Such a Pretty Girl

by Tess Diamond

  Maybe it wasn’t successful women in general that the unsub hated. Maybe it was just one successful woman: her.

  He wanted to get to her. He wanted her emotion. Grace was beginning to think that was what all this was about. Her feelings and how he was trying to manipulate them.

  He wanted a trembling, helpless woman—and she wasn’t going to give him that.

  “Can I see?” Zooey asked from over Grace’s shoulder.

  Grace showed her the note.

  “Well, that’s incredibly creepy,” Zooey declared.

  “I agree,” said Rebecca, the ME. “Talk about a twisted love letter.”

  “He can’t stop himself from putting you down,” Gavin said, his voice tight with anger. “Delicate brain? Give me a break. You’re brilliant.”

  Normally, his outrage would elicit a smile, but she couldn’t summon one at the moment.

  “Can you bag this for me?” Grace asked Zooey, carefully handing her the tweezers holding the note. “Gavin, come with me?”

  He followed her outside. “Are you okay?” he asked, his brown eyes concerned.

  “The victimology is all wrong here,” she said.

  “Does that matter, now that he’s communicating directly?” Gavin asked. “He’s reaching out. The inscription in the book was one thing—it was another puzzle.”

  “But this is a threat,” Grace murmured.

  “A pretty clear one,” Gavin said grimly.

  A car horn honked in the distance, and Grace looked over her shoulder to see news vans pulling up behind the line of SUVs that blocked the road.

  “Who called the press?” Gavin asked, frowning.

  Grace’s eyes widened. “Oh, God,” she said as an idea struck her. She whirled around and dashed back into the trailer.

  “Grace, what are you—” Zooey started.

  But Grace ignored her, peering up at the ceilings and corners of the room. Where was it? He had to have put it somewhere.

  “He called the media,” Grace explained, stepping up onto the sagging mattress, running her fingers along the edges of the trailer ceiling. “This is his version of a public flogging. He needs an audience. It isn’t enough for him to think he’s smarter than I am—he needs everyone else to think so too.” She found nothing in the bedroom. She hopped off the bed and strode back into the main area of the trailer, her gaze narrowing in on the smoke detector.

  She wrenched it off the wall and twisted it apart. Inside, nestled among the battery and wires, was a small camera.

  “There we go,” she said, holding out the pieces to Zooey.

  “That’s a webcam,” the forensic tech exclaimed. “Short-range transmission. Which means . . .”

  “He’s close by,” Gavin said.

  Grace took the smoke detector, raising it so she could stare dead center at the camera. She refused to be afraid. Rejected the horror clawing inside her. It would do no good. It wouldn’t help her. It would just help him.

  She knew he’d be gone before the agents even dispersed to check the neighborhood. But right now, she knew he was watching.

  “I’m coming for you,” she said, a deadly promise in her words. “You’d better get ready.”

  Chapter 21

  By the time they finally wrapped up the crime scene at the trailer park and processed all the evidence, it was getting dark outside.

  “Go home,” Paul said when he found the two of them sitting in a conference room with Zooey, going over the victims’ schedules for the fifth time, trying to find a connection. “Get some rest and come at it fresh tomorrow. Until this guy makes another move, we’re dead in the water.”

  Grace wanted to protest, but she knew he was right. This unsub was too careful to have left any traceable evidence. Until he decided to make contact or kill again, they were stuck.

  She hated the waiting the most. In this case, she knew it wouldn’t take long. This killer had unlocked a vicious need inside himself that couldn’t be quenched. He’d make a move, and soon.

  But that meant more victims. More death.

  “What’s going on in that head of yours?” Gavin asked as he pulled up to her town house.

  “I just hate being stuck,” she said, getting out of the SUV. He followed her inside, and they swept the house before meeting back in the kitchen.

  She felt restless, her skin buzzing angrily with stress and guilt. There was a part of her that said she was missing something, that it was right in front of her, but she couldn’t see it. The feeling was maddening.

  She needed to do something. Anything.

  She yanked her fridge open a little too hard, the bottles stored in the door rattling at the movement. “Do you want something to eat?” she asked.

  “You don’t need to cook for me,” he said.

  “I’m not. I’m cooking for us,” she said absently, grabbing cream and Parmesan cheese, along with a stick of butter. “Does Alfredo sound good?”

  “Sounds perfect,” he said. “What can I do to help?”

  “Sit there and look pretty,” she said.

  He laughed. “I knew you were only keeping me around for my looks.”

  “That is absolutely the only reason,” Grace said, shooting him a wink over her shoulder. She couldn’t miss the flash of heat in his eyes, the way he shifted in his chair. She set water to boil for pasta and diced a few cloves of garlic before measuring out the ingredients for the Alfredo.

  “Who taught you to cook?” he asked.

  “Oh, I picked it up here and there,” Grace said. “Living in this city, you can survive on takeout. But there’s something about a home-cooked meal.”

  “Purest form of love,” he said casually.

  Her gaze met his across the island, and they were anything but casual.

