Obsession Untamed

by Pamela Palmer

Page 10

 

  Tighe took her hand and kept climbing, all the while stabbing the air with the knife in his free hand. That didn’t bother her nearly as much as the blood that was beginning to trickle down his cheek and neck from wounds that shouldn’t be there.

  Don’t look. Just don’t look.

  Sweat was rolling down her temples, her breathing labored by the time she reached the top step of the memorial. As her gaze scanned the area, out of habit her hand went for her gun and closed around nothing. Blast it.

  Something caught her eye. A bare foot, facedown, poking out from behind one of the mammoth marble columns that framed the memorial.

  “There,” she told Tighe.

  Together they ran, Delaney taking the path outside the pillars, Tighe running inside. They converged on another murder scene. She closed her eyes against the sight, then opened them again to study the bodies of a young couple, each partially undressed as if caught in the act of sex, now lying side by side, identical ovals of teeth marks on their necks.

  Not far from them lay a female police officer. Had she heard the screams and come to investigate, only to meet with the same fate? It seemed probable. A wedding ring gleamed on her finger in the bright light of the memorial. She was married. Probably with kids, who would never see their mother again. Dammit.

  “Did you know her?”

  She looked up to see Tighe watching her.

  “No. ”

  He nodded. “I’m going to try to find him. ”

  As Tighe kept walking, Delaney bent over the cop and checked for a pulse. Nothing, but her skin was still damp with sweat. Her murder, at least, had only just happened. She grabbed the woman’s gun and slipped it into her back waistband, careful to cover it with her shirt hem.

  How had Tighe known the murderer had been here? Was he, too, getting the visions?

  As she crossed to the kids, she saw Tighe again fighting something, being injured by something, which wasn’t there.

  Don’t think about it.

  She checked the young couple for pulses and again found none. The old fury welled up inside her at the waste of life. God, she wanted whoever had done this dead.

  She saw Tighe turn and come back toward her, still stabbing the air, the blood running freely down his face now. He must be catching himself with those knives. That was the only explanation that made a bit of sense.

  The gun weighed heavily against her back. If she wanted to shoot him, now was the time, when he was still far enough away that she stood a chance of getting the shot off before he stopped her. But the doubts had lodged too deeply in her head. That she might actually be the one with the mental problem.

  As sirens began to sound on the wind, coming nearer, she let him close the distance between them without pulling her weapon.

  His expression was tight. “Those may be heading here. ”

  Delaney nodded. “The cop has only been dead a matter of minutes. She probably called in the murders of the kids before he attacked her. ”

  “Come on, we’re getting out of here. ”

  “Let me stay. Let me help the cops look for him. ”

  “Not a chance. ” He took her hand and gave her no choice as he ushered her down the long set of steps and into the car. Then he dove in on the driver’s side, slammed the door, and continued to stab wildly at his invisible foe. A foe who couldn’t possibly be in the car with them. Not unless he was the size of a fairy.

  The man was crazy. Whether or not he was in league with the murderer, he was nuts. And the cops were on their way. She reached cautiously for the door handle and never touched it. One of his knives whipped out to within an inch of her face.

  “You open that door, and it’ll be the last thing you do. ” His voice was low and deadly.

  “Okay. ” Delaney slowly put her hand back in her lap, her breathing tight as she watched him slash at nothing. Her eyes widened as the gashes that appeared on his face out of thin air just as miraculously disappeared.

  Okay, we’re both crazy, right? No, they were both probably suffering from hallucinations, thanks to those drugs.

  A couple of minutes later, Tighe stopped fighting and sank back against his seat, his breathing hard.

  “Did you win?” she asked conversationally, pushing back the urge to close her eyes, cover her ears, and scream that this was not happening.

  He turned his head toward her, his mouth opening as if he were about to reply, then closing again.

  “Care to tell me who you were fighting?”

  “Not who. ”

  Well, that was a point in his favor, since clearly no real person had been doing battle with him in the car.

