by J. E. Taylor
Jennifer nodded and he saw the flash of irritation in her eyes.
Steve hesitated and then handed her the bouquet of roses. He shot an awkward smile over his shoulder and stepped farther into the chaos, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “You were great tonight,” he said.
Jennifer led him to her dressing area and closed the curtain behind her. “Why did you have to do that? Now Gus thinks I’m a freak.”
His smile disappeared. “Yeah, well that’s the cover.”
She shot him a glare and yanked the costume off.
“You had another vision.”
Jennifer stripped out of the clothing without answering Steve. She pulled on a pair of faded blue jeans and a sweater and sat at the vanity. “Yes,” she said and began to wipe off the layers of make-up. “And now I have to meet your boss.”
Steve took a deep breath. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not. I’m not okay.” Her lower lip began to quiver. “I just had the performance of my life, and then the damn vision ruined it.” She finished cleaning her face, balling up the wipes and tossing them into the garbage can under her counter. “Now I have to pretend to be interested in meeting your boss.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “And all I want to do is throw up again.”
“We can go home.”
Jennifer wiped the tear off her cheek. “Really?”
He nodded. He wanted to find out about the vision, and Charlie could wait. “You don’t look so good.” He wiped the stray hair away from her face.
That was all she needed to open the floodgates.
Chapter 18
“You can take off,” Charlie said to Kyle as they waited outside the theater.
“You sure?”
He nodded. He didn’t want to have to explain the man standing next to him, not tonight. Besides, he wanted to lavish Jennifer with praise for an exquisite job and having another testosterone-filled male volleying for her attention would dilute his chances of impressing her. And for some ungodly reason, he very much wanted to impress her.
He glanced at his watch as the staff trickled out from the show. “I’ll catch up with you later in the week.”
“Sure,” Kyle said and wandered off.
Charlie returned his attention to the thinning crowd and flipped open his phone. “Steve, where the hell are you?”
“Sorry, she wasn’t feeling so good and I took her home,” Steve said. “I’ll introduce you some other time.”
“How’d you get by me?”
“I didn’t see you, otherwise I would have stopped. Sorry, but she’s having a hard time and I didn’t want her to get sick on the sidewalk.”
Charlie could hear the retching in the background. “Morning sickness?”
“I think so, at least I hope so.”
“Tell her your boss thought she did a great job.”
“I’ll tell her. I gotta go. I need to get her to bed.”
The dial tone filled the line and he flipped the phone closed. Disappointment laced his blood and he glanced at the picture in the program. Snapping the booklet closed, he took a deep breath, cleansing the growing irritation.
Surveying the crowd, he searched for something to spark his interest and on the second pass; he singled out someone and headed her way.
Chapter 19
Jennifer came out of the bathroom, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Who was that?”
Steve folded the cell phone. “Charlie. He thought you were fantastic.”
Jennifer shrugged. “I don’t give a damn what you’re boss thinks. It’s the critics that count.” She pulled off her sweater and slid on a silky nightgown.
“I’ll shoot ’em if they write a bad review.”
She offered him a sickly smile. “That’s sweet, but you can’t shoot every critic in New York City.”
“Yeah, I can.” He pulled out a small box from his briefcase and set it on the shelf, flipping the switch on. A red light flashed and the cube emitted a low hum.
“What’s that?”
“It jams transmissions from leaving the apartment.” Steve turned to her. “Renders bugs useless, but also does the same to cell phones and wireless connections. Now, tell me about the vision.”
She inhaled, audibly sucking the air through her teeth. “Grab me a little ginger ale please.”
Steve poured half a can into a glass and brought it to her, taking a seat on the side of the bed.
She took a sip before she met Steve’s inquisitive gaze. “This one was different.”
“How?”
A crease appeared between her eyes and she struggled to pinpoint the differences. “In the past, he seemed to be very much in control of the situation. This time he definitely wasn’t.” She studied her hands and took another sip of ginger ale before glancing up at Steve. “She fought back.”
“Was it the same man?”
Jennifer nodded. “The same knife and I’m sure there’s a tattoo on his wrist. I just don’t know what it is and I’m not sure if the color I saw was her blood or the tattoo.”
“Red?”
“Yeah. It also looks like there’s a hint of yellow, blue and grey but I get an overwhelming sense of red.”
He pursed his lips. “Just on the wrist?”
Jennifer thought for a moment and then shook her head. “It goes up the forearm a little.” She flopped back on the bed. “I wish I could get a clear picture of it.”
So do I. Steve didn’t voice the thought; instead, he offered her a smile. “Anything else you can tell me about this guy?”
“Outside of the fact that he likes to kill?”
He pursed his lips, raising his eyebrows, and waited for her to continue.
She took a deep breath. “No. I’ve never seen his face. It’s always in a shadow. But his eyes aren’t. They’re blue grey, leaning more on the grey side than blue.” She shrugged. “Can’t you identify him by his DNA?”
“It doesn’t match any known criminal in our database. Believe me, we’ve checked. The DNA matches in all the murder cases but it doesn’t trace back to anyone.” Steve tilted his head. “And you never told me about his eyes.”
