Sometimes when he was a child, lying awake at night in his bed, he would fantasize about how his father and he would just run off, leaving his mother far behind. Run off and do anything they wanted to.
His father was his best friend, as well as his first line of defense against his sharp-tongued, hurtful mother. His best friend, that is, until the day he’d discovered his father had betrayed him. Had been betraying him all along.
With her.
The one with the large luminous eyes. Eyes that stared at him in the last few moments of her life, begging for mercy as eloquently as she had. But mercy was something he’d suddenly found that he was devoid of. Because he had been betrayed. By the man he’d worshipped ahead of all others. Even ahead of God.
He knew it was blasphemous, but he would have gone to hell for his father. Instead, hell was where his father and that whore were destined.
“Leave her alone,” his father had cried, no, begged when the minister had realized that he was no longer listening.
Even now, he could hear his father’s voice in his head. Begging. Except this time, he was begging him to spare Rita Daly.
“Leave her alone, son. You have to leave her alone. Please.”
But he knew he couldn’t. For her own good.
He looked at the calendar on the kitchen wall. The calendar that helped him track his time. Track his missions. There were so many missions. And he was tired. But he knew what was required of him.
It was almost Sunday.
And on this Sunday Rita Daly would finally be free of the mortal clay that held her to this immoral existence. Sunday she would meet her salvation, he promised himself. He could almost taste it.
He began to move about. There was a great deal to prepare before the big day.
Before Sunday.
CHARLEY HARDLY SLEPT. She and David had stayed up all night, talking. When he finally begged off, it was after two o’clock in the morning. She’d left him sleeping like the proverbial baby. She, on the other hand, was operating on four hours’ sleep. Even her morning run with Dakota hadn’t managed to wake her up.
She’d come into the office dragging, only to be subjected to a silent once-over by her partner. Then, for the rest of the day, whenever they were in each other’s company, they’d conducted themselves like two foreign dignitaries in the UN who had only the smallest understanding of the other’s language.
It was beginning to rub her the wrong way. Being a professional, she’d held her tongue during the interviews. But the moment they went back to their vehicle, she hit him full force with her ire.
“Okay,” she declared as she buckled up, “what the hell is going on?” When Nick made no answer, she pushed harder, even as she jammed her key into the ignition. “You’ve had something on your mind all day. Spit it out. What is it?”
Nick kept his face forward as she eased the vehicle into traffic. Whenever he was annoyed, he found it better not to talk until the feeling passed. It hadn’t passed yet.
“You’re my partner,” he told her evenly. “That doesn’t mean you’re privy to my every thought.”
They were heading back to the station. Thank God it was Friday, she thought. This week had had at least three extra days. “No, just the ones that concern me.”
Nick slanted a glance at her that fit anyone’s definition of icy. “Got a swelled head, Special Agent Dow? Not everything is about you.”
If he meant to make her back off with his deep-freeze look, he was in for a surprise. Her father hadn’t managed to intimidate her and he was a world-class expert.
Charley took a quick left turn just as the light was turning red. “It is when I catch you looking at me as if you were a rich socialite and I was a leper about to invade your exclusive party.” She didn’t like being the recipient of dark looks, nor did she care for the silent treatment. “Now, if I’ve done something—”
“Not a thing.” Despite his best efforts, there was sarcasm in his voice. “I just don’t appreciate being paired up with someone I can’t trust.”
She pressed down hard on the accelerator to make the next light. “Excuse me?”
He bit his tongue. The woman drove as if the car was on fire and she was trying to head straight for the lake, obstacles be damned.
“Hearing going, too?”
“My hearing’s in a lot better condition than your brain,” she snapped, then regained control over her emotions. In a more even tone, she demanded, “What the hell are you talking about? What have I done to make you think you can’t trust me?”
He snorted, as if the answer was self-evident. “You lied.”
“I what?” This time, when her temper flared, she just let it go. “Listen, buster, I don’t lie. Lies are for people with things to hide. My life isn’t anywhere near that complicated.”
He almost believed her, she sounded that sincere. But he’d seen what he’d seen and there was no getting around that. “Then why didn’t you have the decency to tell me you couldn’t go out for a drink yesterday because you were meeting your boyfriend?”
Bringing the vehicle to a screeching stop within the Federal Building parking structure, Charley shifted in her seat to glare at him. She opened her mouth to answer, then shut it, swallowing a scathing retort. She struggled to keep her temper in check.
Brannigan reached for the door handle, but she threw the remote lock on, locking all four of the doors. He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
Composing herself, Charley held up first her index finger, then two more, raising the fingers one at a time. Banking down the temptation to hold only one digit up to tell him how she felt.
“Because one, I don’t owe you any explanations,” she informed him evenly. “Two, I didn’t know he was in town and three, David is not my boyfriend, or whatever it is you imagined he was—he’s my brother.”
The last word seemed to echo within the vehicle’s interior. “Brother.”
“Brother,” she repeated with verve.
Nick studied her for a long moment, telling himself he’d know if she was lying. Gut instincts rather than her protestations told him she wasn’t. “That was your brother?”
