Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  “He kept track of me. He stalked me and found out about my identity change. I suppose I should’ve made a clean break and moved to another state, but despite everything I never wanted to leave LA.”

  “Knowing about the current murders and how you might be feeling, is this something Matt would do?”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s one sick individual. Been in and out of the joint for everything from arson to robbery to domestic violence.” She formed her fingers into a gun and pointed at him. “I keep track of him, too.”

  “Then maybe I need to pay Matt a visit.”

  “No!” She slammed her glass on the kitchen table. “That’s not a good idea. I learned long ago, the best way to handle a stalker is to not handle him at all. He’s looking for a reaction—any reaction. That’s what fuels him. I never contact him. I don’t acknowledge that I’m aware of his existence.”

  “Okay, okay.” He peeled the card from the table. “I’m going to take this with me. I’m assuming there aren’t going to be any prints, just like the other card, but you never know.”

  She strolled toward him from the kitchen and sat on the edge of the coffee table facing him, her nose almost touching his, her long lashes almost brushing his cheek. “Do I have your word you won’t tell anyone on the task force who I am, not even Billy Crouch?”

  “I won’t tell anyone, but you have to promise to keep me in the loop. For God’s sake, these cards could’ve been real clues to stopping this guy. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To stop this guy?”

  “More than anything.” She drew back from him and placed a hand over her heart. “I’ll let you know if anything else pops up, and just so you know, Quinn never approved of my deception toward you.”

  “I didn’t figure he did. He’s not that kind of cop.” Jake pushed up from the couch and picked up her water glass and untouched Scotch from the table. He separated himself from her by walking into the kitchen. If she got any closer to him, he’d promise her anything.

  He placed the glasses in the sink. “Why didn’t the court allow Quinn and Charlotte to adopt you? Why thrust you into the system when they had a couple who wanted you?”

  She crossed one leg over the other and clasped her hands around her knee. “Because Quinn was an alcoholic.”

  Jake turned from the sink and gripped the edge of the counter behind him. “How would they even know that? I mean, a lot of cops are alcoholics. My dad was one of them.”

  She lifted and dropped her shoulders. “He told them. Quinn is honest...to a fault. He stopped drinking, went to AA, tried to do everything to convince them he and Charlotte would’ve been good parents. And they would’ve been. I can’t tell you the number of times I ran to them when a foster care situation wasn’t working out for me, which happened a lot.”

  “That’s sad. Does he blame himself?”

  “Of course he does. Most of all, he blames himself for not catching The Player.” She held up the queen of diamonds. “You’re taking this, right?”

  Was that her way of kicking him out of her place?

  “I am.” He retrieved her empty juice glass from the kitchen table and added it to the others in the sink, just to buy more time with her. He’d discovered her secret and confronted her with it, and now she wanted him gone. He’d discovered more than her secret. He’d discovered layers to this woman that he’d never imagined.

  She approached him and tucked the card in his shirt pocket, and then patted it. “There you go. I need to get some sleep.”

  “You’re not afraid here by yourself? You said it. The Player is still out there.”

  “I know that.” She reached past him for her purse on the table, unzipped the gun pouch and pulled out her weapon. “That’s why I sleep with this by my side every night.”

  The gleam of the shiny metal piece in her hand matched the gleam in her eye, and something told him she’d rather sleep with that gun right now than any man—especially him.

  * * *

  KYRA SHOVED A box of tissues toward Desiree, who’d shared her story for the first time in the rape survivors support group. Kyra didn’t have to say much. The other women and one man in the group had crowded around Desiree at the end of the meeting cooing words of encouragement and petting her.

  The petite redhead blossomed under the attention.

  Kyra raised her voice above the chatter. “I think we were all so excited to hear Desiree speak, we forgot something.”

  Tracy, the mother hen of the group, an upper-middle-class homemaker who’d been brutally assaulted and raped by the pool boy, flapped her arms. “Back in the circle, everyone.”

  People returned to the front of their chairs and joined hands. Tracy started the recitation and they all joined in. “We are not victims. We are survivors. We are not our pain. We rise above it.”

  Annika, the call girl who’d been beaten and raped by a john, raised her hands and said, “Amen, sistah.”

  Kyra repeated the amen in her own head. “See you all next week.”

  Kyra waited while everyone stacked their chairs in the corner. She and Candace held group sessions in the roomier outer office, locking the front door during those sessions. The groups ran themselves, and Kyra had never been more thankful for that than today with Jake’s voice mail burning a hole in her phone.

  After the last client left the office, Kyra pulled her phone out of the pocket of her sweater. She hesitated before tapping Play for the voice mail. If he was coming at her with more questions, she didn’t want to listen. Last night she’d revealed way more than she’d ever intended.

  She hit Play and Speaker, and held her breath as Jake’s low voice rumbled over her phone. “Hello, Kyra. It’s Jake. If you have time today, I’d like you to come with me to Melrose and meet Rachel. I’m heading over to do some follow-up on the video we watched yesterday. I just talked to Rachel, and she’s having a hard time with the fact that a killer stole her phone to call in a dead body. I think the shock hit her last night. Let me know.”

