by Robin Perini
Instead, he waited.
Would he finally hear the truth she’d obviously kept to herself for quite a while?
Faith took a deep breath. “Burke has secrets.”
Stefan nodded with encouragement.
“He killed someone,” she rushed out. “In fact, he didn’t murder just one person.
“My ex-husband is a serial killer.”
Chapter Five
Burke paced the floor, his feet sinking deep into the carpet. A pile of unreviewed reports littered his desk. He’d been unable to focus since Orren had called. Damn Faith. She’d caused him more trouble than he’d thought possible.
Soon it would be over. If Orren could be trusted, within twenty-four hours she’d be dead. The thought didn’t thrill him like it should have. He paused at his office’s panoramic window and peered across the Dallas skyscape.
The room went hazy. An image of Faith appeared in the glass. His smiling, low-class, treacherous wife. Before his eyes, a stream of blood washed her away.
Burke shook his head and the vision dissipated. He’d wanted to be the one to make her disappear. He’d been dreaming about taking his favorite Bowie to her since she’d let herself go after Zoe had been born. Her hair no longer the perfect blond, she’d fattened up at least twenty pounds. She was no longer the trophy he’d molded from that waitress at the Shiny Penny. She wasn’t his Faith any longer. She’d forced him to divorce her.
Faith needed to be gone on his terms, not hers. And to discover she had some fool cowboy helping her. The very thought made Burke’s head pound with each beat of his heart. He couldn’t take it. He’d bet she’d given the guy her body. That she’d squealed underneath him like the low-class Jezebel she was. He just knew it. He might not want Faith anymore, but he damn sure didn’t want anyone else to have what had belonged to him. He didn’t share.
Burke grabbed his coat and walked out of his office, forcing his voice and demeanor to remain calm and controlled when inside he longed to scream. “I’m leaving for the day. Cancel my afternoon appointments.”
Before his administrative assistant could ask him any questions, he walked into the elevator. The doors slid closed, leaving him in peaceful silence.
Finally alone.
Burke let out a loud curse. His ex had found herself another man. The guy must not have any class to want someone as broken down as Faith.
His body trembled, prickles of irritation flicked under his skin. He rubbed his arm until it turned red. It didn’t help. Nothing would. He’d have to find a way to calm himself. His father wouldn’t like it, but Burke was past caring.
He needed release. His bag was packed. His plan in place. The Acid Bath Murderer had always fascinated him. The original had been caught. Burke didn’t plan to be.
Now all he needed was the right woman.
The elevator door slid open and he quickly blanked his expression even as he wanted to claw each inch of his body.
A woman stepped onto the elevator and acknowledged him with a nod. Her blond hair turned under just above her shoulders, sleek and smooth.
Polished.
Nothing like Faith.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, digging his thumbnails into his palms. Sometimes pain would drive the urge away for a while. He had rules he followed. One was not to hunt near where he worked or lived.
He glanced down at her hands. She wore a ring on the left one. She had someone else.
Blood pounded at the backs of his eyes. He closed them.
“Are you all right?” she asked in a husky voice that made his body harden in anticipation.
“Low blood sugar,” he said, thinking quickly.
He loosened his hands. The pain dissipated. He’d made his choice.
Burke frowned and plastered a worried expression on his face. “I don’t know if I should drive. Could you take me home?”
She looked at him, surprised. “I can call you a cab.”
“Never mind. I’ll find a way.”
They exited the elevator at the parking garage level, and he stumbled through the doors.
She reached out to help him catch his balance.
He smiled up at her and plunged a syringe into her neck.
The shock on her face caused his body to pulse with pleasure, and he groaned at the release. He scooped her into his arms.
Sometimes rules were made to be broken.
* * *
SERIAL KILLER.
The desert horizon tilted. The campsite surrounding Faith faded away. The persistent trill of the cicadas drowned out the frantic beating of her heart. She pressed her fingers to her mouth. She’d said the words aloud for the first time since she’d called in an anonymous tip the night she and Zoe had left Weatherford.
As far as she could tell, nothing had come of her call. She couldn’t be sure why, but it reinforced her decision as the right one. No one could stop Burke. He was untouchable.
Faith stared down at her hands before chancing a glance at Léon. She hadn’t known him long. He’d been tough to read from the first time they’d met, but she recognized the surprise on his face.
Who wouldn’t be shocked? Burke Thomas came from a wealthy family. He had money, good looks, and power. She’d run away for two reasons: no one would believe her, and she was terrified for Zoe.
Despite his promise, she half expected him to smile and cart her off to the sheriff—or maybe a psychiatrist’s office.
His silence made her shoulders tense.
“How did you learn the truth about him?” he asked, brows drawn together.
Léon hadn’t laughed in her face. He hadn’t immediately dismissed her claims. In fact, he actually seemed to take her seriously.
