by April Hunt
Multiple surgeries. Invasive tests. Shattered hopes and crushing setbacks. After each one of them, she’d stood straight, dried her tears, and kept moving forward. This wasn’t one of those times. The next time the tears came, she wasn’t so sure she’d be able to stop them.
The worst of it wasn’t learning about her father. Or that both Cade and Knox had known. Did it piss her off that neither saw fit to tell her? Definitely. No way would she dole out forgiveness easily. But eventually, she’d forgive and figure out what it meant for next steps.
What destroyed her the most was realizing Knox would never see her as an equal.
He hadn’t told her about Wilcox to protect her.
Although a noble intent, it wouldn’t work if hiding things from her was his go-to reaction. They wouldn’t work.
The breath in Zoey’s lungs stalled. In desperate search of fresh air, she left a message for Grace with the front desk that she’d gone for a quick walk, and hustled outside. The second her feet hit the sidewalk, she realized it wasn’t enough.
Zoey turned left and walked without a destination in mind. Slow and deep, she pulled fresh air into her lungs and released it with a heavy sigh. The tightness in her chest abated the more she focused…the more she walked.
Before she realized it, she’d gone three blocks and stood in front of her own neighborhood deli.
Mr. Cohen waved at her from behind the counter. Arm raised, she returned it and was rewarded with a sharp stab of pain. Wrenching its way beneath her sternum, it doubled her over.
“Miss Zoey! Are you okay?” Mr. Cohen’s alarmed voice preceded his gentle hands. He helped her stand upright. “Do you want me to call for help?”
“I…” Zoey’s chest constricted more with every attempt to inhale. A coughing fit wracked her body as she dropped her hands to her knees. “…just need a minute.”
Another deep breath immediately threw her into another coughing fit. This one left her more winded than the first. Maybe she needed more than a minute.
“Zoey? I thought that was you. Are you okay?” Strong hands replaced those of Mr. Cohen.
“Should I call 911, Dr. Samuel?” Mr. Cohen asked, his tone worried.
“No, I got this, Ira. Thanks.”
Dr. Samuel kneeled in front of her, concern etched on every line of his face. “Please tell me you weren’t out running.”
“Just clearing my head with a walk.” She sucked in another breath. “And I may have taken a Zumba class. But I…I didn’t overdo it.”
At his disbelieving look, she changed tactics. “You said it was still safe to exercise.”
“I did. In careful moderation. We need to get you off your feet.” Dr. Samuel nodded toward the red brick brownstone three doors down. “That’s me right there. I’d like it if you let me take a listen. I don’t like the sound of that wheezing one bit.”
“I’m…” She heard the loud-pitched inhale too. “Okay. Yeah.”
Dr. Samuel thanked Mr. Cohen and with one hand on her elbow, guided her toward his front door. Dressed in shorts and a sweat-wicking shirt, he looked as if he’d been out running.
“Come inside and let’s get you comfortable.” He dropped his keys on the small antique table just inside the foyer.
Unlike her place, which had been built in the back half of this century, Dr. Samuel’s house had seen a lot of history. Although updated with a modern flare, the room-to-room layout had a turn-of-the-century feel, with a long, single hall that led to a rear kitchen and rooms on either side.
“This place is gorgeous,” Zoey huffed, still a little breathless, but better.
He threw a grin back at her. “Thank you, but I can’t claim to be the one behind it. It came fully furnished, but when I saw it, I loved it. I’m around sterile environments all the time at work, so when I come home, I want to be in a space that feels lived in.”
“I get it. I still can’t clean my apartment with bleach. It reminds me too much of the hospital.”
“And I get that. Okay, let’s get you situated.”
He guided her into the room on the left, where a dark brown sofa and chair complemented stucco white walls and dark wood bookcases. He had a lot of bookcases, with every space filled with either aged classics or framed photographs.
He eased her onto the couch. “Sit here while I run upstairs and grab my stethoscope.”
