Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  Jake’s hands curled into fists on his knees. He didn’t like Castillo’s tone or his implications, but the captain wasn’t wrong. He splayed his fingers and took a deep breath. He’d come a long way in his anger-management techniques.

  “Understood. That’s not the reason, by the way, but understood anyway. It has more to do with her foster brother Matt Dugan. I’ll back off.”

  “Dugan has a rap sheet a mile long. All you have to do is look at it to follow the course of his sorry life.” Castillo placed his hand on the receiver of his phone. “If there’s nothing else, McAllister, I have a few calls to make before I leave today.”

  “Thanks for your time, Captain.” Jake heaved himself out of the comfortable chair and shut Castillo’s door behind him...very softly. Didn’t want to give the guy the wrong impression.

  Why the hell was Castillo so adamant about Jake keeping his hands off Kyra’s files? Was the captain somehow involved in the masking?

  By the time Jake returned to the task force conference room, most of his team members had left for the day. He sat heavily at his desk and rubbed his eyes.

  Although he should just leave Kyra to her secrets, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Kyra’s past was somehow linked to these copycat killings. The obvious flag for his hunch was that her mother had been one of The Player’s victims twenty years ago. As well, the lead homicide investigator on the case had taken Kyra under his wing. To the point where he’d ordered her DCFS record sealed?

  Jake would bet on that. No use asking the old detective about it. Quinn’s loyalty toward Kyra ran deep and wide. He’d never betray her secrets.

  Jake rubbed his chin. Even if that betrayal meant catching a serial killer? But did it? What proof did he have that Kyra’s background, other than the murder of her mother, had anything to do with the current rash of killings?

  He grunted softly to himself. Maybe he should just be honest with himself and admit that he wanted to learn everything there was to know about Kyra Chase because he wanted...Kyra Chase.

  He felt an undeniable connection and attraction to her despite the secrets that had erected a barrier between them. The roadblock wasn’t just on his side, either. After his marriage crashed and burned, he vowed to never get into a relationship with a woman he couldn’t trust.

  Still, Kyra had her own reasons for holding him at arm’s length. She didn’t trust him, either, or at least she didn’t trust him with her secrets.

  Maybe she was right. Despite the strong chemistry between them, they weren’t meant to be. Even if the attraction was good enough for a roll in the sheets a few times, at this point in his life he wanted more than that. He had a daughter he hardly knew. He wanted to establish some kind of home life here in LA, an environment where Fiona could visit more frequently.

  He logged off his computer and shoved it into his case, along with files and notes on Andrea and Crystal. A folder fell on the floor, spilling its contents, and he looked into the dead eyes of Andrea Miles.

  As he shoved the photo back into the folder, he muttered to himself, “Great environment for Fiona.”

  He slung his bag over his shoulder and swept his phone off the desk. It buzzed in his hand, indicating a text message. Maybe Billy had already gotten a line on some video.

  Cupping the phone in his hand, he glanced at the display—unknown number, not uncommon for his work phone. He perched on the edge of his desk and opened the text: Buck and Lori Harmon are the names you’re looking for.

  Jake cocked his head and reread the message. Was he looking for names? He texted back: Who is this?

  The message showed that it was delivered. He stared at his phone for two minutes. Then he called back the number. It went straight to a recording informing him that there was no voice mail for the number.

  Someone wanted to remain anonymous. He’d never heard of Buck or Lori Harmon and didn’t know he was looking for them.

  One of the officers they’d brought onto the task force to help survey video called from across the room. “J-Mac, I’m out for the duration. You’re the last man standing. You wanna lock up, or are you on your way out now?”

  Blinking, Jake scanned the empty room and then glanced at the names in the text. He swung his bag onto his desk and pulled out his laptop. “I have a few more things to check. I’ll close up shop on my way out.”

  The officer waved and left the door open.

  Jake fired up his laptop again, his fingers tingling, eager to attack the keyboard. Should he look up the name in the criminal database or just in a search engine? Could this be the first big break in their case?

  He started with a search engine and typed in the names. Texts and links spewed over the screen, and he clicked on the first one.

  The article headline said it all, and he read it aloud to the empty room. “‘Buck Harmon, Foster Father, Brutally Killed by Foster Child.’”

  As soon as he read that the foster child who had murdered Buck was a sixteen-year-old female whose name was not being released because she was a juvenile, he didn’t have to read any more. He knew her identity.

  It was Marilyn Monroe Lake. Kyra Chase was a killer.

  CHAPTER TEN

  After the emotional meeting with Andrea’s parents, Kyra stepped into the hushed atmosphere of the Santa Monica Public Library and inhaled the scent of musty pages that permeated the air despite the electronic age of digital everything. The public libraries had always been her refuge, and that comforting smell still brought her peace even though her mission today filled her with anxiety.

  Brandon Nguyen was able to trace the IP address behind the email from “La Prey,” as she’d decided to call him, and that IP address led to this library.

  The fact that this was her local library, the one closest to her apartment, filled her with a kind of shivery dread.

