Level Five

by Carla Cassidy

  He was vaguely aware of Susan calling his name. He wanted to scream at her to shut the fuck up, to get lost and leave him to stare at the woman who torched such need through his veins.

  He could just imagine the silkiness of her hair in his fist, those lovely eyes widened in horror. Oh yes, he wanted this woman.

  He scanned the poster, looking at her name. Edie Carpenter. She’d be here tomorrow between two and four to sign her newest release, a true crime novel.

  Pictures could be photo shopped. There was a possibility that in reality her eyes might not be quite as blue as they appeared in her picture. Her hair might not really be that curtain of silky darkness.

  It was possible in real life she looked nothing like her publicity photograph, but he’d be here tomorrow to find out. If she was what he wanted, what he needed to stop the tormenting burn inside him for just a little while, he’d do whatever necessary to get her as his new project.

  As Susan called his name once again, he turned and smiled at her. “Come on.” He flung an arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go inside and look around and maybe I’ll buy you one of those romance books you like.”

  “Oh, Anthony, you’re the sweetest man I’ve ever met,” she gushed as they walked into the book store.

  Chapter 10

  Saturday morning Jake and Edie shared a leisurely late breakfast of bacon and eggs and wheat toast. He knew how the day would go, how the distance would begin to creep into her as the book signing drew nearer. He called it her zone and once she got into the zone she’d remain there until bedtime.

  “It’s nice you’re going with me today,” she said as she took a sip of her coffee. She was clad in a pair of hot pink panties and a bright yellow T-shirt that nearly swallowed the upper portion of her slender body. Her hair was still bed messed, but her face was scrubbed shiny clean. He thought she’d never looked prettier.

  “I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be,” he replied. “I just hope my phone stays quiet so I can enjoy the whole spectacle.” Although there was nothing hot on his desk at the moment and the weekends were his normal days off, he never knew when a call would come in that he was needed.

  “It’s not a spectacle, it’s just a simple book signing,” she replied as she picked up a second piece of toast.

  He grinned at her. “It’s two hours of people fawning over you and telling you how wonderful you are. You preen like a peacock and…” He laughed and dodged as she threw her slice of toast at him.

  “You know how these things usually go, I’ll have at least five people ask me where the restroom is in the store, at least ten people will tell me they don’t like what I write and that’s only if there happens to be fifteen people in the store during the signing.”

  “You know that’s not true,” he replied, knowing that this was about the time her nerves were starting to kick in. “With your last two books you’ve developed a real following. You’ll probably be so busy signing books you won’t even notice me standing in the corner.”

  “I’d notice you no matter what corner you were standing in,” she replied seriously. Her eyes held a shimmer of love, a whisper of need. It was that which kept him coming back to her, living within the constraints she had placed on their relationship even though he wasn’t one hundred percent fulfilled. And of course there was always the hot sex to keep him coming back, he thought with a wry inward smile.

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’re thinking about sex.”

  He feigned innocence. “What makes you think that?”

  “I know you too well, Jake Warner. While I’m sitting here thinking about how many books I might be able to sell this afternoon you’re thinking about sex. You had that sex look in your eyes.”

  He laughed and held up his hands in defeat. “Okay, you busted me. I was just thinking that I heard someplace that if you have hot wild sex before a book signing you sell a whole lot of books.”

  “I’m pretty sure that isn’t from Confucius.”

  “No, it came from the Great Goddess of the pink panties.”

  She stood up and pulled her T-shirt up. “You mean these pink panties?” She took them off and gave him a wicked smile. “You know I want to sell a lot of books this afternoon. Let’s go test this theory of yours.”

  Minutes later they were naked in her bed, her sweet breath hot against his neck as he caressed her breasts. Jake had always thought of himself as a big breast man before he met Edie, whose small breasts fit perfectly in the cup of his palms.

  Making love with Edie wasn’t a simple incident, it was a major event. He’d never met a woman who gave so much and demanded just as much in return. She was abandoned and passionate and always when they were finished he felt as if she’d had him heart and soul. He wasn’t sure he had her in the same way.

  Maybe it was the mystery that kept him hanging around, his need as a detective to figure out that small bit of obscurity, to solve the very mystery of Edie.

  At the moment all he wanted to do was drive himself deeply enough, hard enough into her that he would somehow mark her as his own, make it impossible for her to ever think of making love with anyone else for the rest of her life.

  With this thought in mind he moved between her slender legs and slowly slid into her, watching her eyes as she hissed in a breath.

  As he settled into her, with her inner muscles tightening around him, he found it impossible to think about anything but the sensations that flooded through him. Her moist tightness, the scent of her that filled his head and gasps of pleasure that escaped them took complete possession of him.

  They moved together with the familiarity of old lovers who still and always would find pleasure together. He knew just where to touch her, just how fast and how slow to pace himself to make sure that she reached her climax before he allowed himself his own.

  Afterward she rolled over on top of him, her blues eyes slitted with the kind of lazy pleasure of a cat who finds a sunny spot on the floor.

