Killing Fear pb-1

by Allison Brennan

  He kissed her hair, her forehead. She let him hold her. Until he heard the phone conversation between Glenn and Robin, followed by Trinity’s revelation that Glenn had watched them having sex, Will hadn’t realized the depth of Glenn’s obsession with Robin. Seven years ago he’d known Robin was possibly a catalyst, that Glenn was fixated on her for some reason, to hurt people in her life but not her specifically.

  Now, the truth started to fall in place. It had all been about Robin. They simply didn’t have enough information back then to see it. And now Glenn had had years to plot his revenge, to obsess on Robin. Will had feared for Robin’s life since he’d first heard of Glenn’s escape, now he knew she was the reason he’d returned to San Diego. Everyone else Glenn wanted to kill was extraneous to him, no one compared to Robin.

  “I won’t let him get to you,” he whispered, rocking her in his lap.

  “I’ll kill him, Will.”

  The coldness in her voice disturbed him. He suspected for the first time that yes, in fact, Robin McKenna could kill Theodore Glenn. She’d had seven years to practice. Seven years to hate. He’d stolen so much from her-her security, her safety, her friends.

  And Will. Had Glenn not planted those seeds of doubt-if Will hadn’t let him-he’d never have doubted Robin. Or would he have? Was he that shallow? Except that he was a cop first. He had to ask the hard questions. And based on Glenn’s M.O., he had to ask Robin if she’d had a sexual relationship with him.

  Maybe he’d just been so close to her that he was scared of his own emotions. Pushed her away the only way he could. Accusing her of lying to him. Accusing her of sleeping with a killer.

  He’d take it all back if he could. She wouldn’t listen to him, maybe she would let him touch her.

  He kissed her. Firmly. Closely. Intimately. To show her that he loved her. Believed in her. Her lips opened. He tasted the salt of her tears on her tongue. She moaned and he held her head tightly, his hands tangled in her long, curly auburn hair. He kissed her again and again, almost disbelieving that she was kissing him back, her hands around his neck, her mouth seeking his as much as he sought hers.

  She shook her head, turned her lips from his. “Will, no.”

  “God, Robin, I love you.”

  She shook her head over and over. “Don’t. Don’t do this to me. You can’t walk into my life like this because it won’t last. Without trust, love means nothing.”

  “I was wrong. Dammit, Robin! I was wrong!”

  “I know that. And you do, too. But what about next time? What about the way you looked at Mario Medina today?”

  “The bodyguard?”

  “Like I had walked out of my office after screwing him on the desk.”

  “I didn’t. I-” He had been jealous. He’d taken one look at the good-looking, muscular bodyguard and instantly thought something had to be going on between him and Robin. Because she was a beautiful, sexy woman.

  “You’re not like that anymore-” He bit his tongue. “I mean-”

  “I’m not a stripper anymore. So when I was a stripper, you expected me to spread my legs for every halfway decent looking man who walked into RJ’s? I did it fast enough for you, didn’t I?” She pulled herself up.

  “Don’t, Robin. You know it was never like that between us. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded-”

  “Go away, Will. I’m not going to do this to myself. I can’t.”

  He stood, held her arms. “Robin, I love you.”

  She shook her head. “You only think you do. You don’t know what love is. And I don’t, either. I let my heart be broken twice, and I’m done.”

  Will sat in his car outside Robin’s loft. He was sick about their conversation-that he’d hurt her so deeply she couldn’t trust him-but he planned to spend the rest of the night watching her loft. If Glenn was going after her, it would be when he thought she was asleep and unprotected. He’d put in a couple hours sleep once dawn broke.

  His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. “What?”

  “Good morning to you, too,” Carina said.

  “It’s two a.m.”

  “And you’re not home.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The Feds just called Chief Causey. They want to meet at oh-eight-hundred. They have some information about Glenn’s activities in prison.”

  “Causey called me earlier.”

  “You didn’t tell me?”

