Targeted

by Lori L. Harris

“Name’s Ralph Henry, and he blames politicians like Darby for the loss of his construction company. Jack walked around the table. “Do you plan to send Katie back to the restaurant?”

  “That depends on Jolie Kennedy. If she runs any kind of story, it won’t be just a killer looking for Katie, but every damn journalist and reporter, too. She’ll have to go back in hiding.”

  “But will she?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t know. She’s a very determined lady.” Alec opened the door. He frowned. Something was bothering Jack. “You’re sure things are okay with you?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  SHIELDED INSIDE Jack’s office, Katie watched with a sense of embarrassment as the man from the restaurant’s supply room disappeared down the hall. He’d just wanted to ask her out on a date.

  Score one for the crazy woman with the can of green beans.

  But it wasn’t funny, was it? In those moments before Alec had kicked in the door, she’d thought she was going to die. But even more frightening were those that had followed his arrival. The cold look in Alec’s eyes as he’d held a gun to another man’s head.

  She tightened her arms across herself.

  How could Alec, who had looked at her with such warmth and compassion last night, be the same man who had been in that supply room? Filled with enough hate that he could take another man’s life without hesitation?

  The door opened, and she turned toward it. Alec stood in the opening. For the first time her eyes were wide open when she looked at him.

  She no longer saw him as he’d been depicted in the articles she’d read online. Not as a hero who willingly crawled into the minds of killers. But as a man capable of the same violence as the men he hunted. She’d been stunned by his aggression. Really shaken.

  For several seconds neither of them said anything. Maybe Alec sensed that she was having a hard time coping with what had happened.

  “Are you ready to leave?” he said from where he still stood near the door.

  She nodded but made no move in his direction.

  What now? Did she share the thoughts spinning through her head? Or keep her mouth shut?

  Alec closed the door behind him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She turned away. Now was the wrong time to make a decision. She needed to think it through first.

  “You want out? Is that what you want?”

  Tightening her arms across herself, she paced to the opposite end of the room. Did she? Alec had said she only had to say the words. But what then?

  She faced him. “No. But I do want to know if you lied to keep me in Deep Water. I want to know exactly how far you would go, Alec, to get Jill’s killer.”

  He didn’t say anything for several long moments. “Not that far.”

  His eyes were as cold now as they had been this morning. Only this time the anger was directed at her.

  “That’s not what it looked like this morning,” she said. “It looked as if you were willing to go to hell and back to see Jill’s killer dead. Damn the consequences. And whoever got in your way.”

  “Hell and back?” A dry chuckle followed those words. “I’m in hell and there’s no going back.”

  He walked slowly toward her. “Do you know what real hell is? I’ll tell you. Jill came to me six weeks before her death. She claimed she was being stalked. I didn’t do anything. Didn’t even check it out. You want to know why? Because I didn’t believe her. She’d accused me so many times before of neglecting our marriage that I figured the story was just another attempt to get my attention. So what do I do? I book a ten-day cruise. Just a pat on the head instead of taking the time to really listen. I had the tickets in my pocket that night when I climbed those stairs and found her. So do I hold her killer responsible? Yes. I do. But I hold myself more responsible. I had vowed to cherish and protect. I did neither.”

  Even the hard look in his eyes couldn’t conceal his torment. She’d known that he blamed himself for not being there that night, but this was more horrible than she’d imagined. She tried to envision how she would feel if she’d been behind the wheel the night Karen had died.

  “You made a mistake.”

  “No, Katie. A mistake is forgetting an anniversary or to pick up the dry cleaning. There is no excuse for what I did. Just ask Jill’s parents.”

  “They’re just hurting. In time they’ll—”

  Without waiting for her to finish, he turned on his heel and headed for the door. “If you want out, Katie, I’ll hire the bodyguard and do whatever else it takes to keep you safe.” He opened the door. “Right now, Martinez will take you home and stay with you.”

  “And where will you be?”

  “In Orlando, talking a station manager out of running a story.”

  IT WAS SIX O’CLOCK when Alec took I-4 east toward Deep Water. It had taken him more than three hours to convince WKMG’s station manager to pull the story temporarily. Jolie had stormed out shortly after Alec’s arrival, leaving him worried that despite her contract with WKMG she may have gone to another station with what she had.

  If the story broke, they’d lose the best shot they had of apprehending Jill’s killer.

  And that was assuming Katie even wanted to continue.

  Every time he’d called Martinez to check on her, he’d been told that she was in her studio. He would have liked more information about her state of mind, but hadn’t been willing to ask Martinez outright. Which meant he’d find out when he got home.

  He wasn’t sure how to handle things with her. He didn’t know what was going on inside her head. The way he’d acted in the supply room had her spooked. There was no way he could tell her that when he’d kicked in that door, he hadn’t been thinking about Jill. He’d been thinking about Katie. About something happening to her.

  I-4 traffic suddenly slowed in front of him and then came to a complete standstill. Seconds later an ambulance and fire truck sped by using the emergency lane. For the next forty-five minutes, Central Florida’s main east-west artery became a parking lot.