  “Amazing, as usual,” she said. “Even if I don’t sell a single book, I am a contented woman.”

  He leaned up to capture her mouth with his. When the kiss ended he smiled at her. “After that, if nobody buys any of your books, I’ll buy every single copy the store has.”

  She laughed and swatted his chest as she rolled off him and out of the bed. “Promises, promises, that’s all I get from you after we’ve had good sex. Now I’m heading for the shower to start to get ready to look like successful author Edie Carpenter.”

  He watched the wiggle of her ass as she left the room. She had a great ass. As she disappeared into the bathroom he remained in the bed.

  It was still early. He’d have plenty of time to get ready when she left the bathroom. And when she left the bathroom he knew she’d be in the zone, quiet and introspective, gathering her energy to be on for the duration of the signing.

  As always when he had a moment alone if he wasn’t thinking about Edie, his thoughts turned to his work. He felt the frown that crept across his forehead as he thought of the latest missing person’s report. It was quickly becoming a cold case.

  It had been two weeks since Maggie Black had disappeared from the McDonald’s parking lot. Her car had been impounded and gone over by techs. They had found her cell phone tucked beneath the floor mat in the back seat. Other than that, there had been absolutely nothing else that might give them a clue as to what had happened to her.

  Neither her cell phone nor her laptop computer had yielded anything remarkable. Maggie did a little social networking but not a lot. Most of the cell phone calls she’d received had been either from her mother or girlfriends. It seemed that Maggie was exactly how her mother had described her, a nice girl who worried about her college grades and wasn’t into anything that would put her in a high risk category. And yet she was gone.

  It was as if a mother ship from some alien nation had sucked Maggie straight up into the air, not even leaving the faint marks of her shoe prints behind.

 
; He’d say they’d hit a dead end, but there had never been an alley to follow. It had been the same in the Kelly Preston case…beautiful young woman goes missing without a clue, without any real leads to follow.

  Certainly he’d reminded Teddy many times that they didn’t always solve their cases, but both he and Teddy took each one very personally.

  It wasn’t the photo of Maggie that haunted him when he closed his eyes to sleep, rather it was a vision of Maggie’s mother, Danielle.

  At least once a day she called him or Teddy, wondering if they’d found any leads and what she should do and when would Maggie be found? Jake found the calls heartbreaking. More than anything he wanted to give Danielle answers. The truth was they just didn’t have any to give and might never be able to give her the closure she needed.

  He must have fallen asleep for when he awakened later he was alone in the bedroom and a glance at the clock told him he’d been asleep for almost an hour.

  He rolled out of the bed and grabbed the shorts he’d been wearing during breakfast from the floor. He pulled them on and went in search of Edie.

  He found her at her computer in her office. She was dressed for the signing in black slacks and a white and black blouse with matching jewelry. She looked chic and successful and she offered him a vague smile and then returned her gaze to the computer screen. “I was just about to wake you up. We’ve got to leave here in about thirty minutes or so.”

  “I’ll be ready,” he replied and headed for the shower.

  A half an hour later he was dressed in a pair of dress slacks and a black and white pin-striped shirt that was one of Edie’s favorites. He followed Edie in his own car to the book store. He had to have his own wheels should something pop at the station and so whenever she had a commitment like this they always drove separately.

  As always these very public outings for Edie created a small burn of tension in Jake’s gut. Maybe it was because he’d been a cop for so long, had seen the very worst that humanity could offer, or maybe it was just because he loved her so damned much.

  He worried that some creep would become enamored of her, that a fan would somehow step over the line. Jake was intimately familiar with the number of psychos that walked around looking like normal people. He didn’t want any of them anywhere near Edie.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t wrap her in a bubble or lock her up in a safe house. Her job required a certain amount of visibility, book signings and interviews, appearances on the local news and speaking engagements. That put her in the public eye.

  Stop thinking like a cop. How many times had Edie told him that in the course of their relationship? She didn’t understand that thinking like a cop wasn’t what he did, it was who he was at his very core.

  Still, for the next two hours he intended to put his cop hat away and just be the supportive boyfriend. He enjoyed watching her at these things. She sparkled with such brilliance that it burned inside his soul, a brilliance that he knew when the signing was over would overwhelm her with exhaustion.

  They’d go home and order a pizza, then she’d tumble into bed and enjoy the sleep of the innocent while he’d lay awake and worry about all the creeps that might have seen her that day.

  Anthony awakened Saturday morning before dawn, a thrill of anticipation driving him from his bed. He made his way from his bedroom, down the stairs that were an obstacle course of stacked hardback books and to the kitchen where there was a single empty chair and just enough space at the table for him to eat a meal.

  In order to make coffee he had to remove a stack of plastic food storage bins from the sink and that required him moving part of a collection of canisters to the floor. It was a well-orchestrated dance to get him a pot full of water, and then more choreography to get the water and coffee into the coffee maker half-buried by the pots and pans he’d salvaged from his mother’s house before it had been demolished.

