Wrong turn, p.1
Wrong Turn, page 1
WRONG TURN
(A Miles Sterling FBI Suspense Thriller—Book Two)
B L A K E P I E R C E
Blake Pierce
USA Today and #1 bestselling author Blake Pierce is the author of numerous series in the mystery and thriller genres, spanning 10 years of work, including the Jessie Hunt, Ella Dark, Rylie Page, Faith Bold and Rachel Gift series. Blake’s most recent latest releases are the Alison Payne, Isla Rivers Kari Blackhorse, Kate Valentine, and Miles Sterling series.
Please visit blakepierceauthor.com to learn more, join the email list, receive free books, and stay in touch.
Copyright © 2025 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SERIES BY BLAKE PIERCE
MILES STERLING
KATE VALENTINE
KARI BLACKHORSE
ISLA RIVERS
ALISON PAYNE
JENNA GRAVES
THE GOVERNESS
RACHEL BLACKWOOD
SHEILA STONE
FINN WRIGHT
MORGAN CROSS
JULIETTE HART
FAITH BOLD
FIONA RED
DAISY FORTUNE
AMBER YOUNG
CAMI LARK
NICKY LYONS
CORA SHIELDS
MAY MOORE
PAIGE KING
VALERIE LAW
RACHEL GIFT
AVA GOLD
A YEAR IN EUROPE
ELLA DARK
LAURA FROST
EUROPEAN VOYAGE
ADELE SHARP
THE AU PAIR
ZOE PRIME
JESSIE HUNT
CHLOE FINE
KATE WISE
THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE
RILEY PAIGE
MACKENZIE WHITE
AVERY BLACK
KERI LOCKE
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
PROLOGUE
Sarah Morrison arranged the pile of construction paper into neat stacks on her desk. The afternoon sun streamed through the tall windows of her kindergarten classroom, casting long rectangles of golden light across the floor and the desks. She’d just finished straightening up for the day; her class was typically well-behaved and left very little mess behind. Currently, the only untidy things remaining were several finger paintings hanging from clotheslines stretched between bulletin boards. The walls practically vibrated with color.
She loved this time of day. The children had gone home an hour and a half ago, their voices and laughter echoing down the hallway until the last school bus pulled away. Now the building settled into quiet. Sarah could work without interruption, and she settled peacefully into the post-school day quiet. It wasn’t too dissimilar to stepping outside after a severe thunderstorm and appreciating the moment fully.
The classroom felt like a small universe designed entirely for wonder. Reading corners filled with oversized pillows invited exploration. A science station displayed magnifying glasses and collections of smooth rocks the children had brought from home. The dramatic play area transformed daily according to the students’ imagination. Yesterday it had been a restaurant. Today, it was a veterinary clinic complete with stuffed animals wrapped in gauze bandages.
Sarah picked up a stack of drawings from the art center. She smiled as she sorted through each one. Every drawing told a story. Every crooked line represented a child’s attempt to capture their world on paper. Emma had drawn her family as stick figures with enormous smiles. Marcus had attempted a self-portrait, though his nose appeared to be growing from his forehead. Jessica’s drawing showed what might have been a dog, or possibly a horse, standing next to a house that defied all laws of physics and perspective.
Tomorrow, she would hang them on the bulletin board, and each artist would beam with pride when they saw their work displayed.
The lesson plan for tomorrow sat open on her desk. The five senses unit was always a favorite. The children would taste different foods, smell various spices, listen to recordings of animal sounds, and explore texture bins filled with rice, sand, and cotton balls. She had spent the weekend shopping for supplies, filling small containers with vanilla extract, cinnamon, and lemon zest.
Sarah walked to the supply closet and pulled out the materials she had prepared. She then returned to her desk and began writing the day’s schedule on the whiteboard. The marker squeaked softly against the smooth surface. Morning circle time would introduce the concept. Then they would rotate through five stations, one for each sense. The afternoon would end with a group discussion about their discoveries.
A sweet smell drifted through the classroom. Sarah paused, marker in hand, and sniffed the air. It was pleasant but unfamiliar. Not the usual scents of glue sticks and disinfectant that permeated the school building. This was different. Almost floral, but with an underlying sharpness that made her nose tingle. She checked to make sure she wasn’t using the wrong marker, perhaps one of the special ones that radiated certain smells (purple was grape, orange smelled like oranges, and so on). But that wasn’t it; she had her plain old, black dry-erase marker.
She glanced around the room, trying to identify the source. The windows were closed. The air conditioning hummed quietly in the background. Nothing seemed out of place. She wondered if the custodial staff was using a new cleaning product in the hallway. But even if so, the last of the custodians would have left for home about half an hour ago.
