Oh. My. God.
Nikki clutched her heart, her breathing becoming dangerously rapid. She felt two strong hands grab onto her, holding her in a way that permitted her to feel secure enough to do something she’d never done in her life.
She fainted.
Chapter 10
Wednesday, July 16 4:07 A.M.
It was shaping up to be one hell of an enlightening evening. Lucifer had escaped once again, but the CPD had collected more information on the serial killer and his predilections in three hours’ time than they had in the past several years.
1. The predator was now wooing women through the Internet—a fact the CPD had suspected with at least three of his previous victims, but weren’t sure about until tonight. The last email Linda Hughes had ever sent, for instance, contained a reference to meeting an online acquaintance named Allan for a drink. The CPD, however, had found no residual traces from any emails sent by Allan, or any other potential suspect, on the victim’s computer. They were forced to conclude that if Linda had been wooed via the Internet, she had set up a web-based email account through which to correspond with him, so that no traces of him could be located on her computer’s hard drive. Linda had most likely done that to protect herself professionally. She died never having realized that she had played right into her murderer’s hands, that her secretiveness was a predator’s twisted dream come true.
2. Like a fisherman who had discovered a new, successful lure, it was probable that Lucifer’s next strike would occur on a woman he seduced via the Internet. It made a lot of sense, though. He liked professional women, powerful women. Liked bringing them down, removing their power. But professional women don’t have a lot of time on their hands, tend to be too beat from a long working day to go out at night. The Internet makes for a convenient pickup scene and provides an endless pool of potential victims.
3. Lucifer considers himself an expert on D/s and bondage, and uses that knowledge to lure women looking for such an expert—again, the CPD had suspected this, but hadn’t been able to confirm it until tonight. This explained the whip marks on Linda Hughes’s corpse, as well as the bizarre markings on another victim. It also explained his proficiency with ropes and tying women up.
4. He had used the alias Richard Remington—a fact that probably wouldn’t do them much good because he likely changed his name every time. Still, the alias would be looked into.
5. He was a big man, strong and tall.
6. Blue eyes.
7. Black leather jacket.
8. Probably fancies himself in love with his victims, most likely believes the romantic delusions he spins to lure them in. This, if true, probably explained the removal of the victims’ hearts. Or at least explained it as much as it could possibly be explained.
9. Crazy as a two-dollar bill. That, however, the CPD had already known.
Thomas poured himself a cup of coffee from Dr. Nicole Adenike’s expensive brewer before shuffling into the den to watch Leon Walker work. Leon had been on the force for over twenty years and was the CPD’s resident computer whiz.
“Talk to me, buddy. You got anything new?”
Leon shook his head. “Not yet. Still working on it.” He sighed, his ebony face showing fatigue. “On top of everything else, the asshole knows computers, too.”
Thomas’s eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean?”
Leon glanced up. “FallenAngel looks like a legit email account. . . .”
“But it’s not,” Thomas ventured, frowning.
“Nope.”
Which probably meant the real FallenAngel was some fourteen-year-old kid into heavy metal who had no idea his account was being faked by a serial killer. Shit. “What is it, then?”
“Don’t know. Looks to me like the emails are rerouted to another server.”
“Can you find that server?”
“Gimme time, Cavanah.”
Thomas sighed. After all these years he should have guessed that Lucifer had covered himself from all angles. “I’m going to go speak with the victim again. See if she can remember anything new.”
Leon nodded, his attention once more riveted on the computer screen. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
Nikki was in a daze, recovering from the greatest shock of her life. Lucifer. She could still scarcely credit it.
For a month she had been emailing back and forth with a serial killer, had even started to feel the beginnings of love for him. Like a fool she had believed the things he’d said to her, had believed in him.
Good Lord in heaven, she was a moron. A moron who had escaped being raped, tortured, and murdered by the skin of her teeth. She shivered, the realization as numbing as it was terrifying.
“Feeling any better?”
Nikki glanced up, the familiar gravelly voice breaking her from her reverie. Detective Thomas Cavanah. Her nemesis. On a typical night, anyway. She decided that a truce was in order, at least for this particular night.
She studied the homicide officer for a prolonged moment, getting her first good glimpse of him since this entire ordeal had begun. He was a big man, she noted just as she had back in the grocery store, muscular and solid. As tall as he was broad. His hair was dark and cut short, his eyes brown.
Thank God his eyes were brown, she thought. It made conversing with him easier. That last officer, Ben O’Rourke, had possessed blue eyes—she doubted she’d ever again look at blue eyes quite the same way.
“Yes. Thank you.” Nikki cleared her throat. She offered him a half-hearted smile as he handed her a cup of coffee. She blew at the steam rising up from it, then took a long, measured sip.
“It’ll get better, you know,” he murmured, taking the seat on the sofa beside her. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but eventually it’ll get easier.”
She could see how muscular his legs were even through the material of his denim jeans. The muscles seemed to ripple as he bent his legs and sat. She glanced up at his face. “I hope so,” she whispered. “Because right now I’m about a step away from needing to be institutionalized.”
