Intrigue Books 1-6

by Delores Fossen, Rachel Lee, Carol Ericson, Tyler Anne Snell, Rita Herron

  He closed his eyes against a surge of regret. Hell, he hadn’t heard her approach, too embedded in the case. He got like that sometimes—invested—but now he understood why. He’d worked for the FBI. He’d hunted monsters. Standing, Declan faced her, his blood pressure spiking at the play of moonlight across her features. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did. You were one of the best investigators the FBI has ever seen. I can understand the draw to solve one of their highest-profile cases.”

  The half smile on her lips warmed him to the core as she reached for the tablet. Taking it from him, she swiped her index finger across the screen to review the attachments.

  “Anything you think might help the investigation?” she asked. “Or did you happen to solve the entire case and identify the Hunter on your own?”

  Declan wiped his overheated palms down his jeans, studied the too-bright screen as she skimmed page after page. “I’m not an investigator, remember? You’re asking the wrong guy.”

  “First impressions. Tell me what you thought when you looked at the crime scene photos.” Green eyes sparkled in the glow from the tablet’s light as she hiked one shoulder in a shrug. Kate reached to the end table beside the chair he’d taken up and switched on a small lamp. What was this? Some kind of test?

  Okay. “The victims might’ve been hidden enough to keep them from being found too easily, but they were staged.”

  Something familiar took root from inside him, the need to solve the puzzle as if his life—or someone else’s—depended on it. His heart pumped hard behind his rib cage, adrenaline consuming him from head to toe. Declan stood and stepped close to her, his arm brushing against her uninjured side as they reviewed the evidence together. Her touch, like an anchor, kept him in the moment as possibilities of the way the killer hunted his victims played out in his head. He’d lure them in, maybe seduce them, then set them free in the wilderness. Had he given them a head start before he’d started the hunt?

  Declan swiped his index finger across the screen and landed on a single photo of one of the crime scenes. Focusing on the surrounding damp ground and not the body where most investigators started, he pointed to a small patch of bare dirt. “See here? There are no footprints in the dirt, nothing to suggest the grass has been disturbed around her. Like she fell from the sky. The killer brought them to those locations and left them to be discovered.”

  “They were killed elsewhere.” Kate nodded as she scrolled to the next attachment. “Makes sense. The lack of blood at the scenes backs up your theory. The victims had to have been placed after they were already dead a few hours, which means these killings were thought out. Meticulously planned ahead of time. The killer knew exactly where their bodies would end up, maybe even when they’d be discovered, because he picked the locations personally.”

  She was placating him. The excitement drained from his muscles, and he backed off a step. A small burst of laughter escaped as he ran a hand through his hair. The sting of his stitches pulled at him. “None of this is new information, is it?”

  “No. But it can’t hurt to have a second pair of eyes. There might be something in these files I’m missing that could help me build the profile on the guy.” She handed him the tablet, then headed toward the kitchen and flipped on the coffee maker. Pulling two mugs from one of the cabinets, she set them out as the sound of bubbling water reached his ears. Within a few minutes, she’d poured them two hot cups of coffee.

  Green eyes landed on him as she offered the second cup. “I will mention, however, that it took the investigating unit two hours to come up with the same theory that it took you two minutes to put together.”

  Surprise washed through him. Two hours? Seemed kind of obvious to him. He just had to look at the right evidence. Or had it been his past life as a serial crimes investigator coming into play?

  Liquid heat bled through the mug and into his hand. “Dominic barely just sent you the email. How do you know how long it took them?”

  “I’m in a group message with the BAU assigned to the case.” A smile thinned her lips as she leaned forward, one leg tucked under the other. Her robe shifted, revealing pale, smooth skin above her collar. Under her thin shirt, the scars interrupted that perfection, but they only made her more beautiful in his opinion. Stronger.

  She brought the mug to her lips, eyes on him over the rim. “You’re good at this, Declan. You always have been. Investigating is in your bones. There’s something still there and you know it.”

  There’d always been something, ever since he’d woken up in that hospital bed, that urged him to take a closer look, to solve the puzzles around him. Seemed the only puzzle he hadn’t been able to solve had been his past, but now he was starting to get answers. Because he’d found her. If he could get even an ounce of the life he’d had back, maybe the cold, gnawing hole of emptiness inside would heal. Maybe he could start over.

  He focused on the screen in his lap. “Tell me about the Hunter.”

  “My profile is far from solid. I only have bits and pieces right now.” She set her mug on the end table to her left and stood. “Besides, Michaels is still out there. We should be focusing on finding him. His sister took custody of him after his release, and there’s only one address on file for her. We should head out at first light. It’s about a two-hour drive.”

  “First impressions.” He echoed her own words back to her, drawing out a languid smile as he handed her the tablet.

  “All right.” Kate stared down at the screen but didn’t seem to see the words in front of her. Her bottom lip parted from the top, and everything inside of him heated in an instant. “I think he’s punishing her.”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “The woman who broke his heart.” She turned the tablet to face him, but he couldn’t stand to take another look at the collage of all three victims. It was all too easy to imagine Kate—blond hair, green eyes—staring up at the sky, perfect sensual lips blue, unmoving.

