He shouldered into the bathroom, and the sound of water hitting tile filled her ears. Within a few seconds, he’d directed her into the luxurious bathroom she hadn’t expected in any kind of safe house. Least of all one made of shipping containers.
“This is...beautiful.” She took in the glistening marble tile lining the edge of a massive jetted tub and climbing high above the top of the large glass-doored shower. A light gray vanity had been installed perpendicular to the tub, and she ran her free hand along the cold smooth surface. Steam tendriled through the air and settled against her neck and face.
“Not bad for an FBI safe house, is it?” He unclipped the attachments around her midsection and over her uninjured shoulder and maneuvered her arm out of the sling as he had last night. He set the sling on the counter, but his body heat had penetrated past skin and muscle. Just as quickly as he had the night before, he helped her out of her shirt and offered her a robe from a nearby hook before he wound her free from her sports bra. “Take as much time as you need. When you’re done, I should have a lead on some fresh doughnuts and coffee.” He turned to close the door behind him. “Black, right?”
“Right.” Hesitation hardened the muscles down her spine, but she’d never felt so wanted, so...loved as she did right then. “Nicholas?”
“Yeah?” He pushed the door open wider, settling green-blue eyes on her.
“I couldn’t have gotten through this without you.” That truth resonated deeper than she wanted to admit, and an array of emotion washed through her. Fear, anger, desire, exhaustion, grief. It tornadoed into something unrecognizable and foreign, but she didn’t try to stop it. She didn’t try to control it. There was only Nicholas, her anchor. Her partner.
“You’re the one who kept me from drowning out there, Doc. I’m the one who owes you.” He sealed her inside as steam built around her and worked to soothe the aches of the past three days.
Her bare feet stuck to the floor as she discarded the robe he’d given her. Every ache, every shot of pain threatened to resurrect the memory of how she’d been injured. A flash of her counting the drops of blood hitting the floor beneath her lit up behind her eyes, and she automatically brushed her hand against the gauze taped to her neck. She’d faced the results of violence in her career, but she’d never come so close to winding up on another pathologist’s table before. She peeled the medical tape from her skin and examined the cut underneath in the mirror above the vanity. Straight, yet small. Deep enough to puncture her carotid artery but not deadly enough to make her bleed out in a matter of seconds. Whoever had abducted her, whoever had hung her upside down by her ankles and promised to turn her into his masterpiece, had known what he was doing. He’d had surgical instruments, medical training, knowledge of human anatomy. Same as she did.
Aubrey stepped under the shower spray, reveling in the sharp sting against her scalp. Pooling a large amount of shampoo in her hand, she methodically washed the scent of the ocean and thick sections of dried blood from her hair with one hand. The stitches on her temple stung with the added chemicals from the shampoo, but the pain only managed to keep her in the moment. Red-tinted water swirled down the drain near her feet. Bruising protested under her touch as she scrubbed the evidence of her walking nightmare from her skin, and another sob clawed through her chest. The scent of lavender filled the shower. The forensic techs hadn’t wanted her to shower at the hospital. She could still feel the killer’s hands on her, still smell his breath. Still hear him telling her how much he’d needed her to be his masterpiece.
The skin along her forearm reddened, and Aubrey let go of the loofah.
She didn’t want to be needed anymore. Everyone had needed her, and she’d let them, even when it was in rivalry with her own self-interest and well-being. They’d needed her because they’d known she’d come through for them. Her parents had needed her to check in on them throughout the week. Her sister had needed her to call her every night to talk about her day. Her friends had needed her to stop talking about her work in social situations, before they’d stopped asking to meet up altogether. The men she’d dated had needed her to lie about what she did for a living. Everyone had needed her. With the horrendous details of her job, she’d gone out of her way to make others comfortable in an effort to feel closer to the people she cared about, but she’d suffocated her own needs and identity in the process.
Grief charged in uninvited, and she slammed her uninjured hand against the tile wall. The little energy she’d tried to hang on to vanished. She sank onto the built-in bench and brought her legs to her chest. She’d given them everything without any kind of expectation of support in return and called it love. A one-sided relationship wasn’t love. Expecting her to drop everything and come running wasn’t love. Being needed wasn’t love.
Physical relief lightninged down her spine and released the pent-up resentment and anger that’d lived in her bones for years. Nicholas was right. She deserved to have her needs met for once, and if it hadn’t been for what’d happened in that slaughterhouse, she might never have recognized she’d been running on fumes at the expense of everyone around her. She’d had to think of only herself to escape. Not Nicholas. Not her parents if they’d lost another child. Not Dr. Caldwell after he would’ve been assigned to perform her autopsy.
Aubrey straightened and twisted off the water. She was tired of sacrificing her identity, tired of lying, tired of wearing herself out to make others comfortable. It was time she put herself first.
Drying herself as best she could with one hand, she robed slower than a sloth in South America but managed to fit her sling back into place on her own. Water from her soaked hair dampened the collar as she stepped back into the sleeping quarters. She descended the stairs, following the sounds of the television from the main living space. Familiar voices filled her ears, and she glanced around the corner to see the characters from her favorite cartoon working together to fix another toy. Nicholas had done exactly as he’d promised and gone through her list of needs. What kind of person did that?
