Words That Kill (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 3)

by Claire Robyns

  Nate didn’t interrupt once. He just sat there, regarding me with a mildly interested expression, and he kept right on doing that after I was done.

  “I’m not making this stuff up,” I informed him tersely.

  “Never said you were.”

  He didn’t need to. “You’re not taking me seriously, Nate. You haven’t even brought your notebook out.”

  “So that’s the gold standard, huh?” He pushed a hand through his hair, slowly, humor creasing into the edges of his eyes.

  My pulse fluttered without consent. Apparently it had forgotten that we were blissfully hibernating from worldly complications.

  I slipped from my stool and pulled Nate’s mug out of his hands. “Another coffee?”

  “Um, thanks…”

  I scooted for the percolator, putting distance between my pulse and those smoky grey eyes. “So, you know how this cop business works, right?”

  “I hope so.” Laughter laced his tone.

  He really wasn’t taking this serious at all. Which was good news. The best, in fact. Maybe my initial instincts had been spot on. “You honestly think this could all just be a coincidence? Then we don’t actually have to do anything.”

  Nate drank his coffee black and bitter, so once I’d poured the brew, there wasn’t much else to do.

  I crossed back to him and pressed the mug into his hands, looking deep into his eyes, as if I could read what went on inside there. “We don’t have to go to the authorities, just in case? Not me or Joe, clearly, I promised to keep his name completely out of it, but you could always feed the information through for us, tell them your source is confidential.”

  “Oops, sorry to interrupt.” Sam sauntered into the kitchen, not sounding the least bit sorry. “Nate, we’re heading out.” She pulled a face. “Jeff’s parents for lunch.”

  “Oh, that might be a problem,” I told her. “My car’s blocking the road.”

  Sam gave me a high-brow look. “Could you possibly move it?”

  “Maddox’s car is stuck.” Nate pushed off the stool to his feet, glancing at me. “Jeff and I will dig you out of the snow.”

  “What about my problem?” I whispered, realizing I’d made a couple of assumptions on his behalf without much actual input. “What do you think we should do?”

  “Where’s Joe now?”

  “Home.”

  “And that would be, where?”

  “Hollow House, of course.”

  He looked at me. Scrubbed his jaw. Put the mug to his lips, but lowered it again without drinking. “Of course that’s where he lives.”

  My mouth opened to explain. It’s complicated. Luckily I caught it, clamped my lips into a flat line before giving Nate another excuse to mock my complicated life.

  He sighed. “I need to have a chat with Joe, see what’s going on. Is now a convenient time?”

  I nodded vigorously.

  “Give me a minute to get ready,” he said, “then we can all head out together.”

  Sam plucked his mug from his hands. “I need this more than you.”

  Nate threw one last look at me over his shoulder, then he walked out.

  “Maddox, huh?” Sam stepped closer, sipping on Nate’s coffee, eyes on me.

  Another rush of profound irritability prickled my skin. I couldn’t help it. I did not like her drinking from Nate’s mug, drinking the coffee I’d poured for him. It wasn’t a jealousy, propriety thing. It was a Sam thing. She wasn’t a very pleasant person. You’d think Nate would take more care when choosing his friends and partners.

  “Maddox Storm.” Sam leant a skinny hip against the breakfast bar. “The Hollow House girl.”

  I brought out a neutral smile. “My reputation precedes me.”

  “Your police case file precedes you,” she said coolly. “It is interesting, though… Nate never said you were house buddies.”

  I zipped my smile. At least I’d tried. “Does Nate tell you everything?”

  Sam sipped Nate’s coffee before responding with a drawled out, “Yes.”

  “He didn’t tell you about me,” I was quick to remind her.

  “Maybe because there’s nothing much to tell.”

  Indignation rose up my throat, but what on earth was I doing defending my non-existent relationship with Nate?

  “You’re right,” I said. “There’s nothing much to tell.”

  THREE

  So here’s the thing, just something I’d like to put out there. If you’re in the middle of a crap-storm, putting your ex-husband and almost-flame in the same room is not the best way to solve it.

