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 think, once upon a time, but say, “I want you to leave.”


He skulks to where the living room and kitchen meet, and stops at the end of the counter, his dark gaze settling on me like hot flames. “I didn’t come all this way to be rejected.”


The menace in his triggering stare makes me shudder.


As he slides up next to me, his shoulder brushing mine, a muscle in my face twitches.


Then a firm rap on the apartment door separates us, and I feel a sense of strange relief when Sheridan pulls away and turns to the door. “Expecting company?” he asks, looking at me, the unhappiness in his voice taut and sharp.


I start for the door but he steps in front of me, blocking my path. “Get out of my way,” I tell him, staring at him.


“Is e-everything all right in there, Jack?” Out in the hall, I hear my neighbor Miles.


Chapter 12