by April Hunt
A few hours ago, he’d been inches away from kissing the hell out of her in a room full of people, or at the very least, admitting that he didn’t want her running away from him.
He wanted her running to him.
He wasn’t sure which would’ve been worse, a kiss or the admission. He had no business doling out either but hadn’t cared when she looked at him with her big blue eyes…just like she did now.
As if sensing his stare, she glanced over her shoulder.
Knox’s feet moved in her direction before he could stop himself, and by the time he reached her, she’d already corralled the laptop into submission. He braced his hand on the back of her chair, his thumb accidentally brushing against the back of her neck—the first time.
The second time was entirely on purpose.
“You okay? You’ve given breaks to all your people, but I haven’t noticed you taking one.”
She shook her head before he even finished talking. “I’m good. The scene needs to be processed and that’s not going to happen if everyone who knows what they’re doing takes a time-out.”
“Those are the pictures Mason’s taking right now?”
“Yep.” She fidgeted in her seat. Her flowery scent nearly had him taking a deep breath. “We started using the new tech a few months back. As soon as Mason takes the pics, they populate here and download real time. Then it’s up to us to file them where we want them to go.”
“That’s pretty damn cool.”
Zoey nodded, her attention riveted to the screen. Exhaustion rolled her neck in a circle and at the faint crack of her neck, she grimaced. “What I wouldn’t do for some coffee right now…”
“Wish I could help you out there, angel, but you’re not supposed to have caffeine, right?” Knox skated his fingers to her shoulders and kneaded her tight muscles.
Zoey’s fingers paused on her keyboard. “You remember my dietary restrictions?”
“I remember a lot of your…stuff.” He cleared his throat to cover the sudden awkward silence. “I also remember your penchant for diving into things without scuba gear. Overextending yourself isn’t going to do you—or anyone—any good. You need to relax.”
“I’ll relax when we catch this sicko…which is never going to happen if I don’t work.” She subtly shifted away from him.
Her brush-off stung, a hell of a lot more than he expected, but she wasn’t wrong. He folded his arms in front of him and yanked his head on straight. “How long do these scenes usually take to process?”
“A few hours. An entire day. It all depends on the location and circumstances.” She yawned into her elbow. “You don’t need to stick around. I can get Mason to give me a ride home.”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were eager to get rid of me,” he teased.
“Eager? No. Hopeful? Maybe,” Knox could’ve sworn she murmured.
A new image popped up on Zoey’s screen, quickly followed by two others. She muttered an un-Zoey-like curse. “He’s losing his soft hand.”
Knox leaned over her shoulder to better see what she did. “What do you mean?”
She ran her finger along the close-up view of the victim’s wound. “The skin here is smooth, and then it puckers as it comes out of the curve. Toward the bottom point of the heart, it’s completely agape.”
“You lost me.”
“It’s not one smooth, even stroke. He adjusted his pressure and made at least two if not more incisions.” Zoey spun her seat toward him. Her abrupt move and his still-crouched posture brought their mouths within inches of touching. Startled, her gaze dropped to his mouth and back. “Oh. Um…hello lips.”
He cleared his throat to cover up a smirk, and stood. “Why does the number of cuts make a difference?”
“Because in six months and twelve victims, he hasn’t detoured from his execution in the slightest. What happened that made him change it now?”
“Exactly what I’m worried about.” Grace, unsmiling and pensive, joined them. His cousin looked just as run-down as the rest of them.
“So I’m right to worry? Great. For once I hoped I was wrong.”
“Nope. Not wrong. Order is how this guy gets through a basic day. To make him deviate from that, whatever happened had to be huge…at least in his eyes.”
Knox knew his cousin well enough to recognize what she wasn’t saying. “You think he’s deviated in more ways than his penmanship, don’t you?”
Grace nodded. “And I think this is going to be his new norm.”
“An unstable serial killer. Comforting,” Zoey mumbled.
