Deadly Past

by Kris Rafferty

  “Evidence I most likely put there!” She slapped his back hard. “Put me down.”

  “Doesn’t mean you’re a killer. Give me a general profile on a person who’d execute six bound, hooded men, all begging for mercy.” He reached for the doorknob as Cynthia hit his kidneys with two mid-knuckle strikes. “Oomph.” He put her down, grabbing where it hurt.

  “I don’t feel guilty about hitting you, Charlie!” Her expression told Charlie she did, so he took it as apology enough. “You deserved it.”

  “Let’s go.” He opened the front door. She pressed her palm to the door, and he allowed her to slam it shut again, because forcing the issue might have landed her on her ass.

  “Stop it!” she snapped. “I have to call Benton and tell him what happened last night.”

  They both knew Cynthia had no idea what happened. That was the problem. And earlier, Charlie had been speaking rhetorically about the profile, but now realized Cynthia needed to work through it herself. Her priority would be a call to Benton, instead of medical attention, until she believed she hadn’t gone insane and become a mass murderer.

  “A profile. Do it.” He folded his arms over his chest, standing in front of her, glowering.

  She poked his chest. “Six rounds are missing from my magazine, Charlie. Six dead and my gun is the murder weapon.”

  “You don’t know that.” He took a step closer, pinning her against the door. “Humor me. Profile the unsub.” Then they could get the hell out of there. She leaned against the front door, frowning up at him.

  “It’s not that easy. The stats are all over the place, because a mass murderer is… They usually don’t commit mass murder more than once.” Whatever she saw on his face had her grimacing, but she finally complied. “They’re angry, dissatisfied, have poor social skills or few friends, and then they’re triggered.” He could see she was irritated rather than relieved that she didn’t fit a profile for the unsub, and that made no sense to Charlie. No surprise, Cynthia rarely did. “Ninety-six point five percent of mass murderers are male, and a majority suffer from paranoia and often acute behavioral or personality disorders.”

  “So, not you.”

  “No,” she admitted, grudgingly. “Not me.”

  “And this wasn’t just any mass murder.”

  “No.” Her eyes lost focus. “The victims… It was a hit, done for money, not excitement.” He grabbed the doorknob again, leaning closer. Close enough to feel her heat.

  “Can we dispense with your worries now?” He purposefully lowered his tone, attempting to ratchet down the intensity. “You did not execute those men.” His whispered words seemed to jolt Cynthia from her thoughts. Now, she noticed his closeness, but made no attempt to scoot away. Instead, she studied him as if logging his reactions. She was a profiler, and he knew reading people was what she did, but her searching gaze felt peculiar nonetheless. As a forensic pathologist, Charlie wasn’t used to his patients studying him back.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think I killed them, but it sure as shit looks like I did.” She sniffed, then sniffed her sleeve, grimacing. “I smell.”

  He nodded. She did, indeed. His gaze roamed over her ruined suit, and up close and personal he could see all the dirt and abrasion tears in the cloth. Charlie did his best to appear clinical in his appraisal, but he was unabashedly admiring her body. “You look as if you were thrown from a moving vehicle.”

  She blinked a few times before stepping to the side, careful not to touch him as she moved away from the door. “Thanks.” She didn’t sound thankful.

  “Did you want me to lie?” He rested his head on the door, doing his best to rein in his frustration. Then he turned and leaned against the door as he contemplated her.

  “No.” Cynthia kept her gaze averted. “I forgot my pocketbook and phone. I’ll get them, and then we can go.” She hurried back to the living room and came back with her pink pocketbook, dropping her iPhone into her suit jacket pocket.

  “Don’t tell Benton anything until we know more,” he said. Her look of horror had him shaking his head. “It’s only obstruction if you’re guilty. And, anyway, the Fifth Amendment protects you. I’m just saying.” He shrugged. “Wait.”

  “Failure-to-report laws, Charlie.” She shook her head. “You can’t pick and choose which laws to follow.”

  “We’re in Massachusetts. It’s not against the law to fail to report a felony here. Just wait to tell Benton anything.”

