First to Fight Box Set: Books 1-5
Page 73
I glance back at the body, frowning. “Where’s the blood?” I ask Colson, who stops speaking to a tech.
“What’s that?”
“The blood. He likes to take his time with his victims. He can’t very well do that in the open. If we’re dealing with the same man, he likes to blitz attack women in a place where he has cover to play out his fantasy. His attacks are often violent, messy.” I point to the sand and grass underneath and around the body. “There’s no blood.”
Colson leans back on his haunches, his shrewd eyes assessing. “He moved the body. Was that part of his MO before?”
“His first kills were somewhat impulsive. He’d come across a woman in an isolated locale and either convince her to go with him or blitz attack her, then he’d beat and rape her and leave her body or dispose of it afterward. They never found the first victim. Miami-Dade thinks he took her off to a spot in the woods. Probably to revisit her. Relive the memory. Why would he change here?”
“Could have been necessity. Someone interrupted him again.” Colson takes out a cigarette, lights it. “He would have had to move her if he wanted more time with her.”
I shake my head. “That doesn’t make sense. Why move her out in the open like this? Anyone could have come—” My gaze whips around to the house. “Anyone could have come across her.”
I hear Colson’s long inhale, smell the smoke on his exhale. “He wanted her found.” He pauses, considering, before continuing, “Does your girl walk this way every morning?”
My gut clenches. “She likes to walk the dog before she starts work.”
“Regularly?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“We’ll put the dogs out, see if we can find the primary scene. We won’t know more here until they finish processing and conduct the autopsy. I’ll take care of the rest. You go see to your family.”
I give him a nod because I don’t trust myself to speak.
A pair of techs in white lab coats emerge from the sidewalk by the bed and breakfast with a gurney and a large black body bag. They chat idly as they pass and give me a nod. With one last glance at Colson and the remains of Lena Thompson, I turn away and head up the walk.
As many times as I’ve seen death, it never gets any easier.
Behind me a tech greets Colson. “Helluva Saturday morning, sir,” he says.
I pass more of them on the way up the stairs and jerk my head in greeting. Hushed conversation carries through the door, and by the time the screen door clangs shut behind me, I’ve already forgotten what the tech looks like. All I can think about is getting to my family, to Piper.
Aunt Diane and Grandma Rose huddle together on the couch. Two uniformed officers stand close by. Piper is at the window behind the couch, her face leached of all color and her eyes glazed over. I curse beneath my breath when I realize she’s been watching the whole circus.
Aunt Diane glances up as soon as I enter, her shoulders sagging with relief. “Logan.” She gets to her feet and crosses the room to my side. “It’s so awful. So awful. She was such a nice woman.”
“We’ll take care of it, Aunt Diane.” I tuck her under my chin and realize, not for the first time, how small she seems.
“I know you will.”
With a pat on her shoulder, I stride to the window and carefully close the blinds. Piper doesn’t turn, doesn’t acknowledge me, but she does close her eyes. I know it won’t erase the things she’s seen today, the memories it’s likely evoking, but that doesn’t mean she has to torture herself with it.
With the room to ourselves, I bring Aunt Diane back to the couch. “Have the officers taken your statements?”
Aunt Diane takes Grandma Rose’s hands between her own. “Yes, they’ve taken ours. Piper hasn’t given hers yet; she was next before you came.”
Piper doesn’t look when Aunt Diane says her name. “I’m going to call my friend Ben and have his mom take you to her house until we can get everything taken care of here, okay?”
“Oh, dear,” Grandma Rose mutters. “What about the other guests? This is just so awful.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve finished up here, and we’ll direct the guests to another location for the time being. Why don’t you get what you need for the night, and I’ll give Ben’s mom a call, okay?”
Aunt Diane puts a hand to my arm and squeezes. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
After I kiss her forehead, they head down the hallway to the first floor bedrooms, leaving me alone with Piper, who blinks a few times and then visibly trembles as she realizes everyone else has gone. Her throat bobs with a swallow, and she wraps her arms around herself. Her wariness is understandable, but the fear in her eyes when she looks at me is not.
“Do you want to sit?”
Her throat convulses again and her eyes flit around the room before coming back to me. “No, I’m fine.”
“Honey, you look like you’re about to drop. Sit before you fall down.”
She nods but doesn’t move, and that’s when I know she’s definitely in shock. I end up guiding her by the elbow and then leaving her for only a minute to grab her some water.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” I ask after she takes a couple sips. Then, without looking at me a single time, she tells me about her morning and how she came to find Lena.
“She was a baker,” she says absently. “Did they tell you that?” I don’t speak because I know the question was rhetorical. “She told me all about how she started her own bakery after this horrible apprenticeship under the most awful man. They got engaged recently.” Her voice breaks. “She was going to marry him. Someone needs to call him,” she says faintly. “He needs to know.”
“We’ll find him,” I tell her, pulling her close so she can rest her head on my shoulder.
“I thought it was over,” she says, her voice watery. “I really did. I was so happy.”
“I know you were,” I say into her hair. “I know.”