  “You were already planning on being in at eight.” The truth was, after talking to Trinity he’d forgotten to clue Carina in. Chalk one up to lack of sleep.

  Will was about to hang up when he saw Robin in the window of the loft. All the lights were on as she looked directly down at his car. He wasn’t exactly inconspicuous in the Porsche, even if it was black.

  “I need a favor.”

  “Sure, I’ll give you a wake-up call.”

  “I need your friend’s home address.”

  “I have a lot of friends.”

  “Mario Medina. The bodyguard.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a job for him.”

  “Last I checked he had a job.”

  “Dammit, Carina, are you going to make this difficult?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “You’re sitting outside her place, aren’t you?”

  No use lying to her. “And?”

  She sighed. “I hear you. Hold on.”

  Will looked at the window again, wanting another glimpse of the last woman in the world he’d ever wanted to hurt.

  She was gone, but the lights blazed. In the days after Robin found Anna dead, she had been terrified of the dark.

  Time didn’t heal all wounds. Or fears.

  “It’s after three in the morning.”

  Mario Medina was not happy about being woken up in the middle of the night.

  “Thanks,” Will mumbled. Mario lived in a condo right on the beach. Not too large, but with the view and beach access off the sliding glass doors, Will knew it cost a small fortune. It was neat, clean, and sparsely furnished. Will suspected he didn’t spend a lot of time here other than sleeping. He had a similar place a little farther south. The Naval base at Coronado could be seen to the southwest in daylight, now only a faint smattering of light.

  As if reading his mind, Mario said, “Six years, Marines not Navy.”

  “MP, Army.”

  “I figured you’re from a long line of cops.”

  “I need a favor.”

  Mario laughed. “You want a favor? Why should I do anything for you?”

  “Why shouldn’t you?”

  “Want a beer?”

  Will nodded. They walked out on the patio, each with a Dos Equis in hand. It was freezing as far as Will was concerned-under fifty degrees. Not why he moved to San Diego. But Mario, in a black T-shirt and shorts, didn’t seem to notice. He drained half his beer. “What?”

  “I want to hire you to keep an eye on Robin McKenna.”

  Mario showed no expression. “The woman who hired me to watch out for her?”

  “She hired you to watch the club and her employees, correct?”

  He nodded.

  “And not her, specifically.”

  Mario shook his head.

  “She needs someone watching her back and I can’t do it. This investigation is going 24/7 and I can’t justify spending the time on her. I have increased patrols in her neighborhood. We have a cop on-site at the club during regular business hours. But Theodore Glenn is going to look for that. Surveillance. He’s going to find a hole and exploit it. He’s been planning revenge for too long.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “Fuck, Medina, what’s your game?”

  “I can’t do it because I committed most of my staff to her to protect her employees. I have two pairs rotating twelve-hour shifts on the club, open or closed. I don’t have a large operation. My guys are all independent contractors. And one of my best is otherwise occupied.”

  “Who? I’ll pay him.”

  “Doubt
it. Connor Kincaid is watching his fiancee 24/7 and nothing’s going to buy him off that one. Can’t say I blame him, she’s a spunky little number.”

  “You have no one else?”

  “I’ll make some calls.”

  “Dammit, that’s not good enough!” Will clenched his fists. How could he protect Robin while he had a job to do?

  Mario looked out at the ocean. “I’ll keep my eye on her. You have a car on her tonight?”

  “Yes. I just checked and he’s solid.”

  “I’ll attach myself to her starting tomorrow morning. But I have to have your assurance that I will be clued in to every step of the investigation. What you know, I know. I will not be surprised, got it?”

  Will nodded, relieved. He’d have much preferred to stay with Robin himself, but he couldn’t watch her 24/7 and work the case.

  “Anything I should know?”

  “We have the Feds coming to town in a few hours. They apparently have something from San Quentin to share.”

  “Wonderful.” He sounded less than enthused.

