Avenging Angel

by Justine Dare

  "What's your recommendation?" Captain Greer asked.

  "With unlimited manpower, I'd say put a sur­veillance on every possible victim, every batterer connected to Rachel's House."

  Durwin let out a low whistle. "That's how many?" he asked, with a glance at Lynne.

  "There have been nearly three hundred residents since Rachel's House opened," she said, glad she had tuned back in time to keep from embarrassing herself. Especially in front of Drew. "Of those, roughly half have been relocated out of state and hopefully out of reach, or their abusers have relo­cated."

  "That still leaves a hundred and fifty or so," Greer said. "That's more than we can possibly put full surveillance on, even if we call in help from the entire county."

  "It might not be necessary," Lynne said. "The killings have only involved men connected to the more recent residents. The first, the victim's wife had been at Rachel's House only two years ago. For all the good it did her," she couldn't help adding, remember too well how the young woman who had tried so hard to escape her brutal husband had ended up literally crucified on her own living-room floor.

  "Sometimes them leaving is the spark that sets a normal guy off,' Nick said.

  A normal guy? Lynne's head snapped around to look at the big, good-looking blond. Was nobody going to call him on this? Did nobody else see it?

  No sooner did she think it than Drew spoke. "I'm sure you didn't mean to infer that battered women are in some way to blame for their own abuse." Nick flushed and, point made, Drew left it there. "Let's move on. If we do as Detective Garrison sug­gests and limit this to abusers of women who have been in Rachel's House for the past two years, how many are we talking about?"

  Trying to ignore how odd it was to hear Investi­gator Garrison refer to Detective Garrison in such clipped tones, Lynne did some quick figuring. "Fifty to sixty."

  "A more manageable number," Greer said, "but still not easy."

  "So it looks like the options are, we call for help, rotate surveillance, and hope we're in the right place at the right time, or we try to narrow it down to who's likely next and focus on them," Durwin said.

  Drew nodded. "If it was any other kind of case, I'd say we had one more option." "Such as?" Greer asked.

  "Bait." At Greer's frown, he elaborated, "Pick one of the guys who had somebody in Rachel's House, have him purposely go after her again, and then set up on him and wait."

  "But?"

  Drew shrugged. "These guys are cowards. I doubt if any of them have the guts to set them­selves up to lure out a real killer. If they did, they wouldn't be beating up women and kids in the first place."

  Lynne looked up, wanting to give Drew a silent thank-you for that, and for putting Nick in his place. As she did, she caught a glimpse of Nick's face, and the muscle jumping along his jawline.

  "We'll hold that as a last resort," Greer directed. "For now, where would you start? With those who live closest to the area of the previous killings?"

  Drew nodded. "As good a place as any to start. We'll need the geographic data."

  "I've got it," Durwin said.

  "And," Drew added, "you might want to con­sider calling the FBI for an ERT on the next one. I've worked with the San Francisco team before. They're the best."

  None of them commented on his use of the words "the next one"; they all knew it was more than likely there would be another killing before they got this guy. Instead they all looked at Greer, knowing that calling in the FBI's Evidence Re­sponse Team was the first step toward giving up control of your situation. But since they didn't have control of it in the first place, it seemed a moot point. Greer seemed to agree, nodding decisively.

  "You work it out. I want a plan by the end of the day, people. We're looking pretty stupid here, and I don't like it."

  Lynne tossed her mangled paper clip in the wastebasket, stood up, and started toward the door, as did Durwin. Nick, apparently still feeling put upon, went the other way, toward the door to the parking facility. Drew had been cornered by Greer, she noticed thankfully, and felt a sense of escape as she left the room.

  "That must be tough on you," Durwin said when they were clear of the briefing room.

  "What?"

  "Sitting there with your ex."

  Startled, she gave the older man a sideways look. "I've been through worse."

  He said nothing more until they turned the cor­ner outside the detective division office. "Lynne."

