Her expression softened, and his heart fluttered with hope. Somewhere in the back of his brain, a voice whispered, Say yes, Risa. Say yes. Say yes. He tried to ignore it. She would say what she would say. All he could do was wait.
“Tonight?” she asked. “I’m not really dressed for steak tonight.” She waved at her work uniform. It shouldn’t have looked hot, but it did. Maybe it was just that sexy women looked sexy in anything. He figured Risa was one of those women, because the uniform was turning him on.
He shook his head. “Anytime. You say when. Also, you should probably tell me how important the information you have for me is and whether or not our date should be tomorrow. Or you can tell me whatever it is that you found out right here, right now. Then you can go home and change, and we’ll have that steak tonight. Or maybe you’ve decided you hate me and you’re just using me to get the steak.”
He was rambling. He’d been at the desk too long. He probably needed a rum and coke—or five—and he probably didn’t really need any.
She was laughing, and he had no idea if that was a good sign or a bad one. Everything was falling apart. He’d managed to sleep with Risa Caldwell and he’d fucked it up. He’d found out information about his case that was alarming. Then Risa had come along and fucked that up too, with information that he clearly needed that he feared would make the case five times worse.
Not to mention if he didn’t solve this one, and fast, he was probably going to lose his job. Right now, the only information he could give his Special Agent In Charge was that he had a seemingly immortal serial killer who popped up every twenty or so years, but irregularly.
The “immortal” part couldn’t possibly be correct. Ethan knew it. Anyone he told would think it was batshit crazy, and that was also going to lead to his SAC calling for his badge and gun. He’d never work in the field again. And yet, somehow it seemed more pressing to get Risa that steak.
“So,” she said, thinking about it. “Take me somewhere else tonight. Expense it. No steak. We need to talk. Maybe tomorrow, or the next night, you can take me out somewhere really nice.”
That finally made Ethan smile, but then, she said the words that made his heart fall.
“I was talking to Nicole Salway this afternoon, and she has information on one of the cases. You need to talk to her.” The expression on Risa’s face made Ethan’s heart go cold. Her next words confirmed his fear. “She was there when Missy Harrison was killed.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Risa woke to a strange light in a bed that wasn’t her own. It took a moment to place her surroundings and remember that she’d followed Ethan to his apartment after dinner the night before. Clearly, she’d stayed.
As she rolled over, she felt the familiar stretch of muscles that reminded her of his hot mouth on hers…and other places. Of his hands gripping her hips as they moved together. Of the heavy feeling in her breasts as he’d touched her.
The feeling of satiety wasn’t familiar to her. Nor was the feeling that she might have made a mistake and that it might be one she would make again.
The beeping from her phone alarm was at least something she recognized. Reaching out, Risa smacked at it a couple of times until it quit. However, she knew it would start again in exactly four minutes if she didn’t sit up and input her code.
She’d done that on purpose, given her tendency to roll over and slip back into a nice deep sleep. But this morning, she was awake. Ah-wake.
Ethan lay beside her, yawning and stretching from his horizontal position. He’d been dead to the world, but her alarm had woken him, too. He sounded groggy and a little unhappy at being beeped at four a.m.
“Jesus, Risa, it’s so early.”
“I’ve got to get home. Then I have to shower and change for work.”
“What ungodly hour to do you have to go in at?” he asked. The slur in his words indicated that he still wasn’t fully awake.
“Eight,” she told him.
“Shit. Babe, it’s four. Your apartment is not that far away.”
“Yeah well,” she looked at him. “I don’t want to do my walk of shame late enough in the morning that everyone can see me.”
That, it seemed, finally woke him up. His eyes were wide and blue beneath frowning brows as he repeated her words back. “Walk of shame, huh?”
“That’s what they call it.”
“Well, what do you call it?” he asked. “Are you ashamed of this? Of us?”
“No,” Risa said. “But, I’m clearly in the clothing I was wearing yesterday.”
Ethan tilted his head and frowned. “You wear a uniform. How would anyone even tell?”
Risa had to admit she was going to go home and dress in an exact copy of the uniform that she was slowly putting back on from where they’d scattered it around his bedroom floor.
She sighed at him. He didn’t understand, and she didn’t know how to explain. “The wrinkles give me away. Also, everyone will see me walking toward my house in the early-morning hours.”
“So yeah, but really is anyone going to notice?”
“That’s the idea! I want to do this before anyone is on their way to early coffee to spot me. I mean Dark Falls isn’t some tiny little burb in the middle of nowhere. The people around here know me. I’m their local neighborhood firefighter,” she was getting louder, and she was fighting to bring her tone back down. Her hands had quit doing up buttons and were now waving around. “You know who’s up at four a.m.? Firefighters and cops. They are out on the streets twenty-four-seven. And I’m praying I don’t run into someone I know, because I don’t want to deal with the speculation.”
Ethan nodded, finally understanding.
It wasn’t that she was ashamed. It was just that she didn’t want anyone up in her business. People already knew that there was something going on between her and Agent Eames. She did not want to pour fuel on that fire. Not when she didn’t even know if he was her boyfriend. Her shoulders slumped, and she hoped Ethan didn’t see it.
