“I’m not going to let that happen,” he said.
He meant it. Despite the danger closing in, this was what Finn had been trained for, what he’d risk his life for. He’d become a marshal to ensure no one else had to lose a loved one to violence like he had, and he wasn’t about to break that oath with Camille. She’d spent the last year of her life separate from the people she loved, alone in that big house, lying to everyone she came into contact with in an effort to survive. She deserved not to have to look over her shoulder for the rest of her life. She deserved more than this.
“You can’t promise something like that.” She reached for his hand, which had settled near hers, then thought better of making contact. Gaze downcast, she seemed to almost curl in on herself. She’d trusted him enough to patch her wound, and he couldn’t imagine how hard it’d been for her to open up that much. The fact Camille was still sitting here, talking about that night a year ago after surviving a second attempt on her life tonight, was damn near unbelievable. “I’m the one who brought the police down on him. I’m the one who stopped him from killing more women that night. My testimony is what will put him behind bars for life. You don’t know how far he’ll go to make me pay for what I’ve done, or how many people he’ll hurt to get to me. You don’t know him.”
“I know enough. I might not have a front-row seat into the mind of a killer like the Carver, but I know how far I’ll go to keep you safe.” He’d do the same for any of his witnesses, but there was something about Camille—something he didn’t have the courage to consider—that pushed him to the edge of reason. Once the prosecution had Jeff Burnes behind bars for good, she’d pick up her life where it’d left off, and Finn would move onto his next assignment for the marshals service. Just as he had any number of times before. But where he’d been able to compartmentalize his past witness’s faces and situations at the back of his mind after each protection detail ended, he had a feeling Camille wouldn’t go quietly. “I was assigned to protect you. No matter what happens, you’ll never have to face him alone again.”
She rolled her lips between her teeth and nodded once, long red hair bouncing against her shoulders. Her hand drifted to her throat. “Every time I’ve had to tell people what happened that night, the more self-conscious and misunderstood I’ve felt. Like each iteration took a piece of me to the point I can’t remember who I was before I met Jeff.” The weight of those hypnotic aquamarine eyes increased the pressure behind his rib cage. “But when I talk to you, I don’t feel lonely. I don’t feel misunderstood. For the first time since that attack, I feel...like me.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know what to think. He’d done what any deputy would’ve done in his situation, but Camille—
The sudden vibration from the phone in his pocket ripped him back to reality. Finn drove his hand into his sweats and read the name. Jonah Watson. The screen lit up as he connected the line and brought the phone to his ear. He held up one finger, asking for a minute. “Please tell me this isn’t a social call.”
Camille slid off the bed, the fresh shirt he’d gotten for her from the closet clutched in her hand. She headed for the bathroom. Soft hints of her lavender scent settled around him as she ducked into the small space and closed the door behind her, but somehow the tension tightening the muscles down his spine only increased.
“That depends,” Deputy Jonah Watson said. “Do you consider a body a social call?”
* * *
SHE COULD STILL feel his hands on her.
Camille carefully switched out the shirt plastered to her skin for the fresh one Finn had pulled from the closet. The white patch of gauze taped above the left side of her clavicle stood stark against her skin in the mirror’s reflection but provided ample coverage from the destruction underneath. Warmth clung to the oversensitive skin around the area, and she couldn’t help but trace the pattern the deputy marshal had made with his fingers.
She’d been torn down to mere ashes after the attack, but when Finn had touched her a few minutes ago, when he hadn’t shown disgust at the carnage carved into her chest, she’d almost believed she could rise again. That her fantasy self and real self could merge and become the whole, self-aware, creative woman she’d once been. In those short moments, she’d envisioned her art washing away the shadows of the past, and the resulting ache had embedded a desire like nothing she’d felt before. She’d prayed for so long for the strength to defeat the constant pain of fear and isolation, but for the briefest moment, she was reminded of how much she’d already survived.
Because of his confidence in her, his promises to keep her safe.
It’d been so long since she’d let herself savor the touch of another person. She’d been better off alone all these months, apart from anyone who could hurt her, but he’d made shedding her guard easy. For a series of breaths, he’d helped drain the poison of anger, betrayal and hurt from her veins. Not out of domination, as Jeff had, but concern. Respect.
The Carver. The man she’d known as Jeff Burnes hadn’t really existed.
She caught sight of the camera bag Finn must’ve hidden on the closet shelf when she’d gone to bed. Surrounded by an entire array of superhero shirts, the black canvas seemed innocent enough in this safe haven. Victim. Witness. Target. She’d been called so many things. By the officers who’d arrived on the scene, the agents who’d interrogated her, the marshals in Chicago before she’d been relocated to Florence, Oregon. Labels had defined her for the past twelve months, but they hadn’t done anything but steal her very identity right out from under her without her noticing. There had to be a point where they stopped holding so much power over her, where she could take back control of her own life.