  She stopped, startled. He almost never used her first name.

  "Look ..." He stopped, looking uncomfortable, then started again. "I worked an undercover job, back when I was at LAPD. It went on longer than anyone expected, and I kept getting in deeper. And the longer it went, the harder it got to remember who I really was. It... seeps into you, the dirt, the crap, the way of life. You start out having to learn how they think, and you end up fighting not to think the same way."

  Lynne hoped she wasn't staring, but this was more than Ben Durwin had said to her at one time in the entire ten years she'd known him.

  "My point is," he said, his obvious discomfort growing, "that you can lose yourself, lose touch with everything that's real and important when you're under like that." He hesitated before adding, "Like Drew was."

  Lynne's breath died in her throat. Was he defending Drew to her? He'd barely known her back then, and she hadn't been aware he knew Drew at all.

  "Look, I don't know what happened between you two, I just wanted to say, my wife and I, we had a hard time after that. She was alone too long, and I was so out of touch with our life that it took months for me to get back to normal, and even longer for us to get it back together."

  She wanted to say there was more to their situation than that, wanted to burst out that she hadn't just been alone too long, she'd been left to deal with a tragedy no one should have to handle by themselves, but it was obvious that this had taken a great deal of effort on his part.

  "Thanks, Ben," she said softly instead.

  He colored slightly. "I'm not much for talking like this, to her or anybody. I know I'm short-tempered and blunt, but she loves me anyway. God knows why."

  He started to walk into the detective office, then stopped in the doorway and looked back at her.

  "He's still crazy about you, you know."

  Without waiting for her to answer, he continued inside, leaving Lynne standing in the hallway.

  "My God, Regan, I am so sorry."

  Regan shook her head. "It wasn't your fault, Marita, any more than anything else he's ever done has been your fault."

  "But for him to go after you!"

  They were all fussing over her, and had been ever since she'd come back to Rachel's House. Detective Garrison had called Marita as soon as she'd heard about Daryl's arrest, and by the time Regan had returned from the aimless driving she'd been doing after she'd left the Court home, everybody who'd been home knew what had happened.

  Thankfully, they were chalking her emotional state up to the frightening encounter with Daryl Bowers, and she was more than happy to let them think that. But in fact, that seemed to pale next to the reality she'd just been hit with.

  She'd thought all along that Alex Edwards wasn't a case of what you see is what you get. She'd wondered when he'd handled the man with the knife like a pro, and wondered more when he'd seemed to be scrounging up reasons to stretch out his time at Rachel's House. But she'd let her ego get in the way, let herself think he'd been brave to pro­tect her, that he'd stayed because of her.

  And now she knew just how right—and how wrong—she'd been. He'd been lying to her from day one.

  The back door opened, tearing her out of her miserable reverie. There were footsteps in the kitchen, and then Laura came into the living room.

  "Hi, everybody, what's up? Are you all— Regan, what happened to you?"

  "I had a little unpleasant encounter," she an­swered. Marita was avoiding her gaze, and she knew the woman was ashamed, still thinking she was somehow to blame.

/>   "My God, your neck, you're going to bruise," Laura said, kneeling down and looking at her with eyes too used to seeing such marks. And then anger inflamed her normally placid expression. "Damn him, did Alex do this to you?" Alex? Hurt her?

  "No," she said, her voice a little harsh, whether from her madly tangled emotions or the bruises around her throat she wasn't sure.

  "It was Daryl," Marita said bitterly. "The divorce was final today. He couldn't find me to beat up, so he waited at the main office and took it out on Regan."

  "Regan? He hurt Regan?"

  They hadn't even heard Mitch come in, but when he hurried over to them they made room for him beside her chair.

  "I'm okay, Mitch, really."

  "Are you sure?"

  His warm brown eyes were so troubled that Regan reached out to give his arm a reassuring squeeze. "I'm fine. It was ugly, but it's over. He's in jail where he belongs."

