Officer Jack Ballinger receives a phone call from the chief of police in the early morning hours regarding a dead body at an apartment building in a quiet neighborhood in the small upstate New York town of Black Falls. A female student lies in a pentagram outlined in her own blood, clutching a rosary. Ballinger and his former partner Officer Cory Ryan interview tenants in the building about the girl’s death, but are met with more questions than answers.<br><br>When another body is found in the same apartment building a few hours later, Jack knows something is wrong. As he ciphers through a patchwork of unexplainable clues, the investigation detours when Ryan disappears from the case and cannot be found.<br><br>With his future as an officer in question, will Ballinger be able to deal with the truth of these crimes once he dscovers everything he thought he knew was a lie?

Past Sins

I ignore him and tuck the bag under my arm.


His gaze shifts from the bag to my gun secured to my utility belt. His eyes are bloodshot.


I keep an eye on his hands, which are shoved into his red plaid pajama bottoms. My gaze falls to his feet, and I think he is wearing shoes made from snakeskin, but he is just barefoot.


“You better get back inside,” I tell him. “You’re going to catch a cold running around barefoot.”


“You don’t catch a cold from being barefoot,” he says. “You get a cold from viruses.”


I don’t know if he is trying to be funny, but he is not smiling. So I nod, and start to head into my apartment, pushing the door open with my boot.


I glance into the pitch-blackness of my apartment, and scold myself for not leaving a light on before I left.


Contemplating whether or not I should walk three feet into the apartment and flip on the light switch near the refrigerator, I feel Miles staring at me.


Chapter 9