by Rita Herron
* * *
JACQUELINE’S NERVES WERE strung tight as she sat in the outer waiting room of the state prison in Angola. Damon and Jean-Paul had gone in to question Frederick Fenton, a serial killer who had murdered twelve women in the same cruel manner Kendra and her mother had died.
Had Kendra talked to the man herself? Could she have been working on a story about Fenton’s past crimes?
And what did all this have to do with Jacqueline and her father’s death?
Was her mother still alive? Had she looked for her missing daughter? Did she have any other family she’d forgotten about?
If only she could remember everything she and Kendra had talked about…
Her palms felt clammy as she ran her fingers over the photo album Damon had confiscated from Kendra’s house. He’d gotten special permission to remove it from the crime scene.
She thumbed open the book and glanced at the first picture—a shot of Kendra when she was a child sitting in her mother’s lap. She skimmed the first section, which held mostly photos of Kendra between infancy and high school. Some of the older shots seemed familiar.
The next section showcased high-school prom, graduation, sorority functions and a wedding that must have been a friend’s. Then came photos of Kendra’s graduation from college, her journalism awards, a photo of her and the governor of the state after her feature stories on Hurricane Katrina, the aftermath, and heroes she’d discovered during the revival of the city.
Jacqueline scoured the pages searching for other family photos, anything to connect her to Kendra or jog her memory. Stuffed in the lining of the album, she discovered a photograph of a closed casket and a woman bent over it in tears. Roses covered the slick gray coffin in a bed of crimson while the woman seemed stark-faced white in contrast, a picture of grief and remorse.
Her heart clenched. She squinted at the woman’s face and realized she resembled Kendra…The woman must be her.
This was her father’s casket, his funeral, just before Kendra had approached her.
A memory flashed in the darkness that had become her mind, and she closed her eyes, struggling to recall every detail. She’d been sobbing, heart-wrenching cries torn from her gut. Her father was gone. Her hero. Mentor. The man she had adored. The man she’d followed around the world.
She’d been standing by his car, waving goodbye when it had gone up in flames. The explosion had rocked the café beside them, and sent her falling to her knees to dodge the flames and debris. She’d seen his anguished, shocked face as he’d tried to claw the door open, but it had been too late. A second later, flames had consumed the vehicle, the sharp blast of gas and metal exploding into the air, mingling with her screams.
Shell-shocked, she had mourned his senseless loss. Then Kendra had appeared at his graveside to add to Jacqueline’s guilt, suggesting it was her fault. The man she’d been dating, the one she’d met at a fund-raiser in Copenhagen with her father, the man whose charming smile and flamboyant attention had seduced her into his bed—he was not the man she’d thought him to be. Kendra said he had used Jacque line to get to her father.
She pressed her hands over her ears, trying to block out the accusations screaming through her head that Kendra was right. And trying to force the man’s name and face in her mind. But it eluded her.
The sounds of male voices in the prison resounded through the tumult. The clinking of hand cuffs. The prison guards, the police officers, the memory of the fence she’d seen when she’d arrived.
Something about prison…Kendra had said that Jacqueline’s lover deserved to go to jail for all the men he had killed.
What kind of monster had been her lover?
* * *
BEFORE DAMON AND JEAN-PAUL met with Frederick Fenton, they had a chat with the warden. Rodney Rivera insisted Fenton’s mail had been routinely scanned. In fact, he checked the mail and discovered a photo of Kendra’s death that the killer had sent Fenton. Thankfully, Fenton hadn’t seen it yet.
The hulking, forty-something warden scratched his balding head. “I’ll tell my guys to be on the lookout in case he receives anything else suspicious.”
“Tell them to ask around inside, see if Fenton’s talked to anyone about the Yateses’ murders, too,” Damon added.
Jean-Paul reviewed the visitor’s log for the last six months, but the warden said the only visitor he’d had was some prison groupie who’d become his pen pal through a magazine ad. Fairly common, but they would check her out anyway.