  They’d just met. Sure, they’d been married, but as she’d pointed out, he wasn’t her husband anymore. He didn’t know her, had no attachment to her other than the flashes of memories in his head. But the image of finding her as those women had been found initiated a violent chain reaction inside, starting with his head and working down to his toes.

  “He chooses his victims based on her appearance,” she said. “From the care he’s put into placing them, stands to reason he’s been intimate with them, maybe even dated them. He seduces his victims, then kills them, gently covering them in grass and foliage to protect their bodies until they’re discovered. He can’t bear to hurt the one person he wants to, so he replaces her with his victims. He takes his anger with her out on them, but the hurt never stops. No matter how many times he kills, her face is the one he can’t forget.”

  “Then if the FBI can find her, they’ll find their serial killer,” Declan said. “In a city of three hundred thousand people, should be no problem at all.” The excitement was back, stirring something deep within him.

  First thing first. They had a shooter to find. Declan clapped his hands then rubbed them together. “Where’s that address for Brian Michaels?”

  Chapter Six

  She couldn’t change the past.

  Hoping Declan’s memories returned—that her husband was still in there, waiting to reemerge—was more dangerous than being in Michaels’s sights again. She could heal physically. She’d done it before. But mentally? Kate adjusted her grip on the steering wheel. No. She’d lost him once. If she gave in to the hope buried deep down, she wasn’t sure she’d survive the second time.

  “You’re dead on your feet.” Declan’s familiar voice charged through her system inside the too-small cabin of the SUV. They’d been driving for two hours, yet every time he spoke was a new lesson in awareness. “Did you actually get any sleep?”

  “When you’re the possible target of a shoot
er, sleeping isn’t exactly a priority,” she said.

  Dried foliage and dead twigs crunched beneath the vehicle’s tires. Reds, yellows, oranges and browns announced fall had arrived in Alaska as they inched along the dirt road heading away from Potter Creek Ravine Park, but the dropping temperatures said it wouldn’t last long. Snow would cover these parts in the next couple of weeks, if not sooner, which would only make it harder for law enforcement to recover any more of the Hunter’s victims and catalog the evidence.

  “I’ve got more important things to worry about,” she said.

  “Exhaustion is not a badge of honor, Kate, and it sure as hell won’t get us to Michaels any faster.” Declan shifted his weight in his seat, one hand clamped onto the bullet wound in his side. “Speaking of which, where the hell are we going, and do you have to hit every bump along the way?”

  Had that been concern in his voice? A smile spread her lips at the idea, but she forced herself to pay attention to the road and not the way the veins in his arms rippled beneath his skin. She’d been on her own for so long, getting used to someone else’s concern would take a while to sink in. Sure, the team had her back. She trusted that any one of them would stand up for her, fight for her, show up if she needed them. But would they have taken a bullet for her as Declan had less than twenty-four hours ago?

  “Michaels’s sister has a residence about a mile north of here. She’s the only living relative he has left, and court documents recorded he was released into her custody.” A hard knot of hesitation twisted in her gut. She couldn’t ignore the fact Michaels’s sister lived only a half mile from one of the crime scenes she’d studied for the Hunter case, but it had to be a coincidence. Nothing more. “If he’s hiding out, that’s where he’ll be.”

  “You didn’t answer my question about the bumps, which makes me think you’re hitting them on purpose.” Declan stared out the passenger side window, toward the hint of light coming over the Chugach mountain range.

  The sun wouldn’t rise for another hour, but her brain filled in what she couldn’t see of his expression. The laugh line on the left side of his mouth, deeper than the one on the right. The damage he’d done chewing off the skin of his bottom lip. The small dark spot of brown in his right eye. Brains were funny like that. Always trying to fill in the blanks.

  “Consider it payback. Before you...” Kate stopped herself from saying the words out loud again. How much more pain could she possibly expect her heart to take?

  “We used to prank each other,” she said instead. “Small things at first, but over the years, we got a bit more dramatic and tried to top one another. I have to admit, there might’ve been some pain involved.” She couldn’t fight the small lift of one corner of her mouth. “The last prank I played, I applied wax to your leg while you were sleeping, then ripped off over half of your leg hair on your thigh. You retaliated by setting my alarm clock to go off every hour for the next two nights.”

  “Well, that answers the question I had about my uneven leg hair.” His deep laugh vibrated through her as he pressed his back into the seat, and every nerve ending she owned heightened in awareness. How long had it been since she’d heard that laugh? But all too soon, it bled into the background of the engine’s growl.

  “Hard to believe I had a whole life before this,” he said. “I can’t remember any of it, but you do, and you’ve had to face it alone. I can’t imagine how much strength that took to keep going.”

  A sharp intake of breath burned her throat, and she sobered instantly. Not strength. Repression. Day in, day out, she committed to becoming a fraction more numb than she’d been the day before. She’d thrown herself into other people’s heads, learning their habits, their secrets, their pain to keep the grief from carving a bigger hole in her soul. But since he’d walked back into her life, there’d been a spark, a small flame he’d ignited with that kiss, with the way he studied her, cared for her.

  “Have you seen a neurologist?” she asked.

