by Gayle Wilson
But he hadn’t been able to intervene to prevent her death. So now he was trying to do what he saw as the next best thing.
“You have to know—”
“What do you know, Doc? I thought that was the question. I thought you were going to figure out who this guy is. Or isn’t your guesswork any better than the shrinks’ at the Bureau?”
He had shared more of himself than she had any right to expect. And now the door to his past had again been slammed firmly shut. Trying to force it open would accomplish nothing except anger and resentment.
“Your friend on the national task force didn’t share any names with you?” She kept her eyes on the notepad as she asked.
“I don’t think they have any.”
“But they do have suspects, don’t they? They have questioned people.”
“‘Persons of interest’ is the current terminology. As far as I’m aware, none of them have ever panned out.”
She pushed the appealing possibility of that kind of shortcut from her mind, trying to concentrate again on what she knew with a degree of certainty, based strictly on the crimes.
“He’s white.” The victims had been, so that was a given.
“That narrows it to what? A few million?”
“Late thirties or early forties,” she continued, ignoring the sarcasm. “He could be a little older, but not much.”
“The Feds think he’s older, based on the first murders.”
According to the FBI, the Inquisitor had butchered his first victim more than seven years ago. Jenna would be willing to bet there had been earlier killings not yet linked to him.
Those would be in his hometown. Or somewhere nearby. And the reason they hadn’t been connected to him was because he’d still been perfecting his methodology.
He probably hadn’t abducted those women. He’d attacked and killed them wherever he’d encountered them. And then, after the first few, he had discovered the brief brutality of that wasn’t enough to satisfy the rage that drove him.
Based on what she remembered from the classes she’d taught, those victims would probably have been his age or slightly younger, even if his abuser was an older woman. Most serial killers began to kill in their mid- to late twenties. Allowing a window of five years for those earlier, as yet unconnected murders…
“I think they’re wrong,” she said. “The current victims have all been in their mid-thirties.”
“Except for Carol Cummings.”
The UAB student had been twenty. She had also been shorter than the others. Slightly overweight. From the photographs on the news, those few extra pounds hadn’t made her unattractive.
The girl’s death was enough of a variation to be considered as falling outside the pattern. Combined with the fact that he hadn’t let the normal time lapse between his victims—
“He didn’t plan to take her.” As she voiced her sudden realization, she looked up from the pad and straight into Sean’s eyes, which narrowed as he thought about what she’d said.
“He didn’t stalk her,” she went on. “That’s why there was such a small gap between Callie Morgan’s murder and this.”
That should make her feel better about her own situation. It wasn’t that the Inquisitor was becoming less controlled—or in profiler terminology, less organized. It was simply that he’d had a stroke of luck with his last victim. And he’d taken advantage of it.
“She fell into his lap,” Sean said softly.
“Young enough to think nothing like what happened to the others could ever happen to her. We have to tell Bingham.”
“Tell him what? That this one was some kind of accident?”
“It was,” Jenna emphasized, unsure why he didn’t see the importance of that. “She disappeared from Five Points. Where there are always people. Someone may have seen him.”
“Doing what?”
“Leaving a bar with her. Getting into a car. His car.”
Only as she said the words did she realize their implication. Even if someone had only seen the car, it would narrow the field of suspects exponentially. Added to the other things they knew, it might be enough to give them some “persons of interest” here.
“He’s not that stupid,” Sean said decisively.
Could he have been? Would he have taken a chance on someone seeing them together?
“Maybe it didn’t seem stupid at the time.”
“Being seen with a woman who’s going to turn up dead?”
“Maybe he didn’t intend to kill her. Not then.”
“So that means someone he knew? Or someone who was with him for some other reason?”
“She was a student.” Jenna was sure that the Inquisitor was too old to be one, even on an urban campus that catered to people in the work force, but it was possible he was connected to the university in some way. “Maybe he’s a teacher.”
“Still too risky. Maybe more so. Everybody who had any association with the Cummings girl will be questioned. He wouldn’t want to be pulled in. Somebody might take a look at where he’s been before he came here.”
He had probably lied on any application or résumé, but if the cops got interested and began backtracking, that kind of falsification would fall apart very quickly. Sean was right. He was too smart to put himself in that position.
“Then if he didn’t know her, why would he take a chance on being seen with her?”
“He picked her up at night.”
“At Five Points? Too many people. Besides, where was she between the time she left her friends at the bar and when it got dark? She told them she was going back to campus, so why hang around…what, two or three hours? She said she needed to get back to study.”
“It was raining.”
“What?”
“The day she disappeared,” Sean clarified. “I wanted to take a look at the places where they’d found the bodies. It was raining so hard I had to give it up. I literally couldn’t see the ground in front of me.”
