The Boy

by Linsey Lanier

  There he was, the poster boy for classy, well-bred, Old Southern wealth right here in her bed. Well, technically his bed.

  She eyed the scars along his ribs and abdomen. Some of which he’d gotten because of her. But then she’d earned a few for him as well. Like the ones along her chest and the bullet wound near her heart her ex had given her.

  As they often did, his gunmetal eyes bore straight into her.

  “You had a bad dream,” he said in that low musical southern voice that made her toes curl.

  She eyed him cautiously. “How long have you been watching me?”

  “A while.”

  “Hmm. What time is it?”

  “Early. A little after five-thirty.” He stretched out a hand and ran it over her arm in a soothing gesture.

  It did more than that for her.

  Parker smiled as he watched desire rise in those intense blue eyes. They were always so full of passion, so full of determination. And those dagger like lashes could pierce his heart. That wild, wild dark hair. She never failed to rouse him in every way possible. She stirred emotions in him no other woman ever had. She was more than life to him. More, at times, than death.

  He had almost lost her. Pride and fear and stubbornness had nearly driven them apart forever. He would never let that happen again.

  And he had an idea how to ensure that it didn’t.

  “Are you all right?”

  She waggled her brows at him. “I will be if you keep doing that.”

  Instead of taking her up on her invitation, he frowned. “We both know it’s not good to keep things buried.”

  He should talk. They’d spent the two weeks since they’d gotten back together here in the apartment as sort of a second honeymoon, making up for the anniversary they’d missed and pretending they hadn’t just gone through the most harrowing case of their lives.

  He drew her close and she nestled her face in his chest.

  “We should get back to work,” she murmured. “Sometime.”

  Though they hadn’t worked out the details of that yet. She’d given up the ratty apartment she’d rented on East Avenue when she’d left him, but she still had her office.

  Parker ran his hand over her back and she began to purr like a spoiled little kitten.

  How could she ever live without this? How could she have thought she could? He had done so much for her.

  She had come from rape and abuse and thirteen long, lonely years of searching for her child. This man had ended all that and brought happiness into her life for the first time—ever.

  That was good for her, but she wasn’t so sure it was good for her daughter.

  Mackenzie had lived a happy life raised by two solid well-to-do parents who loved her and lavished her with security and a bright future. When Miranda came into the girl’s life all that had changed.

  She hadn’t spoken to her daughter for three weeks. She was afraid if she came near Mackenzie she’d use that telepathic sense teenagers had to see through her. And to figure out what Miranda now knew—who Mackenzie’s real father was. A psychotic serial killer that made Miranda’s psychotic ex look like the Easter Bunny.

  No young girl should have to deal with that.

  “Stop thinking about it,” Parker murmured into her hair.

  “Give me something else to think about.” She began to pepper kisses across the interesting contours of his chest.

  Instead of responding in kind, he said, “Very well. I’m putting you in charge of the team.”

  She lifted her head, groggy from interrupted sleep and lust. “Say what?”

  “You do recall we have a business venture.”

  “Uh—yeah.”

  Parker and Steele Consulting. The investigative team they’d formed for special cases the Agency couldn’t take on. Parker had wanted to expand it to include some of her coworkers. Her former coworkers.

  She scratched at her messy hair. “You want me to be in charge?”

  “Correct.”

  “Of Becker? And Holloway? And—good Lord—Wesson?”

  “Precisely.”

  She let out a high-pitched laugh. “I don’t know about that, Parker.”

  “Why not?”

  He was really serious about this. An uncomfortable knot twisted in her stomach. “I don’t know.”

  They were her coworkers. Her buddies. How was she going to be their boss?

  Parker read her apprehension. “You’re perfectly qualified. None of them ever went out and started their own business.”

  That didn’t mean she could give them orders. They might just tell her where to stick them. Besides, she’d always thought of the boss as the enemy. Except for Parker, of course. Most of the time.

  She frowned again. Wait a minute. “If I’m the boss, what are you going to do?”

  “Supervise.”

  What the heck did that mean?

  She didn’t like this arrangement at all. But she didn’t feel like fighting over it. Right now she felt like being a lover. Besides, they didn’t even have a case. When one came up, they’d work this out.

  “I’ll think about that tomorrow,” she said quoting Scarlett O’Hara, and began planting kisses across Parker’s chest again, working her way up his strong neck to his tantalizing mouth.

  This time Parker responded with the growl of a lion.

  “Have it your way,” he said in a low, lusty tone.

  And he turned her over and sank his talented mouth into hers. As his tongue fought past her lips in an aggressive thrust, she trailed her hands up the sinews of his back, her insides quivering like jelly.

  In kind he ran his hands over her sides, making her squeal with pleasure. He was just about to slip inside her when his phone went off.

  She groaned out loud—and not with release.

  Parker’s powerful mouth ravaged her shoulder. “Let it ring.”

  “Yeah,” she breathed.

  But it went on and on, playing that stupid cat rapping ringtone she had put on his phone as a joke. The joke was on her. It was ruining the mood.

  She stuck a hand out toward the nightstand, in an attempt to end the grating noise.

