“This is a little over and above the call of duty, don’t you think?” she asked when he came up to her.
“Not really. I’m sure this is what Andrew meant,” he answered. Destiny noticed that once away from the gathering, Logan no longer used the “Uncle” salutation. “Besides, it’s generally customary to walk a woman to her door.” He nodded toward the ground-floor apartment only a few steps away.
“That’s when she’s your date,” Destiny pointed out, adding, “I’m not your date.”
“No,” he agreed. “But for now, you’re my responsibility.”
His words stepped all over her independence. Destiny drew her shoulders back, as if preparing for a confrontation. “And just how do you figure that?”
Logan knew he had to tread lightly. She was in a bad place right now. He chose his words carefully. “Well, for better or for worse, we seemed to have been partnered up for this case, and partners are supposed to have each other’s backs, especially when one partner isn’t feeling one hundred percent.”
Her eyes narrowed, her very stance challenging him. “Meaning me.”
He inclined his head, silently agreeing with her. But when he spoke, he tempered Destiny’s assumption. “For now.”
Sarcasm was thick and heavy as she asked, “Would you like to tuck me into bed, too?”
“Well, then, that would have made you my date, wouldn’t it?” he said, going back to her initial disclaimer. “And you’re not, remember?” The smile on his lips took on a sensual quality. “Maybe some other time.” And then Logan grew serious as he smoothed down one side of her collar that had managed to curl under.
It was a simple, gentle gesture, and yet for some reason it threatened to bring tears to her eyes. That just told her that she was exceedingly vulnerable beneath the prickly words and all her efforts to appear to the contrary.
“Are you going to be all right by yourself?” he asked.
What did he care? He had a huge family to return to if he wanted. He had the best of all possible worlds, and she couldn’t help but envy him that.
“Or what?” she asked in a mocking tone. “You’ll sit next to my bed and read me bedtime stories until I fall asleep?”
He laughed softly, amused by the image that conjured up in his mind. “If that’s what it takes, sure, why not?” he asked gamely.
He said it so straight-faced that for just a second, she thought he was serious. Who knew, maybe he was. What he said melted her defensiveness. Moreover, it made her smile. He seemed to take everything in stride, no matter what she said.
“You Cavanaughs are something else again,” she marveled quietly. “Even you newly minted ones.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded her gently. When Destiny raised an eyebrow in silent query, he obliged her by restating the question. “Are you going to be all right?”
For a moment, she said nothing, wondering if he actually cared one way or another, or if he was asking just because he felt it was expected of him. She refused to entertain the thought that it might be door number three: that he did care if she was going to be all right.
And then she nodded. “I’ll be fine.” She could see that he was waiting for her to convince him. “I don’t have any other choice. Paula’s killer is out there somewhere, and I intend to catch him. I can’t do that if I fall apart.”
“No, you can’t,” he agreed. “But if you need someone to talk to—or not talk to,” he added with a smile that was beginning to weave its way under her skin even though she was doing her best to ignore it, “I’m available.”
She nodded. That he was. To any girl with a pulse, she reminded herself. And she had never been one for team sports. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. But I’ll be all right.”
“Yeah,” he said as if he had absolutely no doubt about the outcome. “You will.”
She picked up the note of sincerity in his voice. He didn’t have to say that. Didn’t even have to be here. But he was.
“You’re a good guy, Logan Cavanaugh,” she told him quietly just before she impulsively brushed her lips against his cheek.
Logan felt something within his gut tighten so quickly and so hard, for a second it was difficult for him to draw in a breath.
Every fiber of his being suddenly wanted to pull her into his arms and to kiss her back. The right way. And he had a strong feeling that he wouldn’t have gotten any resistance from her.
But that would be taking unfair advantage of her vulnerable state, and he didn’t want things to go down that way between them. Their time would come. He was fairly certain of that now, but not tonight.
Because tonight was about healing, and she needed to do that on her terms, not his.
“Good night, Richardson,” he said quietly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“In the morning,” she echoed softly.
The next moment, she walked into her apartment and then closed the door behind her.
Logan turned on his heel and walked away.
It was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
And possibly the most selfless.
* * *
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for someone to take me seriously,” Allison West said to them the next day as she sat in her living room. A huge sigh of relief accompanied the older woman’s words.
Determined not to allow any more time to pass, Destiny had suggested to her partner that they interview the families of the other so-called suicide victims she’d found entered into the database.
“Debra was bright, outgoing. There was no way she would have killed herself the way the police insisted. I know my daughter,” she said with feeling, looking from Destiny to Logan and then back again.
That was just the way she felt about Paula, Destiny thought. “The investigating detective said they found a prescription for sleeping pills near your daughter’s body—” she began.
But Mrs. West was shaking her head. “That prescription wasn’t hers.”
“It was her name on the bottle,” Logan pointed out gently.
