Black at Heart

by Leslie Parrish

  "You know, before the nightmares, I never smoked a single time in my life."

  "I know."

  She'd told him once that on the worst of those nights, it was either light a cigarette or down a few glasses of vodka. Still on pain meds and antidepressants at the time, she'd figured smoking was the lesser of two evils and apparently hadn't kicked the habit.

  "I've never done it in the house."

  "I know that as well." Not that he'd give a damn if a stray match burned the entire place to the ground, once Lily was well and had no need for it anymore.

  He'd certainly considered it over the years. Just demolishing the place. But something had stopped him. Perhaps just knowing his grandparents had held on to it for him, never even letting him know until their declining years that it was his, still there on the cliff, silent and dead.

  He'd never come to see it before last winter. Nor, however, had he let it go.

  She glanced down, then wordlessly crushed the unsmoked cigarette into the railing. Finally turning to look at him, she admitted, "I guess conversation beats inhalation."

  He smiled faintly. "You ready to talk?"

  "Well, you sure had nothing to say at dinner."

  No, he hadn't. At dinner he had been too busy wondering how to break the news to Brandon that Lily had been able to get around whatever firewalls and constraints he had placed around the group's files. Not to mention how to get Lily to open up and tell him why she was doing it.

  While he was lying in bed trying to fall asleep a little while ago, the answer had, of course, come to him. "You know I'd tell you if we had anything on him."

  Her brow lifted, though her tone sounded unsurprised. "What?

  "The Lovesprettyboys investigation is stalled. That doesn't mean it will never be solved. You've got to trust me."

  He couldn't imagine how frustrating it must be for her, knowing the man who had attacked her had gotten away and had never been identified. Lily had never stopped believing he was out there, looking for her, wanting to finish what he started. Not only because he held her responsible for his downfall, but also because she might somehow be able to identify him.

  "Damn it, Wyatt. It's been seven months," she said, her anguish clear. Her voice, her face, her twisting hands, her shaking arms, all confirmed how far on the edge she truly was-and confirmed that she might do something crazy, like a little hacking, to get some answers. "How the hell can you still not know who he is?"

  They had leads and theories, but hadn't been able to prove a thing. "You know how these things go. You said yourself it would be almost impossible for you to ID his face."

  "Yes, but someone else could! The vagrant he picked up to help him that night. He was an eyewitness, for God's sake."

  "Not a reliable one," he replied evenly. "Just a drugged-out guy from the street who could remember only that the man who picked him up was Caucasian and middle-aged."

  Lily shivered a little, as if finally noticing just how cold and damp it was outside.

  "Let's go in," he said.

  She shook her head, grabbed a beach towel from the railing, and draped it over her shoulders, tucking her arms into the folds. "Why isn't this going any faster?"

  "Do you really have to ask?" He said the words carefully. The woman already bore a lot of weight on her shoulders. He didn't want to add to it. But he did need for her to understand. "The world thinks you and your assailant were killed in that van crash. So not only is the case not a high priority right now, since they're assuming he's dead, but the official investigators are looking for anyone who went missing or died the same night you did. Only you, Brandon, and I know he did no such thing and might very well have gone back to his real life once he realized you weren't coming after him."

  "But you can't tell anyone that," she whispered.

  "No. I can't."

  Moving slowly to the table, she dropped onto one of the chairs. "Of course."

  Joining her, Wyatt noted the way she'd visibly deflated. "Look, it doesn't mean we won't find him. It just makes it a little harder."

  "Maybe I should just come forward, let the media make a big deal out of the FBI agent who faked her death, and let the bastard come and find me."

  Wyatt stiffened, not even wanting to consider that option. "You're not using yourself as bait."

  "Don't coddle me, Wyatt."

  He intentionally sneered, knowing the very last thing Lily wanted was to be treated like a fragile object. Besides, she wasn't fragile. Wounded, yeah. Weak? No way in hell.

