by Sandra Brown
His bed, with its crumpled covers, looked incredibly inviting. He settled into its warmth. Elaine was still downstairs. He wanted to wait up for her, to thank her for putting up with him and his crazy clients once again.
The quietness soothed him. Sleep pulled at him.
And then he jolted awake. Why was it so quiet?
He should hear the stairs creaking as Elaine came back to bed.
He should hear the whisper of her robe as she slipped it off her body and slid under the covers next to him.
He should hear—
Something.
Christ, how long had Elaine been down there with Molly?
He leaped out of bed and rushed to the hallway, smashing his hip against the door frame as he lunged through it.
She’s chatting with Molly.
She fell asleep.
Molly asked her not to leave.
All the calm, rational arguments sped in—and out—of his mind. They were chased away by fear. By instinct.
By the knowledge that he’d missed something today.
Something had gnawed at him.
He took the stairs so quickly, his feet barely skimmed them.
He heard a scream. It was his wife, although he’d never heard her make a sound like that before, not even when she was delivering Brianna.
“Elaine!” he yelled, barging into the family room.
He heard Elaine before he saw her: fast, gulping breaths of pure fear.
“Don’t move any closer, Eddie,” Molly said. She crouched over Elaine, her knees pinning his wife’s arms to the ground. At first glance, Eddie thought that Elaine hadn’t moved because she was wedged between the sofa and the large steel-and-glass coffee table that anchored the rug.
But then something glinted.
It was a large carving knife. Molly held it against the arch of his wife’s neck.
He knew that knife. It was the one they used for Sunday dinner, the one he flourished with great effect on Thanksgiving.
Elaine’s eyes met his.
What have you done, Eddie?
He willed his voice to sound calm and steady, not desperate and terrified. “Molly, don’t do this. I can help you.”
She snorted. “I don’t think so.” She pushed the tip of the knife against Elaine’s throat. Elaine exhaled, trying to shrink from the blade.
Think, Eddie, think. You can talk her out of this. “Molly, you don’t want to do this. Don’t throw your life away.” Or Elaine’s, he begged silently. “We can solve this together. There are people who will help you.”
She raised a brow. “Oh, really?” She traced the knife blade in a small circle on Elaine’s throat. Her eyes met Eddie’s. So blue, a raging blue. How could he have missed that? “What people will help me? People like you? A defense lawyer who can’t even muster a defense against a forensic pathologist who can’t tell an asshole from a prick?”
He stared at her.
“You still don’t know who I am. Do you, Eddie?” Her lips twisted. Elaine threw a stunned look at him. You know her? “Wait, don’t answer that question. I know the answer. You didn’t give a fuck about me. Or my mother. All you wanted was your money and your ego stroked. When you lost the case, you just abandoned us.”
Those eyes, that honey-brown hair…
“You are Laura’s daughter, aren’t you?” he whispered.
“Took you long enough,” Molly said.
Eddie stepped forward. Molly raised her arm, ready to plunge the knife. Her eyes locked with Elaine’s.
“Molly!” He needed to break her focus. “I never believed your mother killed your little brother. But Dr. Nicholson was the expert. No one could beat him.”
“But someone did. Someone fought it. How else did he get caught?”
Her words slammed him in the heart. “But it was years later…”
“Years that my mother sat in prison, being called a ‘baby killer,’ and getting beat up by other inmates. She couldn’t take it anymore… .” Molly’s fingers clenched the knife handle so hard they were white. “She started using drugs. Did you know that? She became an addict. And then she overdosed.”
“I’m very sorry, Molly.” He took a cautious step closer.
“Yeah, I’ll bet you are. You put up a shitty defense of my mother, and who pays the price? Not you. Oh, no, you’ve got this nice house—” she waved the knife around “—with this nice wife and a nice daughter upstairs.”
Elaine threw Eddie a panicked look. Keep her away from Brianna!
