There was a series of loud explosions. Bryan looked back. “It’s all going down. Shit.”
“Don’t worry. The fire won’t spread beyond the warehouse. I made sure of that.”
“You can’t…you can’t do things like that.”
“I just did.” Aaron’s tone indicated that he didn’t give a shit about Bryan’s opinion. “Scum like that shouldn’t live. They planned to take turns raping her. They intended to kill you. Do you really want to take up for their cause when they so obviously didn’t deserve anything better?”
“You’re not a judge.”
“Getting into moral arguments isn’t productive,” countered Aaron.
He didn’t care about what happened back there.
No guilty conscience? No remorse?
There was something horrible about the ease with which he dispatched those villains to hell.
Bryan wasn’t convinced. “They were scum. But they were people, and they deserved a fair trial and access to a judicial system.”
“I wasn’t about to risk limb and life to get those bastards justice,” said Aaron. “This was the quickest, most efficient way for me to get you both out and I did that. Perhaps I should have left you tied to that chair while the warehouse burst into flames around you.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“I don’t give threats. I act out, keeping my interests in mind.”
Bryan tapped his fingers on the dashboard. “Why did you save us then? What’s your interest in that?”
“Oh, trust me, I’m not interested in you. Saving you was…merely a tactic to avoid a time consuming FBI investigation. They do tend to take it personally when one of their own dies, even if it is due to his own stupidity.”
It was an insult, clear and final. Bryan looked at him, but much to my relief, he refused to rise to the bait. “I’ll report it in,” he said.
“Go ahead. Without any bodies, you might find it difficult to make a case. My fire would reduce them all to ashes.”
Brr.
The chilling manner in which he delivered the statement made me feel cold. It probably wasn’t a good idea to get on the bad side of this guy. He appeared to have thought out the whole situation carefully before putting his plan into action. Of course, he could have made a better plan and captured the goons rather than killing them – but he probably didn’t want the complications that would result from such an action.
Instead, he nailed them inside a coffin and blasted it to hell.
It was a bit scary to realize that if you got on this man’s worst side, he wouldn’t waste his time to open negotiations.
The thought should have kept me awake, instead I dozed off. When he picked me up again, I opened my eyes to see Augusta’s concerned face. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked in a voice that told me that I didn’t look good.
“Drugs. They shot her with heroin,” said Bryan.
I could see the white ceiling over my head. Aaron lay me down gently on the couch. Jasper shuffled forward, the broom in his hand. “Is she dead?”
“No, she isn’t,” said Bryan in a curt voice.
Jasper sounded a bit disappointed as he sighed and moved back.
“Who were they?” Augusta waved a hand. “Never mind. She needs some accelerated purging of the drug from her veins. Shelley, get IVs.”
“Will she be ok?” asked Bryan.
Augusta hesitated, a sure sign that I was worse off than I realized.
Would I die?
I didn’t want to.
There was so much yet to do, so many things I wanted to achieve. This particular case was wide open. I still didn’t know who killed my parents and their killer was out there. I couldn’t just leave everything unfinished.
Save me. I wanted to say. Let me live.
But words failed me. Perhaps something of the struggle showed on my face because Augusta put a hand on my forehead. “You’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
Although I desperately wanted to believe her, I couldn’t because if I weren’t in such a bad shape, she wouldn’t have thought to assure me. But there was a soothing look in her eyes. If I hovered so close to death, there was no else one I would have preferred by my side. Forcing myself to relax, I instead focused on Aaron. The man filled the room; his presence was enough to make everyone nervous. He was so out of place in our farmhouse.
“Those flowers should be in her room,” he said.
Oh dear!
He didn’t miss much.
“She didn’t want them in her room,” said Jasper.
He should have been angry, but instead a smile played on his lips. His gaze settled on me. If I were in full control of my senses, that look would have made me run out of the place. The man wanted me, and he didn’t try hard to hide that fact. If he continued with such persistence, I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to maintain control.
He was a woman’s wet dream.
His confidence, often bordering on arrogance, his body, his sexual appeal, and the intelligence that shone in his eyes made for a more than appealing package, but he was also ruthless and cunning – facts I couldn’t forget.
“She is stubborn, our Cleo, isn’t she?” said Aaron.
Everyone looked at him. No one quite missed the proprietary tone he used. He appeared to not have a care. He’d staked his claim on me, and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone who could about it. Dealing with this man would take more than patience and guts; it would take a shrewd and well thought out plan.
“She needs to be taken to her room and we can start the IV.”
Aaron picked me up again. Holding me close, he climbed the stairs, not even breaking into a sweat. “You might want to bring the flowers up. They will cheer her up when she regains use of her senses.”
“When she tells me to, I will do so,” yelled Jasper from downstairs. “The nerve of the man,” he muttered loud enough for all of us to hear.
If I weren’t so helpless, I would have laughed. It wasn’t so easy to intimidate Jasper. Good. Someone needed to stand up to this force of nature who was a powerful mage and a virtual bulldozer. The memory of the events that unfolded in the warehouse was too fresh for me to ignore him.