Her spine stiffens, and she jerks up. “We have to find him. We have to stop him.” Her eyes widen and she brings a hand to her lips. “What if he goes after Livvie next. Or Sofie. God, Logan, this is all my fault.”
I turn her head so she’s looking at me. When her eyes clear and she focuses in on me, I say, “This is not your fault.”
“When my sister—”
“That wasn’t your fault either. You didn’t do anything wrong. If you’d gone with her, you’d be dead, too. If he’d taken you at the park, you’d be dead.”
“Maybe I should be,” she says furiously. “Why do I deserve to live and they don’t?”
“There is no deserving about it. Everyone deserves to live. Just because you did when they didn’t doesn’t mean you deserve to die, too.”
She buries her face in my chest. “Can you take me home? I need to see to Rocky, and I don’t want to be here anymore. I thought I could—I thought I could handle it, but I just want to be home now.”
“Of course, honey.”
She doesn’t say a word as I bundle them up into the truck and back through the gathering crowd to the little road that leads to our houses. When I glance over to check on her, I find her forehead pressed against the glass, eyes closed. Every line of her body looks pulled taut and ready to snap.
She shuffles out of the truck like she has two cement blocks attached to her feet. Even Rocky can sense something is wrong because he keeps butting his head against her legs when she doesn’t give him any attention.
When she goes to unlock the door, I put a hand on her arm and motion for her to wait. I’m probably just being cautious, but I don’t want to take any chances. “Stay here,” I tell her. Her reaction speaks to her shock because Piper doesn’t just let me order her around. Gritting my teeth, one hand on my hip in case I need to access my gun, I take a cautious step inside.
The hall and living room don’t show anything out of the ordinary. I peer behind doors and curtains, checking locks and closets as I work my way back. The li
ving room is empty, everything just as we left it. The throw blanket is tossed haphazardly over the back of the couch, pillows heaped and smooshed where Rocky made himself a bed. My coffee cup sits on the side table where I left it—had it only been a few short hours ago? It seems like a lifetime. Through the living room, I clear the kitchen and check the back door, finding it locked.
A creak in the floor has me whirling around, my fingers automatically unclasping the catch on my holster. Piper shuffles down the hallway, the shadows accentuating the black smudges I’d never noticed before underneath her eyes.
“I’m going to take a shower, I think,” she says without looking at me. She pauses before turning to leave. “Will you stay?”
My irritation at the situation softens. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here.”
She pads out of the room, her normally strong shoulders slumped. I hear the water turn on in the background and the sound of her undressing travels through the small confines of the house. The shower curtain screeches as she steps in and then the water cascades over her.
I let out a long breath I didn’t know I was holding and lean against the kitchen counter. I have to grip the edge of the counter hard to stop my hands from shaking. The thing about being a sniper is you need those steady hands to make the shot when you’re under pressure. She’s going to need me to have steady hands, to be there for her. But while she’s tucked away in the shower, I give myself a second to come to terms with the fact that a homicidal sociopath is after her.
And if I’m not careful, if I can’t protect her, find the bastard responsible for putting the shine of fear in her eyes, the relationship I’ve been trying to build with her will be over before it’s even started.
Piper
The shower helps, but no matter how hot I set the water, it can’t erase the oily, sick feeling taking up residence in my chest. I rest my forehead against the cool tiles underneath the showerhead and let the water stream down my back. It pounds against the ceramic in a soothing pattern, lulling me into a sort of half-sleep.
Thoughts tumble one over the other, like a kitten chasing a ball of yarn until it’s so tangled there’s no hope of unraveling the mess. The urge to cry is there, a knot of tension in my chest, a hot pressure behind my eyes, but I squeeze my eyes shut. Tears won’t help me. I learned a long time ago they can’t bring people back from the dead. They’re as useless as I feel and as unproductive. Feeling bad for myself won’t change Lena’s fate, but it doesn’t erase the misery.
Movements sluggish, I straighten and reach for the bottle of shampoo out of habit. I don’t need to wash my hair, but I don’t know what to do with myself, so I give into the simple routine of it all. I turn my back to the spray and I’m scrubbing the coconut scented soap into my hair when I hear the sound of the bathroom door opening.
“It’s me,” Logan says followed by the sound of the door shutting behind him.
“Any news?” I ask automatically. Part of me wants to know the answer, but another is terrified and I hold my breath until he responds.
“Nothing yet,” he says.
“I’ll be okay if you need to go back to work. I have my gun and Rocky is here. You can even have them come check on me if you want.” My fingers are numb as they work the soap out of my hair and they’re so clumsy they keep getting tangled in the strands.
“I thought we were past all that.”
I peer out from behind the shower curtain and find Logan leaning against the sink, his expression unreadable. His shoulders alone are too big for the cramped bathroom. The sight causes my lips to bow up and a giggle bubbles out.
He quirks a brow. “Something funny Ms. Davenport?”
“Just imagining you in the shower. Do you even fit?”