  And no, it wasn’t about that. Joe and I were history, six long, dry months of history. And calling Nate my almost-flame was a bit of a stretch, we were more like a wispy tendril of smoke that blew away on the first breeze. So I had no idea why Nate and Joe were acting like two bulls with me as the red flag, but they were and it was doing my head in.

  “What kind of writer doesn’t back their work up to the cloud?” Nate grunted.

  Joe glared at me. “Now he’s attacking the way I work?”

  Nate put his back to the wall, arms folded, looking to me for a response.

  I had none. Well, I happened to agree with Nate on this one, but it wasn’t like I’d voice that opinion, not with Joe’s glare on me.

  We were ensconced in Joe’s bedroom, Joe slumped behind his desk, Nate propped against the wall, me perched on the edge of the bed. The problem we’d arrived at was that Joe, apparently, had no previous versions of his manuscript backed up. Anywhere. He wrote in one Word document and overwrote it each time he saved. He did back up to a memory stick, but same thing there, he overwrote the same file each day.

  “Does it really matter?” I ventured to ask.

  “It matters,” Nate declared flatly.

  Joe released a noisy breath and flipped over pages of the hard copy in front of him until the relevant chapter. “Here, read this.”

  Nate pushed away from the wall to take a look, palms flattened to the desk either side of the paper stack, head bent.

  I still hadn’t actually read it. I’d rather not incriminate myself in yet another murder any more than absolutely necessary. As Nate read, I did begin to hope. Maybe Joe was overreacting and his scene only bore a faint resemblance to the Markson murder.

  “You were supposed to ask him for advice,” Joe flung my way. “You never said anything about bringing him here.”

  “Maddox didn’t bring me anywhere,” Nate informed him rather coolly, not lifting his eyes from the page. “I make my own decisions on which leads to follow up.”

  Joe’s scowl dug deep. “Now you’re investigating me?” He turned that scowl on me. “He’s investigating me?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Nate promised to keep this between us, Joe.”

  “That’s not what I said,” Nate reminded me. “If a crime has been committed, I have to call it in. And I’m not investigating you,” he said to Joe. “I’m trying to establish a timeline.” He tapped a finger to the page. “The date and timestamp here is Friday.”

  “That would be when I printed it,” Joe said.

  Nate looked across the desk at him. “Do you have another hard copy that you printed before Tuesday?”

  “I tossed it out when I printed the final draft.” Joe’s eyes lit on me. “Hang on, I gave you a draft copy weeks ago.”

  “Thanks, Joe,” I muttered sarcastically. “I was really eager for that piece of info to get leaked to the cops.”

  “Maddox?” Nate whipped around, brandishing a wad of pages at me. “You read this before the murder occurred?”

  “No, I emphatically did not read Joe’s manuscript,” I told him. “Not a single word.”

  Not that I was trying to sell Joe out as the only prime suspect, but for goodness sake. As Sam had pointed out less than an hour ago, the police already had a file on me. I did not need the extra attention.

  It was laughable, actually. I’d always dreamed of being in the spotlight. I
should have been a little more specific with those birthday wishes.

  “Is your copy timestamped?” Nate asked.

  “How should I know? Did you miss the part about me not reading a single word?”

  Sure, I’d flipped through a couple of pages, but none of the obviously important stuff. And I certainly hadn’t taken note of whether the page header had a timestamp.

  Joe plonked his elbows on the table and squashed his cheek into his palm. “Just fetch the manuscript, Maddie.”

  “Um…” I wet my lips. “That might be difficult.”

  “Oh, God,” Nate sighed. “It’s complicated, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not complicated,” I snorted. “It’s rather simple, actually. Burns was lighting a fire downstairs this morning and—”

  “You threw it in the fire,” Nate cut in.

  “Why?” said Joe, sounding rather hurt. “Why would you burn my story?”

  There was no way I’d admit to deliberately destroying evidence. “Spring cleaning.”