The tense rumble of Finn’s voice penetrated through the bathroom door, but the tug of something she hadn’t felt in a long time surfaced the longer she studied the camera bag. Familiarity. Longing. The tip of her right index finger burned at the idea of feeling the smooth plastic of the shutter button again, and she curled her hands into fists. One step. Two. Mere inches separated her from the instrument she’d used to bring her lifelong passion to reality. Camille hovered her hand over one of the zippers that sealed her camera inside, and suddenly, the nausea hit. The memories of those photos of Jeff’s victims—the muscles in her jaw hurt, the Carver’s victims—he’d hidden inside her camera were still as clear in her mind as they’d been that day she’d discovered them.
Her finger grazed the metal zipper, and a rush of hesitation swept through her. Thousands of photographers dreamed of traveling to remote locations to learn about hidden cultures, ecosystems never seen by the human eye and documenting events inside land-mine-ridden war zones. Although wearing a giant panda suit in order to photograph a baby panda bred in captivity and scheduled to be released into the wild in China wasn’t an assignment she’d expected while working for Global Geographic, photography—no matter the subject in her lens—had empowered her. Being behind the camera had given her the gift of emotional self-reliance in a lonely, sometimes demanding career, but the people she’d met, the experiences she’d had... They’d been everything. They’d been worth the discomfort, the sickness she’d contracted on assignment, each time she’d had to put her life in danger to get the perfect shot. How had she allowed her passion to be ripped away from her so easily?
Camille pinched the zipper between her thumb and index finger and slid the bracket around the unique curve of her camera bag. Lighting above the bathroom sink highlighted the matte polycarbonate casing. Air stuck in her throat as she curved her fingers around the padding surrounding the delicate device and peered inside.
Three soft knocks reverberated through the bathroom door.
She pulled back her hand, her heart pounding at the base of her throat, and faced the door.
“Camille?” The tension she’d heard earlier during his phone conversation vanished as Finn said her name. “I need to know you’r
e okay.”
Glancing at the open camera bag on the shelf, she forced herself to swallow the uncertainty that’d built at the back of her throat and secured the zipper back in place. She’d taken the first step to breaking through the haze that’d suffocated her passion for photography and come out on the other side no less broken. Maybe that, in and of itself, was a start. Cold bled into the center of her palm as she turned the doorknob and tugged the door open. Bright blue eyes leveled on her, and the last tendrils of her anxiety dissolved. “I’m okay.”
His attention dipped to where her wound ached beneath her shirt. “If having me touch you made you uncomfortable—”
“No, it’s not that.” If anything, the simple act of letting him get that close had given her the strength to push at the invisible bindings that’d been keeping her from picking up her camera. With his help, she’d tested herself more in the past twelve hours than she had over the past twelve months, and there wasn’t a single part of her that regretted it. Camille leaned her shoulder against the door frame, her hand raising to the puckered outline of the gauze through her shirt. “I’m the one who asked you to make it so I couldn’t see the wound, and that’s exactly what you did. Thank you.”
His lips parted as though he needed to process what she’d said, as though he’d expected her to face him with the debilitating uneasiness she’d used as a crutch for so long, but Camille couldn’t be that woman anymore. Not if she was going to get her life back. It’d take time, but just as she’d taken cover from a storm for twelve hours inside a mountain cave to catch a glimpse of the rarest cougar in the world, finding herself after trauma would be worth the risk.
“Happy to be of service.” A dose of casual charm brought one corner of his mouth up into a crooked smile, and her heart thudded wildly in her chest.
“Was that your marshal friend on the phone?” Digging her fingernails into her opposite arm, Camille fought to keep the blatant admiration for her protector out of her voice. “Were they able to recover any evidence from my house or confirm that was Jeff Burnes who attacked me?”
“No. Whoever broke in and tried to kill you was careful to wear gloves and had most likely planned his way in and out ahead of time. The storm didn’t help, either. Any tracks he might’ve left behind were washed away within a few minutes, which could be a happy coincidence or had been perfectly timed.” He folded his arms over his chest, raising her awareness of the thick ropes of muscle under his shirt to a whole new level. “But the search team I had combing the woods around your house found something else. Someone else.”
“Someone?” Camille was gripped by confusion. “What do you mean? You just said the marshals didn’t find—”
“It’s another victim, Camille.” He lowered his voice to a point where she could barely register his words through the hard pulse behind her ears. “She was dressed in running gear and tennis shoes. Florence police believe she was out for a jog on the trail that cuts through those woods when she was attacked about twenty-four hours ago.”
“That doesn’t...” She shook her head. It didn’t make sense. A woman had been killed near her home within a few hours that Camille had been attacked? What were the odds? She cleared her throat, trying to force the words to take form, but a nonexistent earthquake rocked through her and stole the air from her lungs. No. She was getting ahead of herself. Just because the Carver may have come for her again didn’t mean the cases were connected. “How did she die?”
His expression hardened, and in that moment, she knew the answer before the words left his mouth. “Bound, strangled and carved with the word mine above her left breast. The search team found a trail of red rose petals leading straight to the location her body was found.”
The door frame wasn’t enough to keep her upright.