“I didn’t?”
“No.” He ran through everything she ever explained. “So far, I have a Caucasian male who is a little taller than I am, with grey-blue eyes and a tattoo on his right wrist. And he uses a Rambo knife to kill his victims.”
“Yes. He rapes his victims while he kills them,” she added.
He chewed his bottom lip. “Why do you think this one’s different?”
Jennifer thought about her vision, about the growl in his voice, not the usual seductive purr. Each plunge of the knife accompanied a snarling hiss and the last act before she snapped back to reality was that of rage. “He lost it, Steve. The guy was beyond angry, he was furious.”
He paced, rolling it over in his mind. “And he’s not in your other visions?”
“No. This is the first time I saw him lose control.” She watched him pace and sipped her ginger ale.
“God damn, there’s no rhyme or reason to his victims. There is no connection between them.”
“Except for being murdered.”
Steve shot a sideways look at her. “Outside of the cause of death.” He flipped open his phone and pressed a sequence of numbers. When nothing happened, he rolled his eyes and put the phone back in his pocket.
Jennifer started to chuckle. “Forgot already?”
Grumbling, he nodded and took a seat on the side of the bed. “I need to give Jack a heads up and the sweeper won’t be here until tomorrow.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about talking to me anymore. I’m exhausted,” she said, yawning the last word, drawing it out as she curled up into a ball.
Steve leaned over and kissed her. “I’ll only be a little while.” He crossed to the jamming device and turned it off before he settled behind his computer. He logged into the secure FBI site and opened his mailbox, scanning the entries. Noth
ing urgent jumped out and he opened a new email.
Jack, she had another vision. This one was different. Your unsub didn’t act like he had in the past, leading to a completely different signature this time. She doesn’t know what set him off, but she said he was angry. Dream girl insists it’s the same man. So far, I have the following description: White male between six feet and six two and has grey-blue eyes. He also has some sort of tattoo on his right wrist that incorporates yellow, blue, grey and possibly red into the design.
Steve hit the send button and went back to his email box. Before he had a chance to open an email, a response came in.
Pick up the damn phone and call me. Now.
“Shit,” Steve said and dug the phone out of his pocket.
“What’s the matter?” Jennifer’s eyes fluttered open.
“The Knicks lost again,” he answered. He hooked his thumb toward the door and held up his cell phone. When she nodded, he plugged the blue tooth in his ear and left the apartment. Steve hit the special sequence again and opened the door to the stairwell. “Hey, Jack.” He trotted down the steps, his voice bouncing off the concrete.
“What the hell’s going on?” Jack Murphy, the head of the Boston FBI office, snarled into the phone.
Steve emerged in the alley and started walking away from the front of the building. “On which front?”
“Your assignment?”
He was quiet.
“Steve?”
“I’m here. I’m just putting some distance between the apartment and this conversation,” he answered. “I assume Jerry filled you in?”
“As much as he could, which wasn’t a hell of a lot. He said Charlie showed up at Jennifer’s opening.”
“Yeah, well, the last couple of days have been real fun.”
“Cut the crap, Williams, and tell me what’s going on!”
Steve glanced over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t followed before finding a place to hunker down, sitting out of sight in a doorway. “Charlie caught me coming out of the office in the middle of the night on Monday.” He heard his boss suck in his breath. “So I gave him the crazy girlfriend excuse. He didn’t buy it at the time and put a tail on us.” He leaned back against the door. “That’s where it got sticky. Jennifer staged moving in with me and going ballistic when we found a tap in the apartment.”
“You found what?”
“A tap. It gets worse. Jennifer threw the ceramic figure at me and I’ve got six stitches in my forehead to show for that stunt, but she convinced our tail she was as mad as a hatter.” Reaching up, he touched the bandage, listening to the silence on the other end of the line. “Charlie asked me to go to a thing at his house. It was for tonight and I couldn’t blow Jen’s opening off.”
“Steve...”
“I know, I could have fucked up the whole operation,” he snapped into the phone. “But Jack, I promised Jenny I’d be there.”
“You don’t have the luxury of making promises like that.”
He closed his eyes and hung his head. “I’m not sure Charlie trusts me, even after the fucked up test he put me through last night.”
“What test?”
Steve could almost see the steam rising from the phone as his boss hissed the words through the line. “He put a gun to my head and made me do eight lines of coke. I’m surprised I didn’t have a coronary.”
Silence.
Steve didn’t say anything more.
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, I thought I was a dead man. I thought he knew.”
“You are one lucky son of a bitch.”
Steve laughed. “I’m not feeling very lucky, Jack. Jennifer is now involved and Charlie doesn’t know we’re married. He thinks she’s just my crazy girlfriend. And Jack, she’s pregnant.”
The air sucked in the phone as the information elicited another, “Jesus,” from Jack.
“She wasn’t too happy with the development, either.” He closed his eyes.
“Jennifer should leave the city.”
“You try to get her to leave. I already had a crack at it and she said no.” He could feel the volatility in his boss over the phone line.
“She doesn’t have a choice.”
