“Nothing.” The captain’s voice sounded grim. As though she didn’t like the lack of progress any more than he did.
The trip across town took less than ten minutes thanks to the empty streets and his flashers. The Hilton Doubletree was one of the more upscale hotels in Dark Falls—a favorite of conferences and conventions and the occasional tourist. Which meant a full investigation if some bastard tried to break into one of the rooms.
Crime, in the local hotels, made the city look bad.
The hotel staffer who directed him to the room was twitchy. Probably high on excitement or drugs or both. He found Andrews studying the splintered doorframe of a unit at the end of the hall. Judging by the flat, pronged marks embedded in the wood, someone had taken a crowbar to the doorjamb.
Interesting, the perp would have had to hide the tool on the way through the lobby and past the front desk, which meant their suspect had been wearing a coat or some other long item of clothing.
“Do they have cameras on the lobby?” he asked. They probably did; most these high-end places did.
“Yeah, they’re making the footage available to us.” Andrews straightened from her hunched position next to the door, and Rhys got a strong whiff of alcohol.
He frowned, studying the detective’s lined face. She looked older than her fifty years. Older than she had the last time they’d partnered up. He’d heard rumors she’d started hitting the bottle hard. If so, that would explain the lines and aging.
Alcohol was an equal-opportunity health and body annihilator.
“Can’t tell if anything has been taken.” Andrews turned to point at an empty suitcase sitting open on the king bed. “First responders found the room like this. Suitcase open and empty. Nobody was in the room when they arrived.”
Rhys stepped into the room and studied the empty suitcase thoughtfully, before wandering into the bathroom. Next to the sink, a brand-new bottle of toothpaste sat next to a brand-new toothbrush. A cheap bottle of shampoo and conditioner sat on the shelf in the shower. But the tile was dry and the towels neatly folded. Either the shower hadn’t been used or housekeeping had already swapped out the linens.
Something about the items strewn around the bathroom seemed staged. Maybe it had something to do with the cheap products in a not-so-cheap hotel. Or maybe it was that everything looked pristine, like they hadn’t been used.
He returned to the main room and glanced at the empty suitcase. The bed didn’t look slept in either.
“Our perp could have taken the contents of the suitcase.” He frowned. Or the twitchy bellhop down in the lobby could have been the culprit. But that didn’t make sense either. Why not just take the entire suitcase? It would have been easier and quicker to haul the whole damn thing off, rather than remove the contents. He’d check the camera footage. Maybe they’d luck out and see something helpful, like someone walking through the lobby with a duffel bag at two a.m. in the morning. “Who was the room registered to?”
Andrews pulled a notebook from her pocket, flipped it open, and squinted down. “It’s registered to an Ariel Beaubien.”
Rhys froze, surprise lifting the hair on his arms. “Hold up. Did you say Ariel Beaubien?”
She glanced back down at her notebook as though to confirm. “Yeah, that’s what the front desk said. Why?”
Because she’s registered across town at the Candlewood Suites, that’s why.
Suddenly the staged quality to the room made a weird kind of sense. She must have checked in, scattered enough items around so the room would pass for occupied if someone bothered to check, and then left.
It was a decoy room.
But why?
Slowly he turned, staring at the splintered doorjamb and the jimmied door. To hide her tracks. She’d told him she’d taken precautions. This must be one of them. A wave of respect rolled through him. That was some damn fine thinking on her part. She’d double booked to make it harder for people to track her down. Was the Candlewood reservation a decoy room too? Was that why her car wasn’t in the parking lot and nobody had answered his, or Osborn’s, knocks?
Hell, if the guy who’d broke into this room had come to this same conclusion, he could have called around and located the other rooms reserved under her name.
His hand dived for his cell, and he hit speed dial for Scanlon.
Whoever had broken into this room could be headed to the Candlewood. Or hell, maybe he’d already hit the Candlewood, and this was his second attempt. Or he could be headed to a third hotel, one Rhys wasn’t even aware of yet. How many hotel rooms had Ariel booked? Which was the real one? Had the bastard stumbled across the one she was occupying yet?
He filled Scanlon in quickly and hung up. Next step the front desk. He needed to verify that Ariel had been the one to book the room. The desk clerks would have a copy of her driver’s license. It was standard procedure at check-in. He’d request the camera footage while he was down there.
His gaze fell on the jimmied door as he passed through it, and a chill numbed his spine.
They had incontrovertible proof that someone had gone to the trouble of tracking her down and then attempted to grab her.
The break-in had come in the middle of the night, when she should have been fast asleep and vulnerable. The bastard would have popped the door and grabbed her before she could put up a fight…
This decoy room might just have saved her life.
Chapter Eight
Ariel had a full day planned, starting with an appointment at the Dark Falls Daily News to go through their archives. It was amazing what one could find by poring over old newspapers. Her first book had come about because of a weird article about two secretaries who’d drugged, tied up, and slowly dismembered their boss—while he’d been alive.
