“We’ll give you a call as soon as I’ve talked to Ben and Ray.” Katie opened the door, ready to push the other woman through if necessary.
“Miss Ballard, I have questions for you.” Special Agent Orlund pushed his way into her suite.
Razel eagerly perched to one side, ready to capture it all on film.
Katie chose her words carefully. “This isn’t the best time.”
“I have an idea.” Orlund stayed in the doorway, his arm leaning against the frame.
“What are you doing here?” Katie couldn’t hide her alarm. The staff hadn’t alerted her, or escorted him up. Did he use his badge to avoid security and ambush me?
“What do you think of making a public appeal to the Director?” Orlund asked.
Aggi crossed her arms in front of her chest, and slashed them outward in a firm absolutely not before moving to stand beside Katie.
Her sister’s concern was touching, but recklessness spurred Katie to action. She already had the Director’s attention. What’s he going to do, stalk me more? Kill me more?
She straightened. “What would you want me to say?”
The elevator dinged as Orlund replied. “He’s obviously searching for a connection. If you offered to meet with him, it could draw him out.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Ray drawled, joining them at the door. “Being bait isn’t nearly as glamorous as it looks on television.”
“Does no one need a keycard anymore?” Katie exhaled in frustration.
“This isn’t your jurisdiction, Special Investigations.” Orlund glared at the taller man. “You’ve done your consulting work. Now you can go.”
“Actually you’re the one who can go.” Aggi’s usual melodic tones were raspy. “You’re not using my sister as bait.”
“All right, that’s enough!” Katie shouted over all of them. “Aggi, go to your room and rest. No more speaking, or you’ll risk damaging your voice. Razel, none of this is authorized. If you use any of it, we will be pursuing legal action. And Mr. Orlund, I am not going to be bait. I have no interest in speaking to him. I want all of you out of my room. Now.”
Razel left first, glaring, but lowering the camera. Orlund followed her into the elevator, muttering about uncooperative victims. Once the elevator doors closed, Aggi lifted her fist to her chest, and made a circle to signal that she was sorry.
“You know I wouldn’t agree to do something stupid with such a slim chance of success.” Katie gently pushed her sister toward the door across the hallway. “Go and rest. Please. No more talking. I can fight my own battles.”
Aggi hugged her, and retreated to her own suite. Leaving Ray standing in the hallway.
“You can go, too,” Katie reminded him.
“I really can’t. Not without making sure you’re safe.” Ray glanced around. “If something happens to you, I have been given to understand that I will be subjected to an extremely drawn out and unpleasant death.”
Katie folded her arms, standing stubbornly in the door. “I’m tired of being treated like a fragile flower.”
“And I sympathize.” Ray sighed dramatically. “But I’ve come to enjoy life’s little pleasures. Like breathing. I’d like to keep on doing it. At least let me look around the suite.”
“I’m fine.”
“How many movies or TV shows have you seen where the cops drop off the person, and the bad guy is hiding inside?”
All of a sudden, his presence felt less like an intrusion. She wrapped her arms around herself. “Does that ever really happen?”
Ray shrugged. “No. But I’d feel stupid if it did. And I hate feeling stupid.”
“Okay.”
He went through the entire suite efficiently. Katie waited by the hall door, hugging her arms over her chest, and thinking about anything except what to do if he found someone.
As Ray emerged from the bedroom, he gave her a long, lingering look.
“What is it?” she asked defensively.
“I’m trying to figure out why he likes you.” Ray kept studying her in his maddeningly evaluative way.
Well, that’s a shot to the self-esteem. “You don’t think I can make the cover of Psychotic Stalker Serial Killers Monthly?”
“Not the unsub. Ben,” Ray explained as if instructing a particularly dense pupil.
His words didn’t make sense. Abruptly Katie decided she needed liquid anesthetic to cope with this new information. She stalked to the well-provisioned bar, and pulled out a bottle of expensive malt whiskey. Grabbing two empty glasses, she handed one to Ray. She knocked back a healthy shot of the smoky liquor.
Coughing at the alcohol’s burn, she demanded. “Start talking.”
Chapter 10
I’m being a complete idiot. Ben agreed with the voice in his head. Locking himself in the hotel room to review files he’d already memorized wasn’t helping to take his mind off Katie. Ray is taking care of her, and making sure she’s safe. I can best help her by doing my job. If he repeated the words often enough, then surely the restless urge to go himself would fade. I’m not what she needs. Another point of agreement between him and his subconscious. Katie was in immediate, mortal danger from the unsub. She didn’t need a distracted investigator with a crush hijacking his decision making.
Gritting his teeth hard enough that his jaw ached, Ben focused on the case files he’d painstakingly summarized, and printed out. He’d buried the cheap hotel furniture under paper. All of the unsub’s victims, laid out in neat folders full of mundane details such as where they worked, shopped, and lived. Terse sentences outlining their dreams and hopes, followed by simple diagrams that couldn’t disguise the horrors visited on them. C’mon. Find the pattern. It was the only tool he had to keep Katie alive.