  “For what?” Her eyes narrowed, and now it was her reaching for the doorknob, and Charlie keeping his hand on the door. “To be charged with accessory after the fact?”

  “We’re not concealing anything, least of all a crime. It’s on the news. We don’t know who did it, so we’re not aiding and abetting.”

  “You know that’s not true! And stop with the we. I don’t want you involved.” She used her shoulder, attempting to move him, but quickly gave up when he didn’t budge an inch. “I’m giving the flash drive to Benton, along with the evidence in your trunk, and then I’ll confess everything.”

  “I’m involved,” Charlie said. “There’s no way to keep me out of this without lying, so just wait. Until we know more.”

  Her shoulders sagged. “You’re right. And I can’t lie. Look what I’ve done.” She pressed a palm to her forehead, looking ready to cry. “I’ve dragged you into this. After all you’ve been put through by my family…” Her words had Charlie’s teeth grinding. Would she ever look at him without thinking of the accident?

  Her cell phone rang. She retrieved it from her pocket and they both looked at it. “Benton,” she said, sounding worried.

  Charlie tilted her chin up with his fingers, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Just wait. Until we know more.”

  Cynthia hit “accept” and then put it on speakerphone. “Hi, Benton. I’m here with Charlie Foulkes. Sorry, I’ve been—”

  “I’ve got six executed Coppola syndicate WITSEC snitches on my hands,” Special Agent Jack Benton said. Charlie and Cynthia exchanged horrified looks. The vics were Coppola syndicate witnesses for the prosecution of a tightly closed case. This would reopen it. “And the U.S. Marshals are riding me, looking to cover their asses.”

  “On my way.” Cynthia had grown pale, and her hand holding the phone shook. Charlie understood why. The vics weren’t randomly killed. Their identities threatened the careers of everyone who had worked on the Coppola case, and this made Cynthia appear even guiltier than before.

  “No, Benton,” Charlie said, ignoring Cynthia’s instant glare. His patience was gone. “Charlie here. Sorry, but Cynthia isn’t going anywhere but to the emergency room. She’s got a head injury. You caught us on our way there.”

  Benton’s angry tone mellowed to worry. “She okay?”

  “Hopefully. We’ll know more after a CAT scan,” Charlie said. “She’s fighting me.”

  “Cynthia, get the test, and then get your ass to the crime scene,” Benton said. “You’ve both seen the news?”

  “Yes, but they said nothing about the victims being Coppola syndicate,” she said.

  “We’re keeping that quiet for now,” Benton said. “Your team of techs are here, Charlie.”

  “I called them as soon as I got your voice message,” he said. “They’ve kept me updated best they can, but I’m assuming they don’t know this is a syndicate hit, or they would have said something.” Like asked for hazard pay. “We’ll be there, too, just as soon as we get Cynthia sorted out.”

  “Be quick about it. This is no time for the B team.” Benton disconnected the line.

  Cynthia slipped her phone into her suit jacket pocket. “And so it begins.”

  “If you must,” Charlie sighed, resolved to the unavoidable delay, “take a quick shower, but try not to get the wound wet. Then we’ll head to the ER. If you check out fine, we’ll go straight to the crime scene afterward,
but no matter what you decide, you must change. Arriving at the crime scene in this condition will create too many questions.”

  “You’re so bossy.” She said it with no heat, and just stood there, as if frozen with indecision. Charlie cupped her cheek.

  “Don’t think, Cynthia. Just do. You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you safe, right?” She covered his hand, pressing her cheek more fully into his palm. He could tell his words saddened her rather than comforted her, which had been his intent.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispered.

  Then she left him, tugging her shirt from her pants as she walked down the hall toward her bedroom. He was so distracted by what she’d said that for a second or two, he’d forgotten he’d told her to change, so the image of her unbuttoning her shirt confused him, even as it sent his imagination to uncharted places… Taboo places. When she’d disappeared from sight, he no longer needed visuals to feed his active imagination. It ran free. By the time Charlie heard the shower turn on, he needed one, too. A cold one.