Ariel’s curiosity with the case had led to months of interviews with the two women, which had eventually led to A Legacy of Heartbreak, her first book. The book had become a breakaway success and spawned an award-winning miniseries. There were a lot of people, as it turned out, who were obsessed with the whys of aberrant behavior. Indeed, there was a whole genre of nonfiction dedicated to supplying their appetites.
Appealing to the dark side of curiosity made for a very lucrative living. Much better than she’d made as a bookkeeper, that was for sure.
With a yawn, she picked up her coffee cup and headed to the kitchen counter.
The condo she’d rented came with all the benefits of home, including a Keurig coffeepot along with an assortment of K-Cups. She’d made ample use of both since her arrival. After refilling her cup again, she added some cream and sugar, then returned to the breakfast nook in the corner of the condo’s kitchen.
Her phone started buzzing as she sat down next to the window. Her new phone… the one she’d spent far too long acquiring at the cell phone store the day before. Good God, it was absolutely obscene how much time she’d wasted. But her contacts and apps and everything else that mattered had been transferred over. Which left her old phone obsolete and ready for transfer to the Dark Falls police.
She doubted they would pull anything useful from it, but never let it be said she’d shirked her civic duty. Even if she’d made that duty wait a day or two.
She glanced at the caller ID as the phone vibrated against the wood table. It was either her sister or Rhys. Both had called multiple times. Both had left multiple messages. Both had sounded pissed, which made them easy to ignore.
Detective Rhys Evans, Dark Falls Police Department scrolled across the screen.
Grimacing, she let the call go to voice mail, joining the other three or four messages he’d left earlier. The man certainly wanted her phone.
She scowled, staring down at her new Samsung Note. You’d think he’d be curious about what she’d been up to since she’d left town. Maybe invite her out for a cup of coffee and a get-to-know-her-again chat. But no, all he cared about was her damn phone and the not-so-secret secrets he seemed to think it contained.
Why the hell wa
s he was so obsessed with her cell anyway, when her phone records would tell him everything he needed to know? It was a question she fully intended to ask him that next time they met up.
She should probably call him back, make arrangements to drop her old phone off while she was in town. The newspaper wasn’t that far from the station. He could meet her there and save her a trip to the major crimes unit.
Rather than listening to the new voice mail, Ariel called him back. He answered immediately.
“Ariel?” Her name exploded through the mouthpiece.
Whoa… wincing, she pulled the phone away from her ear. “Nice to hear from you too, but could you dial it back a hundred decibels or so? I’d like to keep my eardrums intact.”
Silence crawled down the line.
“I take it you’re fine.” He sounded like he was strangling on his own breath, or possibly his annoyance with her.
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” She frowned, pulling the phone away from her head to give it a quizzical look.
“You haven’t listened to my messages.” It was a statement of fact, and while his tone was flat, she could almost hear the exasperation throbbing beneath it.
“Of course I listened to them.” She tried for a self-righteous tone. And it wasn’t a complete lie… she’d listened to the first one.
“Right.” Disbelief laced his voice. “So you know about the break-ins.”
Ummmm… break-ins?
Maybe she should have listened to his messages before calling him back.
“Well, I listened to all but the last message,” she offered after a moment of silence. “How about you fill me in on what that one said.”
His snort clearly carried down the line.
Damn, he must have filled her in on what was happening in some of his earlier messages too. Time to brazen it out. “How about you tell me why you called instead of playing twenty questions?”
“Your decoy rooms were broken into last night.”
She was too shocked to play dumb. “All of them?”
“That depends on how many you had.”
Like she was going to fall for that.
“Which rooms were broken into?” she asked delicately.
“The Hilton Doubletree, the Candlewood, and the Marriot Courtyard.” His voice was all business now. That earlier exasperation was missing, or more likely buried.
Well damn. All three of the rooms she’d reserved had been hit. Unease swept her, icing her skin. Someone was determined to find her.
She shook the disquiet aside and tried to ignore the hole opening up in her belly. It would be much harder for whoever was after her to find her real rental. They’d have to contact every Airbnb in Dark Falls and match her to the fake name and driver’s license the condo had been leased under. Tracking her to her current abode would take a lot more work than a few phone calls.
She should be safe enough for the time being.
Too bad she couldn’t convince her churning belly of that.
“We need to talk.” His voice was flat. Adamant.
And hell, she couldn’t disagree. This news changed everything. “You think it was the guy who called me? The one who drew me to town?”
Man… Ash was going to be pissed when she got to Dark Falls. Her sister had warned her this could happen, had categorically told her to stay away. After the first message Ash had dropped on her—which must have come immediately after Captain Scanlon had reached out to the FBI in order to verify Ariel’s claims—she’d been avoiding Ashley’s calls.
God help her when Ash hit town and she couldn’t avoid her any longer. Joining the Federal Bureau of Investigation had bumped her sister’s confidence level up far too many notches. It had also turned her into a she-devil, at least when she got her pantsuit in a twist.
“Did they steal anything?” Ariel asked, more to avoid answering his questions than any real concern. There hadn’t been anything in the rooms worth stealing—at least not when it came to her possessions.