A mental image sliced into his brain. Katie, standing on a stage, her stiff limbs propped up by thin metal braces concealed by the billowing glamour dress. Her lifeless eyes stared into the empty audience as the coroner’s flash popped.
A crackling sound pulled him out of the horrifying vision. Carefully, he smoothed the printout he’d crushed, and laid it with the others before clenching his fists on either side of his head. He’d never felt so useless and terrified. All of his defenses of objectivity had fallen, leaving him raw and open.
His phone rang. Recognizing the extension, he accepted the call. “Hello?”
“Ben, it’s Lucy.” Adler’s partner rarely spoke to the other investigators, preferring to interface solely through the computer. “I found something.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I was thinking about Special Agent Orlund, and how obsessed he is.” Lucy paused. “I found the reason. It started with Ashley Gilpin.”
“The sixth target,” he prompted, hoping she’d get to the point. Unsympathetic directness was easier than meandering diplomatic attempts.
“After she was killed, he flagged any future letters. He didn’t wait for invitations to investigate Sonja Freeman and Aisha Jackson. He took over the local investigations, and pissed off a lot of people.”
Just like he’s doing now. Ben held his tongue, not wanting to disrupt the flow of information.
“I went digging, and I found an old photo, saved to his cloud.” Lucy’s deep breath buzzed harshly against the phone’s microphone. “It was of him and Ashley Gilpin. Together.”
He didn’t need clarification. The intensity of an investigation could create strong intimacies. Orlund wouldn’t be the first law enforcement officer to begin a relationship with the person he was protecting. It’s not like I’ve got solid enough walls to start throwing stones.
“There’s more. I found a report from one of Orlund’s colleagues about the night when Ashley Gilpin was kidnapped and killed. Orlund went crazy looking for her. He didn’t sleep for almost forty-eight hours, and he tore a
part the crime scene when they found her. They carried him out, and took him to the hospital.”
An emotional connection would explain Orlund’s man on a mission act. Ben knew from his own experience that losing someone to violence didn’t encourage stable choices. He’d made drastic changes after Jackson Square. Could Orlund have been in love?
“Love or infatuation, it doesn’t matter.”
“What?” Lucy asked.
He must have spoken aloud. “It’s not important.”
“Actually, I think it is.” Unhappiness thinned Lucy’s voice. “I’ve been tracking Orlund’s online research and the forums he follows. He’s obsessed with the unsub.”
“We can’t trust him to stay objective.” Ben drew in a deep breath, ignoring the ragged edges. “Tell Delacroix that Ray and I will be taking a more active role for this investigation. Orlund can’t complain to the FBI, not without drawing attention to his actions. But Delacroix should be prepared for a jurisdiction battle.”
“Of course.” Lucy paused. “Ben, please be careful.”
“I will. Can you help me to narrow down his plans?”
“I’m on it.”
“And, Lucy? Thanks for letting me know.” Ben hung up the phone, his fingers digging into the solid armor of knotted muscle sheathing his neck. If Orlund is planning a blaze of suicidal glory, how can I stop him?
A man with nothing to lose, and who didn’t care about his own survival couldn’t be reasoned with. I should report him to the FBI, get him pulled off the case. Except then the situation could dissolve into inter-departmental bickering, leaving the unsub clear to add Katie to his list of victims.
Ben stared at the photo of Ashley Gilpin, smiling at the camera. Full of life and hopes. He couldn’t help but wonder. He was already having trouble controlling his emotional reactions to Katie. If something happens to her, would I lose it the way Orlund did?
~ ~ ~
“Maybe I should go.” Although Ray said the words, he made no move to budge from his perch by the suite’s bar.
Katie poured herself another drink. “No. You brought it up. Now you’re going to explain it. What the freaking hell?”
“All right. If you insist.” He poured a finger’s width of amber whiskey. “I’ve known Ben Corwin for a year, and the man is practically a cyborg. He lives, breathes, and sleeps the job, which I’ve told him is an absolutely dreadful way to go about life, but he never listens to me. He starts an investigation, he tracks down the person or information, and then he moves on.”
It sounded lonely, but Katie refused to get distracted. “And?”
“When he worked for the FBI, he cracked a lot of cases. He’s always been the go-to guy to get inside the mind of a killer.” Ray stared into his glass. “His brother was at Jackson Square when the two occulata began fighting. After the bomb blast, he was pulling people out of a partially collapsed building when the whole thing came down.”
Ray didn’t need to finish. She knew this story didn’t end with a happy recovery and reunion. The liquor soured on Katie’s tongue, and she put down the glass.
“He doesn’t talk about it.” Ray continued to stare into his glass as if divining the past. “Ben joined Special Investigations immediately after Jackson Square. He didn’t care about the allegations of corruption, or what was happening with the evaluation camp in Alaska. He just wanted to make sure no one else’s family got caught in the crossfire between demigods.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. The outline of a melody stirred in the back of her mind. A lone woodwind, cut adrift from the other instruments as it played out the notes of a tragedy.
