FADE TO BLACK - Thrilling Romantic Suspense - Book 1 of the BLACK CATS Series

by Leslie A. Kelly

  She liked this man. A lot.

  “We’re both better off. My son, however, is not.”

  Sucking in yet another surprised breath, Stacey absorbed that tidbit. A hard-ass FBI agent. A former street cop. The sexiest, toughest-looking man she’d ever seen.

  And a father.

  Tension churned in her stomach, but she quickly swallowed it away. She was contemplating a fling with the man. Not any kind of long-term relationship. So the fact that he had a child was completely irrelevant. “How old?”

  “He’s seven.”

  “Custody?”

  “Not even standard. I get to take him to play at McDonald’s every Wednesday night, and he sleeps on a futon at my apartment one weekend a month.”

  Wow. Less than standard, indeed. Thinking about it, she quickly realized a possible reason. “Is it because of the job?”

  His eyes widened, the sun bringing a gleam to the brown depths, revealing a glint of emotion, either at the unfairness of his situation, or the fact that she’d figured it out so quickly. Or both. Then he moved again, into a pool of shadow cast by a towering overhead tree, and glanced away. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  “Look, I know it probably doesn’t help, but honestly, I’d much rather have had a part-time mom than none at all at that age. I know it isn’t enough, but the time you spend with him is really important.”

  He fell silent and Stacey instantly regretted the words. She wasn’t one of those people who always brought every conversation back to themselves. In fact, she couldn’t stand those types. Yet that was exactly what she’d done: taken his sadness over a recent divorce and how it affected his son and related it to her own childhood drama.

  “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No,” he replied, watching her, quiet and contemplative. “Actually, you’re right.”

  Their stares locked, and Stacey realized they’d taken a step forward. They were no longer near-strangers sharing an unexpected attraction. They’d first spoken less than forty-eight hours ago, yet they’d already reached a crossroads in their relationship, where secrets were revealed and hurts shown. And they’d passed it.

  In the silence of the morning, where even the birds were too heat-exhausted to chirp, their stares locked. Words clamored to escape her throat—an invitation to dinner, to have a drink, to grab a beer later.

  “Guess we should get back to it,” he muttered before she could say anything.

  “Sure.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Might be a good time to check in with the others first, though. See if they’ve found anything.”

  If they had, she probably would have heard the shouts of her own men from their search quadrant a quarter mile away. But she didn’t point that out.

  “I could use a water break, anyway,” she said.

  Taggert lifted his radio and got a brief report from Special Agent Stokes, leaving Stacey a moment to pull herself back together. And to remind herself of all the reasons she should not be letting herself grow more interested in this particular FBI agent.

  He lived a dangerous life, worked a dark and bloody job. He was fresh off a divorce, a single father. He lived in a world she’d intentionally left behind when she’d moved back here from Roanoke.

  But none of those things chased away the interest, the pure, electric attraction she felt for the man whenever she looked at him. Instead, she kept going over what she already knew about him, what she already liked about him.

  He was strong and determined. Stubborn, even. Like her.

  He was good at his job, wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of doing it to the best of his abilities. Also like her.

  He was smart. Intuitive. And deep down, beneath all the gruffness and the swagger, he had both a sense of humor and a genuine warmth. The latter appeared at the oddest of times, like when he’d tossed her that gum, when he’d tried to prevent her from watching the video of Lisa’s death. Even now, when he’d genuinely appreciated the comment she’d made about his son.

  Oh, yes, Dean Taggert had more depth than she’d first imagined.

  And aside from all that, he was incredibly masculine, incredibly tough … incredibly big. Incredibly sexy.

  That last one doomed her. Because despite resenting the darkness he’d brought into her safe, secure, nice world, she couldn’t deny she wanted him. That was all, just plain wanted to go to bed with him.

  It had been a long time since she’d been so aware of a man. Longer since she’d been so aware of herself as a woman. That it should happen now, in the midst of this horrific case, confused her more. Not two minutes ago, in the middle of this nightmare, she’d had one of the most intimate conversations she’d had with a man in years.

  No doubt about it, working with Taggert was messing with her head, putting strange ideas in it at the strangest of times. She’d found her stare tugged back to him time and again this morning, watching the way his white dress shirt grew damp with sweat and molded itself against his thick chest and muscular arms.

  Unlike his boss, Taggert looked like he knew how to get down and dirty. Despite the clothes she’d harassed him about, he seemed more than ready for some rugged action with that powerful body and that rock-hard determination in his jaw.

  Get over it already.

  She had to get over it. Because she needed to work with the man. Taggert was leading this investigation, and he was desperate to solve it. He hadn’t told her the whole story, but she knew enough to know they were working against a clock here. This killer could be stalking his next victim right now. The thought that he could be someone she knew, someone she’d interacted with here in Hope Valley, made her stomach heave.

  Anything she could do to help, she would. That included setting aside her response to the man and being one of seven people sifting through hundreds of acres of woods, looking for evidence that had probably been washed away months ago.

  Utterly futile, perhaps. But she owed it to Winnie. And to Lisa.