  Chapter Three

  Why was Cynthia surprised to discover Charlie had friends in high places? Moments after arriving at Massachusetts General Hospital, her ass landed on a trauma room exam table. While others waited hours to be seen, Cynthia shot to the head of the line. Lucky her. The power of Charlie.

  She’d balked, of course, at the order to don a hospital johnny, and no perky, freckle-faced, hyper-kinetic nurse in moon and star designer scrubs was going to intimidate her into changing her mind. Charlie was never seeing Cynthia in a johnny. Just the idea of him in the room while she was practically naked on the exam table sent waves of mortification through her. Cynthia’s rebellion earned her a hostile preliminary exam, and by the time Nurse Ratched left—having poked, measured, and grimaced through Cynthia’s vital signs—it was clear she’d won the nurse’s “most difficult patient of the shift” award.

  Whatever. Charlie acted as if nothing was amiss, so Cynthia just went with it and didn’t complain. Though she’d wanted to. She’d wanted to complain a lot, because she was here, and every instinct she had told her to be at the crime scene, finding answers.

  Just back from radiology, having received her CAT scan from a handsome, flirting, brown-eyed technician, they awaited the test results. Charlie sat in the corner on a tiny chair, grimacing. He’d been grimacing ever since she’d flirted back with that sexy tech, but she couldn’t prove causation. His discontent could be from sitting on that tiny chair. It made him look like a G.I. Joe crammed into a dollhouse. He didn’t fit.

  Whatever had his panties in a bunch, he was ignoring her, so Cynthia pulled her iPhone from her suit jacket pocket. Charge was at twenty percent. Too much was going on to risk it dying again, so wasting it on Instagram didn’t seem sensible. She slipped it back in her pocket and then leaned for another entertainment magazine, grabbing it from the wall rack without falling off the table. No small feat. She pretended to read as she studiously did not swing her feet, despite an overwhelming urge to do just that.

  “This is such a colossal waste of time.” Cynthia flipped a page, unable to concentrate on the photos of lavishly dressed actresses attending red carpet events, while Charlie sat there, all silent, huge, sexy, and disgruntled. He was perfect, it was distracting, and he had a full charge on his phone. The man was carelessly scrolling, swiping up, looking at who knows what.

  Not for the first time, she wished she didn’t want him so much, but just looking at him made her girly parts clench. He was the smartest, bravest, kindest person she knew, and he made her laugh. He was her best friend, and wanting more from him was selfish and greedy.

  Wanting more would kill their friendship.

  In relationships, when one of the people involved feels indebted to the other, that debt colors everything. Even a kiss. She had no idea how far Charlie might go to appease his sense of obligation, and she had no intentions of exploring his limits, because when she kissed a man, she liked to know his tongue was in her mouth because he couldn’t help himself, instead of wondering if it was there because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  He wasn’t her type, anyway. Slap a kilt on him and he looked ripped from the pages of Outlander. No, one of the later books, after the Battle of Culloden. Battle worn, with scars to prove it, he was more fierce than pretty, and her tastes usually ran toward the pretty: like Benton or Modena, members of her FBI task force. Now, they were seriously good-looking men. Though Charlie’s size was a turn-on, and his pale blue eyes were dreamy…. Still, not her type. So why was she squirming, feeling aflutter just looking at him?

  The exam table paper ripped beneath her butt. She peeked at Charlie, wondering if he’d noticed. Of course he’d noticed. He’d noticed she was acting weird, too.

  “You’re not human,” she said. “You should be nervous thinking about what we’ll find at the crime scene.” Like evidence that could land her in jail.

  He compressed his lips, averted his gaze. “I’m more concerned with the CAT scan. Stop being nervous. I’ll tell you when it’s time to be nervous.”

  “Don’t tell me—” Her back straightened and her jaw jutted out. “Who said I’m nervous?” His calm patience was pissing her off.

  “Are you human?” he said.

