It was a better lead than he’d hoped for.
“The latest victim was found within meters of the other. It means something.”
He stared at the cocked jaw of the skull, the missing teeth. Remembering how it looked when found.
“And the others?”
She turned back to the puzzle of bones. “Dr. Birk’s theory matches yours. The victims are surrogates. Unfinished business, possibly rekindled each year by a life event. A birthday. A death anniversary. Most likely, regarding Jane Doe number one, here.”
Her words trailed as she reached for color sketches, handing them over before continuing. “Dr. Birk’s staff constructed computer models of our two women. You can see the similarities.”
“You said it was foolish to even try, that the fragments were impossible to reconstruct.”
“I said it was impossible for me.”
“Why call in the big guns now, Emma?”
Suddenly uncomfortable under his stare, she ducked a glance to the flowers in her office. “I want you to catch this monster before I … retire.” Her voice trembled, but her clear eyes were full of purpose. “Just read it. Get back to me.”
Dalton nodded, paging through the file on his way to the door. The bright blossoms in her office captured his attention as he passed. He turned slowly. “Birthday or anniversary?”
“Hmm?”
“The flowers. I’ve always meant to ask.”
“Neither.” Emma’s eyes clouded. “I used to think they were from a secret admirer, but I don’t think they’re for me.”
“What do you mean? How long has this been going on?”
At her silence, the pieces clicked together along with her answer. “They come every time a Lakeview Slayer victim is brought in.”
Back in his car, Dalton reviewed the computer model printouts from the famed osteologist and his staff. They’d pieced together the impossible. From a fragmented skull, they’d put together the face of a real woman with the help of software, scanners, and artists. It was like something off Bones.
There were only minute physical differences between the first victim from the ’90s and the latest victims. It followed the surrogate theory—that similarities would be present—but based on their computer renderings? He stared at what should be impossible.
It was Natalie’s likeness who stared back at him. She and the first Slayer victim had to be related. It was the only explanation.
Speed-dialing Nick, he explained the new lead as well as the evidence he needed to collect to prove it.
Dalton hoped it wouldn’t take an act of God to get a DNA sample from Nick’s new girlfriend.
Chapter 22
Natalie knew she was on borrowed time as far as the bank was concerned. Her relationship with the Valence family was tenuous, and answering bill collectors’ questions was getting harder. She’d decided to assume the role of caretaker for this place if for no other reason than to pay Mrs. V.’s stack of aging accounts. It was the right thing to do.
Somehow, spending time in the house, she felt a bond forming with the biological family she’d been spliced from. But it was Mom’s email that truly lifted a weight from her shoulders.
Dig in, do your best, and show how thankful you are for the gift of life they gave you.
Telling her parents—as Corie suggested on penalty of telling them herself—allowed her to embrace the promise of this place. Things from her to-do list were slowly getting checked off, and she was on to renovating the Guinevere suite.
Forest wallpaper ran from floor to ceiling. It may have been beautiful once, but now it was curling and dated. What sort of people would plan a romantic retreat here? In a room named for a famous adulteress, no less? Not the sort of people she wanted to advertise for, surely.
The bed frame was kind of unique, though, she thought as she ran her hands up the tree-trunk post. Maybe they could steam off the paper and transform the room into a fairy glen.
Downstairs, cleaners worked on the floors, the curtains, and the mildew-covered tile in the bathrooms. She heard the whoosh-whir of a huge floor refinishing machine as it dragged across the hardwood planks.
St. Thomas’s had carted away most of the throwaways and all of the donate pile an hour ago, leaving Corie to drag the keep and sort piles out to the barn. Not even her sister would complain at seeing furniture go off to charity, although she did whimper a bit at the sight of retro lamps and tables being loaded onto the truck.
Nick was working on spreadsheets and timelines from his mobile at the hospital as he attempted to ignore his friend’s swift decline. He stayed close, but he didn’t infringe on Philip’s last moments with his family.
