Killer Focus

by Fiona Brand

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Everything. She was in love with him.

  In retrospect it hadn’t been a sudden process. She had seen him on a daily basis for weeks and steadily grown into the emotions. The day she had gone jogging and had finally registered Fischer on a sexual level, the attraction had blindsided her. From that point on, she had been gone.

  His gaze sharpened. “Something’s changed.”

  He took the glass of soda from her hands and set it down on the counter. She registered his intent a split second before his head dipped and his mouth settled on hers. The hungry pressure of the kiss sent a raw shudder through her. Fischer had been polite, the perfect host, but she had no illusions that he would play the gentleman when it came to sex. Safe haven or not, he had never made any bones about the fact that he wanted her.

  Fischer lifted his mouth, his gaze searching. “I hadn’t meant for this to happen. It’s your call.”

  She hooked her fingers in his shirt and pulled him close. “Don’t give me time to think.” If she had time she would say no, because doing this was crazy. She had to leave, and sleeping with Fischer was going to make walking away even more difficult.

  He stepped in close, crowding her against the counter. “What made you change your mind?”

  “Don’t ask.” She cupped his face and kissed him back, imprinting the scent and taste of him, the hard warmth of muscle. She didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to examine—not when she would lose him tomorrow.

  Long, drugging minutes later, his hands, settled at her waist, swept upward, peeling her limp T-Shirt from her arms. Cold air raised goose bumps. A split second later his mouth fastened over one breast through the fabric of her bra and the stirring ache in her belly sharpened.

  Rain pounded on the windows, the cold from outside at odds with the heat flushing her skin. She felt the release as her jeans were unfastened, Fischer’s hands working her jeans and panties down, the rush of cool air against her skin. His hands closed on her bottom and she wound her arms around his neck as he lifted her onto the counter. Seconds later, he shoved deep.

  Shock reverberated as she registered the drag of the condom. She hadn’t seen him sheathe himself and she hadn’t given a thought to protection, but Fischer had; he must have had the condom in his jeans pocket.

  Her fingers dug into his shoulders as he continued to thrust. The hot, stirring ache started again and her belly clenched. She lifted her head, Fischer’s eyes locked with hers and sultry heat exploded in the room.

  For long seconds she simply hung on, her head buried against his shoulder while she adjusted to the feel of him.

  A small shiver went through her as he finally withdrew and carried her through to the bedroom. Rain pounded on the windows, filling the room with a damp chill, as he set her on her feet, unhooked her bra, discarded it then peeled out of his clothes.

  She pulled back the bedcovers and slid between the sheets. Lamplight slid over his broad, tanned back as he smoothed on another condom, then joined her in bed, the heat of his body burning away the chill.

  She wound her arms around his neck and settled against him. “What about dinner?”

  His gaze locked with hers and heat swept through her again.

  “Later.”

  When she woke, it was still raining and the wind was gusting powerfully enough to make the windows shake. Light from the sitting room filtered down the hall, dimly illuminating the room, although she didn’t need light to know that Fischer—Steve—was awake.

  Her palm slid over his chest, enjoying the feel of hard muscle and damp skin. His hand closed over hers. Her eyes flipped open and she logged the fact that he was watching her.

  “So what made you notice me? Up until a few days ago I was the invisible man.”

  She smothered a yawn. With light gleaming off broad shoulders, a five-o’clock shadow roughening his jaw, she wondered that she had ever not noticed him. “Your truck.”

  “If I’d known that I would have taken it to work earlier.”

  She propped herself up on one elbow. “You can tell what people are really like by the vehicle they drive. For example, Dane looks great—the tan, the ponytail—but he drives a hatchback.”

  His expression was bemused. “What’s wrong with hatchbacks?”

  “They’re short. Cut off.”

  Fischer wound a finger in her hair and tugged. “Back to the truck.”

  She shifted closer, her thigh sliding between his. “If anyone had asked me, I would have had you pegged for a station wagon or an SUV. Something manly but practical.” She ran a finger down his chest. “Instead you had a four-wheel-drive muscle truck with mud spattered on the wheel arches.”

  “The mud counted?”

  She smothered a yawn. “It meant you went off road.”

  “You are kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  He pulled her close, his fingers sliding through her hair. “You drive an SUV. What does that mean?”

  “The SUV doesn’t count.”

  “Because it goes with the new identity.” His teeth closed over one lobe and a shiver went down her spine.

  She let out a breath, the tension in the pit of her stomach growing. “That’s right.”

  “What if my truck was a cover?”

  She slid a hand beneath the sheet, found his penis and gently squeezed. “Trust me, it isn’t.”

  Eighteen

  Morning sunlight beamed across the front of Taylor’s house as she unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway. Moving quickly, she walked through the rooms, checking closets and cupboards, just in case Buster had somehow managed to conceal himself and was trapped inside. When she’d ascertained that the house was empty, she began searching outside. Fischer had left for work at his usual time. When he realized she wasn’t coming in, he would come looking for her. By her calculation she had until eight-thirty, maximum.

