Dangerous Game (Mallory Burke Mysteries Book 1)

A Killer Storm, A Vanishing Patient, and A Deadly Secret

When a murder suspect vanishes and a hurricane descends on New Orleans, psychologist Dr. Mallory Burke is thrust into a race against time. Her patient, Tom Taylor, is accused of killing his father—but Mallory believes he’s innocent. Torn between her professional duty and personal instincts, she crosses paths with her former lover, Detective Rick Landry, who’s convinced Tom is a dangerous fugitive.

As floodwaters rise, so do tensions. Mallory’s search leads her deep into the shadows of Bellmont Psychiatric Hospital, where a twisted legacy of silence and betrayal is buried. The closer she gets to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes. When the killer’s identity is finally revealed, Mallory realizes the threat was never far from home.

DANGEROUS GAME is the riveting first installment in M.A. Knight’s Mallory Burke Mysteries—a taut, atmospheric crime thriller where trust is fragile, danger is real, and the truth can kill.

Start reading Dangerous Game now and discover the secrets that storm cannot wash away.

Excerpt from the book

Today

New Orleans, Louisiana

Mallory glanced at her clock.

Three o’clock—the witching hour, the time for witches, ghosts, and demons. She sighed. My only demons are work, money, and my love life. Oh, and family.

She heaved another sigh. Work was on her mind—a place where some said she didn’t belong. Sometimes, she felt it too–her fear of not belonging chasing her all the way from Florida.

She tried to suppress her insecurities–especially at her job–at the college. She was the youngest with the newest degree and the least experience, so she had a lot to prove.

A glance at the clock. Four o’clock. Almost morning. She tossed again and pulled her covers up tightly as she listened to the smooth sound of rain outside her window. Let it lull me to sleep, she thought. She closed her eyes tightly and slowly drifted off.

When the sound of beeping filled the air, she swatted at her phone until the sound stopped. Then she sighed deeply, stretched her arms out from under the covers, and opened her eyes.

***

Mallory reached the Bellmont Psychiatric Hospital just after 8 a.m., nearly an hour before her students would arrive. Now owned by the state of Louisiana, the old Gothic-style building was originally constructed as a hotel, which never came to fruition, as the owner lost his fortune, including his land and the unfinished building. Consequently, it looked more like an old cathedral or a medieval castle than a medical facility, with its high peaks and arches and its steep roof line—a perfectly symmetrical monstrosity with ivy creeping up the sides onto the crumbling, faded stone.

As she exited her car, she looked at the expansive lawn, engulfed in a dense fog. The rain continued, and she heard a low, deep thunder erupting in the opacity. Mallory entered through a side door where she met the damp smell of a building past its prime, an interior far more stark and forlorn than the architectural stylings of the exterior. She bypassed the lobby, with its ribbed vault ceilings maintaining its grandeur. In contrast, the ceilings in this part of the building were low and pedestrian, with walls covered in painted sheetrock and out-of-date tile.

Mallory made her way down the first-floor hallway alone, as the patients were eating breakfast in the vast community room or still asleep. She observed the walls, which wore scars of patients past and present—holes cheaply patched, railings missing in sections, tiles pulled loose from the lower half of the wall. The building smelled old, but with a faint hint of disinfectant. It was dim in the hallway, the lights still turned down from the night before.

A voice behind her startled her. “Back again?”

When Mallory turned and saw Cordelia Horne, her stomach performed a flipflop. A ladder-climbing MBA with no medical background, Cordelia only saw dollar signs and bottom lines, and she didn’t even know any patient by name. Cordelia Horne was the reason Mallory had left before—the reason Mallory had to leave.