He didn’t smile, but his dark eyes gentled. She sensed he wasn’t the type who smiled much.
“Well if you do need to be institutionalized, at least you’ll get some good drugs for your trouble.” He winked, winning a small smile from her. “See there,” he drawled, his gravelly voice a purr. “You’re doing better already.”
Her gaze clashed with his. His brown eyes flicked down to her lips, then back up. She glanced away, blushing for reasons she couldn’t fathom.
He was just being nice, she reminded herself. He was trying to provide calm and hope where little existed.
Thomas cleared his throat. “I know it’s been a difficult night . . .”
“But?”
He sighed. “This is the part of my job I hate. I know you’re just wanting to retreat to your shell to lick your wounds. . . .” He waited for her to make eye contact. “But I need to find this bastard, Dr. Adenike.”
“Please, call me Nikki.”
“All right, Nikki. And you call me Thomas.”
She nodded. “Okay,” she whispered.
“Have you been able to recall anything else about your attacker?” he asked, his tone patient. “His shoes? Any tattoos? Any . . . anything?”
She sighed, her eyes briefly closing. “I wish I could say yes, but . . .”
“But you can’t.”
She frowned, her head slightly shaking in the negative. “No. I’m sorry.”
Thomas was silent for a moment as he studied her face. Finally, he inclined his head. “If there is anything else you remember, anything else at all . . .” He held out his business card to her. “I jotted my home phone on the back. My work phone and cell phone are on the front.”
Nikki breathed deeply before responding. “I’ll let you know if I come up with anything, but you have copies of all the emails we sent back and forth. That was the extent of our relationship. Oh, and I did have him—
or Richard Remington, rather—checked out by a detective agency.”
Thomas’s eyebrows drew together, though truthfully the information didn’t exactly surprise him. It was just further proof of what a careful woman Dr. Adenike was. She had done everything she could do and then some to play it smart. “And?”
She shrugged. “The report is laying on the counter in my kitchen. Feel free to take it. Anyway, Richard Remington is definitely a real man. As a matter of fact, he’s a teacher at a middle school. But I’m willing to bet my last dollar he isn’t the man you are looking for.”
Thomas’s frown was thoughtful. The doctor was right about that. He’d check into it, but it probably was a dead end. If there was one thing Lucifer was not it was stupid.
Nikki’s nostrils flared as she looked away. “I, an allegedly intelligent woman, was taken in by the fantastical musings of a serial killer.” She groaned, mortified by her own stupidity. “I actually believed that he was falling in love with me. My God, I’m pathetic.”
Thomas was silent for a suspended moment. She glanced back at him, the quiet making her curious as to his thoughts.
“I think he did fall in love with you,” he murmured, his gravelly voice kept to a minimum. “In his own sick, twisted, delusional way, of course.” He inclined his head. “But I hold no doubts that he believed what he wrote to you.”
Nikki shivered. “If he thinks raping, torturing, and killing are signs of love, well, that’s pretty damn sick.”
“Hence the term ‘psychopath.’ ”
She found her first genuine smile, even if it was a small one. “Touché.”
Thomas rose from the sofa. He held out his hand, waiting for her to make the first move and reach out to him. She could tell that he didn’t want to frighten her, was probably assuming she found the touch of all men repulsive at this point.
She didn’t. Richard—or whatever his name was—was not a man. He was the demon the press had dubbed him.
Nikki accepted his hand and shook it. “I’ll let you know if anything else occurs to me, Detective.”
He winked. “Go get some sleep.”
“Thanks. I think I will.”
Thomas nodded, then turned to walk away.
“Detective—I mean Thomas!” She stood up, waiting for him to turn around. When he did, she blushed. “Those emails . . .” She cleared her throat, the crimson in her cheeks growing more pronounced. “If they get out to the press, my career is over.”
His forehead wrinkled. In that moment she was aware of the fact that he hadn’t had time to read them yet. No, of course he hadn’t. He’d spent the majority of his time on the phone with various officers and forensic specialists, first at the hospital where she and Kim had been checked out—the hospital where Kim was still under observation—and then again when she’d been driven back home.
“When you read them,” she muttered, glancing away, “you’ll understand.” She sighed, looking back to him. “Anyway, if you can keep those emails out of the press until I figure out a way to save face at work . . .”
“Not a problem.” Thomas inclined his head, curiosity as to what the emails contained evident in his dark eyes. “I’ll see to it that those emails never see the light of day.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, her head slightly bowed.
“You’re welcome.”
Her head shot up. “Oh—one last thing.”
One of his eyebrows rose.
She sighed. “The pistachios,” she muttered. “They’re in the kitchen. Go ahead and take the damn things.”
He stared at her for a protracted moment, an enigmatic twinkle in his eye. “You think because you’re a woman I won’t take you up on the offer,” he drawled.
Nikki frowned, a telling gesture.
Thomas held back a smile. His intense gaze swept over her. “I’d let a pretty lady come in between me and many, many things, Doc. . . .” He shook his head slightly. “But not between me and my nuts.” He winked down at her, then turned and strode away.