  His cheek kicked up when it took her a moment to realize he’d thrown her words back at her. His cleverness earned him a scowl. Then her shoulders sagged under the weight of her fears. “Yes, I’m…” She glanced at him. “I’m human.” She slapped the magazine closed and set it on the table next to her. “What if we find something at the crime scene that points to me? I could lose my career over this.”

  “Did you kill anyone?” His expression and tone suggested he’d already answered that question for himself, and he’d judged her innocent.

  “Not yet.” She narrowed her eyes, throwing out that threat. “I didn’t kill anyone. Probably. Are you suggesting no innocent person has ever been convicted?” His impatience was marked, yet Cynthia thought the question pertinent.

  Grabbing the edge of the exam table, she found herself rhythmically tapping her pale pink, manicured fingernails on the wood underneath the table’s cushion-top. She calculated the odds of her falling on her face if she hopped off the table, and then calculated them again on a sliding scale with three-inch heels added to the equation. She was getting antsy.

  “Try to be patient,” Charlie said, scrolling on his annoyingly charged phone.

  She hated sitting there, looking like a little girl who might, at any moment, begin to swing her feet. FBI special agents with degrees in criminal psychology do not swing their feet while sitting on exam tables. In fact, it was impossible to project confident, capable, and professional while atop this plastic cushion with crinkly paper, swinging feet or not. The very act of sitting there put her at a disadvantage. Unfortunately, Charlie occupied the only other seat in the room. His tiny seat.

  “I have every reason to be nervous. Blind justice, and all.” She studied the aseptic room with its waxed shiny floor, its high-gloss white walls. Everything had the look and smell of something that was bleached frequently. “Our criminal justice system runs on evidence, Charlie.”

  His smile barely touched his lips, but it was there when he glanced up from his phone. “Yeah? Do tell.” Charlie’s world revolved around evidence, and Cynthia was caught preaching to the choir.

  “It’s only a matter of time before they find my blood at the scene,” she said, “or my prints on bullet casings.”

  His brow furrowed for a moment, and then cleared just as quickly. “I’ll figure it out.”

  The way he said that had her worrying. Terrance’s death had a grip on him, even now, ten years later. She had no doubt he’d go to extraordinary lengths to repay the debt he felt he owed for “allowing” Terrance to drive drunk. Cynthia, for her part, would make sure Charlie never got that chance. She wanted no
part of his risking his career to “figure it out.”

  “If evidence can clear me,” she said, “Benton will find it. I trust him to do his job.”

  “I trust him, too.” He returned his attention to his phone, but he no longer scrolled, or seemed to be reading, which meant he was just avoiding her gaze.

  “Is there a but implied there? I mean, it sounds a lot like you’re implying a but.”

  “No buts. I trust him.” He finally looked at her, and then slipped his phone into his back pocket. “l learned to trust him during the Coppola trial. The syndicate is dead, Coppola is in jail, and that’s because Benton knows what he’s doing.”

  “True.” She glared at the shiny tile flooring again, allowing her hair to fall in damp, loose waves over her face. It took forever to air dry after a shower if she didn’t take the time to blow dry it. There hadn’t been time this morning, what with both her and Charlie impatient to get out of the house, so it was unruly. Cynthia preferred her hair pencil straight, sliding over her shoulders like silk, swaying when she walked, with not a wisp, not a stray hair moving out of alignment. Yet, here she sat, on an exam table, with unruly hair. Not aligned. “Six Coppola syndicate WITSEC witnesses. I can’t keep silent, Charlie.”

  “You will. We follow the evidence, as always, and it will lead to the real unsubs. As always.” He folded his arms over his chest. “You open your mouth before we can clear you, we’re off the case. Or do you have an alternate idea? I mean, one that doesn’t require you to confess to murders you didn’t commit?”

  She hopped off the table, unable to sit there any longer, and boom! Her heel zigged when it should have zagged. Her knees buckled and forced her to grab the cushion-top to regain her balance. Charlie shot forward, intense, like a parent hovering over a toddler: hands out, poised to catch.