it out gracelessly with the rest of her classmates at Franklin West High School. Now the humidity lingered, clinging to her bare thighs, condensing into a fine sheen of perspiration.
Sydney pushed herself, running faster than usual. She passed a couple jogging with their dogs—a greyhound and a husky—a bicyclist, and then a knot of teenage boys whose catcalls trailed after her. She picked up her pace, ears pricked to any sounds behind her that might suggest someone approaching. The tension in her body eased when she’d gone another quarter-mile without incident. The light was seeping away, the shadows around her lengthening. All she could hear now were the sounds of her raging heartbeat, her labored breath, and her sneakers pounding the trail.
None of it drowned out thoughts of him—of what had happened between them.
Mentally she calculated the days. It had been twenty-one days since he had kissed her, touched her, taken her. She had let him. There was no denying that. She could have stopped him at any time. She should have. He was older. He was married. And he was white.
And yet . . .
She willed her burning leg muscles to move faster, harder. Her entire body was slick with sweat. It ran in fat drops down her face and neck, pooling between her breasts, sliding down her spine and gathering at the cleft of her ass.
What would Lonnie think?
A lump formed in her throat, and she swallowed quickly. Her boyfriend would never know. No one would ever know. Only the two of them. It had happened one time because they both wanted it, and now it was in the past. She might be a teenager, but she was far from naïve. She knew exactly how scandalous the situation was, and she had no interest in continuing with it. She had a future. She had Lonnie and Georgetown and a grandmother she didn’t want to disappoint. A grandmother who had worked hard to raise her and her sister after her parents had died. A grandmother who had moved heaven and earth so Sydney could afford to go to college in the fall.
Their flirtation, or whatever it was, had to be over. Still, she thought of his hands gripping her hips, his breath hot and rapid on the back of her neck. His mouth—