“By chance.” She twisted her hands in her lap, her nerves still jumping with dread. “He’d brought Zoe home after a weekend with him and her grandparents. Less than a half hour after he left, a lawyer delivered a new custody agreement.” Faith couldn’t stop the ironic chuckle from escaping her. “I’d hoped I could change his mind, so I tried to find him. My last stop was the bar where we’d met. I saw a prostitute getting into his car. Two days later, her photo appeared in the paper. She’d been murdered.”
“It could have been a coincidence.”
“That’s what I tried to tell myself,” she said with a frown. “For a while. A few weeks later, we argued about child support. He was behind again. I threatened to call his father. Two days afterward, the police found a body a couple counties over. The victim had blond hair and resembled the first woman, but she’d been killed in a completely different way.”
Léon picked up a stick from the ground and poked at the cold ashes from the previous night’s campfire. He didn’t say anything for a moment. He thought she was insane. He had to.
“I know what you’re thinking.” She forced herself to stop fidgeting and met his thoughtful gaze. “I’m not crazy.”
“Actually, I was waiting to hear what else you’d found. I have a feeling there’s more.”
For a moment she froze. Every time she’d pictured going to the cops—or anyone for that matter—she’d imagined being on the receiving end of condescending questions with an oh-so-reasonable tone that grated on her like a karaoke singer a half step off key. Léon’s encouragement shattered the dam of silence.
The words, the thoughts held in confidence for so long, poured out. “I reviewed the newspapers, searching for murdered women. I found over a dozen tall, blonde, very thin women in the counties surrounding the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Almost all of the victims lived or were killed in different cities or towns. I recorded the dates. They all happened on days that Burke and I had a huge argument.”
“You remember every argument?”
She bristled a bit. He didn’t understand. Would he ever? Someone like him, who was clearly in control of his world. “I kno
w which days Zoe stayed with Burke. When he brought her home, he pushed me. I pushed back.”
Faith didn’t mention how every encounter had ended with her dry heaving in the bathroom. Their arguments had upset Zoe, too. The love between her and Burke may have died, but she’d kept hoping they could both put their daughter’s well-being first.
A scratching filtered through the air from the edge of the campsite. Léon shot to his feet and palmed his handgun. She’d never seen anyone move with such precision and economy of movement.
A prairie dog scurried at the edge of the campsite. He returned to his seat across from her and leaned forward. “You’re convinced after each fight he walked out your door and committed murder?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but yes. That’s exactly what I believe.”
He rubbed his neck and the camp went silent for a few seconds. “Did you ever call the police?”
“I left an anonymous tip from a pay phone.” She tucked one leg underneath her. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do. The police knew about the custody battle. They’d come out several times on bogus calls—a tree branch crossing the property line, someone falsely reporting screaming. I’m pretty sure Burke called in as part of his plan to get full custody.
“I didn’t think they’d believe me.”
“Could you be wrong?” Léon propped the heel of his boot on the edge of a rock.
“I wanted to be wrong, but I’m not.” Faith glanced over to make certain Zoe still slept and lowered her voice even further. “When we married, Burke tried to transform me to look like the women he killed.”
Léon stilled, his eyes laced with incredulity. “Some might say a custody battle would be an excellent reason to suggest your ex is a murderer.”
She didn’t bother responding. Why should she? Instead, she retrieved a bag hidden beneath her things and dug out a thick expandable folder. “Maybe you’ll believe this,” she challenged.
Faith removed the rubber band holding her evidence in place. She passed over a newspaper clipping of the face of a blonde smiling into the camera. “The woman I saw Burke with outside a bar a few hours before she died.” Faith pulled out an article she’d printed from the woman’s social media site. The image still made Faith shiver. In color, the victim’s hair was styled the way it had been that night, her dress designed to show off her prominent collarbones and very thin frame.
“Obviously the same woman.”
His deep voice tugged Faith back to the present. “She was murdered on a Saturday night, the same night Burke and I argued. A few weeks later, Burke came over out of the blue. We had an arbitration scheduled about the custody agreement, but he wanted Zoe to stay with him all week. His father had some kind of event planned. I think Burke wanted to show Zoe off to his clients. I told him no. She had two baseball games she had to pitch. We had another fight. A couple of days later, I saw this article in the paper.”
She passed the newspaper clipping, taking in every expression, every nuance as he read the article.
“There’s a definite resemblance,” he said, pointing at the grainy photo.
He met her gaze, and she followed the first two with another social media printout. Faith couldn’t help but hold her breath. She’d never shown these documents to anyone.
Léon fingered through the items. “No doubt. They could be sisters.” He returned the papers to her.
Faith clasped the evidence to her chest. “The photos made me nauseous. I think I must’ve known in that moment what was going on, but I didn’t want to believe it.”
His brow furrowed. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
He wouldn’t understand until she showed him everything. Faith dug into the folder. “I went to the library and searched old papers.” She slapped another woman’s photo in his hand. “Two days after our divorce was final.” Another photo. “Three days after he didn’t receive sole managing conservatorship of Zoe, which is basically sole custody.” She placed a stack of photos in his hands. “I found nine more. Every time I saw another photo I thought I was going to be sick.”
