Love Kills

by Lisa Renee Jones

  “You underestimate me if you think I won’t,” I counter.

  “I don’t underestimate you, Lilah Love. I understand you.”

  Sirens sound in the near distance, approaching quickly. “Who hired you to kill me?” I ask, going where his interest leads me.

  “No one.”

  “Who hired you—”

  “You’re asking the wrong question.”

  The wrong question.

  What the fuck is the right question? Because I know that he’s not Umbrella Man, and yet—he’s here, and so is Umbrella Man, and that can’t be a coincidence. “You’re setting me up.”

  “I just saved your life.”

  “All right then. How much to kill the man in the makeup?”

  “That’s your question?”

  “No,” I snap. “It’s someone else’s, but answer anyway. How much to kill—”

  “For you, it’s free. I just need a name.”

  “Are you serious right now? If I had a name, I’d kill him my damn self. What good are you?”

  “I do always wonder why a killer hires a killer.”

  “And here I thought you didn’t play games,” I counter.

  “I don’t play games, Lilah Love, and you know it.”

  That’s exactly what he’s doing, playing games. It doesn’t sit right in my gut. In fact, it makes me wonder if the victims could be hits he’s organized to look like victims of a killer that isn’t. It makes me wonder if I’m one of the targets. Nothing else explains why this man is here or the content of this conversation.

  I shift the light from his face to just his eyes. “You don’t want to cross—”

  “Kane?” he challenges.

  “Me, asshole,” I say. “You don’t want to cross me because I don’t give a fuck where you land or how bloody the view. He does.”

  “You think Kane Mendez cares how bloody he gets? Interesting.”

  The sirens rip through the air, and vehicles screech behind us. Ghost backs away into the darkness. He’s betting that I won’t stop him. I could shoot him. I could arrest him. I decide to let him go.

  For now.

  But he hasn’t seen the last of me.

  And I haven’t seen the last of him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rain splatters on my shoulders, while just behind me, the voices and footsteps of emergency crews echo in the dark night, made darker by cloud cover. I ignore it all, aware of the killer I just let back away from me, my flashlight and senses homed in on the alleyway, right along with my weapon. Movement to my right catches my attention, and I watch as Ghost scales a fire escape, far too quietly, invisible to anyone who doesn’t know he’s there. He’s showing me how Umbrella Man got here and left.

  I swipe the light away from him before someone else sees him. He came here for a reason, and his reason is my reason for letting him go. Whatever that proves to be, whoever is behind his presence here tonight at the same time as Umbrella Man, I need to know. And it won’t be dealt with by way of the men and women in blue. I do one last scan of the alleyway with my flashlight and weapon just to make sure Ghost is gone, though I feel no danger. Not now. Not to me, at least. Ghost didn’t want me dead, or I’d be dead. Umbrella Man didn’t want me dead, or I’d be dead. Cold comfort, perhaps, but really, I’m not one of those girly girls who needs comfort at all. It’s all about facts to me. Cold hard facts. If Ghost comes for me to kill me, I’ll embrace the killer inside me. And I’ll show him a woman isn’t an animal to be put out of her misery. He’ll be the one who dies.

  I give that bitch of a hellhole alleyway my back to find the EMT crew now kneeling next to Jay and a rush of law enforcement. “Two dead!” I shout out, flashing my badge. “Agent in Charge. This is my crime scene. Secure the area now and draw a wide perimeter.”

  The officer nods and takes off running. Another three uniforms stop in front of me, none of them familiar faces. “Who’s in charge?”

  Not a one of them steps up, or even offers to play that roll, and I just start spouting orders. “Time is not on our side. Victim number one is one of ours. I know her data. I need to know who victim number two, center stage, is now. This guy kills his victim’s families. We aren’t going to find identification on her. Get me a team to fingerprint her and get me her name and address now.” I point to an officer. “You. Do it now.” He nods, and turns away.

  I focus on the rest of the crew. “I need tents up now. I need forensics teams in here now, before the rain washes away everything worth seeing. I need lights. I need photos. I need evidence bagged. I need it now. Who’s making the calls?”