Movement registered from the kitchen, and she caught sight of Nicholas at the stove top, a spatula in hand and an apron tied around his waist. She leaned against the wall for support, watching him, as the scents of frying oil and pastry chased back the lavender soap she’d abraded against her skin. Flour and chunks of what looked like dough peppered the small countertop to his right, and she raced to replace the nightmares at the back of her mind with this moment. “You’re making doughnuts, aren’t you?”
“Hey.” He turned, a wide smile in place. “I couldn’t pull my intern off the case for a run to the bakery, so I decided to give homemade doughnuts a try.” He scooped a chunk of unrecognizable dough from the pan, showing off the blackened edges of one ring. “I’ve got to tell you, I’ve never been burned so many times in my life. Keep in mind they may or may not be doughnuts when I’m finished.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at the effort and crossed the kitchen. Taking his free hand in hers, she smoothed her thumb over the shiny spots of skin. First saving her life from a sadistic serial killer then taking time out of the investigation to help her work through her abduction and grief. Aubrey kissed one of the burns. She could get used to this. “They’re perfect.”
Chapter Eleven
“So this little girl has magical powers that make her toys come to life, and she’s a doctor?” Nicholas took another bite from the warped, sugary doughnut he and Aubrey had salvaged from the mess he’d made in the kitchen. Her body heat spread through his right side as she huddled closer under the thick blanket they’d pulled off one of the beds. “Got to admire that kind of work ethic in a kid.”
“She has a magical stethoscope, and don’t bash my favorite show. It’s cute.” She picked a collection of pink sprinkles off the top of her doughnut—sans chocolate glaze—and pressed them against the tip of her tongue. “Beats all those true crime and procedural shows. I get enough of t
hat in the real world.”
“I can see that. I can also see where you get all your crazy sayings.” His arm pulsed with the weight of her head pressed against it, but Nicholas couldn’t for the life of himself—or for the life of the investigation—summon the desire to move. Not with the amount of doughnuts he’d eaten or the fact Aubrey had allowed him to hold her again. Hints of lavender from her shampoo and soap battled to replace the burned odor clinging to the kitchen and living room, but it wasn’t responsible for the sense of calm pulsing through him. It was her. The warmth of her skin, the brightness in her eyes, the way she put him at ease and rocketed his pulse into dangerous territory at the same time.
And all this suddenly seemed a little less temporary.
That smile made him hope for more, but more wasn’t possible. Not with him. Not when he couldn’t trust the masks people wore for the world and lied about who they really were on the inside. Not when Nicholas couldn’t trust himself.
Once they’d solved this case, he’d move on to the next, and Aubrey would go back to the morgue to examine the next set of remains that came across her slab. He’d gone out of his way to help her deal with the rolling effects of what she’d been through for the sake of the investigation and her mental health, but now... Now he’d started envisioning mornings just like this. Where she’d wake in his arms. He’d make her breakfast, and they’d watch morning cartoons together to escape the real-world violence they dealt with on the job. He’d imagined joining her in the shower, kissing her senseless and exploring the curves under her oversize sweats and T-shirt.
None of that reinforced the detachment he’d held on to after arresting Cole Presley, and an invisible earthquake rocked through him at the idea. This wasn’t him, and Aubrey deserved a hell of a lot better than what he had to offer.
The past few hours had slipped by in the blink of an eye, but reality wouldn’t be ignored much longer. A killer waited outside these walls, one who’d already murdered two women and had targeted Aubrey to prove he was better than the veteran killers Nicholas had hunted, and so far the son of a bitch was right. Most serials followed a set of internal rules when it came to stalking their prey, compulsions. They had to kill, and they had to finish that kill a certain way or in a certain order, but this one... He’d never seen a killer like this. Unpredictable, far more intelligent than he’d originally believed and seemingly lacking those internal values that helped Nicholas construct a profile.
There was no order to the way this killer worked. Not in his MO or victim choice. Maybe that was the point. Kara Flood had been an elementary school teacher, her sister the city’s chief medical examiner, and Paige Cress had been a paralegal who’d been attacked and put in the maintenance shed eighteen to twenty hours before the first body had been discovered. Everything had been meticulously planned, but Nicholas couldn’t see the pattern.
Images of toys come to life and a little girl who’d taken up being a doctor phased to the back of his mind. There had to be a connection. If the killer had planned to make Aubrey his masterpiece—his own sick introduction to the serial killing world—then the other two victims had only been the start of his plan. Who knew how many other pieces it would take to solve this puzzle?
Nicholas unwrapped his arm from around Aubrey and leaned forward on the couch. Instinct pulled him to his feet, and he crossed to the dining room table, where he’d set his laptop before he’d burned the doughnuts.
“Nicholas?” His name on her lips tightened a knot of desire in his gut and threatened to pull him out of his thought process.
