“No. You’re all cleared.” The lieutenant stared them down. “If you have a problem with our investigation, take it up with someone who cares. Get to work. Find this guy. There are seventeen stanzas to that damn poem and I’m sick of it. Sick of poetry, of secrets, of people dying in weird ways. I want this case solved.” He went back to his office with a slice of pizza in his hand.
Deming tossed her crust in her waste bin and licked her fingers. “You know what we have to do.” Hannah had no idea. Jack seemed interested, though. “Hannah was lured to the yacht. The other victims were presumably lured to their deaths. Our killer is smart enough to make it look invisible. Now that we’ve robbed him of his victims, he has few choices; abandon his ritual, alter it, or target the one person on his list not in hiding.”
Hannah smiled. “Are you suggesting we set a trap?” It nudged aside the weight of hopelessness. Deming didn’t appear as enthusiastic as Hannah was, but it was a good idea.
“We’d finally be in the driver’s seat,” Gilroy said, “instead of all this damn waiting around.”
“No,” Jack said.
Ferguson scowled. “It would put Hannah in harm’s way. So, I vote no, too.”
“Ferguson, if our places were reversed, you’d jump at this chance. And you.” Hannah glared at Jack, who glared back at her. “You’re pulling rank,” she said.
“Damn right. That’s what rank is for.” Jack smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Benton, just think about it.” Deming winked at Hannah, making her believe maybe, if they worked on him, they might push this idea down the road.
“We have two bad choices right now,” Hannah said. “The perp either kills again, or he fades into the ether. We can’t just wait around hoping.”
“She’s right,” Gilroy said.
Hannah’s gaze clashed with Jack’s, but what she saw in his eyes stopped her cold.
Jack was scared.
Chapter 17
He could lose her again.
She’d been pregnant when he left her. Pregnant. Oh, how he wished he’d known. It would have given him the excuse to stay. Instead, he’d run, all to protect his pride. Jack blamed his screwed-up childhood, but found no consolation in the excuse. Discovering he was a father was triggering old fears. What if he became his father? Who would protect Hannah and Ellen from him?
Jack didn’t know what to think, but he held onto the one thing he knew was true. He loved Hannah, and wanted to be a good father to his daughter. He clutched that truth like a talisman and hoped it would lead him to make the right decisions.
That night, their drive home was silent.
As they passed the uniformed policemen guarding the entrance of her brownstone, Jack exchanged pleasantries with the officers, but was distracted. He was too busy castigating himself, worrying that Hannah’s silence on the drive here meant she’d decided her future didn’t include him. When Mrs. Branaghan answered the door on the first knock and they collected the baby, he was still worrying. Then he and Hannah trudged upstairs to their apartment, exhausted and hungry, and it became impossible to worry about anything but his daughter.
Ellen was fussy and screaming. Tiny little screams of misery. Jack’s mind cleared of everything but that. Walking down the hall, he held the baby out to Hannah, panicking, thinking he’d somehow broken her, but Hannah shook her head, refusing to save him.
“Babies cry,” she said, smiling softly, pulling the apartment’s key from her pocket. “Being a parent means weathering the storm.” She opened the door and stepped inside.
Jack quickly followed, sensitive to the other tenants hearing little Ellen’s cries. It wasn’t that she was loud. She was maybe twenty pounds, so basically tiny, as was her voice box and lung capacity, but the pitch of her cries set him on edge. It made stopping her cries paramount to any other priority. Any other priority. He kicked the door closed behind them and lifted Ellen up and down, careful not to strain her little neck but desperate to distract her.
“She’s not happy,” he said, and hated the uncertainty in his tone.
Hannah threw her jacket over the back of the couch and approached them, her expression one of unconcern. “You’re doing fine, Jack. She’s tired, like us. If I don’t sleep soon, I’m gonna start crying, too.”
“Not funny.” He didn’t think he could handle two women crying.