  “I got it,” one officer says, holding up a hand and already hitting the button on his shoulder, that controls a microphone. Finally someone fucking does something other than get rained on.

  “Get me the officer in charge,” I say, “and get moving now!” With that, I dismiss them all to kneel next to Jay, who grabs my arm. “You’re a crazy bitch,” he chokes out. “They might as well not even save me. Kane’s going to kill me.”

  Spotlights blast into the alleyway, and I note the pale line over his lip, a stark contrast to his dark skin. “He told me not to kill you,” I tell him. “He’s not done with you.”

  “Wasn’t done with me,” he says, letting go of my arm, his eyes shutting. “Wasn’t,” he whispers. “He is now.”

  I should be bothered by how afraid this man is of Kane. I’m a fucking FBI agent for God’s sake, but it’s not an emotional blow. It’s not a shock. It’s just Kane. I know the man is refined and handsome, well-spoken and polite, but he’s also brutal. Because I’m brutal. I understand you, Ghost had said to me. He doesn’t fucking understand me. And I am bothered by Kane scaring the fuck out of Jay. I lean in and whisper in his ear, “You took that bullet for me. No one gets to fucking kill you. I won’t let them.”

  When I pull back and look at him, there’s a twitch to his lips, his attempt at a smile that is never fully realized. I eye the EMT who answers my unspoken question by saying, “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  Translation: the vultures are already circling above, and the grim reaper is ready to reach through the ground and yank him to hell because that’s what people who run with me and Kane do—they go to hell. Only, I plan to scratch the devil’s eyes out on the way down. Jay won’t do that, or he wouldn’t have saved me, so I just have to do it for him.

  Therefore, I pin the EMT in a stare and reject his bullshit secret answer hard and fast. “Save him,” I order. “You fucking save him or someone will have to save you from me. Understand?”

  His eyes go wide, and he nods quickly, a response that says he’s clearly aware that I mean what I’m saying. Which is smart on his part because I really want to kill someone right now. I should have killed Ghost. Why the fuck didn’t I kill Ghost? I could have found the instigator in all of this with him dead in the ground. I push to my feet, determined to go hunt his ass down again. An officer rushes toward me and offers me a NYPD raincoat that is big enough that I pull it over my thinner version of the same type of coat, yanking the hood over my soaked hair.

  “What’s the ETA on the medical examiner?” I ask, shoving my arms into the jacket and pulling up my hood.

  Before the officer can answer, I hear, “What the hell is going on?”

  That demand, delivered in a snarly voice, has me turning to find Houston barreling toward me like a linebacker.

  He shouldn’t be here is the only thought I manage before he again demands, “What the hell is going on?”

  His out-of-character stabbing question hits ten nerves, and anyone who knows me, knows I don’t have ten nerves to spare. “I just called this in. Unless you’re my new stalker, and—and this is a big and—also the invisible man—who last I heard is being played by Johnny Depp, if he gets his shit with his ex cleaned up, of course—you can’t know about this crime scene yet. It’s not possible. And yes, that’s a fucking accusation. Do with it what you want, but explain yourself and now.”

&nbs
p; “I don’t even know what the hell that means, Lilah,” he snaps, and I swear his body is all but twitching with his effort to contain his agitation. And the thing is that Houston is a chill and Netflix kind of guy all the damn time. He doesn’t get agitated. He doesn’t twitch. Unless that’s how he’s dancing, and I don’t think he’s dancing at a crime scene, though I’ve seen a lot of weird shit when people are stressed since taking this job. “This is my city,” he adds. “You get that, right?”

  “And my case. My jurisdiction.”

  His lips tighten. “My city, Lilah. My job. My responsibility. And as to your question: I was nearby. And funny thing about having you and a serial killer around at the same time is that the mayor continues to breathe down my fucking throat. It keeps me on edge.”

  “How the fuck are you here, Houston?” I repeat.

  “I have an alert set for anything Lilah Love, which I’d tell you was to be supportive and that shit aside, I’m protecting my ass, too. You make everyone, including the mayor, act like a little bitch ass whiner. What the hell is going on?”