  He didn't like having to remind her that she owed him, but damned if he would let her take unnecessary risks and lose everything she had gained. "We didn't save your ass, put our careers on the line, just so you could go out and get yourself killed."

  It was a cheap shot and he knew it. Lily flinched, but she also lifted her chin, glad he'd treated her as an equal, a strong woman capable of taking as much as she dished out. It wasn't difficult, because despite how much he wanted to keep her safe, he knew she was strong, his equal in every way.

  "Understood." She tapped her fingers on the surface of the table and dropped the idea, as he'd known she would. "The owner of the vehicle he ditched before he grabbed me, did you talk to him? Make sure it truly was stolen?" she asked, going back to the case.

  "She was a well-known, respected plastic surgeon. Very convincing, very reliable."

  The unsub had stolen a car parked at a ritzy Richmond hotel, intending to break into a house where two young children were supposedly alone, unsupervised. He'd found the children, stalked them, by lurking on a kids' community Web site.

  Those two unattended children had never existed. Lily had played the role of young girl irritated at having to babysit her little brother for the first time. She'd lured him in like a slimy fish on a baited hook. She'd called herself Tiger Lily, in answer to the handle he'd been using on the site: Peter Pan. The boy who never grew up.

  Sick fucking bastard. At least the one he'd used at Satan's Playground. Lovesprettyboys-the identity he had admitted to using when he had Lily in his clutches-had been unambiguous. It had revealed him for the twisted degenerate he was.

  On that January night, fearing a trap, the unsub had waited down the block from the undercover house, slipping a vagrant a twenty to scope out the place first. When he'd realized the whole thing was a setup, he'd tried to run, but he couldn't start the car. The closest vehicle was an FBI van doing exterior surveillance. Inside it, Lily had been watching, listening, waiting for the end of the investigation that had consumed her.

  The rest of what had happened that night had been thought about, talked about, wondered about, by everyone on the team and others in the bureau. Considering Lily's memories were fuzzy, he doubted they'd ever know the whole story. How, for instance, the killer had stashed Lily in the dilapidated beach shack and then gotten back to the bridge to stage the crash. How he'd gotten away from the crash site without being spotted. If, perhaps, he hadn't gotten away and had just blended in as onlookers and rescue workers filled the scene.

  One of the biggest questions: Had someone helped him?

  He needed to know all those things. But the only one who could answer the questions was the unsub.

  At first, as he'd told her, Wyatt and everyone else in the bureau had looked for any Richmond-area middle-aged man who had disappeared unexpectedly the same night Lily had. They'd thought, of course, that he had died. When Wyatt realized one week later that the unsub was still alive, he'd still looked at anyone who was missing, likely in hiding.

  Then he'd realized the truth. The unsub might have hidden out at the shack with Lily for a day or two, waiting for any hint that his identity had been uncovered, despite all his precautions. When that day hadn't come, though, had the slime simply returned to his real world? Gone back to a normal life, believing no one would come after him? At least as long as nobody ever found out Lily was still alive.

  How he must have panicked when he got back to the shack and found she h
ad disappeared. Had he been somewhere on the long, deserted beach himself that night, searching for his victim even as Wyatt and Brandon were rescuing her? It was possible. Because he certainly hadn't returned later, when they had been staking the place out. Wyatt imagined that, like a character out of a Poe story, the unsub was tormented by the possibility of discovery, the chance that his victim might have her vengeance on him yet. That waiting and uncertainty would be enough to drive a sane person mad.

  No one had ever called Lovesprettyboys-Peter Pan-sane.

  "Tell me what you have." Apparently seeing the instinctive refusal about to come out of his mouth, she urged, "Please. I'm healed; I'm healthy. If you talk about it, maybe it'll spark something and give you a new lead."

  He stared at her intently, unable to see the depths of blue in those eyes out here in the moonlight. The floodlights over their heads might brighten the cliffs and the stairs. But here they were almost caught in a small pool of night that existed between the house and her security perimeter. Caught between light and darkness, being in the open and remaining hidden in the shadows. Just as Lily was caught. And would be, until he captured the person who had tried to kill her.

