by Tess Diamond
“You like everything about me,” she said sarcastically, grateful for the distraction of his teasing at a moment like this. She hated confronting Paul almost as much as she hated what was happening to him.
“True,” Gavin replied, and the unabashed honesty in his voice startled her into looking up at him, her eyes wide.
“Come on, it can’t be a surprise,” he said. “You’re a hard woman to forget.”
“Gavin, I—” she started, but then the elevator chimed and the doors opened into a hallway swarming with forensic techs and SWAT.
“Later,” he said. “Let’s go.”
They made their way through the throng and arrived at the apartment, which had crime scene tape crossed over the door. After putting on booties and gloves, Grace slipped between the tapes into the apartment.
The decor was tasteful. Expensive. Nancy Bantam, the divorce lawyer who’d lived—and died—here clearly liked luxury. Grace took in the vintage Waterford crystal vase holding still-fragrant hothouse flowers that she knew must have been flown in from Hawaii, the honed Carrara marble counters in the kitchen but no pots or pans in sight. She could feel Gavin at her back, silent and watchful, as she got a sense of the space as she moved into the kitchen. She opened the fridge. Lots of fresh-pressed juice and meals from a high-end meal service, neatly packaged.
This was a woman who ran a well-organized life. Who didn’t like fuss, clutter, or domestic work. Who knew what she wanted and had gotten it. Until . . .
“Nothing’s out of place,” Gavin observed as they made their way into the living room. The throw pillows on the delicate pink couches weren’t even askew. “He tried to make the Andersons’ place look like a robbery, but he didn’t bother here.”
“The ruse was up the second he sent me that package,” Grace said. “He didn’t want us to make the connections before. But now?”
“He’s rubbing it in our faces,” Gavin finished disgustedly, shaking his head. “Man, I do not like this guy.”
“Ready for the bedroom?” she asked him.
He nodded.
They entered the bedroom and came to a stop. Grace could hear Gavin swear behind her, so quietly she knew she was the only one who’d heard.
She couldn’t blame him. The scene was horrific.
Nancy was laid out on the bed, which was carefully made under her. Her body, entirely naked, and the chartreuse comforter were scattered with Polaroid pictures.
“God, this guy hates women,” Gavin said as Grace reached over and picked up one of the photos. It was of Nancy, already dead, reclining in a bathtub full of water. Grace looked over her shoulder—she could see the adjoining bathroom from here, and the claw-foot tub from the photo.
Gavin reached over her shoulder, taking the photo from her. “This is so fucked up,” he said. He frowned as he and Grace looked at each other. “Maybe too fucked up?” he questioned.
“Like something out of a TV show,” she agreed.
“It’s kind of on the nose,” he said. “Like he’s trying to show us how bad he is.”
“They’re for us, not for him,” she said. “If they were mementos, a way to relive the killing later on, to fetishize it, I’d understand. But this?” She turned in a slow circle, taking in the room. “He gets to humiliate her and taunt us at the same time.”
Zooey glanced up from examining the woman’s hands. “There was a struggle here, as you can see.” She gestured to the large broken mirror on the opposite wall. “She fought him off, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at her.”
“He groomed her,” Grace said, her eyes skating over Nancy’s perfectly coiffed hair.
“He bathed her,” Zooey said. “He put lotion on her. He did her nails. There’s a little spilled polish right here, see?” She pointed to the pink smear near the pillow.
Grace could see it in her mind: the care the unsub took with Nancy’s body. He’d even taken photos to document it. Were they proof? A signal? His twisted way of saying I care about her?
“He spent his time with her,” Grace said. “Doing all this . . . it took time. He didn’t take time with the others.”
“He didn’t humiliate the others like this either,” Gavin said. “Shooting Janice was cold and removed, with no message. Killing Megan Anderson was rage fueled, complete with the sexist message of where he thinks women belong. But this?”