  The steady rain of the past few hours slowed to a drizzle as he turned into Katie’s subdivision. He glanced at the Explorer’s outside temperature gauge. Fifty-seven. More like Pennsylvania weather than Florida.

  He’d told Katie he’d come by to pick up her shoes, but now wondered if it might be a wasted trip. There was every possibility when he got home tonight that she’d tell him she wanted out. And he couldn’t blame her.

  Alec parked in front of the bungalow. Turning off the engine, he sat there for several minutes, watching the rain on the windshield slowly turn the dark neighborhood into a surreal scene. He was tired. And not just physically, but mentally exhausted, too. He hadn’t slept well in three hundred and sixty-two nights now. Another three would mark the first anniversary.

  Climbing out, he scanned the quiet streets. Front porch lights shined at regular intervals, almost like those that lined an airfield landing strip. Most would remain on throughout the night because the people inside those homes couldn’t forget what had happened just down the street from them.

  Katie wasn’t the only victim. Deep Water itself was. The quiet town that time had seemed to forget for much of the second half of the twentieth century had been ripped into the present. And even when Jill’s killer was apprehended, that wouldn’t change. There was no going back.

  The scent of burning leaves simmered in the air. The low hum of distant traffic and the sound of a train whistle reached him. Lonely sounds. And he admitted he had never felt lonelier than he did at that moment.

  Recalling how the overgrown bushes surrounding the courtyard blocked the light from the streetlamp, he retrieved the flashlight from the glove box. Alec headed up the narrow, cracked sidewalk, scanning the beam ahead of him as he went.

  Until it landed on Jolie Kennedy’s body.

  She was sprawled faceup, her blue eyes staring heavenward. Droplets of rain ran from their corners as if she were crying. The length of surgical tubing k
notted around her neck appeared to be embedded there.

  Fairly certain that it was a waste of time, Alec squatted next to her and searched for a pulse. He didn’t find one, though, and her skin felt cool beneath his fingertips, suggesting that she’d been dead for at least an hour or more.

  The jacket of her red pantsuit had been ripped open, exposing the pale skin of her rib cage and abdomen.

  He recalled watching an interview she’d given recently. One of the network morning shows had been doing a segment on local reporters who were responsible for breaking what turned out to be top national stories the previous year. When the interviewer had questioned her about the reason she always wore the color, she’d answered without hesitation. Red suggested power, demanded attention, ketchup didn’t show on it, and neither did blood—all of which were important to an investigative reporter.

  As Jolie had stormed out of the station manager’s office earlier, she had screamed that nothing, not anyone, could keep her from reporting the news.

  She’d been wrong. Someone had. And in the process made her the lead story.

  “THE VULTURES HAVE ARRIVED,” Jack said, drawing Alec’s gaze to the two news vans that had pulled up to the curb, neither of them belonging to WKMG.

  More than an hour and fifteen minutes had elapsed since he’d discovered Jolie. A crowd had formed outside the bungalow shortly after the first emergency vehicle arrived. Mostly neighbors who’d been drawn out of their homes by the strobing lights, and who had remained in spite of the steady rain.

  It had been only a matter of time before the media followed.

  The irony struck him. He’d spent the afternoon convincing Jolie’s station manager to hold the story. Now the man’s best reporter was the story, and there was no way to keep the media away.

  Jack’s deputies, however, kept them behind the crime tape strung out near the street.

  Halogen lights had been set up, creating day out of night in the courtyard. Half a dozen techs borrowed from Orlando and Volusia County worked the scene. In another few minutes, a tarp would be erected in an attempt to keep any remaining evidence from being washed away, but Alec suspected it was already a wasted effort.

  Jack turned to the investigators crawling around the overgrown bushes and yelled loud enough that all in the courtyard could hear him, “Anyone find that camera yet? It has to be here.”

  He glanced inside the red satchel that had been found beside the body. It contained all the tools required by a determined investigative reporter, including ones for B and E. “Evidently she wasn’t letting the law keep her from getting the story.”

  “Apparently not.” Alec watched the medical examiner carefully wrap the body in a new white sheet, then place it in the body bag. He had his own theories about what had become of the camera. Either the killer had taken it as a souvenir, something to remember his victim by, or he’d wanted the film the camera contained. And if it was the film, why had he wanted it? Because it contained photos of him? Or had he seen the camera as a convenient opportunity to immortalize his victim?

  “What do you think?” Jack asked his brother as the black bag was zipped closed. “Do you think he knew it was Jolie? Or do you think in the dark he thought it was Katie?”

  “If I had to make a guess, I’d say he thought he had Katie. The height and the build are about the same. Hair color, too. By the time he discovered he had the wrong woman, it was too late.” He looked over at his brother. “If anything, this is going to drive him closer to the edge.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Alec glanced at the black bag holding the victim. A puddle formed in one of the plastic valleys. A smaller one overflowed, leaking the collected rain onto the ground.

  No husband or children waiting at home. In spite of the regret he felt over her death, that’s all he knew about her life. That and that she was a tenacious and resolute woman. It was those two qualities—ones that he’d always admired in other people—that had brought her here tonight to get a story, and into the path of a killer.

