by Karen Rock
“I get it. When my father cheated on my mother, she cried for months after he left.”
“How old were you?”
“Five. I spent my childhood trying to make her smile.”
“Now you do it for a living…and take pictures of cheating spouses on the side.” The mystery surrounding Nash evaporated, leaving a clearer image, a man she was falling harder for by the second.
“Being a private investigator is the closest I can get to being a cop.”
“You should take the civil service test again. It’s not too late. The cutoff is forty-four.”
“I still won’t get past the interview stage.” His lips were on her neck, kissing softly.
“Have you had a clean record since the first charges?” The slight scruff on his face tickled her.
“Yes. But who’s going to take a male stripper seriously?” he asked, his hand traveling down her side, over her hip, and resting on her outer thigh.
“I do. Especially after you helped nab one of Texas’s worst serial killers, if we’ve got the right man in custody. That’s one hell of a line item on your resume. Speaking of which, we’d better head out to check on Jax. Maybe a night in jail has loosened his tongue.”
Nash traced slow, seductive circles on her lower abdomen and her mind started to spin and twirl, blurring the lines between business and play. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“And neither can we.” She sat up, clutching the sheet over her chest.
A tiny piece of glitter on her shoulder caught the slanting sun, and she brushed it off. Brittany. No matter how many showers Katherine had taken, the memory of the missing young woman clung to her as hard as the plastic, sparkling pieces, demanding all of Katherine’s attention. Anything less would be a dereliction of duty. Her singular purpose was to find Brittany. A relationship with Nash would only distract her and, eventually, lead to heartbreak since he didn’t want a serious relationship.
Nash rose on one elbow and propped up his head. “What are you saying?”
“That last night was—was—”
His sexy mouth quirked, dimples denting his cheeks. “Mind-blowing, amazing, sensational?”
She gathered her calm and searched for an answer he’d accept. “All of that. But it was also a mistake. We should focus on the case, not each other. Besides, you said you don’t want a serious relationship.”
His smile faded and he peered at her steadily, his intent expression making her squirm. “That was a stupid thing to say.”
“Why?”
“Because I hadn’t gotten to know you yet.”
“Oh, Nash.” Her heart exploded at the confession, then rained like wet confetti on her brief parade. “Don’t make me break my promise to you.”
He pulled her hand over and placed a quick kiss on the top of her fingers, a gesture that melted her. “Which one?”
“When you warned me not to fall in love with you.”
“And that’d be a bad thing because…”
“I’m devoted to my job. It’ll always come first.” She lowered her face to hide her stinging eyes. “My marriage broke up because of it.”
He pulled her head up and wiped her tears away with his thumbs. Holy damn, his eyes were as green as a cat’s.
“You’re divorced because your asshole of an ex-husband didn’t appreciate how damn lucky he was to have you. I’d never make that mistake.”
She nodded, mesmerized by his eyes. “Do you want a serious relationship? You said you always keep things casual.”
She held her breath, unsure what she wanted his answer to be.
Nash scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’ve seen too many marriages break up. I don’t want to end up divorced like my parents.”
“And I don’t want to fail at another marriage.”
He sat up and captured her hand, entwining her pale, slim fingers with his. “Does it have to be all or nothing? Can’t we play it by ear, see how it goes?”
Katherine shook her head, the memory of her wedding day quickly followed by the memory of being served with divorce papers. “You forget, I’ve already lived this story. I know how it ends.”
They locked eyes for a long minute. “I wasn’t the hero in that story.”
“I just…I can’t trust things would be different.”
“Because of my job?”
“No. Yes,” she groaned. “I don’t know.”
What if her work commitments kept her from devoting enough time to Nash, a man surrounded by temptation? She couldn’t risk repeating mistakes from her past.
“I’ll prove it to you.” Nash’s dimpled grin didn’t quite reach his eyes. Had she hurt him? “Okay, Special Agent Bowden.” His mock-serious tone failed to cover a darker, sadder note running through his words. “Let’s grab a bite then hit the road. Maybe Jax is ready to talk.”
“We can only hope.”
He nodded but said nothing further, and she found herself disappointed. A piece of her wished he’d argued rather than accepting their relationship stalemate, but another piece of her was glad he hadn’t. He might be caring and he might be supportive, but every instinct she had told her he’d grow tired and frustrated with her eventually.
It was not better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. If she didn’t know how good a relationship with Nash could be, she’d never mourn its passing.
Okay, genius, then why are you feeling so crappy?
She dressed hurriedly and followed Nash back to his mother’s house. Would a casual affair with Nash be so wrong?
Playing things by ear…seeing how things went…it went against her need for control, a trait stamped into her when she’d stumbled into the dark woods one night with two best friends and only returned with one.
Nash opened the screen door and ushered her inside.
“A remarkable development in the Last Call Killer case,” announced a news anchor from a small TV on the kitchen counter.
“Morning, Ma.”
Nash’s mother waved without tearing her eyes from the screen.
“A KNBZ affiliate station in Dallas has received an exclusive and graphic video from a sender identifying himself as the Last Call Killer. We warn you the images you’re about to see are disturbing and not intended for all audiences.”