Was the man deaf as well as dense? “I just said that. Do you need to see his ID? Because I can call David up to bring it over if you like. He’s staying at my place until he settles in.”
Nick had never felt stupid before. He didn’t much care for it. Waving away her offer, he muttered, “No, your word’s good enough.”
“You’re sure?” she pressed sarcastically. “Because back there, for a second, it didn’t seem as if my word was worth as much as dirt to you.”
When he turned to look at her, her eyes were blazing.
“You are an arrogant son of a bitch, you know that?” Charley spit.
Arrogance had nothing to do with it. He felt relieved. And that bothered him. Just as much as his jealousy last night had bothered him. When he’d first seen her at the bar last night, he’d thought she’d had a change of heart. And then he’d realized that she was with someone. Someone she was talking to and laughing with. Standing at the bar, he’d observed her for several minutes before she’d finally looked his way. Observed the way she placed her hand on the other man’s arm, the way her fingertips caressed his wrist.
Observed, too, that a strange displeasure wove through him as he witnessed her behavior with another man. A lover.
The relief he experienced at learning that Charley and the man were siblings was as unexpected as the stab of jealousy he’d felt last night.
He had always kept the lines between work and private life drawn, if not tightly, at least noticeably. He sensed the dangers that would arise out of mingling the two. But right now, the only thing on his mind was the desire to satisfy his curiosity. There was a volley of sizzling words leaving Charley’s mouth. Did that make her lips hot?
He suddenly needed to know.
In a move that surprised them both, he leaned over in the car, threaded his fingers throug
h her hair in order to bring her closer. And kissed her.
Shock vibrated through her. Charley’s first reaction was to pull away, to wedge her hands between them and shove this man back as hard as she could. Maybe even as she called him a few choice names. And threatened to put him on report.
She did none of that, said none of that. She was too busy trying to catch her breath as she clung to a runaway roller coaster. Her reaction, this feeling that was zooming through her, surprised the hell out of her.
Especially since she wasn’t the type to believe in feelings like this. Until this very moment, she’d been firmly convinced it was all a lie made up by men and women who wanted only to make everyone around them jealous. Jealous as hell over something that really wasn’t out there to feel.
Except that it was. Neverland did exist. And she’d found a sliver of it within this enigma that the Bureau had pushed into her life.
Charley bit back a moan as she leaned in closer to him. She intended to glide on the winds with Peter Pan for as long as she could manage. It was her first visit here. And undoubtedly her last, she thought with the part of her brain that still functioned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
FINALLY, ALTHOUGH IT almost hurt to do so, Charley drew back.
As did Nick.
Heat swam through her, casting out long, searing rays. Pulling herself together took effort. She sought refuge in anger. Except she didn’t actually feel angry. Just confused.
“What the hell was that?” she demanded, hoping she sounded sufficiently put out.
She watched as a bemused, almost lopsided grin—not a smile, but a grin—slipped over his lips. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
She caught herself tossing her hair and stopped mid-motion. Too melodramatic, she upbraided herself silently. Except that she felt melodramatic. She felt a lot of things. Mostly turned inside out.
“I’m not the one who kissed you.”
The grin moved slowly along his lips, taking her prisoner. “The hell you didn’t, Special Agent Dow. You kissed me just as much as I kissed you.”
He was right. To deny it would be doing the very thing she’d said she didn’t. It would be lying. She had no choice but to admit it. Kind of.
“Don’t let it happen again,” she warned. Because I might just kiss you back again. She fervently hoped he couldn’t read minds.
Damn, that had been good. If he kissed like that on the spur of the moment, what must the man be like in…
Startled at the direction her mind was going, Charley refused to allow herself to complete the thought.
“I won’t.” But even as Nick said it, he wasn’t sure he could back that up. Because he’d liked what he’d sampled. Liked it more than he should have. And, God help him, he wanted to do it again.
CHARLEY SPENT the weekend trying to catch up on the rest of her life. Catching up with her brother and just fussing over him. More than anything, she enjoyed the feeling of being part of a family again. It was something she had acutely missed when David enlisted.
Although both her parents were still alive, she thought of herself as alone. Especially when her mother began to swiftly deteriorate. Not long after David had gone through basic training, their mother had drifted away.
And her father only thought of Charley as a means to an end. The end being that she would find her sister’s murderer and bring him to justice. Or, better yet, hand the man over to her father for vengeance. She and her father had nothing in common except for a last name. He wasn’t really family anymore, not in the true sense of the word.
For the most part, Charley thought of the people she worked with as her family. This helped over the bumpier times.
Early Monday morning, over her own protests, Charley drove her brother to a car rental agency. But even as they pulled up in the parking lot, she made a last-ditch attempt at getting him to change his mind. And save money.
“You can take my car,” she offered, coming to a stop before a pleasant-looking ground-floor office. The sign above the door proclaimed it to be the leading car rental agency in three counties.
His fingers resting on the door handle, David shook his head. “You need your car.”
“One of the agents can pick me up.”