  “I’ll check in with you tomorrow after the meeting.”

  “I’m counting on it, Hooper.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Will slept like shit for three hours before dragging himself into the shower and heading over to the station for whatever the Fed was going to report. He arrived before the FBI and debriefed Chief Causey on everything, including his previous relationship with Robin McKenna.

  He waited for an admonishment. Instead, Causey said, “Did your relationship with Ms. McKenna affect your duty as a cop?”

  “Not at all, sir. Except-” He stopped.

  “Except?”

  “I let Frank run with the investigation. If I had been more concerned about the investigation than with Robin, I would have been sitting outside Glenn’s house the night Jessica Suarez was murdered.”

  Causey didn’t say anything, and Will worried his honesty may have cost him the head position of the task force. “Will,” Causey said quietly, “I should have pulled Frank long before the Glenn case. If anyone is culpable for that girl being murdered, it’s me.”

  “With all due respect, sir, I disagree-”

  “I knew Frank had a drinking problem and I relied on you to carry him through retirement. The last thing I wanted to do was pull a once-fantastic cop and destroy his reputation. I’ve known Frank for a long time. We were in the Academy together.” Causey sighed, rubbed a hand over his face. “We also had politics to deal with seven years ago. Between Descario and the perceived reputation of the victims, we didn’t have the man power to devote to the case. And if the crime scene techs hadn’t fucked up the DNA evidence, who knows what would have happened?

  “We’d like every case to run smoothly. To do our job, interview witnesses, process evidence, arrest a suspect, earn a conviction. But you know as well as I do that textbook perfect cases are just that-in textbooks. You’re a good cop, Will. Mistakes happen and, unfortunately, sometimes with fatal results. But it’s not all on you, or Frank, or me, or the crime lab. It’s on an imperfect system and the imperfect humans within it.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Will said quietly. He’d rarely heard the chief utter more than two sentences together.

  “The Feds will be here any minute. Prepare to brief them.”

  Putting the conversation with Causey aside, Will reviewed the reports that had come in from the field. Nothing from Theodore Glenn himself in twenty-four hours, since he’d phoned Robin at her loft. No dead bodies, no sightings, nothing. Every patrol that came in at shift change reported to Will where they’d been, who they’d talked to, and all with the same conclusion: No one had seen the escaped convict.

  They had two patrols following up full-time on tips from the hotline, which was ringing nonstop with “sightings” of the escaped convict. So far, none were credible, but they had to follow up on each and every call.

  “Carina, anything come in from the patrol outside Glenn’s parents’ house?”

  “No activity,” she said. “Mrs. Glenn brought them coffee and donuts this morning.”

  “He’s not going home. He has no beef with his parents, and he already got what he needed from them: his sister’s address.”

  The main bull pen doors swung open and Chief Causey walked in with a Suit, male, in his mid-to-late forties. The Fed was under six feet tall, with the face of a character-the kind of cop who in the movies always played the wise old mentor or sidekick. Someone you’d have fun shooting the breeze with over beers at the bar.

  Causey walked over to Will’s desk and introduced the Fed as Special Agent Hans Vigo out of Quantico.

  “Quantico?” Will asked. “You’re a long way from home.”

  “I go where I’m needed,” Vigo said with a half smile that reminded Will of a leaner Columbo.

  Causey said, “Hooper is heading the task force. He worked the case seven years ago, has a good grasp on Glenn.”

  Vigo nodded. “Good you’re still here. I’m ready when you are.”

  “You in town for a while?”

  “However long I can be of help.”

  Will pulled in Officer Diaz, who was coordinating the patrols, Chief Causey, and Carina. They met in the makeshift task-force command center.

  “To save some time,” Vigo said, “I read the past case files. Your chief was kind enough to fax them to me yesterday so I could review them on the plane, as well as the current reports.”

  “Then there’s nothing you don’t know,” Will said. “Glenn has been quiet for the last twenty-four hours. You’re a profiler, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “What I want to know is what he plans on doing next.”

