by Kylie Brant
He rubbed his thumbs lightly along the soft skin of her palms. The sensation helped center him somehow, pulled him back from the abyss his memory was approaching. “My partner and I tracked him to an abandoned warehouse. We called for backup, but we couldn’t wait for the other units to arrive.” They hadn’t dared wait when the screaming had started, the bone-chilling, terror-filled shrieks. They’d entered the building and confronted a hellish scene that still revisited in Technicolor reruns in his dreams.
His voice, when he continued, was hoarse. “Colby Neesom was a serial rapist who fancied himself something of a collector. Got the idea of setting up his own personal harem. The women…he kept them naked, bound and gagged when he wasn’t savaging them. When we broke in he was attacking Amy Lou Travers at knifepoint.” He stopped for a moment as the crashing waves of memories engulfed him—the wide-eyed shock in the eyes of the women when they’d seen them, the terror and hope warring in the eyes of Amy Lou as the scene unfolded.
As if sensing the horrible brutality that was replaying in his mind, Zoey brought his hands to her lips, pressed a kiss to his knuckles. The sweetness of her action was so at odds with the scene he was immersed in, he felt a moment of vertigo, lost between two worlds. “Neesom pulled Amy Lou in front of him and put the knife to her throat. Kept telling us she’d die before we could get a shot off. But he was a bit taller than she was; part of his forehead was visible behind her. Only a couple of guys in the department could have made that shot. I was one of them.”
She knew, without his saying it, that what had happened that night still haunted Cage. She could hear the regret throbbing in his voice, recognized the unspoken pain that still lingered. “It was a horrible position for you to be placed in.”
He recognized the solace she was trying to offer, but wouldn’t, couldn’t accept it. “More horrible for those women, I expect. Most horrible for Amy Lou. Because I hesitated, only for an instant, although it seemed longer. Tried to weigh whether taking the shot was worth the risk to the victim; to decide if there wasn’t some way to bring an end to it without bloodshed. When I saw Neesom’s fingers tighten on the knife, I pulled the trigger. He’d plunged the knife into her throat a fraction of a second before the bullet hit him.”
The breath clogged in his lungs as he watched the scene unfurl in a mental movie fixed in slow motion; watched as the impact from the bullet blew away part of Neesom’s brain; saw Amy Lou’s body crumple; watched himself catch her, hoping that most of the blood on her belonged to her attacker.
And saw, once again, Amy Lou Travers die in his arms; read the condemnation for his hesitation in her lifeless eyes.
Zoey pulled at his arms to free herself, and twisted around in the tub until she was astride him. Both hands slid up to cup his jaw, and her lips brushed his with exquisite gentleness. In contrast, however, her voice was fierce. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for her death, Cage. What kind of man would you be if you hadn’t weighed her safety when considering that shot? Lay the blame for Amy Lou Travers’s death squarely where it belongs—with her killer.”
He rested his forehead against hers, his arms going around her to hold her tightly. “Blame’s a funny thing, honey. It doesn’t shift around where you’d like to put it. It sticks where the doubt’s the strongest.”
“Then that’s where you start.” Her lips went to his eyelids, his cheeks, that straight arrogant nose. “You said it yourself. Few could have made that shot. Yet you did, saving four women. Let it be enough.” The words were whispered against his mouth, her lips a fraction away. “Let go of the doubt, Cage.”
When her mouth settled over his he slid a hand up to her nape, cupped her head in his palm. He returned her kiss with all the emotion that still churned and frothed inside him. Minutes later, his attention focused on the woman taking him slow and deep inside her, he felt a glimmer of peace that had long eluded him.
And if it wasn’t accompanied by a marginal lessening of guilt, it was, at least, a celebration of life. He’d accept that much for now.
Having decided his shirt was a lost cause, Cage walked downstairs wearing only his chinos. He needed to go home and change before work, anyway. So it was a good thing that he’d awakened in Zoey’s bed alone, right? And that he’d soaked away the aches that were naggingly making themselves known this morning, also alone.
But no amount of convincing could make him resent his solitude any less. It hadn’t taken him long to get used to the feeling of having Zoey sprawled out beside him. Or over him. Or beneath him. He tucked the erotic thoughts away. For the first time he was uncomfortably aware that there must have been a woman or two in his past who’d felt just as cheated when they’d awakened after he’d left during the night.
His daddy had always said, “What goes around comes around.” His relationship with Zoey proved the phrase true. The first time he’d been the one to want more from a woman, he’d chosen one who was wary about taking it; terrified about giving it. But the connection between them was too real to deny. Last night had only intensified it. It was past time Zoey accepted it, as well.
He heard her voice then in the kitchen, and padded softly in the direction of the sound. At first he thought she was talking to Oxy, but as he neared, it became apparent she was on the phone.
Planning to swipe a kiss on the way to the refrigerator, he was halted in his tracks by the one-sided conversation floating toward him.