“He picked her up in the rain.” She knew how it must have happened. The area around the fountain deserted except for a lone girl trying to make her way back to her dorm in a storm. “He offered her a ride. Or maybe she asked him for one. And despite Callie Morgan’s death, he just couldn’t resist. He knew that the chance of anyone being out in that rain, especially as cold as it was…He picked her up, Sean. For once he took a risk. For once he played the odds.”
Sean pushed back his chair, the legs sliding noisily across the ceramic tile of the kitchen floor. Startled, she looked up to see him take his cell phone out of his pocket.
“You’re calling Bingham?”
“Maybe somebody will remember. Because of that rain. Maybe somebody saw something they didn’t realize at the time was important. If the cops can remind them—”
He didn’t bother to finish the sentence. He punched one of the preset buttons on his cell instead, and then walked over to the breakfast room windows overlooking the pool.
She didn’t listen to whatever he told the lieutenant. The theory might come to naught. Even if they were right, maybe no one had been outside that day. Or looking out a window. Maybe the Inquisitor had been as lucky as he’d always been before.
Even if no one had witnessed what happened, she knew on some level beyond logic she was right. He had picked Carol Cummings up in the rain, and then he’d driven her to wherever he’d killed her. And at some point in that journey she must have known.
Suspicion first. Increasingly frantic questions that had gone unanswered until there was no more room for uncertainty. Or for hope. Finally there would only be room for the terrible reality. That what had been done to the three women whose deaths and mutilations had filled the pages of the local paper for days was about to be done to her.
Jenna lay listening to the rain and watching the minutes and then the hours change on the digital clock. She hadn’t bothered turning it to the wall. Its dim light wasn’t what kept her awake tonight.
She turned over, pummeli
ng the down pillow in an attempt to fashion it into a more comfortable shape. Even when she had done that, she didn’t bother to close her eyes. She knew the images would still be there.
She listened instead, straining to hear the comforting sound of Sean’s snores from the adjoining room. If he were asleep, the drum of rain on the roof drowned out any evidence of it. And if he were awake—
Maybe he was struggling as she was to put the scenario they’d created for the Cummings girl’s abduction out of his head. Or maybe for him tonight’s attempt to enter the mind of the Inquisitor had created other images. Ones that centered around another murder. Another woman he’d vowed to protect.
Which brought her full circle to what she’d learned about him tonight. Something else that had made it impossible to calm her restless mind. She kept thinking about what his life had been like. Comparing it to hers. Knowing that as soon as they’d walked into her parents’ house, he had done the same.
She pushed up from the mattress, straining to hear any sound from the other side of the door. Even if Sean were sleeping, she’d feel better simply being in the same vicinity. If she were in the sitting room, she would at least be able to hear the reassuring sound of his breathing.
She pushed the covers back, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. A flash of lightning illuminated the room, revealing for an instant the arrangement of her mother’s beloved furnishings.
Tonight nothing felt familiar. It seemed alien and somehow frightening. Which was ridiculous.
Acknowledging that didn’t prevent her from stepping onto the floor. She shrugged into the robe she’d laid at the foot of the bed. As thunder followed the lightning that had lit the room, she crossed the thick carpet on bare feet, almost running toward the door.
When she opened it, the low light on the table by the love seat temporarily blinded her. As soon as her vision adjusted, she realized that the sitting room was empty.
Her uneasiness over that discovery was disproportionate to the cause. Sean had gone to the bathroom. Or downstairs to the kitchen. Just because she was alone up here…
Alone. The word reverberated, causing her to wrap her arms around her body as her eyes surveyed the room again, paying special attention to its shadowed corners. As if she thought Sean might be hiding from her.
Which was even more ridiculous than her initial desire for companionship. She was a grown woman. Someone who was supposed to understand how the human mind worked.
Instead, she was fueling her own irrational fears. She took a breath, deliberately trying to quell her sense that something was wrong. “Sean?”
She waited, listening to the sound of the rain. Bathroom, she thought, moving across the room toward the hall that would lead to her father’s suite.
It was dark. Surely if Sean had left the sitting room, he would have turned on a light out here.
She fought against her growing fear, knowing, even as it filled her chest, that there must a perfectly legitimate explanation for his absence. He’d gone downstairs. He’d thought of something he needed to tell Bingham and didn’t want to disturb her while he made the call. Or maybe he’d decided to get a good night’s sleep in one of the other bedrooms.
Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t cause for anxiety. This was her parents’ home, with a state-of-the-art security system. That’s why they’d ended up here.
And no matter how “organized” the Inquisitor was, he couldn’t walk through walls. She was imagining bogeymen where none existed.
Except for the one who’d killed Carol Cummings.
Pushing that thought out of her head, she stepped out into the hall. She turned on the light in her father’s bedroom to find its king-size bed still made, the bronze coverlet undisturbed. Although the bathroom door was open, she crossed to look inside. It was also empty.
Downstairs. A phone call or a midnight snack. Something mundane. Something easily explained as soon as she found him. He’d laugh about the fact that she’d been so frantic.