  It was a routine that was comfortable, accomplished without any thought. His feet knew exactly where to step, his body knew how to contort in order to accomplish what he needed at the moment.

  He sat at the chair as the scent of fresh-brewed coffee filled the air. The other chairs were buried beneath boxes of other things he’d brought from his mother’s home. Eventually he planned to go through them to see what he wanted to keep. But each morning that he faced the boxes, memories of his life with his mother fired into his brain and the seething rage that was never far from the surface threatened to erupt.

  This morning as he sipped his coffee the boxes were the last thing on his mind. Instead a vision of the poster he’d seen in the bookstore window filled his head.

  Edie Carpenter. Her name was burned into his brain, the vision of her long dark hair and bright blue eyes had made him feel like he was five-years-old again and staring into his mother’s face, seeking some sort of affirmation of his own life. Searching those beautiful blue eyes, waiting for a smile of affection to lift the corners of her lush lips, needing something from her that never came.

  Love me, a little boy’s voice cried inside him. Just make me feel loved. He bit his lips, forcing the little boy deep inside him.

  Saturdays were often hunting days for him. He’d usually drive aimlessly around the city, the further away from his house the better, seeking new projects and if not finding anyone to his taste, then using the opportunity to hit a couple of thrift stores or see what people had placed out by the curb for pick-up.

  But today he was immersed in thoughts of Edie. When he’d gotten home from his date the night before he’d climbed into bed with his laptop and had gone cyber-searching, digging up any information he could get on the crime writer.

  Edie Carpenter wasn’t exactly a household name but her career was definitely taking off. She had a professional web page that displayed the cover of her latest book and gave a generic bio that said a lot of things but actually told very little about the woman herself.

  The photo on the web site had been the same one that hung in the store window. On paper and in the cyber world her physical appearance definitely stirred his blood, made him a little light-headed with need. He wouldn’t know for sure if she was right for his next project until he saw her in person. And that meant going to the signing.

  As he took a sip of his coffee and thought about Edie Carpenter, he absently swatted a cockroach off the table with the back of his hand.

  There was a bit of a mess in the paper room, left from Maggie. He’d spend the morning swiping up the dried old blood, getting rid of any flesh or brain matter that might cling to the hardwood floors in preparation of a new project.

  Even if he discovered this afternoon that Edie wasn’t right, he needed to find somebody to fill the emptiness of his paper room. The hunger inside him had been simmering and he felt an imminent explosion. He needed to find somebody soon.

  The book signing lasted until four. If Edie wasn’t the woman he needed for his next project then he’d have the rest of the evening and all day tomorrow to hunt, to find somebody who was right for his needs.

  In the meantime, maybe he’d check a couple of dumpsters this morning to help the day pass more quickly. He needed…he needed…a dark cloud of despair descended on him. If he didn’t get something…someone soon, he knew he was going to die. He slammed a hand down on the table, this time crunching a cockroach beneath his hand as anger combined with anguish to create a barely controlled rage.

  Chapter 11

  Book signings terrified Edie on any number of levels. She feared that the only people who would talk to her were customers seeking the bathroom or the poetry section of the store. It worried her that nobody would show up and she’d feel responsible for the amount of books that had been ordered by the store on her behalf.

  She was afraid she’d somehow make an ass out of herself and for years after people would talk about the goofy crime writer they’d once met in a bookstore.

  She knew these fears were irrational. Oh, she could always count on somebody to ask her where th
e restroom was, and the books that didn’t sell could be sent back to the publisher. She rarely made an ass out of herself on any occasion.

  As Jake pulled into the parking lot behind the large bookstore and came to a stop next to her car, a burst of adrenaline flooded through her veins. She knew it was an adrenaline that would be with her until the signing was over, leaving her exhausted from being ‘on’ for the next couple of hours.

  “You okay?” Jake asked as he got out of his car and joined her at her driver door.

  “As okay as I ever am at these things.” She gathered her purse and a handful of flyers from the passenger seat. “I just want to make Terri, my agent and my editor all happy today.”

  “Try to take a minute and feel some happiness for you,” Jake said, making her smile with appreciation for the man who was such an integral part of her life.

  The heat of the day rode their shoulders as they crossed the parking area. As they walked into the front door she was grateful to see that the store was busy. Terri had set up a lovely table with a bright yellow tablecloth, a bouquet of fresh flowers and stacks of her books.

  Terri greeted them with a bright smile. “We already have several people in the store who have just been waiting for you to arrive.” She checked her wristwatch. “You’re a bit early. I expect you’ll have a line forming within the next ten minutes or so.”

  Edie thrilled at the fact that she was in a place in her career where a line of people would form, people all waiting to meet her and get her latest release. It was a culmination of hard work and an unwavering dream. She turned as Jake touched her shoulder. “I’m going to go get a cup of coffee and then I’ll just lurk in corners until you’re finished.”

  She flashed him a grateful smile. He knew the last thing she needed to worry about was if he was bored. He’d make himself comfortable and she wouldn’t have to give him another thought until it was time to go home.