Léon flipped through the pages. A low whistle escaped his lips. “Have the cops connected Burke? Surely they see the pattern?”
“I don’t know.” Faith shrugged. “There’s been nothing in the paper. Maybe they’re investigating after I called in my tip, but not one of these bodies was found in the same town. None of them were killed the same way. From what I’ve read, most serial killers have a pattern. Burke’s pattern is that he doesn’t have one.”
She hesitated over the remaining two photos. Her skin tingled every time she stared at these images, but she handed them over anyway. “This is me.”
Léon gripped the photos tight and fell back into his chair. She got that. When she’d first seen all the photos together, she’d sunk to the floor, unable to stand.
Faith knew exactly what he saw. Her, smiling, with a bone-thin figure hugged by the formfitting gown her husband had chosen, hair golden blond, piled on her head in an elegant chignon. She’d been Burke’s image of perfection. He’d told her so. She’d been so happy; she’d had no doubt she’d finally found her very own Prince Charming.
She’d found a monster disguised as a prince.
Léon studied the second picture of her poured into a skin-tight designer dress, her hair straight, with wisps of bangs. Faith winced at her emaciated body. She looked sick and starving.
“He chose my clothes. He dictated the cut and color of my hair.” She let out a self-deprecating laugh. “He said it was because he wanted me to be the best I could be. That he wasn’t trying to change me, just make me better. I believed him. I thought I was lucky he cared. For a while.”
Léon tugged a cooler over to them and used it as a small table. He laid the photos down with Faith’s picture in the middle. To Faith, the images shocked her as much now as the first time she’d seen them.
He let out a soft, low whistle. “You could all be sisters.”
“And they’re all dead.” Faith met Léon’s gaze. “Except me.”
* * *
A SMALL BREEZE furled the photos spread out in front of Stefan. When he’d first met Faith, he’d assumed she’d been running from an abusive relationship, or someone showing a twisted interest in Zoe...anything but a man who was obviously murdering Faith over and over and over again in his twisted mind.
Crazy made it a tough capture. An organized psycho was easier to track due to their predictable nature. Burke seemed to be a very dangerous combination: an organized killer mimicking a disorganized one. The worst of the worst.
Faith sat across from him and chewed on her lips; a guarded expression settled in her eyes. She was waiting for his judgment, as if she feared he’d laugh at her.
“I’m impressed. I understand why no one identified the pattern. Until you.” He couldn’t give her enough credit. “If my company had compiled this package, we’d be on the cops’ or district attorney’s doorstep with high confidence the perpetrator wouldn’t see the outside of a prison for the rest of his life. With all this—” he swept his hand across the pile of evidence “—why run?”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Her voice grew urgent. “Burke and his family have too much influence. The Thomas family doesn’t lose.” Faith shook her head, the movements strong and emphatic. “I can’t take the risk. I could never put Zoe in that kind of danger.”
Her entire body shook. Stefan knelt in front of her, gripping her hands. He rubbed her ice-cold fingers between his. “You and Zoe are safe here.”
“Because of you, but we can’t live here forever.” She didn’t pull her hands away. “My plan to escape Burke is in the toilet. He found us in Carder, a town I’d never even heard of before my car broke down. How am I supposed to disappear without new identities for me and Zoe? He’ll track us down. I just know it.”
The despair
in her voice struck his chest like a bayonet. More than that, he could see the loneliness in her, echoing his own.
CTC could help Faith. Ransom’s contacts had to be as influential as the Thomas family’s. His challenge was, after fighting against power for so long, would Faith ever trust him enough to let them help?
He pulled her to her feet, determined to try. She stood stiffly. Ever so slowly, giving her ample opportunity to escape him, he trailed his hands up her arms to her shoulders and cupped her cheeks. His gaze held hers captive. “Listen to me, Faith. Whatever I have to do, however I have to do it, I’ll make certain you and Zoe are safe. I promise you that. I think you should let me help get Burke the legal way, but if that fails, I have a friend. Her name is Annie. She can create new identities that Burke can never track. I promise.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
She leaped at him and threw her arms around his neck in a grateful hug. He wrapped his arms around her, but within seconds, the warmth of her body tugged at him. He fought the instinct until she stilled. Faith cleared her throat and stepped out of his arms.
He couldn’t speak. His gaze fell to her lips and he dragged his attention back to her eyes. Her pupils had dilated. Awareness sizzled between them.
She swallowed deeply and wet her lips.
Stefan nearly groaned in response. He shouldn’t feel this way. He couldn’t. He only had three days, though he’d already admitted to himself that however long it took, he’d see Faith and Zoe safe and secure before he carried out his own plans.
Faith gripped his shirt. She blinked once, then twice and shook her head. “This can’t happen,” she whispered under her breath.
She stepped out of his embrace. Stefan let her go. She was so very right, but the moment she backed away, his heart chilled a few degrees.
He couldn’t remember ever having such an intense reaction to a woman.
“I...umm... I think I’ll rest,” she said softly. “It’s only three, but it’s already been a very long day.” She nodded at the tent where Zoe still slept.