She swung around to look at him, anger in her eyes. “I don’t care what it said, I’m telling you that it wasn’t hers. Debra was a personal trainer with an extensive list of clients. She really believed in what she was doing. She exercised religiously, was almost fanatical about what she put into her body. She wouldn’t even take so much as an aspirin,” Mrs. West insisted. “I don’t know how they did it, but those pills were planted. They were not my daughter’s.”
Destiny tried another approach. “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to get rid of your daughter this much?”
Again the woman could only shake her head. “No, I can’t. If I knew, I would have confronted them myself, made them confess, even if I had to shake it out of them with my bare hands.”
Given that the woman was barely five feet tall and most likely weighed as much as a pile of wet towels, her words didn’t amount to much of a threat. But it was a testimony to where her heart was and how much she believed her daughter’s death had been staged.
“The police said that your daughter left a suicide note, saying she was upset because she and her boyfriend had just broken up. Do you have any idea what his name was?” Destiny asked.
“No.” Mrs. West’s small voice hitched. “Debra wanted to keep it a secret. She said she didn’t want to jinx the relationship by talking about it too soon.”
Destiny stared at her, startled that Mrs. West had used the exact same words that Paula had used.
She didn’t want to jinx the relationship.
“She did tell me that she thought he was perfect,” Mrs. West was saying. “And that when I found out who it was, I was going to be surprised.” Her eyes darkened as she took hold of Logan’s wrist, squeezing it as she made her appeal. “Debra didn’t kill herself. She didn’t write any suicide note. It was typed, for God’s sake,” the woman cried in frustration. “Who types a note, then climbs into a bathtub and slashes their wrist
s? For all her outgoing nature, Debra was a very modest person when it came to her body. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to find her like that. She didn’t do this,” Mrs. West insisted again, growing progressively more agitated. “I’d stake my life on it.”
Feeling compassion as well as a bond with this woman because of what she was going through, Destiny patted Mrs. West’s arm. “You don’t have to stake your life on it, Mrs. West. We’ll find whoever did this to your daughter.”
Grasping Destiny’s hand between both of her own, the woman looked directly into her eyes. “Promise?” she pressed.
Destiny didn’t even hesitate. “You have my word on it.”
* * *
“She believed you, you know,” Logan said to her when they finally left the woman’s apartment some twenty minutes later.
Destiny knew exactly how committed she’d made herself. “I know.”
Logan studied her profile as he asked, “And what are you going to tell her if you can’t make good on that promise?”
That scenario was never going to happen, she thought fiercely. “I have every intention of ‘making good’ on it,” she told him simply.
There was no way she could make a promise like that in good faith, and she knew it. “Destiny—”
She stopped for a moment to look at him. She knew what he was thinking. Hell, she could all but read his mind.
“Don’t give me odds, Cavanaugh. We’re going to get the bastard. Nothing less is remotely acceptable.”
There was a fine line between being a dedicated detective and an obsessed one. “You ever read Moby Dick?” Logan asked as he got into the vehicle on the driver’s side.
She pretended to take his question seriously. “We’re not after a whale, we’re after a human being. And human beings make mistakes. He will, too, if he hasn’t already,” she said confidently. “Somewhere, somehow, all those women I turned up have something in common. We have to find what it is.”
Right. Simple, he thought sarcastically. “So, to sum up, we’re looking for one needle that was in six different haystacks at one point or another.”
He noted that she never even cracked a smile. “Precisely.”
They returned to the precinct to review some things before planning their next course of action.
Once there, Destiny got busy compiling a file on all six of the women who had initially been thought to have committed suicide while in the throes of despair after each had supposedly broken up with the love of her life.
While she was printing up screen after screen, Logan borrowed a bulletin board and brought it into the squad room. One of the wheels had an unfortunate squeak that was heard with each complete rotation. Moving it faster only made the squeaking sound continuous, like an amorous rodent calling to its mate.
The noise drew the lieutenant out of his office and into the main area. He eyed the offensive bulletin board. “What’s this?” Bailey asked.
“Visual aids,” Logan told him, keeping it simple. “Richardson thought it might help if we put the victims’ pictures up in chronological order with a summary of what we know about them under each.”
“You mean the nonserial-killer case,” the lieutenant corrected pointedly.
Logan was not about to argue with the lieutenant at this stage of the investigation. He would have needed more evidence at his disposition for that. “That’s the one.”
“It might not be a serial killer,” Destiny said, coming up behind them. Both men turned almost in unison and looked at her quizzically. “At least, not a serial killer in the traditional sense.”
“You want to explain that?” Logan requested. Seeing as how she was the one who had originally called this a serial-killer case, this was a complete one-eighty on her part and he wanted to know, in as few words as humanly possible, why she’d changed her mind.
Between arrangements for her sister’s funeral and dealing with her own grief, Destiny had still managed to squeeze in some work. She’d been busy reading everything she could find on each of the other so-called nonvictims, plus she also had the benefit of the interviews she and Logan had conducted. There were still some details that bothered her. Details that didn’t add up in the traditional sense.