“What did I have, Eddie? I had a mom everyone teased me about. Child Protection took me away. I lost my mother, my little brother and my home. I ended up living in foster care for the past ten years. And did anyone give a shit? No. I lived for the day that my mom would come home. But she overdosed instead.” Her voice caught. “Before I could help her. I never had a chance, Eddie. Not one fucking chance.”
Elaine eyes locked with his. Now, Eddie. Do it.
He stepped closer, as lightly as he could with his bulk, holding his breath.
The knife moved so quickly, he wasn’t sure if his fear had conjured it.
Elaine gurgled. Blood welled from her throat.
With a roar, he vaulted around the coffee table. Molly jumped onto the sofa and brandished the knife at him. “You didn’t think I’d do it, did you?” He felt the cold steel of the coffee table frame digging into the back of his knees. He lunged forward, grabbing his client’s wrist before she could plunge the knife in his chest.
“Molly, drop the knife.”
She gazed down at him. Her eyes were bright. Victorious. “So glad you believed in my innocence, Mr. Bent. Just like you believed my mother. But I made Dr. Nicholson pay. The bastard wasn’t even going to jail! So I tricked him. I let him do his perverted little act on me. And then I killed him.” She smiled, but it twisted itself into a snarl. How had he ever thought that Brianna could grow up to be like her? “Why should you be able to have a family when you cost me mine?”
“Just drop the knife, Molly. You don’t want to do this.”
“Don’t tell me what I want. I’m not a fucking child anymore!” She yanked her arm upward, trying to break his grip. He leaped onto the sofa and twisted her wrist.
She went limp.
He staggered sideways, off balance. Just as she intended.
She tore her wrist from his hand with a triumphant glare, raising the knife.
He dived at her, angling his body to prevent her from falling on top of Elaine. Air whooshed past his ears as they went flying off the sofa. He felt Molly’s body absorb the impact of their fall onto the glass-topped coffee table, his body skidding over hers as he tumbled, headfirst, toward the ground.
His skull exploded when he hit the rug. For a second, light filled his brain. Get the knife, Eddie. Get the fucking knife!
He rolled off Molly.
Her head swayed with his movement.
Cold sweat pricked his skin.
Molly lay on her back, mouth open, her head extended at an unnatural angle over the steel edge of the coffee table.
Jesus. He’d broken her neck when he fell on top of her.
He scrambled to his feet and rushed over to Elaine. Blood seeped steadily from the slash in her throat. Eddie grabbed one of the forgotten bedsheets and pressed it against Elaine’s neck.
“Hold on, sweetheart. Please.” He ran to the phone on the other side of the room and dialed 911.
The ambulance made it in fourteen minutes. Eddie’s hands were white from keeping pressure on Elaine’s throat, his throat hoarse from whispering pleas for her to hold on. “She’s a fighter,” one of the Emergency Response Technicians told him as they rushed her to the hospital.
And fight she did. Several transfusions later, Elaine had stabilized.
But despite the endless bottles of vodka, scotch and wine Eddie imbibed, he never did.
* * * * *
DIRTY LOW DOWN
A Jackie Mercer Story
Debra Web
b
Some girls know how to have fun…Jackie Mercer is one of them. ~SB
Temporary Command Center, Houston, July 8, 9:30 p.m.
“This is a bad idea, Jackie.”
“You think?” Seriously. Some jerk-off tortures and murders five women in the space of as many months? Yeah, that really was a bad idea. Helping out with the official sting to take him down? A flippin’ stellar idea. My partner should just get over it.
“Look.” Dawson cast a wary glance at the cops on the other side of the room before huddling close to me. “These guys can’t guarantee your protection. This whole operation hinges on dangling you as bait. I don’t like it.”
Dawson was worried. If not for the circumstances, I might have smiled. He really could be sweet at just that moment when a woman needed it most. Like now. Problem was, I had to do this. Yeah, it was risky. But this bastard hadn’t left a single piece of evidence. Not a speck of DNA or a solitary hair. He washed the bodies and meticulously cleaned the scene. The cops were convinced the suspect on tonight’s agenda was the guy, but they had not one lick of evidence. None. Nada. The only way to nail this guy was to catch him in the act.
