Twisted

by Laura K. Curtis

  “There’s an ‘intuition’ box for events, too? And tags?”

  “Sure. Along with crime-scene photos and a card for each of the places involved, like if the victim was killed in one spot and dumped in another. Jake is always looking for patterns, and he says intuition is usually your brain trying to tell you that it sees a pattern you can’t consciously access. The program actually keeps a list of tags you’ve already used, to prompt you in case one is relevant to a new person, place, event, or item. Those are the other classes of information—places and items. And they’re all tied together. So if you have a series of murders, many of which take place in cars—which could be both places and items—the computer tries to find that connection. An item could be a piece of music that’s always playing at a crime scene, too, or a scent you notice in the air. There’s also a journal feature, where you can record anything you want. The computer won’t bother to use the journal information unless you specifically tell it to sync journal data with the case file.”

  “This Jake sounds like a smart guy. You talk to him often?” Ethan’s voice was cool, and when Lucy glanced at his face, she saw he wore his cop’s mask. He couldn’t possibly be jealous, could he? No, more likely he found something about Jake suspicious. The application embodied the obsessive attention to detail that had made Jacob Nolan a great agent, if sometimes a less-than-perfect friend; Ethan probably couldn’t imagine why anyone would put so much effort into a project that would bring little in the way of financial reward. Police departments everywhere were strapped for cash—even if they wanted to run a program like DJ, they couldn’t pay enough for it to make it a cash cow for Jake. But she wasn’t going to second-guess the man. He had his own reasons for everything he did, and he’d been nothing but good to her.

  “Nobody talks to Jake,” she answered carefully. Jake had never asked her to hide her use of the DJ program, but neither had he ever given her permission to talk about it. He’d never mentioned any other testers.

  “He left the FBI two years ago and fell off the face of the earth. I know he’s out there because he updates the software periodically. I log in, and the interface has changed or there’s an update notice. Other people get the occasional postcard from him, but there’s never a return address and the postmarks are all different. I don’t have an e-mail address or anything for him. I maintain a backup copy of my DJ records on my own computer in case he decides to pull the application, but all the number crunching is done on a server elsewhere. If I tried to log in one day and the site was gone, I’d have no way to contact him.”

  Ethan remained stiff, though she thought the lines bracketing his sculpted lips eased a bit. Could he imagine that she would leak details of his case to Jake? Was that what was behind the questions?

  “But you trust him?”

  “Yes.” For the most part. In every way that mattered, she trusted Jacob Nolan implicitly, but she wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t log into the DJ server at night and read up on her activities, which was why her more personal observations remained unrecorded.

  “Okay, then.”

  He watched as Lucy entered all the information she’d learned, and all her suspicions. Except to contribute a bit of advice here and there, he didn’t speak until she was done.

  “You need another spot on those forms,” he offered at last. “Might be a recommendation to make to your friend.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You have a box to put where information comes from, to create a link. Like you linked the information you got from this Gina Woodward back to her.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it only goes back one generation. Hearsay evidence isn’t admissible in court, but gossip is the lifeblood of an investigation. You don’t just want to know who gave you the information, you want to know who told her, and back on up the food chain as far as you can go. Your friend, Jake, he’s FBI. If he’s a profiler, he may be dealing with different kinds of cases. But if this program is meant to help us regular Joes, we need that data.

  “For example”—he tapped the timeline at the bottom of the screen to indicate Cecile’s murder, and Lucy pulled up the event card—“I see you’ve entered all the information from her case file. And you’ve attributed it to that file.”

  “Of course.”

  “But nowhere does it say how you got your hands on that file. I assume you have a screen in there with my name on it?”

  Lucy felt her face redden, but Ethan merely smiled and leaned over to press a kiss to her forehead. Then he let her go as if the gesture meant nothing at all. And maybe, to him, it didn’t. Hadn’t he denied any relationship between them when the doctor had assumed one? Maybe he kissed women all the time, and every one of them felt the same shock of fire slamming from his lips all the way down her body. She’d never run across a man like Ethan Donovan.

  “You wouldn’t be much of an investigator—or a writer—if you didn’t. But back to business. On the card identifying the case file as an ‘item,’ you’ve probably listed me as a source. But in a bigger department, I wouldn’t be the one who pulled the file from records. You would want to be able to mark down every person who’d handled it, on the off-chance someone was cherry-picking information to give you. Or in case all the leads you had that seemed to come from different sources could be traced to one or two individuals.”

  “Gotcha. I’ll make a note for Jake.” She’d also add more details to the intuition section of Ethan’s card, which was beginning to weigh rather heavily in his favor. For that, however, she’d wait until he was gone.

  “And what about the word ‘whore’? I notice you put in the events where it’s appeared, but shouldn’t there be a way to highlight it? Especially now, after the text message?”

  “That’s exactly the kind of thing the program will pick up. But, yeah, I’ll put it in, too.”

