by Mallory Kane
Holly flinched. Debi was feeling like Holly had abandoned her. She needed to know the truth. When they got home, she’d ask Jack about letting Debi in on their secret, that they were married in name only. That as soon as the stalker was caught, Jack would go on to his next case, and Holly would still be there to take care of everything.
The thought didn’t cheer Holly as she stood on the porch listening to the crickets and frogs after Debi’s Firebird sped away.
Farther down the street she heard another car engine flare to life and roar away, but when she looked, she didn’t see anything but a small cloud of dust.
The front screen door squeaked, and Holly knew without looking that Jack was behind her. How could she tell? She took a long breath. It was some combination of scent, sound, and an aura that emanated from him. Soap and outdoors and the soft swish of cotton and calm strength.
“Are you okay?” he whispered, his voice closer than she’d expected. If she leaned back an inch, she could rest against him. She stiffened.
It occurred to her that although she’d never spent a lot of time regretting what might have been or yearning for what might be, she’d already gotten used to having Jack there to lean on, to depend on. What would it be like to know he’d always be there?
“Debi thinks you’re taking me away from her,” she said, trying to sound light, but failing.
“Yeah, I heard. How did she act when you married Brad?”
“She was eleven when I left for college. You’d have thought I died, the way she cried herself sick.” Holly hugged herself. “That was the age I was when our parents died. I think I know how she felt.” A lump grew in her throat. “Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am trying to get away.”
To her surprise, Jack slipped his arms around her waist. “What are you doing?” she whispered, dismayed at how easily his touch could banish her worries and make her feel safe.
“I’m comforting my wife. A good husband knows when his wife needs support.”
His breath tickled her ear. She shivered as a deep thrill spun through her.
“Is Debi always so volatile?”
“Volatile?” That was a good word for Debi. “You could say that,” she breathed, wondering if the neighbors were watching, amazed at how much she hoped they were, if it gave her an excuse to accept Jack’s embrace.
She continued talking because it kept her focused on something aside from his warm, hard body against her. “Debi was so young. She looked to me to take care of her.”
“To you? You were a child, too. What about your aunt and uncle?”
“Uncle Virgil has been a policeman his whole life. Aunt Bode’s always been eccentric. She was fun, except when she’d get into one of her moods, but she was never very motherly. She didn’t quite know what to do with two little girls.”
His fingers tightened and he pulled her closer.
“What about the car?” he asked with his typical single-minded focus.
But his practical words were at odds with his low, seductive voice, and his lips moving against her skin nearly caused her knees to buckle.
She struggled to concentrate. “The second one?” She angled her head away from his mouth, which was brushing her earlobe with disastrous effects on her ability to think.
“Mmm-hmm.” Jack took full advantage of her exposed neck and pushed her hair away with his hand as his tongue lightly touched the surprisingly sensitive place just behind her ear.
Her thighs tightened as her body reacted.
Lord, nobody had ever kissed her precisely there before. She had no idea that the delicate skin behind her ear could be so erotic.
For a few seconds, she was lost in sensation. She leaned back, only to come up against a shocking hardness pressing against her backside. He was aroused, too. A sense of power and satisfaction swirled through her. Jack O’Hara, for all his professional detachment, wanted her.
His arm tightened around her waist as he wound strands of her hair between his fingers and pulled her head back to press kisses along her jaw. He shifted, widening his stance, pulling her up close against his arousal.
“Holly, the car?”
His words finally sunk in, and she remembered that all this was an act.
He was just doing his job. She was his assignment. His being affected by her was nothing more than a man’s physical reaction to a woman.
“I heard it start up but I didn’t see anything,” she said tightly, pulling away from his touch, embarrassed that she’d let herself respond to him, even for a moment. He let her go.
A disturbing thought occurred to her as she turned around. “It was him, wasn’t it?”
To her consternation, he reached out and touched her cheek. Her response was instantaneous, an aftershock of the desire that had rocked her just a few moments before. So what if this was just a job to him. She wanted to know more about him, and about herself. She wanted to feel his hands against her bare skin, wanted to feel him cup her breasts, trace her waist and hips, touch her in places that hadn’t been touched in a long, long time.
“I’m going to take a look around. You didn’t see the color, the make, anything?” He met her gaze, his eyes frosty, his manner back to the consummate professional.
Hurt and embarrassed, Holly couldn’t do anything but shake her head.
Jack flashed a quick grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll be right back to give you a hand with dinner. I’ve got a trick or two I can do with chicken that only takes about a half hour.”
Holly nodded jerkily, feeling like a child who’d been scolded. She took a second to compose her face, then went inside.
JACK STOOD ON THE PORCH cursing himself for reacting sexually to Holly. He was finding it harder and harder to control his growing desire for her.
He was no stranger to undercover work. He was used to setting himself up as bait. But not for one instant had he forgotten his primary goal—to free the victim or the victim’s family from their terror.
He’d only been with Holly one day and he’d already nearly gotten lost in her fascinating contradictions. She was strong but vulnerable. Rational and intelligent, but innocent. She was his assignment, but she was fast becoming more than just a victim who needed his protection. He twisted the gold band on his finger. Why was he having so much trouble staying detached?