I was the one person involved with this operation who had the right connections to do just that. More importantly, as a P.I., I wasn’t corralled by those sticky cop rules of engagement. There wasn’t a cop on the force, man or woman, who could do what I was about to do—not that anyone on the force would admit as much. The key noncop players involved trusted me, Jackie Mercer. I both understood and fit into Houston’s gritty streets where those ladies operated night after night. I could play the part of Happy Hooker with the best of them.
The idea gave me pause. Exactly what did that say about me?
Okay…maybe that wasn’t the precise analogy I was looking for. Basically, I meant that I’m a woman. I’ve been down and out, and bottom line, I wasn’t letting this son of a bitch get away with what he’d done. My partner and I had been over this twice already.
“You ready, Mercer?”
That voice. I cringed. Like nails scraping across a blackboard—yeah, they still had those when I was in school. Twisting on the heel of my thigh-high hooker boots, I faced the bane of my existence. “I was born that way, Nance.”
Detective Walter Nance, his off-the-rack suit wrinkled from the long day, his tie still cinched like a noose around his neck because he was too uptight to dare loosen it, marched over to where my partner and I waited patiently for the rest of this crew to get into gear.
“You sound check your com link?” He stared at my breasts as if he expected one or the other to answer.
Duh. I tapped my left tit. “You betcha.” I stared at his crotch. “You check yours?” Considering he thought with his dick more often than not, made sense his communications link would be somewhere down there.
He ignored my barb. “You’re not carrying a piece are you?” His gaze slid down my bared midriff, paused on the black micromini before visually measuring the length of my religiously toned legs. Those nondescript beady eyes of his popped back up to tangle with mine and promptly narrowed with suspicion. “You better not be. You’re a civilian, Mercer. We can’t have you going all Rambo on us out there.”
I bellied up to the good old boy just close enough to make him sweat and held my arms up surrender style. “You wanna frisk me, Nance?” I cocked my head, a Marilyn Monroe lock of blond wig hair falling across my cheek. “I got nothing to hide.”
Every cop in the place sniggered behind Nance’s back.
Fury burned a red path up his thick neck and spread across his face. His nostrils flared. “Good. Let’s do this thing. We’ve wasted enough time.”
That’s what I thought. Nance liked to rag my ass but he didn’t have the cojones to follow through. At least not to my face. He’d been known to do some pretty sneaky crap behind my back. Just another reason I strong-armed my way into this operation. Nance was a decent cop on most days, but when it came to women I just didn’t trust his motives. I intended to make sure this one got done.
Powerful fingers wrapped around my arm and tugged me around. “Jackie.” My partner’s glare proclaimed that he was far from finished with our previous conversation before he said a word. “You gotta listen to me.”
I sighed in spite of myself. Over the past year I’d gotten used to that sexy voice of Dawson’s. I’d even learned to prevent my jaw from sagging so that my tongue didn’t loll out the side of my mouth when looking directly at that Hollywood handsome face. But, with Dawson there was always a but, the touching still carried an effect I couldn’t quite brace for. I melted a little every damned time. Hey, I was only human. Derrick Dawson was sweet, sincere and protective. That said, his knee-weakening physical assets weren’t the reason I’d hired him, albeit reluctantly. In fact, in the beginning, I’d only hired him so that I could annoy him with enough crap assignments to get rid of him. The man had refused to give up. He still had a job at my agency a year later because he possessed fierce investigative instincts. I’d had no choice but to admit just how good he was at solving the most puzzling cases.
The benefits of making the right business decision far outweighed my personal discomfort with having him around. The occasional touch in passing, completely innocent occasions, mind you, wasn’t what kept me slightly off balance in Dawson’s presence. It was the total package. He was cute as hell and had that sexy-ass voice, punctuated with those dreamy blue bedroom eyes and that thick, perpetually tousled dirty blond hair. Not to mention a body that would make any woman alive stand at attention.