Natalie weighed his latest expenses against her balance statements and reviewed the bank balance. Mrs. Valence’s account was hemorrhaging money with the troops of sub-contractors that Nick sent her way. He must have had every local repair guy on speed dial.
Fixing the roof. Replacing the banister rails. Steam-cleaning carpets and refinishing hardwood floors. She’d just wanted the wood floors polished, but Nick insisted that refinishing them would make the place look like a million bucks. She couldn’t argue—they would be amazing, but the cost really ate into her budget.
At least she’d convinced Corie to call for a repair guy to come fix the Sub-Zero rather than fork over thousands for a new refrigerator. They would have to wait a while for the parts and a qualified tech, but it would be worth it.
Everything was coming together.
When her pocket chimed again, she paused her work in the eighth and final room to answer Nick’s call. Her lips twitched in an expression caught between a smile and a frown.
“Bank account’s draining, cowboy. You want my blood now?”
“Something like that. Can you come down to the hospital?” Nick’s voice was strained. Hopeful.
Phone tucked under her chin, Natalie snatched up her keys and passed yet another worker who wanted her to sign something.
“On my way. Is Philip—”
“Fine. He’s holding on pretty tight, but he’s getting tired. Marie’s holding on for now too.”
Natalie forced her breath in and out. Hospital visits were part of her routine now. How long could someone live on a knife’s edge?
“Okay. What do you need?”
“Just come.”
Fifteen minutes later, Natalie pulled her V-Dub up to valet parking. She smiled every time she thought about how Nick had paid for the repairs on her car. Now, her heart filled with him. For once, with his friend’s death pending, it was her turn to worry about him.
Inside the hospital, she found him in an empty lab with his brother. She looked around at green vinyl chairs, tubes, swabs, labels, and several needles of varying sizes in sealed packages.
“What’s going on, boys?”
Nick inhaled a full breath. He exhaled her name and wrapped her in a tidal wave of need. “I’m sorry.”
She quirked her brow. “For what?”
“We need your DNA.” Dalton crossed his arms and leaned against the short privacy wall. “There’s been a development.”
“What does my DNA have to do with—”
Dalton dragged out an image.
“What’s this?” She looked from Dalton to Nick. “Someone’s drawing pictures of me? They’re pretty good, but …”
“It’s not you.” Dalton had his professional voice on. His interrogator tone. “It’s a computer model of a cold case. We think she’s our guy’s first victim.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in the silence that followed. Natalie reviewed the cheekbones, the chin, the slope of the nose, and saw herself. Like a needle in her heart, the image stole her breath.
“How long have you known about this?”
“Her remains were found near the lake beside a new victim—but the computer model came through a couple of weeks ago. We ran DNA, but now ... I’d like to match it against you. With your permission.”
Natalie sagged into a nearby chair
.
Nick inspected his thumbnail, leaving Dalton to meet her forced gaze. “The likeness—it’s indisputable.”
She fisted her locket and slid it on its chain. “How old was she?”
“The osteologist’s best guess is mid- to late twenties. They can tell a lot from the skeletal remains. Age. Cause of death. That she’d given birth.”
Swallowing the revulsion, she looked toward Nick. “Are you saying this is Amanda? My birth mother?”
Nick’s gaze dropped to his boots. “We think so, yeah.”
She held out her hand and he clasped it, tight.
“Ready? Just a swab to the cheek,” a huge Samoan-looking tech said as he swept in, snapping on latex gloves. His nametag read Jamie.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Natalie felt the tears come—for what it all meant. If her DNA matched this unknown victim, her mother had fallen to the same fate as Nick’s sister. The tears streamed so thick that they dribbled down her neck. “Nothing more?”
Jamie’s dark eyes were honest. “We can get a better read if we gather blood, too.”
She clutched Nick’s hand and focused on his steadfast presence at her side.
“Let’s get this over with.” She cocked her jaw open and submitted to Jamie’s large Q-tip inside her cheek. He slid the swab into the solution that would reveal her DNA.
