Pretty Little Things
A terrifying new standalone psycholgical thriller from the bestselling author of ‘Retribution’ and ‘The Cutting Room’Dozens of teenage girls are going missing in Miami. And for Special Agent Bobby Dees of Florida's Crimes Against Children squad their families' pain is all too real. So when thirteen-year-old Lainey Emerson doesn't return from her date with 'El Capitan', a mysterious figure she met online, he vows to do whatever he can to bring her back.But as the missing reappear, gruesomely murdered with clues pointing to a collection of abductees, it becomes chillingly clear there's a serial killer on the loose. It's every parent's worst nightmare and, with the murderer always one step ahead of the police, can Dees save Lainey before it's too late?
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JILLIANE P. HOFFMAN
Pretty Little Things
HarperCollinsPublishers
For Rich, as always, my rock And for the not-so-little lambs, Manda-Panda and Monster, who continue to inspire and amaze me
Table of Contents
The small, portly man in the white suit, deep purple shirt and patent slipons ran around the stage with a microphone in hand, reaching out to touch any one of the hundreds of sweaty hands that waved back and forth before him in the Unity Tree of Everlasting Evangelical Life church auditorium. He slicked back a thick band of gelled gray hair that had broken form and swooped down across his forehead and over his eyes. The amazing camera work practically let you count the fine lines in the preacher’s full face, the beads of perspiration that rolled off his red cheeks and down through layers of neck fat.
‘Now when Moses went to meet the Israelites after their victory over the Midianites,’ the preacher boomed as he worked the stage from one end to the other, ‘he had all the princes and the priest, Eleazar, with him. And he sees what? What does he see that the Bible tells us made Moses so incredibly angry? He sees women!’ The crowd, which looked to be made up of mostly females, booed loudly.
Seated in his worn La-Z-Boy in front of the TV, the man nodded along with the church audience, watching the drama unfold on the television screen as though he had not already seen this video a hundred times before.
‘The Israelites have saved the women!’ the preacher boomed. ‘And Moses, well, he says, “So you’ve spared all the women? Why? Why, when they’re the very ones who have caused a plague to strike the Lord’s people! Why did you spare them?”’
Somewhere in the church audience, a female yelled, ‘Because they were men!’
The preacher laughed. ‘Yes! Because they were men. And because they were men, they were weak to the ways of women! To the smell of a woman and the taste of a woman and the feel of a woman!’
The man wiped his sweaty palm on the recliner’s worn armrest, nodding enthusiastically at the preacher’s words.
‘They were weak!’ the preacher continued. ‘And so these weak men spared these vile women who had wreaked havoc on their tribe. But Moses is not just upset, ladies and gentlemen. He doesn’t just say, “That was a stupid thing to do!” and leave it at that. No. Moses knows what will happen now that these vile women have been saved. Their delicious scent and their warm skin and their soft curves will soon sway their captors. Wickedness takes on many forms, folks. Many forms.’
The preacher summoned a young woman in the church audience then by pointing at her. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen. ‘Come on, child, come on up here.’ Encouraged by her parents and the enthusiastic crowd, the girl hesitantly climbed on stage. ‘Look at how beautiful she is,’ the preacher said, walking around the slight figure with his arms outstretched, as if she were an animal on a pedestal in the circus and he was the ringmaster introducing her to them. He sniffed exaggeratedly at her and smiled. ‘She smells good. She sure looks good. She doesn’t seem evil. What man would not be tempted?’ He turned back to the crowd. ‘Like many of us in our everyday lives, Moses must make a difficult decision. A terrible decision. One that many will find objectionable, but yet Moses – well, Moses knows it is necessary. A difficult choice, but a necessary one.’
A pregnant hush came over the crowd. ‘What does he tell them?’ the preacher asked his flock, staring as he did right into the eye of the camera, speaking to the thousands of lost sheep all across the country who waited on his every word. ‘What? He tells them – and this is right out of the Holy Bible, folks – he tells them, “Slay, therefore, every male child and every woman who has had intercourse with a man. But you may spare and keep for yourselves all girls who had no intercourse with a man.” What does that mean, folks? “Only the young girls who are virgins may live,” Moses says. “Only the