  “Then what?”

  “It’s not your concern. ” He straightened, his breathing already back to normal, and lifted his shirt to wipe the blood off his face. “They won’t bother you. ”

  She stared at him, another thought breaking through the bafflement and disbelief that had become her mind. What if he really had been battling something? Something she couldn’t see. Some kind of cloaked, supersecret weapon.

  Had she accidentally stumbled into the middle of something far bigger than a psychopathic serial killer and his sexy, drugged-up twin?

  Tighe turned to her as if he were reading her thoughts. “Don’t try to figure it out, Delaney. Don’t try to figure me out. You won’t succeed. And if by some long shot you do, you’ll only endanger yourself more. ”

  Because then she really would know too much. A frisson of adrenaline pumped through her veins. She felt the gun at her back and wondered if she could bring herself to kill him. If she drew on him, she’d better be ready to shoot, because she’d only ever get one chance.

  Her gaze studied his strong profile as he started the car and put it in gear.

  No, she wasn’t ready to kill him. If her theory was even partly right, that he was involved in something big and dangerous, she needed to know more. She needed all the information she could get if the Bureau was to have any chance of stopping it.

  And, disturbingly, there was a part of her that wanted to believe the angel wings that continued to whisper, Trust him. There was a part of her that was genuinely drawn to him in ways beyond the sexual. His strength. His gentleness. He intrigued her mightily.

  And yes, deep in her gut, she was starting to trust him.

  As he drove, questions bombarded her brain. She tilted her head against the headrest behind her, watching him.

  “How did you know your twin was here, Tighe?”

  He glanced at her. “You told me. ”

  She jerked upright. “I told you?”

  “I saw him in your vision. ”

  Her scalp began to tingle. “In my vision?” She’d never told him about her visions. She’d never told him anything. Was he reading her mind now? Could this night get any weirder? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. ”

  “Don’t you? I think you do, brown eyes. ” He glanced at her again. “I was the one having the visions until you came along. ”

  She stared at him, the hair rising on the back of her neck. “What do you mean?”

  He turned back to the road. “My twin and I have a psychic connection I don’t entirely understand. When he first started killing, I was the one seeing the murders. I was the one watching those terrified faces as he went for their throats. Through his eyes, I saw the death of that blonde in the basement of the Potomac Side Apartments. A couple of minutes later, I saw him attack you. I thought he’d killed you as he had her. ”

  No way. Her mind rebelled, yet she stared at him, her attention riveted.

  He glanced at her and met her gaze. “But my next vision wasn’t of death. It was of you staring at yourself in the bathroom mirror at work. You wondered out loud why you were being forced to watch him kill others. One of your coworkers found you leaning on the sink, white as a ghost, and called your name. That’s how I knew who y
ou were. ”

  Her head rang like a gong struck too hard. Yet everything he said was true. Everything correlated exactly with the events as she knew them.

  “You think I’ve come between you and your twin. ”

  “I know you have, though I’m not sure how. Something must have happened when he attacked you and didn’t kill you. You’ve disrupted our connection. Now when he murders, I sometimes see you watching the murder, and I sometimes get tiny glimpses of it myself. But so far, the only time I’ve seen the whole thing since you got involved is the one time I held on to you while you got the vision. ”

  She blinked. “In your house just now. You saw it instead of me, didn’t you? You knew he was in the Lincoln Memorial killing those people. ”

  “Yes. ” Tighe released a harsh sigh. “But I didn’t get there in time to catch him. ”

  “Because something attacked you. ” She pressed her palms against the roof of the car. “Is this for real, Tighe? Is this all happening, or am I seriously losing my grip on my sanity?”