  "For now," Marita said, her voice still tight with bitterness. Regan understood; she'd been trying to break free from this man for nearly two years, and still he haunted her.

  "Maybe they'll keep him locked up this time," Laura said.

  Marita laughed, and it wasn't a cheerful sound. "Like they did when he beat up my mother, trying to get her to tell him where I was?"

  Mitch stared up at Marita from where he still crouched at Regan's side. "He beat up your mother?"

  She nodded. "He barely got his wrist slapped for that one. My dad, he beats her like Daryl beat me. He beat her when she wanted to help me. Dad told her he wouldn't allow her to testify, that I'd had it coming, what Daryl did to me."

  "Marita," Regan said firmly, "that was not your fault, and this was not your fault. There's only one person to blame here, and that's Daryl."

  It took her a lot of time and effort she could ill af­ford to calm them. They were more shaken by her bruises than they had ever been about their own much worse injuries.

  "Because if s you," Laura explained. "You're sort of a symbol to us, that there's another kind of life. If our lives spill over and hurt you ..." She shook her head, but her eyes were so troubled Regan didn't push for anything more.

  By the time Regan was able to retreat to her room she was truly exhausted. Yet when she lay down on the bed, her mind continued to race like a mouse on a wheel.

  Laura's assumption that it had been Alex who had hurt her had rattled her. Her instant leap to his defense had rattled her even more. She knew she would get no rest until she faced this, so she quit fighting and let the painful memories, both good and bad, flow in like a stream of acid-laced honey.

  He'd insisted that everything he'd told her was true, it just wasn't all of the truth. But that didn't help much. It just made her rocket back and forth from a simmering anger to a wrenching ache in her chest, going from rage through shock to heartache and then back again.

  Lillian Court

  's son. The woman she owed every­thing to, who had given her the chance to build Rachel's House. Given her the chance even though she had nothing to recommend her but a brand-new college degree that wasn't even in a related field, and a passion that was heartfelt and bone deep, born on the day she'd found Rachel's body arranged carefully inside her front door.

  Although she hadn't realized it then, hadn't realized anything beyond her horror, shock, and pain, her entire life had changed in that instant. Gone was the plan to work at an upscale advertising firm until she was ready to strike out on her own. Gone was the dream of using her inheritance from her fa­ther to build her own business with the clients she intended to make sure found her indispensable. Gone was the ten-year goal of being a recognized name in her chosen field.

  In their place, fueled by a steady, burning out­rage, was one single thing—the determination to fight back. To save as many as she could from this epidemic that had stolen her father and her best friend.

  She'd done that, with Rachel's House. But she couldn't even have started if not for Lillian Court

  .

  I want you to remember, no matter how you feel, no matter how angry you might be, that none of this was his idea. It was mine. He never would have done it, nor hidden his actions from you, had I not ordered him to.

  The words of the woman who'd become a men­tor to her echoed in her mind. The woman she'd come to admire, respect, and even love as they shared their vision of how to fight this cancer that ruined so many lives.

  The woman who had sent her son to protect the residents of the place she'd put her considerable standing behind.

  How stupid can I be? she wondered. Stupid that it had never occurred to her that he'd shown up after the third killing to watch them. It should have at least occurred to her that he might be an under­cover cop or something. But she'd gotten so tan­gled up in her emotions about him that her brain seemed to have shut off.

  So was it Alex's fault she'd gotten silly over him? Was it even a surprise, given she'd had so little social life in the past eight years? Did she even have any right to be angry at him?

  She didn't know. She only knew she felt shattered, lost, in a way she hadn't known since she'd opened Rachel's House.

  And it didn't help any that when she at last drifted off, she dreamed of sunsets and Alex.

  "You need an interview room, Detective?"

  Nick Kelso shook his head at the jailer. "No. I'm just going to go take a look at Bowers."

  "Need the recorder on?"

  "No. I won't be there that long."

