The Inquisitor

by Gayle Wilson

  He made a sweeping gesture with his hand toward the staircase at the far end of the foyer. Carpeted in cream, the stairs led to a landing where they split before continuing upward to the second floor. Each side led to a separate wing. One of those had traditionally been designated for the children’s rooms; the other, for the adults.

  Jenna bent to grasp the handle of the suitcase she had also carried into the house, preparing to lead the way up to the familiar living quarters at the top of the stairs. Sean, who had yet to set his bag down, followed her as she climbed.

  Without any conscious decision, she turned to the right as she reached the landing. Toward the wing that contained her rooms, as well as her brother’s and three guest suites.

  Her parents’ domain, which occupied the other half of the second floor, included separate bedrooms and baths for each, as well as a large sitting room and her father’s office. Despite the fact that they were gone, it would have felt like an invasion of their privacy to bring a stranger into that space.

  Since Jenna hadn’t lived in this house in more than ten years, except for two rare summers when she hadn’t been in school, giving Sean a tour of the other bedrooms didn’t seem too personal. Not until he followed her into the one where she’d slept throughout her childhood and adolescence.

  His blatant masculinity seemed out of place among the girlish accoutrements of the room. She hadn’t noticed its color scheme or furnishings in years, so familiar they no longer made any impression at all. Now she tried to view them through his eyes, realizing how much the room revealed about the years she’d lived in this house.

  He didn’t comment on any of it. Not the shelves filled with dressage ribbons and trophies. Nor the framed certificates she’d won for school achievements, long forgotten by everyone but her mom. Not even the photographs that chronicled every phase of her growing up.

  Although his gaze had lingered for a few seconds on those, instead of asking about them—or about anything else—Sean walked over to the window and examined it, taking care not to touch the glass or the frame. “These are wired. Basement?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Is there a basement?”

  “Of course. A garage and storage areas are down there.”

  “Want to show me?”

  “Look—”

  He turned. One brow arched, seeming to mock her attempt to question his request. “Yeah?”

  “I just—” She stopped, shaking her head. “If you’re having second thoughts…”

  Maybe he was afraid she was going to throw herself into his arms again. If so, he didn’t need to worry.

  She no longer bothered to deny that she was physically attracted to him. She had been from the moment she’d seen him—at least before he’d opened his mouth to chastise her.

  Still, her reaction last night to having him safely back inside the motel room wasn’t anything she was likely to repeat. The stress of that moment had destroyed her inhibitions. Now that she was aware of how strong her attraction was—

  Sean’s words interrupted that self-castigation. “I haven’t. I just need to see the house. All of it.”

  “Why?” Maybe it was a dumb question, but she wasn’t sure what the point of this was. Not as tired as they both were.

  “Because I need to find a way to breech its defenses.”

  She laughed, shaking her head at the archaic terminology before she realized that he was serious. Deadly serious.

  And why shouldn’t he be? Sean knew better than anyone what kind of maniac they was dealing with.

  An intimate knowledge, he had said. And now, having watched the forensics team work over Carol Cummings’s mutilated body, she understood what he had known all along.

  “You want to let me in on the joke? Believe me, I could use a good laugh.”

  “Sorry,” she said quickly. “That was…nerves. A sense of disbelief, maybe. It’s hard for me to fathom that someone would consider breaking into my parents’ home. And even harder to believe—”

  Despite her conviction that Sean was right about the Inquisitor’s intent toward her, she couldn’t bring herself to put it into words. It was like something out of a movie. A novel by Stephen King.

  It was not the stuff of real life. Not hers. It couldn’t be. And especially not here, the place she had always considered to be the securest haven in her very safe world.

  Even as those thoughts formed, Sean was moving. He crossed the room to take her by the shoulders. He shook her once, hard enough that her head snapped back. His eyes bored down into hers, his lips compressed so tightly they appeared colorless.

  “You damn well better believe it,” he said, every word like a blow. “You’d better think about it every minute of the day. Because the first time you let down your guard, he’s going to be there. And he isn’t going to care how much money or influence your granddaddy had. He’s going to treat you like he treated all the others. If you don’t remember that, every waking minute, even in your dreams, then you’re going to end up like they did.”

  Too shocked to respond, she simply stared up into his face. It was ruthless. Implacable. Just what she had wanted him to be when she’d begged him to protect her.

  She had thought then that his eyes were cold. Now they were blue flame. Like looking into the heart of a fire.

  She could feel the heat of his fingers through the thin knit of her sweater. His hands gripped her upper arms so hard they would leave marks on her skin.

  Even though that force was being used to remind her of the danger she faced, she celebrated their strength. He was strong enough to do what she had asked of him. Skilled enough. And looking into his eyes, she knew he was coldblooded enough.

  Finally she nodded. Sean released her so suddenly she had to take a step back to keep her balance. The anger that had caused his voice to shake hadn’t yet disappeared from the lean features.

  She licked lips gone dry and attempted to make some coherent response to his warning. “I won’t forget. It’s just…” Despite her resolve not to call attention to them, she glanced at all the mementos of an ideal childhood. “This is my parents’ home,” she said, trying to make him understand what that meant to her.