“Does he have access to the Internet?” Damon asked.
Rivera shook his head. “No. Though a few of our guys have earned the privilege, Fenton hasn’t. He’s too much of a troublemaker.”
Damon frowned. “He can pass messages through a third party.”
Rivera nodded. “That’s possible. The guys trade favors in here for cigarettes, drugs, you name it. They find a way to get it.”
Damon was relieved that Rivera seemed cooperative and had agreed to check with a few of the snitches inside. Finally they faced Fenton in a small interrogation room. Damon had pulled up the man’s mug shot. Six-one of lean, mean muscle. At the time of his arrest, twenty-five-year-old Fenton had had short spiked black hair, a full beard, a tattoo of a tribal symbol on his left arm and beefy hands. According to his rap sheet, he liked to use his fists on women.
Despite the years, the killer facing them now was just as mean-looking as he’d been when he was young. But he was middle-aged and had put on at least thirty pounds. His hair was scraggly, his beard graying and thin, and jagged scars crisscrossed his face and arms. Damon knew he’d earned those in prison fights.
His shackles clanked as he dragged his feet across the floor, the fierce set of his mouth and narrowed eyes obviously meant to intimidate. But Fenton had no idea who he was dealing with. The Dubois men did not allow criminals to scare them.
“Well, boys, to what do I owe this honor?” Fenton slunk down into the hard vinyl chair across the table from them, dropping his cuffed hands into his lap.
“You’ve read the news lately?” Jean-Paul began.
Fenton pulled at his chin. “Oh, yeah.” As if a lightbulb went off in his head, he grinned, revealing yellowed teeth. “You’re here about that woman being mutilated.”
Jean-Paul nodded, his body relaxed in the seat. “It looks like a fan of your work has surfaced.”
Fenton shrugged. “I guess I’ve got an admirer. After all, I was a master at the game.”
“If you were a true master, you wouldn’t have gotten caught,” Damon replied deadpan.
Fenton scowled. “So how many has this guy done?”
“Two,” Jean-Paul replied.
Fenton’s eyebrows shot up. “He do them together?”
Jean-Paul shook his head.
Fenton leaned forward, hands on the table in front of him, fingers flexing. “Shit. That would have been fun. Do one while the other watched.” He angled his head toward Damon. “If I get out of here, that’s what I’ll do. A tag team, mother and daughter together.”
“You’ll never get out, Fenton,” Damon said. “Now tell us, is this guy working for you? Do you know who he is?”
Fenton’s eyebrows shifted into a thick unibrow. “What’s in this for me if I talk?”
“Depends on what you have to say,” Jean-Paul said.
A long hesitation followed, where Fenton acted as if he were chewing over the idea and testing its weight. “Afraid I can’t help you boys.”
Damon leaned forward this time, his hand slapping the table. “Look, Fenton, we researched your past. Didn’t find any real friends you had, no family either. Is there someone we don’t know about?”
“No brats if that’s what you mean.”
Damon clenched his teeth. “Did you have a friend back then? Or maybe you made one inside, he got out and decided to copy your crimes?”
“I don’t need friends or partners.” Fenton shook his head. “I worked alone. No ass-wipe to screw me up.”
&n
bsp; “What about since you’ve been inside? Any mail from an admirer? Someone who wanted to boast to you about his newly acquired skill?”
“Nope.” Fenton grunted. “But I hope he sends me a picture or something. I’d like to see his handiwork.”
So the photo the warden had was the first one the killer had sent. Probably wouldn’t be the last. Disgust chewed at Damon’s insides and he grabbed Fenton by the collar. “Listen to me, you asshole. If you don’t cooperate and we find out you’ve withheld information from us, we’ll charge you with these murders and see that you end up on death row.”
Fenton bared his teeth. “All right. Let me look at the crime photos and I’ll see what I can tell you from them.”
Perverted bastard just wanted a thrill. No way.
