And that person was now setting him up for the murders.
“What did you mean?” he demanded, striding into the kitchen where Gracie was sitting at the kitchen table, a steaming mug between her hands. “You said you knew I wasn’t there that morning, the morning Sarah was killed. What did you mean?”
She didn’t respond immediately, caught in her own thoughts. She looked at him, her pretty eyes misty with unshed tears. She brushed a hand over her cheek and sighed, her eyes dropping back to the mug before she answered.
“I was there that morning.”
“Where?”
“Outside your apartment. I wanted to catch you, talk to you about the case. I wanted to know what you knew about Dirk Francis.”
“You were outside my apartment when Sarah died?”
She shook her head, lifting the mug to her lips. Durango wanted to grab her arm, twist her around and force her to look at him, tell him what the hell was going on. He felt like they were walking around in verbal circles and it was making him dizzy.
“Tell me what you know!”
She grimaced a little, startled by the urgency and the anger in his voice. But that was her only response.
He jerked out the chair beside her and sat, crossing his legs in an exaggerated attempt at patience. Tears filled her eyes again, a single one falling down her cheek as she stared into her mug.
“I was there,” she said in such a little voice that he could barely hear her. She was Gracie again, mousy and shy, afraid to speak for the reaction she might get. “I saw you come out. I saw him go in.”
“Him?” Durango was confused for a moment, but then the cold truth of it trickled down his spine. “You saw him?”
“He was outside the building. I didn’t put it together, didn’t realize . . . If I’d known, I would have stopped him. I would have told you. I would have . . . I’d have done something!”
He grabbed her arm, jerked her around. “You saw him?”
“I saw him. He was standing on the sidewalk, sucking on a cup of coffee like he was waiting for someone. He was wearing a jogging suit, one of those vintage things like from the seventies. He had on a ball cap and a heavy beard. I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t tell anything about him except that he was white, he was at least six feet tall, and he had a pot belly like guys who drink too much beer have.”
It hit Durango in the gut, forcing him to fold over, the air bursting out of him like he’d taken a punch right in the solar plexus. He grunted, the memory of Sarah’s body lying cold and lifeless on the coroner’s slab bursting so vibrantly across his thoughts that he jumped out of the chair and lost what little he’d eaten that day in the sink. The dry heaves came after, tearing him up until he could barely take a breath.
She touched his back, a soothing caress between his shoulder blades. He jerked away, just the idea of her touch sending new spasms through his stomach.
“You saw him, and you did nothing?”
His words were quiet, but the accusation was clear.
“I didn’t know. You came out, and I saw him go in. It didn’t occur to me until later—”
“And you’ve known all this time? Five years. You’ve known for five years that it wasn’t me, that it was this other guy. You knew what he looked like, knew that he was still out there, and you didn’t do anything?”
“I didn’t see enough to identify him.”
“But you knew!”
“Do you think I didn’t do everything I could to help you? I went to my bosses, I told them what I saw! I fought as hard as I could, but I was just a field agent, they wouldn’t—”
“You didn’t fight hard enough, and now Kyle’s dead! Hyde and that other girl and Felicity and—”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her up against the refrigerator.
“If you had told me sooner who you were and what you knew, we could have protected them! We might have changed this!”
“How do you know that? I saw literally nothing!”
“You saw him. You’re the first person to see him who’s not dead, don’t you understand that?”
He pressed his fingers hard into her shoulders, the pain of frustration and grief burning through him, tearing him apart. He wanted to shake her, to tear her apart the way she was tearing him up, wanted to blame her for the hurt and pain of losing Sarah, of the insult of going through the murder trial, wanted to hurt her the way he’d been hurting for five long, horrible years. But the tears running down her face, the guilt he saw in those beautiful eyes.
“I don’t even know you.” He pushed her hard against the fridge, then let go stepping back, suddenly feeling the exhaustion of the long night. It wasn’t just a physical exhaustion, but an emotional one, as well. He just wanted to give up, to let what was going to happen, happen.
“Durango,” she whispered, defeat laced heavily in her voice.
“I’m done.” He waved a hand at her as he stepped back even more, trying to put as much space between them as possible. “You should have just left me in that jail.”
Her eyes widened. “Why? So more people can die?” She grunted a low, angry sound. “Are you really so self-centered as to believe that he’ll stop when you go to jail? Knowing everything you know now? Do you really think he’s capable of stopping?”
He didn’t want to listen to her. He turned and headed toward the door, but her voice following him like an eager puppy snapping at his heels.
“He’s been killing for twenty years, Durango! He’s killed more than two dozen women, maybe more. All those months and years of dormant activity? How do we know he wasn’t in a foreign country, killing women there? How do we know he didn’t continue and simply found a way to hide it? How do we know that there aren’t dozens more women out there, missing women, women whose families have been left without any knowledge of what happened to them, women who he took from them? And how do we know that he won’t keep doing it when you go to jail?”