She hurriedly retraced her steps. As she exited the bedroom, heading toward the stairs, she noticed a dim light in the other wing, and suddenly everything fell into place.
If Sean had decided to sleep rather than stand guard, he wouldn’t have used her father’s bed. Not with three guest rooms only a few feet away. As she approached the top of the staircase, she looked down at the landing and then on to the foyer beyond.
With the rain there was no moonlight coming in the glass panels on either side of the front door. Judging by the almost total darkness below, there were no lights on the first floor, which negated the possibility that Sean might be in the kitchen.
She raised her eyes, focusing on the light emanating from the other wing. Now certain that she knew where Sean was, she hurriedly crossed in front of the curving wall of windows that separated her parents’ suites from the other bedrooms.
As she grew nearer, she could tell that the light was coming from her bedroom. Puzzled because that didn’t seem to fit with her theory, her steps began to slow. She thought about calling out again, but because of her confusion, she didn’t.
She walked toward the open door instead, stopping just before she reached it. Holding her breath, she leaned forward to look into the room.
Sean was holding one of her old dressage trophies. He appeared to be reading the engraving on its metal tag.
A perfectly logical explanation. Just as she’d told herself. She drew a calming breath and moved forward into the doorway. “What are you doing?”
He spun around, the gun she’d seen him take out of the duffel bag replacing the loving cup as if by some sleight of hand. Knees bent, he held the weapon out in front of him, its muzzle centered on her chest.
For seemingly endless seconds they remained frozen in that silent tableau, their mutual shock holding them motionless. He moved first, straightening out of his crouch as he lowered the gun. His mouth opened and then closed, but he didn’t speak.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, realizing how very close he’d come to pulling that trigger.
And if he had, it would have been her fault. A man charged with protecting someone from a monster like the Inquisitor couldn’t afford to be taken unawares.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She should have been the one asking that question, considering where she’d found him. Shaken by what had almost happened, she told him the truth instead. “Looking for you.”
“Why?”
A legitimate question. And she couldn’t think of a single legitimate answer to it.
Because I couldn’t sleep. Because I keep thinking about you. And Makaela. And Carol Cummings. And because I don’t want to be alone.
She picked the least revealing. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought that maybe if you were—”
“If I was what?”
“I thought maybe you were awake, too. When you weren’t in the sitting room—” She realized she still didn’t know why he’d left. “What are you doing in here?”
She glanced around at the familiar objects, trying to fathom what might have brought him to this room. Surely he hadn’t come to look at the awards she’d won in junior high.
Without answering, he laid the gun on the top of her dresser and then bent to pick up the trophy he’d been holding when she’d walked in. In the confusion of that moment, she hadn’t even realized he’d dropped it.
He set it back in place before he turned to look at her. She couldn’t read whatever was in his eyes. All she knew was that right now they weren’t cold. Or angry. If she were forced to characterize what she saw in them—
He was embarrassed, she realized. Because he’d been snooping and she’d caught him?
She supposed she should feel annoyed that her privacy had been invaded. But since she hadn’t lived in this room in almost a decade, she couldn’t drum up any indignation over his presence.
“Idle curiosity.”
Just to see what makes you tick.
�
�About those?” She nodded toward the array of loving cups.
He hesitated, and then, with the arrogance she had become accustomed to, he said, “You’re the psychologist. You figure it out.”
“You were curious about me. But I thought you said you knew all you needed to know the day you came to my office.”
He said nothing, still holding her eyes.
“Or is it possible that some of your preconceived ideas haven’t turned out to be accurate?”
“You’d love to hear me admit to that, wouldn’t you?”
“You bet your sweet ass I would.”
His eyes widened, whether at her language or the force of the emotion behind it. One corner of his mouth lifted and was quickly controlled.
“So do I get an apology?” she prodded.
“Is that what you’re waiting for? An apology?”
“I believe I deserve one. Don’t you?”
For a moment he said nothing. Then he walked toward her until he was standing directly in front of her. The difference in their heights was emphasized by the tilt of her chin as she continued to hold his eyes challengingly.
His seemed to search her face. Finally his lips parted. She held her breath, unable to believe that he was finally going to admit he’d been wrong.
“Deserved or not, this is the only thing I want to give you right now.” He lowered his head as he said the words until the last was whispered against her lips.
They, too, had parted because, at some point in the middle of that sentence, she had realized he was about to kiss her. And realized also how very much she wanted him to.
Twenty-Two
Still he waited, giving her the opportunity to protest. To refuse. To step back, breaking the contact between them.
She did none of those things. She shut her eyes instead, anticipating the feel of his lips closing over hers.
When they did, they were nothing like she’d expected. Warm and soft and very sure, they teased along her open mouth, dropping one small kiss after another until she ached for whatever came next. Then, as he finally enfolded her in his arms, his tongue invaded with a demanding expertise that for some reason surprised her.