  “You know what’s going on,” I say, not happy with his answer. “He struck again.”

  “If you mean Umbrella Man,” he replies, “since when does Umbrella Man shoot random men on the street?”

  “He didn’t randomly shoot a man on the street,” I snap, though he’s hit another nerve. Who the hell did shoot Jay? Because Ghost doesn’t shoot to maim. He shoots to kill. “Jay was with me,” I say. “And he got between me and Umbrella Man.”

  He steps closer. “You saw him? He showed himself to you?”

  “No,” I say flatly. “I was going into the alley to save the two women he had captive. Jay tried to stop me. That earned him a bullet. The bottom line right now is that he’s alive, but we have not one, but two dead women.”

  “Two? There are two?”

  “I already said that,” I reply. “Yes. Two.”

  “Holy hell.” He runs rough fingers through his light brown hair. “Holy fucking hell. And clearly, they were meant as gifts for you. This is Kane’s place, right?”

  “You know where Kane lives?”

  “Oh, come on, Lilah. He’s Kane Mendez. His father was—”

  “I know who his father was, Houston. Are you surveilling him?” I hold up a hand. “Don’t answer that. I don’t have time to be as pissed off as you’re about to make me. You’re correct. Umbrella Man didn’t choose this location by accident, because apparently, everyone knows where the fuck I live. The victims were booby-trapped to kill anyone who tried to help them.”

  “Meaning you,” he supplies, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. “But you outsmarted him. You’re still alive. You won.”

  “He won, Houston, or Jay wouldn’t be bleeding out while two dead women decorate the alleyway with bullet holes in their chests.”

  “Bullet holes? What happened to poison?”

  “This was a twisted game,” I say, “with many moving pieces.” I leave out the part where one of those moving pieces includes Ghost. “He didn’t plan on anyone but me leaving that alleyway alive.”

  His gaze narrows, his attention sharpening. “And yet you did. What aren’t you telling me, Lilah?”

  He thinks he’s cornered me, but I snap back with a punch he shouldn’t expect. “Detective Williams didn’t make it out. She’s one of the victims.”

  His face lifts skyward, jaw clenching, and it’s a good thing we’re under the overhang, or he’d have a mouth full of rain. And I’m pretty sure rain in New York City has rat shit in it, which is why you keep your mouth shut. His is not, but he remedies that when he levels me in a stare and purses his lips like a chick about to go at her man. I am not his man. “Williams is in that alleyway?” he confirms, blame in his voice.

  “Don’t ask that question like I did this shit. Which I would have. I’d have killed that bitch if I’d gotten the chance. She tried to kill me. She tried to lure me into a trap. She called me. She knew what was waiting for me.”

  “Are you telling me that she was Umbrella Man?”

  “No,” I say, because Ghost named a man in makeup, but I can’t know that. Not where Houston’s concerned. “My guess is he promised her she’d live if I died.” I pause to consider who shot Jay all over again. It could have been her, but I can’t be sure. “Or, she was his partner,” I continue. “She wasn’t in this alone. There were shots fired from above.”

  “None of this adds up to a serial killer.”

  “Because you know serial killers so well?” I challenge, reminding him that I’m the profiler.

  “I know enough,” he rebuts. “What the hell happened to poison? He kills with poison.”

  “We don’t know how many times or ways he’s killed,” I say. “He kills how he kills. We just might not be in on the secret codes.”

  “Sir,” an officer says, “the press is here.”

  “Of course, they are,” Houston replies. “Block them the hell off. I want this area sealed so tightly that a dog in heat could be right here with us and a pack of wolves couldn’t get to her. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.” The officer rushes away, and Jay’s ambulance pulls onto the road.

  “I need to deal with the press, and the boots on the ground before this gets out,” Houston says, scrubbing his jaw. “And call the damn mayor, which is one big pile of shit I need to dive into. I’ll find you when I have my head that he’s about to take off reattached to my body.” He doesn’t wait for a reply. He turns away and starts walking, stepping into what is now a downpour all over again. I don’t move. Not because I’m worried about getting wet. Water doesn’t bother me. Bullshit does, and I can smell it, like the stench on my shoe last week when I stepped in dog shit. I couldn’t figure out where the smell was coming from until doodoo was smeared all over the fucking floor. I cleaned that up. I need to clean this up.

