by Wolff, Tracy
Tugging a shirt randomly from the bottom of the pile, she stepped back, startled, as a large manila folder came with it.
A paper clip from the file had gotten snagged on one of the shirt’s arms, and as she pulled them apart, the contents of the file slipped onto the floor.
Cursing, she dropped to her knees and began to pick up the documents and pictures, trying to clean up the mess as quickly as possible. It would be just her luck for Cole to return home to find her apparently riffling through his personal effects. But as she shuffled a group of newspaper clippings together, she froze. Her eyes caught on one of the papers—her name was at the top of the page.
The clipping was over five years old, and showed her receiving an award for valor. She’d still been in uniform then, and more than a little uncomfortable receiving an award she hadn’t felt she deserved. She hadn’t done anything extraordinary, except to live through the nightmare that had killed her partner and three other cops, but her sergeant had disagreed. Had instead paraded her in front of God and everyone like a puppet on a string.
Anger burned in her gut, and she was shocked to realize it still grated even after all these years.
But what was Cole doing with the picture? She began sorting through the clippings. What was he doing with all these pictures of her and other NOPD homicide detectives? Of—her stomach began to churn—photos of homicide scenes that were months and years old?
With an unsteady breath, Genevieve forced herself to look through the entire file when what she really wanted to do was to shove everything back in and forget she’d ever seen any of it.
But she couldn’t do that, she acknowledged as she riffled through the rest of the papers. As she came across a second picture of herself and then a third, her entire body began to shake so badly that she could barely hold the photos.
What kind of game was he playing?
What did he want with this information?
What did he want with her?
Panic welled within her as she continued to sift through the papers. There was a ton of research here—and all of it had to do with murder. Clippings of numerous sexual murders that had taken place in the last few years—including the two from earlier this year, open cases that Genevieve was still working.
The two murders she was sure were connected to the one she’d been called in on yesterday morning. The serial killings Chastian didn’t want to believe in.
Doubts crowded her mind as she relived every second she’d spent with Cole since he’d sat down next to her at the bar last night. Had he planned the whole thing? she wondered as she continued to sift through the damning evidence. Could he have intended for this to happen all along?
She tried to reject the idea; she was the one who had spoken to him first. She was the one who had propositioned him. Surely, if he was the serial killer she was looking for, he wouldn’t have been bold enough to accept her invitation.
She stopped at photos of the DuFray crime scene, her blood running cold at the familiar images. Lorelei DuFray had been a teacher—young, pretty, sweet. But by the time her killer had done with her, they had to use dental records to identify her.
Genevieve winced as she traced a finger over one particularly brutal photo. The crime photographer had managed to catch the body so that every jagged slash and tear was visible.
Shaking her head, she shoved the photo to the bottom of the pile, unable to bear the reminder of her failure for one more second. She’d opened this case three months before and had spent weeks working relentlessly as she’d tried to pin down the perp—all to no avail.
About six weeks later, another body had shown up—the cause of death strangulation instead of exsanguination, but to Genevieve’s experienced eye, the murder had the same killer’s sick and twisted stamp all over it.
The same way it had been all over the case she’d caught yesterday. Of course, she hadn’t been able to do much investigating yet outside of the crime scene and the neighborhood the body had been found in. The girl’s fingerprints hadn’t popped, so even after hours of canvassing the area, they had no idea who she was.
Could Cole have done these terrible things? She closed her eyes, but still the pictures of Lorelei DuFray continued to haunt her. Had she unwittingly let a murderer into bed with her last night?
Had she let a twisted sexual predator inside of her?
Nausea had her stomach cramping, even as everything inside her rejected the notion that Cole could have done these things. He’d been so careful not to hurt her last night, had pushed her to the edge of her control but had never taken her past the point of comfort.
But then, she hadn’t protested anything that he’d done either. If she had, would he have stopped? Last night, she would have said absolutely. But now—she glanced down at the incriminating file. Now all she could think was, What if she’d been wrong?
Sickness churned in her belly, beating at her brain and heart and lungs until all she could think of was escape. Cole would be back soon and she couldn’t face him—not now. Not before she knew who he was and what he wanted.
Glancing around for something that would carry his prints, Genevieve settled on a couple of discarded condom wrappers and the glass he’d left by the bedside last night, after he’d gone to the kitchen for some water. After yanking an extra evidence bag out of her purse, she used the sheet to gingerly pick up the items and slide them into the bag.
Then, desperate to get out of there before Cole made it home, she shoved the file back where she’d found it and yanked the all but forgotten T-shirt over her head. Grabbing her purse and shoes, she ran for the door.
* * *
Cole walked away from the small, broken-down house on Magazine with rage in his gut and cold fear in his heart. The interview hadn’t gone as he’d planned; the woman had been so dried up and emotionally closed off that he’d barely learned anything from her.
Her daughter had been murdered seven years before, presumably by the same sick fuck who had killed his sister. But unlike Cole, this woman had put her faith in the police—and had lost a little bit more of her soul each day that her daughter’s murderer remained on the street.