“That’s great, Mark. I’m glad you liked it.” There was silence again, then she laughed delightedly. “From your lips to the publisher’s ears.” There was another pause. “Just how long a book tour are you planning, anyway? That’s a lengthy time to live out of a suitcase. Well, we can iron that out when I get back to Chicago.”
She continued to speak, but Cage stopped listening. Sheets of ice settled over his skin, a layer at a time. She was planning to go back to Chicago. There was no doubt about it. Maybe not for a month or two, but it was definitely on her mind. Leaving Charity.
Leaving him.
The frigid lance of pain that pierced him had the bitter sting of betrayal. He found it wasn’t to his liking. It was easier, far easier, to feel anger.
She looked up then, saw him standing in the doorway. “I’ll talk to you later, Mark. Let me know how negotiations go.” She hung up the phone and strolled over to Cage, slipping her arms around his waist and kissing his unshaven chin.
“You were sleeping so soundly I thought it best to leave you be while I made coffee.”
“And a phone call.” Unhooking her hands, he set her away from him, went to the cupboard for a glass. “Who’s Mark?”
Puzzled by his attitude, she watched as he poured himself some orange juice. “My agent. He left a message for me on my machine last night. He had the greatest news.” Wonder entered her voice. “He’s got offers from three publishing houses for the book I’m writing. We haven’t settled on one yet, but they’re all talking book tours, astronomical advances— What’s wrong?”
He leaned against the counter and drank the juice. It wasn’t a good choice for a throat that already felt tight and raw. “Sounds big. How soon do you leave?”
Comprehension coursed through her, and she chose her words carefully. “The book isn’t even done yet, Cage. I haven’t really thought that far ahead.”
The smile he aimed was devoid of humor. “That’s kind of the problem, isn’t it? You’re not thinking about much of anything. Not concerning us, anyway.”
“That’s not true.” Her hands slipped into the pockets of her robe, hugged her body defensively. “I was awake most of the night, thinking.”
“You were awake most of the night, sugar, but not thinking. Unless you do your best planning while you’re naked and moaning.”
Her lips thinned. “Don’t be crude.”
He gave a polite nod that was at odds with the heat in his eyes. “All right, I’m listening. Why don’t you tell me what you came up with?” At her silence, he coaxed, “Well, come on, sweetheart,
let’s have it. Just tell me about the parts that involve us.”
She turned away, reached out a finger and traced a shape on the table. “I haven’t had a lot of luck planning futures with men. My ex-fiancé is serving time for robbing me blind while I was making the wedding arrangements.” She steeled herself against his reaction to the disappointment she knew she was dealing. Again. Defensiveness edged her words. “I’m not like you. Trust doesn’t come easily for me. I don’t have an endless supply of it.”
Her words tore through him with jagged, gnashing teeth. After the incredible gift of her support last night, her failure to offer her trust to him as easily couldn’t possibly wound more deeply.
“That’s bull.” He made no attempt to disguise his anger. “I’m willing to bet you never let your ex get close to you, either. Your brother and sister, sure, but no one else. It doesn’t matter to me, because I don’t want what he had, anyway. I want it all. Everything you have to give. I won’t be satisfied with less.”
Her heart jammed like a fist in her throat. He couldn’t have said anything more guaranteed to terrify. She sorted through the false denials, the explanations; then, in a desolate tone, she uttered a slice of the truth: “You want too much.”
The simple words struck hammer blows at his heart. “So how long am I going to have to pay for what that creep did to you?” He took care to make sure none of the desperate emotion churning inside him made it to his voice. “Another week? A month? A year?” He slammed the glass down on the counter and went across the room to her, taking her arms in his hands. “Give me a clue, Zoey.”
“I don’t know!” she shouted at him. She pulled away from his touch, her body suddenly trembling. “It isn’t about him, anyway, it’s about you!” She paused when she saw the hurt wash over his face, and her heart wept. Hurting Cage was the last thing she wanted to do.
She dropped her gaze to the floor. “I was ready to marry Alan. His betrayal shook my structured little world. But it didn’t shatter it.”
Her last sentence arrested his attention. “And what if it was me, Zoey? What if I betrayed you?”
It was as if he’d reached deep inside her and ripped out the last desperate question that had been torturing her relentlessly. “I couldn’t get over that,” she whispered achingly. “I don’t even want to think about having to try.”
He opened and closed his hands helplessly, feeling as if he had one chance left, but it was dancing just out of his reach. “I don’t suppose I can promise that I’ll never hurt you.” He watched her flinch at his words. “But I can promise to try my best not to.” He waited, but she made no response.
Not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash did he reveal how deeply her silence stabbed him. “I reckon we both know what the other wants. It’ll be all or nothing for me, Zoey. Guess you know where to find me when you decide.”
Burying himself in his work was as good an escape as any. Cage called the remaining detectives on the list, each conversation adding to the feeling of foreboding inside him. When he’d finished with the phone calls he returned his attention to the stack of printouts in front of him. He removed only the ones in which the detective had relayed details about superficial wounds to the victim’s knees and shins. When he was finished, he had a stack of seven unsolved cases that involved rape/homicides.