  Someone who knew about her past had been in this library sending an email to her work address, taunting her, threatening her, trying to frighten her. She didn’t know what she hoped to find here. The phantom emailer was long gone. The librarian was not going to hand over any library records or CCTV video to her.

  However, the librarian might hand it over to the police, specifically a homicide detective investigating a serial killer.

  Kyra wandered to the row of computers where the silence had been invaded by clicking keys and the soft giggles of high school students pretending to do homework. She trailed her hand across the keyboards of three unoccupied computers.

  An old homeless woman on the last computer in the row looked up. “Psst.”

  Kyra raised her eyebrows and met a pair of lively dark eyes set in a leathery face besieged by lines running every which way. “Me?”

  “Yeah, you.” The woman drew herself up in the chair, pinning her sagging shoulders to the back. “You need to see the reference librarian to use the computers.”

  “Thanks for the tip.” Kyra’s gaze darted to the monitor in front of the woman, ablaze with pictures of gaunt models displaying haute couture, then dropped to the baggy gray Santa Monica College sweatshirt covering the woman’s form like a sack and what looked like men’s black slacks folded up at the ankle to reveal a dirty pair of sneakers with a hole in the toe.

  Kyra’s nose stung. “C-can I pay you for that advice?”

  The woman’s eyes lit up. “Well, that’s what I’m here for. I’m the information desk...when I’m not designing clothes.”

  Two girls at the high school study table behind the computers sniggered and snorted. Kyra whipped her head around and gave the girls a hard stare.

  The grins died on their lip-glossed mouths, and they hunched over their laptops.

  Kyra reached into her purse and pulled a twenty out of her wallet. She slid it beneath the woman’s keyboard. “Will that be enough?”

  The homeless woman snatched it, and the bill disappeared among the folds of her
clothes. “That will do.”

  “Do you come here every day and, um...work?”

  The woman nodded.

  “I suppose there are a lot of people using these computers over the course of a day.”

  “All the famous designers work here.” The woman brushed a hand down the front of her sweatshirt, and Kyra knew she wasn’t going to get anything coherent out of her.

  “Everything okay?” A librarian, twirling a pair of glasses between her fingers, glanced between Kyra and the homeless lady.

  “I think she wants to check out a computer, Inez.” The woman turned back to her own screen, dismissing both of them.

  “Thanks, Yolanda.” The librarian, Inez, smiled at Kyra. “Is that right?”

  “No, but I do want to talk to you about the computers.”

  Inez gestured with her glasses. “Follow me.”

  The librarian scooted behind the reference counter and faced Kyra across the smooth surface littered with flyers and cards. Inez had put her glasses back on, making her look more formidable.

  Kyra put on her best therapist’s smile—soothing, nonthreatening, understanding.

  “I have a—” Kyra glanced over her shoulder and hunched toward Inez “—bit of a stalking problem.”

  “Oh, no.” Inez pressed three fingers against her rather pale lips.

  “Someone has been sending me unwanted emails from a bogus email address. I had a friend of mine who’s in IT track down the IP address of the sender, and it came back to one of your computers here in the library.” Kyra swept her arm behind her as if to indict the entire library in this stalker’s crime.

  “That’s terrible.” Inez’s fingers trailed from her lips to her throat, and if she had pearls, she’d be clutching them. “You don’t think Yolanda is responsible, do you?”

  “Oh, no, no. I sort of have an idea who it is, and I’d like to catch him in the act. You know, have some proof to wave in his face.” Kyra folded her hands on the counter on top of a stack of flyers announcing a story time.

  “That’s terrible. I had a stalker once.” Inez slid her glasses to the tip of her nose and whispered, “My ex-husband.”

  Pursing her lips, Kyra shook her head. “Even when you know who it is, it can be frightening. Sometimes because you know who it is, it’s even more frightening.”

  “I agree.” Inez readjusted her glasses, which magnified her eyes. She waited quietly.

  This was where being a cop came in handy. Kyra said, “I know this is an unusual request, but is there any way you can look at your records and let me know who was at a computer on a particular day at a particular time? Video footage would be even better.”

  Inez blinked. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

  “All I need is a peek.” Kyra crossed her finger over her heart. “I swear, I won’t tell anyone. I’m at my wit’s end.”

  “I understand, but it’s against our policy. Perhaps if you filed a report with the police. I could release that information to an officer.”

  “That’s the thing.” Kyra pressed her palms together and rested her fingers against her chin, silently apologizing to every cop she knew—even Jake. “I think my stalker is a cop, which makes things tricky.”

  “It certainly does. Santa Monica PD?”

  Kyra nodded vigorously, hoping she’d never need the assistance of anyone at the SMPD.

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t.” The eyes behind the glasses brightened. “Maybe you could do a stakeout. If he’s coming at the same time every day, you could sleuth among the stacks and surprise him.”

  Kyra stifled a chuckle by smacking her hand over her mouth. When she’d arranged her features into a more fitting expression, she peeled her hand away from her mouth and said, “I might just do that, Inez. Thanks for your time, anyway.”

  Inez called after her back. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

  Several library patrons shushed the librarian, and Kyra waved a hand in the air. When she landed outside, she huffed out a breath. She’d known it was a long shot.

