by Lori Ryan
When she was finished, she poked her head into the kitchen. “Ms. Tiede?”
The woman looked up from a pan where she was sautéing something that smelled fantastic.
“Yes?”
“I just wondered if you could tell me what’s up on the third floor?”
“Mostly storage. There are some guest rooms up there, but they’re closed up from lack of use.” The cook frowned. “I think there’s a sitting room up there, too, but that’s not really used, either. I don’t know when anyone was up there last.”
“And the basement?”
“Oh, that’s mostly empty. I think Liz spends time down there, though.” She shivered. “It’s creepy if you ask me. There’s an old fireplace that a grown man can stand in. And a giant furnace that looks like it belongs in a horror movie. Liz had a TV and couch put down there.”
Shauna nodded, then went to check the basement. She would leave the attic for later.
A flick of the light switch showed what the cook had meant. It was eerie and old. The fireplace looked like you could put an entire tree in it back when it was in use. It was empty now. The large furnace looked more like some kind of oven, dark and brooding like a squat giant in the corner.
A small table sat next to the couch and television the cook had mentioned. Shauna looked at the papers on the table. Homework.
She went out to get Liz. She would get the girl settled, then go check the third floor as an extra precaution.
The house was surrounded by a manicured lawn, with the small carriage house turned guest house at the back of that. Behind that, there were woods, but Shauna knew there was a pool and tennis courts through the woods. It was back there that the land connected to the clubhouse that Jonathan Sawyer’s parents had built for their son.
“For the most part, you can pretend I’m not here, Liz,” Shauna said to Liz as she led the girl into the house. They had left Liz’s car in front of the house. There had been a freestanding four-car garage off to the left side of the house and she knew that was where the cook’s apartment was located.
“I’ll stay down here,” Shauna continued. “Let me know if you want to go outside at all.”
Liz frowned. “I need to take Fiona out.”
“Your dog?” Shauna asked, remembering Liz had found the threatening note when she’d taken her dog out. “Okay, let’s do that now.”
Liz went to the kitchen and came back with the small ball of fluff Shauna had seen laying in a corner of the kitchen. The dog opened dark eyes, blinking at Shauna from her perch in Liz’s arms. Shauna didn’t know what kind of dog she was, but somehow, she hadn’t pictured Liz with the poof ball. The girl struck her as more of a golden retriever type of person.
They went to the back of the house and stepped out onto the lawn where Liz let the dog loose while Shauna let her gaze cover the lawn and the trees beyond.
“I want to check the third floor of the house when we go back inside,” Shauna said to Liz as the girl watched the dog sniff in the grass.
She didn’t get anything more than a shrug in response.
“Then, you can do whatever you want and I’ll stick mostly to the main floor, but you let me know if you need me. Zach is trying to get ahold of your parents.”
A smirk came at that. “Good luck.” The vulnerable Liz seemed to be gone and the walls back up.
“Do you talk to them regularly?” Shauna had a feeling she knew the answer.
“Sometimes.”
“I bet you’ve been to some great places.” She assumed Liz traveled with them during the summer and on breaks.
“Whatever.” Liz rolled her eyes and picked up the dog. “I’ll be in my room.”
Shauna nodded and looked up to the windows on the third floor as the girl walked away. She would double check the front and back doors, make sure the alarm was on, then check the upstairs rooms.
Then she’d see if Liz wanted to come down for dinner. She needed to see if she could get that kid to open up. The only problem was, she had zero experience with kids, and teens were a mystifying mystery to her. Though, she guessed they shouldn’t be. She’d been one herself. Had she really ever been that moody?
She shook her head as she headed indoors. She should have told Zach to come watch Liz. He at least knew how to deal with the mood swings of a teenage girl.
Chapter Twenty-nine
There was nothing to do but wait now. Zach had put in calls to Liz Gordon’s parents and to the medical examiner. He’d left messages for everyone.
He slipped into the coffee room and went to the couch in the far corner. He would take twenty minutes to close his eyes and rest. They’d been going flat out and he had no intention of going home anytime soon. Power naps would have to do.
When he closed his eyes, though, he didn’t sleep. And his mind wasn’t running through the case, either, the way it often did. He usually used these naps to let his mind wander through the elements of a case, fitting pieces together, discarding any that didn’t fit, or letting other scraps of information bubble to the surface.
This time, though, his thoughts went to Shauna. Specifically, to the days when he had the freedom to put his hands on her lush curves. When they were dating, he hadn’t been working. He’d been free for her to call on him whenever she had free time. It was common for her to come to him late at night after she finished on a case.
Their relationship had been solely based on sex, and it was explosive sex, at that. Whenever they got together, his body instantly lit up and he hadn’t done a damned thing to try to keep his hands off her. She’d light him up in ways no other woman did. Without fail, their first encounter every time they got together would be hot, hard, fast. His body tightened now at the memory of her, slick and sweaty in his arms, his mouth on her as he lost himself in her tight heat.
