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Автор Дженнифер Линн Барнс

Copyright © 2016 by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Cover design by Marci Senders

All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

Designed by Marci Senders

ISBN 978-1-4847-5854-0

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Three Weeks Later…

Acknowledgments

Also by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

About the Author

For William, who helped Mommy copyedit this book when he was just five weeks old.

YOU

Without order, there is chaos.

Without order, there is pain.

The wheel turns. Lives are forfeit. Seven masters. Seven ways of killing.

This time, it will be fire. Nine will burn.

So it has been decreed, and so it must be. The wheel is already turning. There is an order to things. And at the center of all of it—all of it—is you.

The serial killer sitting across from me had his son’s eyes. The same shape. The same color. But the glint in those eyes, the light of anticipation—that’s wholly your own.

Experience—and my FBI mentors—had taught me that I could delve further into other people’s minds by talking to them than by talking about them. Giving in to the urge to profile, I continued to appraise the man across from me. You’ll hurt me if you can. I knew that, had known it even before coming to this maximum security prison and seeing the subtle smile that crossed Daniel Redding’s lips the moment his gaze met mine. Hurting me will hurt the boy. I sank deeper and deeper into Redding’s psychopathic perspective. And the boy is yours to hurt.

It didn’t matter that Daniel Redding’s hands were cuffed together and chained to the table. It didn’t matter that there was an armed FBI agent at the door. The man in front of me was one of the world’s most brutal serial killers, and if I let him past my defenses, he would burn his mark into my soul as surely as he’d branded the letter R onto the flesh of his victims.

Bind them. Brand them. Cut them. Hang them.

That was how Redding had killed his victims. But that wasn’t what had brought me here today.

“You told me once that I would never find the man who killed my mother,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt. I knew this particular psychopath well enough to know that he would try to get a rise out of me.