  “Which only makes you more vulnerable. You feel that because you’re here, you’re safe. You always have been. What you have to remember now is that you’re not. Not here. Not anywhere. Not until he’s dead.”

  She nodded again, compelled by his surety to accept as truth something she wanted to deny.

  “As long as you remember that,” he went on, seeming not to expect an answer, “this is as good a place as any to make a stand.”

  The military terminology again seemed out of place. As if they were playing G.I. Joe. This time she felt no inclination to laugh.

  “You know the house better than he ever could. And I’ll learn it. Every inch of it. So that when he shows up…” Sean let the sentence trail, but it was clear what he expected to happen.

  For the first time the reality of what they were doing sank in. She was bait in the trap Sean Murphy was trying to set. And despite their agreement, protecting her wasn’t—and never would be—his primary goal.

  Jenna had fixed a family-size frozen lasagna dinner she’d found in her parents’ well-stocked freezer. Although her stomach had been empty enough that at one point during their tour of the premises, she’d become light-headed, she had been unable to eat more than a few bites of the food piled on her plate.

  Whatever Sean was feeling after the events of the last twenty-four hours, he’d eaten with the steady concentration of a man shoveling coal into a furnace, although the glass of wine she’d poured and placed beside his plate had remained untouched.

  “More?” she offered.

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  Her eyes fell to the congealing mass of pasta and meat sauce on her plate. She prodded it with her fork, trying not to think about the approaching night. A primitive, unreasoning fear of the darkness, the same terror that had m
ade her ancestors huddle around the fire in the center of the cave, had begun as soon as the sun sank, painting shadows over the familiar scene beyond the breakfast-room windows.

  “For what it’s worth,” Sean said, bringing her gaze up, fork frozen in midmotion. “He’s going to be busy with other things tonight.”

  There was only one “he” in the world they shared. What Sean meant by “other things,” however…

  “The Cummings girl’s death is still fresh,” he said. “The excitement it caused very new. All he’s going to want to do right now is savor it. You’re the last thing on his mind.”

  It would be comforting if she could believe that. The problem was she knew better.

  “He was enjoying torturing Carol Cummings when he wrote those words on my car.”

  “You’ve got no proof that was him.”

  “You’re the one who told me to tell the police. You seemed pretty sure at the time he’d left that message.”

  “‘Help me?’ You think that’s what he wants? For you to say some mumbo jumbo and make him well?”

  The flood of anger had as much to do with her exhaustion as with what he’d said. After all, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out Sean’s opinion of what she did. He’d made that patently obvious the day he’d barged into her office, wallet open.

  “Maybe,” she said calmly. “On some level.”

  He laughed, wiping his mouth before he slid her mother’s white linen napkin under the edge of his plate. A tiny smear of sauce remained on the corner of his lips.

  For some reason, Jenna couldn’t take her eyes off it. Annoyed, she jerked them up to find he’d been watching her.

  “Surely, Dr. Kincaid, you haven’t bought into the idea that he wants to get caught. To be forced to stop what he’s doing. Believe me, he doesn’t want to stop. He enjoys it way too much. Making people hurt. Listening to them scream. Life’s blood to someone like him.”

  She had never heard the expression used that way before, but it was apt. In this case, a little too apt.

  “I’m a psychologist. I have no illusions about what he is.”

  “Just some poor, misunderstood son of a bitch whose mama abused him.”

  “There’s little doubt that someone did, given his rage against women. As for the former…I imagine there are a lot of people who understand him very well. Your friends at the Bureau, for example.”

  “The most important thing about that profile is what it doesn’t say.”

  “What it doesn’t say?”

  “No name. No occupation. No age. Other than the standard stuff about middle-aged white male, the details are few.”

  “It also says he’s organized, with a high IQ.”

  “He isn’t just organized. He’s meticulous. I told you that.”

  “Look, I know you’re still angry about what I did. I thought if there was the slightest chance—”

  “There wasn’t. If there was anything to be found on those boxes, he wouldn’t have left them.”

  “I can understand that you’d want to keep the ring, but…” She shook her head, remembering Bingham’s face when, just before he’d released them, he’d told them what was in that second box. “The other didn’t concern you. Surely Carol Cummings’s family deserves—”

  His laughter interrupted that platitude, its sound harsh and grating. “You still don’t get it, do you? That finger didn’t come from the Cummings girl’s body. I don’t doubt he took one of hers. It’s part of his signature. But he wouldn’t have left it for me.”

  It took her too long to make sense of what he’d just said, maybe because she didn’t want to. And when she had…

  “Makaela? You think that was—”

  “Just like the ring. And the phone call. He knows I’m here, and he knows why.”

  Sean was here to kill him. She had finally understood that last night.

  “Then why do you still need me?”

  She hadn’t meant to ask the question. It seemed self-serving. Cowardly, perhaps.

  And who wouldn’t be both? Considering the consequences of failure.