  Ghost clutters up my mind.

  Why was Ghost here?

  He didn’t want me dead. He didn’t want Jay dead, or Jay would be dead.

  I rotate and look toward the building I now call home with Kane and realization hits me. Oh fuck. Ghost was here for a reason, and if that reason wasn’t me and it wasn’t the victims—oh fuck, I think again. I grab my phone and dial Kane. “Hello, beautiful,” he answers. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Listen to me now. I’ll explain later, soon. Turn around. Don’t come home. I’m safe. You are not. Do it now. Now. I need you to do it now.”

  “Turn right,” he orders his driver and then he’s back. “Done. Talk to me, baby. What’s going on?” His voice is calm. He’s calm. He’s always so fucking calm.

  “Ghost was here, and he didn’t come for me. That means—”

  “He came for me,” Kane says, finishing my sentence.

  CHAPTER THREE

  He came for me.

  Kane makes those words spoken about an assassin hunting him sound oh so cool, calm and elegant, the way Kane manages to make all things brutal and cold sound. The man could literally say “I’m going to kill you” in that low, accented male voice of his, and make death sound like seduction. And then he’d kill you and never think about you again. Me, I do what I already did to a man—just shove a knife in your chest over and over, let Kane bury you, and then worry that my enjoyment in killing you means that I’m fucked up.

  He follows his cool observation about Ghost by asking, “Is Jay with you now?” almost matter-of-factly, as if he’s debating inviting Jay to dinner with us, because, of course, why wouldn’t he? It’s not like he has one killer hunting him while another hunts me. Or maybe it’s the same killer. Either way, dinner with Jay is off the table. Maybe forever.

  Fuck.

  Maybe forever.

  Because he took a bullet for me instead of just letting me play the damn game I would have won.

  “Lilah?” Kane presses, a slight hint of urgency in his voice, a slight tell I doubt anyone but me would hear. It pisses me off. I’m pissed off at Kane. Why the
hell was Jay following me around like a puppy dog?

  “If you mean my bodyguard, he’s now in an ambulance on his way to the hospital,” I say. “And he’s in that ambulance because fear makes people do stupid things. He was so fucking afraid of you that he did something stupid.”

  “What does that mean, Lilah?”

  “He tried to stop me from doing my job and saving a woman in the alley. That didn’t end well for him.”

  “And you shot him?”

  “I didn’t shoot him, Kane. What kind of bitch do you think I am?”

  “The kind that takes killing as seriously as she does protecting those she doesn’t want to kill.”

  “We walked into a trap set for me,” I say. “It appears that Umbrella Man didn’t appreciate Jay interfering. Therefore, Jay ended up with a bullet in his chest.”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad,” I say grimly. “Really fucking bad, Kane. He thought he was saving my life, but I was never in danger. Now, he thinks you’ll kill him.”

  I can almost hear his grimace. “Lilah—”

  “I told him he was wrong about you.”

  “Did you?” It’s not really a question but rather an accusation.

  “Of course, I fucking told him you wouldn’t kill him. So don’t fucking kill him.” And with that command, I move on. “This is a game being played with me, and Jay got caught in the middle. Which means Jay can’t die. If he dies, I can’t kick his damn ass for being stupid.”

  “He’s not going to die, Lilah,” he says, his voice low, rough, filled with understanding that proves, once again, he knows me better than anyone else knows me. He knows I’m worried. He knows that while I can kill, while a part of me enjoys it a bit too much, those urges have yet to drive away my humanity, the way I sometimes worry they have his. Until he worries about me, which is why Jay was following me around. In those moments, in this moment, I’m reminded that he has to have a human side to see mine. And all this human crap is pissing me off. It’s dangerous. We’re dangerous to each other.

  As if proving my point, Kane adds, “I’m coming for you. We’re circling around to the flower shop one street over. Meet me there in three minutes.”