“We got an ID.” Cade hustled toward them, slamming down a rap sheet that looked about a foot long. “Ginny Monroe.”
“You already know who she is?” Knox picked up the background check and whistled. “She definitely wasn’t a kindergarten teacher. Drug possession. Solicitation. Assault. And that’s just since turning eighteen.”
“She’s also got sealed juvie records which I bet my truck are just as colorful,” Cade added. “I can’t even begin to explain how much Ginny Monroe doesn’t fit in with all the other victims.”
“A copycat?” Shit. The thought of two killers out on the DC streets left him ice cold.
“No.” Zoey shook her head. “We’ve kept all references to the etching purposefully out of the media. To law enforcement he’s the Beltway Cupid Killer, but to everyone else he’s just the Beltway Killer. Heck, the public erroneously believes that his MO is strangulation, not Fentanyl.”
“If he’s broadening his requirements, the pool of possible victims just widened to every twenty-something blonde in Washington, DC.” Knox slid his gaze to Zoey.
He didn’t want to scare her, but he also needed to bring a little reality to the situation.
Smart. Blonde. And with a self-proclaimed stagnant dating life.
With the exception of Ginny Monroe, Zoey matched the profiles of every other Cupid Killer victim.
Zoey’s vision blurred as she fought the exhaustion that had been riding her hard for the last hour. She’d caught herself nodding off no fewer than three times. On the fourth, a lab tech dropped something metallic behind her, and the unexpected crash was the only reason she didn’t face-plant on her keyboard.
“Must. Keep. Going.” She pinched her cheeks and continued logging images into the data program.
Knox’s offhanded insinuation about the Cupid Killer’s victim pool made it difficult not to transpose Ginny Monroe’s face onto any of her blond-haired, blue-eyed acquaintances—or her own. She expected that had been his intention.
It wasn’t the first time her similarities to the victims had been brought up. Cade had pointed it out about seven victims ago, but until that moment, the unfortunate women had been either graduate students or teachers. It wasn’t until recently that he extended that MO to nurses…and now Ginny Monroe.
As she shifted her focus back on work, the stack of evidence dwindled down to one lone bag. “And the light at the end of the tunnel that leads to a nice, warm bed is a…necklace.”
Blinking, she adjusted her glasses and brought the evidence closer. Higher on one side than the other, the heart pendant swooped down in an elegant curl, where it melted into a smaller curvature.
Delicate. Memorable. And familiar.
“Are you trying to conjure some kind of latent laser beam power?” Knox’s humored voice startled her.
Dropping the bag onto the table, she swung around and glared. “Seriously, Knox! Heart condition here! Stomp or do that annoying throat-clearing thing or yodel. But you don’t ninja-walk around a woman at a homicide scene.”
“I stomped.” His smirk undid most of her annoyance. “Okay, I didn’t stomp, but I did drag my feet. Loudly.”
“Not loud enough, evidently. If you’re still around for the holidays, I know what I’m buying you.”
“What’s that?”
“A freakin’ cowbell.”
She hadn’t meant to mention the holidays. There was no way he
was still going to be around. Iron Bars looked better every day, and once they had the official grand opening, there wasn’t a reason for him to stay.
Still, she couldn’t help but notice he didn’t correct her. And she sure as heck couldn’t ignore the roll of flutters that went to her stomach at the idea of him being around months from now.
Knox jutted his chin to the collection bag she held. “What do you have there?”
She mentally scolded herself for daydreaming. Again. “The victim’s necklace. Which is yet another deviation from the BCK’s norm.”
“Cade said none of the others wore jewelry, right?”
“None. A few had indentations from rings they’d obviously worn a long time, had tan lines, et cetera, but they’d always been removed. Until this one. It’s just…”
“What?”
Part of her wanted to keep her mouth shut. Coincidences happened all the time, and mass production made the chances all the more likely. But her other half was more than a little freaked out.
