by Tracy Wolff
* * *
Oh, shit. Fuck. Goddamn son of a bitch. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Cole dragged air in through his mouth as he searched desperately for a bathroom. He was going to lose it and lose it big, and he really didn’t need anyone else to see him when he did.
He found the bathroom at pretty much the exact second his stomach revolted. Slamming through the door, he dashed into the nearest stall and puked up everything in his stomach—and it’s lining to boot.
And still he wasn’t done, the dry heaves racking his body again and again as he struggled for control. But for once, it eluded him—his body and everything else completely out of his power.
The bastard had killed that poor woman the same way Samantha had been killed. Had strung her up, nude and cut all to hell, the same way his sister had been hung. Tears burned behind his eyes, and for the first time in nearly a decade he let them fall.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. How could this be happening again? How could he be expected to live through it a second time? Every instinct he had told him to get his ass up and leave this place, leave this city, and never return.
But he couldn’t do that, not now. Not when the nightmare was repeating itself. And not when Genevieve was here, trapped in the middle of everything.
But isn’t that what he’d wanted? Her to wade in and get her hands dirty? He thought of the woman he had just seen; it didn’t get any dirtier than that.
It was a message and he knew it, even if Genevieve didn’t. He might be so twitchy and disturbed that he barely recognized himself, but he was still together enough to realize this whole thing had been done for his benefit.
It had been choreographed, staged, with just this result in mind. He didn’t know exactly how he knew that, but he did. It made him even more furious, that he was reacting with such utter predictability that even a murdering asshole like this could figure him out.
But how was he supposed to react? This bastard—this sick, sociopathic fuck—was after her now. Maybe he’d always been, and Cole’s interest in her had made the guy snap. He didn’t know, and frankly, didn’t care. But he couldn’t leave Genevieve like this—a lamb for the slaughter.
This son of a bitch was sick, demented. Totally twisted, and he had his eye on Genevieve.
And she knew it.
She’d been shaken by the crime scene—he’d seen it, even if no one else had. She hadn’t wanted to go into that closet, hadn’t wanted to look at what had been done to that poor woman any more than he had.
But she’d done it.
What kind of strength did it take to do that, he wondered. To walk into that shit day after day, year after year? To look at the dead, and more, to take a stand for them? He didn’t think he had it in him—hell, it had taken him close to a decade to take a stand for Samantha, and look what a fine job he was doing of that. Puking his guts up in a police station bathroom, too shaky and too disturbed to get off his knees and try to do some good.
He wanted to stand up, to get back to Genevieve, but he was man enough to admit his legs wouldn’t yet support him. While his body might be out for the count, however, his brain was working perfectly well. And he realized that he was going to have to tell Genevieve the truth. Have to give up some control to keep her safe.
And he would keep her safe. Somehow, in the past few days, she’d become more important to him than anything else. She’d become his world, and the idea of her being in jeopardy because of him … he shook his head. No, that wasn’t going to happen.
Tonight, they would sit down and he would tell her everything. He no longer had a choice. Pushing himself to his feet, he kept his head down as he left the bathroom and headed down the hallway to the nearest exit. He couldn’t be here right now, couldn’t deal with this newest outrage. Couldn’t face Genevieve until he knew how to explain everything to her. Because after today, one thing was clear. He was becoming a liability, and Genevieve had the right to know about it.
* * *
Back at her desk, Genevieve stared at her friends and fellow detectives, all of whom looked as sick as she felt. “How did he get in here?” she demanded, more than aware of how wild she sounded. “We need to look at the film. There’s a camera aimed directly at the waiting room next to the supply closet. We need it.”
Shawn was already on the phone with the front desk. She didn’t know what the desk sergeant was saying to him, but it sure as hell didn’t look good. “The camera’s fried—has been for three days. There’s a requisition form in on it, but so far no one’s gotten to it yet.”
“Are you kidding me?” She stared at him in disbelief. “What about the one by the front door?”
He shook his head. “The whole system is down.” Shaking his head, his expression revealing the same impotent fury she was feeling, he said, “This guy is always one step ahead of us.”
She snorted. “Don’t you mean three?”
“Well, somebody had to have seen him. We’ll ask around, find out—”
“Come on, Shawn. A guy good enough to commit bloody murder right under our noses is good enough to keep from being seen.”
Shawn looked like he wanted to argue, but in the end he shut his mouth because she was right and he knew it. They were exactly where they had been all along—totally screwed.
“I can’t trace the flowers.” Luc came up behind them. “Someone dropped an envelope in the mail slot with a hundred bucks in it, asking that the roses be delivered here yesterday afternoon.”
She turned to look at him. “What did the guys on duty have to say about last night? How the hell was this bastard able to get Sharon in that closet and mutilate her like that in the middle of a fucking police station? And how the hell did no one hear it going on?”
“They have no idea. I’ve talked to everyone on duty. According to Jefferson, Sharon was staying late to work on something for one of her cases—apparently, Chastian’s in a rush for it.