He killed people without remorse, without a second thought.
It wouldn’t do to forget that.
Shelley bent beside me. With an expertise that I was grateful for, she managed to slide in the needle, put in the IV, and set it up within a few minutes. As the clear, transparent fluid crept through my veins, I kept a steady gaze on the flow. The sooner I recovered, the quicker I could get to work. This disaster was perhaps the best thing to happen; I now had an idea regarding our killer.
Whoever he or she was, we would get him in the end.
“You can both go. She needs rest,” said Augusta.
“I’ll stick around, if you don’t mind,” said Bryan.
Aaron didn’t move, nor did he give an inclination that he heard her. She stared at the men, looking as befuddled as I felt. “Fine, but no one can wait here. She needs to sleep.”
I waited for Aaron to fight her. He looked at her and wrinkled his brow. Much to my shock, he bent and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “Get well soon,” his voice was feathery soft in my ear. “We’ve much to talk about.”
Despite my predicament, his words and tone sent shivers of delight through my body. My overtaxed veins nearly burst with excitement.
What the hell did he mean?
And did I really want to take this any further with this man?
It was a good thing that I couldn’t say anything, because I didn’t have anything to say. He walked out. I released the breath I held. Bryan cast one last look at me. He opened his mouth. Oh no, not him too. I would die from sheer excitement if he said something nerve-wrecking. He closed his mouth.
Good.
I didn’t think my heart could take any more excitement.
As the men left the room, Augusta bent closer to me. Putting her hand on my forehead, she smi
led. “I don’t know what you have gotten into this time, but let me assure you that you can sleep easy. I’ll keep the two men at bay for a while. When you get up, you can decide what you want to do with them.”
I didn’t want to do anything to them.
All I wanted was to regain my magic, but since it was locked somewhere, somehow within my body, I’d to wait until the confounded chains that held it broke. As she straightened, I closed my eyes. Sleep came quickly, mercifully.
It was a blessing to let go just for a while.
Chapter Eleven
The men stared at me as if I’d lost my mind.
Maybe I did.
But one didn’t get to close so many cases without relying on some instincts and all of mine were telling me, loud and clear, that Smith Kline was the one whom we were after.
“We don’t have any evidence against the man, and he is a reputable guy with a solid reputation. Why would he go around killing mages and werewolves?” asked Mark.
“Yes, he does have a solid reputation. He is also friendly and apparently an upstanding citizen of the city. But he’s our man. He fooled us in his office, but he’s the one we should be after.”
“He is a hypnotist,” said Bryan. “But that’s all we can hold against him. There is nothing else that links him to the case.”
It was the morning after my revival from the near dead. Although I felt a little zonked and a bit out of sorts, I was almost back to my full energy. It was a good thing that Aaron Fine didn’t stick around till morning to see if I was ok. After Augusta told him around mid-night that I was doing better, he left. Bryan, of course, was staying in the farmhouse. It was kind of sweet that he checked on me a couple of times at night.
Not that I cared much about either one of them.
Lie.
Oh, shut up. This wasn’t a good time for my subconscious to kick in.
“We know now how the mage and the werewolf were made docile. He used a drug to bind their magic.”
“Werewolves don’t have magic,” said Jeremy.
“Their magic is innate. Their speed, stamina, and strength as well as their ability to shape shift is all linked to their inherent magic. He put that to sleep, and bam…they were vulnerable to whatever he wanted to do.”
“You don’t have any proof,” said Jeremy.
“Nothing else makes sense.”
“Even if you were right about the use of drug to subdue the victims, it doesn’t make sense to pinpoint Smith Kline. He is a reputable hypnotist, and I really doubt he would risk to hunt our kind,” said Jeremy. “What would he get out of such an endeavor?”
Motive.
Yes, that was a big question.
Why did he do it?
“He could have easily softened them up with hypnotism, and then injected them with a drug that made them catatonic.”
“And he carried them over his shoulder and dumped them at the clearing? Remember that you were unable to crawl forward an inch. I just don’t see Smith being able to carry that werewolf,” said Bryan.
Pursing my lips in a thin line, I surveyed the men who questioned me. They were right, but I wasn’t wrong. No. I’d staked my career on my instincts many times, and I was willing to do that here too.
Smith Kline did it.
How?
Why?
I would find out.
“He couldn’t have carried the werewolf,” I admitted.
“And the autopsy doesn’t show any drugs. They checked for alcohol, analgesics, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, cannabis, cocaine, narcotic analgesics, stimulants, and just to safe, they also included barbiturates, LSD, GHB, digoxin, and what not,” said Mark as he read from the autopsy report that had finally landed on our desk. The results from the werewolf were not in but Sara Field’s toxicology screen showed her to be clear.
She was only slightly dehydrated, but that wasn’t what killed her.
Smith Kline did, and somehow he got away with it.
Justice denied was justice lost.
“How he did is not important. We need to figure out why he did it because the motive will help us build the case,” I said.
“If he did it?” said Bryan. Leaning back, he surveyed the report in his hand. “I would still like to interview Elena Chapman, the hypnotist in Chicago. She may be the one we’re after.”