His eyes flick down to my bared shoulder and then trace my shadowed form behind the curtain, stealing the remnants of laughter straight from my chest. Then his eyes come back to mine and it doesn’t take long for me to read the desperate hunger there. My smile fades and the aching emptiness I’d been lamenting is swallowed by a much more visceral yearning. Reflexively, I tighten all over. My fingers clamp down around the shower curtain, lungs strain against the dense steam, and my pussy throbs.
I should tell him I’ll be out in a few minutes. If I had any sense of self-preservation left where he was concerned, I’d press him to go back to work, to leave me be, but I can’t seem to force the words around the lump in my throat. And if I’m being honest with myself, I don’t really want him to go. I want those big arms wrapped tight around me like they can protect me from everything. I know the second he walks out the door I’d be waiting for him to return. Somehow, he’s become as essential to me as my own breath.
He steps close enough for me to reach out for him. I shove the curtain aside, heedless of the spray that soaks him, and my own nakedness. My hand fists his collar and pulls him closer and I gasp at the sensation of the rough material against my sensitive nipples. His hands go to my waist, his grip cautious.
“So I’m too big for my shower, but you think the both of us can fit in there?”
My fingers tighten, I nod, unable to speak. One touch and he lights me on fire.
He cocks his head. “Why don’t you finish up here and we’ll order some pizza, watch a movie.”
When he moves to step away, I move my hands to his shoulders. “You don’t have to baby me. I’m not going to break.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Then don’t treat me like I am.”
“I’m not.”
My hands slide down his chest to his abdomen. I take his shirt into my hands and start easing it up. “Then trust me when I say this is what I want. What I need. Please, Logan.”
I pull his shirt the rest of the way up and it stops under his arms. I meet his eyes and plead wordlessly. The moment he gives in to his internal struggle, he rips the shirt from my hands, over his head, and then tosses it to the floor, baring the wide expanse of his chest and my mouth waters. He is a veritable feast and all I want to do is eat him up. I want to drown myself in him, in how he makes me feel.
Free.
The realization strikes me as his hands slide from my waist, up my ribs and skirt the sides of my breasts to frame my face.
He makes me free.
When he doesn’t make the move to kiss me himself, I surge upward and drag his lips down to mine. Even with the lip of the tub between us, Logan towers over me, surrounds me, overwhelms me. He blots out the light from the dim overhead bulb like an eclipse. I cling to him, loving the way he makes me feel comfortable in my own skin for the first time in years. Needing it, and him, I take the kiss deeper.
Logan groans against my lips and pulls away. I follow him with a sound of protest and he says, “We’re getting water everywhere.”
I look down and find the shower curtain splayed wide and water cascading to the linoleum floor in torrents. The clink of metal draws my attention upward and my breath strangles in my throat as I find Logan undoing the buckle of his pants and sliding them down his thickly muscled thighs. I grip the shower curtain, more to keep myself from melting into a puddle of need right there in front of him than anything else.
Try as I might to get a handle on my staring, I can’t tear my eyes away from his body. Muscles ripple beneath caramel skin as he toes out of his boots and then pushes his pants the rest of the way off. He moves with subtle male grace and a confidence that can only come with the knowledge of just how good he looks. Abs ripple and I don’t need the Adonis belt leading down to find his cock, though both are mouth-watering.
With hungry eyes Logan steps into the shower and I back away to make room. He yanks the shower curtain closed with one deft flick of his wrist, trapping me between him and the wall. His body blocks the spray, but I don’t need its warmth. Desire unfurling in my belly heats me from the inside out and he’s barely even touched me yet.
“I didn’t come here for this,” he says, even as his hands come to skim my back.
True to form, instead of diving right in, Logan reaches by me and I give up on breathing at the way the soft hair on his chest scrapes along my already sensitized nipples. Then I hear the popping sound of a bottle cap and his hands are in my hair massaging conditioner through from scalp to tip. I forget my protests as his fingers knead at the tension in my scalp and then work the knots out of my shoulders as the conditioner soaks. When my body turns to mush, he somehow manages to maneuver us around and tips my head back to rinse it out.
My knees liquefy and I have to press my hands to his chest to keep myself upright. As he works the conditioner out of my hair, I begin to tremble with anticipation. Having him so close and not devouring him is torture.
“Is this the part where you make me wait again?” I manage to ask. I’m pleased when my voice doesn’t betray how much the thought of his brand of foreplay is going to kill me.
He gives a dark, self-satisfied chuckle, then leans forward and his lips skim my ear. “This is the part where I make you want.”
If my knees weren’t already precariously loose, he would have made them weak. “I’m pretty sure I already do.”
Logan brushes back my clean hair, then leans back to study my face. He must find whatever he sees there to his liking because he gives a low growl and then his lips cover mine and I have no choice but to forget everything that’s happened because there’s nothing left but the wanting.
When he breaks to heave steamy breaths of air, I’m plastered against his wet body. “You’re so very, very good at that.”
“Kissing you?” he asks absently, as his hands traverse my back and dip down to cup my butt possessively.
A powerful shock of pure pleasure shoots through me and I have to turn and bite his shoulder to keep from crying out. When I speak, my voice sounds like I’ve spent the last few hours screaming, “Everything. Just . . . everything.”