Jack draped the baby over his shoulder, and watched as Hannah disappeared into her bedroom. He thought to follow, but didn’t want to come across as stalkerish, or give the impression he wanted to hand off this screaming child. Now. He didn’t. It’s just…he didn’t know what the hell he was doing here, and wanted Hannah’s moral support. She was the expert.
His daughter’s cries escalated.
Hannah came back quickly enough, having changed out of her work clothes into sweats. She’d tied her pale hair into a messy bun, so she looked like a college kid, except her sweatpants had the FBI logo on them, reminding Jack she’d been out of Quantico and in the field for seven years now.
“I think she wants her mother,” he said. Jack held Ellen out again, but Hannah shook her head again. “Her diaper is dry, she’s fed, so that means she’s tired, but she has an hour before bedtime, so she can’t sleep.”
“Why?”
“She’ll be up all night otherwise. Just distract her, Jack.”
“How?” He lifted Ellen so they were eyeball to eyeball, but it didn’t lessen Ellen’s tirade. He blew on her face, and other than blinking a few times, and kicking her feet a bit, it had no effect. She was pissed. “Her cries are freaking me out.”
“Yeah.” Hannah stepped to his side, smiling serenely at their daughter. “I think that’s a biological imperative thing. Mother Nature didn’t take anything for granted. She wants us to care about our babies, so she designed them that way.” Hannah’s lower lip jutted out, and she made cooing noises to Ellen. “Will you listen to her? She’s acting like the world is coming to an end.”
Jack could relate. He’d broken into a sweat and no matter what he did—jostling, pacing, cooing like a fool—Ellen kept crying. Out of options, Jack kept pacing, though at this point, it was more about calming himself down rather than any response he was receiving from Ellen. In fact, all his efforts seemed only to affect the quantity of air pushed through her voice box. Bouncing her on his shoulder made her cries come out in oscillating waves, so he swayed in place instead, though it didn’t lessen her cries.
Hannah seemed sympathetic, and from the looks of her, Ellen’s cries were wearing her down, also. She winced when Ellen hit a particularly strident note, yet she remained sitting on the couch, looking half dead with weariness.
Hannah pulled out a leather-bound scrapbook from under the coffee table, and set it on top. Then she patted the couch’s cushion next to her.
“Sit. I want to show you this.” She raised her voice to be heard over Ellen’s cries. Jack sat, laying Ellen between them. Only after he loosened his tie and stripped off his suit jacket did he feel as if he could breathe again.
“What’s that?” He indicated the book.
It was as if they were starting their relationship from scratch. Which felt beyond odd, because here they were, living together again, and they shared a baby. Yet times like this made him feel as if they were strangers.
He studied her, sitting there, smiling at their daughter. She was different. Not completely, but… He kept coming back to her earlier confession, when she said he’d broken her. He believed her, and it was as if she’d been put back together differently than her original model. Stronger in some places, but more delicate in others. He couldn’t, in all honesty, say he knew Hannah anymore, though Ellen’s existence made that somehow unimportant. Whoever Hannah was now, he wanted her and she got a blank check from him, because without Hannah, nothing else made sense in Jack’s life.
“It’s a photo
album.” Hannah leaned over and kissed Ellen’s forehead. “Hey pookie, sweetie pie, did you miss Mommy today? I missed you. Yes, I did. I did.” She kissed her again and Ellen’s crying settled to discontent.
“I knew she just wanted her mother.” Jack was relieved, but felt a bit disgruntled, wondering how long it would take Ellen to love him, too.
The baby scrunched up her face and there was a rumble in her diaper. “Oh, you had a bellyache?” Hannah chuckled. “Guess who is about to change his first diaper?” She gently tapped Ellen’s nose. “Daddy. Yes, that’s who. Daddy.”
Daddy.
He was a special agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, trained at Quantico, an expert in hand-to-hand combat, knives, and a variety of handguns and other weaponry, yet this bundle of joy might as well have been an IED that was about to blow. Jack was ashamed to admit it, even to himself, but Ellen scared the hell out of him. Hearing himself referred to as Daddy, though, gave him the courage to tackle the dreaded diaper, because daddies change diapers, they hold crying babies, they’re loved unconditionally. He wanted to be Ellen’s daddy in a big way. He wanted Hannah to be his wife.
