The Collector

by Cameron

  “God, Beth. You don’t even have to ask. You know how much you and Nick mean to me.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I do, Seven. I really do.”

  He gave her a kiss on the top of her head. “We’ll get through this. I promise.”

  He waited until he knew she’d fallen asleep. He checked on his nephew. Nick, too, was tucked into bed, homework finished and at the ready on his desk.

  Seven locked the front door on his way out. He told himself they’d work it out. He had his parents to help out. No matter what, Beth and Nick were family.

  Only, once he sat inside that quiet, empty car, all that emotion he’d kept in check exploded. It was like one of those laws of physics: nature abhors a vacuum or something. The anger he felt transformed him. He wasn’t thinking about his brother or Beth or even Nick. Instead, all that emotion boiling inside focused in a different direction.

  Your partner has a private investigator following me. He’ll report your presence here.

  Once she’d said it, he’d spotted the car immediately, a nondescript gray sedan. He recognized the P.I., Cedric Patterson. He was pretty well-known. Most of the defense attorneys in the area used him. When Seven decided to get his own take on what happened with his brother, he’d given Patterson a call.

  Which was apparently what his partner had felt the need to do. A little extra investigating—not that she’d mentioned anything to him.

  Erika didn’t trust him.

  And maybe she shouldn’t. What the hell, it’s not like he’d been honest, right? He was keeping secrets, fooling himself into believing that he just wanted to give it some time before he talked it over with is partner.

  Well, it looked as if his time was up.

  Suddenly, he felt this urge to do something. Like Beth, he didn’t want to swallow back his anger anymore. He wanted to let that emotion flood over him and burn him up.

  He jammed the key into the ignition and turned over the engine. He had a better way to deal with this.

  Erika rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. She could hear Frank snoring in the bed next to her.

  Shit.

  Just as she’d thought. Frank was a nester.

  She’d never considered herself needy. She knew better than to let some cute banter over ribs and a cosmo bring her to this point. But here she was, wishing she could at least pass out alongside him. Instead, she was wide-awake, already dreading the awkward morning after.

  She knew exactly when it had all gone wrong. She hadn’t admitted to herself how much the butchery of the day had gotten to her. Those poor women. She’d tried to keep it all professional, admiring the FBI agent solving the case with commendable precision. Snaps to Special Agent Barnes.

  But that wasn’t Erika. Her Latin soul prevented that kind of distance. All along, she kept wondering how they were going to stop this monster. Who might be next if they didn’t? What good had it done her to think she could keep that cool head she projected to others?

  It’s like she always said. Denial—there was no stronger emotion.

  And now she had Frank camped out beside her, business that she would have to deal with in the morning, when her emotional reserves were already shot.

  Only suddenly—out of nowhere—the doorbell rang, the sound echoing through the quiet condo. She glanced over at Frank, still fast asleep. She glanced at the digital alarm clock at her bedside. What the hell?

  It was well past midnight.

  Again, the doorbell.

  She grabbed a robe and headed for the door, wondering who would come a-knocking at this time of night. She gave a glance to the drawer where she kept her service revolver, the vivid image of those women stamped inside her head.

  Maybe that’s how it had all started for Mimi Tran and Velvet Tien? A simple doorbell?

  But instead of grabbing her sidearm, she checked through the peephole to see Seven standing on the other side, looking none too pleased.

  “Shit!”

  She stepped away from the door. She turned to stare at the room. Clothes lay strewn across the floor, like bread crumbs leading to the bedroom.

  Seven was leaning on the doorbell now. Any minute, the guy in her bed would wake up from the bender they’d just shared and wonder what the hell was going on.

  She opened the door a crack.

  “Jesus, Seven. What the hell are you doing—”

  He didn’t wait for her to finish the sentence. He pushed the door open and walked inside.

  “Well, come on in,” she said, shocked by the aggressive tactics.

  He turned to look at her, absolutely fuming. “You didn’t think you should let me in on your little gig with Cedric?”

  She immediately put it together. “Well, well, well.” She crossed her arms, leaning back on the door. She’d thought he’d left today to go put out some fire with Beth. But he must have gone straight to Gia Moon’s from the crime scene. That’s the only way he could know about Cedric.

  “You went to see your psychic?”

  The way she said it, it sounded like some strange accusation. Almost like some fishwife yelling at her unfaithful husband.

  “I was following up on some information I had, yes. And imagine my surprise when I discover Cedric on her tail.”

  Erika shook her head. Maybe it was her own secrets that gave her special insight, but suddenly she understood.

  “You didn’t go see her about the murders. You’re falling for this woman, Seven. A possible suspect in a high profile case.”

  “Bullshit. Jesus, Erika, what the hell were you thinking, hiring Cedric? If we actually end up putting a case together against this woman, and her attorney discovers your personal involvement, what do you think is going to happen? Our case goes down the crapper. What could possibly make you believe it was worth the risk?”

  She locked her arms around her stomach, giving him a hard stare. “My personal involvement? That’s what has you worried?”

  “Are you telling me you didn’t hire Cedric?”