He took a long, cleansing breath. The air didn’t smell quite as good since she’d gone inside. The taste of her skin lingered on his tongue.
He clamped his teeth and slapped his palm against the porch rail, hoping the sting of the blow would knock away the sweet, sharp memory of her firm backside pressed intimately against him. He had to keep a clear head, and for the first time in his career, he was finding it difficult.
He’d never been anything other than completely professional in his relationships with victims. Caring, yes. Protective, certainly. But after the assignment was over, he’d always been able to walk away, knowing he’d done his best.
But Holly had knocked his orderly world out of balance. He found himself struggling with inappropriate desires. And feelings and thoughts were clawing their way to the surface of his consciousness for the first time in over twenty years. He didn’t like any of it.
He steeled himself as memories washed over him in colors of dark red and black and bright, bright light. His stepfather, raging drunk and defying his mother’s restraining order; himself too young, too weak, only half conscious after his stepfather’s offhand blow.
His mother screaming, then still. So very still.
He cocked his fist and aimed it at the porch rail, then lowered his arm and walked deliberately down the steps. It wouldn’t do any good to batter Virgil’s porch.
He’d spent twenty years putting all that fear and anger to positive use. Enduring his mother’s murder and testifying against his stepfather had taught Jack a number of things.
Emotions got in the way. Calm, icy detachment made it possible to bear anything. And putting away other scum like his stepfather
was what he wanted to do with his life.
The sun was low in the sky as he walked down the sidewalk to the street, pulling his cell phone from his pocket.
He was glad he’d unabashedly eavesdropped on Holly’s conversation with her sister. He wasn’t sure yet if Holly would have mentioned the second car. But the idea that someone was furtively parked near Virgil’s house could be vitally important.
Holly had told Winger they were coming over to Virgil’s tonight.
Jack thought back to the drive over here. He was certain no one had followed them. Holly had told him she generally cooked dinner for her aunt and uncle three nights a week, so he was sure the stalker knew her routine.
Several streetlights were broken, littering the ground with bits of glass. Maybe kids playing with rocks. Maybe someone wanting the cover of darkness.
He toyed with his cell phone as he took in every inch of the area. Not far from where he stood, he saw a dark smear on the curb. Had the unknown car parked too close and scraped its tires?
Pulling out a small envelope and his pocketknife, he glanced up and down the street, but didn’t see anyone. Quickly, he dropped to his haunches and scraped some rubber into the bag. He wasn’t sure this rubber was from the suspicious car, but he was taking no chances. He never did.
He owed a debt to Danny, his friend, who had trusted him. Today, twenty years after the first person he’d loved had been killed, he had experience, strength, and the power of the FBI behind him.
He wasn’t about to let this killer win.
Straightening, he checked again to be sure no one was watching. He considered the little street with its quaint houses and perfect lawns. It was one of the maze of quiet streets that made up this town, so aptly named Maze. No blaring music, no bright flicker of cigarette lighters or kids hanging out on porch steps, with nothing to do but get into trouble. Just the smell of fried chicken and coffee and the sound of crickets chirping.
Somehow irritated, and missing the impersonal bustle of D.C., Jack walked back toward the house and dialed the Division’s profiler.
“Yeah?” Eric’s familiar voice sounded distracted.
“Baldwyn? You’re answering your phone?” There was a joke around the office that paying for a phone for Eric Baldwyn was a waste of money. When the Division’s profiler was working on a case he rarely spoke to anyone, even in person, and he never answered the phone. Jack had planned to leave him a voice-mail message.
“Very funny, Ice Man. How’s married life?”
“Did Decker tell you to say that?” Jack sat down on the porch steps and leaned back against the rail.
“No, why?”
“Never mind.” He shot a quick glance toward the screen door. He could hear Holly’s musical voice and Virgil’s rumbling answers floating out from the house. “What have you got on the items that have gone missing from Holly’s house?”
“Your UnSub is a collector,” Eric said patiently. “You’ll probably find a shrine to her when you find him.”
“Yeah. That’s what I figured. But usually they keep photographs, newspaper clippings. Stuff collected at a distance.”
“Right. This guy is either arrogant or desperate to risk exposure by entering her house. You didn’t include the exact date or time any of the items disappeared.”
“Don’t know that. But here’s a flash. Today an English lit textbook was left on her floor, open to a passage by Browning.”
“Today?”
“Yep. It was a message for me. I’m sending the book and some photos to the lab.”
“So, he knows you’re there, and you’ve rattled him. Likely suspects?”
“Just everyone in town—and no one in particular.”
Eric made an impatient sound.
“I’m serious. Everybody in town knows her, cares about her. I’ve only met a few people but I’ve been threatened by every one of them.”
“Threatened?”
“Never mind. Bad joke. Every male in town has this ‘you better be good to her or you’ll answer to me’ attitude.” Jack arched his shoulder, which had started to ache, and switched the phone to his other hand, checking one more time that nobody was listening at the door or lurking around the yard.