“It’s calm. Orderly. She means something to him,” Grace said, voicing the thing they were both thinking.
“Maybe they knew each other,” Gavin suggested. “She’s a divorce lawyer. Maybe a disgruntled client? Or a husband who thinks he got screwed over by her? What’s the cause of death, Zooey?”
Zooey straightened, propping her hands on her hips. “I can’t be sure until the ME gets here, but from the raw tissue around her mouth he wasn’t able to cover with makeup, I’d say suffocation. Probably with one of the pillows.” Zooey tugged at the edges of her gloves, looking troubled.
“This is . . . solicitous,” Grace said. “Careful. He treated the body with care.”
“But he left her naked,” Zooey said, confused.
“Her clothes, they’ll be folded up in the bathroom. Carefully, neatly. Precise,” Grace said.
“She’s right,” called one of Zooey’s cronies, a short man with horn-rimmed glasses, walking up from the hall. “The clothes are sitting on her vanity in there. He even scrubbed out the tub.”
“No detail left unnoticed,” Grace murmured, walking to the other side of the bed. “The grooming, the attention to her femininity—it isn’t respect. Or remorse.”
“I thought usually when they took care of the body after, it meant remorse,” Zooey said.
Gavin shook his head. “This isn’t remorse,” he said. “This is all about shaming. Shaming her for her sexuality, reducing her to a pretty doll for him to play with. He’s objectifying her in death, stripping her down to her femininity, banishing all traces of her brain, her work, her agency, because he thinks women are only good for serving men’s desires.”
“So he’s the type who thinks women owe him everything,” Zooey said.
“Definitely,” Gavin said.
“Well, I know that type,” Zooey said. “But at least the jerks on the dating sites just send dick pics—they don’t kill you.”
“He needs to disempower his victims to make himself feel superior,” Gavin said. “He feels inadequate in his life and he’s gone for the easy target that men and society have gone after for centuries: successful, independent women.”
Zooey raised an eyebrow. “Someone paid attention in his women’s studies classes,” she said.
“Understanding how half the population lives and what they deal with is essential if you want to be a good cop,” Gavin said.
“I wish every guy was such a good feminist ally,” Zooey said dryly. “But, alas . . .”
“Where are the earrings?” Grace murmured, half to herself as she stared down at Nancy.
“What was that?” Zooey asked.
“The earrings,” Grace said, brushing Nancy’s hair back. “She’s not wearing them.”
Had he forgotten?
No. He wouldn’t forget. The earrings meant something to him. They represented someone—his mother? An old girlfriend? A woman he never had a chance with?
There was a slight smudge of pink along Nancy’s lower lip. Something horrible and dark swooped inside Grace’s stomach. With gentle hands, she tilted Nancy’s mouth open.
The diamond earrings glittered against her blue, swollen tongue.
Grace’s stomach clenched when, for a second, it felt like the floor was dropping out from under her.
She’d been right. Dammit. There was a part of her that had hoped she was wrong.
She had a serial killer on her hands. One who seemed to have put his focus on her, if her theory was right.
He was playing a game, and he’d set it up for her to be his opponent. He’d waited to reach out to her—and she’d had to prove herself wo
rthy to even get this far by solving his puzzle. And now he had delivered her another murder victim, displayed like a virgin sacrifice.
Why focus on her, though? That was the question. Was it just because she was more in the public eye than most of the FBI’s profilers? That would be the simple answer.
But Grace had a feeling, a dreadful, chilling feeling, that none of the answers here were simple.
“Hey, Zooey!” called a tech from across the room. “Over here on this wall there’s some discoloration. At first I thought it was just a bad paint job, but looking closer, I’m not sure. Will you check it out?”
The three turned to look. The blue wall did look slightly darker in the area he was pointing to—like paint or ink that hadn’t quite dried.
“Shine a UV light on it,” Zooey directed.
The tech grabbed one from his box of tools, switched it on, and passed the beam along the wall.
