Riddle Me This (Detective Kate Rosetti Mystery Book 2)

by Gina LaManna

  We emerged into a dreary backyard. Patches of limp green grass spotted between blobs of brown snow. An old clothesline hung empty. The house had clearly seen better days, and it was no wonder it hadn’t sold yet. Wilkes had obviously picked this location because it wouldn’t be getting a ton of activity from showings anytime soon.

  I studied the yard, the house. The path to the back door was neatly shoveled and salted, and several muddied sets of footprints—all about the same size—had trekked to and from the garage over the past several days.

  Wilkes climbed the back steps to the house, keeping his body angled toward me, the gun held loosely in his hand. His eyes were on me. “Stay at the bottom of the steps until I get the door open. One move, and I shoot.”

  I studied him, the door, the familiar way he worked the keys on the chain. The footprints. The garage code. Wilkes had been here for a while. This wasn’t some random last-ditch hole he’d crawled into when we’d discovered his lair at the Robertson’s—this had been his lair. Which mean that, once again, I’d had it all wrong.

  “You haven’t changed,” I said suddenly. “You don’t change, that’s the thing. That’s what I’ve been missing.”

  Wilkes slipped the key in the hole. “I never claimed to be looking for redemption. I enjoy what I do far too much for any of that nonsense. We both know it, Kate. People are who they say they are. I’ve shown you who I am, and you’ve done the same. We’re set.”

  “Exactly,” I agreed, taking a deep breath, biding my time. I’d only have one go before my revelation became obvious. “Which is why you’re so upset that Jennifer is interrupting your plans. The Robertson house wasn’t yours—that was her.”

  Wilkes froze. His hand drifted toward his side, but it was an aimless tic—one of surprise. Wilkes was rarely surprised, and I used that to my advantage.

  I leapt for him, for his legs. I grabbed the one nearest me, pulled hard. Wilkes let out a cry as I offset his balance, and he went down. There was a hard crack of bone on cement and a shriek of pain as Wilkes hit the steps hard.

  I lunged for his gun, but it was under his body. Instead I turned, booked it toward the neighbor’s house, pounded on the door. I shouted for them to call 911. There was no answer.

  I glanced back toward Wilkes’s borrowed house and found the steps empty save for a pool of blood from where his skin had split from the impact of falling.

  “Nobody’s home.” A sing-song voice sounded from behind me. “Give it up, Kate.”

  Wilkes had the gun tucked discreetly against his body so that anyone peeping out their windows wouldn’t see it. Unfortunately, nobody in the neighborhood was peeping out their windows. It was a young, twenty-something neighborhood with residents who spent their days at work. The other half of the population consisted of elderly folks who wouldn’t have heard my call for help over the volume of their daily game shows.

  “Last chance to cooperate, or I’ll shoot you right here. I’m getting tired of these games.”

  I raised my hands, inched down the front steps. The lights in the house were off. Nobody was calling 911. Nobody was coming to the door to see what the commotion was about.

  Probably better that way, considering the circumstances. Wilkes might have killed them just to spite me. A muscle twitched in his forehead. He bled from his eyebrow, the side of his head. The way he was limping told me he’d twisted something in his leg when he’d fallen.

  “I’m coming with you,” I said evenly. “Don’t punish me for something you asked for.”

  “I asked for this?”

  “You asked for a challenge,” I said. “I’m giving you one. So is Jennifer.”

  “Shut up and walk.” Wilkes flicked his gun in the direction of the house.

  I kept my movements slow, my hands raised above my head. “Just tell me one thing. Do you even have Sarah? Or was that Jennifer’s doing, too?”

  If I hadn’t been watching for the tinge of worry, I’d have missed it. But I’d kept my eyes fixed on Wilkes in hopes he’d give me some indication, a sign, that my theory was correct.

  And it was there. A flash in the pan, a bolt of fear. If I’d blinked, I’d have missed it, but it was enough. Wilkes had all but confirmed he had no control over the fate of Sarah.

  I took one last step before throwing my best right hook at Wilkes’s face. I popped him in the nose and a spray of blood spurted out to join the rest of his bedraggled appearance.