Damon made a grunting sound, then he and Jean-Paul motioned to the guard to let them out. Though they hadn’t learned much, they’d whetted Fenton’s appetite for information on his copycat. Hopefully now if Fenton did hear something from the killer, he wouldn’t be able to help himself. He’d brag about it and whoever the warden had on the inside would spill his guts to Damon.
They found Jacqueline sitting quietly staring at the photo album, looking lost and vulnerable.
She clutched the book and stood. “Did you learn anything?”
Damon gestured for her to go outside, and the three of them stepped into the stifling heat. “Not from Fenton. But the warden scanned his mail, and the killer had sent him a photo of Kendra’s murder.”
“God,” Jacqueline whispered. “That is sick.”
“Yeah. We’ll catch him, chère, I promise you that.”
Jean-Paul got in to drive, and Damon’s cell phone rang just as he opened the back door for Jacqueline. She buckled her seat belt while he connected the call and climbed in front.
“Special Agent Dubois.”
“Dubois, listen,” said the voice of his partner. “I just got a hit on the fingerprints from that woman who looks like Kendra. We have an ID now.”
Damon gripped the phone tighter. “And?”
“Her name is Jacqueline Braudaway.”
His mouth went dry. Braudaway?
“There’s more,” his partner continued. “She’s the daughter of former Ambassador to Denmark Eduardo Braudaway. He used to work for the State Department and traveled all over the world. But he was killed in a car explosion a little over a year ago…”
Damon didn’t need to hear the rest. He already knew what had happened to Braudaway. The ambassador had been murdered by a terrorist. A man the government had been tracking for months. A man the E-team had taken out. It had been Damon’s last mission. The one that had fallen apart.
Damon had been responsible for the assassination and setting the explosive himself. But that woman had appeared out of nowhere.
All along they’d wondered how Diego Bolton had gotten to Braudaway.
The hair on the back of his neck suddenly stood on end. They’d suspected he’d done so through family.
Maybe he had seduced Braudaway’s daughter…
Jacqueline.
Jesus. The woman sitting in his backseat was the ambassador’s daughter—and she might have been Diego’s girlfriend. She’d said her father was murdered and she was right. She’d also claimed she was to blame for her father’s death….
The air in his lungs froze. Bon Dieu…
Had she been the woman in Diego’s apartment that fatal day he’d set off the explosive? No…the woman had died in the fire…. Cal had told him she wasn’t breathing.
But the photos of Jacqueline’s burns, her plastic surgeries, her mysterious appearance in Pace’s hospital a year ago, the timing…It all fit.
Except she thought she’d been injured from a car explosion. But what if she was confusing her own near-death experience with her father’s car explosion?
What if she’d actually survived the terrorist’s explosion, only to be mangled by the one he’d set?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SOMETHING WAS BOTHERING Damon.
Jacqueline saw the strain on his face as they drove back to the police station. As soon as they arrived, Jean-Paul escorted them to his office and got them both a cup of coffee. Damon told her they had to talk.
“Do you want me to leave?” Jean-Paul asked.
Damon shook his head. “No, you need to hear this, too. My partner at the bureau just called.” Damon angled his head toward her. “We know who you are, Jacqueline.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. Judging from his reaction and the intensity in his expression, he’d learned something disturbing.
“And?” she asked, determined to face whatever he’d discovered. After all, was not knowing any better? Especially since she’d had that flash of a memory in the car.
“Your name is Jacqueline Braudaway.”
Jacqueline. So she was right. Yet, there were so many holes in her mind. Such as why she had Kendra’s face.
“Your father was an ambassador to Denmark, Eduardo Braudaway,” Damon continued. “He worked for the State Department and traveled abroad.”
She nodded, seeing flashes of her travels in Africa and Honduras. That was where she’d learned to speak Spanish.
“And you were right. He was killed in a car explosion last year.” Damon tapped into the computer and produced a photo of a tall, regal dark-haired man shaking hands with the mayor of New Orleans and another of him and the president.