  BY THREE P.M., Dean was beginning to regret not bringing the shorts he’d mentioned to Stacey. Heat radiated from each molecule of air, baking and assaulting the senses. His clothes clung to every inch of him, and his eyes had glazed over. His sunglasses didn’t help; they merely steamed up, so he’d shoved them into his pocket early this morning and hadn’t touched them since. If he had to inhale one more mouthful of hot, pine-scented air, dry and redolent with the must of decaying trees and ancient dead leaves, he was gonna gag.

  The great outdoors. Give him the D.C. Metro during rush hour any day.

  “Nothing,” he muttered. “Absolutely nothing.” The three teams scouring the perimeter of the fence hadn’t turned up anything other than the remnants of an old, illegal campfire and a few crushed beer cans, there for a month at most.

  “We’ve still got a lot to cover,” Stacey reminded him. As if he needed reminding. With only seven of them working, this was shaping up to be a weeklong project. They’d expected to have more help with Brandon and Lily, but Wyatt had kept them in the city for today. Another auction could be taking place at any time, and the IT experts would be more valuable trying to track it than searching for the bloody needle in this forest-wide haystack.

  “I know, but we’ve got to be thorough.”

  He’d seriously considered doing a trade-off when they’d all broken for a quick lunch: letting Stacey partner up with one of her men, leaving him with just about anybody else. Because despite the fact that he liked working with her, those moments this morning when things had gotten a little on the personal side had been a bonehead move.

  He had no time to get personal. No interest in getting personal. No room in his life for anything resembling personal.

  Right?

  Keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll start to believe it.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to hear himself say that when his head was filled with nothing but her words: We both know there’s something h
ere.

  God, she was so direct, one more thing he really liked about her. That and the way her sarcastic sense of humor emerged every once in a while. The things he knew about the woman—the details she’d let slip—only made him want to know more. And despite the way she’d answered his question the previous night, he suspected he understood what she was doing here in small-town Hell Valley.

  April 2007. Virginia Tech. Christ.

  “I dunno, I somehow think I’ve seen this tree before,” she mumbled as she leaned against a staggeringly tall pine. “Or maybe it was one of his nine thousand brothers.”

  He got the point.

  “Can I be honest?” she asked. She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I’m afraid this is a waste of time. The guy’s smart. Would he really have left anything for us to find?”

  “It’s possible. You’d be surprised at the mistakes criminals make.”

  “But he’s got to be a genius, right?”

  “Not necessarily. Brilliant monsters are a Hannibal Lecter fallacy; most organized serial killers are of just slightly above-average intelligence. Disorganized types can have low IQs, but they’re cunning. In fact, the less intelligent the perpetrator, the more persistent and brutal he can be. Like an animal going after a treat, he just doesn’t give up. Doesn’t relent. Doesn’t see anything wrong with what he’s doing.”

  “Doesn’t have a conscience,” she whispered.

  “Exactly. No moral compass. Combine that with a bloody streak, a hint of cleverness, determination, and a good survival instinct and you’ve got yourself a John Wayne Gacy, who was no rocket scientist, yet killed dozens before he was caught.”

  “He’s savvy, though. Using the Internet the way he does …”

  “Every sixth grader in America is savvy enough to utilize the Internet. You’ve got teenagers beating each other up and proudly sharing the video on YouTube. While it might be unbelievable, it’s not that difficult. Any asshole with a digital camera and a DSL connection can get his fifteen megabytes of fame.”

  She fell silent. The reality of what they were facing was probably worse than what she’d been imagining. Because a brilliant criminal, while hard to catch, might trip himself up through his own arrogance and certainty of his intelligence. An average one often escaped notice, his sheer blandness allowing him to fly under the radar. For years.

  “Okay. So maybe he left something.” She shook her head, eyeing the hundreds of trees in all directions. “But seventeen months?”

  There, he agreed with her. It was a long shot. And they were all exhausted. They needed more men, and they needed dogs.

  About to call it a day and suggest he, Stokes, and Mulrooney start on their interviews of Lisa’s family and friends, he paused when Stacey’s staticky radio came to life on her hip.

  “Sheriff? You better get over here,” one of her deputies said.

  Their eyes met and locked. “They found something?” he asked.

  “What is it, Frank? Over.”

  “Sorry ‘bout that, Stacey. I forgot about the ‘over.’ Uh, over?”

  Dean’s teeth clenched and his temples began to throb.

  “It’s okay. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “We got company. Damn it now, Warren, you put that away unless you want to get yourself shot.”

  “Oh, hell.” Stacey’s slim body stiffened and she immediately began to move, her long legs pistoning as she blew past him. The radio at her mouth, she ran toward the next quadrant, where her three deputies had been working. Mulrooney and Stokes were south of them, too far to be of any use.

  Dean took off after her, his feet tangling in mounds of overgrowth. Sharp branches and brush tore at his clothes, and he thrust them out of the way. Every instinct he had screamed at him to tell her to wait, and the sudden panic that she might be running into something dangerous made his feet fly over the ground. Still, he wasn’t as nimble as Stacey at maneuvering through this crap, so she beat him to the others by a few yards and a few deep breaths.