He stopped cold, his stomach wanting to evacuate itself again. He pressed a hand to the center of his chest, his thoughts once again absorbed with Sarah, with Kyle, with the sight of these women he’d loved in such different ways, but just as passionately, just as completely. And then his mother’s face crossed his mind, the woman who should have lived a long and happy life, the woman who should have been his mother, his source of compassion and affection, but wasn’t. He’d lost so much.
He walked away, not because he disagreed with Gracie, but because he knew she was right. Not only that, but he knew she was his only hope of finding this killer before he took another victim.
Chapter 5
Lorenzo, Indiana
Franklin Family Home
“I got some of the forensic reports, but my access is limited now. Do you think you could use your resources to get the rest?”
Gracie played with the cord on the old phone, her fingers getting stuck inside the coils. She remembered doing this as a teenager, annoyed with her parents that they wouldn’t get a cordless so that she could talk to her friends without her mother standing there, hanging on every word. She understood now that they were trying to protect her, but, at the time, all she could see was that they were invading her privacy.
“I’ll do what I can,” Calder’s deep voice said in her ear, “but no guarantees. The Chicago PD is pretty pissed with your stunt. They aren’t being incredibly cooperative.”
“I know. But we need that information, need to find that one little slipup.”
“We’ll get it, one way or the other.”
“Good. Anything else? Anything new?”
“Not really. The DNA results came back on Detective Hyde. It’s a match for Durango, but we knew it would be.”
“We did.”
She sighed. To be honest, she was half hoping it wouldn’t be a match. She wanted to believe that Durango was smart enough not to have sex with one of the Harrison Strangler’s victims just an hour before she was killed, but she knew it was naive to have though
ts like that. First, Durango couldn’t have known the strangler was targeting Hyde. Second, he was a grown man who had no romantic attachments. He had a right to sleep with whoever he wanted. Just because she thought there’d been something of a spark between them at Kyle’s funeral, didn’t mean he felt it.
Though his actions later suggested otherwise. But that was after Hyde, after Kyle, after his world was turned upside down and he was reaching out for whatever handhold he could find. Again, she shouldn’t be so naive.
“Did the Springfield PD show up?”
“No. They’re aware of the open case in Chicago. I think they’re willing to sit back and see if Chicago is luckier this time around.”
“Okay.”
“What’s the plan now, Gracie? You can’t just go on the run with him and hope it all blows over.”
“No,” she agreed. “We have to figure this out. We have to identify the real killer.”
“What if that’s asking too much?”
“Durango’s our boss, Calder. Our friend. We have to do all we can to help him.”
“And if he’s guilty?”
Almost as if he could hear the conversation, Durango burst into the room and tossed the duffle she’d brought from his condo onto the table.
“What’s that?” she asked, ignoring Calder’s question.
“If we’re going to do this, then we need to go to Los Angeles.”
“Why?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes like steel. “If the killer is someone who traveled with my father, then we should go directly to the source. He is a lot of things, a lot of things I don’t like, but he’s also a hell of a business man. He keeps fantastic records of everything that took place on the set of each of his movies. He’ll know who was there, even the people who weren’t otherwise documented.”
She nodded, following his logic. “He’ll be able to tell us who should be on our suspect list.”
Durango didn’t react. He just stood there, his arms crossed, looking like a soldier waiting for his captive to stop protesting his fate. She turned slightly, untangling her finger from the phone cord as she spoke to Calder.
“We might have a new lead. I’ll keep in touch, but you focus on getting more information on the Chicago case.”
“Gracie—”
“It’s important we have those forensic reports. We need to make sure we’re chasing the right asshole.”
“All right. I’ll talk to Axel. Maybe between the two of us, we’ll get some results.”
“Thanks, Calder.”
She hung up and turned back to Durango. He was still watching her, his eyes still as hard as steel.
“He’s trying to get information on the Chicago case. We need to verify it was the strangler.”
“Who else could it be?”
“She was a television producer. I can imagine she had plenty of enemies.”
Durango shrugged. “We’ll need names of movies, dates, and places. As much information as possible to make it as painless as possible.”
“I’ve got all that.”
“Good. Get packed.”
Gracie’s eyebrows rose, but she nodded. She climbed the stairs, exhaustion from the long night making every step so heavy she wasn’t sure she’d make it all the way up. She stripped the moment she entered her childhood bedroom, grabbing an old bathrobe that still hung from the hook on the back of the door—her mother liked to keep everything the same just in case she decided to come home one day. She pulled the robe close to her face to take a deep breath of the fabric softener her mother had used her entire childhood. It was faded—time does that—but it was still there. Or maybe it was just a memory. Whatever it was, it soothed her soul just a little.
She crossed the hall to the bathroom, happy to find the shower fully stocked. Thank you, Mr. Young. She let the water pound against her skin, her eyes closed as she turned her face up to the spray. They’d have to drive. Flying was out of the question because the Chicago PD would be notified the moment Durango’s name showed up on a flight manifest. Indiana to Los Angeles, driving ten hours a day, it would take three days. Not horrible. Not great. Durango’s anger with her would make the whole thing tense.