Even going home at four a.m. wouldn’t fix things. She truly might run into a coworker. Nicole had already inserted far too many lilting “Ohhh”s during their lunch the other day.
With a few deep breaths—and Ethan no longer trying to stop her—Risa buttoned her wrinkled uniform shirt over her bra and stepped into the pants that had been pressed when she started her day…yesterday. It was no designer pantsuit, but her uniform was expensive on the “earning the right to wear it” side, and she was not going to jeopardize that by showing up in yesterday’s wrinkled clothes—even for desk duty. Even for Ethan Eames. Though, God help her, he made it tempting.
She struggled to say no to him about anything. She hadn’t demanded a steak last night, and they’d wound up going out for pizza. Once again, they’d sat in the back booth and talked about the case—much more like co-workers or Holmes and Watson than a man and a woman.
Risa’s news had been a bomb dropped into his case. And Ethan had called Nicole right after they’d finished eating. The Missy Harrison murder had happened with another child in tow—Nicole Salway. Ethan was hoping she might remember some details about the killer.
As children, the two girls had been kidnapped together. It seemed she was the only one who’d ever seen anything, but Nicole had not held up well to questioning. Honestly, neither had Risa. She had hoped that she and Nic would become better friends in the future, but after last night’s dredging up of bad memories, Risa didn’t think Nicole would associate her with anything good.
The detective had wanted to help. She hadn’t seen her friend’s death. In fact many of her memories about the incident had been repressed until recently. But, Risa figured Nic probably wouldn’t want anything to do with her again. Risa understood that she might not be welcomed by her friend when she showed up at the station for more arson investigation training with Noelle Grey. No one would want someone who triggered bad memories working there with her. Shit.
Still, the case was far too important. Child
ren’s lives were on the line. Probably not for another twenty years, but that assumed she and Ethan were right about the time frames.
Risa slipped into her sock and back into the ankle boot she was now allowed to remove at night. She stepped into the stupid kitten heel that she was going to throw out when this was over. And she considered climbing back into bed and staying with Ethan a few hours longer. Let everyone see her walk home, let the world know that this was just what adult women did.
Ethan apparently wouldn’t have had any compunction about walking home from her house early. In fact, it seemed he’d bolted from her apartment several mornings ago at five a.m. without even the slightest thought to what people might think.
Risa wasn’t quite ready to embrace all of that, so she leaned over, kissed him good-bye, and told him to stay in bed. Then she let herself out his front door and prayed she didn’t run into anyone. At her building, she climbed the stairs and opened the door hoping she didn’t wake any of her own neighbors. She closed the door behind her and thought, “safe!” But when she went to turn the bolt, it didn’t slide into place.
Risa froze and looked around the apartment, her heart pounding at the thought that someone had been in here. She checked the whole apartment out, realizing she still hadn’t told Ethan about her suspicions.
Once she determined the place was clear and she didn’t find that anything had been moved, Risa jammed a chair under the door, then showered. Even then, she still had several hours before she had to get dressed and go to the station. It only took a moment to convince herself to climb into bed. There wasn’t much else she could do at this hour except go down to the neighborhood coffee shop and wait out her time there. Also, she told herself that she wanted to be available in the evening. In case Ethan still wanted to go for that steak.
Then she told herself to live her own damn life and not make plans around a man who hadn’t made plans around her!
Ethan had a full day of research, and she had to debate telling him about her bolt. It could just be broken, but she didn’t think so. He had to look into the Ester Holtzclaw case and see if it really fit the pattern. He had to use all the little odds and ends of information Nicole had given him and try to put the Missy Harrison case together.
Risa lay in her bed, wrapped in her towel, as a thought nagged her at the back of her brain. They found a case from fifty years ago, one from twenty years ago, another from seventy-five years ago, and none of it made sense. Fifty years was a long, long run for a serial killer. Seventy-five was improbable beyond belief.
She wanted to go to the library as soon as she was off work and re-check the records. She was going to dig even further back. Something told her there was nothing normal about this case or this killer. And she had to tell Ethan about her door tonight.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Risa opened the door to Ethan’s office and stood in the space it made. Though she didn’t slam her way in as she had the evening before, she did open it without knocking. This man had been in her bed, and she in his.
Behind her, she imagined the eyebrows of several of the detectives rising. Right at that moment, she realized her leaving his apartment to go home at four a.m. had been a complete waste of time. She’d clearly changed after work—into a skirt. And she was showing up at the local FBI agent’s office. There was probably no one in Dark Falls who didn’t at least have some idea of what was going on between Ethan and Risa.
As she took in the view in front of her, she noticed Ethan looked worse for wear. Risa imagined that he’d likely rolled over and gone back to sleep when she left him that morning. He’d said it was his only chance to sleep in, and by that he meant seven a.m. rather than a bone-jarring five. It was why she hadn’t called him when she found her bolt.
He almost looked as though he hadn’t shaved. The day was wearing on him, she could tell. She almost didn’t want to give him her news because it certainly would not make things easier.