And when he’d had her once, then he would lay naked and spent next to her, lazily trailing kisses up and down her body. He’d allow himself to taste, taking his time, learning every curve, learning what made her moan and wriggle beneath him.
Without fail, she’d have him hard and ready for her again in no time. The second time would be slow, almost tortuous in its pleasure, in the way the orgasm would build to the point of madness before crashing over them.
Zach sat up, realizing if anyone walked in, they’d be able to see how hard he was underneath his clothing.
Fuck, that would be embarrassing.
He scrubbed his hands down his face, trying to wash the memories from his mind. He knew it was a useless effort. Shauna had always reserved a special place in his memories. In fact, no other woman had competed with her since then, despite his efforts to try to imprint someone else’s body over hers in his mind. None had done what she could do to him.
Being with her now, working this case, he was a smart enough man to know that no other woman would ever measure up. Especially now that he’d gotten his head out of his ass long enough to see that she was a lot more than just the sexiest woman he’d ever had. She was tenacious, committed to the same cause he was, taking her passion for justice to the same level he did with his work.
She was sharp, but also had a hell of a lot of compassion, often dealing with witnesses better than he did. He liked that about her. He liked so many things about her.
He didn’t know if it was possible, but he wanted to see if they could try again. If she’d give him a real shot at a relationship. If he could get her to see that he was more than the ass he’d been when they’d been together so many years before.
The first thing he had to do, though, was to solve this case. They needed to bring a killer to justice.
Giving up on the fantasy of a nap, he walked back down the hall to the bullpen, finding Ronan approaching their desks at the same time that Zach came in.
“Did you get the parents?” Ronan asked as he sank into his chair. Like all partners in the major crimes division of NHPD, Zach and Ronan’s desks were pushed together so they faced each other as they worked.
Ronan’s face looked like Zach felt, his mouth open in shock. “I guess we should have expected that.”
Zach clicked through screens on his computer.
“What are you looking for?”
Zach didn’t look up as he answered. “Checking to see if they have any history with child protective services.”
“Anything?” Ronan asked.
Zach shook his head.
“What’s bugging you? You’re too quiet.” Ronan studied Zach.
“I can’t put my finger on it, but I know I’m missing something.”
Ronan snorted. “We’re all missing something. We’ve been missing it this whole damned time.”
“No, this is different. I don’t mean the big picture. We’ve obviously all been missing something this whole time. But this is different. I feel like I’ve seen something today that should mean something to me.” He stopped, frustrated, then began again. “You know when a word is on the tip of your tongue? It’s like that.”
“Have you tried laying down?” Ronan knew Zach often put things together when he took a break, but this time, the question only reminded Zach of the uncomfortably tight state his pants had been in minutes before.
Zach cleared his throat. “Yeah. Didn’t work.”
If Ronan noticed his discomfort, he didn’t comment on it. “When did the feeling start?”
This was one of the reasons Ronan and Zach worked so well as partners. They each thought of things the other hadn’t. Zach thought back through his day.
“When I started to try to reach Liz Gordon’s parents.”
“Then, we start there.” Ronan gestured to the slip of paper with the parents’ name and number on it.
Zach picked it up from his desk and looked at it. The nagging feeling was there, but nothing jumped out at him.
“What else were you doing at the time?” Ronan asked.
“Talking to Liz Gordon.”
Ronan looked thoughtful. “Is it something about her that’s bothering you?”
Zach thought back to the way Liz had watched he and Shauna in the bullpen when she’d been waiting for Shauna to escort her home. If he had to name his feelings, he’d probably say his spidey senses were tingling.
“It could be her.” Zach thought through what he’d seen of her and how she’d looked that day. What she’d sounded like. “She’s calculating. It’s barely there under the surface, but I get the sense in a lot of our interactions, she’s there and part of the conversation, but there’s this small piece of her that’s watching the conversation from a distance to see what’s happening, to see people’s reactions to her.”
Zach looked up at Ronan with the sudden realization that he hadn’t consciously thought that about her until now. It was like the thought had only come to him as he found the words to describe it to Ronan.
“What else did you do today?” Ronan asked, despite the fact he knew all of Zach’s movements throughout the day. He was trying to dislodge his partner’s memory, so his plan was to get Zach to move through the day.
“Went up to the cold case unit to see what they were working on.” Zach didn’t need more prompting. He ran through what they had seen in the short time they were there. “They’re working through huge lists of people who could have been our killer thirty years ago, looking for any connection to our suspects. It’s slow.”
Ronan waited as Zach closed his eyes and ran over what he’d seen and done up in the cold case offices.
Hell. He let the curse come out under his breath as he fished for the paper with Liz Gordon’s parents’ information on it again. “That’s it.” Zach tapped the paper and picked up his phone, calling up the information for Detective Hutchinson.
While the phone rang, he talked to Ronan. “Liz’s mother hyphenates her name. Kenworth-Gordon.”
Hutch answered the phone before Zach could finish.
Chapter Thirty
Zach and Ronan got in the car and raced toward Liz Gordon’s residence.
