by Marion Myles
She paused before stepping into the kitchen. “Three. Lonely. I realized I wasn’t passionate about art and most of my effects were lost in a fire. Do you want me to heat your brownie?”
Picking up their glasses, he followed her. “I guess that’s a start. Though it only makes me want to ask more questions.”
She put the plates down and gripped the edge of the counter before squaring her shoulders. “Roman, why do you keep pushing on this? My past is my business. I don’t share it with anyone.”
“Whatever you’re afraid of, whatever you’re running from, I can help. Is it an abusive boyfriend or husband? You don’t have to tell me right now, but I need to know if someone might come looking for you.”
She shook her head and made a growling noise in her throat before turning to face him. “You’ve got to get this stupid idea out of your head. I’m no damsel in distress, and I don’t need saving,” she snapped. “I simply choose not to talk about my past. Get over it already.”
He raised a hand as though to ward her off. “Okay. All right. Message received.”
They stood staring at one another while the seconds ticked by, and then she nodded. “Hallelujah. Finally. Okay, do you want ice cream with your brownie?”
The tension remained for the rest of the evening. Mia decided to make it an early night. This is exactly why I don’t want anyone in my life, she thought, as she brushed her teeth. All the emotion and negotiating and upset. It’s so much better being alone. Just me and my dogs.
She tried not to remember the hurt in Roman’s eyes or the jerky half-shrug he’d given the way he often did when he was battling with his emotions. Even thinking about it made her mad. She’d told him and told him she didn’t want a relationship. He kept pushing for intimacy anyway. She simply wasn’t built that way. Why couldn’t he be content to leave things on the surface, just coast along and enjoy each other’s company while they were in this strange situation and forced to live together?
She was tucked up in bed with her laptop when Roman knocked on the bedroom door.
“Yes,” she said impatiently.
“Can I come in? I need to say something.”
She heaved out a sigh. “I guess.”
He opened the door and stepped into the room. Layla immediately leapt off her bed and rushed up to him as though his presence was the greatest thing ever. He smiled down briefly and patted her head. Mia saw he’d showered. His damp hair was slicked back from his face. If she wasn’t so mad, she might have enjoyed perusing all six foot two of prime male specimen. Instead, she said “Yes?” and raised her eyebrows at him.
“Here’s the thing,” he began. “You’re absolutely right that your past is your business. I’m sorry I keep pushing on it. I won’t ask again. Promise. Maybe one day you’ll trust enough to tell me more about yourself, but if all you’re willing to share is the here and now, I’ll take it.”
“You’ll take it?” she said slowly.
“Yeah. I’ve hardly made my feelings a secret, so you have to know I like you. Let me try keeping it casual, like you said. I’ll be happy enough to hang out with you or whatever with no promise of anything more. We’ll go day by day.”
She pushed herself farther up the headboard and studied him with narrow eyes. “I don’t think you can do it.” She pursed her lips. “No, you’re way too intense. You’ll never be able to keep it casual.”
He tipped his head before his lips slowly curved into a smile. “Are you seriously daring me? Listen, Missy, I can keep it casual, no problem. In fact, I bet you’ll be the one who starts to slip. You’re gonna get super into me because I’m a really great guy. The more time you spend with me, the harder it’ll be to stay detached.”
She laughed and pushed her hair back from where it had fallen forward over her face. “Okay, you’re on. Except how do we set up the parameters to figure out who wins? And what are the stakes?”
He walked farther into the room until he stood at the foot of the bed. “I’ve got a hundred that says I can take you. As for the parameters, well, I’d say on my side no asking about your past, obviously. No talk of us having any kind of future. Also, while I’m staying here, I won’t expect to have dinner with you or even assume we’ll hang out every night. I’ll be all easy come, easy go.”