  Kyra released her breath in a long stream. Work, not personal. And she could understand Rachel’s uneasiness.

  She returned Jake’s call, and he answered from his car. “I wasn’t sure you were available, so I’m on my way out there now.”

  “I was leading a group session. I’m heading out the door and can meet you at Rachel’s work. Can you give me the address?”

  He rattled off the address on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, all business now, the pity and even the anger stripped from his voice.

  In a sick way, her status as the daughter of one of The Player’s victims had given her bona fides in Jake’s eyes to belong to the task force. She could’ve revealed it before to take a seat at the table, but she’d never used her mother’s death to further her agenda and didn’t intend to start now.

  For all the freeways in LA, there was no easy access to West Hollywood from Santa Monica, and she sat in her car on Santa Monica Boulevard anxiously tapping her steering wheel in time to the music on the radio.

  Forty-five minutes later, she rolled onto Melrose. Even on weekdays, the crowds surged onto this street, tourists and locals shopping, eating, gawking.

  Hunting? Did this area have significance for the killer? Her gaze darted around the street, looking for a parking place—or a killer.

  She spotted the store where Rachel worked and, a block down, zeroed in on a car pulling away from the curb across the street. She managed an illegal U-turn in the middle of the street and tucked into the space, careful not to bump the fenders of the high-end cars on either side.

  She slid from the car and tugged her skirt down to her knees. She swiped her debit card into the parking meter and added time. The Santa Ana winds had dissipated, and with them the wildfire threat and the dry, suffocating heat, but the sun still beat down on the pavement, sending shimmering waves into the air that seemed to pulse with the traffic.


  She strode to the corner to catch the signal because even if the LA County Sheriff’s Department hadn’t caught her making that U-turn, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t come down on her for jaywalking.

  She joined the hustle and bustle of people as the signal changed and the little green man flashed. When she reached the other side, she noticed Jake’s unmarked sedan parked in the red. Didn’t the guy ever pay for parking?

  She charged toward the store with the blue-and-gold awning and stepped inside. The man at the counter, helping another customer, sang out, “Be right with you.”

  No sign of Jake, but the low murmurs from the back of the store, behind the shivering beaded curtain, gave him away. She waved to get the clerk’s attention, but when he didn’t look her way she crept toward the rear and parted the strands of beads with two fingers.

  Jake glanced up, a look of relief spreading across his face, as he sat across from a sobbing young woman with tats marching up one arm. Being a cop, he’d surely dealt with upset and traumatized people—it didn’t mean he had to like it. The situation with Rachel probably confused him even more, as she’d been a rational human being yesterday. That was yesterday.

  “Kyra’s here.” He gave up his seat and hovered by the chair that looked like it belonged in a dentist’s office...or a torture chamber. “I told you she was coming. You can tell her everything you told me...and more.”

  Kyra took Rachel’s trembling hand in both of hers. “Hi, Rachel. I’m Kyra. I just want to tell you, first off, how impressed I was by the help you gave the detectives yesterday. You kept your head, and you gave them valuable information.”

  Raising her tear-streaked face, black rivulets from her eyeliner trailing down her cheeks, Rachel’s voice cracked when she said, “I—I don’t know what happened. I felt okay yesterday, a little creeped out but more mad than anything else. Then today when I came into work, it hit me. Some serial killer stole my phone. He saw my contacts, he knows my number, maybe he still has it.”

  Jake said, “If he does have it, he turned it off. More likely, he won’t want to be caught with your phone in his possession so he tossed it.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, what you’re experiencing is totally normal.” Kyra patted Rachel’s shoulder. “You were mad yesterday, maybe a little shocked. Today you’ve had time to digest what happened, and it is scary. But this guy stole your phone to use it, not to target or terrorize you. He’s not interested in that and may not even know or remember who you are.”

  “You think so?” Rachel hiccupped.

  “I do, but all that logic doesn’t mean you still can’t feel rattled.” Kyra glanced around the back room, which obviously functioned as the piercing area. “Do you have a few minutes to talk right now, or do you have to go back to work?”

  “I can talk for a few. Gustavo has me covered.”

  Kyra flicked her fingers at Jake. “Detective McAllister has some canvassing to do in this area.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Jake coughed and smacked his hand against the back of the chair. “I’m going to be retracing Rachel’s steps from the other day if you want to catch up.”

  “I’ll find you.” Kyra scooted her chair closer to Rachel, their knees almost touching.

  “Detective McAllister?” Rachel dabbed her face with the tissue Kyra handed to her. “Is this going to affect your recommendation for me as a dispatcher?”

  “This?” Jake’s eyebrows jumped to his hairline. “You mean your reaction to having a close encounter with a serial killer?”

  Rachel nodded, shredding the tissue between her black-tipped fingernails.

  “Absolutely not. We do like humans working in Dispatch.” He winked and plunged through the beaded curtain, leaving it clacking and swaying behind him.

  Rachel sat up straight and squared her shoulders. “I like Detective McAllister.”

  “So do I.” Kyra plucked another tissue from the package in her purse and waved it at Rachel. “Now, tell me what you’re feeling.”