He looked up, seeming to know what she was going to say. She wanted to believe she could be casually dropping by to see if she could get dinner for him. But no, he looked her dead in the eyes and seemed to read her very clearly.
“Let me guess. You found another case?”
She nodded, even though it wasn’t the whole truth.
“Me, too,” he said, and Risa frowned. He’d been through everything in the FBI database before. So how had he come up with something that wasn’t there yesterday? “What did you search this time that made it different?”
“Everything. Some of the same things, new combinations, and honestly, I went back and asked Carol Kastrop.”
“Really?” Who knew the old biddy would turn out to be a font of information?
“It turns out Carol had a metric ton of gossip about the state of the DF Police Department and crime in the area. But, it paid off, because like the librarian she is,” Ethan said, the exhaustion still showing through his voice despite his pleasure that Carol had actually done something worthwhile, “she pointed me in the right direction.”
Risa frowned. “But I was just at the library.”
“No, no library for me. I went back to pulling old police records.” He motioned to his computer. “I have more possible missing children cases—bodies not found yet. One relatively recent, and the others spread out. I pulled every missing child in the entire history of the town.”
“Holy shit!” Risa felt the exclamation burst out. “I thought you were supposed to use that super-computing algorithm of yours to sort it out so you didn’t have to do that.”
“It wasn’t working.” Something about that phrase explained the look on his face. “I have five more cases. I have no idea if they fit or not. I really want to hand them to you to take a look at but I’m pretty sure that’s highly illegal. No,” he paused. “I’m confident it is.”
“Well,” Risa said, “what’s the oldest case you found?”
“Ninety years. I had another one that’s over a hundred, but I can’t make it fit.”
This time, Risa had paid almost ten dollars in copying fees to the library. She laid out all the things she’d brought on his desk. “I found three more cases.”
“Did you now?” Ethan looked at her with a wary look in his eyes. He didn’t want more cases. She could tell. One side of his mouth quirked. “Well, it will be good if they line up with mine, and harsh if they don’t.”
Risa understood. If they’d pulled the same cases, they confirmed each other’s work. But if hers were different—and if hers matched the pattern—it would mean that his method was still incomplete.
“My oldest one,” she said, the sound of her voice echoing softly in the room and making her wish she’d closed the door, “is two hundred years old.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ethan felt his head sink into his hands. His elbows rested on his desk, his face down, and his body almost melted into defeat.
“Long day?” Risa asked him.
“The longest,” he told her. Though he’d had worse, few had been as relentless at delivering one negative piece of information after another.
The immortal killer angle was clearly incorrect, and he’d begun searching for groups, cults, any organization that had been in the area dating back to the earliest killing. He’d found several that had changed hands over the years, but nothing that connected—even slightly—to the killings. Several of the groups had gone inactive during a time when one of the murders they had found occurred. Several others had disbanded ten or even thirty years ago and couldn’t be responsible for Kaylee Schulte’s death.
What he’d thought was a solid idea was just another dead end, and one he couldn’t tell Risa about unless she brought the evidence to him. He’d already told her far more than he should. Giving her keys to his research into the case could get him fired. Ethan thought he might plausibly defend the rest of it, but not this.
He sighed and tried to let the ugly day slide away. “The latest thing I’ve been failing at is requisition
ing protection for Nicole Salway.” At least that was something he could tell Risa.
“Why would she need it? I mean, this guy has been killing children. I know you told her to stay safe the other night and not be alone, but I thought those were normal precautions. And she’s a detective...” Risa’s words trailed off into a frown.
“That’s true, I was trying not to alarm her.” He’d been trying to get a security detail because Nicole was likely the only witness who had ever seen this guy—even though she’d been clear in all her statements at the time and again now that she hadn’t actually seen him.
She’d been young and frightened when she and Missy were kidnapped. Nicole’s memory included only flashes and images. She’d seen a knife, indicating further that Missy’s case was one of this batch. It also stood to reason that if there was a serial killer on the loose, he might come after Nicole to stop her from identifying him.
Ethan looked up at Risa. “I’d been going through the records—from Missy’s murder. Because it was twenty years old, I had to pull the records from off-site records storage. So I knew there was a friend with her when she was initially abducted. I didn’t connect that it was one of the DF detectives—she changed her last name between then and now.”
The Janet Deevers case would indicate that the killer was likely now well into his seventies. The Dark Falls PD was struggling to find money to protect an adult woman from a serial killer who wasn’t really a serial killer yet and was likely too old to offer much real harm to a trained officer of Nicole’s age. One who wasn’t even living alone. Like Risa was… Telling Nicole she might be in danger again had been painful for both of them.
He hadn’t told anyone in the public that he was trying to get Dark Falls PD protection. In fact, he’d tried to downplay it the night before, which was what Risa had seen. Now, however, she heard the other side of it. Honestly, he was afraid for Risa, too. She’d tripped over Kaylee. Did the killer know it was her? “I just hope you aren’t afraid, too.”
Dark Echoes: (Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 7) Page 13