She wiggled against him, her blush spreading as she became increasingly aroused.
“Rylan,” she breathed.
“Maybe this?”
He captured her lips in a kiss that sizzled with heat. With a tiny sigh Jaci wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs parting as he rolled on top of her.
Almost three hours passed before they managed to climb out of the shower and get dressed for the day. Not that it’d been Rylan’s idea to pull on his jeans and sweatshirt. He’d voted on returning to bed.
Jaci, however, had insisted that she had to spend the morning in the shop, finishing up the crafts she intended to sell during the St. Patrick potluck dinner at the local school.
He bit back the urge to tell her he could easily buy all the crafts so they could concentrate on enjoying a leisurely day together. Jaci had done an amazing job of generating a career that not only paid the bills, but obviously fulfilled her creative talents. He would never undermine her pride in what she’d accomplished.
He did insist, however, on making breakfast. She spent enough time in the kitchen. He could scramble eggs and fry bacon. Plus, he’d located her stash of blueberry muffins in an old-fashioned tin container.
Perfect.
Once the dishes were done, Jaci grabbed her jacket and whistled for her dogs. She was clearly determined to get on with her day.
Rylan heaved a rueful sigh. It was ironic. He was usually the one looking for an excuse to bolt after a night of sex. No doubt he deserved to be the one clinging too tightly.
With a grimace, he trailed behind Jaci as she headed out of the house and directly toward the garage. The sun was making a rare appearance, splashing splotches of warmth over the muddy ground as they crossed the driveway.
Distantly he could hear the sound of a chain saw, revealing that Andrew was already hard at work. Closer, Rylan heard the chirp of a sparrow.
But he wasn’t paying much attention to his surroundings. His thoughts were still distracted by the memory of the hot, soapy shower he’d shared with Jaci, which explained why he was caught off guard when Jaci came to a sharp halt in front of him.
“Rylan,” she breathed, her eyes wide with horror.
On instant alert, Rylan focused his attention on the nearby garage. He didn’t see anything at first. The door was closed and all the windows were tightly shut. Then a soft breeze whispered through the air and the glint of cheap gold captured his gaze.
A locket dangling from the doorknob.
It looked like the others. A plain oval on a gold chain. And inside, he didn’t doubt, would be strands of hair wrapped in a bloody ribbon.
“Shit.”
Grasping Jaci’s arm, he swiftly tugged her back to the house, his gaze darting around. Suddenly it felt as if they were sitting ducks. A shooter could be hidden anywhere, just waiting to take them out. Calling for the dogs, he hustled them all inside and firmly shut and locked the door.
“Call the sheriff,” he commanded. Jaci was in shock. He wanted to give her something to concentrate on beside her fear.
With a shaky nod she walked toward the landline phone and called the office. When there was no answer, she called O’Brien’s cell phone, asking him to come to the house.
Rylan double-checked the doors and windows to make sure they were locked before he grabbed Jaci’s laptop and set it on the kitchen table.
He’d downloaded the security tape from the night before when Jaci moved to stand beside him.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Checking the video,” he said, hitting the fast-forward button on the keyboard.
Silence filled the kitchen as they watched the computer screen. There was nothing but the occasional raccoon, and a curious deer that wandered through the front yard. At last there was a hint of movement from the road. Rylan slowed the video to normal speed to watch the shadowy form that crept up the driveway.
“There.” He halted the video, zooming in on the intruder as he placed the locket on the garage door. “Do you recognize him?”
They both bent down, studying the image. The camera was equipped with night vision, but the intruder was wearing a hoodie that kept his face hidden and plain jeans that could have belonged to anyone. He was even wearing a pair of rubber boots that every man in the county owned.
“No,” Jaci admitted, her voice tight with frustration. “He never looks at the camera.”
Rylan forced himself to suck in a slow, deep breath. They might not be able to see his face, but there were other clues that could help reveal the perp.
Laying his palms flat on the table, he did a logical inventory of the image.
It was definitely a man. That was obvious in the way he moved and the width of his shoulders beneath the hoodie. He was of average height. If Rylan was to make a guess, he would say the guy was shorter than himself, and he seemed to move like a man in his prime.
Of course, Rylan would be an idiot to scratch anyone off his mental list of suspects on a vague estimate.
It took a minute for him to actually realize the most obvious clue.
“You’re right,” he said. “He very deliberately doesn’t look at the camera. Which means he knew it was there.”
Jaci shivered, wrapping her arms around her waist. “What time was it?”
Rylan peered at the time stamp at the bottom of the screen. “Three a.m.”
At that hour they’d both been sound asleep, unaware the killer was creeping around the property.
It was no wonder Jaci was shivering. The knowledge the man had been so close to them was creepy as hell.
Rylan, on the other hand, needed to punch something. Really, really hard.
“Why didn’t he leave it on the front door like the last time?” she asked.
Rylan frowned. It was strange. It was as easy to walk to the front door as to the garage. And if the killer was hoping for maximum impact from the necklace, it would have made more sense to put it where he’d placed the others.