Katherine froze and Nash sucked in a harsh breath. A video from her serial killer? Not possible. It had to be a hoax since Jax was behind bars.
An image of a scantily clad woman chained inside a cage filled the screen. Purple-blue bruises bloomed on her skin. Red slashes carved the letter M into the center of her chest.
The victim’s head had been shaved, and when she lifted it, Katherine’s heartbeat thundered in her ears. Brittany Reins. Her familiar, wide-spaced blue eyes were bleak and clouded with agony. She was alive, but clearly in distress. Her screams rang over background music, The Who’s haunting tune “Behind Blue Eyes.” An indistinct male voice taunted Brittany offscreen. In the lower left corner of the video, a time and date stamp revealed it’d been filmed last night.
While Jax was locked up.
If Jax wasn’t her serial killer, then who?
Her lungs struggled to work as her eyes ran over the dank cement space, searching for clues. Hacksaws, knives, pliers, and other ominous instruments of torture hung from walls or lay atop a stainless-steel table. Crimson stained the floor. In the cage, Brittany twisted and strained against her bindings as fresh blood flowed from a nasty gash beneath her rib cage. Her jagged nails, coated with sparkle nail polish, were either chipped, broken, or missing altogether.
Fury howled inside Katherine. It lifted the hairs on the back of her neck and seized her muscles. Where was this torture chamber? It looked to be one long in use. The work of a practiced sexual sadist.
And where was Layla Pierce? The cage held only one. Nash’s missing person was d
isturbingly nowhere in sight.
The clip ended and the newscaster’s somber face filled the screen. “The entire video has been forwarded to the Dallas Police Department in full cooperation with their ongoing investigation.”
“Full cooperation my ass,” Katherine bit out, furious. They’d sent it only after preparing this airing, since she hadn’t okayed it. For a cheap ratings grab, critical details of the case were now public knowledge.
“Oh, my Lord, that poor girl.” Nash’s mother pressed a fist to her mouth. “Are you going to catch this sicko? Save that woman?”
Nash’s hands fell on his mother’s shoulders, and his concerned eyes swerved to Katherine. “Yes, Ma. We’d better get going.”
“But I made eggs. Bacon.” Nash’s mother gestured to platters of food lined up on her counter.
Nash grabbed a stack of buttered toast, folded a napkin around it, and kissed his mother’s cheek. “No time to waste.”
“Nash,” she called, halting them at the door. “I’m proud of you.”
Nash blinked fast at her words. When he spoke, his voice was rough and thick. “Thanks, Ma. I’ll call soon.”
A moment later, they raced down the highway, adrenaline banging through Katherine as she drove at breakneck speed.
“Son of a bitch,” she swore, passing a slower car.
“Layla wasn’t there.”
She risked a quick side glance and noted Nash’s clenched jaw, his balled fists. “No.”
“He has no reason to hide her.”
Her teeth worried her bottom lip as the full meaning of that piece of information sunk in…. Layla was dead.
“The unsub’s taunting us. He would have used both victims for maximum effect if they were alive.” Just saying the words increased her heart rate.
“I’ve got to call Deena.”
“Tell her the suspect in custody is no longer a person of interest, but avoid speculating further. Layla’s officially missing until we find her body.”
“We have to find her.”
Her eyes clicked against his for a split second. “Yes.”
“The unsub’s got blue eyes,” Nash muttered, as though speaking to himself. “The song. Those lyrics. He’s using them to tell us he’s misunderstood. That no one knows what it’s like to be a bad man, a sad man, like the song says.”
“He chose it for a reason.” Questions pummeled her brain and a dull throb began behind her eyes as she replayed the video in her mind, seeking a clue, an identifying mark…something, anything that would tell her the torture chamber’s location.
“He’s apologizing,” Nash declared.
Her mouth dropped open. Nash’s insight never stopped amazing her. “But to whom?”
“Good question. And why carve an M on Brittany? Except for Becca, he hasn’t matched any of the letters to victims’ names.”
“The letters are personal to the unsub, not his targets.”
“He marked Vivienne Tourneau and Becca Waterson with Bs, Jennifer an A, Mackenzie Payne an S, and Shelby Miller and Brittany Reins with Ms. What would Layla’s letter be?”
“We’ve got to figure out the pattern.”
“And he’s switched up his M.O. He liked his privacy. Or used to.”
“He’s escalating faster than I thought, growing more erratic.” The throbbing in her head intensified, a vise-grip now squeezing her brain. Any harder and it’d leak out of her ears. “If we don’t find Brittany alive in the next couple of days…”
“We’ll find her on I45 or an off-ramp like the rest,” Nash finished for her, grim. “And since the unsub’s not Jax, we’re back to square one and running out of time.”
Katherine swore, then used voice control to call Command Central at BAU.
“WCN aired the video,” Tammy answered without preamble. “Sick bastard.”
“I need your help, Tam.”
“You got it.”
“I’m going to send you the clip. Can you separate the audio tracks? I can’t hear much over the music, and I need to isolate the male voice.”