“The murderer is likely to be local,” I said.
“We have to study all avenues,” he countered.
Logically, he was right. We’d identified her as a likely suspect and it didn’t make sense to eliminate her without an initial interview. However, we needed to concentrate on Smith Kline before he killed someone else. He may have appeared friendly and cooperative in the interview, but in hindsight I could see that he was smart. He’d given us all the right answers, gained our trust, and sent us on a wild goose chase that nearly got us killed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he had banked on the gang getting rid of us.
I wouldn’t be shocked if he bloody planned the whole thing.
The friendly face was a mask for the devil that hid underneath.
“Elena is out.” I sighed. “Jeremy, can you please get some more details on Smith Kline? Dig deep. Get his background, his friends, his spouse and her family, anything, everything. Mark, I want you to tail him. I’ll take over at night from you. He can’t be left alone for a minute.”
“I know the drill,” he muttered.
My team was solid; maybe they didn’t agree with me but they would support me all the way through.
“Cleo, May I talk to you for a minute?” said Bryan.
“Sure thing,” I said. After walking out, we stood in the corridor. “What is it?”
“We can’t just cross Elena off the list.”
“It doesn’t make sense to ignore her,” I said. “But we have limited time before Smith hits again. Do we really want to waste it by looking at the wrong person?”
“You don’t know if she isn’t the one?”
“She doesn’t fit the profile.”
Bryan pushed back his hair. “What profile? We didn’t have enough data to build one for the killer.”
Technically, he was right. But sometimes I got an itch between my shoulders and I just couldn’t ignore it, not when this was so critical. Another murder wouldn’t go down well with Jones or with anyone. I didn’t want the blood on my hands. “There was a gap of four days between the two murders. We’re already three days past the second murder. He will hit again, maybe tomorrow. Any delay could mean the loss of another life.”
Bryan ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve worked with you before, and I know that your instincts are not always wrong, but this time, you’re making a big mistake.”
“It’s mine to make.” I crossed my arms. “Alright, maybe I could be wrong…but it would still make more sense to look at him. Tail him. See where he goes and what he does.”
“I want to meet Elena,” he said.
He was as stubborn as a mule.
“Fine. Do it your way then.”
“But I don’t like splitting up this way,” he said. “If you go alone after Smith, it might not be safe.”
“Mark and I will take turns.”
Smith Kline must have left a trail, and if we didn’t find it in the clearing, we were likely to find it somewhere else. No murderer was ever perfect.
Jasper swept into the corridor. He was carrying a vase of yellow daffodils. “Another delivery for you. Where do you want to put it?”
I looked at the flowers as if it was a weapon he carried. The white note was stuck to the vase. Bryan bent. “Get well soon, and meet me. Aaron.” He read.
Agh!
The man was persistent.
Sliding the card free, I tucked it in my pocket. “Put them in the foyer, please.”
“I’m not your personal assistant,” Jasper sniffed.
“Of course, you’re not,” I said in a conciliatory tone before he slipped way off the track.
Too la
te.
“I don’t like to be told what to do and how to do it. That man ordered me about as if it was his right to do so, and now he has sent more flowers and you expect me to deal with this. Why? Just so you know, I have a job and a lot of responsibilities. I’m not flitting in and out of the farmhouse. If I wasn’t around, this whole house would crash down on its foundations.”
Hmm.
A bit of an exaggeration, but then this was Jasper, and he was prone to such grandiose statements about himself. I just wanted to stop him so that others were not attracted to my plight.
Grabbing the vase, I held it. “I’ll take care of this.”
“Yes, you better do, and I’m not watering these flowers also, no matter how pretty they are. You get the flowers, you take care of them. And that man…” He waved his finger as if he could see Aaron. “I didn’t like the way he talked to me.”
There wasn’t much I could do about Aaron Fine. He was a creature of a fierce will and did what he wanted.
Meet me.
Heck no.
I wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to suck me deeper into whatever trap he was setting.
Augusta entered the corridor. Great. Just what I wanted; more audience for this unfolding drama. If I’d a few minutes, I would have opened an air pocket and slipped the vase with flowers through but if I did that in front of Jasper, he would likely make even more fuss about it.
“What’s going on?”
“This.” Jasper pointed at the flowers as if they had personally offended him. “Taking deliveries and putting them in the right places seems to be my new job these days.”
Augusta looked at the flowers. I could tell she knew exactly who gave them. “They are lovely.”
“Lovely they are, but I tell you…if there is one more delivery…”
“Next time there is a delivery, leave it on my desk and I’ll handle it. Weren’t you supposed to organize the store today?”
“I would have, if I got the time.” Jasper snorted. “No one appreciates me, no one cares about me.” He walked off and we all let out identical breaths. “One day I’m just going to walk away and…”
If he did walk away, we would have to spend a lot of time looking for him.
“He won’t go anywhere,” said Augusta as if she could read my mind. “Jasper is all bluster. No bite. So what’s happening in your new case?”
01 Serial Killer (FBI Paranormal Casefiles) Page 10