  He fumbled for the gun. I ducked as he swung and barely dodged a pistol-whip that would have cracked my skull in two. By the time he got a handle on the gun, I’d landed one on his stomach. He bent in half, struggling for a breath.

  My next move was a well-placed kick toward his bad leg. He’d been limping with his left, and I knew the second I landed my foot at his knee joint that he’d be going down.

  And down he went. His leg buckled underneath him, and he collapsed to the ground with a sharp yelp. His eyes widened more from surprise than pain as he lost control of his limbs.

  “Bitch,” he snarled.

  I fell on him, scrambling for the gun. What I didn’t foresee was his grip on the knife. The last thing I saw was sun glinting off the blade as he stuck me in the stomach.

  “Got you in the same place last time, didn’t I?” Wilkes twisted the knife, just enough to send shooting pain to every one of my extremities. “You should have known better, Kate. Close those pretty eyes. If you wake up, we’ll do the rest of this my way.”

  Chapter 23

  I woke, not in a dark cellar or dingy chamber as expected, but in a creaky old room flooded with light. Someone, likely Wilkes, had placed me on a soft mattress with pink bedding that had been stained an ugly brownish-red.

  Seconds later, I realized the stain had come from me, from the wound in my side. An icy hot burst of pain slashed through my body, and as I reacted, tried to curl into the fetal position to protect my injuries, I felt the tug of bindings coming from each of my arms and legs.

  My breath came in shallow gasps. I was alive, which meant that Wilkes had probably done something to bandage my wound and suppress the bleeding. I could feel it just as I had the first time. My lower left side sliced open by Wilkes’s blade.

  The fear, the bile, the memories came back like a crumbling brick wall. They hit me, piece by piece, until sweat dripped from my forehead, and I could almost imagine Jimmy coming through the door to find me tied and bleeding and begging for a quick ending.

  I gave a tug on my arms, fighting off the pain. I gritted my teeth against the involuntary wave that begged to be a cry. I wouldn’t give Wilkes the satisfaction.

  “Ah, so you did wake up.” Wilkes stepped through the doorway and into the room, stopping in the corner at a rickety rocking chair. “I wasn’t sure if you would. You left me no choice out there, Kate. I was disappointed—”

  “Make up your freaking mind, Wilkes,” I spit out. “Either you want me to fight back, or you don’t. You can’t have it both ways.”

  The slightest of smiles curved up Wilkes’s face. He still moved with a limp, though it seemed he was consciously trying to mask it. The gun was present as usual at his hip, the knife in his hand. He spun it around, then sat in the rocking chair and began creaking back and forth, back and forth.

  “I figured it out, didn’t I?” I grunted. “I was right about Jennifer. She’s the one who had correspondence with you in prison. She seduced the guard—Bellows. Did you blow him up, or did she do that?”

  “Jennifer lacks the finesse needed for my line of work.”

  “Okay, so you took care of Bellows. But she did Tate herself, didn’t she? Seems like maybe she is fit for your line of work. Have you ever murdered anyone close to you, someone you cared about? I think the answer is no. You don’t have anyone close to you, so you’ve never made that sacrifice. Jennifer has. Killing her fiancé is a new level of dedicated. Are you jealous of her?”

  “She didn’t love him.” Wilkes spoke matter-of-factly, but his jaw twitched, tell
ing me I wasn’t all that far off. “He was a tool for her to use. Just like Bellows. Only she didn’t clean up her mess because she’d fallen for that idiot.”

  “Jennifer fell for Bellows?” I blinked. “No way. People like you, like her, they can’t care about others.”

  Wilkes pushed himself out of the rocking chair. He moved across the room, stopped over my bed. Raising a hand, he dragged his finger down my cheek. “Oh, we can feel, Kate. We feel so, so much.”

  I turned my head, averted my gaze. Disgust bubbled in my stomach. “You don’t like me. You’re mistaken; you don’t have any feelings toward me except intrigue. Because I hate you, and I challenge you, and that drives you nuts.”

  Wilkes snatched his hand back and returned to the rocking chair. He creaked back and forth again, back and forth. “Jennifer thought she could let Bellows off the hook. Just let him live on, but we both know that’s not how I work.”