“I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try. It’ll take a while since the music’s part of the video, not dubbed in. Makes the task extremely difficult, maybe even impossible.”
“Don’t you live for impossible?”
“That I do,” Tammy sighed happily.
“How long will it take?”
“I’m not sure. A few days minimum if I can do it at all.”
“All right, Tammy. Thanks.”
Katherine ended the call and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. She had to watch the full video and see what, if anything, further she could glean.
With time running out and her leads dried up, she had precious little time to waste.
* * * *
Nash stared at the wooded patch where the Last Call Killer had dumped Becca Waterson, his most recent victim. Police had removed the yellow tape cordoning off the area and traffic flowed by as if the former crime scene was nothing special. Not a young woman’s dump site. Not the location chosen by a killer to display his hellish handiwork.
A copse of ash trees rustled, blown by a steady breeze calling up a storm from the south.
What secrets did those woods hold?
And where was Layla?
His mind replayed the other dump sites he’d viewed today after Katherine dropped him off on her way to the precinct. The wish to follow her, to be a legitimate part of the investigation, not just her “detective on the side,” pressed inside him, hard. She’d vowed to include him, but he was still on the outside looking in while she dealt with the latest bombshell development. Alone.
Worse, she didn’t want him in her personal life, either.
Last night, she’d rocked his world and ruled his heart. Watching her defend him to his dismissive aunts, her graciousness toward his great-grandfather, her let-loose-have-fun dancing and her passionate response when he’d gotten her alone added up to an incredible night with a complicated woman he’d never forget. In fact, he’d very much like to repeat it.
How to convince her to give him—them—a chance?
A male stripper wasn’t an easy sell as a boyfriend, especially to a woman who’d been cheated on.
A beer can rattled on the asphalt behind him, thrown from a Chevy exiting I45 onto this off-ramp. It rolled to the edge of the brush and stopped.
Nash bent and peered at the grass. No drag marks. The Last Call Killer was strong enough to carry a petite woman weighing approximately a hundred pounds. Not a lot of weight, but enough to suggest physical fitness, some conditioning. And he didn’t want any dirt to mess up his handiwork. Based on the photos, the victims were spotless save for the cuts, bruises and burn marks he’d given them. The bastard wanted to showcase his work, and his unwillingness to dirty up his victims, despite the mutilation to their appearance, suggested an underlying sense of inadequacy, a need to overcompensate.
He ran through the killer’s profile: A blue-eyed thirty- to forty-year-old Caucasian male who liked vintage cars and hated women—young women enjoying a night out. He craved control and power, which he achieved through ritualistic torture and domination; he worked autonomously, possibly in downtown Dallas, where his presence wouldn’t raise suspicions…someone who seemed trustworthy, harmless, of so little threat women didn’t see the danger until it was too late…
A dull, vicious throb started at the base of his skull. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t bring the killer into sharper focus.
Then change tactics.
With his thoughts wandering in circles, he’d never find Layla. Monitoring of her cell phone, bank accounts, and credit cards revealed no activity since the night she’d disappeared. And she hadn’t been in the video. If she wasn’t in the Last Call Killer’s torture chamber, her body rested out here somewhere. He’d posed some victim
s close to the interstate, others farther back. Some on the main drag, others on off-ramps. Why? There must be a pattern, one that’d lead him to Layla. He had to decipher it.
He brought his vibrating cell phone to his ear. “Hi, Deena.”
“I’m sorry I missed your call earlier,” she said. “My eldest, Anya, just had her baby, so it’s been hectic. Layla’s an aunt. Any news?”
“Not the kind we want. I’m sorry, Deena, but the suspect’s property search was called off today.”
“Why?”
“He’s not the Last Call Killer.”
“What? But you said he tried to escape when you arrived. Shot at you…”
“He thought we were arresting him on an outstanding warrant.”
His heart squeezed at Deena’s muffled sob. “I don’t know how much more I can take. The wondering, the waiting, is killing me. I can’t sleep. Can’t eat. I just need to know what happened to my daughter.”
“I’m going to get you those answers, Deena.”
“And Layla.”
“Yes, Layla, too.”
He hoped she was still alive…
He shoved his phone back in his pocket, hopped on his bike, and raced home. Twenty minutes later, he stood in front of the map on his bulletin board, studying the thumbtacks marking the five known dump sites. He wrote the letters carved into each victim next to their corresponding pins, left Layla’s pin blank, and wrote the letter carved into Brittany on the margin. Five steps carried him backward, where he stopped and scrutinized the pins harder still.
“B, A, S, ?, M, B, M,” he said out loud.
What did it stand for?
His back teeth ground together, his jaw so tight it ached.
You’re wrong, Amafo, I’m not the best man for this job.
He’d wanted to make his great-grandfather proud by wearing a uniform, by fighting for justice, but he was failing, despite everything Amafo had taught him. They’d camped, fished, hiked, and hunted together, all while Amafo shared their ancestors’ teachings and taught him how to be a man.
His thoughts carried him back in time and he was eight again, camping beneath a star-studded sky out on the open plains. “There’s two canoes racing,” his great-grandfather said, pointing up at the sky. “One big, one little.”