  “Kind of hard to get an appointment when you don’t know your real name, have insurance or employment history,” he said. “Or any way to pay for it.”

  Right.

  “I have a friend who works at the Alaska Neurology Center,” she said. “She owes me a favor for having the team help her with a case last year. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind running some tests. There might be something you could be doing—mental exercises—to speed up the process.” Kate didn’t think that kind of science existed, but it was worth a shot, wasn’t it? “Your memory loss might not be as permanent as you think.”

  Especially when it came to investigative work.

  “Thank you.” The weight of his attention pinned her to her seat. “Really. You don’t have to be doing any of this.”

  “Well, I am the reason you got shot in the first place, right?” Hollowness set up residence in the pit of her stomach. Her mouth dried. “I should at least try to make it up to you.”

  “I told you. Michaels is responsible for his actions,” he said. “Not you.”

  “Doesn’t matter what you believe. It’s the truth. Maybe if I’d been more focused on Michaels during our sessions, none of this would’ve happened.”

  The road wound deeper into the woods, pulling them into darkness. Kate guided the SUV to a stop outside of a short brown wooden fence surrounding the property. “This is it. We’re here.”

  Tufts of green grass sprouted across the half acre of dirt. Dried leaves from the surrounding trees covered the landscape, bare branches hanging dangerously low over the cabin’s roof. The weathered planks along the sides of the structure hadn’t been repaired, left exposed to the elements for what looked like years. Broken windows reflected the rising sunlight sneaking over the mountain peaks, and from what she could see from here, the front door had been left partially open.

  “Are we about to be murdered?” Declan shouldered his way out of the vehicle, leaving the passenger-side door wide-open. “I’m getting the sense your patient isn’t here.”

  “Former patient.” Hitting the button to shut off the engine, she rolled her fingers into a fist to control the tremors. She hadn’t seen Michaels since his last session, since before... She tucked her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down to keep herself in the moment. One. Two. She could do this. She had to do this.

  Kate got out of the SUV, leaves crunching beneath her boots. The small sign nailed to the fence said this was the address on Michaels’s release paperwork. Her fingers tingled for her weapon. “This is the address his sister gave the judge.”

  “I think the judge got played.” Declan stepped toward the thigh-high wooden gate protesting at the slightest push of the breeze. “There’s nobody here. Are you sure it was his sister who showed up to claim him?”

  No. She wasn’t. In fact, Michaels had never mentioned a sister in the few sessions she’d had with him. He’d refused to talk about his family, despite her attempt to help him through a sudden emergence of a dissociative disorder.

  Before emergency medics had brought him into the ER after he’d attempted suicide, he’d lost his job, his wife had filed for divorce and taken custody of his kids. Statistically, the disorder was brought on by trauma—abuse, combat—but his medical records hadn’t shown anything out of the norm and there was no record of him serving in the military. So who would have taken custody of him if they weren’t a relative and why?

  Her instincts screamed to get out of there as she pushed open the gate, but this was the only lead they had to finding the person who took those shots at them last night. Reaching for her ankle, Kate unholstered the small, loaded revolver she kept as backup. “Here. You might need this.”

  She wasn’t taking the chance of him getting shot again, unholstering her Glock from her shoulder holster.

  Declan took the weapon and checked the rounds.

  They moved as one toward the cabin. No lights. No fresh tire trac
ks. No movement. Nothing to suggest the place had been recently occupied, but the weight of being watched aggravated her instincts. If Michaels was the shooter from last night, it stood to reason he wouldn’t stop until he was caught or killed. Putting this address on his release papers could’ve just been a way to draw her into the trap. Bringing the prey to the hunter.

  Warmth penetrated through her cargo jacket and settled deep into her bones as she brushed against Declan. She’d trained for situations exactly like this, but having him here, at her side, calmed the raging storm of uncertainty inside. Her mouth tingled with the memory of his bruising kiss, and she took a deep breath to keep herself from analyzing every moment of it.

  Despite their personal situation, the plan hadn’t changed. She’d find Michaels, help Declan get his life back and move on. End of story.

  He positioned himself ahead of her, taking point as though he intended to protect her from any danger that lay ahead. His mountainous shoulders blocked her view into the cabin. “This doesn’t feel right.”

  “I think we’ve seen enough,” she said. Lowering her weapon, she swiped a bead of sweat from her temple with the back of her hand. The temperatures had dropped below freezing out here. How could she possibly be sweating?

  Kate surveyed the property a second time. She still couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched, but there was nothing here. And they were out of leads. She took a step back, retreating toward the SUV. “Michaels isn’t—”

  There was movement to her left, the outline of a man in the trees, but in an instant, he was gone. Kate blinked to clear her vision. Sunlight had barely started lighting the west end of the property. Had it been a trick of the shadows? She searched the tree line. Nothing. She wasn’t crazy. He’d been right there.

  Shifting off the safety tab on her weapon, she checked back over her shoulder to gauge Declan’s reaction. “Did you see that?”

  “Sure as hell did.” He moved beside her, the revolver gripped in his hand. Staring toward the spot the shadow had disappeared, he raised the gun. “We’re not alone out here after all.”