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 don’t think so. The proof is all here.” I wave the paper at him.


He loosens his grip on the tie and snatches the report from me, tearing it out of my hands and staring down at the paper.


“I don’t know if you and Ms. Block were romantically involved, but after a few hours of seeing things more clearly, I finally can put two and two together. You definitely knew each other. We’re the two of you in a relationship?”


He leans into me, which forces me to take a step back, the floorboards creaking beneath us. “Do you know who you’re talking to, Ballinger?”


“You’re a rookie beat cop,” he says.


I swallow down the hard lump in my throat.


When he grins, I notice the top row of his crooked teeth.


“You don’t know how wrong I wanted to be,” I say.


Chapter 30