She nodded and smiled up at him. “I wonder if we should be writing this down? Nah, you won’t last long enough for us to forget. I’ll meet your hundred and say that on my side, no spontaneous, affectionate gestures. Definitely no declarations of loving, needing, or missing you. I will under no circumstances pry into your past relationships. If you don’t call or come around, I won’t mind and certainly won’t call to ask where you are. Anything else?”
“Sex. On or off the table?”
Her smile was dazzling. “On. No question. The only thing I ask is no other sexual partners. When it’s over, we say it’s over, and then we’re free to sleep with anyone and everyone. Agreed?”
“Agreed. Anything else?”
“Nothing’s coming to mind. Should we shake on it?”
She closed her laptop lid and put it on the bedside table then folded the sheet away from her body. Her grin was full of fun and sex. “I can think of a better way to seal the bargain, but you’ll have to get in here with me, and you’ll need to be naked. Unless you don’t want to?”
He stood stock still for several beats then grabbing the hem of his T-shirt stripped it up and over his head. “I guess I could fit you in since I don’t have anything else going on.”
She rolled out of bed and following his lead, lifted her shirt off. “Race you.”
Naked, they tumbled onto the bed together, arms and legs tangling. Roman rolled until she was pinned underneath him. He framed her face with his hands and lowered his mouth bringing hot, hungry lips to meet hers. She sighed against him, and her hands stroked down his back and lingered on his ass, kneading, before she wriggled and twisted. He obligingly rolled over again.
When she reached down between them, her hand closed over him and his breath caught in his throat.
“I wasn’t expecting this tonight, but as you can see I’m already getting up to speed,” he said into her ear before nibbling down her neck.
“You sure are,” she said, squeezing and stroking while he moaned against the side of her throat.
“I’m nothing if not a fast starter.” His teeth closed over the tender skin at the base of her neck, and she gasped.
When his hands got busy, though, she slapped them away. “No. Your only job is to lie back and enjoy the ride.”
So saying, she straddled his waist and slid down until she was seated in his lap. Slowly, sinuously, Mia rubbed herself against him. His hands grasped her hips. She shook her head and held his wrists, pushing them down by his sides, anchoring them in place with her knees. Rolling her hips again, she arched back and cupped her breasts. Lifting, fondling, her hands worked steadily while her eyes remained locked on his.
When she judged him on the point of desperation, she shifted back onto her heels and slowly lowered down onto him…inch by glorious inch. His eyes closed for a moment. This time when he reached for her, she gave him free rein to touch. He caressed and kneaded while she rose and fell, flexed and rocked, gently, so gently, keeping time with her breath.
But soon the need built layer upon layer until she was no longer in control. Her body tightened and plunged following its own path. The clawing desperation forced her faster, harder, deeper. Roman saw the release coming as her eyes went soft and unfocused. With a groan, she slammed down again and arched back lifting her arms around her head while her breath sobbed out in a kind of triumph.
Staring up at her in awe, he thought she looked like a goddess. Mia was lean through the waist, full breasted with the moonlight bathing her skin, glowing porcelain white against her fiery hair. Deep inside, in the heat, she clamped around him and slowly circled her hips a few times more while her body shuddered. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anything more beau
tiful in his life.
She eventually collapsed down on him, heart hammering against his chest, and he gathered her close and rolled until he was on top again. Grasping her legs and pushing them up around his waist, he finally, joyfully, allowed himself to go. Thrust after thrust after thrust, he pounded until the heat and the pleasure shot through him. He was so close now. His body cried out for release and, oh Lordy, it was all he could do not to follow.
Yet at the same time, he wished this moment would somehow spin out forever and ever, and he could be with her like this into eternity. When he did come, when all the tension disappeared, he lay limply on top of her gasping and partially blind from the bliss, a small secret part of him already missed her. Physically, she was right there next to him, but in every other way, Mia was nowhere even close.