“Anyway, Jefferson left at nine o’clock, and Sharon was still alive. Edgar called her cell at eleven thirty—I guess they’d had plans—and she didn’t answer. He came back here at one to look for her, and found the lab locked up tight.”
“Did he get her on the way home, then?” Luc asked. “After she’d left the station?”
“No.” Genevieve pictured the crime scene in her head. “That would be impossible. She was taken out by a blow to the head. I don’t care how busy or understaffed this place is; if someone carried one of ours—unconscious—through the door, we would have noticed. Someone would have noticed.”
“So what, then? How the hell did he get her where he wanted her without attracting attention?” Torres demanded.
“He knew her.” Luc piped in, his normally ruddy face deathly white. “She trusted him—whoever he is—enough to follow him into a storage closet in an empty police station. He gets her to walk in ahead of him, and pow!” He brought his hand down in a quick slicing motion. “One blow to the head and she’s stunned enough to let him do anything he wants to her.”
“But where’s the satisfaction in that?” demanded Torres. “All his other victims were wide awake for their torture—it’s something the bastard gets off on. I know he’s mimicked a bunch of past crimes, but he always puts his own twist on it. Why change his MO now? He gets off on the torture.”
“Because this wasn’t one of his masterpieces,” Genevieve answered as her instincts screamed at her that this was an inside job. She beat them down as she glanced into the outraged faces around her. There was no way one of these men was the killer—no possible way. “Sharon was a means to an end, a punishment. Nothing else.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Almost all the wounds were postmortem—at least, that’s what Jefferson believes at this point. And I’m betting that we’ll find out that either the blow to the head killed her or something else did very quickly. He didn’t want her to suffer. Oh, and there was no sign of sexual assault on the preliminary exam.”
“Which reinforces that he knew
her.” Shawn spoke up for the first time.
“Or that he just didn’t want her to scream her head off in the middle of a cop shop,” Luc said through gritted teeth.
Genevieve watched him thoughtfully for a minute, and couldn’t help thinking that finally the killer had made a mistake. Taking a cop—particularly in her own precinct—was a stupid thing to do. Killing her here and leaving her mutilated body to be found was more than stupid. It was downright suicidal. So either the guy had a death wish and wanted to be caught, or he was too damn arrogant for his own good.
She was betting on the latter.
“Who was he punishing?” Torres demanded, his angry voice drawing her out of her musings. “Who’s he pissed at—besides his mother and the whole fucking world?”
Her phone rang before she could answer him. Wondering if it was Cole—since he’d disappeared once poor Sharon’s body had been found—she answered it with a soft “Delacroix.” But it wasn’t Cole, and she froze at the whisper at the other end.
It was a recording, and he said only three words, but they had her paralyzed. She stared at her computer like it was a bomb about to go off. “Check your email.”
“Why?” she started to ask, hoping to keep the line open long enough to trace him, but a dial tone was her only answer. Bumping Shawn out of her way—as well as the two CSI guys who had just shown up—she logged in to her email and skimmed through her in-box.
Buried between an email from the DA’s office and one from the lab was a message simply titled READ ME.
She clicked on it, and huge red letters filled the screen. This one’s on you, Genevieve. She didn’t have to die.
Suddenly, loud music blasted from her speakers and photos began popping on the screen—the same photos Chastian had shown her the day before.
She tried to shut it down, to close the email, to turn off the computer—to do something, anything to make the images stop. But nothing was working—her PC had been hijacked.
She was achingly aware of the men behind her, all of whom had averted their eyes after the first few pictures came up. But by then the damage had been done—the bastard had led with the most explicit ones—her naked, blindfolded, and tied to Cole’s bed, tequila pouring over her nude body with her nipples hard and glistening, a man’s hand coming down hard on her bare ass, her masturbating.
The music was drawing attention from others in the room, and though Shawn and Luc and Roberto tried to shield the computer, she knew by the buzz in the room that some of the other detectives saw anyway.
Tears of rage and humiliation burned in her eyes. She saw these men every day, worked with them, took their backs and trusted them to take hers. Now that they’d seen her like this, how could she expect them to ever look at her the same way?
It wasn’t that she was ashamed of what she’d done with Cole—she wasn’t. The way he loved her was beautiful and exciting and so achingly intimate it made her head spin and her heart ache. But to have others see what she let him do to her was a violation like no other she’d ever known.
Not knowing what to do, wanting desperately for it to stop, she repeatedly hit the computer’s off button, but to no avail. Behind her she heard Torres growl, “Unplug the goddamn thing!” and then Luc was crouching next to her, ripping the power cord from the wall.
The music stopped instantly, as did the photo montage as the screen went mercifully blank. For long seconds she stood, paralyzed. Unable to move or think or even breathe, she tried to steady herself. Tried to think of what to say, of what to do.