He was my cross to bear.
First day on the job I’d laid down the law. Our relationship would be totally professional. He was fifteen or so years my junior—I didn’t know for sure since he refused to give me his full date of birth—and he was a man. Not that I didn’t love the hell out of men, but I know my history. Good-looking men are like kryptonite to me. End of story.
“Get with the program, Dawson,” I warned. “This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. Stop treating me like a greenhorn.”
Did I fail to mention he was stubborn?
His fingers tightened, sending little blasts of heat over my skin in a tantalizing hailstorm. “I don’t want you out there unarmed.”
There went another chorus, sacred chord included. I rallied my defenses and rolled my eyes. “Who said I was?” I pulled free of those long, blunt-tipped fingers and gave him my back. Time to get this done.
“Pretty Boy can ride with me,” Nance shouted over his shoulder as he hit the door.
Behind me Dawson muttered, “One of these days I’m gonna kick his ass.”
Now that I would pay good money to see.
* * *
An hour later I was still standing on the corner of Montrose and Taft. It was muggy as hell and my feet were killing me. My companions for the evening were complaining that it was slow for a Friday night. Just went to show that the depressed economy even affected the oldest profession. I guess when push came to shove some guys preferred their Starbucks Venti Double Chocolate Chip Frappuccino over a quick blow job.
“Suspect is headed your way, Mercer.”
The warning vibrated across the wireless com link and in my ear just as the black Lexus IS convertible rolled up to the curb. Well, well, ’bout time.
“This one’s mine,” I murmured to the ladies on either side of me. One was a redhead, the other a brunette. Both did a little body wave and cheered me on with you-go-girl. Ain’t no use in us all going home hungry tonight.
The bastard behind the wheel looked straight at me and smiled. “You like to take a ride, baby?”
Ten plus years as a private detective had prepared me for most any situation. Trailing cheating spouses, locating missing persons, background searches, you name it. But tonight was different. Tonight I had agreed to work with Houston’s elite homicide folks to help lure in the suspect in a string of prostitute murders.
Not exactly my usual fare. But, hey, I con
sidered myself a team player. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Mainly, though, tonight was about Kelli Reese, a seventeen-year-old who’d decided high school was getting in the way of making her dreams come true. Kelli, the starry-eyed senior, and I hadn’t ever met when her mother hired my agency to find her. Easy as pie I tracked her down within forty-eight hours. Unfortunately her dramatic journey toward independence and celebritydom led to the city morgue. And this good-looking piece of shit in his thousand-dollar Armani suit was her killer. All I had to do was prove it.
I removed my knockoff Versace sunglasses and tucked them atop my blond head. The lush blond wig was part of my cover. He has a penchant for blondes, all five victims had sported golden manes and pretty blue eyes. Colored contacts turned my unremarkable brown eyes to just the right shade of sapphire blue. While it was true that the only seventeen I’d seen lately was on a calendar or as the balance in my checking account, this guy didn’t seem to care about age. His victims ranged in age from sixteen to forty.
I strolled over to the car, the six-inch heels of my thigh-high boots making my legs even longer just for him. I leaned down to his eye level, allowing him a nice view of my cleavage. “I ain’t cheap, handsome.” I surveyed the luxurious car before settling my gaze back on his expectant one. “Can you afford me and this car, too?”
“Get in.” He nodded toward the passenger seat. “I can handle whatever you believe you deserve.”
Cocky bastard. I opened the door and settled into the buttery-soft leather seat and turned to him. “I’m all yours.” He watched as I crossed my legs. The black spandex mini hiked all the way to my crotch. “Like the preview, sugar?” His gaze zeroed in on mine. “I’ll make sure you get exactly what you deserve, too.”
The Lexus peeled away from the curb. With the push of a button the top went up, then the windows, closing out the rest of the world. I would be lying if I didn’t admit the move rattled me just a little. Focus, Jackie.