  "Cell three," the man said, gesturing to the right as if people had trouble finding their way in the small, four-cell jail. Kelso nodded and walked down the cool, green-walled hallway. He noted that the cell before Daryl Bowers was empty, and after his cell came the doorway to the covered sally port where units pulled in with prisoners. He turned his back to the security cameras without looking up at them.

  The man in the cell pointedly ignored him. Kelso leaned a shoulder against the bars and waited. Silently. At last the man looked up.

  "Who the hell are you?" he said, sounding surly.

  "Detective Kelso. Just wanted to meet the guy who got caught in the middle of this mess."

  Bowers eyed him warily. "Look, all I wanted to do was make them tell me where my wife is. I got a right."

  "A guy did have the right, once. Nowadays ..." Kelso shrugged.

  Bowers swore under his breath.

  "I know," Kelso said. "Doesn't seem right or fair, does it?"

  An expression of suspicion spread over Bowers' face. "What are you trying to pull?"

  Kelso shrugged. "Me? Not a thing. Just came by because I know the feeling, man."

  "What feeling?"

  "That everybody else is in your way, when all you want to do is get your life back."

  Bowers blinked. "Yeah. That's all I wanted."

  "I get you. Women today . . ." He shrugged again.

  Bowers swore again, but this time his tone was of a man sharing a gripe with someone who under­stands.

  "Well, at least you won't have to spend much time in here because of her," Kelso said. "How you figure?"

  "Bail. Piece of cake for somebody with only one prior. That ought to fry her."

  Bowers looked pleased at that thought, but then grimaced. "I don't have that kind of cash."

  "Bet you know somebody who does, though. Somebody you could call, they have to let you call for that. Maybe somebody who feels like you do?"

  "Nah, I don't..."

  Bowers' voice trailed away, and his brow fur­rowed as if he'd just had a thought. "Maybe. Yeah, maybe." "Relative?" "Nah. Well, sort of." "Who? Maybe I can help."

  Bowers hesitated, then told Kelso who he was thinking of. Kelso laughed out loud.

  Lillian watched her son pace. "Give her time, Alexander."

  Alex grimaced. "I don't know. I've never seen her so angry."

  "She had reason to be, I'm afraid. You should have told her the moment you began to get person­ally involved."

  "I know, I know, it's my own fault. I
should never have let it go so far."

  "Just how far did it go?"

  To her amazement, her self-contained son blushed. And then, tiredly, he said, "Too far. Not far enough."

  "I see." And she thought she did. "She's not an unfair woman, or a vindictive one. Give her time to work through it."

  Distractedly, he shoved his fingers through his already tousled hair. "How much time?"

  Despite her worry over the whole situation, Lillian stifled a smile. "As much as it takes."

  "Gee, thanks," Alexander said wryly.

  "Do you want me to speak to her?"

  "I've already messed up enough, without hiding behind you, thank you."

  "Very wise," she said, glad he saw it that way. "And don't forget, there's more than just a decep­tion for her to deal with."

  "More?"

  "She not only has to deal with the fact that you're not who she thought, she also has to deal with who you really are. For many people, that's not easy."

  Alex groaned, and Lillian knew he hadn't thought about that aspect yet. "And she's the kind of person who's just as likely to find it a drawback as an advantage.

  "I'll arrange for someone else to keep watch for now, if you like."

  He grimaced again, as if he didn't trust the safety of Rachel's House to anyone else. Lillian smiled to herself.

  "For now," he muttered, sounding unhappy.

  "Lynne, it's me."

  "Another one?" she asked. It was the only reason she could think of for him to be calling her at three in the morning.

  "No," Drew answered. "But I had an idea."

  "What's the idea that couldn't wait?" Her tired­ness put a snap in her voice.

  "Sorry, I know it's late, but if I'm right, we'll have to be ready to hit the ground running."

  She sat up, shoving her hair out of her eyes and flipping on the bedside lamp. This was business, the business of catching a murderer, and nobody was better at it than Drew Garrison.