“You’re keeping me in suspense here, angel.”
“I’m debating whether I’m going to keep you there,” she said honestly, weighing the two possible outcomes against each other.
Reinventing herself as a strong independent woman was difficult to do if she was skittish of all the what-ifs. The other scenario involved an overprotective brother, four Steele bodyguards, and the evaporation of any and all Zoey-alone-time.
Both scenarios sucked.
She took a breath and came clean. “I have a necklace a lot like this one.”
Knox’s dark-eyed gaze settled on her like an anvil. “Could you repeat that?”
She let out a shaky laugh, already sensing an incoming babble-fest. “I’m pretty sure Georgetown Med buys them in bulk. They hand them out to patients following open-heart surgeries. I have a small collection at home…all slightly different.”
Knox’s silence had Zoey pushing her glasses to her nose. Damn her nervous tick.
“Stay here,” Knox ordered abruptly.
She narrowed her eyes, her nerves shifting into annoyance. “You know I’m not a poodle, right?”
“Just stay. Please. For one minute.” Putting it into request form looked as if it physically pained him.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m sitting. But only because I have to finish my job.”
He watched her another second before stalking across the alley, no doubt to her brother. She grumbled under her breath as she finished logging the necklace into the database.
“Last one.” Zoey handed the bag to her assistant and watched as he locked it up in the case. She stood and stretched out the muscles that had tightened into knots during the course of the last few hours.
“Wright! Give me a hand?” Mason waved her over to help wrap up the scene.
She signed the victim—Ginny—over to the coroner, where she’d be processed and autopsied, and then Zoey and Mason packed up their gear. Once everything was loaded onto two carts, she grabbed the nearer one and lugged it toward the CSI van across the street.
Both the crowd and the cop presence had wound down considerably, someone having already removed the crime scene tape. Trash scraped across the sidewalk like urban tumbleweeds.
Zoey eyed a lone blue sedan a half block away and turned the corner, narrowly avoiding barreling into a pedestrian.
“Holy fudge.” Her heart jumped nearly as high as she did. “I didn’t run over anything important, did I? I am so sorry.”
“Not a problem.” The man barely paused his brisk pace as he headed in the opposite direction.
Wearing a dark blue baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and his parka collar tilted up, the man’s face was obstructed from her view, but something familiar in the lilt of his voice had her watching him until he turned the corner at the next block.
She just couldn’t pin it down, her mind too exhausted to think straight.
“I really need my bed,” Zoey muttered.
“Join the club, kid.” Lieutenant Mason waited for her a few feet away. “Do you want me to drop you off at your place or are you hitching a ride with Steele?”
As if the name had magical powers, Zoey’s cell dinged with a text.
Grace: Where are you?
Knox is buggin’ out.
He said he told you to stay put.
Zoey snortled, and replied quickly.
Tell Knox I failed obedience school.
And I’m getting a ride home with Mason.
Not giving Knox’s reaction another thought, Zoey accepted Mason’s offer and helped him pack the van. She felt slightly bad for evading Knox the way she was, but the eerie shiver that danced down her spine—the second time that day—told her it was probably for the best.
Paranoia wasn’t exactly sexy.
She needed to shake it off.
She needed to binge-watch happy Hallmark movies.
She needed to climb into her bed, pull the covers over her head, and sleep for a million years.
Chapter
Fourteen
While parts of Zoey’s job would never fully leave her, she’d been decently successful at compartmentalizing her duties. Home life. Work life. Two separate entities. But for the last two days, the image of Ginny Monroe’s lifeless body had followed her home and walked straight into her nightmares.
She could blame her new meds, or it being only her second on-site case. Or she could blame the fact that she’d torn her apartment apart—again—to search for the necklace she was positive had been in her destroyed jewelry box.
But blaming others—people or situations—didn’t solve anything.
At least that’s what her mom told her on days Zoey got down on herself about her health. Surprisingly, it could be used to things other than congenital defects.