  “I mean he’ll see this as his second failure where Katie is concerned,” Alec said. “The level of his frustration and hate will continue to escalate until the goal—killing Katie—will take precedence over everything, even over his own survival.”

  He rubbed the water off his face and stared toward the street where the crowd remained. “Is the video still running?”

  “It’s rolling, and I have officers working their way through the crowd and checking nearby cars. If he’s there, we’ll get him. As you said before, it shouldn’t be too hard to pick out the face that doesn’t belong.” Jack’s gaze followed Alec’s.

  The man they hunted would have a nearly uncontrollable urge to stand in the crowd, watching. He would enjoy seeing the bright lights and the men crawling across the ground. Because it allowed him to believe that he was superior to them. That he was the master. That with a mere tug on a string, he could make them all dance.

  As he had tonight.

  He would enjoy watching Alec, too, because, no matter how much Alec tried to conceal it, he knew he looked tired and defeated.

  “What about the arrangement with Katie?” Jack asked. “Think it’s time to make some changes? Perhaps stash her someplace?”

  “There’s no turning back.” Alec ran a hand through his damp hair and tried not to think about those first few seconds after he’d found Jolie’s body. When he’d thought it was Katie. “There never was.” He looked over at his brother. “Katie wouldn’t go, anyway. Not after this.”

  “Not many women would be doing what she’s doing,” Jack commented.

  Seeing the speculation in Jack’s eyes, Alec fixed his attention on the crowd again. Not many women, was right.

  Jack laid a hand on Alec’s shoulder. “Maybe you should go home. To Katie.”

  Alec shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. After what he’d said to her in Jack’s office this afternoon, he doubted Katie was eager for him to return. But for a moment, he allowed himself to contemplate what it would be like to go home to her if things were right between them. Home to her quick smile and resilient nature. To her soft, supple body and warm skin. To the blinding heat of need and the warmth of physical satisfaction. But more than sex, it was the conversation, the sense of connection that he felt when he was with her that he wanted to go home to.

  But he wouldn’t be going home to any of those things. The only thing waiting for him was the hard job of telling a frightened woman that a killer had made a mistake, had killed another woman, all the time believing it was her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Alec hit the remote to open the wrought-iron gates in front of his home. He’d been listening to a jazz station out of Orlando, hoping to unwind a bit, but turned it down now as he waited for the gates to swing wide enough for the SUV.

  It was past two thirty in the morning. He and half a dozen police officers, all longtime Deep Water residents, had spent the past hour and a half studying the video of the crowd outside Katie’s bungalow.

  Only eleven faces hadn’t been quickly identified as belonging to Azalea Park neighbors. Of those, five could be eliminated due to gender or age. That left six potentials to be checked out. Chances were at least three of them owned police scanners and considered accident scenes and fires to be just another form of entertainment. The rest…well…they could have been visiting someone in the area. Or, if Alec was lucky, one of the unrecognized faces belonged to the killer.

  Alec dreaded the coming confrontation with Katie. She wouldn’t take the news well. She was a strong woman, but not a pragmatic one.

  He’d been thinking about her more than he would have liked, but it was just chemistry. Even what had happened last night was just chemistry. He’d been without any type of physical relationship for nearly a year, and clearly, the conversation about her sister had left Katie feeling vulnerable, needy. The wine had simply done away with any remaining inhibitions for both of them.

  But, no matter
what the circumstances, he wouldn’t have let it go any further than it had.

  Alec rubbed a hand over his face. Who the hell was he trying to kid here? If he hadn’t noticed the postcard on the desk, he wouldn’t have stopped. He would have taken her right there. His body tightened as his mind served up images. Her lips softly swollen. Her quickened breathing as he’d slipped his fingers beneath her T-shirt. The way she’d trembled as his hand had… He shouldn’t be thinking about any of those things. A woman was dead, and the fact that he couldn’t seem to keep his mind firmly focused on the investigation was just another indication that he needed to build some distance from Katie.

  When the gates were once more securely closed, Alec dropped the SUV back into gear.

  He’d sold the Philadelphia house for more than twenty thousand below market value—a well-publicized murder tended to lower a home’s marketability—and bought this white elephant of a house for what by Philadelphia standards was a reasonable amount. He hadn’t really wanted the square footage as much as the privacy afforded by the acre and a half of land and the distance from town.

  The place, which needed some work and a hell of a lot of furniture, had been built in the late 1890s by a naturalist. Which accounted for the large solarium at the back of the house and also explained why the extensive grounds had been left in their natural state.

  He’d planned to clear away much of it, but once he’d moved in, decided not to.

  Moonlight, penetrating the oak canopy, cast a lacy filigree of light onto the blacktop. As he made the last bend in the drive, he realized the light over the front door appeared to be the only illumination. Alec stopped the vehicle. Even if Katie had gone to bed, where were the signs indicating Martinez’s whereabouts? Alec sat there for several seconds before dropping the car into reverse. Something wasn’t right.

  Leaving the SUV out of sight of the house, he slipped the automatic weapon from the shoulder holster. Moments earlier, Alec had been dead on his feet, but now adrenaline pumped through him.

  The scent of wet earth permeated the night air as he moved cautiously toward the house.