  “No, you’re right. I put Cedric on her. And if I thought for a minute that you had your head on straight, I would have told you about it.”

  He looked as if she’d slapped him. But before they could really get into it, the guy—Jesus, what was his name?—walked out from the bedroom.

  “Is there a problem here?”

  Like two kids caught in the act, Seven and she turned their attention to Frank. It was almost comical, the way Seven’s eyes grew huge as he stared at the men’s trousers lying next to her bra on the carpet.

  Frank stood there with a sheet from the bed covering him toga style. From their conversation at dinner, Erika was pretty sure he was an engineer and not an accountant. Too much imagination. He’d never looked more the part of the nerd, with his glasses and that stupid sheet wrapped around him like some Roman senator.

  And now he was trying to stick up for her? Bring it on!

  “Everything’s fine,” she said. She looked pleadingly at Seven. “We can talk about it tomorrow, okay?”

  But Seven just stood there frozen, as if he’d been flattened by one of those big rigs, staring at Frank in his toga.

  In perfect timing, his cell phone went off. That distinctive ring.

  Beth was calling.

  Erika couldn’t help her mocking tone. “Don’t you think you’d better get that?”

  He stared at her again with a strange disbelief in his expression—only to turn on his heel and flip open his cell phone on his way out.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Frank again, coming to stand behind her.

  She didn’t even want to look at him. “Yeah. Just dandy.”

  Except that she felt like shit.

  “He called you Erika.”

  She took in a deep breath. Jesus. The lightbulb hadn’t gone on yet?

  She turned to give him a wane smile. “You always knew Sophia wasn’t my real name. And by the way, you look ridiculous in that bedsheet.”

  “Hey, if I knew you
preferred me naked…”

  She shook her head, looking away. “Why do I feel like I owe you an apology?”

  He stepped up closer. “Because you’re a woman. It’s supposed to be the guy who lies and scams you into bed, not the other way around. That was your partner, right? You’re a cop?”

  Erika frowned. Okay, she’d had a lot to drink. But she quickly went over her conversation with Frank during the evening—nothing which included anything specifically about police business. She’d made damn sure of it.

  She stared at Frank in his toga. “What makes you ask that?”

  He walked over to a set of bookshelves and picked out a framed photo of her in uniform, hugging her mother. Erika remembered her brother had taken the photograph when she’d graduated from the academy.

  “A cop, right?” he asked, holding up the photo.

  “Well, aren’t you the observant one.” She thought about it a minute. She asked, “What did you say you do for a living, Frank?”

  He put the framed photo back. “Actually, I didn’t.”

  “Really?” Suddenly, Erika got this sick feeling in her gut. “Okay. So, what do you do for a living, Frank?”

  He shrugged. “I’m a reporter.”

  She dropped onto the couch, her knees feeling like rubber…and it had nothing to do with the cosmopolitans she’d downed like punch. She tried to slow her breathing.

  She was working on a red-hot case that was just about to blow open once these new murders were reported.

  She laughed. “Wow. I must have drunk more than I thought, because I think I just heard you say you’re a reporter.”

  He sat down next to her on the couch, still wearing the toga. “For the Register. But what’s the big deal? And by the way, for the record, I was sober the entire evening.”

  He reached over and took her hand in his. He started stroking her wrist with his thumb. She felt a tingle run up her spine.

  He had that look in his eyes. She saw it all the time. He was falling for the exotic Latina, never knowing how much baggage that entailed.

  She shrugged it off, forcing herself to focus on something other than Frank’s broken heart.

  “And here I thought you were an engineer,” she said, almost to herself. So much for her powers of observation.

  He laughed. “Why would you think that?”

  She looked into his hazel eyes behind the thick glasses. His wardrobe alone—slacks with a not-so-matching shirt—had put the idea in her head. Not to mention his cell phone strapped to his belt like a gun holster. Really, all he lacked was the pocket protector. And wasn’t Huntington Beach full of engineers, Boeing being one of the top employers in the area? She was used to them chatting her up at the House of Brews.

  “Must be the name,” she said. “Frank. Sounds so solid and engineerlike.”

  “And Erika sounds like a homicide detective?”

  He said it with a smile, but again, she had this sinking feeling. She tried to think of any clues in the room that could lead him to believe she was a homicide detective, and came up empty.

  He was still stroking her hand, his touch distracting as hell.

  “Maybe you thought I was an engineer because I come off as such an intellectual.”

  “You got off, all right,” she said. “Several times, if I remember.”

  “Wow. Keep talking like that and you’ll definitely nail down that whole hussy thing you have going.”

  “What? You didn’t see hussy tattooed on my ass?”

  “Maybe I’d better take another look.”

  They sat in uncomfortable silence, Erika on pins and needles, almost afraid of what was coming.

  “So,” he began, sounding almost too casual.

  Oh, God, here we go, she thought. The marriage proposal.

  But instead, he asked, “Is there a break in the Tran case?”

  Suddenly, whatever amorous feelings she’d had simmering inside went stone cold.