Open-jawed, Nikki could only stare at him as he disappeared into the kitchen.
Chapter 11
Wednesday, July 16 8:10 P·M·
Feeling rejuvenated after sleeping for eight solid hours, Thomas booted up his home computer, slid the CD containing the email exchanges between “Richard” and Nikki into the e: drive, and settled in for a long working night.
He’d been itching to read them ever since he found out about their existence, this being the first writings the police department had on file of Lucifer. And then, after his little pistachio thief had blushed so prettily when referring to them . . . well, call him nosy, but his curiosity had increased tenfold.
She was an intriguing woman, Dr. Adenike. He could understand the predator’s obsession with intelligent, strong, driven women—and with Nikki in particular. She wasn’t classically beautiful in the fashion-magazine sense, but she was a beauty in her own way, a woman who held a certain exotic allure. She was sexy, sensual-looking . . . he could understand Lucifer’s attraction. What he could not understand was the desire to murder her over it.
A feeling of inadequacy on “Richard’s” part, no doubt. The need to prove his power by robbing his victim of hers.
Dr. Sydney Horace, the CPD’s forensic psychologist, had skimmed through the emails already. Later, probably within the next few days after consulting with an FBI profiling specialist, she’d render a more complex summary on this particular killer.
The newly discovered knowledge on Lucifer would help immensely as the psychologist would then be able to make guesses on everything from the killer’s profession to what style shoes he favored. Or at least that was the hope.
Dr. Horace’s brief perusal of the emails was how Thomas already knew about the predator’s penchant for Domination /submission games and a few other details. What he didn’t understand was how Nikki came into play in all this. And why a successful, accomplished woman such as herself would agree to meet a man who admitted to the types of fantasies the forensic psychologist had briefed him on.
Thomas opened up the first email. It was time to have some questions answered.
Talking to you has been so freeing, Richard. I feel as though I can tell you anything. You have no idea what a relief that is to me. I’ve had D/s fantasies for years, I just never labeled them as such. Until, one day, I came across this website and started reading.
It changed my life forever, made me feel a bit less abnormal, if that makes sense. Anyway, it was comforting to come to the realization that lots of women like me—professional, “together” women, fantasize about sexually submitting to a man. About playing slave to his Master, prisoner to his jailor . . . .
About giving up all power to a man behind the closed bedroom door and trusting him to do what he will with her body.
Thomas blew out a breath. He felt like a real asshole because of it, but his cock was hard enough to cut a diamond. Shit.
The yearnings I have are more needs than cravings, more goals than simple curiosity.
Images of submission, of handcuffs and blindfolds, fill my mind whether awake or asleep. Thoughts of crying out my Master’s name in orgasm—
Whoa! Thomas shifted in his chair, his erection damn near painful.
This certainly explained a lot, he thought, suddenly in the mood for a cool drink. Namely, it explained why Dr. Adenike didn’t want these emails circulating in the press.
It also accounted for why all of Lucifer’s victims, countless numbers of professional, intelligent women, were duped into meeting dominant, yet allegedly gentle “Richard.” They thought they were meeting a likeminded, sane professional male who was into the same kind of D/s games they enjoyed playing. Nothing more, nothing less, as Dr. Felix Goldstein was fond of saying.
Who would have guessed a female trauma surgeon was into those games?
Thomas sipped from his lukewarm coffee and continued working. For the hour or so he’d been reading, it had been hard not to envision
Nikki in the types of situations she was so graphically describing, difficult not to see her tied to his own bed, screaming out his name as he pumped her long and hard. But calling him “Master” while he rode her—
That he’d never thought of before. Suddenly he was thinking about it.
Envisioning scenarios like that, especially given the damn near deadly meeting these emails had led to, made him feel like a big jerk. Unfortunately, feeling like a jerk didn’t matter in the least to his raging erection.
Nikki was the victim here, he reminded himself. Thomas’s job was to protect her, to find Lucifer, not to get distracted with images of mounting her.
He sighed. If the pistachio thief’s writing got any sexier, he’d get up and make a glass of iced tea. For now, lukewarm coffee would have to do.
Until now, all of my D/s fantasies have been just that—fantasies. You are the first person I’ve ever opened up to about my longings.
I really think I want to meet you, Richard. I’m just a bit scared. Forgive me, k?
I know in time I’ll be ready. But this is a big move for me, mentally and emotionally, and I need some time to settle into that.
But . . . *smiles* . . . remember how you told me that you wanted my heart? Call me insane, but I think you just might already have it . . . .
Jesus. If only she’d known he meant that he wanted it in the literal sense.
Thomas felt his anger growing. These women had all trusted the bastard. They had revealed their innermost selves to him, only to have that knowledge used against them for vile, sick purposes.
Okay, I’m blushing! I can’t believe I just admitted that—I’ve never even met you!
But I feel as though I’ve known you my entire life, Richard. Am I imagining all of this, or do you feel it too?
I’ll look for your email when I return from work, just as I always do. Take care of yourself.
*smiles*
Your “sweet, submissive” Nikki
Jaid Black Page 8