Except for a few spiders in the attic, the house was clear, so he went and got her a glass of water—the hot drink had been a ruse so as not to freak Erin out as he searched the place—and headed back to the bedroom.
Putting his SIG on the nightstand, he stripped to his boxers and climbed in beside her. Something clenched inside his chest when she snuggled into his arms. After a few minutes of silence, she spoke.
“I can’t stop thinking about it. I just see this rush of trees flying past me. If I hadn’t managed to throw myself out of the truck before impact…”
Her head rested on his chest. He held her hand tightly in his.
“It used to be that every time I closed my eyes I’d see Graham raising that gun to his head, grinning at me before pulling the trigger. As if he’d finally figured out a way to invade my life forever. I suppose he did.”
The things people did to one another never ceased to amaze him.
“I see my mother,” he confessed. “The last time she kissed me.”
“Did she really not tell you she was going?”
“She just kissed me goodnight, and I never saw her again.” He rubbed his chin gently against her silky hair. “Experiences like that—like Graham, like my mother walking out without a word—they make it hard to trust anyone. Harder to let anyone get close.”
Something wet hit his chest. Erin’s tears.
“The thing is, there are never any guarantees.” Because they both knew better than most, death could take them at any moment. A bullet, a dangerous curve in the road. A madman having them in his sights. “We either take a chance and try for happiness, or…”
“We miss out on the good stuff.”
“Did you ever think about us? About that night in Quantico?” He needed to know.
Her fingers clenched his. “All the time. Whenever I got lonely I thought about that night. Whenever memories of Graham became too much, I’d remember the two of us together instead.”
Her blonde hair formed a cloud around her head. He took a lock and smoothed it between his fingers. The enormity of what he was feeling, of what he’d almost lost today hit him like a meteor. The words he wanted to say lodged in his throat. All he could manage was, “You’re beautiful.”
She huffed out a disbelieving laugh. He leaned down and kissed her slowly, gently, hoping she could feel what he wasn’t brave enough to say out loud.
“Go to sleep,” he said.
She smoothed her hand up his stomach to rest it against his heart. Gradually her breathing quieted. He hoped she fell asleep and got some rest. They were both exhausted.
Oddly, her curled up against him in sleep felt more intimate than all the sex they’d shared. He and Erin hid their feelings behind desire and passion, but she meant more to him than that.
He was in love with her, and probably had been since the moment they’d met, which was why he’d freaked when he’d found out she was married. He was in love with a woman who guarded her heart as carefully as most men guarded their balls. She snuggled deeper into his embrace, and he pulled the cover higher to ward off the chill. He knew enough about psychology to wonder if maybe he was one of those people who set themselves up to fail at relationships—that way he could constantly relive the pain of his mother’s abandonment. Or maybe he just had a thing for hot blondes with independent streaks the size of the Mississippi. Either way he was going to have a fight on his hands to make this, to make them, happen.
First they had a case to solve. They needed to figure out why the killer had wanted Rachel dead, and whether the same sonofabitch had run Erin off the road. Hopefully Rachel would wake up tomorrow and tell them everything.
One of the things Darsh had learned from being a sniper was it wasn’t always easy to spot your enemy, but once you had them in your crosshairs you better damn well be prepared to pull the trigger. The other thing he’d learned was patience, but that was something the town and the chief of police were running short of.
Time was running out.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rachel was alive. How the hell had she survived that fall yesterday? And a whole day wandering alone in the wilderness in the middle of a fucking blizzard? Stupidity always managed to find its way into the gene pool, and he had no doubt that, in a normal world, she’d go on to have at least fifteen children. But this wasn’t a normal world. He’d helped forge the woman she’d become, and he didn’t intend to let her live long enough to add to the population.
He’d already visited the hospital in the hopes of catching her unprotected. A cop had guarded the entry, and her parents had been inside.
His fingers drummed his thigh. He had time.