  “Jennifer must be pretty upset that you killed the man she loved.”

  “She made the choice to involve herself with me. She knew the costs going in,” Wilkes said. “Everything was her idea. Jennifer followed the trial and got in touch.”

  “Jonathan was never involved?”

  “No. I helped her, held her hand as she learned the ropes. Taught her how to point evidence away from herself,” Wilkes said. “And it worked. Because if you’d looked into Jennifer’s past at the start, you’d have seen it clear as day. The evidence is all there: A history of petty crime, trouble in school, you name it. She had the desire, just not the skill. She wasn’t as smart as me, but she wanted to learn.”

  “So, you promised to teach her if she helped you escape?”

  “More or less,” Wilkes said. “But I didn’t give her quite enough credit. Once she and Bellows got me out, Jennifer thought she could branch out on her own. She took my grab bag, used the supplies to kill Tate and made it look like it was my work. And you fools believed her.”

  “Why didn’t you go after her?”

  “I’m focused. She wasn’t my target. I’ll clean up those loose ends when it’s time. For now, she’s serving as a very useful distraction tool.”

  “Where’s Sarah?” I asked. “Is she at the Robertson house?”

  “What do I care?” he murmured. “I have you. That was my end goal. That’s where Jennifer makes her mistakes—she loses sight of her end goal. Gets swept up in the moment.”

  “I knew it,” I muttered, more to myself than to him. “I told them you worked alone.”

  “Very good. Though it didn’t seem to help you much.”

  “The shooting in Afton, the phone dropped there. That was all Jennifer?”

  “Again, if you look into her past, you’d see she’s been quite interested in guns and long-range shooting for quite some time. She’s got a little hidden talent.” He wrinkled his nose. “While I respect her creativity, it’s far too impersonal for me. I like to feel you, Kate. Feel the knife as it goes into your skin, watch as the life drains from your eyes. If I can’t have that, I don’t want you at all.”

  “What happens if she finds you before you get rid of her?” I asked. “Seems like she’ll be wanting to clean up her loose ends, too.”

  “I’m better than her,” Wilkes said simply. “She can’t beat me at my own game.”

  “Is that right?” A female voice tinkled from the hallway. “That’s cute you think so.”

  Jennifer took a step into the bedroom, her gun trained on me. Her gaze, however, was fixed on Wilkes.

  “For what it’s worth, Wilkes—you’ve got it all wrong,” Jennifer said quietly. “It’s a shame you didn’t trust me. We could have been great together. A real team.”

  “All men are like him,” I said. “None of that should come as a surprise to you.”

  Jennifer’s eyes landed on me. “I’m not talking to you.” She turned her attention back to Wilkes. “You promised you wouldn’t kill James. He wouldn’t have said anything.”

  “You don’t know that,” Wilkes argued. “People are finicky, they can be bought. James Cordone was already bought once. It could have happened again.”

  The gun wavered in Jennifer’s hands as her mouth twitched with anger. “I loved him! You promised me you’d leave him alone. He didn’t help you out of prison because of the money; he did it because I asked him to.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I’m sorry, but the only way to make this right is to show you how it feels.” Jennifer took a step toward me. “You love this cop in some weird, twisted way. Tit for tat, I think.”

  Wilkes rose from the rocking chair, flipped his gun around and put his hands palm out to show he wasn’t going to shoot. “She’s nothing to me.”

  Jennifer’s eyes shone with determination. “We’ll see about that.”

  “Jennifer,” Wilkes said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  I looked between them. I wasn’t sure what would be worse—getting shot by Jennifer or being left for Wilkes. I was seriously hoping there was a third option.

  “Leave the detective,” Wilkes commanded calmly. “She’ll die of her wounds. That’s the point; I’m just waiting here, rocking. Watching.”

  Jennifer’s brows furrowed. Then her gaze traveled down to my side. Her eyes lit up when she spotted the half-heartedly bandaged wound on my side. It was obvious Wilkes had tried to stem my bleeding.

  That gleam in Jennifer’s eyes returned, and I knew what she was going to do before she did it. Lowering the gun toward me, she fixed her eyes on Wilkes. “You saved her life. You could have let her die, but you didn’t. James never had a chance.”