“Well, crap,” Zooey said as the light revealed two painted words in the same neat block letters used in the inside cover of the book.
TOO LATE
Grace stared at them, her palms starting to sweat in the blue nitrile gloves she had snapped on earlier.
“Okay,” Gavin said quietly, taking Grace’s arm lightly. “Zooey, Agent Sinclair and I are going to discuss some things in the hall. Bag the earrings for us, please. And let us know if you find anything else unusual.”
Grace let him steer her through the apartment, into the hallway, which had thankfully emptied of the throng of SWAT and techs from earlier. Now it was empty and quiet.
She looked up at him, and the horrible tightness in her chest eased a little when their eyes met. He hadn’t dropped his hand from her arm, and she didn’t want him to.
“Grace,” he said. “Have you noticed what I’ve noticed about the three women’s appearance?”
She swallowed, her throat terribly dry. She could play ignorant to him but not to herself.
“I could maybe look past the similar coloring,” he continued. “But, Grace, they all have hair like yours. And most women don’t keep their hair long like that.”
She touched her pinned-up braids, her heart beating fast. “I know,” she said. She had known since the second she’d realized the package contained a message.
This was about her.
Those women? Mr. Anderson?
They’d died because of her.
“He’s performing,” she said, finally. “He’s staging all different kinds of kills. He’s showing off.” She gestured haltingly around her. “‘Look what I can do. See how many ways I can kill. You’re a fool for not catching me.’ That’s what he’s saying—to me.”
Gavin’s mouth settled into a grim line. “So what are we thinking? A deranged fan? Do you have any stalkers? The popularity of your books must bring some delusional people out of the woodwork.”
“I don’t know,” Grace said. “He has an ego—a big one. He wants recognition. Maybe from me specifically . . . but I feel like this is rooted in something bigger.”
“If the women are surrogates for you, then that means you’re in danger,” Gavin said.
Grace could barely hear him, her mind was racing in so many directions as she tried to puzzle it out, as she tried to nail down the exact profile of this . . . this monster.
“Maybe I triggered something in him,” she said “Or, God, maybe my books did.” She pressed her hand against her mouth, trying to calm the panic rising inside her. Her skin felt too tight for her body, and a headache started to pound at her temples.
“Hey.” Gavin’s voice was a soft rumble and then he was stripping off his gloves and his palm was cupping the back of her neck, his fingers settling against the nape. It took a moment, but she finally met his eyes and instead of feeling lost and afraid, she felt as if she was suddenly found. Like she was being seen, truly, really, for the first time.
“This is not your fault,” he said firmly. “And it’s not your book’s fault.”
“I know,” Grace said. And she did know. Intellectually. But emotionally . . .
That was harder. She loved writing. She loved the morality of the world she’d created, where the good guys always won and the bad guys ended up in prison. It was comforting.
But if her words had somehow led someone to do this . . .
No, she told herself sternly. She wasn’t going there.
That was surely what the unsub wanted.
Gavin’s thumb was making long, slow sweeps against the curve of her neck, and it sent little trickles of warmth spreading through her.
“Let’s think about this. What does he want?”
“He wants me to think he’s brilliant,” Grace said immediately. “He wants admiration for what he’s done. And he wants me to feel terrified. He wants me hopeless and useless against his brilliance.” She pressed her lips together. “Well, he’s going to be disappointed,” she said, steel entering her voice. “Fear is motivating if you use it.”
“That’s my girl,” he said, all affection and heat in his gaze. The moment the words were out of his mouth, he seemed to realize what he’d just said, and the high tilt of his cheekbones started to redden. “I mean—” he started.
“Nancy was a much tougher target than the two other victims,” Grace interrupted smoothly, unable—not even unwilling, just plain unable—to examine the burst of emotion she’d experienced at his words. Now was not the time. “He had to get past the doorman and kill her quietly enough that her neighbors didn’t even notice. Plus, the elaborate care he took in staging her body. He’s evolving. The first kill removed him from the blood, from the intimacy of the act. The second, he got a little closer to what he wants. But with Nancy, it was the first time he got to be alone with the body for a long period of time.”