He hadn’t been able to do a deep dive since those panic-filled moments on the dock, but he couldn’t ignore the zing of intuition driving him now. Nicholas scanned the attachments in the latest email from the team. “Striker and West sent photos from the first victim’s apartment while you were in the shower. I only had a few seconds to run through them, but I think I just figured out how Paige Cress and your sister were connected. That’s the pattern. You might not have known Paige directly before she’d died, but she knew your sister.” He skimmed through the photos until he found the one he wanted and stepped back. Pointing at a shelf of books in the victim’s apartment, he faced Aubrey as she struggled to her feet. “There.”
“Those four books.” Disbelief graveled her voice. “I recognize them from Kara’s apartment.”
The books. Damn it, he should’ve made the connection sooner. “What are the odds a paralegal and a kindergarten teacher would have the same collection of four true crime books? That must be the connection between the first two victims.” He bent down, dragging a photo from Kara Flood’s apartment beside Paige’s. “Each of these books has been published in the last year. They’re new, and judging by the spines’ condition, I’d say they were all bought around the same time, possibly from the same bookstore.”
“You think they were reading them together.” Aubrey’s tongue darted across her bottom lip, and she raised her left hand as though intending to cross her arms over her chest, but the sling wouldn’t allow it. “He told me he used Kara to get close to me, to learn about me. If Paige Cress knew my sister, maybe he did the same thing to her.”
“Stands to reason he would’ve had to have known her.” The adrenaline surge of following a lead exploded through him. This was what he’d been trained for. This was what he was good at, taking the pieces of the puzzle and fitting them together to make a cohesive narrative. “We’ll have to confirm through the victims’ financials and track down the retailer where they were purchased, but there’s only one reason two or more people buy the same set of books and read them around the same time. The victims could be part of a true crime book club.”
“Kara never told me she was part of a book club or that she was interested in this kind of stuff.” Aubrey stepped away from the screen. “Serial killers? Crime? I had no idea.”
“Maybe she understood you wouldn’t want to talk about it given how much you try to avoid that kind of entertainment when you’re off the clock,” he said. “I imagine broaching the subject with you would’ve been difficult for her.”
“It’s possible. I’m starting to realize she’d been keeping a lot of secrets from me. We still haven’t determined how she was able to afford living in her neighborhood on a teacher’s salary.” She pointed to the screen. “Nicholas, look at the book titles.”
He enlarged the images to read the text clearly on the books’ spines. Son of a bitch. “X Marks the Spot: The Hunt for Cole Presley. Not Your Average Fairy Tale: The True Story of the Gingerbread Woman and Eat the Darkness: Exposing the Watcher.”
“If Kara and Paige were in a book club together, it can’t be a coincidence the man who abducted me used two MOs of the same serial killers they were reading about these past few months.” Aubrey circled out of his peripheral vision. “Do you think it’s possible he’ll kill more victims, given there’s four books on Kara’s and Paige Cress’s shelves?”
But First, Lipstick. Nicholas recognized the fourth title from the shelves of both victims. The detailed retelling of the Extreme Makeover Killer, a man who’d given all his victims—redheaded women between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five—makeovers after he’d bound them and cut their wrists; an homage to his wife, whom he’d bound and killed after her attempt to leave the abusive relationship. Nicholas studied the illustrated stick of lipstick on the binding. The Extreme Makeover Killer had applied a bright red lip color on his victims, the same shade his wife had preferred, before he’d cut their wrists and watched them bleed out. Had the Extreme Makeover Killer been the inspiration behind Aubrey’s attack in that slaughterhouse?
“It’s possible he already has. The killer has replicated the X Marks the Spot Killer and the Gingerbread MOs so far, every detail in line with the original cases, but the only reason we discovered Paige Cress was a victim was because the Gingerbread Woman left photos of her victims with a fresh kill. He used Kara’s cri
me scene to give us that clue, but the Extreme Makeover Killer didn’t leave bread crumbs for the BAU to follow.”
Dread pooled at the base of his spine as Nicholas ran through the details of that investigation. “He hid his victims underground, where no one would find them. Whoever abducted you wants to prove he can kill as well if not better than his idols. He wouldn’t have experimented with only two victims. He would consider it hands-on research, a test of his capabilities and a gathering of knowledge. These books laid out the investigations for him and walked him through exactly how to kill his prey.”
He tried to take a deep breath, but the pressure behind his rib cage built faster. “There are more victims out there, ones we haven’t uncovered. I’m sure of it.”
“We need to find where Kara’s book club met,” she said.
Nicholas scrubbed a hand down his face. “And who else is a member.”
* * *
THE BUILDING’S SUPERINTENDENT twisted the key for Paige Cress’s apartment in the door and motioned Aubrey and Nicholas inside. They hadn’t found anything in Kara’s personal effects that’d given them an idea of when and where the true crime book club meetings had occurred, but Paige Cress might not have been so secretive. An immediate wall of sunlight spread across the light brown flooring and beckoned them into a long hallway expertly furnished with a bench, hooks for jackets and cubby holes for shoes. The super offered Nicholas the key. “Paige was a good tenant. Never late with rent, always greeted me with a smile. Have you contacted her family to let them know what happened?”
Profiling a Killer Page 13