  “I’m not sure I do. What I am sure of is that you still need me. His attraction to you hasn’t lessened. If anything, the fact that I’m involved with you will have increased it. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to be able to hand me another one of those gift-wrapped boxes.”

  The few bites of dinner that she’d managed rose to the back of her throat. She closed her lips, swallowing in an attempt to force them down again.

  Sean was right. Everything the killer had done had been a jeer and a challenge directed at him. Taking her despite Sean’s protection would be the ultimate taunt. And there was nothing in this world the Inquisitor would enjoy more than being able to make it.

  Nineteen

  Some sound pierced his exhaustion, dragging Sean from the depths of a sleep he hadn’t known he’d fallen into. At first, drugged by his almost desperate need for rest, he resisted waking, telling himself that whatever he’d heard was the product of a dream, but he could find no lingering dregs of one in his consciousness. He knew from long experience that the images from his recurring nightmare were always still there when he opened his eyes.

  He did that now. For a few seconds he literally had no idea where he was. Then, as memory of the past few days came flooding back, panic followed almost simultaneously.

  He was in the sitting room that connected to the huge bedroom belonging to Jenna’s mother. He’d insisted that she sleep there, rather than in her old room.

  It was the only one of the bedroom areas that had the kind of arrangement he’d wanted. A bed and bath where Jenna could have a degree of privacy. An attached sitting room providing a place where he could sit all night in relative comfort and guard the only entrance to the room where she slept.

  Except he hadn’t guarded her. He’d fallen asleep, instead. And despite what he’d told her about what the Inquisitor would be doing tonight—

  The sound came again. This time he lunged off the brocade love seat, chosen because he’d believed it would be uncomfortable enough to force him to stay upright and awake.

  He realized after he’d taken a couple of steps toward the open door of the bedroom that the Glock was, thankfully, still clasped in his right hand. His fingers had automatically curled around the weapon even as he’d scrambled off the couch.

  His rush slowed as he approached what seemed to be total darkness in the other room. Despite the lamp on the table beside the sofa, which was now behind him, he couldn’t make out anything inside the bedroom. Not the furniture. And certainly not the occupant.

  He took a step to the side of the door, putting his back against the sitting room wall as he raised the gun in both hands, the right supporting the left. He held his breath, listening again for whatever he’d heard before.

  Someone talking? Examining his impression of the noise, he decided that’s exactly what it had been, the words low enough to be indistinguishable.

  He hadn’t heard the phone ring. So this must be—Nightmare. And that’s what the muttering had sounded like. Someone in the throes of a nightmare.

  Despite his conviction, he led with the Glock as he sidestepped around the door frame and then into the darkened room. He made a survey of its interior, his eyes tracking the movement of his weapon as he swung it in a slow arc. As they adjusted to the moonlight filtering in through the drapes, he began to distinguish the shapes of the furniture.

  His scan completed, he brought his gaze back to the king-size bed, which had been placed in the center of the room. Semiautomatic extended, he took another couple of steps, far enough that he could tell Jenna was there.

  With that knowledge his heart rate began to slow. He released a breath, drawing air into lungs that seemed to have forgotten how to perform that normal, physiological process on their own.

  The sound this time was more prolonged, the words clearer, either by virtue of his nearness or because of their repetition. “No. No, ple
ase. Please don’t.”

  He’d done this to her, he realized. And he’d done it deliberately.

  He had intended to frighten her badly enough that she wouldn’t be tempted to do anything foolish. That she would be on her guard at all times…even in your dreams.

  “Jenna.”

  Her name echoed in the stillness. He waited, becoming aware as he did of a subtle fragrance surrounding him.

  Not Jenna’s perfume. He recognized that by now. Associated it with her presence. Despite the fact that she no longer lived in that trophy-filled room in the other wing, and hadn’t in years, the darker, stronger scent she normally wore still lingered there.

  This was lighter. Sweeter. Like roses. The old-fashioned kind that had grown in his grandmother’s garden. The flashbulb image of them, drooping in the summer heat, releasing their familiar scent into the heavy air, caught him off guard.

  It shouldn’t have. Smell was the sense most closely associated with memory. Even now there were certain odors—most of them unpleasant—that sent him instantly back to that dirty, four-room public-housing apartment where he’d grown up.

  He’d fought the comparison from the second he’d entered this house. He’d pushed the remembrance of “home” as he knew it out of his head as ruthlessly as he always did all those other memories. Denying them now, he took another step forward.

  “Jenna? Wake up. Everything’s okay.”

  Some nearly imperceptible change in the quality of her breathing let him know that she was no longer asleep. After a moment she lifted her torso off the mattress, propping on one elbow to look up at him. He wondered if she even knew who he was, his body silhouetted against the dim light from the other room.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “You were dreaming.”

  For a moment, she said nothing. And then, her voice flat, “About him. And her.”

  “Carol?”

  That was possibly the first time he’d said her name. He had tried not to think of her as a person. That would do nothing but weaken him. Something he couldn’t afford right now.

  Carol Cummings was dead. Just like Makaela. There was no longer anything he could do for either of them. His only concern now was Jenna.