Chapter Twenty
The idea nagged at Roman while he and the other officers sat through roll call. It followed him out on the road when he and Kevin were sent to investigate a B and E in neighboring Walkerton. He wasn’t even sure what had sparked it off in the first place, but now that the awareness was lodged in his brain, he felt stupid for overlooking the obvious. If this had been anyone else’s murder investigation, he’d have thought of it immediately.
When he finally got back to the station, he shut himself in his office and logged onto the NCIC database. He started a search of homicide investigations both solved and unsolved adding details of Anita’s case into the parameters. Assuming it would take some time, he wandered out for coffee. By the time he’d returned to his desk, Roman was surprised to see there were already two results showing on the screen.
The first was from July of last year in Cleveland, or more correctly Brecksville, a suburb of the city. Marla Shaw finished work at a jewelry kiosk in the Sparkswork Mall on the night of July sixth. Security cameras showed her exiting the mall through the door by the movie theatre at nine twenty p.m. There was no visual on the parking lot. Her car remained where she’d parked it earlier that afternoon. No one saw or heard from her again.
She was found a week later by a man walking his dog. She’d been buried in a shallow grave in the wooded area of Furnace Run Park. The dog had dragged his owner into the forest, and the man saw the recent evidence of digging and what looked like a human size grave and called the police.
The tox screen showed traces of chloroform in her system. She’d been raped and strangled. She wore an emerald ring on the ring finger of her left hand. No semen or other DNA evidence was found, and no unusual fibers or other trace materials existed on her body. The case remained unsolved.
The second victim was Jenny Maple of Wilmington, North Carolina. She disappeared seven years ago on July sixth, also after leaving work. This time the victim worked at a Dunkin Donuts. The manager claimed to have seen her walk across the parking lot to the bus stop. He couldn’t remember if anyone else was waiting there. He was the last person to see her alive.
Her partially decomposed body wasn’t discovered until almost four months later at a park on the other side of town during a Rotary Club scavenger hunt. Like Marla, there was chloroform in her system, and she was wearing an emerald ring. The authorities had zero leads on the case.
With heart hammering, Roman clicked back onto the search he’d left running in the background. Three more hits. All abducted on July sixth. All strangled. All either wearing an emerald ring or one was found in the gravesite.
“Kevin, get in here,” Roman shouted.
The detective stepped into the office, stopping to lean casually against the door frame. “What’s up?”
“We’ve got ourselves a serial,” Roman said, his eyes never leaving the screen.
“You mean the B and E? Nah, I checked. Nothing else reported in the area.”
“No, a serial killer. The same as my sister. Shit. Another one just hit. That brings the count up to seven. So far, all of them occurred after Anita.”
“Seriously? No way. Other than some domestics gone bad and Leonard Karl, who was killed by his brother-in-law for cheating on his sister, we haven’t had any homicides in the area during the past ten years.”
“Not here. Try Wilmington, Cleveland, Gainesville, Tucson, to name a few. They’re spread all over the US of A. All on July the sixth.”
“Well, fuck me. I never thought to look. Jesus Christ, we have to bring it to the lieutenant.”
“Yeah. We will. First, let’s put this thing together. I’ll let the search finish and see what we end up with. In the meantime, I’m going to dig deeper into the next two victims. Why don’t you take Marie Gleeson and Rhonda Ziegler? I’ll email you the links to the files.”
In the end, there were nine in total, including Anita. All strangled, many dosed with chloroform, and every burial site contained an emerald ring. A couple of the bodies had carpet fiber, but other than tracing it to a car type, it was a dead end until they found the killer. No traces of foreign DNA on the victims. Each one, again except Anita, had been unconscious at the time of their rapes and deaths.
Lieutenant Schmidt sat back in his chair, hands clasped over his stomach and his index fingers steepled. He said nothing while Roman and Kevin brought him up to speed.