With a muttered oath, he glanced at his watch. This had taken longer than he’d thought, and Genevieve had probably woken up—alone. It wasn’t what he’d planned for their first morning after. He should have gone with his instincts and canceled the appointment with Mrs. Harlow, but it had been so hard to get her to agree to see him that he hadn’t wanted to do anything to spook her.
Now he was the one who was spooked—the utter hopelessness of the woman’s face haunting him as he made his way through the humid New Orleans morning.
Ignoring the heat, he started walking back toward his house. It was a couple of miles away and normally he would have taken a cab, but right now the walk felt good. Necessary. The heat touching the part of him that had been frozen since Samantha had died, and had grown even colder as he’d interviewed poor Mrs. Harlow. It wasn’t warming him, exactly, but it was keeping absolute despair at bay.
Would he end up like that, he wondered, as he turned left onto St. Charles and continued his trek. Cabs passed him, one after the other, but he didn’t raise a hand to flag them down. Simply turned his face as they slowed and kept up his pace. Dried up and miserable, like Mrs. Harlow—a living shrine to the sister who had died so long ago? The world so out of his control that he no longer had a reason to get up in the morning?
For seven years vengeance had kept him going—the need to find Samantha’s murderer at all costs. It had fueled the years of monitoring the police, the numerous private detectives, even his latest—and last—plan.
But what would he do if it didn’t work?
What if Samantha’s killer was never found, never charged?
Would he be able to move on, to live his life with the knowledge that that monster was still free? Still unpunished? Or would he shrivel up, become a soulless entity, just counting down the days until death?
&n
bsp; He sped up until he was almost running, as if he could somehow go faster than his fears and the memories that haunted him more each day. What would he do if this stack of cards he was assembling failed? He was out of ideas, almost out of hope, and Genevieve was his last chance.
Stopping at the corner market a few blocks before his house, he quickly picked up eggs and bacon, along with some fresh bread and fruit. He’d go home, make breakfast for Genevieve and then lay the whole sordid story out at her feet and pray she would agree to help him. Because if she didn’t, he was completely screwed.
But when he opened the door to his house ten minutes later, he knew he had missed her—the warmth she’d brought to the house, and to him, was gone.
Still, he checked the bedroom for her, praying that he was mistaken. He wasn’t—Genevieve was gone and she hadn’t even bothered to leave him a note.
Cole went back down the stairs to the living room. Mindless of the fact that it was still well before noon, he crossed the huge room and poured himself a shot of Patrón. Tossed it back and wondered, miserably, what he was supposed to do now. What he could do now that he’d screwed everything up so badly.
With the bottle of tequila in one hand and the empty glass in the other, he headed back up the stairs to his office, where he turned on his laptop. While he waited for it to start up, he splashed more Patrón into the glass.
As soon as the computer was ready, his fingers began flying across its keyboard, amassing information at close to the speed of light. God bless the Internet—you really could get anything you wanted on the Web these days. Even information that wasn’t readily available was just a few keystrokes away if you knew what you were doing.
Cole knew exactly what he was doing as he eyed the homicide photos that had been taken early yesterday morning. They’d been uploaded into the NOPD database yesterday afternoon, and he had retrieved them last night, before heading out in search of Genevieve.
Tossing back the shot he’d just poured, he reached for the bottle of Patrón he’d set to the right of the computer. Poured another shot into his glass and knocked it back.
What had he been thinking when he’d brought Genevieve home last night? Had he really expected her to sleep with him and then calmly listen—after the fact—while he laid out the reasons he’d gone looking for her to begin with?
He was a bigger fool than he’d thought, and now he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He had to get to Genevieve, which meant he needed to go to the police station. At the same time, his sudden appearance there would seem suspicious to her; they hadn’t exactly exchanged job descriptions the night before.
Would she believe him when he told her that bringing her home had had nothing to do with the movie he was making—nothing to do with Samantha? Or would she kick him out before he even got the chance to explain?
The second outcome was much more likely, he acknowledged, his fingers tensing on the keyboard. And if that happened—if that happened, he’d be right back where he’d started. With a bunch of research on dead women and a ton of photos he could barely stand to look at.
Glancing back at the computer screen, Cole ran through the photos of recent homicide scenes. He knew what he was looking for—something, anything that might connect to Samantha. Something that might point him in the right direction, even after all this time.
But as he scanned the photos, he knew he’d hacked into the NOPD for no reason—there was nothing here, nothing at all that resembled what had happened to his sister. And yet he couldn’t deny a horrified fascination with the pictures. Couldn’t help wanting Genevieve to find whoever had done these terrible things. So that some other family could find a modicum of the peace that continued to elude him seven years after his baby sister’s brutal murder.