  About fifteen minutes later, at the end of their mini-session, Rachel’s cheeks were dry and she even managed a laugh. The haunted look in her eyes had disappeared, and a fiery light had replaced it. She’d definitely swung back to anger, and Kyra got a glimpse of the young woman who had so impressed Jake yesterday.

  Kyra held out one of her cards between her fingers. “Call me anytime you like. My office is in Santa Monica, but I can meet you anywhere.”

  “Thank you.” Rachel plucked the card from her fingers and dropped it in the front pocket of her polka-dot blouse, tied at the waist. She tugged on her earlobe. “If you want another piercing for your ears, it’s on the house.”

  “Thanks, Rachel.” Kyra rose to her feet and smoothed her hands over her skirt. “I’m going to catch up with Detective McAllister. You let him know if you remember anything else, and you let me know if you’re starting to feel panicked again.”

  “The sooner they catch this guy, the better.” Rachel rubbed her arms. “Have the police identified that body from the Malibu fire?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So, she’s not like the other two, nobody reporting her missing. Nobody noticing her absence.” Rachel launched from her seat and swept aside the curtain. “That’s sad.”

  “Not yet. I’m sure law enforcement will get a hit soon.”

  “You know,” Rachel said, aiming her gaze at the window across the store, “there are call girls on this block. They aren’t as obvious as the ones on Hollywood Boulevard or Sunset, but they work it here. Maybe she was someone like that.”

  “Detective McAllister was right. You do have good instincts. I’m sure the task force is looking into all of that.” She held out her hand. “You take care and don’t hesitate to call me.”

  Rachel gripped her hand in a professional manner and dipped her chin. “I won’t.”

  Kyra navigated her way through the cluttered store, stepped onto the sidewalk and looked both ways. What were they missing? Kelsey had gotten her nose pierced in this very store, and Rachel’s phone had been stolen on this block. What was Marissa’s connection to this area?

  On her way to Uncommon Grounds, Kyra poked her head in at the pita place, looking for Jake’s tall frame. He’d stand out, for his height and also the suit he wore on a warm, sunny Southern California afternoon.

  Jake didn’t dress to the nines like his partner did, but he had his own style that emphasized a casual masculinity. He didn’t try too hard, but his clothes were well made and fit his muscular build to a T.

  She puffed out a breath and made a beeline to the coffee place. When had she found the time to make such a detailed study of J-Mac and his sartorial splendor? Was it when he was waving her off crime scenes? Trying to get her kicked off task forces? Or when he was confronting her with truths about her past he’d ferreted out with snooping?

  She barged through the front door of the coffee shop and nearly bowled over a woman carrying an Uncommon Grounds cardboard tray with four frothy drinks inserted in it.

  “Sorry.” Kyra held the door wide for the woman, who scowled at her anyway.

  She spied Jake talking to an employee who looked like the manager. Jake was pointing to the corners of the store, probably trying to find more footage.

  She waved, and he nodded. Then he shook the manager’s hand and loped toward her.

  “How’s Rachel doing?”

  “She’s fine. I think the shock from yesterday wore off, and the reality came at her like a freight train today.” She tilted her head. “You did a good job reassuring her that the killer didn’t have her in his sights. Do you believe that?”

  “I do. Taking her phone was a crime of opportunity, which happened somewhere around here.” He did a slow pivot to survey the four corners of the room.

  Kyra jerked her thumb at the ceiling. “No more cameras with a better v
iew of the store?”

  “No. They’re mostly geared to the counter to catch any funny business at the register or a robbery.” He tipped his chin. “She did point out some regulars, and I wouldn’t mind having a chat with a couple of the men who hang out here.”

  Her gaze tripped from one table to another, hosting mostly single people with their laptops stationed in front of them, stacks of papers, note cards, books and the occasional cup of coffee littering the tables. “What are all these people working on here?”

  “My guess.” Jake spread his hands. “Scripts, treatments, whatever you call them. This is LA, after all.”

  She nudged him. “C’mon, don’t you think you have one good script in you from your experiences?”

  His hazel eyes widened for a split second. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  “I’ll tell you over coffee.” He leveled a finger at the counter. “Let’s get a couple of those fancy drinks and sit outside to survey the scene for a while.”

  “You’re on, but it’s my treat this time. You got the pho yesterday.”

  “Was that just yesterday? Seems like a lifetime ago.”

  “Yeah, my lifetime.” She put a hand on his arm as he fell in step with her. “I’ll get the drinks. You nab a table.”

  “I’d rather get a first-hand look at what Rachel saw.”

  “Good point.” They fell in line behind an older couple with matching gray braids down their backs.

  Jake tipped his head to hers, his lips close to her ear. “Wanna bet they smoke weed and say things like namaste?”

  She flattened her lips to contain the bubble of laughter that threatened to explode. “You shouldn’t stereotype.”

  “Hell, that’s part of the job. Isn’t that part of your job? Don’t you make assumptions about people when you first meet them?”

  “Sure, I do, but a lot of times the therapy proves them to be false, and then I’m humbled. Aren’t you ever humbled, Detective McAllister?”

  “Often.” He stepped to the counter and hunched forward to peer at the menu board on the wall.