  If she’d had Jake by her side, getting that information would’ve been a piece of cake. She could’ve had him by her side if she’d come clean about her past. She could have shown him the picture of the Harmons and told him why it was a threat to her, and in the very act of telling him, she’d remove the threat.

  She’d kept that dark period of her past a secret from everyone, especially guys she was dating. While not wanting to scare anyone off, she’d been scaring men off for years with her secretive nature.

  She didn’t want to scare off this one.

  Striding to her car, she snatched her phone from her purse and called Quinn. “I’m out and about. Do you want me to pick up some food and head over?”

  “I was just going to heat up meat loaf. I’ll do enough for two.” He paused. “Are you all right?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Something in your voice, Mimi.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  She drove the short distance from Santa Monica to Venice down traffic-heavy Lincoln. Turning onto the street that led to the canals dropped her into a different world. Most likely Quinn wouldn’t have been able to afford a house on the canals, blocks from Venice Beach, on his detective’s salary, but his wife, Charlotte, had been a bestselling author of thrillers and mysteries and had sunk most of her money into their beach cottage, creating an oasis for Quinn away from the grit and grime of his job.

  Jake had the same type of getaway with his home in the Hollywood Hills. His creative endeavors on two screenplays had allowed him to buy his own refuge from the job.

  Kyra crossed the wooden bridge over the canal and knocked on Quinn’s red door. Just as she was about to use her key, he answered.

  Stepping over the threshold, she sniffed the air. “Smells yummy in here. Is this meat loaf another contribution from Rose?”

  “It is. She’s a damned good cook.”

  “Yeah, she’s got something cooking for you, all right.” Kyra opened her mouth and winked one eye in an exaggerated fashion.

  Quinn poked her in the back. “Go on. At least one of my acquaintances has some home-cooking skills.”

  “Hey, I’m very good at picking up the phone and ordering.” She breezed past Quinn into the kitchen. “You have any beers?”

  “Now you’re encouraging me to drink? You’re usually trying to hide them from me.” He sat on a stool at the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. “Bad day?”

  She popped her head out of the fridge, clutching two cold ones in her hands. “Bad, scary, frustrating.”

  His bushy brows rose to his gray hair. “Scary? You’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She twisted the caps from the bottles and shoved a beer across the counter to Quinn’s hands, gnarled by arthritis but still able to grip a gun. “I suppose I should start at the beginning.”

  Taking a sip of beer, he squinted at her through one eye. “I know the beginning, Kyra.”

  “Sometime after that—” she chugged down some of her drink and wiped the back of her hand across the suds on her lips “—Matt Dugan decided it was a good idea to leave me his worldly possessions.”

  “That Harley? I’d take that off your hands if I could ride it.”

  “That bike’s getting a new home. Anyway, Matt’s parole officer told Jake about my inheritance, and Jake asked if he could come with me to Matt’s apartment. He thinks Matt might have been in touch with Jordy, the first copycat killer, because of the playing cards he was leaving me.”

  “Is Jake wrong?” Quinn folded his hands around the damp bottle.

  “I’m not sure.” She then told Quinn about the search of Matt’s room and the picture of the Harmons she’d taken from his dresser. “Jake saw the picture before I snatched it, but I’m not sure he made any connection to me.”


  “You’re keeping things from him again.” Quinn dragged his fingernail through the foil label on the bottle.

  “It got worse.” She drank more beer for confidence and relayed the rest of the story about the key to Matt’s storage container and how she’d set the whole thing on fire to keep Jake from seeing the newspaper clippings and pictures of her Matt had saved.

  Quinn set the bottle down on the ceramic tile so hard she thought he’d cracked it. “Kyra, you could’ve killed yourself and Jake. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I didn’t think the whole place would turn into a fireball.”

  “Did Jake suspect you?”

  “I don’t know.” She lifted and dropped her shoulders. Would he have attempted to make love to her if he thought she’d knowingly torched a storage container with both of them in it? She tapped her finger along her buzzing bottom lip. Maybe.

  “Now you want to tell him what you did.”

  She held up her hand. “Wait. It gets worse. I haven’t even told you about the email yet.”

  “You’d better slow down.” He jabbed a crooked finger at her half-empty beer bottle cradled possessively between her hands. “Or you won’t be coherent enough to tell me anything.”

  “When I was at the station, someone sent me an email and attached that same picture of the Harmons.”

  “Can’t blame Matt for that one. The man’s dead.” Quinn scratched his grizzled chin.

  “I realize that, thanks. I did ask our IT guy to trace the IP address, and it came back to the library in Santa Monica. Obviously, it’s someone who wants to hide his identity.”

  “It could be the same person who hired Matt to harass you. Now that Matt’s gone, this person has to do his own dirty work.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s the case. I haven’t told you the rest of the storage unit story.”

  “There’s more? It’s not enough you set it on fire. Did you blow it up, too?”

  “No, but Jake rescued one of the boxes from the unit that didn’t burn. I didn’t care if he had that box because I’d already checked it out, and as far as I could tell, it contained a bunch of scrap paper and receipts.” She took a tiny sip of beer, watching Quinn over the bottle.