“I’m already feeling better,” she said truthfully. “Still winded, but not like I’m sucking air through a straw.”
“You do look better, but I want to make sure.” He saw her hesitancy and smiled. “If you’re fine, I promise I’ll drive you home, but—”
“If I’m not, I’m going in for tests, and probably that cardiac cath—ahead of schedule,” she finished.
“That’s why you’re my favorite patient. Pretty and smart.” He handed her a bottle of water. “Drink this. Slowly. Small sips. And stay put. No jogging around the room.”
She snorted and watched him take the old jigsaw staircase two steps at a time.
Feeling an itchy tingle in her limbs from the abrupt cease of movement, she stood and stretched. Although no longer feeling like she’d knocked on death’s door with both her fists, she mentally prepared herself for a trip to the hospital.
Zoey scanned the myriad of photographs interspersed on the bookshelves. A few were of Dr. Samuel as a child, wide-smiled and dimpled, standing next to his parents in various exotic locations.
Down the line, the images changed from locations to people, most in hospital settings. Phillip Samuel with his patients.
His father had done the same thing, taking “team” pictures with patients days after a successful operation. She’d posed for four through the years, and smiled for one with the younger Samuel last year.
“Guess I’m not the favorite after all,” Zoey quipped, noting her face wasn’t displayed with the others.
An abrupt wave of light-headedness forced her back to the sofa, where she grabbed the water bottle with a shaking hand.
Two sips in, she dropped its contents all over the expensive looking leather sofa. “Crap.”
She dabbed the dripping trail of water with her shirt, and grimaced at the obvious wet spot left behind. “If it works for the guys…”
Zoey tugged on the offending cushion, prepared to make her indiscretion disappear by flipping it upside down, and found a gold-letter-embossed photo album wedged between the cushion and the sofa frame. Cover torn and edges bent, it looked as though someone flipped through it repeatedly, and had done so for a long time.
She shouldn’t snoop. People who hid things did so for a reason. Still, she wanted to make sure she hadn’t ruined it with her clumsiness. At least that’s what she told herself as she eased the album onto her lap and flipped it open.
Taking the entire first eight-by-ten page was the image missing from the bookshelf: her and the younger Dr. Samuel, post-surgery, smiling into the camera and celebrating a valve restoration that would hopefully be her last.
Zoey turned to the next page and on the left was greeted by another eight-by-ten image, but not one for which she’d posed.
The photo was carefully cropped to cut out the person to whom she’d been talking, but Zoey recognized the unflattering purple dress as one she’d been coerced into wearing to a coworker’s wedding seven months ago.
Zoey’s nausea ratcheted upward three pegs, but soared a dozen more when she glanced at the images on the right.
In a similar purple dress, another woman was the focus of a series of collaged pictures.
One focused on the satiny texture of the purple dress. Another showcased meticulously brushed golden hair. A pale shoulder. Bruised—and bandaged—wrists. A close-up of a face, eyes closed as if sleeping.
And a sickening familiar heart etching.
Unlike the crime scene photos that migrated across Zoey’s desk, these images had been taken with great care and carefully arranged. They’d been displayed by someone proud of what they’d done.
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br /> Zoey turned the pages, and each time, she was met with another collection: a full-sized photo of her on the left, and a collage of a different woman on the right.
A young, blond woman.
“Oh my God.”
Zoey jumped to her feet. The book fell open at her feet.
Above her head, the ceiling creaked as Dr. Samuel—the Cupid Killer—headed toward the stairs. The old-fashioned brownstone layout meant one way into the room and one way out. She’d never beat him to the front door.
She shoved the photo album back beneath the cushion, making sure she angled it exactly as she’d found it. She’d no sooner planted her butt on the other end than Dr. Samuel came into the room, his stethoscope in his hand.
“Sorry it took so long, but I was so tired after my last on-call shift that I tossed my bag aside. I had to go hunting for this.”
“Not a problem.” Zoey focused on keeping her voice even—and not throwing up.