  “Bellows was different—”

  “This lady’s a cop!” Jennifer screeched, lowering the gun, her finger dancing lightly over the trigger. “She will arrest you, throw you back in prison—everything James and I went through will be for nothing. She’s got to go—”

  Jennifer’s words were punctuated by a gunshot. I closed my eyes, the searing pain and deafening ringing making me think I’d been the one shot.

  The second I opened my eyes, I saw Jennifer’s expression flicker to one of surprise as a patch of blood spread across her stomach. Wilkes had shot her in almost the same exact place he’d stabbed me.

  Jennifer bent forward, her gun dropping to the floor. When she fell to her knees, her gaze turned up at Wilkes. It looked as if she was trying to speak, but no sound came out.

  I’d seen death hundreds of times, but Wilkes was right. Death was different than dying. And seeing the light slip out of Jennifer’s eyes as she crumpled into an unmoving bundle on the floor sent waves of hot and cold through my body.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that.” Wilkes moved toward the bed, looking calm and collected as he stepped over Jennifer’s body. He rested a hand on my forehead, gave a soft stroke of his thumb down my face. “It’s never pleasant to have to kill for convenience.”

  I gritted my teeth. “But for pleasure?”

  Jennifer was right about one thing.” Wilkes gave a small smile. “I don’t know why I haven’t killed you yet. I’ve been sitting here waiting, procrastinating. Maybe I do love you in a strange way, Kate. And that frightens me. Which means it’s time for us to say goodbye.”

  I screamed as loud as I could until his hand came down over my mouth. Then it was a pillow. I screamed and screamed until I lost my breath. My consciousness hovered on the edge of blackness. I’d suffocate if I didn’t stop screaming. So, I stopped.

  “There,” Wilkes said, removing the pillow. “All better? Now, as you know, my mother always said I’d grow up to be a dentist. If she could see me now...”

  Wilkes pulled open a drawer near the bed, took out a thin booklet of tools. He laid it on the mattress next to me. I continued to jerk violently against the restraints but nothing made a difference.

  He selected a tool, a knife. Sharp, silver, shiny. He ran a hand through my hair.

  “At last, Kate.” He smiled.

  I opened my mouth to scream.


  And a gunshot rang through the room.

  My scream came fast and swift. The world seemed to stop. Wilkes hovered above me, knife in hand. His lips parted in surprise, his eyes widening just as Jennifer’s had before him.

  Finally, the rest of the world caught up. A patch of blood appeared on his shoulder—the same shoulder holding the tool. The knife dropped to the bed next to me as time raced forward. Wilkes grunted in pain, flinging his useless arm across his chest as he tipped forward, falling directly onto me.

  Footsteps flooded the room. People in black were everywhere.

  I recognized only one face.

  “Russo.”

  Men and women hauled Wilkes off me. Others rushed to Jennifer on the floor. But it was Russo who stayed. Russo who, with trembling fingers, cut my restraints, pulled me to a sitting position, brushed the hair back from my face.

  He held my shoulders when I crumbled forward. I couldn’t cry, couldn’t speak. Russo seemed to understand, and he didn’t push. He just held me, and held me, and held me, until it was all over.

  Chapter 24

  At the chief’s insistence, I took a few days off work. I had no problem with the suggestion. There were certain people I didn’t want to face in the wake of the confrontation with Wilkes. Namely, one FBI agent with kind eyes who’d saved my life. I wasn’t avoiding him, I told myself, I just hadn’t figured out what to say.

  Jane moved back into my house and took a few days off from Rubies to be with me, even though I told her to carry on as normal. Secretly, I was glad she did. We spent our time watching re-runs of old movies, popping popcorn and guzzling Diet Coke by the two-liter. I hadn’t realized it was Valentine’s Day until my sister demanded I change out of my pajamas and put on my clothes.

  “Come on,” she said. “You’re coming with me.”

  That was how I ended up at Alastair Gem’s holiday bash. This one was held on the bottom floor of Gem Industries in a gigantic ballroom decorated with fairy lights and delicate white hearts and pastries too beautiful to eat.