  It should have scared her, what he wanted from her. The curse of the profiler was that she often figured out people’s desires even before they did. And Gavin? He was the kind of man who went all in.

  She wondered if he’d ever been in love. There was a part of her that doubted it, because she had a feeling that once he loved someone, that was it.

  He was a forever sort of man. And she was a never-stay sort of woman.

  It was a recipe for a disaster. It was one of the worst ideas she’d ever had.

  And she just couldn’t bring herself to care anymore. Because he made her want more.

  She expertly put together the sauce in the time it took for the pasta to boil. After slicing a baguette in half, she spread it lightly with herb butter and toasted it under the broiler for a few minutes. She tried to ignore his admiring, watchful eyes as she moved around her kitchen, but her skin burned as if it were on fire, as if every second he was there and not touching her was agony.

  “Let’s eat in the living room,” she suggested. There was something about her dining room that seemed terribly formal and unfit for someone as at ease as he was.

  She liked him in her house, she thought as she took their bowls of pasta to the couch and pulled the coffee table closer to rest the food on. Gavin followed, with two glasses of white wine that she had poured earlier. Grace curled her legs underneath her, twirling pasta on her fork as he settled next to her, his thigh warm against her hip. For a moment, she had the urge to rest her legs in his lap, but she forced herself to resist.

  “I’m really starting to think there’s nothing you can’t do,” Gavin said, his eyes closing for a moment as he savored the rich sauce.

  “I can’t seem to catch this damn killer,” Grace said and then sighed. “Sorry.”

  “You don’t need to apologize,” he said. “This has been a tough one. And it escalates each time. I want to catch him too.”

  “This is the problem with serial cases,” Grace said, taking a bracing sip of her wine. “If you can’t catch them on forensic evidence or narrow it down through the profile, you’re pretty much treading water until they kill again. I hate waiting for the next victim.”

  “The jeweler said he bought only four pairs
of earrings,” Gavin reminded her. “That’s been the one consistency of these kills: that he leaves the earrings. He’s used all the pairs.”

  “He could’ve bought more earrings from another jeweler,” Grace said miserably.

  “Or he could be moving on to the next phase,” Gavin said.

  But Grace knew what the next phase entailed: her. Her pain. Her suffering.

  Her murder.

  She suddenly felt exhausted and hopeless. She slumped against the couch, knowing it had to show in her face, because he put his arm around her, bringing her snug against him. She went willingly, leaning into him.

  “Okay,” Gavin said firmly. “That’s enough. We’re going to take a break. Thinking about this 24–7 won’t do any good. So I’m going to take this”—he grabbed her wineglass and set it on the table next to the files—“and clear these all away.” He picked up the plates and disappeared into the kitchen for a moment. She could hear the water running as he rinsed the dishes and left them to soak before he came back into the living room.

  “Now you’re gonna come with me.” He pulled her to her feet, then settled his hands on her hips. “We’re going to get your mind off this. You want to watch a movie?”

  She smiled, reaching out and tracing the curve of his cheek with her finger. His skin was warm and just a little scratchy—he hadn’t shaved today.

  “No, I don’t want to watch a movie,” she said. “I want you to take me upstairs to bed. And I want you to make love to me until I forget.”

  His hand squeezed her hips, a reflexive, almost involuntary reaction to her words. “You once told me you didn’t make love,” he said, his voice gruff with an emotion she couldn’t quite identify.

  She kissed him, sinking into him. His arms came around her, holding her close. The feeling of safety, of contentment, made her head spin.

  “Maybe I changed my mind,” she said.

  Maybe he changed it for her.

  When she woke, it was still dark outside. Gavin was fast asleep. He was a stealth cuddler: He started out on the other side of the bed, but during the night, he’d slowly gravitate to her side, wrapping himself around her.

  She glanced at the clock; it was nearly 3:00 a.m. She knew she wouldn’t be getting back to sleep, so she carefully extricated herself from Gavin’s arms and grabbed her robe and phone. She padded downstairs and turned just one lamp on in the living room before she began to methodically spread the victims’ files out on the rug for what felt like the tenth time.

  She was missing something; she was sure of it. So she was going to go old-school. She pulled out a pad of paper and a pen, then wrote each victim’s name down and divided the paper into four columns. And then she began making lists. Of everything. Their education. Their hobbies. Their schedules. Their favorite restaurants, where they got their coffee, what charities they donated to, what organizations they belonged to.

  “There has to be a connection,” she muttered as she ran out of room on the fourth page of the notebook. She flipped the paper over, starting on the other side as her phone began to buzz.

  It was a text from Zooey. She swiped on the screen to open it.

  Artist sent over his sketch from his consult with the jeweler. Ran it through all the databases. No match. Here it is.

  Grace scrolled down, but the photo Zooey had sent had only partially loaded. She turned her attention back to the list. Maybe there was some sort of event all five of the victims had attended?

  She glanced back at her phone and froze. Her vision began to tunnel, her ears roaring as she grabbed the phone with suddenly shaking hands, staring at the sketch that had finally loaded.