“Hey, Liam.” Zoey pulled her thoughts away from things she couldn’t control and focused on what she could—her designated corner of the Iron Bars lobby. “Did you pick up any miracles when you did your home improvement run? Because I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing capable of fixing this.”
“It can’t be that bad.” Liam came up next to her and hissed. “Well, hell. Look at that. I guess it can.”
“This is going to take more than a dab of spackle and a few coats of eggshell.”
“Watch the miracle happen.” Liam shot his attention across the room. “Hey, Tank! You got something up your sleeves for a hole that could sink a battleship?”
A low chuckle drifted across the room before the man in question, Hunter Dawson, headed their way. Tall, broad, and with an easy smile and sweet Cajun drawl, Roman’s friend from the service had dropped by for a visit and ended up being roped into physical labor.
Liam grinned. “This guy’s a one-man construction crew. I’m tempted to see if we can get his discharge papers signed early.”
Tank’s smirk widened. “And deprive me of knocking around a few more bad-guy heads? Don’t you dare, Steele.”
“You’ll get to knock around more when you join Steele—” Liam’s gaze shot awkwardly toward Zoey. He cleared his throat. “I mean, I’m sure they won’t be the last heads you knock around. This world’s full of assholes who deserve a good beat-down.”
Zoey glanced back and forth between the two men. “I will never understand your language.”
Liam smirked. “The Language of Awesome?”
“The language of stupidity more like it.” Grace sauntered into the room and set two travel cartons of coffees onto the only finished flat surface in the room. “Coffees up. A half dozen black sludges for the Neanderthals. Decaf for their female counterpart. Hot chocolate for me.”
Zoey reached for her decaf. “I’m a female Neanderthal?”
Grace gave her a pointed look. “Is that coffee in your cup?”
Zoey peeked inside. “Looks like.”
“Is it black? No sugar. No flavored creamer or anything that could remotely make it taste less like battery acid?”
Zoey sniffed he
r mug. “Smells like it.”
“Then yes, you’re a female Neanderthal who obviously has a grudge against your stomach lining.” Grace sipped her own travel cup. “Mmm. Nothing’s. Better. Than chocolate.”
“For six-year-olds, and apparently, my cousin.” Liam ruffled Grace’s hair and dodged away before she could hit him in retaliation.
By the time everyone stopped teasing Grace about her drink of choice, Tank had fixed the hole with a patch and slathered the mat into place. “All good. Let it dry for about an hour, and then you can sand it smooth and paint over it.”
“Did you do home improvement before joining the Navy? Helped with a family business or something? You seem to know an awful lot about this stuff.”
“The family business?” Tank barked out a laugh. “No, chère. Just learned by reading. A lot.”
His response brought up a lot of questions, but she didn’t feel right asking.
Ryder called the guys to the other side of the room, leaving Grace and Zoey alone to paint the far wall while the spackle settled.
Grace dipped her roller in the off-white color and grimaced. “Painting the walls this color feels like aiding and abetting. It’s boring.”
“It’s a distillery,” Liam called out, hearing the complaint. “If we paint it sunflower yellow, every man’s ball sack will shrivel the second they walk through the door.”
Grace shot him a glare. “It doesn’t have to be yellow. There’s blue. Or hell, even a soft green.”
“Stop moaning and start painting, Martha.”
Zoey, smirking over her friends’ razzing, leaned toward Grace and murmured, “It may be boring, but the cream’s going to make the dark hardwood stand out.”
Grace’s lips twitched. “I think so too, but I’m not telling him that he made the right decision. And speaking of decisions…what are you going to do about Delicious Dawson?”
Zoey blinked, unsure what one thing had to do with the other.
“Do not even play coy.” Mirth danced in Grace’s brown eyes. “Are you going to tell me that you haven’t noticed that his attention lingers over here a little too much for it to be casual?”
