Showing results by author "L.T. Vargus" in All Categories

This is the end. Listen to the stunning conclusion to The Scattered and the Dead series in this third and final volume. This is the way the world ends. With 99.7 percent of the population dead and gone. And the rest left to fight over the scraps. Extinction threatens. War rages across the land. Violence and death still linger around every corner. So what's left of humanity? All paths cross. All is revealed. But who will make it, and who won't? And what will be left of the world? Listen and find out for yourself.

Will Violet Darger agree to a face-to-face meeting with the man who shot her? Still awaiting trial, the infamous serial killer Leonard Stump has hinted at the locations of additional bodies - more desert graves waiting to be uncovered. He wants to talk, but he has one condition. Violet Darger must be present at the interview. Now, the pressure is on. Should Darger head to Vegas and sit down with Stump? Everyone else seems to think so.

When a serial arsonist terrorizes Los Angeles county, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads over to California to investigate. The fires keep coming faster. The body count rises, and the threat hangs over the city as thick as the smog. The case file is brutal - stuffed with photographs of charred bodies, human faces melted beyond recognition. And when Darger gets up close to the crimes - the real thing - that sense of savagery only intensifies.

When Gloria Carmichael’s body is found broken and bleeding on the sidewalk just days after knocking on Detective Charlie Winters’ door begging for help to locate her father’s will, Charlie’s instinct is confirmed: Her latest case is about more than just a simple family feud. The Carmichaels are famous in Salem Island for their large family and charitable work, but, moments before she died, beautiful, trustworthy eldest daughter Gloria called Charlie to say she had uncovered a terrible secret that would break the mystery of her father’s death wide open.

New crimes lead FBI profiler Victor Loshak to revisit former scenes and witnesses in the Las Vegas area. The evidence suggests the return of a notorious and brutal serial killer from years ago - the one who got away. Loshak conceals his work from his partner, Violet Darger, and tries desperately to stay one step ahead of both her and the murderer. Leonard Stump is back. Maybe. And things are about to get so much worse.

When a search party trawling Salem Island find a girl’s body curled on the damp earth, the hunt for missing waitress Emma Jacobis grinds to a devastating halt. The day before, Emma had come to Detective Charlie Winters convinced someone was watching her. In her trembling hand, she held a sketch of herself sleeping peacefully with the stuffed rabbit she’d had since she was a child. On the back, scrawled in black ink: You will be mine.

A family has been massacred in their home, a display of violence both brutal and bizarre. The details prove curious - not only are the bodies savaged way beyond anything found at a normal murder scene, every mirror in the house has been shattered. The spectacle shocks a peaceful island community, and when local police turn to the FBI for assistance, Agent Violet Darger finds herself working another harrowing crime scene. She stares, once more, into the abyss, and mankind's warped reflection stares back.

When 17-year-old Micaela Tolliver goes missing during her beach vacation, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to Curacao to investigate. The case vexes local law enforcement, with plenty of suspicious characters around and comparisons to Natalee Holloway aplenty. Further complications emerge due to someone else entangled in the case—Darger's old friend and former lover, private investigator Owen Baxter. They're working together for the first time after a bad breakup. The tension is palpable, and Darger begins to question the knot of conflicts in her own heart.

When a second body turns up in a truck stop parking lot, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to rural North Carolina to investigate. These crimes are quickly connected to more. And more. And more. The scope of the crisis balloons. Soon, a task force is formed to work a serial murder case spanning a 1,500 mile stretch of the interstate.

A shocking death launches Special Agent Victor Loshak on a new investigation with an ominous message: They know everything. He heads to Tucson, Arizona, where a recent murder spree seems to be linked to the human trafficking conspiracy he's been working in secret for months. Loshak still has dreams about the Kansas City case. Nightmares about the team of techs peeling up the floorboards in a suburban home. Finding the rotting bodies face down in the muddy earth of the crawlspace. A grisly discovery that ultimately led to more questions than answers.

Some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. FBI profiler Victor Loshak works a brutal murder case in Watertown, New York - a woman found strangled in her basement, her face gone purple and baggy. But as he sifts through the crime scene details, his mind keeps drifting back to Kansas City, his last job. The human trafficking case there ended in something of a cliffhanger, and it's a loose end that everyone else in law enforcement seems in no hurry to tie up. The truth is out there. Always just out of reach.