  Parker’s hand joined hers, his lips back on hers, willing the distraction away. Together their fingers touched the phone. She thought she had it but the stupid thing slipped out of her grasp and tumbled to the hardwood floor.

  “Let it go,” Parker groaned.

  But somehow the landing had answered the call.

  A chilling mechanical voice over a bad connection echoed into the air.

  “Wa—ade Parker. Wade Pa—a—chhh—er.”

  Miranda bolted up with Parker beside her. Together they stared down at the phone on the floor.

  The mechanical voice said something she couldn’t make out. And then, “Death on the tracks. Investigative skills needed.” Another rush of static. Then an address that was only partly garbled. Somewhere near Kennesaw.

  And then the phone went dead.

  Parker leaned down and picked it up off the floor. He disconnected and the room went silent.

  For a long moment he studied the screen. “Unknown caller.”

  A chill went through her as Miranda remembered the untraceable text messages she’d gotten weeks ago.

  To hide her nerves, she pulled the sheet around her and let out a weak laugh. “You get a robot for a client since I left, Parker?”

  “No.” His tone said he was in no mood for jokes. He got up and started to dress.

  Amazed Miranda watched him reach for a sexy pair of designer jeans. “Are you actually going to follow up on that?”

  “We’re going to follow up. The address is only about thirty miles away.”

  “Only? And aren’t you going to check it out first?”

  “And how would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. But what if it’s a scam of some sort?”

  He pulled up the jeans, the denim wrapping nicely around those delectable muscles. “The caller didn’t ask me
to go to my computer because I had a virus.”

  She gave him a smirk. “How about a prank? That voice sounded so weird.” She couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.

  “Who would do that?”

  She thought a moment. “Becker could.”

  His scowl was dark. “Dave Becker certainly has the skills to make such a call, but I can’t imagine the thought would even cross his mind.”

  He had a point. Becker was a loyal friend. He wouldn’t do something like that. Especially after the messages she’d gotten. But that conclusion only made her feel antsier. Parker had put away a few killers who would like to see him dead.

  “Could be some kind of trap.”

  “Then we’ll deal with it when we get there.” He reached for his Glock. “Who do you want to call in?”

  “Call in?”

  “From the team. Do you want all of them?”

  He really meant it about the boss thing. That made her feel more uneasy than that weird call.

  But there was no time to sort through her feelings about it. Parker was right. If that call was legitimate, someone was in bad trouble.

  As she got up and went to the dresser to dig out some clothes, quickly she mulled it over.

  It was Saturday. Becker was no doubt doing some family thing with Fanuzzi and the kids. Wesson was probably recovering from a hot date. That left her with one choice. As far as she knew, his weekend plans were watching old movies on his couch.

  She tugged on her jeans and pulled a light blue top over her head. “Let’s go with just Holloway this time.”

  Fully dressed in form fitting dark blue jean and a gray polo shirt that made his eyes viciously handsome, Parker crossed the room and picked up her phone.

  With a business like gesture he handed it to her. “Call him.”

  Chapter Three

  Holloway seemed annoyed when Miranda woke him up out of dead sleep. But once she explained they had a case, he was all in.

  After they picked him up at his apartment on Piedmont and headed up I-75, her coworker slouched in the back seat, adjusting his lanky body to the confines of Parker’s gray Mazda.

  “So what’s this case about, sir?” he wanted to know.

  “Miranda will fill you in, Detective.” Parker nodded toward her.

  He really was serious about the boss thing, wasn’t he? “We don’t know much yet,” she told Holloway. “Parker got a weird call this morning on his cell.”

  Holloway cocked a thick brown brow. “What do you mean, weird?”

  She turned back to Parker. “Was it recorded?”

  Parker had an app that routinely recorded calls from numbers that weren’t on his contact list.

  He reached into his pocket and handed her his cell. She took that as a yes and fiddled with the buttons until she got the thing to replay.

  “Wa—ade Parker. Wade Pa—a—chhh—er…”

  Once again the eerie sounding message with the bad connection set her nerves on edge as it played to the end.

  Frowning Holloway sat forward. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Can’t trace the number?”

  “Nope.”

  “We’ll find out more when we get to Kennesaw.” Parker sounded more confident than she felt at this point.

  “Okay, sir.” Holloway sat back and stared out the window.

  Nothing else to do until they reached their destination.

  It took almost an hour and a half to reach the address the mechanical voice had given them. They got off the Interstate, drove down an overpass and past the standard brigade of fast food and shopping places, then into a quiet residential section dotted with variously sized homes, all spread out a country-suburban distance from each other.

  Like the rest of Atlanta and its surroundings, the little area northeast of the town of Kennesaw was drowning in tree cover. “The city in a forest,” they called it, Miranda thought gazing at the shadowy abundance of deep green foliage lining the road. And that was just downtown Atlanta. But after being here over a year and a half, she’d decided the plethora of trees that simultaneously struck the residents with awe and hay fever, made the place feel like home.

  The dawn was just breaking as they rounded a curve and came upon a railroad crossing.