  Nate gave me a deadpan look. “It’s the middle of winter.”

  “I wanted to get a head start this year.” Moving on. “So…?” I flapped a hand at the pages Nate still held. “Now that you’ve read the important bits, what do you think?”

  Nate retreated to his position by the wall. “Well, I guess there are two possibilities. Either it’s just coincidence—”

  “Or a copycat killer stole Joe’s manuscript,” I finished.

  Nate scrubbed his jaw. “Three possibilities, then.”

  “Three?” I lurched to my feet, hands on my hips, heart suddenly thudding. “You are not seriously considering the ridiculous notion that Joe killed that girl!”

  “Okay, make that four.”

  My mouth opened in furious protest, but I had nothing. “What’s the fourth one?”

  Nate’s gaze swerved to Joe. “Don’t take this personally, Joe, but we’ve seen this kind of thing before.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m sure it is personal,” Joe shot back.

  “What kind of thing?” I demanded.

  “A writer claiming credit for a murder.”

  Joe and I shared a confused look.

  Nate expounded. “Writing a real murder into his book after the fact and then claiming he’d written it before.”

  That cleared up exactly nothing for me. “Why on earth would anyone do that?”

  “To prove some sort of prophetic ability?” Nate shrugged. “A publicity stunt? There are reasons.”

  Joe lurched to his feet behind the desk. “This is why you were so intent on that damn timeline.”

  “I have to get a full picture,” Nate said dryly. “We call it investigating.”

  “Bullshit.” Joe slammed his hands on the desk. “You’d already made up your mind before you walked in here.” He laughed, a bitter, twisted laugh. “You know what? It makes no difference. I’ll do this on my own.”

  I stepped closer to Joe, worried at the frenetic gleam in his eyes. “Do what?”

  “While you were busy with your detective,” Joe told me, “I was actually giving this case some proper thought. This killer’s already re-enacted my first act in graphic detail, but what if he doesn’t stop there?”

  Nate turned on him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “After his first kill, Max takes a girl every Tuesday. He holds them until Wednesday, then he kills them and dumps the body at midnight.”

  “Who’s Max?” I asked.

  “My serial killer in The Twilight Kill,” Joe said. “And if this copycat killer has decided to use my book as his bible, there’s a good chance he’ll take another girl on Tuesday.”

  The blood drained from my face as it hit me. Joe had totally flipped and gone lunar crazy for real. “Joe, you don’t seriously believe that.”

  Joe sank back into his chair. “I don’t know. Maybe not, but I can’t help feeling responsible. And if there’s the smallest chance…” He looked at me, the frenetic gleam replaced with desperation, his fingers resting on the manuscript. “If he strikes again, and I know exactly where, when and how, I have to make sure I’m there to stop it.”

  Crap. Did he have to sound so reasonable and not lunar crazy? “You can’t go chasing after a serial killer on your own.”

  “So you agree?” he said, missing my point by a mile. “Lacey Markson’s murder could be the first strike of a serial killer?”

  “No, that’s not what I said.”

  But Joe was no longer listening. He’d made his mind up. It was Saturday, which gave us three days before the killer struck again. Well, that’s if you were asking Joe. If you were asking me, that meant we had three days until nothing happened and Joe gave up this new, crazy theory.

  Nate couldn’t seem to care less whether Joe stayed or went, until I grudgingly agreed to play taxi driver to Joe’s wild goose chase. “Maddox,” he said curtly. “Could I have a word?”

  I followed him out into the passage.

  He led me to my bedroom door, but he didn’t go in. “What are you doing?”

  “Going on a road trip, apparently.”

  “And you honestly think that tagging along with Joe is a good idea?”

  “Joe would be tagging along with me. He doesn’t drive, let alone own a car.” I shrugged. “He won’t get far without me.”

  “Then he doesn’t get far.”

  My eyes widened on Nate. I’d forgotten how bossy he could be. Which, naturally, just made me dig my heels in. “The Markson murder clearly has Joe unraveled. If chasing ghosts helps him work through it, that’s what we’re doing.”