But, again . . .
She couldn’t stop thinking about that afternoon in Durango’s office, the feel of his lips on hers, the taste of his skin, the feel of his hot breath . . . It was juvenile. She hated herself that she could become so obsessed with a man. After fighting so hard to become an FBI agent, after showing the world how independent she was and how she didn’t need a man, she hated herself for falling for this man as hard as she had. And it wasn’t even a recent thing. She knew this was happening, and she should have created distance, allowed her boss to put someone else in Mastiff to watch over him. Because the thing was, she fell for him while she sat in the back of a Chicago courtroom watching him fight for his freedom.
“Mr. Masters, can you please tell the court how you met your fiancée?”
Durango looked out over the room, his eyes barely touching on the prosecutor’s table. His concentration was on a group of people behind them, a tall man and the middle-aged woman beside him. The victim’s parents.
“We met at a party, a fundraiser I attended with my brother, Billy. We hit it off immediately and were practically inseparable afterward. She is . . .” his voice broke, “was funny and intelligent and a light like nothing I’d ever known before.” He shook his head, brushing a hand over his cheek. He wasn’t crying, but he seemed like he might be on the verge. And when he began speaking again, his voice trembled. “Sarah was more than just my fiancée. She was my whole world.”
“You’re a detective with the Chicago Police Department, correct, Mr. Masters?” his lawyer asked after a respectful moment to allow him to catch his breath.
“I was, yes.”
“What was your last case in that capacity?”
“I was working a series of murders that had taken place in the city.”
“Eight murders to be exact. Right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’d made an arrest the night before your fiancée was murdered?”
“Yes.” Durango straightened a little, the cop in him coming out. “We’d been investigating the case for nearly two years. As part of the investigation, we were trying to connect the victims to one another, assuming that the killer was choosing them for a specific reason. All eight victims were in their twenties, blond, and blue eyed, but the similarities stopped there. Some were students, some working women, some were stay at home moms. Their lives did not appear to intersect until we discovered that all of their names appeared on a mailing list for a small boutique’s catalog. We discovered that a hacker, Dirk Francis, had hacked the store’s system just before the murders began. We also discovered that he’d been seen in the neighborhoods where the four of the victims lived in the days and weeks before their murders.” He paused, his eyes moving to Sarah’s parents once more. “When we arrested him, we found items in his apartment that belonged to five of the eight victims.”
“You were convinced you had the real Harrison Strangler.”
“I was. I still am.”
“What happened to Dirk Francis?”
Durango’s eyes fell to his hands. “He was found murdered the same morning Sarah . . .” Again, his voice broke. “The morning she died.”
“Yet, you still believe he’s the killer?”
“I believe he had a partner, and it was his partner who came after Sarah. I believe she was killed in retaliation for my part in the investigation.”
The lawyer allowed those words to settle on the jury for a long moment. Then he stepped up to the witness stand and looked down at Durango with all the compassion he could possibly have mustered. Gracie could feel that compassion, even at the back of the courtroom.
“Mr. Masters, did you love your fiancée?”
Durango gasped, his head coming up sharply. “More than life!”
The lawyer nod
ded sympathetically. “Did you kill her?”
Only then did Durango look at the prosecutor’s table. Only then did he allow emotion to shine brightly on his face. Anger, mixed with profound grief, changed his handsome face into something almost fearful while at the same time overwhelmingly endearing.
“No, sir. I did not kill her. She was everything to me.”
The memory of it, of that moment, still caused goose bumps to break out on Gracie’s arms. That was the moment she knew Durango was innocent, the moment she knew that he was something so much more than they were painting him to be in the press. And she knew then that she had to prove it wasn’t him, that he hadn’t hurt those women. That should have been the moment when she realized she was too enamored of him to be objective, but she didn’t. Or she didn’t want to admit it to herself.
She shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be doing this. Someone was going to figure out what they’d done, that the paperwork that got Durango out of the county jail was based on a bunch of bullshit. She would lose her job when the truth came out. Lose her job, maybe even go to jail herself. And if they didn’t prove Durango’s innocence before that happened, he’d go to jail, too. Or worse.
Pain sliced through her chest when she thought of the pills he held in one hand and the gun he had in the other less than forty-eight hours ago. Had he really thought suicide was the only way out? She shivered as she tried to imagine a world without Durango Masters in it. She couldn’t. He was a force, one of those people who changed the atmosphere of a room just by walking into it. Even if she never set eyes on him again when this was all over, she wanted him to stay in the world. If she failed, if he didn’t survive this, then losing her job would be the least of it.
Gracie finished showering and stepped out, drying off with the clean towels hanging on the rack. She slipped her bathrobe on, once again pulling it close to her face to catch a whiff of the fabric softener that said home to her. She was lost in her thoughts as she stepped through the door, unaware Durango had come upstairs. He was leaning against the wall beside her bedroom door, watching her, a thoughtful expression in his eyes.
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