“And he got performative and freaky,” Gavin said.
“He’s finding out what he likes,” Grace explained, sick to her stomach. “And once he does, it’ll be hard to stop him.”
Gavin sighed. “You know we’re going to have to take this to Harrison.”
“I know,” Grace said.
“And he’s going to want to put you under a protective detail,” Gavin added.
Grace’s eyes flared. “I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, I don’t think Harrison’s gonna be very moved by that argument,” he said.
Chapter 15
Predictably, Harrison was absolutely not moved by Grace’s impassioned argument that she didn’t need a security detail. He stood there next to Gavin, his arms crossed over his chest, his blue eyes glittering with a stern light as Grace clashed with him inside his office at headquarters.
“This is ridiculous!” she said. “Just an hour ago, you didn’t believe me when I said there was a serial killer and now you want me to go to a safe house to avoid him?”
“Grace,” Paul said. “You can’t have it both ways. Either there’s a serial killer and he’s targeting you and sending you codes in your books and killing women who look a lot like you, or these are all unrelated murders with a few weird similarities. I thought you’d be happy I’m on board.”
“Not if you assign me babysitters!” Grace shouted. “I’m a better damn shot than most of the security detail team, and I’ve got the marksman trophies to prove it.”
“Is that true?” Gavin asked Harrison under his breath.
“Yes, it is,” Grace snapped.
“She’s a better shot than half of the FBI,” Paul said, looking cross. “It’s incredibly annoying.”
Gavin should probably not have found that such a turn-on, but he’d always been a little bit drawn to dangerous women. “Tell you what, Sinclair,” he said. “If you can outshoot me, you don’t need a security detail.”
Grace stopped her pacing for a moment, looking at him, suddenly calculating. “And if I lose?” she asked, because she was too damn smart to walk into that one without knowing all the angles.
“Then you come and stay with me until this is over,” Gavin said. �
��I’ll have your back.”
“This is absurd,” Paul protested. “Completely against protocol.”
“I’ve seen your place,” Grace countered, completely ignoring Paul. “The front windows are perfect for an ambush. If I lose—and I won’t—you’ll come and stay with me at my brownstone.”
“He knows where your brownstone is,” Gavin protested. “He already sent you a bomb.”
“It has fewer access points than your place,” she shot back.
“Fine. Let’s go down to the range right now,” Gavin said.
“You two—” Paul started, but Grace had already dashed out the door.
Gavin clapped him on the back and winked. “Don’t worry, boss. I’ve got this,” he promised.
Grace was at the elevator leading to the basement level by the time he got to the hallway. He jogged down it and caught up with her just before the elevator doors closed.
“You’re stressing Harrison out,” he said, leaning against the elevator wall as he regarded her.
Grace’s neat crown of braids was starting to come loose from the careful pins. There were smudges underneath her eyes, and her normally perfectly straight shoulders—she held herself like a queen—were slightly slumped.
She was exhausted. She needed to rest.
“I can convince Harrison to let it just be me watching over you,” he coaxed. “You’ve got to have a guest room in that brownstone of yours. I am an excellent houseguest. Very clean. I even make breakfast.”
“Oh, yeah?” she asked.
“Eggs, bacon, pancakes. The works,” he said. “If you hadn’t ditched me last time, you would know that already.”
She shot him a look, a disapproving “don’t talk about that” look. And God, it was the wrong kind of look to give him, because it made him want to do all sorts of things. To hit the stop button and press her against the wall, kissing her until she regretted leaving him that night. Until she remembered what she’d been missing. What they’d both been missing.
She brought the mischief out in him—all he wanted to do was tease and pull at her braids and lightly nip his way down her perfect stomach until she was gasping for it.