  “I’m a criminal profiler, not a psychic. If you don’t mind, I’d like to listen to the conversation from yesterday-” Vigo glanced at the file in front of him. “The conversation between Theodore Glenn and Robin McKenna.”

  Will put the CD in a player and they all listened. Hearing Robin’s strained voice again, and Glenn’s taunting, angered him and made him doubly glad he’d gone to Mario Medina the night before. Robin didn’t have a death wish, but she was far more concerned about everyone else’s safety than she was about her own.

  “We’ve warned everyone we can,” Will said, “but that doesn’t mean they’ll be on guard 24/7. The crime lab, the cops working the case, the prosecution, are all on high alert. We’ve contacted the jurors and everyone else who testified. He’s already taken out two people close to the investigation, his own sister, who testified against him, and my former partner.” Will paused. “The prosecution’s primary witness, Robin McKenna, has hired additional security for her business, and we’ve increased patrols in that neighborhood. We’re still tracking down other witnesses.”

  Will glanced at Vigo. “You have something new?”

  The Fed nodded. “You’ve gone above and beyond. If all jurisdictions were as organized as this one, maybe more than three convicts would be back in custody.”

  “Wasn’t that the work of some vigilante?” Diaz asked.

  Vigo said, “We think one of the other escapees has been tracking the men and restraining them.”

  Causey asked, “A convict is beating up the others? I thought that was media grandstanding. We didn’t hear anything formal about it.”

  “It’s not something we’re advertising. Because when we get the guy back behind bars, we don’t want the prison population knowing that he was once a cop. As it is, we’ll probably have to move him and put him in isolation when he’s found, or send him to a federal penitentiary.”

  The news sunk in, that one of their own had turned. Yet hadn’t turned so far that he condoned the escape of convicted murderers.

  “What do you have on Glenn?” Will asked.

  “We’ve been working with the prison authority on seizing all personal property of the escaped convicts,” Vigo said. “We have their journals, their books, their letters. We have sent in a computer expert to pull down all e-ma
il communication. Prisoners are not allowed e-mail communication, but we know they find ways to access the Internet. We can get everything except privileged communication with their attorneys, but we have a legal team working on that with a federal judge.”

  Vigo tilted one side of his mouth up. “We may get in a little hot water for that one, but at this point these men have already given up their rights. Theodore Glenn is not the only one who has killed since the escape. A gang of four are on a robbery spree in San Francisco. Two clerks are dead. You’d think in a city that geographically small we could get a handle on them-” Vigo stopped himself. “But right now we have info on Glenn that can benefit you and I’ll help in any way I can.”

  Will appreciated that Vigo didn’t force himself into the case. At this point, he would ask for all the help he could get.

  “Give it to me,” he said.

  “I work in the Investigative Support Unit, which basically means that I think like the bad guy. I try to figure out his next move. To do that, I look at his past. If you understand why a killer did something, you can predict what he will do in the future.

  “I don’t need to tell you all who Theodore Glenn is. You know he’s a borderline genius corporate attorney who, before he turned to murder, received intense thrills through extreme sports-things like skydiving and BASE jumping. I’ve read his transcripts, and concur with what Detective Hooper said on the stand: Glenn is a sociopath with no ability to feel remorse for his actions. He will kill again if it gets him what he wants.

  “Most serial killers kill to live out a fantasy. They gain satisfaction in either the hunt or the kill or both. They relive that fantasy as long as they can. When the memory or souvenirs from the kill no longer gives them the physical and emotional satisfaction as the act itself did, they kill again. They are constantly perfecting their crime, making the fantasy better, more complete, in their minds.

  “This is why Glenn changed his M.O. almost immediately.”

  “The bleach,” Will said. “We guessed he did that because he’d left evidence behind at the first crime scene.”

  “Exactly. He knew it as soon as he left. He has finely developed instincts, which is why he’s been so elusive since his escape.