She was in a coma right now and would be for days according to what he’d overheard at the nurse’s station. But eventually the guards would get lax. The parents would need to rest or get an urgent phone call. Maybe there would be a fire in one of their offices? Or drugs would be spotted in plain sight in one of their cars. Something. Anything. He didn’t need long. Just long enough to stick Rachel with a fat ass needle.
Erin was also alive. At least that made him happy.
He looked at his prized possessions. His wall of devotion. Photographs. All of her. In her house, in her car. At work. The naked ones were the most precious. The idea of handing those over to someone else was killing him, but he didn’t have a choice. He’d baited the trap. Now he needed to set the hook. Wearing gloves, he began pulling the pictures off his wall, pushpins flying around him.
He held up his favorite picture of her. He’d taken it with a zoom lens through her bedroom window and had climbed a tree to get it. He slipped the print into his back pocket. He’d buried the memory card of his camera and wiped the hard drive of his computer. He’d downloaded the images onto someone else’s laptop.
He smiled.
It gave him a perverse sense of satisfaction to do that. Apparently, he enjoyed revenge, even for minor slights or insults. Getting back at people was addictive. Now he put the prints in a plastic bag and placed that inside his backpack. He dug into his pocket, removed the one remaining photograph, and shoved it inside with the others. He couldn’t afford to be weak or sentimental. He was smarter than most people on the planet, but he knew he could trip up if he grew overconfident. Rachel needed to die. The investigators needed to follow the breadcrumbs and believe what he was telling them.
He included Cassie’s letters from poor pathetic Drew Hawke. What a loser. He smiled grimly as he cinched the top of the pack and fastened the snaps.
Chaos provided its own kind of opportunity, and he intended to take full advantage of that over the next twenty-four hours.
* * *
After a short fight about whether or not she should be at work, Darsh had helped her get dressed in yoga pants and a loose tunic-style blue sweater. He’d even zipped up her boots and helped her into her jacket.
She forced back the emotions that swelled inside her whenever she thought about him. She’d awakened wrapped in his arms, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that happy. Even if it was just a reaction to careening down that hillside and then managing to escape alive, the fact she wanted to hold on tight to him whenever she saw him was disconcerting. She barely knew the guy, but ever since the murders, her confidence in her own abilities seemed to be eroding. She didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all.
Her sidearm was in a shoulder harness that made the bruises on her back ache. But she’d rather hurt wearing it than get hurt without it. The chance of her pulling her weapon in less than thirty seconds? Small to zero. Whatever. At least she felt like a cop rather than a victim as she walked stiffly down the corridor.
The sight of a broad-shouldered guard outside Rachel’s door made her very happy. Darsh had said they’d arranged additional security. She got to the opening, and he stopped her with a hand on her chest. She squeaked in pain.
“Sorry, ma’am.” Bright blue eyes looked her over. “No one’s allowed inside except medical staf
f.”
She pulled her badge out of her pocket. He leaned closer to inspect it thoroughly.
“Donovan?” His eyes lit up in recognition. “So that’s the reason you’re looking a little peaky today, huh?”
She laughed at ‘peaky’ and then winced as she held onto her bruised ribs. “And I thought I’d used enough makeup to hide any side effects.”
He tilted his head. “When you go sledding down a mountainside in a truck there’re going to be consequences.” He looked over his shoulder into the room. “The patient is still in a coma. Parents went for a coffee. I think it would be okay for you to go in for a couple of minutes if the nurses don’t object.” A nurse walked by at that moment and gave him a sweet smile. He cleared his throat. “My name’s Jack Reilly. I’ll need to come in too, just to keep an eye out. Not taking any risks with my client.”
She nodded slowly. The guy was good. Really good. He opened the door, and she eased inside, careful not to jar herself by bumping into anything or moving too quickly. Everything hurt. Every muscle, every bone, every strand of DNA.