  He reached over and gently squeezed her knee. “I’d like to tell you you’re losing it. Or it’s all a dream, or something equally inane. But you’re not, brown eyes. You’re perfectly sane. You’ve just gotten in the middle of things you shouldn’t have. ” He nodded toward her window. “Keep your eyes peeled, Agent Randall. We may have missed him, but he could still be around here preparing to feed off someone else. ”

  Delaney nodded, letting his words sink in. She wasn’t insane, at least. Which was definitely something. Unfortunately, the deeper she got into this, the more convinced she became she was going to be lucky to get out of it alive.

  She needed to trust her instincts and her instincts were screaming at her to trust him, to hold on to him and not let him go. Every instinct she possessed warned her that Tighe was her only chance of survival.

  Tighe glanced at Delaney as he had every few minutes for the past couple of hours as they drove through the night streets of D. C. The woman drew him like a cat to cream, even in the dark where he could only glimpse her face in shadow. There was a depth to her that intrigued him. Alternating layers of strength and softness. Of fury and pain.

  He was pretty sure he knew where the pain came from, but he wanted to know the whole story. He found himself wanting to know everything about her.

  “Was your mother a cop, brown eyes?”

  She turned toward him as the lights of a passing cab lit her face.

  “No. Why?”

  “I saw your expression when you saw the dead cop. I thought maybe you’d known her. Or that she reminded you of your mom. ”

  Delaney sighed and tilted her head back against the seat as if exhaustion pulled at her. “I saw her wedding ring. I’d be willing to bet she had kids. My mom wasn’t a cop, but I was eleven when I lost her. I hate the thought of any other kid going through that. ”

  “Tell me what happened. I heard you tell the cat in your apartment that a scumbag caught her on a bike path. ” He wasn’t sure she’d open up to him, but they’d been traveling together in a comfortable silence for a while now. He found he wanted to understand her better.

  “He raped her. Murdered her, while I was at school. I don’t know any more than that. They never found the killer. ”

  “I’m sorry you lost her. ”

  “It was a long time ago. ”

  “Not so long. And you live with it every day of your life, don’t you? It’s why you became a federal agent. To catch the killers like the one who killed your mother. Maybe to catch him. ”

  She turned back to him. Then slowly looked away. “Maybe I am a little obsessed,” she said softly. “But, blast it, Tighe, people like that need to be stopped. ” She swung back to look at him. “How dare he steal her life? And not just hers. Mine. He took everything from me that day. Everything. ”

  Tighe slid his hand over her shoulder and gave a squeeze. “Just don’t devote so much of your life to revenge that you forget to live it. ”

  “It’s not revenge. ”

  “What is it, brown eyes?”

  “It’s…a calling. I hate the killers. All of them. ” She groaned. “It is revenge, isn’t it? Every time there’s a murder, I wonder if it’s the same guy. If maybe this time I’ll get him. ”

  She was silent for more than a minute, as if pondering that realization. Finally, she shrugged. “Who cares why I do it? It’s my job, and I’m good at it. ”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “What happened after your mom died? Did your dad raise you?”

  She gave a soft sound of disgust. “No. ”

  That single word held a stunning wealth of emotion, emotions that trailed across his tongue. Anger. Hurt. And a deep, painful betrayal he knew the taste of all too well.

  “My dad decided he couldn’t handle being a single parent. Five days after I lost my mother, he ripped me away from everything I’d ever known—home, friends, school, my cat—and dumped me on my aunt’s doorstep, more than two hours away. I guess in his messed-up logic it was the perfect solution. I needed a mother, and she needed help. She was single with four small children. Only I didn’t get a mother. I got a full-time, unpaid job. I became her babysitter, cook, housekeeper, you name it. ”

  “Cinderella,” he murmured.

  She made a sound. “Believe me, I thought that at least ten times a day. Which was ridiculous, of course. I wasn’t abused, at least…Yeah, anyway. ”

  Tighe looked over at her. Her abrupt silence was loaded. He reached over and stroked her hair. “I’d like to hear it all. Though I don’t want to cause you more pain. ”

  “It’s not…I mean…” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “My aunt’s boyfriend moved in with us when I was sixteen. ”