But there was nothing she could do, the images indelibly burned into her brain—and the brains of her partners, the CSI guys, and half the squad room to boot, she was sure. Everything she’d done to fit in, everything she’d done to promote a professional image—strong, self-reliant, as capable as any man—was worthless now. In seconds, she’d been reduced to a joke for the water cooler. Or worse, the locker room.
Her lungs started aching, and Genevieve became abruptly aware of the fact that she wasn’t breathing. Opening her mouth, she managed to suck a few strangled breaths into her starving lungs.
But then she heard Torres clear his throat, felt his hand—soft and comforting—on her shoulder. The tears she’d been battling overflowed, sliding down her cheeks in long rivulets she no longer had the strength to hide.
“I need … I’m sorry, I need a minute.”
And then she was running out of the bull pen. Out of the station house. Out of her mind.
Chapter Twenty-one
She wanted Cole.
Needed him with an intensity that bordered on insanity. Tired, disgusted, and more scared than she would ever admit, Genevieve wanted nothing more than to curl against her lover and let him soothe her—body and soul.
But that wasn’t going to happen tonight, she told herself grimly, as she fumbled in her purse for the keys to her front door. She hadn’t seen him since the body had been discovered that morning, hadn’t had a chance to call him as she and the others had worked all afternoon and half the evening trying to get the evidence to pop out a lead—any lead.
Not that she blamed him; that body would have been hard for anyone to take. That it had so closely mimicked his sister’s death—she could only imagine how devastated he was.
It had taken her a while to work up the nerve to go back to the station, and when she’d finally gotten there, braced for the worst, it was to find her computer missing, her desk cleaned and the guys deep in conversation about any- and everything pertaining to the case—except what had happened to her earlier that afternoon.
And while she’d been on the receiving end of a couple of hard-to-interpret looks, all in all she was shocked at how good everyone was at pretending nothing had happened. She also couldn’t help wondering just what Shawn and Luc and Torres had threatened them with to make such behavior a reality.
The only reference to the email was when Torres growled out of the corner of his mouth, “I had to give the computer to the e-guys—see what they could come up with from it. But I made them promise that Jose would be the only one to look at it. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
She’d been touched by his concern, by his desire to spare her any and all embarrassment. She’d thanked him, but he’d shaken his head and told her it was nothing. Chastian hadn’t seen it the same way; had called her into his office just a little while ago and ordered her to take a week’s vacation, or face suspension.
She’d taken the vacation, effective immediately. And the worst part was—after all her fine posturing—that she hadn’t even had the nerve to tell him to go to hell. Stressed out over the photos, feeling more violated than she ever had before in her life, she didn’t have any fight left in her. She’d just agreed with Chastian and left. What was one more violation on top of all the others?
Her hands locked onto the key ring, and she pulled it out with a sigh. Slid her house key into the lock. Heard it click and then pushed the door open. Before she knew what was happening, Cole grabbed her wrist and yanked her inside before he slammed the door shut behind her.
“What are you—” Her question was cut off when he shoved her face-first into the wall hard enough to have the air whooshing from her lungs.
“I need you.” He grabbed her wrists, locked them above her head and pressed his hard, muscular body against her from behind. “I need to be inside you.”
He sounded utterly desperate—and her sorrow fled in the face of his obvious pain.
She could feel his arousal against her ass as he molded every inch of his rocksolid body to hers, and she responded instantly as the need to comfort him the only way he would allow welled up inside of her.
She struggled to turn around, to look at him, but he wouldn’t ease up. Wouldn’t let her go, his hand tightening around her wrists as he leaned even more heavily against her.
“Do you want me to stop?” Cole whispered the question in her left ear, his hot breath making her shiver despite herself.
Then he was rocking his hips against her, and any thought of stopping him disappeared. He felt incredible, the hand that gripped her wrists tight but not painful. The pressure of his long, lithe body against her the same.
“Genevieve?” he prompted, licking the delicate skin behind her ear. “Tell me now if you want me to leave.”
Closing her eyes, she said the only two words she was capable of forming, the only two words she wanted to say: “Don’t leave.”
His response was a deep whoosh of air against her cheek, as if he’d been holding his breath, waiting for her answer. And then he was moving, his free hand tangling in her hair. Pulling her head back so that her throat was exposed to his questing mouth.
His raked his teeth down the slender column, then used his tongue to lick away the sweat that had formed as suddenly as her need for him. Up and down her throat, he went, covering every square inch of her neck until there was no place he hadn’t kissed. Then he got to the hollow of her throat and began to suck, strong pulls that sent heat and wetness careening into her sex.
She arched against him, stood on tiptoes so that she could press her ass more firmly against his hard cock. He felt so good. Hard and hot and in control, he made her feel like the most desirable woman on earth. Like no one else would ever do for him.
With her hands stretched above her head, her body held nearly immobile by the hard press of his, she felt bound. Helpless. Completely at Cole’s mercy. And somehow the vibe worked for her, despite the fact that she had never wanted to give any man this much control over her. Had fought against it her whole life.