Could it be a copycat?
It was the sound of nails clicking against the linoleum floor that finally rattled the obvious explanation out of his sluggish brain.
“If he approached the house the dogs would have barked.”
“Oh.” She paused, her eyes widening with sudden distress. “If he avoided the camera and the dogs, then it has to be someone I know.”
He grimaced. “That was always the most likely possibility.”
“God.” She buried her face in her hands, releasing a choked sob. “That makes it so much worse.”
Rylan turned to wrap her in his arms, resting his cheek against the top of her head.
“Jaci, we’re going to find him and stop him. That much I swear.”
She leaned against him, for once accepting the comfort he was so desperate to offer.
“I want this nightmare over. It’s just . . .” Her words trailed away as she stiffened, pulling out of his arms with an expression of horror on her pale face. “Rylan, if there’s another locket that means there’s another woman who’s been killed. Maybe someone we know.”
He held up a slender hand. As much as he wanted to pull her back into his arms, he needed to put the brakes on her gruesome speculations.
Whipping herself into hysteria was only going to hurt her.
“We don’t know anything yet,” he said in clipped tones. “And it’s dangerous to try and speculate. All we can do is deal with the facts we have.”
Her eyes flashed with fury, as if she was offended by his lack of concern for some unknown victim. Then, perhaps realizing he was trying to help her maintain control of her composure, she gave a sad shake of her head.
“Why is this happening?”
He lifted his hand, brushing his fingers down the length of her jaw. A ghost of a caress.
“We’re going to figure this out.”
He waited for her to give a jerky nod of her head before he returned his attention to the image frozen on the screen. If there was anything
else to learn from the man, he wasn’t seeing it.
Tapping the keyboard, he put the video into motion. Instantly the man was moving, leaving the locket on the door and turning away from the garage. For long minutes he simply stared toward the house, his gaze on the window to Jaci’s bedroom.
Fury blasted through Rylan. The bastard had stood there and imagined Jaci in her bed. No doubt he’d even fantasized about joining her.
Very soon Rylan intended to make sure the creep’s only view was a six-by-eight-foot prison cell.
Struggling to concentrate, he zoomed the camera out as the man abruptly turned to jog up the driveway. Within seconds, he disappeared from view. Rylan ignored Jaci’s sound of frustration as he clicked out of her security program, concentrating on pulling up the remote feed from the cameras he’d placed along the road. Then rewinding the video to shortly before three a.m., he let it run.
“That must be him,” Jaci said as headlights briefly cut through the darkness before they were shut off as they neared the house from the south.
Rylan tensed, expecting the approaching vehicle to stop before it came into full view. It’s what the guy had done when he’d dumped Anne’s body, although he’d been coming from the opposite direction. Instead, the vehicle continued on, not pulling to a halt until it was half hidden behind a large oak tree.
Rylan did his best to focus, but the vehicle was dark and barely visible behind the tree trunk. At last he zoomed in on the hood ornament glittering in the moonlight.
Jaci’s breath caught. “I know that car,” she said in a strangled voice.
Rylan nodded. He didn’t need the fancy hood ornament to recognize the elegant lines of a Jaguar.
“Christopher.”
“Yes.” Jaci stepped back, her hand pressed against her throat as she tried to process what they were seeing. “I can’t believe it.”
He turned to study her tense profile. “Why not?”
She licked her lips, as if she was considering how to answer.
“We’ve never been as close as most brothers and sisters, but I know he’s never been violent,” she at last said. “He couldn’t possibly be a serial killer.”
Rylan couldn’t deny a similar sense of disbelief. Christopher Hamilton was a spoiled little prick who’d spent his life doing exactly what he wanted with zero concern for the consequences.
But a killer?
He gave a sharp shake of his head. What was he doing? There was nothing more dangerous than assuming you could recognize a serial killer.
Trained professionals who’d studied the behavior of psychopaths knew that they could be anyone. The local mailman, or Sunday school teacher, or the son of the richest man in town.
Some were charming. Some were antisocial. Some were family men who’d kept their lust for violence hidden from their wives and kids for years.
They could quite literally be the person standing next to you and there would be no warning.
Rylan had to avoid the urge to allow his emotions to cloud his logic.
With an effort, he considered whether Christopher was a viable candidate for the stalker. Or if he’d somehow learned of the lockets and was taking the opportunity to torture his half sister.
At last Rylan had to concede that the evidence pointed in Christopher’s direction.
“The time line would fit,” he said.
Her brow furrowed. “The time line?”
“He was around the area when you first started receiving the lockets.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Including a hundred other men.”
“And they didn’t start again until he returned to town,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken.
Jaci stilled. They both knew the fact that the lockets had started again at virtually the same time Christopher returned to town was highly suspicious.
“I suppose,” she grudgingly conceded.
“And he’s the one person we know who had a connection to Anne Dixon and Angel Harper,” Rylan said.
It was Christopher’s intimate knowledge of both victims that made Rylan seriously consider him as a suspect.
Who else in the area had the same access to both Angel and Anne?