Natalie’s spine went to jelly, her shoulders wrenching with an unexpected, agonized sob from deep within. Once she let go of her tight control, she knew that the beast couldn’t be contained.
If her birth mother was the first, how many other victims of the Lakeview Slayer had there been? How many tears had been shed for their loss? How many empty dinner chairs and bedrooms were never again used?
“I’m here, Nat. It’s going to be okay.”
Her vision tunneled and she felt like she was trying to breathe through a straw. She rubbed her throat and closed her eyes. There’s so much air in here. Why can’t I breathe?
As the tech advanced with a hollow needle and the plastic-stoppered tube, Nick body-blocked his progress. “You’ve got her sample. Why blood?”
“In case more detailed typing is needed.”
“Then we’ll wait.” Nick all but dared Dalton to say otherwise. “If you need more you can take it later.”
“No. Do it now.” Natalie’s arm trembled but she held it out, veins exposed. “Take whatever you need. I don’t want to go through this again.”
Nick stood at her back, hands clamped to her shoulders, protective, yet unable to protect.
She cocked her head at Jamie. The large tech had a thick swath of dark hair and enormous, capable hands that tied the rubber tubing around her bicep.
Deft, sharp, and quick, Jamie pressed the needle. She felt an icy pinch of pain, and then dark blood filled a tube. Then another. And another for good measure.
The blood, dark red like Mike’s Mustang, sent her mind spinning back to the spring night when the meteor shower rained streaks of purple, yellow, green, and blue that later would match her bruises.
In a flash, Natalie was back inside Mike’s Mustang she once thought was so cool. The door locks were just out of reach. His hands on her neck, torso, legs—hard, bruising, demanding, furiously fighting her denial. Her formal dress shredded in his hands while she battled him away, clawing at his neck and his face. Blood pooled under her manicured finger nails.
He’d stolen her trust in men, and in return, all he’d received was a harsh warning from the cops. It wasn’t enough for her brother. Aaron had known exactly where to find him, and he’d threatened to flatten him—to ruin the boy forever as Mike had almost ruined Natalie. Since then, she hadn’t trusted any man but her father and her brother. Now, Nick had broached that threshold.
Jamie pressed a cotton ball to the tiny wound and wrapped it with stretchy pink tape as if that would ease the coming bruise.
Natalie trembled. Nick wrapped a steadying arm around her and walked her from the room.
“Here.” Dalton joined them, placed a fizzing cup of tonic water topped with lime in her hands. “It’ll help.” She drank deep.
A call on Dalton’s radio stated a Main Street address she recognized followed by police call numbers.
“That’s my attorney’s address, isn’t it? Fife and Fife?” Natalie watched the brothers’ double takes.
“What’s the call?” Nick asked when Dalton put away his handset.
“Breaking and entering.” He tucked the tail of his shirt back in as he spoke. “I’ll swing by. Check it out.”
“Some sleepy little town,” she complained, rubbing a circle on her nose.
Together, they shuttled back upstairs to the hospice wing waiting area. Dalton said his goodbyes and left her clutching the picture of a mother she never knew. If it was her mother.
Either way, they’d know soon.
Nick had clung fast through the storm of her memory, pressed calm and peace into her with steady hands and his rock-solid presence. Now, he watched as she sipped a drink designed for calming panic. But it wasn’t tonic and lime that did the trick.
She’d survived an earthquake of repressed memory, and he was the reason.
Nick pulled her close and pressed his lips to her forehead. She sighed against him, finally able to accept that horrible night, remember the agony of what came after, and survive. At his lips, his warmth, her heart shuddered with joy—like she’d always dreamed it would. It was just like her favorite love story, her parents’ love story, about falling in love during a Haitian earthquake.
“Seven. No, eight-pointer.” She sagged against his side in sweet relief. At his confused look, she gave a flirtatious smile. “Every time you kiss me, it’s like the ground shakes.”