  "Please," she repeated.

  Sighing heavily, he tried to give her what she wanted, knowing he could not reveal too much. Especially since he was currently investigating two cases that somehow involved Lily Fletcher: her own "murder"… and the murders of three men who had a lot in common with her attacker.

  "As I just said, the owner of the car was a plastic surgeon from Williamsburg, Virginia, attending a medical convention at that hotel."

  "Are you certain she-"

  "She isn't a suspect. Just the owner of the stolen car. A number of people remember seeing her at the banquet at which her father received a humanitarian award that night, and her sister-in-law shared an elevator ride with her right around the time you were being attacked. We have the surveillance video to prove it."

  "Where was the car?"

  "It had been parked by a hotel valet."

  She immediately leaned forward. "Meaning the valets had access to the keys."

  He nodded. "But the keys to that particular car were still at the valet stand the next morning."

  "Hot-wired? That would indicate a certain kind of criminal."

  "No. Dr. Kean admitted she kept a spare key to the car in a magnetic box inside the fender."

  "Leaving a key hidden right on the vehicle in this day and age?" she asked, sounding astonished. "Good grief some people are so naive."

  She used to be one of them. Not that he intended to mention that. "Apparently, the doctor has a teenage son, a new driver, who has already locked himself out of the car several times."

  "What, and she never heard of OnStar?"

  Wyatt ignored her sarcasm. "When the vehicle was searched after your attack, that magnetic box was open, the key gone. It's very possible the unsub just went hunting for a car with a spare key hidden on it and struck pay dirt."

  Lily's frown remained.

  "Dr. Kean was very upset and concerned about being implicated in any way," he said, seeing she still had doubts. "She was entirely cooperative."

  "Well, she can rest easy, anyway. I know Lovesprettyboys was not a female." A bitter laugh escaped her mouth. "Though I did hear a woman's voice during those final hours I spent in that shack."

  Stunned, he leaned closer. "What?"

  Lily immediately shook her head, negating his assumptions. "No, no, it wasn't a real voice. Just one in my head."

  Probably her own voice encouraging her to not give up, to get away while she still had the chance. He blessed that voice; he really did. "Your own?"

  "No. A ghost's, I think. My sister's."

  Wyatt couldn't stop himself from reaching out and clasping her hand, noting the coldness of her fingers. He quickly pulled away, knowing physical contact wasn't what Lily wanted right now. She might never want it again. Besides which, it shouldn't come from him.

  "Don't be so sure," he said. "It's possible the unsub spoke with a woman, maybe someone walking on the beach, who had no idea he was holding you captive inside. It's one more avenue to explore."

  "Maybe."

  He got back to the things they knew for sure. "Dr. Kean claims she had no idea someone had taken the car from valet parking until the next morning, when she reported it stolen and found out it had been used in a crime. Since she was staying at the Richmond hotel, the police hadn't been able to use the vehicle registration to reach her at home the previous night."

  "Okay, back to the valet parking. What about surveillance video?"

  "The valet lot was full because of the conference. The attendants started parking overflow in the back alley of the hotel. No cameras."

  She reached for the cigarettes, drew one out, twisting it between her fingers but making no effort to light. "And the witness? Were you able to get anything from him at all?"

  "The vagrant told us the unsub had been wearing thick gloves, a heavy coat, a furred cap that disguised his features. Considering he was having withdrawal shakes after just a few hours of interrogation, I'd say that description was pretty good. He also admitted he'd grabbed the key from the ignition while the unsub was retrieving something from the backseat, worrying he would be left behind if things went wrong."

  "Good move for him. Not so good for me and poor Vince Kowalski."

  Special Agent Kowalski had been shot dead in the street right in front of Lily's eyes.