Jaci looked confused. “I thought my brother liked Angel.”
Rylan snorted. Christopher had “liked” a lot of girls. In fact, Rylan had heard rumors that he wasn’t above renting out hookers from St. Louis when he had his infamous pool parties.
“He liked to party with her,” he said, refusing to go into detail about what the partying might entail. “But if the rumors were true and she really was pregnant, that would change everything. Papa Hamilton wouldn’t be happy to learn that his first grandchild was going to be born to an underage girl with a juvie record and a mother who was a known drug user.”
She grimaced. “My mother would have had a fit.”
That had to be the understatement of the year.
“Christopher would no doubt have done anything to avoid having Angel and a baby hanging like a noose around his neck,” he said.
She took a few minutes to try and absorb the implication of his words. At last she gave a slow shake of her head.
“I can see Christopher panicking and deciding to get rid of Angel. He’s a coward at heart,” she said. “But why would he continue to kill?”
He shrugged. He didn’t miss the edge in her voice. It was bad enough for her to know that there was some crazed lunatic who’d been stalking her for years. But to actually consider the thought that it might be her own half brother . . . It had to be profoundly disturbing.
“Some men develop a taste for it,” he said. “The thrill of the hunt. The feeling of power when he steals the life from his victim. It can be sexual or just a need for control.”
She flinched, no doubt thinking of poor Anne. The middle-aged woman wouldn’t have stood a chance against the killer.
“But why the lockets?” she asked, another shiver shaking her body.
His gaze moved toward the window that offered a view of the garage. Even now he could see the necklace glittering in the pale sunlight. An icy chill inched down his spine.
The lockets were the key. But he didn’t have a damned clue what they meant. Or why Jaci was the only one to receive them.
“He’s clearly obsessed with you.”
She paused, her eyes narrowing as she studied his rigid body.
“There’s something bothering you,” she said.
He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Everything about this damned situation is bothering me.”
“No, it’s something else.” She tilted her head to the side. “You don’t sound convinced that Christopher is responsible.”
“I think Christopher is the best suspect we have, but . . .” He released a deep sigh. “It’s ridiculous, but none of this fits the pattern.”
“What pattern?”
He drummed his fingers on the table, his thoughts jumbled. “Whoever this man is, he’s managed to remain under the radar for years. Beyond the lockets that he left for you, he went to extreme measures to make sure no one realized that he was killing women and burying them in the levee.”
“You’re saying he didn’t want to get caught.”
“Exactly.” Rylan nodded, his hand lifting to rub against the whiskers he hadn’t had the chance to shave from his jaw. “Now he’s started leaving bodies openly in the road, and he drove a car that’s unmistakable and left it in view of the camera.”
“Maybe he thought the tree would hide the car from view,” she suggested.
He shrugged. His own guess was that whoever was responsible for the killing was swiftly spiraling out of control.
Whether it was Christopher or another maniac, the clock was ticking.
“It’s possible.”
He heard the sound of an approaching car. Motioning for her to remain in the kitchen, he swiftly moved through the house to peek through the front window. A swift glance revealed the squad truck pulling to a halt at the edge of the road. R
ylan returned to the kitchen, his heart squeezing at the sight of Jaci’s tense expression.
The past few days had taken their toll on the normally resilient woman. She looked brittle enough to shatter into a million pieces.
“O’Brien is here.”
She stretched her lips into a tight smile. “I know. You want me to stay in here.”
He moved until he could bend down and brush a soft kiss across her lips.
“Actually, I need you to do something.”
“What’s that?”
“Pack a bag.”
Her brows drew together. “Rylan.”
He pressed his fingers against her lips, halting her predictable protest.
“Once your brother is arrested I intend to take you to the beach for a few weeks of R and R,” he said.
She remained rigid, as if she intended to argue. Then with a tiny sigh, she gave a slow nod of her head.
“It sounds like heaven.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mike left his deputies at Jaci’s to finish up processing the scene. At the moment he was far more concerned with tracking down Christopher Hamilton.
He shook his head as he pulled to a halt in front of the elegant mansion. He’d never liked the younger man. In fact, if Jaci had called to say she’d caught her half brother sneaking into her garage to steal from her, Mike wouldn’t have batted an eye. It was exactly what he would have expected.
But a serial killer?
Of course, would it have been any easier if it’d been someone else from Heron?
Nope.
None of this made any sense.
Taking a minute to clear his thoughts, Mike swung out of his truck and headed up the front steps. As expected, the door was wrenched open before he could finish crossing the terrace.
He’d been buzzed through the front gate. Which meant they already knew the sheriff was coming.
It wasn’t Payton, however, waiting for him. Or even her mother. This time it was the great man himself, Blake Hamilton.
A tall man, Blake had once been the local cock of the walk. He was filthy rich, he had the biggest house in the county, and the women fluttered around him like he was some sort of god. He’d enjoyed his life as a swinging bachelor until he’d decided he wanted the pretty Loreen as his wife. He hadn’t, however, wanted her newborn child.
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