  She pushed his hand away and stood. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

  “What did I say wrong?” he asked, standing, as well. “I was just making conversation. Smoothing over an awkward moment.”

  “Bullshit! You’re an investigative reporter for the Register. How did you know I was involved in the Tran case?”

  She could see him calculating his chances of talking his way through this.

  “If you are honest with me,” she said, “there is a slight chance I won’t go and get my service revolver.”

  He nodded. “Okay. I may have asked the bartender your real name, and I may have Googled you.” He shrugged. “I go to that bar a lot. I thought it was interesting, how you gave a different name every time. Like maybe you had something to hide.”

  She always used her credit card at the bar. She’d never thought she had anything to hide—or that anyone would come snooping around, slipping the bartender a twenty for information.

  She couldn’t believe it. Plain and simple, he was here for a story. All along, he’d known who she was—she was his ticket to headline news on the Tran murder.

  And here she’d spent the night feeling sorry for the guy? Calling him a nester?

  More like a nest of asps….

  She grabbed the neck of her robe shut. “Get…the fuck…out.”

  “Geez. What happened to ‘if I’m honest I might get another chance’?”

  She walked over to the drawer where, indeed, she kept her service revolver. It wasn’t loaded, but Frank wouldn’t know that.

  “The door. Now.”

  He nodded, sensing that she meant business. “My clothes?”

  She kicked his trousers over to him. She figured they’d have his car keys and wallet. “I’ll drop the rest off with your friend, the bartender.”

  He nodded, putting on his pants and leaving the bed sheet. “One bit of advice before I leave. The psychic—the one you hired the P.I. to investigate? I might be able to help you there.”

  What the hell? She quickly went over her conversation with Seven, a conversation Frank here had certainly overheard. Fuck! “You have thirty seconds to walk out that door before I shoot your sorry ass.”

  He was zipping the trousers, talking fast. “If you want information on this woman, the best way to flush out her past is to let me run the story. The tabloids do it all the time. Make an accusation and see what dross rises to the surface.”

  “Now you have ten seconds.”

  He took out his wallet and pulled out a business card. He held it up as he flashed what she’d come to think of as an extremely sexy smile.

  “Just in case,” he said, dropping the card on the coffee table.

  She slammed the door shut behind him.

  Erika dropped onto the sofa, still holding the gun. She didn’t know if she wanted to scream or cry.

  She’d never had anything like this happen. Her nightlife never followed her into the light of day. She should have stuck with the usual suspects. Instead, she’d let some nice guy with what she thought was an engineering degree buy her dinner.

  She glanced down at the business card and frowned. Suddenly, she put the gun on the coffee table and grabbed the card.

  He was indeed a reporter at the Register. But the name printed on the card wasn’t Frank.

  It was Greg. Greg Smith.

  He’d lied about his name.

  “Freaking great,” she said, already trying to come up with some damage control.

  37

  Seven’s conversation with Beth was short and sweet. Beth was embarrassed—God, did I really make a pass at you?

  He was understanding—That was the alcohol talking, Beth. You and I are fine.

  Only, he wasn’t fine. Far from it.

  He’d gone to Erika’s place thinking he’d get some of it out of his system. He and Erika would have a fine old knock-down, drag-out like the good partners they were. They would come clean on their transgressions, all the secrets they’d been keeping from each other. Maybe they’d even open a bott
le, and Erika would help him understand what the hell he was thinking, lusting after what might be their chief witness—if not suspect—on a triple homicide.

  Instead, he’d walked in on Erika having a normal life.

  Moving on….

  Seeing Mr. Toga come out from her bedroom, Seven had felt as if he’d slammed into a brick wall. He hadn’t realized how much he’d come to rely on Erika, the only other person who had no one else in the world.

  After leaving her place, he’d driven in circles, first heading home, then thinking he’d just go grab a drink somewhere. Calm down.

  He didn’t want to face the fact that there was no one out there waiting for him.

  So he made another mistake, ending up exactly where he shouldn’t—back in front of Gia’s house.

  He told himself he’d just pull up alongside Cedric’s Acura. He’d signal Cedric to roll down his window, let him know his services were no longer needed. But, by the time he got there, Cedric was long gone.

  Seven turned off the motor and settled back behind the steering wheel. What was it Erika always liked to say? Something about denial being such a powerful emotion.

  Maybe that’s what this was about. Denial. Acting as if he didn’t feel those sparks between him and Gia. Ignoring the image of their tangled bodies, like a memory he wanted to wipe from his mind, when it had never actually happened. Trying to make sense of things that couldn’t make sense.

  He imagined this was what his brother had felt like. Out of control, wondering what he could do to make the circus inside his head shut down.

  Suddenly, the porch light turned on and the front door opened. Gia stepped into the moonlight.

  She was dressed in low-slung sweats tied at her hips, and a gray T-shirt. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, watching him from her porch.

  He didn’t want to think there was anything special about her. She couldn’t read minds or tell him about his brother. She was just like the cute blonde at the grocery store or the bank teller who cashed his checks. Nothing special.