Each of the women had knelt or crawled in something that lacerated the skin. Gravel, glass, wood chips—the material had varied. Two victims had died of gunshot wounds, one had been poisoned, three stabbed, and two strangled. No wonder he hadn’t caught a pattern before. Looking at MOs had been a futile task. The shooting victims had been killed with different makes and models of guns. The stab wounds indicated different murder weapons, as well. And one woman had been strangled with a pair of panty hose; while regular clothesline had been used on Janice Reilly.
Eight women in ten years, if Janice Reilly was included. All victims were in their early to mid-twenties, all attractive. All had been brutally murdered, some of them tortured first. He felt bile rising in his throat. He didn’t like the suspicions that were growing more certain by the hour; didn’t enjoy envisioning a killer at work in the state, with eight homicides behind him, possibly more. A serial killer, who, to Cage’s knowledge, wasn’t being hunted as such.
He got up, went to a drawer and took out a map of the state. Unfolding it, he tacked it up on the bulletin board. Then he went through each of the files again, wrote dates on slips of paper and carefully pinned them up on the map, designating the locations of the bodies and the sequence of the deaths. The resulting pattern made the hair rise on the back of his neck.
The first had happened a little less than a decade ago, the second three years later. Two murders had taken place in the next four years, spaced an equal distance apart. Then it had been only eighteen months until the next. The cycle had accelerated with the last two victims—Cage checked again—killed within a space of five months.
He was no expert in the area but he knew what that escalating cycle could mean. He scrubbed his hands over his face once, hard, then reached for the phone.
It was time to call in the Louisiana attorney general’s office.
Many states finance a government agency that law-enforcement officers can turn to for help in complex crimes. In Louisiana, the investigative offices of the attorney general were at the disposal of law-enforcement officials.
After driving the fifty miles to Baton Rouge, then cooling his heels in a waiting room for over an hour, Cage was ushered in to an assistant attorney general by the name of Tom Lane. He’d feared he’d be handed off to one of the several political types rushing to and from through the waiting room. But the man seated behind the desk before him had to have experienced at least fifty years, most of them hard ones. His dark hair was liberally streaked with gray, and his craggy features could have been hewn from stone.
“Sheriff Gauthier.” The man rose, shook Cage’s hand firmly. “What brings you all the way to Baton Rouge on such a miserable day? Way I hear it, another storm is brewing.”
Reseating himself, Cage crossed one leg over his knee. “Hope that doesn’t prove to be the case, sir. We still haven’t completely dried out from the last one.” Pleasantries over, he eased into business. “You might have heard about the murder victim discovered in St. Augustine parish a while back.”
The man nodded. “Do you have any leads?”
“Not many, until yesterday. Now…well, now I’m not sure exactly what I have.” Quickly he updated the man on the research he’d been doing.
By the time he’d finished, Lane was already shaking his head. “That’s impossible, Sheriff. No serial is operating in the state, thank God. So far, we’ve managed to avoid that plague.”
“I sincerely hope that’s true.” Cage handed the man a sheet on which he’d typed the pertinent information and sat back while the man scanned it.
“These injuries to the victims’ legs—that checks out for all of them?”
“I called the investigating officers on each of those crimes in the last twenty-four hours. I asked about it particularly, and eliminated the victims who didn’t fit. I know the MOs are all over the place. Can’t figure a guy changing the way he operates from one crime to the next. That part doesn’t figure.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” the other man muttered, glancing up. “It wouldn’t be unusual for a serial to change the way he commits the crime. It’s the signature that would remain static.”
“You think these injuries to the victims’ knees and shins indicate what the killer does to fulfill himself?”
“Could be.” Lane’s voice was reluctant. “Let’s say, purely for the sake of speculation, that there was some nut out there who feels compelled to punish women. What does he do before he kills her? Does he make her beg, plead for her life?”
“Or pray.” All would require the victim to take a position of supplication on some sort of painful surface. That might elicit the rush of power that was so important to a dem
ented mind.
“Do you have anything else?” It was clear from the man’s tone that he was hoping Cage would respond in the negative. Silently Cage handed him the file he’d brought along. Lane took his time reading through the cases. He stared for a long time at the map Cage had drawn indicating the sites of the bodies and the dates of the deaths.
When Lane finally looked up, concern had etched a few more lines in his face. He considered Cage for a long moment. “I told you when you came in here, Sheriff, that we have no knowledge of a serial killer working in Louisiana. I still believe that.” His gaze dropped to the open file folder before him. “However…you’ve presented some compelling information, which I feel requires further examination.”
“What exactly will you be looking at?”
Lane raked his hand through his hair. “I’ll be interested in seeing if there’s a similarity in how each of the bodies was disposed of. What were the crime scenes like in the homicides where the crime scene was discovered? Some of these freaks like to take trophies from the kills. Was anything missing from each of the victims?” He shot Cage a grim smile. “The more I think about it, the more questions I’ve got.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” Cage was silent for a moment. “We’re still speculating, right?” He didn’t wait for the other man’s nod before going on. “What kind of guy would do this?”