“That depends on whether your suitcases were empty or not.” His voice flattened again. “Where are you? I’ll come to you.”
“No.” The refusal was instinctive.
“Damn it, this is—”
“I know it’s serious, okay?” she broke in. “Serious enough I’m not telling you where I’m staying and chancing someone following you.”
“Nobody will follow me.” His tone went cold and clipped as though he didn’t like having his professionalism challenged.
Too damn bad.
While she trusted him personally—he couldn’t have been the X Factor Killer or the person responsible for framing her father—she didn’t trust the men he worked with. At least two of them had actively investigated her father, either of them could be the killer or at least the person who’d framed her dad.
She knew how police technology worked. It would be easy for someone in his department to track his car or his phone and find her hideaway.
She wasn’t letting him near her rental.
“I’ll meet you in town,” she said quickly. “At the Dark Falls Daily.” That meet up would kill two chores with one drive. “In an hour.”
She hung up as his voice rose in protest. Okay, maybe setting the time and hanging up on him hadn’t been fair. Maybe he was investigating something or had appointments and couldn’t get away. But if he didn’t show up at the paper, she could just call him back and reschedule. If he did show up… well, she’d gotten her way and avoided a trip to the police station.
A small, victorious smile played with her lips as she scooted out of the kitchen nook and headed for the master bathroom.
“Son of a bitch.” Scowling, Rhys lowered his cell to his desk.
Mason England, Rhys’s partner, slung an arm across the top of the partition that separated their desks. “She okay?”
His partner must have heard him say Ariel’s name on the phone.
“She’s fine.” Rhys forced his teeth to unlock.
“Well, that’s good. That’s one less worry,” Mason said, his green eyes curious. “What did she say?”
Rhys blew out an annoyed breath. “She wants to meet in an hour.”
With a shrug, Mason ran a hand over his short-cropped blondish hair. “What’s the problem? You need to be somewhere? I can meet up with her if you have something on the docket.”
The problem was that she shouldn’t be out in the fucking public, exposed, available for any damn Tom, Dick, or killer to grab off the streets. She should have stayed put and let him come to her.
It damn well stung that she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him where she was staying.
He took a second to control his breathing and offered his partner a tight smile. “Nah, I can make it.”
Although he needed to talk to the captain first. Make sure he was good to go when it came to meeting Ariel. These hotel break-ins had ties to the murder case he’d been eighty-sixed from.
“If you want me to tag along, let me know.” His partner’s head disappeared as he took his seat.
Rhys muttered an acknowledgment. Normally, as partners, they’d both have gone to the meeting. But it was all hands on deck at the moment as Major Crimes sorted through the forensics and evidence of the Hamilton case, along with this new murder victim. Mason was neck-deep in autopsy reports at the moment.
He glanced down at his watch, making a mental note on when he’d have to leave to meet up with Ariel. If he arrived early and waited for her, he could make sure nobody tried to grab her from the sidewalk.
“Detective Evans, you got mail.” A plain white envelope hit the corner of his desk, and the officer with his mail cart rattled on.
Surprised, Rhys reached for the envelope. Pretty much all the day-to-day documentation or requests or whatnot arrived by email these days. It was rare to get an actual letter.
Opening the envelope, he unfolded the thin slice of white and scanned it. Thick, black, capitalized letters shouted out from the page.
What the hell?
The words were centered in the center of the page. Composed with black, blocky caps.
* * *
How long is it going to take you assholes to figure out that you got it wrong? How long is it going to take you clowns to realize that you fingered the wrong guy? Hamilton wasn’t the x factor killer. Fuck, he wasn’t a killer at all. How many more bodies do I have to drop before you realize that? Before you get a clue? Hello, you stupid fucks. I’m here. I’ve always been here. I’m getting tired of waiting for you to come get me.
* * *
Rhys froze, his pulse suddenly electrified.
“Mason?” he said calmly.
He carefully set the letter on his desk and let it go. If they were lucky, the lab would pull some prints from the paper—other than his own.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mason’s head pop up again. “What’s going on?”
“Call the lab. Get someone down here ASAP. Then get the cap.”
“Okay… why?”
“Looks like our killer reached out to us.”
Mason’s head disappeared again, and Rhys heard the low drone of his partner’s voice on the phone. He read the letter again. A third read-through followed, but the message didn’t change. Disbelief swelled, buzzed through his head.
This couldn’t be true.
It couldn’t be.
The bastard who’d sent it must be making it up. Trying to grab some notoriety for himself.
There was no fucking way this could be true, because if it was… it changed everything…
“What do we have?” Scanlon’s voice came calmly from behind him.
Rhys looked up, twisted his torso until he faced her. His mind scrambled for explanations. “We have a letter from someone claiming to be the X Factor Killer.”
Her face went still, shocked. He suspected his looked much the same.
“Call the lab, get them down here ASAP.”
“Already done.” Rhys pushed his chair to the side so Scanlon could get a look at the letter. It was still curled slightly from where it had been folded, but it was perfectly readable.
Dark Legacy: (Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 3) Page 7