“He’s dedicated and driven. Except for today, where he shoved me out the door because he thinks he’s too distracted.” Ray’s glass clinked as he set it down on the narrow counter. “So I’m wondering why.”
“Trying ever so hard not to be insulted.” Katie ran her fingers over her glass.
Ray leaned in. “You shouldn’t be. You’re quite lovely, smart, and talented. Which means you don’t need me to further elaborate your high ranking in the dating market. But you are not the kind of woman that I would imagine Ben is attracted to. So I am sitting here doing the relationship math because I don’t want him to get hurt.”
Oh. She didn’t want to hurt him either. Is there room inside a heart scarred by time? Were you lost to me before you were mine? Soulful vocals, no instrument distractions.
“He’s taking this case very personally. I don’t want to nurse him through a sullen broody recovery. He’s quite prickly enough as is.”
Ray’s words were casual, but she heard the note of real friendship underneath.
“What do you expect me to do?” Katie put aside the nascent song, though it felt like letting go of a life preserver in the middle of an ocean. She’d always used composing to untangle her feelings, and make sense of the world.
Ray smiled. “I have no patience when a lack of communication slows down a perfectly good romance. You want him, now you know that he wants you as well.”
Katie refused to travel into do you really think he likes me territory. She swirled the whiskey in her glass, wishing for the answers to appear in the peaty liquor. If Ben had been a fellow musician or dancer, she wouldn’t hesitate to enjoy a weekend or two. But he was trying to catch a man who planned to kill her.
She took a drink. “Distracting him doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
“He’s already distracted. Both of you are. Pretending otherwise, and ignoring the elephant in the room will only make things worse.” He pushed his untasted glass away.
Maybe it was the alcohol which made the idea of throwing caution to the wind sound so tempting. If it all goes wrong, I won’t have to worry about a break-up. Swallowing a fit of giggles at the gallows humor, she poured out her glass into the sink. “I’ve had enough. Yesterday, I was worried about a multinational tour and organic smoothies. Today I’ve got a killer after me, and I’m being prompted into a torrid affair.”
“I suppose it has been rather busy.” Ray chuckled.
“What do you expect from me?” Katie pushed aside the bottle. Alcohol was incredibly hard on the vocal chords and wouldn’t make this mess any easier to solve. “I’m not chasing after him if he’s determined to avoid me.”
“Trust me, darling. He’s not going to stay away for long. I’d be willing to bet he’s climbing the walls right now. What you and I need is a little patience.”
Her phone began to buzz. Enough brooding. Time to get back to work.
“Miss Ballard, this is Lucas from the front desk. There’s someone here requesting to speak with you.”
Her hand tightened around the phone. At least they’re calling instead of sending them right up. “I don’t want any more visitors today.”
Ray shifted into alert mode, all his playfulness transformed into anticipation.
“I’m afraid he’s not taking no for an answer. He claims it is an urgent matter, and can’t wait.”
“Who is it?” Her voice cracked, a different pitch for each syllable.
“His name is Patrick Gayle. Should I call security?” Lucas asked.
“No. Please escort him up.” Katie ended the call. “My lawyer is here.”
Chapter 11
When Katie went to open the door, Ray stopped her. Silently, he tapped the peephole, and drew his gun.
I was going to check. Pushing back her irritation, Katie peered through the distorted bubble. To her relief, she recognized Patrick on the other side. Tall and slender, wearing a custom-fit pale gray suit that offset his dark skin perfectly, he always gave the impression of a complete gentleman. She unlocked the door.
“My dear, I thought I’d never get past those fools downstairs.” Patrick’s rich baritone wrapped around her like a comfortable vocal b
lanket. He opened his arms for a hug.
Katie gratefully accepted. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Patrick’s eyes narrowed, and he stood taller. “And who is the gentleman with the gun?”
“I’m assigned to protective detail at the moment.” Ray slid the gun into his shoulder holster. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“I won’t say likewise until I know why you’re here.” Patrick stood protectively between them.
He’d been her mother’s business manager and lawyer. After she died, he’d stepped into the parental role. Katie trusted his advice. He’d always had her and Aggi’s best interests at heart.
“It’s about the letters.” She explained about the Director.
Patrick’s eyes widened with every additional sentence. “He was right there? And no one saw him?”
“I realize it may seem fantastic,” Ray began.
“I’m not concerned about that.” Patrick’s astonishment and dismay brought a wave of guilt. “How could you not tell me about this?”
“I can handle this,” she insisted. “You didn’t have to come—”
“I most certainly did, young lady.” He stretched his neck in his indignation. “And yes, you’re a very competent woman, but this is not the time to push through alone. Are you all right?”
“She’s been handling the situation very well,” Ray said without a trace of mockery.
Patrick exhaled, and shook his head. “Katie, I don’t like this. I think we should cancel the tour.”
Images of disappointed fans, scathing Internet commentary, and lawsuit-happy lawyers formed in Katie’s mind. “Aggi already suggested that. We aren’t canceling.”
“Why not? Especially if it means keeping you safe.” Patrick’s eyes flashed in anger. “We’ll shut down until Special Investigations catches this killer.”
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