The room was dimly lit. The bodyguard left the door open and stood quietly to one side, watching her without making her feel like a criminal. Doing his job. She got closer to the bed so she could see Rachel’s face, and gasped. The girl was so pale, and her injuries made Erin feel like a weenie for complaining about a few bruises. There were deep scratches on her face that were going to scar. Both her eyes were swollen shut. Cuts streaked around her lips. Her arm was bandaged. One leg was set in a cast. She was intubated, and on a drip. The sight of all that equipment and all those machines keeping this girl alive made Erin’s heart break.
Tears welled up. She didn’t usually let herself get this involved with victims, but this was Rachel, and she’d held her hand through the aftermath of her ordeal and promised her things would get better.
She touched one delicate finger that appeared to be the only unharmed part of the girl’s body. “I’m so sorry I let you down. I’m so sorry you got hurt.” She’d tried so hard not to cry about her own accident, but seeing this young woman like this, who’d been through so much. It felt like someone put a fiery rock in her throat. Her eyes watered, and she couldn’t breathe properly. She swallowed tightly, looked back at Reilly standing near the door. “She’s scared of strange men.” The expression on his face tightened at the implications. “She might be scared of you when she first wakes up. It’s nothing personal.”
He blinked twice and raised his chin. “I’ll keep her safe, Detective. No need to worry. We’ll figure it out.”
She took a last look at Rachel and hobbled to the door, passing the bodyguard with a grateful smile. Rosemary Knight and her husband, Donald, were just walking down the corridor.
They both seemed surprised to see her.
“Detective, you look terrible.” Rosemary acknowledged. Her attitude was a lot chillier than it had been yesterday when she’d been crying in the back of Erin’s now deceased truck.
Erin was going to make a comment about having felt worse, but she realized she hadn’t. This was the worst she’d ever felt. Her lowest point. Even getting beaten by her ex didn’t compare to how she felt after being forced off the road and seeing Rachel lying there looking so broken.
“Do they know yet who did this to our daughter?” Donald asked. He stood behind his wife and held onto her shoulders. Maybe they’d found a way of getting past their differences. It was all about coping strategies, Erin knew. Hers had always been to isolate herself, figure things out, make a plan and then deal with it. Darsh called it running away. She called it thinking things through.
“Not yet, but—”
“It’s the same person who killed those girls on Monday isn’t it? It’s a miracle Rachel isn’t as dead as they are.”
Erin flinched. “We’re doing our best—”
Her cheek rang from the slap Rosemary landed on her. She reared back. Dammit. Erin rubbed her cheek, shaking her head at Reilly as he stepped in to intervene.
“Your best isn’t good enough. Your best got my baby in here on a ventilator,” Rosemary hissed.
“I am sorry about Rachel. Call me when she wakes up. You better get back to her.” Erin skirted past them, ignoring her stinging cheek and bruised pride. Anyone else and she’d have hauled them downtown, paperwork be damned. But with these people? Goddamn it, what did they want? Blood?
She forced back the tears that wanted to fall. No way. No way was she gonna cry when she still had to run the gauntlet of the press. She felt vulnerable, emotional. Falling for someone when she felt like this was not a good idea. She needed to rein in the feelings Darsh was pulling out of her. Now wasn’t the time to get involved in something that would probably lead to heartbreak.
She was a good cop, but she wasn’t a magician. This perp had so far outfoxed them, but that couldn’t last, and the guy must be starting to panic with Rachel still being alive. Maybe it was him who’d run her off the road yesterday, and not some football fan who hated her guts. Hopefully they were only the first of many mistakes, and it wouldn’t be long until he was cornered like the animal he was.
* * *
Darsh stared at the timeline he’d taped to the wall. He forced worry for Erin out of his mind. She was a professional and needed space to do her job. She’d only gone to the hospital, which was probably safer than staying home alone.
“What am I missing? What the hell am I missing?”