Hannah reached under the couch and pulled out a quilted changing pad, diaper, and a pop-up wipes dispenser, and arranged them on the coffee table next to the photo album. Then she looked at him. When he just looked back at her, she laughed, shaking her head.
“What are you thinking?” he said.
Her amusement reminded him of the Hannah he’d known before, and for a moment, he wondered how she’d react if she knew what he had planned for her. What would she say if he knelt on one knee, right now, and confessed his dreams of their future? Would she clam up, or be embarrassed for him? Would she be confused? Or would she accept him and agree to a life together as a family? He had no idea, and knew a smart man would wait until he had a better idea of her response.
“Jack.” She pressed her hand to his thigh, as if consoling him. It was ridiculous. Consoling him because he was changing a diaper? He wanted to scoff, and discount the difficulty of the task, but he didn’t want to denigrate this moment, either. “You can do this,” she said, referring to the diaper change, he was sure.
When he opened his mouth to explain he was okay with the diaper change, he instead felt a confession press against the back of his throat, so he shut up and swallowed it whole. But he wanted to tell Hannah how he felt. He wanted to take the chance that she’d embrace him and his hopes for their future. The only thing stopping him was that he was mid–diaper change. Not a romantic choice for a declaration of love and commitment.
Ellen was wiggling, kicking her heels. Hannah opened the wipes dispenser and turned to him, expectant. “Jack?” she said.
“I’m ready,” he said, wondering if some part of her understood he was talking about more than the diaper change. I’m ready to trust you with my heart, Hannah Cambridge. Are you ready to accept it?
Hannah smiled, her heart on her sleeve, looking at him like she used to. Like she loved him. “Prove it,” she said.
Challenge accepted. Jack rolled up his sleeves, and took a moment to brace himself.
Hannah snorted in amusement, and then outright laughed. “The diaper isn’t getting less ripe, Jack.”
“I’m doing it. I’m doing it.” He unsnapped the onesie and wished he’d paid more attention to how they’d been snapped, because it occurred to him that he’d have to put this outfit back together when he was done. The diaper came off quickly enough, but he learned too late that he should have wiped Ellen’s tiny bottom before putting the replacement diaper under her. Hannah’s warning came too late. By then, he’d soiled the pad, her onesie and the new diaper. Ellen eventually had to be stripped to the skin, and the whole process started all over again.
Ellen was not happy.
She howled. Hannah struggled not to laugh, so much so her eyes teared up. She cooed to Ellen, telling her to cut her daddy some slack, but Ellen remained unsympathetic. By the time the baby was changed, a new outfit donned, both she and Jack were inconsolable. He’d sweated clear through his shirt.
Hannah picked up the infant and paced the living room, cooing and singing sweetly into Ellen’s ear while Jack recovered, slumped on the sofa. A few minutes later, the baby was asleep in her arms, and Jack was relieved beyond measure. Impressed, but mostly relieved. Hannah, however, was not pleased.
“I don’t have the heart to wake her up,” she said.
Jack took the news with a wince. “Why would you do that?”
“It’s too early. She’ll wake in the middle of the night. No one will get any sleep.”
“I’ll get up with her,” Jack said. “I’m trained to go without sleep.”
He could tell Hannah wanted to laugh, but was refraining. He wished she wouldn’t. He’d take her laughing any day, even if it was at his expense. He followed her into Ellen’s nursery, enjoying the cheerful decorations of white and yellow. It was girly, and adorable, and assured him that Hannah had done right by their girl.
After she laid Ellen in the crib, she turned on the sheep-shaped night-light, then turned off the overhead light. Neither spoke again until they left the room. “We were interrupted and I didn’t get to show you something,” she said.
“The photo album,” he said.