  Calling softly, she searched underneath the house and the deck, then started on the backyard. The empty tuna dish on the deck indicated that Buster had come back to eat—either that, or the dish had been emptied by one of the neighboring cats.

  A sharp wail, like the sound of a crying baby, jerked her head up. At the rear of the yard, just beyond the fence, she caught a glimpse of tabby markings and a fluffy white paw.

  Heart pounding, because she had never heard an animal utter a sound like that, she climbed the fence into the overgrown reserve that backed onto her property, pushed through thick undergrowth and finally emerged in a clearing. She searched the area directly behind her house then began to walk, still calling. The ground sloped gently toward a drain, the surface lumpy and uneven where water had flowed over the ground, flattening grass and scouring the dirt. Mounds of leaves, shaken loose in the storm, lay in thick drifts.

  Something pale gleamed at the edge of the clearing. She walked toward the flash of color, calling Buster’s name, then froze, as the peculiar arrangement of light and shadow suddenly made sense. The outline of a body, partially covered with leaves and dirt, was just barely discernible.

  Stepping closer, she studied the head. He was male and Caucasian, with a patch of shaved scalp punctured by two neat, round holes. The glint of a steel earring made him instantly recognizable: Hansen. The last time she had seen him alive, he had been mowing Letty’s lawn.

  She retraced her steps so she didn’t disturb the crime scene any more than she already had. Clambering over the fence, she pushed through shrubs, stopping short before she stepped out onto the open, exposed area of her lawn.

  Muir had thought that the appliance thief might have a connection to the newsagents or the post office, but a lawn-mowing service was even better. Hansen had regularly traveled around quiet neighborhoods, talking to residents and neighbors; he would have been notified when clients were away on vacation.

  From memory his truck had been covered, not open, and it had been backed into Letty’s driveway. In retrospect that hadn’t been necessary when all he
’d had to do was unload a lawn mower and an edge trimmer. But if Hansen had been concerned with loading appliances, backing in made perfect sense.

  If she wasn’t mistaken, Cold Peak’s appliance thief was now lying in a shallow grave at the edge of the park with a double tap to the back of his head. In contrast to Letty’s murder, the execution-style killing of the lawn contractor was both professional and chilling. Muir had been satisfied that Letty’s death was linked to the thefts, but that theory might not fly now that Hansen had wound up dead.

  For the first time in months her mind was sharp and clear. The shot fired at the shooting range, the theft of her computer and two distinctly different murders happening right next door suddenly made sense. Neither murder was the result of miscalculation or coincidence; they formed part of a pattern. A lethal pattern that had almost snared her for the third time.

  She had been the killer’s focus all along. He had targeted Letty’s house as a soft option for getting close, moved in and waited to set up a shot, but Hansen had broken in, disturbing him and discovering Letty’s body.

  At a guess, the killer had marched Hansen out of the house at gunpoint, made him climb the fence into the reserve then had shot him. That scenario explained why the killer had returned to Letty’s house, despite the greater risk of discovery after not one killing, but two. It would have taken time to bury Hansen and he would also have had to dispose of the getaway van with the stolen appliances. It also explained why he had taken the added risk of stealing her computer. In a creative twist, he had decided to use the spate of computer and appliance thefts to cover his real target, which had been the disks.

  And there was only one logical reason for him to want the disks. Rina had been right when she had stated that Taylor must have something that Lopez wanted. Somewhere in the torrent of material on Lopez there was information that was important.

  She stared at Letty’s house. He wasn’t there now. With crime-scene tape making the house conspicuous—and a second body—it was no longer a safe haven. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t close.

  Leaves shivered. Buster materialized at the edge of the lawn, half-hidden by shadows, his normally greenish eyes dilated and black.

  He stared at her blankly for a few seconds, then began to keen, the sound high pitched and eerie. Her heart squeezed tight. She finally understood what had been happening. Buster had been spooked for a couple of days before Letty had been killed. With his acute senses, he had known it was no longer safe. He would also have known Letty was dead the night Taylor had tried to take him back, which explained why he had recoiled and bolted. Then, just when he thought he was safe, the killer had broken into her house.

  Scooping Buster up, she carried him inside and through to the kitchen. Setting him down, she reached for a can of tuna, opened it and emptied it into a dish.

  While Buster was eating, she walked through to her bedroom and grabbed an oversize shirt and a dark blue ball cap off a hook in the closet. Coiling her hair up, she jammed the cap down tight then shrugged into the shirt. The shirt made her figure shapeless and the cap hid her hair and shaded her face.

  Walking back into the kitchen, she scooped Buster up and carried him out to the car, sliding in beside him and closing the door before he could lunge through. If he got away now, she would never have another chance to catch him, and she owed it to Letty to make sure Buster was safe.

  Putting the SUV in gear, she reversed out of the garage and onto the road. The street looked normal, a quiet backwater. Just across the road Scanlon was washing his Corvette. Farther down, an elderly lady was walking her Corgi. Neither were candidates for espionage and murder, but somebody was. They had been operating within yards of her, and she had missed them.

  She reached for her cell phone and called the Cold Peak PD as she drove.