“Okay, assuming most of them are just concerned friends, who does bother you?”
“Nat ran a list of boyfriends for me. There are several possibles on it. And I’ve got the dead husband’s father, who blames her for ruining his son’s career. The son gave up a pro football slot to marry her. Then there’s a big chunk of policeman who acts like it would be his personal pleasure to take me apart if I let Holly break a fingernail.”
Jack paused as a car drove by. He raised his hand in a casual wave. “Think it could be the father-in-law? Motivated by revenge?”
“Making the assumption that the husband’s death was an accident?” There was a long silence. Jack waited. He knew Eric worked intuitively. He seemed to have an empathic link with victims. Finally the younger man spoke.
“The father-in-law could be a candidate for a revenge-motivated stalking. But…” Eric paused for so long that Jack started to fidget.
“The UnSub went into her house in broad daylight?”
“Yep.”
“I assume she lives in a close-knit neighborhood? Probably knows everyone and everyone knows her?”
“You got it.”
“And even though she knows everybody in town, she doesn’t leave her house unlocked. The missing articles and the coincidences of the deaths were already getting to her, but she defends anyone you ask about?”
Jack sat up. Eric’s intuition was kicking in. He had Holly described perfectly. “That’s my girl,” he said wryly.
“So she’s started to act differently. That plus your presence has agitated the UnSub, which is why he has already acted outside of his usual pattern by taking the chance of entering her house in broad daylight to leave the book there.”
“Exactly.”
“He’s escalating.” Eric drew in a swift breath. “I don’t think the husband’s death was an accident,” he said, his voice muffled as if he were wiping his face. “I don’t feel revenge.”
Jack stood and paced the sidewalk. He knew Eric was the best, but he didn’t understand the profiler’s feelings. He listened to the facts, but then he just sort of felt something. The thing that most bothered Jack was how often Eric’s feelings were right.
“I still think it’s an erotomaniac. You’re in the house, right? As far as everyone knows, you two are married?”
“Right.”
“I mean married. As in, if someone walked in unannounced or looked in the window, you would still look married.”
Jack swallowed, recalling Holly’s soft breathing in the night. His thumb touched the wedding band. “Yeah. Mostly.”
“If you’ve fooled him, if he knows that behind those doors you’re really intimate, I believe he’ll continue to escalate and probably get careless. Are you?”
Jack raked fingers through his hair, stood, and began pacing the sidewalk. Eric’s matter-of-fact questions were making him squirm. “Are we what?” he parried.
“You want it in four-letter words? Intimate.”
Jack snorted. “Of course not. I’m on a job, Baldwyn. It’s not necessary.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this a unique situation for you? You’ve never had an Unknown Subject with both stalker and serial-killer characteristics and a live victim at precisely the same time, have you?”
Jack didn’t answer. Eric was right. In his previous cases, either the victim knew her stalker all too well, or the stalker had already turned violent and the vic was dead.
“So, you don’t know who the stalker is, where he is, how closely he watches her or her house. You can tell, you know.”
“Tell what?”
“When two people are in an intimate relationship. If your stalker is obsessed with your vic, he’ll be attuned to every brea
th she takes. He’ll know if she’s—”
“Crap, Baldwyn. Are you deliberately screwing with my head?”
“Not at all. Come on, Ice Man. Anything to catch the killer, right?”
“I’ll make it work,” he said hoarsely, as an unwanted vision rose in his brain: Holly’s hair spread across his pillow and her perfect breasts bared to his touch.
“What about the items the UnSub chose? What’s he going to go after next?”
“I’ve studied the list. It’s obvious he’s preparing a place for them to be together. A love nest.”
The words hit Jack like a punch to the stomach. He’d expected Eric to say exactly that, so why the instantaneous adrenaline reaction? Why the barely controllable urge to break something?
“What?” He’d missed Eric’s last remark.
“I said, I’d expect something virginal, but he’s already got that white nightgown. So maybe symbolic of a wedding? A bridal veil or gown? Or if nothing else, her wedding pictures with the dead husband cut out.”
Apprehension sliced through Jack. “You think he’s escalating that fast?”
“You showing up unexpectedly married to her may have disrupted his plans by a year or more. He could strike at any time.”
Jack rubbed his jaw. “Good. Do me a favor will you? Tell Nat to check Theodore ‘T-Bone’ Polk.”
“T-Bone?” Eric sounded amused.
“Jack?” It was Holly, calling his name through the screen door.
He froze. “Yeah. Tell Nat to run him. I’ll talk to you later, kid.” He pocketed his phone.
“Ready to start dinner?” he said, trying for casual but coming off hard.
Holly stood haloed by the light from the kitchen. Jack couldn’t take his eyes off her. The backlighting accentuated her slim, toned body. The ache of desire that hadn’t gone away since their encounter on the porch flared, fueled by Eric’s words.
“Well, around here, unless you dress up and go to a fine restaurant it’s called supper, but yes,” she said, a smile in her voice. “You promised me great tricks with chicken. Come on in and have some iced tea. You’re probably getting eaten up by mosquitoes out there.”