Last Breath (Emma Last FBI Mystery #1)

by Mary Stone

He’d escaped his parents, his marriage, and his mortgage.

He’d only married Marsha to prove to his parents he wasn’t gay.

But it wasn’t until last month, right around her twenty-eighth birthday, that ghosts started popping up in her daily life.

three of their performers have turned up dead over the past two weeks.

A photo of a dazzling woman in golden sparkles flashed on the screen.

“The first death, that of twenty-six-year-old Penelope Dowe, was originally thought to be an accident.”

“She fell to her death in the middle of a show when her safety lines broke.”

However, late last night, our forensic team came through with a report that the safety lines appeared to be cut with a sharp object prior to snapping.

The next photo was a promotional still of the man in full clown makeup. He held a hoop of sparklers in his white-gloved hand.

second death, that of forty-eight-year-old Dennis Hamel, occurred almost exactly a week after Dowe’s.

Vance coughed to cover a laugh. “How do you light a firecracker that big and not realize it? Even if you are drunk? They’re not the same thing.”

“Exactly. And then we come to the third case.” Jacinda turned her gaze back to her device.

“Kyle Perkins was the circus strongman. Twenty-seven years old

He drank a protein shake, as he did every morning, and was dead within ten minutes.”

I sipped my soda and bit back a grin at the thought of it. The circus was on its knees, bending lower than our trick horse kneeling in the dirt.

She’d just come back to swing through the air, as if she didn’t have a care in the world, as if she hadn’t abandoned her own flesh and blood just a month earlier.

nothing compared to the gory remains of that bumbling drunk of a clown, Dennis Hamel—another loser who’d left his family behind.

always wondered what a firecracker through the chest would do to a human body, and it’d been something of a pleasure to ...

Then, yesterday, good ole Kyle Perkins, a man just so perfect and so talented, who ditched his wife and didn’t u...

Our troupe’s strongman taken down by an itsy-bitsy little glass of chocolate-flavored poison.

I could relate to that…wanting to make trouble. The circus was a crime scene now because of me, and I enjoyed the hell out of that fact.

Now that multiple murders were being examined and the Feds were around, the whole circus would suffer a slow death. I planned on making sure we never put on a show again.

“I’m sorry to hear that…that Penelope’s death was on purpose. If she wasn’t safe, nobody’s safe. We’ll tell you whatever we can.”

After looking around the circus grounds all morning, she was finally going to see a ghost.

was a woman in a bloodied gold leotard with only half of her beautiful face intact.

The ghost pointed to the very trailer of the last person who’d spoken to the protesters, Ringmaster Reggie O’Rourke.

Just as Mia’s transfer request came through, she learned that Agent Sloan Grant had been granted the same relocation.

Sloan Grant. Her late brother’s would-be fiancée…had she said yes. Ned, upset and out of control, crashed his car and died on the way home from his proposal gone wrong.

So far, Mia had managed to avoid her brother’s ex-girlfriend entirely.

Then there was Special Agent Vance Jessup. He seemed intent on picking up where they’d left off.

Special Agent Chris Parker had happened. After she’d fallen for him, Chris had betrayed their team.

he’d been found out, he’d held her hostage but then shot himself in front of her.

All she wanted was for the people she loved to stop dying.

The taller one seemed to be the steadier of the two. “Ty Belloise. I’m the knife thrower around here. This is Jamie Hearn, resident contortionist.”

Jamie leaned into Ty, shaking his head. “I joined the circus three years ago to get away from my parents. My dad…”

The people in this circus are the first real family I’ve ever had. And now Penelope and Dennis and Kyle…”

Jamie wiped at his face. “Reggie works hard to make sure we all work together well.

vets the performers and trains them himself. He makes sure we all get along.”

Ty took a deep breath, one hand patting Jamie’s back. “You have to find out who’s responsible and stop them. If this keeps up, we might not ever be able to reopen.”

All three of them had screwed over their real family members and looked for acceptance here.

Because of one night, one stupid choice, Betty Weaver’s death would be truly tragic.

Inside, O’Rourke commanded Calliope to take off her shirt and sit on his lap.

The whore and her old man would get what was coming to them. I’d see to it.

Instead, he’d been unable to sleep, with young Bunny’s words running laps in his brain.

“We have the best times when it’s just me and Reggie!”

Between just the two of them, a man in his fifties and a tween girl.

What did they know about what an adult should—or shouldn’t—be doing with them?

Most pedophiles had a type, and as terrible as it still was, O’Rourke seemed to prefer older adolescents.

Did that mean Bunny was safe? No. He could be grooming her so she’d be open to a sexual relationship in a few years.

involved the smarmy ringmaster. His gut told him something was seriously off when it came to the relationship this man had with Bunny Weaver.