  Dispatch picked up the call. She reported the body, supplied the address, then hung up.

  With a jerky movement, she depressed the accelerator. By the time she reached the first intersection, Buster was howling and had somehow managed to entangle himself with her feet and the accelerator.

  After installing Buster in a cattery on the outskirts of town, and paying two weeks in advance, Taylor drove back into Cold Peak, taking a circuitous route. When she was satisfied that she hadn’t been followed, she parked the SUV on a small side street and walked through a mall. Sliding dark glasses onto the bridge of her nose, she crossed the road and walked into the bank. It was nine o’clock and the branch had just opened, so the likelihood that anyone from the gym would be inside was slim. She needed cash, but that would have to wait. Time was running out, and she wasn’t about to expose herself any more than was necessary by standing at the main counter or an ATM.

  Stopping at the information counter, she produced her safe-deposit box key, then waited until a bank officer was available to take her through to the vault.

  Minutes later, she slipped the disks containing copies of the Lopez research files into her bag, along with an envelope containing a set of fake identity papers she had used on and off for operations over the past two years: a birth certificate, driver’s license, bank account and credit card.

  Colenso had requested the return of the papers when her resignation from the Bureau had become effective. Normally, Taylor would have complied without a thought, but a bullet in the back had changed her priorities. She had balanced the ethics of retaining a second identity against her life and told Colenso the ID had been stolen along with the rest of her papers and files.

  Slipping the safe-deposit key into a side pocket of her purse, she strolled out to the main reception area. This early, the bank was quiet. A woman was making a deposit at one of the teller’s booths. To one side, behind a screen of opaque glass, a couple were in conversation with a banker. The main street came into view through the wide expanse of glass windows and doors.

  She froze in midstep. Fischer.

  He was standing just outside the bank, talking with another man. The stranger turned slightly. Shock reverberated through her. He was wearing dark glasses, not spectacles, but she recognized him. The first time she had seen him had been months ago in the library in D.C., the second time on the beach in Wilmington.

  Nineteen

  She was already shuffling back. Fischer had his back turned to her. He hadn’t seen her, but all his companion had to do was turn his head and he would.

  The inquiries clerk, a pretty blonde in her early forties, lifted a brow and mouthed, Someone you don’t want to see?

  As understatements went, that one was huge. She had dated Fischer; she had slept with him. She had wanted more, but it was now clear that Fischer never had.

  Despite Burdett’s extra precautions, Fischer and his friend had followed her from Wilmington. They had kept her under surveillance. Fischer had even gone as far as moving into her place of work and renting a house just down the road.

  Not all of the facts stacked up. The attempt on her life didn’t fit with Fischer taking the time to get close to her. If he had been paid to kill her, the equation was as simple as it had been in D.C.: one good shot and problem solved. If he had wanted information, he could have made his move weeks ago.

  Only one thing was certain—whoever Fischer worked for, and whatever he was doing in Cold Peak, he wasn’t here for the rock climbing.

  She met the woman’s concerned face. “He’s an ex-boyfriend. He doesn’t like taking no for an answer.”

  The woman was careful not to look at the two men, who must have still been in plain view. “Do you want to call the police?”

  The thought was tempting but dangerous when her first, last and only priority had to be to get out of town. By now Muir would have found Hansen. When dispatch replayed the tape of her phone call, he would recognize her voice. His next move would be to find her. “It’s okay, he’s not violent, just persistent.”

  Fischer and his friend would have been caught on the bank’s security cameras. All she had to do was advise Burdett and he could pi
ck them up, although she was aware that it wouldn’t be that easy. Fischer and his buddy were professionals. Once they realized she had left town, they wouldn’t stay in Cold Peak long. “Is there a back door I can use?”

  “Sorry. That’s off-limits to everyone but staff.” The woman walked around from behind her desk, opened the door to an interview room and peered inside. “There’s no one in here. If you want, you can sit down for a few minutes and I’ll let you know when the coast is clear.”

  Taylor set down her bag, took a chair and checked her watch, her urgency to leave town mounting. By now Muir would have discovered that she wasn’t at work. He could even have put an APB out on her car, which meant she needed to be gone. It would take her twenty minutes to make it to the nearest town large enough to have an ATM and a rental-car agency so she could ditch the SUV. It would take a further hour to hit a city with a large enough population that she could disappear. Vermont was pretty, but it was definitely rural, a perfect place to be trapped on narrow country lanes.

  She checked her watch again. It didn’t make the time go any faster, but it helped keep her mind off the mind-numbing emptiness of the mistake she’d made in sleeping with Fischer.

  It was a fact that Fischer had followed her and watched her. Now she had to consider that he had murdered both Letty and Hansen, and stolen her computer. His sidekick had probably broken into her house and taken the computer while they were at the shooting range.

  The logic was inescapable. Even the timing of the gunshot that had narrowly missed her made sense. They had had the computer and the disks, therefore she was now expendable.

  It seemed fair to assume the shooter had been the guy with the glasses. Fischer had probably phoned him while he was out of Taylor’s hearing, made sure he had the disks and given him their current location at the shooting range.