“It’s happening again.” Her gut clenched. Camille stumbled back a step as the information cut through her, barely catching herself on the vanity before her legs collapsed right out from under her. She could have every intention in the world to move past the attacks, to heal, but the truth of the matter was the Carver wouldn’t let her go. No matter where she ran, no matter how many times she changed her name, he would find her. He would hurt more people. He would come for her again and again until she finally lost the battle to survive.
Finn moved slowly, setting one hand beneath her elbow to help keep her on her feet, but where she’d found comfort less than ten minutes ago when he’d touched her, there was only nausea now. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure whether or not to say anything to you about it, but you are the only woman who’s survived this kind of attack. We need your help to bring this bastard down.”
Her help? She could barely help herself. What on earth could she possibly do against a man determined to destroy so many lives? Camille sank to the floor, her back pressed against the vanity cabinet. “Who was she?”
“The Lane County medical examiner’s office has already been able to pull prints and get an ID.” Crouching in front of her, Finn took out his phone from his sweats and turned the screen to face her. A woman, maybe in her early thirties, with long red hair, freckles across her nose and dark green eyes, smiled back in what looked like a photo a loved one might hand over to law enforcement when a family member disappeared. “Her name is Jodie Adler. Do you recognize her?”
“No.” But she couldn’t ignore the similarities between herself and the victim found near her home. The hair, the age, the eyes. Her throat burned with awareness. Camille was going to be sick. “But I think I know why he chose her.”
“So do I.” Finn swiped his finger across his phone’s screen, and every cell in her body prepared for the worst. “That wasn’t all the medical examiner found when she started Ms. Adler’s autopsy. The killer left a note in the victim’s mouth after he was finished.”
He offered her the phone.
She swallowed the bile working up her throat as she studied the photo of a crumpled sheet of paper with scrawling black ink. “Happy anniversary, Camille.”
Chapter Five
Pain shot through his thumb as Finn ended the call with the deputy chief of the Illinois USMS division a bit harder than intended. Damn it. He’d reached out to everyone he could and had asked his own superior, Deputy Chief Remington “Remi” Barton, to do the same. So far, nobody in the marshals service, the FBI or the Illinois state police had been able to narrow down Jeff Burnes’s location. Interviews with the SOB’s cell mate at MCC Chicago had gotten them nowhere. Every second the Carver wasn’t behind bars was another chance for him to get to Camille.
“Anything new?” Her voice remained steady, her expression soft, and an unwelcome shot of awe loosened the tightness in his chest. Not only had she trusted him to clean and patch the lacerations on her chest without giving in to her urge to pull away, but she’d also kept herself from falling off the emotional roller coaster after discovering a killer had once again put her in his sights. How the woman wasn’t curled up in the bathroom in the fetal position, he didn’t know, and he couldn’t help but admire the display of inner strength he hadn’t expected her to possess—which wasn’t his job.
“Not yet.” Whoever’d killed that woman near Camille’s home had used the same MO as the murders in Chicago, but none of the forensics from the attack on his witness, or what had been collected from the crime scene in the woods, could verify the Carver as their suspect. Other than the addition of the note, with “Happy anniversary, Camille” written in dark ink, there was no forensic proof to definitively pinpoint that Jeff Burnes had picked up where he’d left off, and Finn couldn’t do a damn thing about it as long as he was assigned to protect her. He wanted to be out there, wanted point on the investigation, so everything had to go through him. The more intel he had on his enemy, the better prepared he’d be and the sooner he’d see the threat coming, but the thought of leaving Camille in the hands of another deputy burned an ulcer into the lining of his stomach. He caught sig
ht of the superhero logo emblazoned across the shirt he’d given her for the night. Hunting a serial killer while keeping his witness protected at the same time? No problem. If he’d been one of the damn superheroes he’d idolized most of his life. Which, despite Camille’s admiration for him having saved her life, he wasn’t. “Whoever attacked Jodie Adler obviously knew we’d have the woods around your house searched. He knew exactly where to leave her to ensure you’d get his message. From the note he left behind, we have to assume he’s making this entire mind game about you.”
Hell, if Beckett Foster—the deputy with the highest fugitive recovery rate in all of Oregon—wasn’t on his honeymoon somewhere on a tropical island with his pregnant wife he’d once been assigned to bring in, Finn would’ve called in the marshal to aid in the hunt. But, for now, he and Camille were on their own while the rest of the marshals from his office followed leads.
“Lucky me.” Her shoulders rounded inward. The whitening of Camille’s knuckles against the dark ceramic mug of coffee tugged at something primal he hadn’t let himself feel since he’d been ten years old.
He’d followed his own set of self-imposed rules when he’d taken that first step to following in his mother’s footsteps. Emotional involvement—of any kind—only ensured pain and abandonment when the people he cared about left, or were taken from him. It was an experience he wasn’t too keen on going through again, but there was something about Camille Goodman that wanted him to break that rule. He itched to pull her against him, to comfort her, to promise her she was safe as long as he was assigned as her protection, but he’d already proven that wasn’t the case. Had he walked through her door thirty seconds later, Camille wouldn’t be sitting here at all. She would’ve been taken under his watch, and there wouldn’t have been anything he could do about it.
The Witness Page 5