  “I’m not letting you go off alone with Joe.”

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” I scoffed. “We land up in a motel with fleas and bed bugs?” Actually, that was pretty bad. I sighed. “Okay, what’s the problem? I know you don’t believe we’re going to find ourselves a real serial killer, or you’d already be all over this case.”

  Nate stepped forward, tipped his head sideways to look deep into my eyes, his voice low and deadly serious. “And when you don’t find a killer, what if Joe decides to do something about that?”

  “What do you mean?” I really had no idea.

  “I mean,” Nate said slowly, “Joe might make sure there’s a murder.”

  “You’re not suggesting Joe might actually kill someone?” I gasped.

  For a split second, Nate looked as if he might mean exactly that. Then he shoved a hand through his hair and grimaced. “No, probably not, but he could fake it.”

  My mind boggled. “How do you even fake a murder, Nate?”

  “It’s not that hard,” he said. “Call it in, say you witnessed something, maybe even pay a couple of collaborators to back your story. And just so you know, wasting police resources like that is a criminal offence. Joe could get into a lot of trouble.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I snapped. “Joe would never… He isn’t like… You don’t know him at all.”

  “I don’t know Joe,” Nate agreed, “and that makes him a problem so far as I’m concerned.”

  “He’s not going to fake murder anyone! Why would he?” It made no sense whatsoever.

  Nate shrugged. “Some people go to ridiculous lengths to prove themselves right.”

  “Are you mad? Joe doesn’t want to be proved right. He’s petrified he is and that he’ll be responsible somehow.”

  Nate’s jaw firmed. “I’m not going to take your word on this, Maddox.”

  “You don’t have to,” I said hotly. “You don’t have to do anything at all. I don’t need your permission to trust Joe without a doubt.”

  “So you’re still going along with his stupid plan?”

  “Yes!”

  Nate ran a hand through his hair. “Then I guess I’m going, too.”

  What? “That’s not a great idea.”

  “You’re chasing after a serial killer and you don’t think it’s a good idea to bring a cop along?”

  “I
would seriously not be doing this if I thought there was even a remote possibility of catching up to a killer and the only person you expect to catch is Joe,” I countered. “So, no, it’s not a good idea.”

  “I’m not letting you go alone, Maddox.”

  “What are you so afraid of? That Joe will corrupt me down his wicked path?” The words rattled out my mouth like a runaway train, puffed up on heated steam and not necessarily coherent. “That I’ll end up a collaborator, playing Joe’s dead victim while the cops chase their tails after a fake murderer? Because I obviously don’t know better, and I obviously don’t have anything else to do with my life.” I stabbed a finger at his chest. “Seriously, Nate? That’s what’s got you so worried?”

  “You tell me.” He looked past me to Joe’s bedroom door, then back at me. “You seem to have trouble saying no to Joe.”

  It took a lot to shock me speechless, I usually had more than my fair share to say on most matters, but Nate had managed it. I stared at him, aghast and slightly brain dead. I didn’t even have the wits to gather a scrap of indignation to spit at him.

  “Maddox…” Nate pinched the bridge of his nose. “God, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it.”

  I found my tongue. “Sure you did.”

  “I’m just struggling here, seeing you again, hearing you’ve been divorced all this time, but you’ve still got Joe living under your feet.” He reached for me, wisely dropped his hand before making contact.

  It wasn’t much, as far as apologies went, but I saw where he was coming from. “There’s something you should probably know about Joe and me.”

  Nate shoved a hand through his hair again, kept it there. “You’re not really divorced, are you?”

  “Of course we are, but I’m not falling over backward to accommodate Joe. In fact, it’s the other way around. I don’t own any shares in Hollow House, Joe does, so I’m living off his charity right now.” I folded my arms, nudged my chin high. “Joe is a decent guy, and that’s exactly why I’m not bringing you along just to spy on him.”

  Nate dipped his head a fraction, watching me through heavy lidded eyes. “Okay.”

  “Okay!”