  "Brandon's been working on the cyber angle, of course, and tracked the computer used by the unsub to an IP in central Virginia. The ISP led to a Wi-Fi hot spot in a mall."

  "Sure. Why not sit in a food court and stalk little kids in an online chat room?"

  He hadn't been in the food court. Wyatt had gone over every inch of the mall's surveillance tapes. Wherever the unsub had been when he'd picked up the signal, it hadn't been within camera range.

  Sighing, she mumbled, "That's about all you know, then."

  She didn't ask about the forensics from inside the stolen van, or the beach shack. Some issues were apparently too much, even for her. Nor did she ask him about the other online leads, what other information they'd gotten from the chat rooms and message boards where she, posting as a little girl, had attracted the attention of their unsub.

  He suspected he knew why. If Lily hadn't been up here doing her own online investigating, then he was no judge of character at all.

  Maybe you're not. Look what you're doing right now, wondering if she could possibly be a killer.

  Every instinct he owned screamed no. But he had to make certain. He didn't want to spy on her, but he'd gone ahead and checked the mileage on the Jeep. He'd bought it slightly used and had a good idea of what the original mileage had been. If there'd been another several thousand miles on it, his suspicions would have increased. There wasn't, however.

  That didn't mean she couldn't have driven to the closest bus station, train station, or airport. He always left plenty of cash for her personal use.

  She remained silent, still, moving only the tips of her fingers on the surface of the table. Her nails tapped out a nervous beat, and she averted her gaze as she mumbled, "I've been doing some thinking."

  "Undoubtedly." Wyatt stiffened, red flags going up in his head. He already knew that when Lily announced she'd been doing some thinking, he would probably end up trying to talk her out of something. Like, for instance, this whole obsession with tae kwon do and additional weapons training.

  "We've known all along he was someone with money."

  "Yes." The unsub had once offered a small fortune to a serial killer to have his ugly fantasies enacted online.

  "And though he hurt me, he knew enough to keep me alive. To stitch me up."

  He already knew where she was going. "Of course we've considered all the medical personnel who were at that convention. We've looked into their backgrounds, investigated their location the night in question and the week following. We show
ed the witness photos of every registered male attendee we could get a picture of. Nothing."

  She waved a hand. "I know that."

  "Damn it," he muttered, wondering if she knew her ass might not be on the line for staying dead, but certainly could be if she'd been hacking into an FBI computer system.

  She came up with a quick explanation, as if realizing he was holding himself on a very short tether regarding his suspicions about her hacking. "I mean, I know you would do that, not that I know know."

  Of course.

  "I was just thinking about it the other day, though, and wondered if I might be able to help."

  "How? Do you want to see the pictures?"

  "I've seen most of them."

  He closed his eyes and shook his head.

  "Oh, come on, would you relax? I'm not spending my days nosing around in your precious system, okay? It didn't take me more than sixty seconds to find out which hotel and which medical convention was going on that weekend. Nor to find a list of the speakers, honorees, and attendees. Most doctors have Web sites now, you know, and most of those sites have photos of their staff members."

  He didn't take the news as good or bad, knowing from the beginning that she would probably be unable to visually identify the man.

  "What I was thinking is, if we could possibly get any tapes or recordings from that conference, and I listened to the voices…"

  He immediately followed. "I'm sorry. I just don't see that working. It was months ago. You were wounded. And you know he was drugging you."

  She nodded once, undeterred. "Wyatt, I hear that man's voice in my dreams every single night. It is imprinted on my brain."

  Maybe. But dreams were tricky things.

  "I'd know him," she insisted. "Maybe six months ago, I wouldn't have. My head was too clouded. I was too scared. Now. though, I'm thinking rationally, seeing things with utter clarity. And I honestly believe I'd know that voice." She shivered slightly. "That cold, mocking voice."

  He believed her. No, he wasn't certain it would work, but he genuinely believed she thought it would.

  That didn't mean it was a good idea. "It could be risky for you, emotionally. Are you sure you're capable of doing that?"