  “The program can’t protect you, Lucy.”

  “Of course not.”

  He gently closed the lid and set the laptop on the table next to the bed. “You need to be more careful.” He shifted on the bed until her head lay in the hollow of his shoulder. Beneath her ear, she could hear his heart pumping blood, pumping life through his body, its beat solid and stable like the man himself. So what did he want with her?

  She didn’t even realize she’d asked the question aloud until he answered it.

  “At the moment, I just want to know you’re safe.”

  “Why?”

  “Does there have to be a why?”

  It wasn’t the answer she’d hoped for, but since she refused to acknowledge what, exactly, that answer might be, she also refused to acknowledge the niggle of disappointment that wormed through her.

  Chapter Ten

  Word around town had it that Cecile Sadler was easy. None of the people making that claim, however, actually lived with her. As I grew up, I had a hard time imagining how a woman as tough as Momma could have ended the way she did.

  from A Bad Day to Die by Lucy Sadler Caldwell [DRAFT]

  LUCY KNEW SHE should pull away, push Ethan out of the hospital bed and back to his chair. Despite his protestations the other night, he had to have been put off by her behavior. Though she trusted him with most of her secrets, and certainly with her safety, he obviously didn’t feel the same. Until he could be completely open, she had to remember to keep her distance.

  But, dammit, she didn’t want to. The solid beat of his heart beneath her ear and the warm strength of his arms combined to make her feel more secure than she had in all the months since Todd’s death. Fair was fair, however. She wouldn’t offer him false hope.

  “I can’t do this,” she said, shifting away from him and reaching for the laptop. He accepted the move with grace, helping her to get the computer and removing the arm he had laid across her shoulders.

  “So what has your fancy program come up with?”

  “Nothin
g yet. But as you saw, I’ve barely begun entering information. I was hoping I could convince you to share what you’d found out about the girl by the lake, in case her murder does tie in with my mother’s.”

  “You admit it’s a possibility, then?”

  “I never said it wasn’t. They don’t feel the same, but there is a peculiar kind of symmetry. If nothing else, the timing’s awfully coincidental.”

  “And the other anomalies in the area? The rapes and disappearances? I suppose you want access to those files, too?”

  “I’m not naive, Ethan. I realize you can’t just open your files to me. I’ll take whatever I can get.”

  “But you believe it all ties together.”

  “I’m not sure. But I think it would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility.”

  He studied her in silence for a long moment. She wished she could read the thoughts behind those glade-green eyes, but the mask he wore was impenetrable.

  “As it happens,” he said finally, “I agree with you. The sheer number of cases in one area argues for more than mere coincidence. So I’ll make you a deal.”

  “A deal?”

  “Yeah. I want access to that program.”

  “I can’t—”

  He held up a hand, anticipating her protest. “I understand it’s not yours to share. So, here’s my proposal. I’ll give you the data to enter, which will allow you access to the files you want. In return, you share anything you—or the computer—come up with, whether it has anything to do with my cases, your mother, whatever. And you don’t make a move without telling me.”

  “It sounds as if I give up a lot more than you do in this deal.”

  “You get more. I could do what that computer does. It would take me a huge number of man-hours, but I could do it.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that. But what does telling you everything I do have to do with the investigation?”

  He smiled, a crooked, wolfish grin that banished the chill of separation. “Oh, that’s not about police work. That’s personal.”

  Her heart gave a reluctant thump. “I can take care of myself, Ethan.”

  “I know.” He stroked her cheek with one calloused finger, and his eyes darkened. “But just because you can do it alone, doesn’t mean you have to. I want to help. And if I have to bribe you to get my way, well, I guess I’m not so devoted to the law after all.”

  Her mouth went dry. “Ethan—”

  “Shhh.” He leaned forward and pressed a soft, almost teasing kiss to her lips. “Just say yes. It’s easy. One little syllable.”

  She pulled back slightly from the temptation of those incongruously soft and gentle lips and shook her head to clear it. “How will you get permission for me to see the files?”

  “You’re too accustomed to thinking of this as the Dobbs family’s private fiefdom. I’m the chief of police. If I want to bring in a professional consultant, I can. I’ll have June Gibb, the town’s legal advisor, draw up papers dictating the restrictions and regulations tomorrow, and once you’re out of here, you can come in and sign them.”

  He leaned back, arms crossed over his chest, and waited for her answer.

  She couldn’t quite meet his eyes when she gave it to him. “Okay, then.”

  • • •

  SITTING IN THE dark, kicked back in a recliner, the Commander let the burn of whiskey down his throat combat the anger boiling there. He pulled a disposable cell from inside the chimney where it was taped and texted Drew Dobbs. The text contained only the number one. It was their signal. Drew would call him back as soon as he could get away.

  The cell rang four minutes later.

  “I know why you’re calling, and I didn’t do it.” The man was such a sniveling, pathetic brat. He needed a lesson.