“Okay, I want you two to split the list and call every single detective in charge,” he said when they’d finished. “See if you can get anything from them that’ll help us. Keep a lid on it for now until we’ve had a chance to look into it more thoroughly. I don’t want the townsfolk breaking out in mass hysteria.” He paused and rubbed a hand over his chin. “You realize if this guy stays on pace he’s probably planning to kill someone else this year. That gives us ten days.”
“Yes, sir,” Roman said.
“And I want you to pass off some of your remaining caseloads to Cooper and White. This is your priority for the time being. Remember, if you learn something new, I’ll know it two seconds later.”
“We’re on it,” Kevin said.
“You know we’re going to have to call in the big boys, but let’s finish this round of investigation first and put it all together,” Schmidt added.
“I figured as much,” Roman said. “They’d better not cut us out.”
“They will, Son. That’s how it works. The only way we stay in the loop is if the killer strikes here again. That seems unlikely since so far he’s never repeated a kill spot.”
“Come on, partner.” Kevin slapped his hand on Roman’s shoulder. “Maybe we can crack the case before the FBI hones in on it.”
They went back to Kevin’s office and divvied up the victims. “Kinda weird this guy only kills once a year. Most serials don’t show that much control and certainly don’t wait so long between victims. I wonder if he did anything else in between?”
Roman rolled his printed list of victims into a cylinder and tapped it against his leg. “You’re thinking sexual assaults, right? Maybe he snatched them the same way using chloroform, but I’ll bet there was no ring on those gals. Probably has to kill them to make them worthy of a ring. I’ll log back onto NCIC and run another search. Good thinking.”
“See, I’m not just a pretty face. You know, it also occurs to me that with these murders scattered all over hell and back, it may not be a native Daltonion. When we thought your sister was a one-off, I’d assumed it was someone from around here, but maybe not. Coulda been a guy in town for the fireworks.”
“Yeah. I’d been wondering about that too. Well, I guess we’ll see where the trail leads us.”
* * *
It was almost dark when Roman pulled up in front of the house. He’d called earlier to say he would be late. In that brief moment on the phone, Mia sensed his excitement. Now she watched impatiently while he climbed out of his car and walked across to the porch steps. She met him inside the front door with Mac flanking her left side and the other canines fanning out behind.
“You’ve got a new lead,” she said even before the lock had clicked into place on the door.
He turned to her, and she saw the weariness
in his eyes. “Shoulda known you’d be up-to-date. Yes, we got a break, but still no suspect.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll tell you all about it. First I need a shower and a beer, and then I’ll probably eat everything in your fridge.”
“I have a stir-fry prepped. You go on up and wash away the day. Dinner will be ready when you come down.”
When they finally sat at the table with plates of steaming food in front of them, she reached across and touched his arm. “I’m dying here. You have to tell me.”
He took a deep swig of his beer, rubbed a hand over his face, and laid it all out for her.
“But…I mean…wow. All those women. You think Anita was the first?”
“Maybe. She was either the first or he slightly altered his method after her because all the other bodies were left in shallow graves. Easier to find that way. If he killed before her and buried them deep, we may not have found his earlier victims yet. May never find them.”
“I guess this opens up the possibility of it being someone from out of town. If that’s the case, either he’s back here now and is likely the person vandalizing my property or it’s completely unrelated and we’ve been barking up the wrong tree.”
“Except for the note about helping the police,” Roman said.
“Yeah, there’s that,” she agreed. “Who from town does a lot of traveling?”
Roman finished chewing, swallowed, and leaned back in his chair. “Um…I can think of a couple of guys off the top of my head. Chad Murray is on the road a ton. Dusty Preston works for Whirlpool and goes to sales conferences several times a year. It could be someone who grew up here and moved away but still comes back to visit family. Hell, it could be anyone really. All they need to do is go on vacation every July.”
“It doesn’t actually help,” she said after they’d contemplated all the possibilities.
“Not right now. It’ll help when we have someone in our sights because we can run the dates against his whereabouts. Until then, nothing’s popping out at me.”