  Parker slowed the car.

  “Is this it?” Miranda said.

  “Seems to be.”

  An officer stood on the tracks. Dressed in regulation blues with a bright yellow hi-viz jacket, he gestured for them to halt.

  Parker obliged and rolled down the window.

  “I’m sorry, sir. We’re detouring traffic. There’s been an accident.”

  Miranda peered down the tracks into the woods. There were several police officers about half a football field’s length away. As she squinted into the shadows she could have sworn they were examining a body.

  Had there really been a “death on the tracks”?

  “We’re here to investigate,” Parker told the officer handing him his card.

  “Wade Parker.” He sounded impressed. He leaned down to peek inside the car. “And is that Miranda Steele with you?”

  Miranda squirmed. She’d been in the news too much lately. “We’re here on business, Officer,” she said.

  “My client would like us to assess the situation,” Parker added.

  Even though right now their “client” was an anonymous robot.

  The officer glanced back toward his coworkers. “I’ll have to check with the Lieutenant. You can park over there while I do that.”

  “Thank you.”

  The place the officer had indicated was an old precast company with a large flat building and a large flat parking lot facing the tracks. Two cop cars were already sitting there.

  As soon as Parker pulled up beside one of them Miranda hopped out and started heading up the bank where the cops were working. One thing she’d learned from Parker about PI work. Never wait for permission to enter a crime scene.

  There were only three officers, all in uniform, near the mound near the tracks. The tallest one had on a gray Stockman hat that gave him the appearance of a Mountie.

  As she approached he stepped toward her and Parker and Holloway, who had caught up.

  “Mr. Parker? Is that really you?”

  “It is, Ed.”

  Of course, Parker would know him. He seemed to know every police officer in Atlanta and its surroundings.

  He turned to her. “Miranda, this is Lieutenant Ed Upson of the Kennesaw police. Ed, this is—”

  “Miranda Steele. Who doesn’t know that name?” He extended a hand and gave Miranda a hearty shake.

  “Glad to meet you Lieutenant.” Remembering she was supposed to be in charge, she gestured toward Holloway. “This is our associate, Curt Holloway.”

  They shook as well.

  Upson turned back to Parker. “Who called you in?”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No.”

  Parker pressed a finger under his nose in an elegant, nonchalant move. “I received a very esoteric call this morning about an incident here. Are you sure you don’t know anything about that?”

  “Not at all, sir. But I sure am glad to see you.”

  Parker nodded toward the other two officers who were gathering evidence. “What do you have?”

  Upson took off his hat and scratched his head. “Durndest thing I’ve ever seen. Looks like somebody tripped on the tracks just before one of the night trains came by. Ugly mess. Tragic.”

  Miranda decided to have a look for herself and moved toward the cop crouched on the tracks taking photos.

  As she neared the spot and the body came into focus, the rest of the scene seemed to slip away. The hum of the officers’ voices were drowned out by the sound of her shoes on the stones. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Like a dinosaur chewing rocks. When she came to a halt and stared down at Death, the silence seemed to echo through the surrounding woods.

  A bird chirped away in one of
the trees. A robin? A mockingbird? She didn’t know birdcalls. The air seemed to take on a metallic scent, as if the train had left a blanket of a special kind of debris in its wake.

  She could hear her own heart beating steadily as if to remind her she was alive. Or was she? Her vision clouded and she was standing back in that musty basement—the one west of the city—staring at the poor young woman with the holes punched into her naked body.

  This wasn’t the same thing. The rational part of her mind knew that. But the sight sure set off those recent memory. Still Miranda couldn’t decide which scene was worse.

  Instead of suspended in midair, here the body lay on the tracks.

  It was a woman, by the clothes. She wore a demure collared white blouse under a pale blue sweater. A modest gray knee-length skirt. Hose. Flats on her twisted feet. The limbs lay still, so very limp. Almost relaxed. Some of her fingernails were broken, as if she’d been scratching to get out of some prison. Or fighting her attacker. Or bracing herself for the oncoming train.

  The neck—or what had been the neck—was mangled and bloody. So much blood. It drenched a long length of the track, pooling in the stones between the ties. The officer was taking shots of the bloody stub—the spot where the head should have been.

  Instead the head lay a few yards away in the middle of the tracks.

  Fighting the gag reflex Miranda stepped over to get a better look.

  It lay sideways, cheek to tie, as if it were contemplating how it had gotten there. Though the hair was matted with blood Miranda could tell it was dark brown, straight and cut in a simple style. Little makeup on the face. The cheeks were sunken. Hard to tell the age. Maybe late twenties, early thirties.

  But it was the eyes that got to her. It was always the eyes. These were big and brown and they bulged from the head as if the poor woman’s last thought was one of unbearable terror.

  It probably had been.

  Accident her ass. A familiar rage began to brew inside her. Who would do that to another human being? Did they have another serial killer on their hands?

  “Raccooning.”

  Miranda turned to see Parker at her side. She hadn’t heard him come up.

  He looked a little pale himself. And angry at the senseless death. “The bulging occurs when the vacuum of the human head is opened.”