“For one thing, I don’t get a sense that our killer is enjoying this. That he’s following some ritual dictates that he’s unable to ignore. Most serial killers stick to a pattern religiously, one they can’t deviate from, only embellish on.”
Destiny looked at the photographs of the other women on the bulletin board, deliberately avoiding the last one. Her sister.
“It’s almost as if the killer’s doing this out of some need for expediency, like he has to do it now and quickly. And he changes things,” she pointed out. “He’s not slavishly bound by steps he has to follow.” She pointed to one photograph, then another, moving from one pretty face to another. “One victim types her suicide note, another doesn’t leave one at all. And a third sends a text message, while a fourth posts a note on her Facebook page, telling the world goodbye because ‘he doesn’t love me anymore.’ It’s like he uses whatever he can get, whatever’s handy for him.”
“So exactly what is it that you’re saying?” the lieutenant pressed.
Frustrated, Destiny dragged her hand through her hair as she slanted a glance toward her sister’s picture. The one taken at Christmas, one of the last times they’d been together. “I don’t know. Just that something doesn’t feel right.”
Her answer did not please Bailey in the slightest. “Feelings don’t stand up in court, Richardson. We need evidence. You’re a crime scene investigator. You should know that,” he all but barked at her.
For a second, she closed her eyes, pulling herself together. “Yes, I know that.”
“Then get me some evidence!” Bailey shouted before storming away. Less than a minute later, he slammed his office door as if to underscore his order.
“Why don’t we get that personal trainer’s list of clients?” Logan suggested, acting as if the lieutenant hadn’t even been there. “We can see if Debra trained anyone your sister interacted with. If we can just find that one point in common that they had—”
“Other than they were all in their twenties, blonde, more than reasonably attractive and supposedly committed suicide when they were ‘dumped’?” she posed dryly.
“Yes, other than that.”
He let his voice trail off, allowing her to fill in the silence that followed any way she wanted to. At this point, they didn’t know what they were after, only that if they stumbled across it, they’d know it—if they were lucky.
* * *
“Debra West’s list of clients?” Becky, the receptionist with the toothy smile repeated. She looked at them blankly for a full five seconds before saying, “We don’t have a Debra West working here.”
“No, you don’t,” Destiny agreed patiently. Because she’s dead, you idiot. “But you did,” she went on in the same calm tone. “A year ago.”
“Oh. A year ago,” she repeated as if that was the key to the secrets of the universe. “I’ve only been working here two months,” Becky told them. “I don’t know where I’d have to go to access that kind of information.” She seemed perfectly happy to let the conversation drop at this point.
Sensing that she was near the end of her patience, Logan moved Destiny aside and addressed the intelligence-challenged receptionist.
“Do you think you might be able to call over someone who could possibly know how to do that?” he asked, speaking to Becky in a calm, level voice, all the while smiling into her eyes.
Whatever he was doing, Destiny noted, it had the desired effect on the receptionist.
“Sure. That would be Brittany,” Becky volunteered. She jumped up to her feet as if her lower limbs had gotten the message delivered belatedly. “I’ll get her for you.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Logan told her.
“Maybe I should have let you do the talking to begin with,” Destiny murmured
under her breath as Becky disappeared into the rear of the building.
“Maybe,” Logan agreed, amused.
Now that he thought of it, the receptionist did remind him of the kind of woman he usually dated. Young, fun-loving, but definitely not a candidate for a Rhodes Scholarship in this lifetime. And, up until a few days ago, he was fairly certain that was the type he preferred and for the most part required. Because there was no chance of a meaningful or lasting relationship growing out of those sorts of liaisons.
But after trading barbs and dealing with a woman who continuously kept him on his toes, Logan began to view women like the receptionist as less appealing despite all her impressive physical attributes.
The realization, coming to him out of the blue like this, was more than just a little unnerving. It threatened to upend his world.
Just what the hell was he thinking? And why was he thinking it now?
“Something wrong?” Destiny asked as they waited for the receptionist to return with this Brittany person in tow.
Rather than answer her question, he asked one of his own, sounding, she noticed, just a little defensive. “Why do you ask?”
She shrugged, about to drop the subject when something stopped her. There was this unusual expression on his face, as if he’d suddenly realized something. About Paula’s case?
“You look like you just had an epiphany,” she told him.
Epiphany.
Well, that was as good a word for it as any, Logan decided.
If that indeed was what he’d just had. It sounded a lot better than saying he’d suddenly come to his senses—because he didn’t know just how sensible he was.
“Maybe I have,” he murmured more to himself than to her.
Destiny’s eyes narrowed as she tried to make sense of what he was saying. She’d just thrown the word out there, never once expecting him to do anything except bristle at the term. It was a twenty-dollar word, and he was a fifteen-dollar cop.
Was he humoring her or laughing at her?
Had he actually had an epiphany?
And why did any of this actually even matter to her, she silently demanded?
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