Shauna wasn’t answering her phone and the lead ball that filled Zach’s gut the minute he’d made the connection wasn’t going anywhere. Of course, he didn’t know precisely what the connection was yet, but he knew it had to do with Liz’s mother’s side of the family.
Ronan looked at his screen. “Still no response.” He looked over at Zach. “The uniforms will be there in two minutes.”
Zach’s phone rang. Ronan hit speaker and Zach spoke into the air as he drove. “This is Reynolds.”
“It’s Hutch. We found the connection. Herschel Kenworth was Liz Gordon’s uncle, but he died back in his late twenties. The timing is right for him to be our guy. He was checked into a mental institution an hour from here. It’s a place that’s since been closed down. Its practices were questionable, despite the high price they charged for their services.”
“And the dates line up with the last killing?” Ronan asked as Zach took the exit on the Merritt Parkway that would take them to the Gordon estate.
“Yes. Admitted to the hospital two weeks after the last killing. Three months later, he was given a lobotomy by one of the doctors there, even though that was out of practice by that time in most places. Soon after that, the family took him home for a while then brought him back to the hospital, where he died later that year. He was cremated.”
“Did the family live in the same place at the time?” Zach asked. They’d given Hutch the details of the family home earlier.
“Yes. It was passed to Liz’s mother when her parents died sometime later. Herschel was her only other relative, and since he died years back, Liz’s mother inherited everything.”
“Thanks, Hutch. We’re a few minutes out. We’ll let you know as soon as we’ve got eyes on Shauna.” Ronan hit the button to end the call and Zach could feel his eyes on him.
“We’ll get to her,” Ronan said quietly.
Zach only nodded. He couldn’t think about what might happen if they didn’t.
And he couldn’t stop cursing himself for not seeing this sooner.
Ronan’s phone rang and he put it on speaker as he’d done with the other call. “This is Cafferty.”
Zach held his breath and gripped the wheel tighter. He wanted there. Now.
“Sir, this is Officer Langston. We’re at the house. Detective O’Rourke’s vehicle is in the driveway. The girl is here, but she was in the shower when we arrived. We almost broke down the door before she opened it. She says Detective O’Rourke was going out to check the property line when she got into the shower. She isn’t sure if she came back.”
“Bullshit,” Zach said into the phone, not worrying about his language. His captain could pound sand for all he cared right now. “Don’t let that girl out of your sight. We’re two minutes out.”
“Yes, sir. We’ve got a pair of men out searching the grounds, and I’ve got three more cars on the way.”
Zach nodded, despite the fact the man couldn’t see him. Then he floored it into the straightaway. He would find Shauna.
He had to.
Chapter Thirty-one
Zach saw the quick flash of shock in Liz’s eyes when they told her they knew about her late uncle. They’d taken her into the living room to talk but they had other teams on the premises, looking for Shauna.
Liz covered her surprise almost instantly with a confused air. “He died long before I was born. I never knew my uncle.”
Zach sat in front of her and studied her, tilting his head. It was all he could do to stay calm right then. He was pulling on every ounce of control he had not to reach out and grip her neck in his hand and squeeze until she told him where Shauna was.
It was odd, really. He’d stopped seeing her as a teenage girl. As the kind of girl who could have been one of his niece’s friends, the way he saw all the girls involved in this case.
Right now, when he looked at Liz Gordon, he saw a monster. He could see t
he cold callous calculation beneath the façade she projected to the world.
He focused on doing his job. On questioning her until she gave up where Shauna was. “Did you find the rope and lipstick? Was it stashed someplace in the house?”
Liz shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Zach counted in his head, willing his breath to stay even and his face calm. They each had a part to play here now. She was committed to her performance, he’d give her that. “I think you do. Tell me, Liz, did your mother tell you what he’d done? Was it common knowledge in your family that he’d killed all those girls, or was that something you only discovered recently?”
He could see the gleam in her eye and he was disgusted by it. She almost seemed to want to talk to him, to tell him what he wanted to know. To describe her uncle’s involvement, and maybe to brag about her own. To tell him how she’d done it.
He played on that. “You were smart, Liz. You had us fooled for a long time. In fact, I have to think if your mom hadn’t hyphenated her name, it would have taken us even longer to figure it out.”
As it was, he hated that it had taken them so damned long.
Liz’s mouth twitched, like she wanted to speak, but she didn’t.
Zach continued, willing away the urge to lift her off her feet and throw her against the wall. It wouldn’t get them anywhere, but it might get their case thrown out of court. Then again, what the fuck did he care about court if he couldn’t get to Shauna in time?
“Why don’t you tell me how Sawyer’s involved? Were you working together?”
Liz’s whole body jerked at the suggestion and she wasn’t able to hide the venom in her eyes then. “Sawyer is a pig.”
It wasn’t enough. She’d said nothing to implicate herself yet. He needed a confession, so he could press her to tell them what she’d done to Shauna.
He saw Ronan step out of the house, presumably to check with the officers that were scouring the property.
Zach focused on Liz and pressed her weak spot. “What happened, Liz? Did Sawyer drug you?”