She nodded, and then climbed on the couch, tucking her legs beneath her as she pulled the leather photo album onto the couch between them. The album was filled with pictures of them, mostly selfies, mostly in D.C. in the apartment.
“I wanted Ellen to know her father, so I’ve been slowly putting this together.” She flipped through the pages, smiling, and pressing a finger on this photo or that. There weren’t many of them, reminding him that their relationship had been a secret, so there had been few photo ops. At the time, he’d told himself it was to protect Hannah and his relationship, but he now knew it was more about protecting his pride. If she left him, people would know, and from the moment she’d said yes to their first date, he knew she’d leave him eventually.
“Here it is.” She drew her fingertips over a grainy black-and-white ultrasound photo. “This was taken at eight weeks gestation. I should have told you then, but… Well, I didn’t. This one,” she pointed at another photo to its right, “at eighteen weeks. This one was tough, because you were…” She glanced at him. “Not there.” She ran her finger over the outline of Ellen’s little jaw. “She looked like you even then.” She smiled. “I have a lot of ultrasound photos because Ellen had a tough time inside me. They had to keep checking her.”
His baby in vitro. Speechless, Jack suffered a wave of regret that he’d missed so much. It had him struggling to keep his composure. Hannah put the scrapbook on his lap so he could get a better look. From her expression, he could tell she was so caught up in the joy of sharing, that judging his reaction was the last thing on her mind, so he did his best to get over himself, and just apologize. Again. She’d earned it a million times over.
“I’m sor—” His voice broke. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
She nodded, keeping her attention on the photos. “I tried to tell you that night.”
“The night I left.”
“Died.”
His stomach sank. “Died. I’m sorry.” He traced his finger along the outline of his baby’s photo. “Is she sucking her thumb?”
Hannah smiled, nodding. “They say it’s pretty common.” Her smile faded as she met his gaze. “I had a lot of time to think in the hospital. Being pregnant has a way of prioritizing life. Rumor has it Mrs. Pepperidge suffered four stillborn babies. That she named the ones who made it past twenty weeks. They even have birth certificates, death certificates, too.” Hannah chewed on her lower lip, not meeting his eyes. “I was lucky. I got Ellen instead.”
Jack stood. “I need a drink. You?”
She nodded absently, returni
ng her attention to the photo album. “There’s beer in the fridge.”
He wanted something stronger, but wasn’t about to complain. Jack escaped to the kitchen, struggling with his guilt, desperate to see a way past his mistakes. It was as if the woman he loved, the life he wanted, was behind a wall, and the wall was made up of stuff he didn’t want to deal with. He grabbed two beers from the refrigerator and then went in search of a bottle opener, tugging drawers open until he tugged one drawer with too much force and it fell to the floor, spilling everything. He spied the bottle opener among the fallen.
He saw Hannah leaning against the kitchen door’s casement as he gathered everything, and then slid the drawer back in place.
“You okay?” she said.
He grimaced, shaking his head. “I want to howl,” he said, “pound the snot out of someone, or at the very least destroy some furniture. I have a ball of rage or fear in the pit of my stomach—not sure which—and my head is in a place I can barely stand.”
She approached him, touching his arm. Jack saw her worry, and immediately felt bad for laying his crap on her shoulders. She had enough going on. “Why?” she said.
“I screwed up, Hannah, and I don’t know how to make it right.” He pulled her into his arms, grateful when she returned his embrace. “How can you ever forgive me?”
Hannah snuggled deeper in his arms, rubbing her face against his chest. “I already have.”
He leaned back, searching her face. “Excuse me?”
Her smile was sad, and she looked tired. “I don’t have the energy to stay angry at you. Parenting an infant takes everything. I’ve got nothing left for grudges.” She leaned against him again, reaching up and wrapping her arms around his shoulders, burying her face in his neck. “Jack, a part of me died when I thought you’d been murdered. Now I’m…I’m confused, I guess. I don’t know what to think.”
He kissed the top of her head. “I can’t even imagine what you went through.”
Catch a Killer Page 20