Sarah returned to the whiteboard and continued writing. The smell grew stronger. Sweet and cloying, like overripe fruit left too long in the sun. Her eyes began to water slightly. She blinked and wiped them with the back of her hand.
And then, as she returned her focus to tomorrow’s schedule, the marker slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. A wave of dizziness washed over her. The cheerful classroom seemed to tilt sideways. The children’s artwork on the walls blurred into streaks of color. She gripped the edge of her desk for support, confused and suddenly afraid.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
Sarah tried to take a deep breath, but her lungs felt tight and strange. The air itself seemed thick and difficult to draw in. Panic began to rise in her chest. She needed to call for help. Her phone sat on the desk just a few feet away, but the distance felt enormous.
She took a step toward the phone. Her legs wobbled like water. The sweet smell filled her nostrils completely now. It was everywhere, coating the inside of her mouth and throat. Her vision started to dim around the edges. She could barely breathe now, and she wondered if she was perhaps having some sort of allergic reaction to whatever that odd smell was.
Sarah’s hand reached out desperately toward her phone. Her fingertips brushed the edge of the desk, but her coordination was failing. It might as well have been on the moon. Her breathing became shallow and rapid. Each breath felt like trying to drink through a straw that was slowly closing.
She stumbled forward, knocking over a container of crayons. They scattered across the floor in an explosion of color. Red, blue, yellow, green. The same colors the children used to draw their families, pets, and houses. The same colors that now seemed to dance and swirl in her failing vision.
The sweet smell intensified. It was inside her now, filling every cell of her body with its toxic presence. Her throat burned. Her chest felt like it was being crushed by an invisible weight. She gasped for air that wouldn’t come.
Sarah’s knees buckled. She fell among the tiny chairs and child-sized tables. Her face hit the carpet where just hours before, children had sat cross-legged listening to stories about brave mice and friendly dragons. Above her, the ceiling seemed to spin slowly. Paper butterflies and cardboard stars performed their endless dance while she lay gasping on the floor below.
Her vision narrowed to a tunnel. The edges of her sight went black, then gray, then disappeared entirely. The last thing she saw was Emma’s drawing of her family, the purple-haired stick figures holding hands in a line across the bottom of the page. Their crayon smiles seemed to wave goodbye as darkness closed in.
Construction paper and crayons lay scattered where Sarah had dropped them. The whiteboard held her half-finished schedule for tomorrow’s lesson on the five senses.
Sarah Morrison would never see another group of kindergarteners discover the world through taste and touch and smell. The five senses of her final lesson plan had betrayed her completely, delivering death disguised as something sweet and harmless.
CHAPTER ONE
Miles Sterling adjusted the microscope’s focus and studied the hair sample mounted on the slide. The strand was dark brown, roughly six inches long, with a distinctive kink near the root that suggested it had been pulled out rather than cut. Under magnification, the cuticle showed the telltale damage patterns he’d learned to recognize over years of forensic analysis.
He was deeply zoned in on the sample as the lab hummed quietly around him. Centrifuges whirred in the background. Digital scales beeped as technicians weighed evidence samples. The familiar rhythm of scientific investigation filled the sterile white space of the FBI Laboratory Division at Quantico. It was methodical work. Precise. Predictable in ways that field investigations never were. Miles was comfortable here, although he had been feeling a bit restless as of late.
Nearly three weeks had passed since he and Agent Victoria “Vic” Stone returned from San Francisco. Three weeks since they’d arrested Diana Hartwell in that cramped museum storage room. Three weeks since Hartwell had tried to kill Mayor Callahan with molten gold while Miles tackled her to the ground.
He tried to push the memory away and focus on the hair sample and the case to which it was tied. The case belonged to the Baltimore field office. A domestic assault where the victim had fought back, leaving behind physical evidence that might identify her attacker. This was the kind of work Miles excelled at. Clean analysis. Objective results. No philosophical puzzles about periodic table murders or gold-obsessed killers.
Behind him, there was a knock on the door. It opened slowly and Dr. Patricia Hendricks walked in, carrying a stack of case files. She was the division’s DNA specialist, a woman in her fifties who’d spent the last twenty years helping to build the bureau’s genetic database. Her gray hair was pulled back in a neat bun. Despite eight hours of processing evidence, her lab coat was spotless.
“How’s the hair analysis coming?” she asked, setting her files on the adjacent workstation.