As he sat next to her, she choked back rising bile. He’d listened to her heart and lungs a million times, and as she recalled each and every one, her nausea worsened.
“Breathe deep for me and hold it,” Dr. Samuel ordered, his voice deceivingly gentle.
Every time he touched his stethoscope in a different position, Zoey fought against jolting away. She needed a plan, and she needed one quick. Even if given an opening to escape, she couldn’t outrun him. Not in her still breathless condition.
“I hate to say it, but we need those tests.” He flung his scope around his neck and stood, handing her the water she’d sat on the table. “I’m hearing a lot more regurgitation around your valve and I’m afraid it’s because your heart’s not handling the increased load. If we don’t nip this in the bud, fluid will start backing into your lungs.”
She forced her head into a nod. “Okay. I’ll go back to my place, change my clothes, and meet you at the hospital.”
His smile remained friendly as he helped her to her feet. “Nonsense. I’ll drive you straight there myself. This isn’t something we want to postpone.”
Oh yes it was, especially the part where she’d be in close confines with him—the Cupid Killer.
It all clicked…the MOs, the victim histories, the sharp, pristine condition of the crime scenes. It took a smart person to get away with so much and for so long.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Dr. Samuel studied her carefully.
“I’m fine.” Her voice cracked.
His eyes eased around their surroundings…and slowly dropped to the cushion. If her gaze hadn’t been locked on him, she would’ve missed the slight flaring of his nose.
He knew.
Dr. Samuel transformed into a different person before her eyes—stance, facial expressions. Hell, even his voice changed.
He solidly inserted himself between her and the only exit to the room, an eerie smile melting into place on his face. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am that it’s finally out in the open, Zoey.”
He stepped forward and she jumped back, keeping the arm of the sofa in between them. “You’re happy that I know?”
“You must be so disappointed in me.”
“Disappointed? That you killed all those women?”
“Disappointed that I even entertained the idea that they could take your place.” Dr. Samuel pulled the album from its hiding spot, and after thumbing through the pages, tossed it onto the couch with a heavy sigh. “They couldn’t. I tried, and tried again, hoping each time that the next would be different. But it wasn’t. Because you’re irreplaceable.”
Nausea rolled into a sharp, piercing pain through her stomach. Her head spun, gaining momentum by the second. This wasn’t panic. This wasn’t her heart. This wasn’t normal.
“W-what did you do?” She stumbled into the back of the couch, hands scrambling to hold herself upright.
“What was needed to keep you safe.”
She looked at the water. “You drugged me.”
“In time, you’ll see that I had no choice.”
“No choice?” Equilibrium lost, she crashed into an end table, knocking over a lamp in her attempt to remain standing. “No one forced you to do this…any of it.”
“You did, Zoey. Every life that walks this earth is frail, but yours? Yours needs extra protection. Yours needs me. I knew it from the moment my father came home talking about the blond-haired little girl who’d been rushed into his operating room.”
Samuel’s smile went in and out of focus.
Zoey blinked, her periphery darkening by the second. Shadows closed in all around her until the only thing she could see was a small point of light…and Phillip Samuel’s nearby face.
“You’d been his responsibility all those years ago, but last year, you became mine. You became my miracle, Zoey Wright. You became My Heart.”
Zoey’s tongue turned into an uncooperative mass of muscles in her mouth. Her legs buckled, and this time, she couldn’t conjure one more ounce of energy.
She dropped, hard.
The last thing she did consciously was cry out Knox’s name.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
For the first time in a hell of a long time, Knox saw his future clearly.
It involved DC. His family. And it involved him and Zoey. Together.
How to make that last part happen was a little less obvious. A simple apology wouldn’t hack it. Hell, regular words wouldn’t do the trick. In her eyes, he’d viewed her as a weak, defenseless slip of a woman who couldn’t possibly take care of herself.
Somehow, he needed to force her to look through his eyes and see the strength, beauty, and resilience that had captured his heart. But it wasn’t about to happen at Steele Ops.