Agent Chen ignored his grumblings. She’d just got back in the office and looked immaculately dressed and freshly showered. He wasn’t sure where she’d slept last night, but it wasn’t in here, and it wasn’t in an office chair. Mad Ninja skills.
He checked his email. There was a team meeting in five minutes. The good news was they got DNA from the hair on Mandy Wochikowski’s sweater. The bad news was there were no hits in CODIS.
His cell rang. “Agent Singh.”
“DOJ called. They want an update,” Jed Brennan said without preamble.
“Nothing definitive, but I’m leaning more and more toward the cases being related.”
“By the same UNSUB? You think Hawke is innocent?” Brennan asked with a hint of disbelief.
“Yeah, but don’t tell it to the DOJ just yet. I have no evidence.” This had been the DOJ’s fear when they requested the BAU’s assistance, but they’d still resist the idea that they’d helped send an innocent man to prison. Miscarriages of justice happened—look at Richard Stone, one of the FBI’s own agents, who’d been wrongly imprisoned for the last fourteen years. “The rapes last year and these murders seem to have been orchestrated by an individual or individuals with some serious smarts.” Darsh rubbed his brow. “I’m not sure there can be more than one genius level predator in a town this small.”
Brennan swore. “The shit is going to hit the fan if you’re right. I take it the local cops missed something?”
“That’s the thing.” He thought of how hard Erin worked on behalf of the victims and how diligent they’d been. “I don’t think they missed anything. I think they had more than enough for an indictment, and the jury had more than enough for a conviction. And I still don’t think he did it.”
“What about the witness statements?” asked Jed.
“We both know they’re notoriously unreliable. I think the drugs and alcohol were used to confuse the victims and distort reality. I’m guessing he wore a customized mask of Drew’s face that he ordered off the internet.”
“Those things freak me out. Now you can fool biometric security systems for under $300 plus shipping. Mission Impossible has got a lot to answer for.”
Darsh rubbed the knot of muscle tying up his neck. “He wore the mask when he raped women who were either shitfaced or high, and absolutely terrified. He was imprinting Hawke on them during a period of great stress.”
“So the witnesses thought they were telling the truth.”
“They were telling the truth as they understood it.” Darsh didn’t like be
ing taken for a fool. “Hawke believes he was set up, and I think he might be right. It’s this UNSUB’s thing. He likes twisting the evidence, knowing exactly how the justice system will react.” The bastard wasn’t infallible though. He’d already make a crucial error with Rachel Knight. “I meant to call you last night. Someone tried to kill the first victim yesterday.”
“You think it’s the same guy?”
“Seems a stretch to think it was anyone else.”
“Why did he try to kill her? Does he get off on torturing people, or does she know something?”
Darsh flashed back to his conversation with Rachel the other day. Had she told other people what she’d told him and Erin—that she’d started to remember things from her attack? “Probably both.”
He looked out the window. There were press and demonstrators milling around in the parking lot and out front. So far no one had leaked the fact a rope had been tied around Rachel’s mouth like a bridle bit. The exact same type of rope that had bound Cassie Bressinger to the bed during her murder.
“The Knight girl hasn’t woken up yet and won’t for a few days at least. It’s a miracle she survived.” Frankly if it weren’t for what she might know, the doctors said they’d let her sleep for weeks in an effort to let her body heal. Darsh had insisted it was urgent they talk to her as soon as possible. They’d told him there was the very real possibility of brain damage from the car accident. That was the only reason he wasn’t trying to make them wake her up now. He wasn’t big on prayer, but he was praying Rachel Knight woke up with the name of her attacker on her lips.
Jed was talking… “I’m going to request field agents be brought in. The New York Field Office has a team—”
“Not yet,” said Darsh. He wasn’t ready to let this go yet, and he didn’t even want to think about leaving Erin in the middle of the fallout this shit storm was bound to bring.
Cold Hearted (Cold Justice Book 6) Page 27