  “You will address me properly.”

  A long pause. Every fucking time, the idiot thought he would get away with not using the

  Commander’s appropriate title.

  “Yes, master.”

  “Better. You didn’t put that snake in her car?”

  “Hell, no! I can’t afford to have her point the finger at me. I want her to go away quietly.”

  “You didn’t care how we got rid of her not so very long ago. What’s changed?”

  Another protracted silence, which meant the fool’s divided loyalties were acting up again. Perhaps his usefulness was coming to an end.

  “A man can only serve one master. Your father does not control you anymore.”

  “My father is looking out for my career. He says she has too many friends on the police force and even in the FBI from writing her books who’d come around if anything happened to her. He’s also . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s worried about the dead girl. Renee. You did that, didn’t you?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “No. I don’t. I thought . . . I thought you were over the girls. At least, alone.”

  “I only did it to protect you,” the Commander said soothingly. “You had dozens of witnesses to alibi you. I don’t want you to fall under any scrutiny. I had to do it without you.”

  “You could have just killed her. I heard she was raped.”

  The Commander smiled and sipped his whiskey. Hell, yeah, she’d been raped. And she’d wept her way through it, just like they all did. Just like Drew himself the first time he’d been submitted, even though he’d professed his love only a week earlier.

  “You know I don’t have any feelings for them. They’re nothing more than fun and games. What we have is all that matters.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Do not question me!”

  “No. I didn’t mean—”

  “No, what?”

  “No, master.”

  • • •

  EARLY THE NEXT morning, the doctor told Lucy she could go home. He gave her crutches to use, since walking on the bitten leg was still painful, and told her not to soak the leg until the wounds had completely healed. Since both Ethan and Lucy had arrived by ambulance, he called a cab to take them back to her house. Once there, he searched the place thoroughly for any booby traps, living or not.

  And then he was stuck. He couldn’t leave her alone, but he couldn’t defer his duty to Renee Josephs and the other victims they’d uncovered any longer, either.

  “Go,” Lucy said from the couch where he’d seated her. “I know you have a ton of work to do.”

  “I don’t like to leave you,” he admitted.

  She snorted. “Get. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll call. And come and get you once I have approval for you to be a consultant. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  But the promise of a coming visit wasn’t enough, and he sat beside her the way he’d first sat on the edge of the hospital bed and cupped her cheek with his palm. Slowly, cautious of both her leg and her emotions, he drew her forward and pressed a lingering kiss to her lips.

  “Ethan—” she said on a breathy whisper when he pulled away.

  “I know, sugar. You need time. I got it.”

  But on the way out, he couldn’t resist looking back, and the slightly dazed expression in her eyes, along with the way her fingers were pressed against those soft lips, sent a curl of satisfied heat through his belly.

  • • •

  AT THE STATION, he called the town’s legal advisor and explained his needs. She said she’d be by in an hour with the necessary paperwork, which eased a little of his tension. If he could get Lucy on the payroll, he’d be able to keep an eye on her. Picking up his second cup of coffee, he settled behind his desk to review the information TJ had gathered for him.

  No known snake aficionados in the area. Of course not; that would be too easy. She’d found a couple places online that sold the deadly critters. Ethan shook his head over t
hat—who wanted a rattler as a pet?—and promised to check into whether anyone local had bought one. The last line of her note was clearly worded to sound innocuous to anyone who might see it.

  Don’t forget to ask Scott about Eric.

  Ethan rubbed absently at his knee, then elected to call TJ and get as many details as he could before approaching Scott about his brother.

  “Got a minute?” he asked when she picked up.

  “Sure. Is Lucy okay?”

  “Yeah, she is. I wanted to ask you about Eric Allenby. Before I hit up one of my officers with questions, I need background beyond ‘he liked slimy things when we were kids.’ What can you tell me about him? Who does he hang around with?”

  “Jeez, I don’t know. He dated Amy Callahan for a while, but she couldn’t handle his hours. He works four a.m. to ten a.m. five mornings a week. Plus, he’s really outdoorsy. He always wanted to take Amy camping and fishing and rafting and stuff.”

  All those women raped out in the woods. Suddenly, Eric Allenby shot right to the top of Ethan’s short list. Could he have wanted to take his date to the same spots where he had held his victims? Other rapists and murderers had succumbed to that compulsion. Ethan needed to talk to Amy. He scribbled her name on the pad in front of him, then returned to the conversation with TJ.

  “So Eric’s a part-timer. Does he do anything else for money?”

  “Odd jobs when he feels like it, and I remember Amy saying he took extra shifts at work when anyone wanted time off, and the late-night thing pays pretty well, since it’s hard to find anyone willing to do it. But the Allenby boys are pretty well-off. Their parents died in a small-plane crash when they were kids and left them sizable trusts from their life insurance. It’s not that they don’t need to work, but they can afford not to make a huge amount at it.”