  His numbed brain started working again as soon as he skidded to a stop beside her, seeing that she was fine and totally in control.

  Tense. But in control.

  Stacey had unsnapped her holster, and the tips of her fingers hovered over the grip of her weapon. She didn’t betray the effects of her hundred-yard dash by so much as a gasp, and neither her hands nor her chin trembled in the least. She was entirely focused, as she warily eyed the metal fence topped by that vicious razor wire.

  On the other side of it sat a hulk of a man on an ATV.

  With grizzled gray hair cut close to his skull, his dark green camouflage clothes, and combat boots, he could be nothing other than a vet. Something kick-ass and violent had shown this guy some action and had left his brains a little scrambled up about whether or not it was peacetime. The scowl—not to mention the shotgun lying across his lap—made that obvious.

  His own hand went to his hip. But Stacey shot him a warning look, silently telling him to wait.

  “Did he point that shotgun at you?” she asked one of her deputies, not turning her head, keeping her attention on the man glaring at them through the metal fence.

  “No, Sheriff,” one of them said. “Just waved it around a little.”

  She nodded but didn’t lower her hand. “Warren, you want to fire up that four-wheeler and ride on back to your house right now, you hear me?”

  Warren. The name sounded familiar. And suddenly Dean knew for sure who they were facing. This was Warren Lee, the man who owned the property on the other side of this fence. The violent one who Stacey seemed certain hadn’t been the man in the tape.

  Dean wasn’t so sure. The shadowy figure who’d killed Lisa and the others had been covered from top to bottom, a black hood hiding his entire head, a shoulder-to-toes cape doing the rest of the job. But he’d been tall, and obviously strong, given the way he’d overpowered his victims. He’d also been disgustingly impressive with weapons.

  The proximity and this man’s violent personality meant they could be looking at the man who’d killed those women. Tensing, Dean slowly removed his sidearm from its holster, keeping it low, down by his side. He didn’t want to inflame the situation, but damned if he’d be caught unawares if that mean-looking bastard started shooting.

  Noting that none of the deputies had done the same, all following Stacey’s lead, on alert, but not unholstering, he gave her the benefit of the doubt that she knew what she was doing. This was their territory; the man was one of their townies, whom they all knew.

  “What’s going on? What do you people think you’re doing on my property?”

  “This isn’t your property,” Stacey said, maintaining her cool so easily he wondered if she had a little ice in her DNA. “We’re on federal land and we have every right to be here. Now, I mean it, get on back to your house and put that shotgun away before you wave it at the wrong person and end up with a bullet in you.” Despite the words, her tone was even, not exactly threatening but not one bit weak, either.

  Damn, the woman was cool under pressure.

  “This is my fence …”

  “And we’re not touching it,” she snapped.

  “I got a right to protect my property and make sure you don’t come on it.”

  “We’re officers of the law performing a legal search, who have the right to respond if we find ourselves threatened. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mr. Lee?” Her hand wrapped around the butt of her nine-millimeter. She’d reached the end of her patience with the man. “I don’t care if you’re on your own property; if you point that gun at one of my men, or any other officer in these woods, they will be perfectly within their rights to take you down.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed and he remained still for a moment, engaging in a staring contest with the female sheriff whose entire posture said she would not back off. Then, as if someone had whispered some sense into his ear, he pushed the shotgun, muzzle-down, into a scabbard on his ATV. “Saw activity, had the right to
arm myself to come out and see what was going on.”

  Dean wondered just how much this man actually knew about his rights. Because if he was stupid enough to shoot and kill anyone merely for stepping over his property line, the guy would be looking at manslaughter at the very least.

  “We’ve talked about this, Warren. There’s a big difference between protecting yourself if someone breaks into your house and you coming out here to look for trouble.”

  The tension drew out a moment longer, as the big, gruff-looking man continued to glare. Then, slowly, as if someone had poured a modicum of malicious pleasure into his brain, a creaky smile cracked his face. It looked more menacing than friendly, like it didn’t get a lot of use.

  “Good luck on your search,” he said with a sarcastic salute.

  The smile widened, going from creaky to crafty.

  All Dean’s senses reacted to the change. He almost smelled the malevolent humor rolling off the man, as if he had a great, dark secret and knew the sheriff was wasting her time. He stepped forward, wanting to question Lee about whether he really knew something, as his expression and tone seemed to indicate. Before he could, though, Mr. Lee started the engine and revved it up.

  “Stay on that side of the fence,” Lee called before speeding away.

  When he was gone, Stacey questioned her deputies. “Tell me everything he said and did.”

  Exactly what Dean wanted to know. Seeing her deep frown, he wondered if Stacey, too, had been struck by the unfriendly man’s strange mood swing.

  Her men, despite their rusty radio skills, proved pretty observant. They succinctly related the details of Mr. Lee’s arrival, his belligerent attitude, and his comments. One thing was apparent: He did not immediately question what they were doing. He had been focused only on whether they were coming too close to his own property.

  “He didn’t ask what you were looking for?”

  The deputy who’d been doing most of the talking, a middle-aged guy with a bulbous red nose, answered, “Nope, he never did. Only …”