But David laughed, turning her down. “Don’t try to mother me. Besides, any car I rent is bound to leave me cleaner than yours.” He glanced down at his civilian clothing. “Look at all this dog fur.”
“A, that’s not from my car, it’s from my dog, and B, serves you right for roughhousing with Dakota. You know how much she loves you.”
He lifted his shoulders in a self-deprecating shrug. “I’ve always had a fatal charm when it comes to the ladies,” he laughed.
Before she could make a comment, her cell phone began to ring. She fished it out of her pocket and answered, putting a finger up for David to hold whatever thought he had until she was off.
“Dow.”
“Charlotte? It’s Alice.”
She stiffened. Since they’d gone out to lunch together, the secretary seemed intent on getting closer to her. Although she felt sorry for the woman, she had no desire for a lasting, long-term friendship. “Alice, can this be quick? I have to—”
“There’s been another murder,” Alice told her, a smattering of authority infused into her normally timid voice.
Damn.
Thoughts of another chatty, nonsensical conversation vanished. Charley was alert, all business. She’d hoped the killer would just stop. Maybe it wasn’t realistic, but things happened to people all the time. Their serial killer could have been involved in a fatal car accident and they would never know. Except that the killings would stop.
“Where?”
Alice recited a Newport Beach address. Vaguely familiar with the location, she knew that it belonged to one of the more exclusive neighborhoods, a gated development with its own guard.
Not even the rich were safe.
“A.D. Kelly wants you and Special Agent Brannigan on-site,” Alice told her.
“I’m on my way.” Closing the telephone, she looked at her brother. David was still in the car. Charley nodded toward the rental office. “You’ll be okay?”
She could see that David was doing his best not to laugh at the question. “Marines made a man out of me, remember?”
Okay, so she was being overprotective. “And you can walk and chew gum at the same time, yes, I know. Sorry. I have a tendency to mother and ordinarily, the only one on the receiving end is Dakota.”
David laughed, letting her know that no offense was taken. “Go.” He waved her off. “Get the bad guys.”
She flashed him a smile. “I only wish.”
She hit the road less than a minute later.
David never asked her about her work. Unlike their father, David never asked in his letters if she was close to catching the man who had robbed them of a sister. She truly didn’t know if that was because David knew she couldn’t discuss an ongoing investigation, or if her brother had to pretend that the taking of Cris’s life hadn’t happened.
It was a question to ponder for another day. Right now, she had a fresh murder on her hands.
BRANNIGAN WAS THERE ahead of her. It figured, she thought, disgruntled as she parked near his vehicle. She got out quickly. Ever since the man had kissed her Friday, she felt as if she was running in slow motion, ten paces behind him. Not particularly a good thing, seeing as how she was the lead.
Police milled around, obviously called in to control any crowds that might begin to gather around outside the fashionable house. Crowds drew reporters and the latter would be here soon enough.
She couldn’t help being a little awed by the structure as she walked through the entrance. It was a rich neighborhood. The least expensive home in the area went for approximately one point two million dollars.
When she entered the room where the body had been discovered, she saw Brannigan crouching over the woman. He looked up as she approached. They exchanged polite
nods.
It wasn’t going to get any more personal than that, she promised herself. And as she did, she felt her fingertips tingle, as if telling her she was lying.
“What are we looking at?” Slipping on a pair of plastic gloves, Charley squatted down beside Brannigan and looked at the victim. Like the others, the woman had been posed to lie on her back. As if she was asleep.
“Same guy?” Even as she asked, she gently moved aside the blond bangs that covered the woman’s forehead. The same faint cross was carved on her skin.
Nick went over the M.O. “Manual strangulation from behind. A cross carved on her forehead. No loose, telltale signs. No signs of forced entry.” Rising, he shook his head.
“You’d think someone would have noticed him by now,” Bill complained, coming forth.
Charley looked over her shoulder at the man. Sam was behind him. She saw Jack passing by the living-room doorway. Apparently, she was the last one to get here. Getting up, Charley left her gloves on. They would be doing a lot of looking around in the next few hours. Not to mention a lot of praying that, for once, they would finally get lucky.
“Maybe it’s someone nobody would think of questioning.” She was only saying out loud what everyone had to be thinking. “A cop, a delivery man, a public utilities repairman. Maybe the cable guy or someone posing as a mail carrier.”
“In other words, someone you wouldn’t look at twice,” Sam supplied.
“Exactly. He tells the victim there’s a package that needs a signature, a leak in the neighborhood that he’s tracking to its source, he’s collecting for the policemen’s ball.” She shrugged. “Something that gets him into the house without a problem while keeping him invisible as far as everyone else is concerned.”
She sighed, shaking her head. The deceased looked a little like Cris. It brought it all too close again.
Charley threw up her hands. “Hell, all I know is that he’s good, he’s getting cocky and he’s killing more often. The first three murders were exactly a year apart, then they began to escalate.” She looked at Sam. “Now, it’s, what, a little more than a month? We’ve got to catch this bastard before he starts making it a weekly event. Or decides that Sundays aren’t the only day he wants to kill women.”
Sundays Are for Murder Page 14