Her heart clenched with the realization that this man was her father. Memories teased at her mind. Her father’s gruff voice as he addressed a crowd. His caring concern for the people he represented. The trips he’d taken abroad. A thin blond-haired woman in the shadows behind him…her mother? And a little girl tagging behind him, wanting to go everywhere he went. Wanting to be like him, to travel, to help others. Her small hand in his. A time when he’d taken her to a carnival and they’d ridden the roller coaster together. She’d screamed and laughed, and he’d hugged her tight, then bought her cotton candy. Another when he’d surprised her with a hand-carved wooden cross he’d bought in a small shop in Italy. Her high-school graduation, then a trip to Honduras on a church mission trip where they’d worked side by side with the locals, mudding houses, cementing floors and digging latrines.
Tears trickled down her cheeks as other memories crowded her mind. Some fleeting and happy, some reminding her that he’d spent long hours and weeks away from the family. That she hadn’t always been able to accompany him.
But he had inspired her to volunteer in developing nations to feed the hungry, and to start a program that sponsored Honduran children for education beyond elementary school.
Damon accessed another photo—this one of the accident that had taken her father’s life.
Jacqueline stared at the crushed car, the flames spewing, and remembered the image as the one from her nightmares. A second photo showed the car charred beyond recognition. Grief swelled inside her as if the explosion had just occurred. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?” she managed to ask.
“So you remember?”
“Not everything, no. But pieces of the past with him. My father…was a good man.” She forced herself to look at Damon, blinking back more tears that begged to be released. “The nightmares I had, the car explosion, the man staring at me through the flames…It all makes sense now.” She hesitated, sipped the coffee, then set the mug on the desk. Her hands were shaking so badly the hot liquid sloshed over the side. She reached over to find something to mop it up with, but Damon pressed one hand over hers in comfort, then cleaned up the spill with a napkin himself.
“I’m sorry, Jacqueline.”
She nodded, squeezing his fingers. “When you were questioning Fenton and I was looking at the photo album, I had a brief flash of the explosion again.” Her voice wavered. “Somehow, I felt like it was my fault.”
She studied Damon, searched for a reaction, but his poker face revealed nothing. He looked to Jean-Paul and then back at her.
�
�Why do you blame yourself?” he asked calmly.
“My cousin,” she said in frustration. “She said I knew the killer. I think I was involved with him.”
“You weren’t hurt that day?” Damon asked, and she shook her head no.
“My accident…It happened later.”
“What else do you remember?” he asked.
“Being at the funeral, standing beside my father’s casket, my mother crying. And Kendra…warning that I might be next.” Jacqueline searched her mind for the man’s name, for details of him, for an explanation. “What about my mother? Is she alive?”
“Yes,” Damon replied. “But I’m afraid she had a nervous breakdown after your father’s death and is in a rest home. That’s why she didn’t report you missing.”
Sadness washed over her all over again. Her mother…She had always lived for her husband, had been old-fashioned and had supported his political aspirations. And although she hadn’t liked traveling to the poorer countries, she had spearheaded charities in the States. What was her mother’s condition now?
“I have to see her.” Jacqueline wrapped a vise around her emotions, savoring her newfound memories even as pain accompanied them. “Maybe she can tell me what happened, fill in the blank holes.” And maybe seeing Jacqueline would help her mother recover….
A second later, a bad feeling tightened her stomach. Maybe her mother wouldn’t be happy to see her.
But why? From the brief memory flash, she knew they hadn’t been as close as she and her father, but her mother had loved her. Had something happened to drive a wedge between the two of them after they lost her father? Did her mother blame her for her father’s death as she blamed herself?
“We’ll arrange a visit,” Damon agreed.
She nodded, feeling numb, then sensed that Damon was still holding back. Amazing how quickly she’d learned to read the tiny nuances of his expressions, even when he tried to maintain that professional mask. “What else do you know about my father’s death? About me?”
Damon gave his brother an odd look—worry? Anger? Distrust? She couldn’t be sure.