Throwing on clean clothes, Knox left the locker room and followed the shouts to Ops Command. He’d no sooner taken one step into the room than Cade was in his face.
“This is your fucking fault.”
Grace, her eyes rimmed in red as if she’d been crying, gently tugged on her ex’s arm. “It’s not. It’s mine. I’m the one who left her alone.”
“But she wouldn’t have needed fresh air if it weren’t for him.”
“How about instead of playing the blame game, someone tells me what the hell’s going on.” Knox looked around the room, noting that everyone wore matching grim expressions.
And he did mean everyone. His brothers. Tank, who’d yet to rejoin his unit. Hell, even Hogan Wilcox stood off to the side, hands speared into his pants pockets.
Only one face was distinctly missing.
“Where’s Zoey? She shouldn’t be off on her own until we figure out who’s responsible for the cameras at her apartment.”
No one offered an answer, and Ryder even shifted his gaze away.
“Someone better start talking,” Knox warned, his voice growing louder. “Now.”
“Zoey’s missing,” Roman said.
“What the fuck do you mean she’s missing?”
Grace shifted uneasily, mercilessly biting her lower lip. “I went to get us water at the gym, and when I got back, she’d left a note at the main desk saying she was taking a quick walk around the block. I waited twenty minutes, thinking she’d be back any second. But she wasn’t.”
“What about her phone? Did anyone try calling her?”
Grace smacked her palm to her forehead. “My God! Why the hell didn’t I think of that? You’re a damn genius, Knox!”
“All calls go to voicemail.” Liam sat behind one of the Steele Ops computers. “And I can’t get a ping on it, which means that it’s turned off.”
If it was even with her.
Knox took a deep breath and tried to think rationally. But damn, it was hard. His first instinct was to haul ass to the gym and look for her himself, no matter that it would be a colossal waste of time.
“How long has it been since she’s been gone?” Knox forced his voice calm.
Grace glanced at her watch. “About two hours now…give or take.”
&
nbsp; “Then let’s stop talking and start doing.” Jumping into action, Knox stalked around Liam’s desk to see his brother’s fingers already flying at breakneck speed. “I know you can’t ping her phone, but what about its last location? It might give us some idea of where she’d go.”
“Are you sure she wouldn’t have gone back to her place? Or to Gretchen’s?” Wilcox asked from the sidelines. “She was upset earlier. She could’ve just wanted something familiar.”
Knox threw his glare across the room. “You’re part of the damn reason she was upset.”
“The way I see it, I wasn’t the only one,” Wilcox growled back.
Cade stepped into the line of fire. “Shut the fuck up. Both of you. All three of us have a hand in this, but we can’t fix it until we find my sister.”
Grace’s whistle pierced the air. All arguments immediately stopped as every single pair of eyes turned her way. No nibbling. No shifty feet.
FBI Special Agent Grace Steele had pushed her way to the surface. “None of this whining shit is going to get us to Zoey any faster, and I’m going to throw a little bit of reality your way because obviously someone has to. Zoey’s out there, alone, while DC’s resident psycho could be looking for his next Ginny Monroe.”
Knox’s stomach twisted. “It’s been days since the Monroe murder.”
“And prior to her it had been four. If our Cupid Killer has fallen off the rails like we suspect, it’s a matter time before he picks out his next victim…if he hasn’t already. And I don’t know about you, but Zoey fits the outside package a little too much for my comfort.”
Grace was right. They couldn’t let their own issues get in the way of what was important, and that was finding Zoey. Once he had her safely in his arms, Knox wasn’t letting her go until she heard him out.
Completely.
He’d bare his heart and soul, and if she still wanted him gone, he’d leave. But he’d come back and try again. And again.
Ryder got off his cell and stuffed it into his front pocket. “She still hasn’t been by Gretchen’s or Ma’s. And she hasn’t been back to her place because Liam’s alarm system would’ve clocked in an entry.”