“Hmm? Only an eight?” He tossed a cocky grin, lightening her mood. “I can do much better than that.”
He kissed her again. There weren’t enough kisses. Not enough time. Words couldn’t possibly capture love like this. At that moment, she understood what Philip’s wife had meant as she lay with him, warding off the end.
Natalie stared at her arm, at the wrap of bright tape around the bend. What might the blood tell of her family history? The Valence name might be washed in death, but that wasn’t her future. Her future was bright and hopeful and full of Nick. Though they’d only known each other a handful of weeks, her soul knew it had found its perfect fit.
Did he feel the same way? Natalie knew he’d catch up eventually. She would love Nick Hardaway beyond this world and into the next. In the steady throb of his heart, she’d found her true home.
Chapter 23
Old Town Long Valley was bumper-to-bumper with Saturday happy-hour traffic. Dalton flashed his lights to get cars moving and clear the path.
Driving up to the wood-framed attorney’s building, two black-and-whites sat in the lot. One for the crime scene investigator, the other for the officer in charge.
Through the window, he saw a distraught Clinton Fife waving his hands toward the back of the building while the police did their work. Slight victory crept along his spine at Fife’s frustration. Dalton wasn’t too small a man to admit it.
The hot ball of hatred for the now successful attorney was fresh, as if the game that ended Nicky’s baseball career was only yesterday. Dalton had seen what Fife did at that game. How he’d cheated and shredded Nick’s knee.
He’d wanted to pound that Ken-doll face of Clint’s back then. Shutting off the beefy Crown Vic’s engine, Dalton would happily do the job now.
“What’ve we got?” Dalton trotted up the wooden stairs, each step a hollow clomp.
Inside, Clinton raked back his stark blond hair. His eyes were wild and worried as he talked to Detective John Moody. The detective was twenty years Dalton’s senior, just shy of retirement, but still sharp on the job.
“Computer’s gone,” he said, bringing Dalton up to speed. “So is a large portion of the files.”
“Which ones?”
“The Vs. I took a list of potential
suspects, but from what I can tell, it looks like Fife’s on Long Valley’s most wanted list …”
Moody continued his dissection of the case, but Dalton’s attention swam around what was missing. The motive. Unless ...
V for Valence.
Moody finished and Dalton thanked him. Fife remained inside the office amid the scattered papers, smashed fish tank, and ruined posters.
Whoever tossed the place clearly hated Fife more than the Hardaway brothers did.
“Just come straight in,” Clinton seethed into his phone. He gritted his teeth at whatever he heard and pocketed the cell phone with a glare as Dalton skirted around a crime scene worker.
“Any idea when they’ll stop doing that?” Fife waved at the people dusting for prints.
“When they find what they’re looking for. You may as well go home.”
“Home.” Fife sat. “I have clients. Work. I’ve been away for a week. It piles up.”
Dalton nodded. He knew Fife was some extreme sports nut now and decided to play nice. “What’s the sport of the month, Clint?”
“Skydiving. I broke a formation record.”
Dalton looked to a worker, got the nod, and righted a toppled waiting room chair. “Who was the call to?” he asked Fife, sitting.
Fife frowned at his phone. “My assistant. Valery Harper. She should have called and told me about this.”
“How long since you heard from her?”
“I don’t know, a few days, maybe a week. I asked for a little space, you know?” Fife grumbled. “She didn’t know I was coming back early. Her car’s in the lot.”
Dalton snapped to attention. It was a small thing, a missing secretary, but he hooked on it like a trout. “She call in sick? Notify friends or family?”
“No family. I don’t know her friends.” Fife shook his head. “Like I said—I asked for some space, but she’s professional. She runs the office like it’s hers.”
Dalton whipped out his notepad and scrawled her name. “Where’s she live?”
“Just up the street. In the lofts.”
Dalton copied down the address and gave it to Katie. She said she’d send someone to check out the condo.
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