Genevieve could bring him peace. The thought sprang unbidden into his head, even as he snarled at the absurdity of it. She’d done a lot of things to him last night—made him sweat, made him swear, made his body respond in a way it hadn’t for a very long time, if ever. But bring him peace—no, he wouldn’t describe the riotous emotions she caused in him as anything close to peaceful. Yet she could be the answer to his prayers, the salvation he’d spent so long looking for. If he stuck to the plan and controlled his suddenly out-of-control libido.
Shit, fuck, damn. He slammed back another shot as his body tightened uncomfortably. What the hell was Genevieve doing in homicide anyway? She was too hot for this job, too sexy to waste her life investigating the dead. She belonged somewhere far away from all of this—before she ended up a victim of the very criminals she’d spent her career trying to stop.
The idea of one day staring at homicide photos of his sexy blond cop had him swearing and downing his drink yet again. His hands were shaking, his heart beating wildly, but he ignored them. Stared harder at the broken, bloody bodies on the computer screen. Tried his damnedest not to see Genevieve in the same position as the dead women in the photographs.
He reached for the mouse. Clicked a few times and watched as the current photos were replaced by older ones. Bloodier ones.
As he stared at pictures of his sister’s body, he knew he no longer had a choice. There was a compulsion inside of him, a dark and violent need that grew with every day he spent in this city.
It was why he had come back, after all, why he had allowed the studio to talk him into making this movie. And it had only grown worse with every hour he stayed here.
Closing the laptop, he shoved it away from himself with a muffled groan. He couldn’t stand to look at it anymore, couldn’t stand the images that were branded into his brain. But they were there for good. He’d learned to accept that sometime during the last seven years.
It was ridiculous to be this upset, considering how long he’d spent thinking about doing this. How many times he’d asked himself if he could go through with it before deciding that indeed he could. How often he’d run his plan in his head, looking for any and all flaws.
There hadn’t been any.
Focus on the female homicide detective, not just because of her gender but because of her background in cold cases and her higher-than-normal case clearance rate. Get her interested in past cases through the documentary he was working on. Get her to decide to reopen Samantha’s case—and investigate it.
The subterfuge burned his ass, but since he’d been all but banned from the precinct, he had no other choice.
After his sister’s death—and in the intervening years—he’d gone a little crazy. Had hired private detectives—some of whom caused more harm than good—when he’d been dissatisfied with the police investigation. Had lost his temper and threatened officers when progress hadn’t been made.
He’d even gotten himself kicked out of the damn station three years ago, by that prick of a homicide lieutenant, Chastian. He’d told Cole in no uncertain terms that one more inquiry or public confrontation regarding Samantha would end with him burying the file so deep inside cold cases that it would never see the light of day again.
Cole hadn’t believed him, had pushed the asshole anyway. And had found out that Chastian didn’t make idle threats; Samantha’s file had all but disappeared, after erroneously being declared closed. Chastian had even gone so far as to threaten the detectives involved in the case, until each of them had developed an overwhelming case of amnesia when it came to his sister.
Fucking damn corrupt cops. He hated them with a destructive passion that ate at him until he could barely think through the red haze that enveloped him. Hated them enough that he’d planned on using one without a drop of compunction, completely unconcerned that helping him could end her career.
But that was before he’d met Genevieve, before she had stripped everything from him but the primal desire to mate. He wanted her, needed her, in a way he didn’t understand and couldn’t afford.
She was a distraction, a complication that could keep him from seeing this thing through. Because every time he ran the scenario in his head, with Genevieve as his l
over, something went terribly wrong.
How could he lie to her, use her, at the same time he was sleeping with her? He might be a bastard, but that was too far even for him. Besides, the feelings she’d evoked in him last night made it impossible to imagine just fucking her and moving on—he wanted to possess her, to do things to her body no one else ever had.
Leaning back in his chair, he slammed down one last shot, more than a little unsteady from the alcohol he’d consumed but still relishing the burn of the liquor down his throat. The heat that masked the coldness inside of him, even if it couldn’t chase it away completely.
So what to do? How to balance his insane attraction to Genevieve with the agenda he just couldn’t abandon? How could he have both?
He rolled the shot glass between his hands, watched as the light projected the colors onto the cherry desktop. Shifted his hand and sent the rainbow cascading over his arm instead. Twisted the glass slightly and thought of all the ways he’d failed his sister. Hadn’t controlled her wildness as a teenager, hadn’t tried to stop her ill-thought-out move to New Orleans, despite his mom and stepdad’s objections. Hadn’t rushed to her side when his mother had called him and told him she thought something was wrong with Samantha.
He hadn’t wanted to seem like he was trying to control her. He’d known how important independence was to Sam, how she’d fought to find a place of her own, separate from the overachieving family she’d always struggled to be good enough for.
As he thought of his sister—of everything he hadn’t done for her—he knew he had to tell Genevieve the truth. Had to wait for her to get off work then lay everything on the line—including his too strong attraction to her—and hope that she could see past the deception to help him anyway.
Because if she didn’t, he was totally fucked.