“Getting there.” Miles made notes in his lab notebook. “Definitely consistent with forcible removal. The suspect’s DNA profile should confirm identity once the comparison runs.”
“Good. Baltimore’s been pushing for results on that one.” Patricia pulled on fresh gloves and began organizing her materials. “Speaking of results, I heard yet another heroic tale of how you and Agent Stone saved the mayor of San Francisco.”
Miles kept his eyes on the microscope. “I do have to admit, heroic sounds better than got lucky.” He was honestly growing tired of the praise and mentions. Not only because they made him feel awkward, but also because he still felt there was something deeper to it all—something that went far beyond Diana Hartwell.
“Four murders solved and a mayor’s life saved. That doesn’t sound like luck to me,” Patricia said.
He didn’t respond. The truth was more complicated than Patricia’s summary. Yes, they’d caught Diana Hartwell. Yes, they’d prevented another murder. But Diana’s suicide in county jail, three days after her arrest, had eliminated any chance of learning about potential accomplices. The case file was officially closed, but Miles felt deep in his bones that they’d only scratched the surface.
The hair sample under his microscope blurred slightly. He blinked and refocused. Concentration had been difficult since his return from California. Simple tasks that used to absorb his attention completely now felt like exercises in forcing himself to stay present.
“Miles?” Patricia was looking at him with concern. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just tired.” He made another note in his file. “Late night last night.”
That was true, though not for the reasons Patricia might assume. He’d been awake until nearly three in the morning, lying in bed next to Elena while his mind replayed the moment Diana Hartwell swung that blackjack toward his head. The sound it made connecting with his temple. The way her eyes burned with fanatical conviction, even as Vic’s bullet dropped her to the floor.
The nightmares were getting worse, not better. Last week he’d woken up screaming about molten gold pouring over his face. Elena had been patient, understanding, but he could see the worry in her dark eyes when she thought he wasn’t looking.
Miles finished his analysis and sealed the hair sample back into its evidence container. The chain of custody form required his signature, the time, and a summary of his findings. Standard procedure that he’d followed thousands of times before. But his hand shook slightly as he wrote, and he had to concentrate to keep his handwriting legible.
The rest of the afternoon passed slowly. He processed three more cases, all routine forensic work requiring technical expertise, but little imagination. A fiber analysis from a burglary in Richmond. Paint chip comparison from a hit-and-run in Norfolk. Blood spatter interpretation from an assault in Alexandria. Each case represented someone’s worst day. Victims whose lives had been disrupted or destroyed by violence. But the work itself was clean and methodical. Miles could examine the evidence objectively, apply scientific principles, and produce reliable results without getting emotionally involved in the human drama behind each sample.
It was exactly the kind of work he’d been doing happily before Assistant Director Hayes sent him to San Francisco. Before he’d learned what it felt like to chase a killer through museum corridors. Before he’d grown almost certain that Diana Hartwell was connected to the other element-related murders he’d been researching from all across the country.
At 5:30, Miles packed up his files and headed for the parking garage. The drive home to his Victorian row house took forty-five minutes through Northern Virginia traffic. He spent most of it trying not to think about Diana Hartwell or the periodic table murders he’d spent three years tracking before her arrest. He knew that if he allowed himself to do so, he’d let it consume him again…and he and Elena had already had a few hard conversations about the boundaries he needed to put up.
The house he shared with Elena sat on a quiet residential street lined with mature oak trees. It was a neighborhood of young professionals and growing families. People who worked regular jobs and worried about normal things like mortgage payments and lawn maintenance. Elena’s car was already in the driveway when he arrived. She would have gotten home an hour ago from her pharmaceutical research lab and had probably spent the time reviewing clinical trial data or preparing presentations for her supervisors. Her work was demanding but straightforward and she had been very busy over the past several months.
He found her in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for dinner. She looked up when he entered, and her smile was warm, but tinged with the careful concern he’d grown accustomed to since his return from California.
“How was your day?” she asked, setting down her knife and moving to greet him.
“Fine. Routine lab work.” He kissed her briefly, then stepped back to wash his hands at the sink. “How about you?”
“Meeting with the clinical trials coordinator. We’re seeing promising results from the Phase Two data.” Elena returned to her vegetables, but Miles could feel her watching him from the corner of her eye. “Dr. Martinez thinks we’ll be ready for Phase Three testing by early next year.”
“That’s great news.”
They fell into the comfortable rhythm of preparing dinner together. Elena had started a pasta sauce that filled the kitchen with the smell of garlic and fresh herbs. Miles set the table and opened a bottle of wine, stirring sauces and pasta at Elena’s direction.
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