“How am I supposed to explain that, huh? Especially since Charlie knows she’s pregnant.”
“Charlie knows?”
“Yes. I told him this morning, I really needed some viable reason for her volatility and I took the facts and made them work for me. Charlie shocked the shit out of me, the dude decided to open up about his parents and his brother after I came clean about the pregnancy.” He stood and stretched his back. “I need to get back to the apartment.” He headed toward the building.
“She had another vision?”
“Yep. I’m sure no one missed the fear in her expression. At least it waited until the curtain call. She recovered and shook it off in time to take a bow, but man, she was pale for a moment there.”
“That could be attributed to the pregnancy,” Jack said.
“The paleness, yes, the change in her eyes, no. It’s still god damn freaky to see that.”
Jack let out a gruff harrumph on the other end of the line. “I can’t believe I’m buying into this shit, but at this point I’ll take stock in anything that brings us closer to nailing that son of a bitch.”
“I hear you. Her visions still freak the shit out of me, but they’ve also saved my ass a couple of times. I just hope she can give us something concrete to go on.” Steve used his key to slip into the stairwell, climbing to the fourth floor rapidly. “I have to bolt. I’ll be looking over the financials this weekend and I’ll record my findings Sunday night.”
“Okay. I’ll let you know if we find another victim.”
“It won’t be the exact M.O., so watch the wires for similarities.”
“Will do.” Jack hung up.
Steve walked back into the apartment, disconnecting the blue tooth and setting it on his desk. Jennifer was sound asleep and Steve stripped, climbing into bed, and pulled her into his arms. “I love you,” he whispered in her ear. She didn’t stir and he closed his eyes, drifting into a light sleep.
Chapter 20
The desk looked like the paper fairy vomited all over it, ledger sheets everywhere—including in and on the file cabinet behind Steve—as he poured over Charlie’s financials. Jennifer emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel when a rap on the door interrupted their Saturday morning.
They exchanged a look and he glanced through the peephole. He shot back. A sudden pounding cramped his throat and he took a double take through the peephole before turning toward the desk. He went into action, scooping paper into the file cabinet and pointed her to the door.
“Who is it?” she yelled, even though she had a reasonable guess from Steve’s reaction.
“Charlie Wisnowski. Steve’s boss.”
She cracked the door; the chain preventing him from seeing anything other than her scantily clad body. “Steve’s in the shower and as you can see, I’m a little underdressed. Give me a minute.” She smiled and closed the door.
He glanced at her, shaking his head and shrugging before dropping the last of the papers in the file cabinet, locking it and closing the laptop. He bolted past her into the bathroom, shutting the door quietly while she crossed to open the front door.
Jennifer took a deep breath, smoothing her shirt and putting on a smile before she opened the door. The first thing that hit her was his eyes, grey-blue and direct. Her smile faltered and she ran her hand through her wet hair. “I’m sorry it took me so long to find something decent.” She indicated her disheveled attire with a flourish of her hand.
“No worries,” he said, his eyes scanning the open neckline of Steve’s oxford she had on before he returned his gaze to hers.
“Steve didn’t tell me he was expecting company today.”
Charlie smiled and stepped into the apartment. “I didn’t exactly tell him I was coming. Sorry for interrupting your morning.”
A rogue sheet of paper drifted to the floor and Jennifer picked it up, stuffing it in the middle of the script sitting on the corner of the desk. “I’m sorry. Where are my manners? Please come in.” She waved her hand toward the modest living area, heat flushing her face at the unmade bed.
Steve opened the bathroom door, hand combing his wet hair away from his face. He raised his eyebrows. “Charlie, what are you doing here?”
She was impressed with the performance. The surprise seemed genuine and he wasn’t the least bit ruffled like he’d been moments before.
“I figured I’d hand deliver these to Jennifer.” He handed her a box of candy along with a small bouquet of flowers. “Your performance last night was exceptional.”
Flustered, she took the offerings. “Thank you.” She looked up at his eyes and smiled, covering up the shiver that wanted to take hold. “Um, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to meet you last night,” she said and turned, crossing to find a vase for the pretty bouquet and setting them next to the dozen red roses Steve had given her.
She studied the floor, getting her nerves under control before turning and gazing at Charlie. The way he stared at her made her skin feel like an oily snake slithered across her flesh, leaving a trail of barely suppressed goose bumps. “I was a little sick after the show last night.” She shrugged and walked to Steve. “He took good care of me.” She hooked her arm around his. “He always takes good care of me.” She laid her head on his shoulder to make her point.
He cast a sideways glance at her. The clingy girlfriend routine gave him the willies and he turned his attention to Charlie, peeling her off his arm. “Can I get you anything?”
Charlie shook his head. “No, thank you, I’m fine. I just wanted to swing by and drop off the flowers.” He glanced at Jennifer again, grazing her with his eyes, interest flaring in his irises. He offered Steve a smile and a slight shrug.
“Thanks again for the flowers and the kind words.” She sent her sweetest smile his way.
“You’re welcome,” Charlie said and stepped out. “I’ll catch you Monday,” he added and disappeared down the hall.