  No.

  It couldn’t be.

  Oh, God.

  Her breath began to come too quick, panic spiraling inside her.

  It was a mistake. It had to be.

  This couldn’t be.

  But it was. He was staring up at her in pen and ink.

  He’d done this. All of this.

  Because of her.

  Chapter 22

  Gavin stirred awake, reaching for Grace, still groggy. When he found her side of the bed was empty, he pulled on a t-shirt and went looking for her.

  He expected to find her downstairs drinking coffee or maybe going through files. But instead he found her on the floor of her living room, her knees drawn up to her chest, papers spread across the Moroccan rug in a haphazard sea of files.

  “Grace?”

  She sniffed, brushing underneath her eyes.

  She’d been crying.

  Something horrible and dark was clawing at his gut as she glanced up at him, her eyes swollen and her face full of guilt.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She gestured to the papers strewn all around her. “I figured it out,” she said in a shaky voice.

  “You know who he is?” But surely that was good news. The look on her face told him it was the worst kind of news.

  “I know who he is,” she said, her words clogged and choked, like she could barely say them. “And I know why he’s doing this.” Tears shimmered in her eyes. “This is my fault,” she whispered. “This is all my fault.”

  Gavin set two cups on the floor, sitting down next to her. “Drink this,” he said gently.

  She obeyed, taking a long sip of the mint tea he’d brewed, closing her eyes as the soothing taste drifted through her.

  “Now start from the beginning,” he said.

  “It’s a long story,” she sighed.

  “I have time.” The worry was hot and heavy in his chest: She’d totally withdrawn into herself, defeat written on every line of her body.

  Grace wrapped her arms around her knees tighter. “I was never close to my parents,” she said slowly. “My mother wanted a daughter to play the society game, and my father just didn’t really bother with me at all. I got sent to boarding school after elementary school and I never looked back. I came home to visit my grandmother, and I saw my parents, but it was always just . . . formal. And I was fine with that, I really was.”

  Her fingers, clasped together around her knees, flexed nervously as she tried to figure out how to continue. “Gran and I were so close,” she said. “She understood me. Encouraged me, even though my parents were horrified at the idea of me studying the criminal mind. She died three weeks before my eighteenth birthday.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Gavin murmured.

  “Before she died, she made some changes to her will,” Grace continued.

  Gavin’s eyes widened in realization. “The art collection.”

  She nodded. “My father was wealthy, of course. He’d inherited my grandfather’s company years before. But he expected to control the art collection someday, because he expected to control everything. That’s his way. The rest of her estate was impressive, but it was nothing compared to the art collection.”

  “And she gave it to you instead of him.”

  “The day I turned eighteen, it became mine,” Grace said. “My father was furious. He had plans to lease all the artwork to various museums. The income some of the pieces would generate . . . It was an enormous loss to him, not just monetarily but status-wise. He could’ve made some very valuable business connections in the art world with the collection. He tried everything he could think of—legally and emotionally—to discredit my claim. But my gran was a smart woman.”

  “I don’t think your father and I would get along,” Gavin said darkly.

  Grace let out a watery little laugh. “No, you certainly would not,” she said. “My father disowned me,” she continued. “Took away my trust fund and banned my mother from speaking to me. So when I got to college . . .” Grace pressed her lips together, her fingers twisting and rubbing against each other “. . . I felt very alone,” she said quietly. “I’d lost the one person I felt had ever truly been on my side, and both my parents were being so hateful, over money, of all things . . .”

  Gavin didn’t know where she was going with this. His lawman’s min
d was racing down the multiple avenues, examining the evidence, the facts as she gave them to him, but there were too many possibilities, too many variables still.

  “I threw myself into my studies,” Grace said. “I’d taken accelerated courses in high school, so I was able to take upper-level classes if I convinced the professor to consider me. I’d specifically chosen University of Maryland because they had one professor who I wanted to work with desperately. His name was Henry Carthage.”

  Something sick began to churn in Gavin’s stomach as the possibilities started to narrow in his mind.

  “I’d read all of Carthage’s papers and respected him to no end,” Grace said. “He had a way of approaching the science—of putting himself inside the criminal mind—that seemed brilliant to me. I wanted to learn from him, so I did everything I could to get his attention. He liked my enthusiasm. Offered to be my faculty adviser. Started teaching me in a private seminar, because he said I was too good for his basic criminology classes already.”

  And there it was. Confirmation. Gavin’s hand wanted to shake with anger when he pictured her, barely eighteen and vulnerable, still grieving and finding her footing, and this bastard . . .

  “I should’ve known better,” Grace said softly. “I was smart. I should’ve seen it coming and stayed away. He was a married man. I was eighteen, but I wasn’t oblivious. But when I met him, I felt like someone understood me again. I was in the thick of it before I realized I’d crossed the line.”

  “He took advantage of you,” Gavin said.

  “No,” Grace protested. “I really should’ve known better.”

  “Grace,” he said, moving forward so he was kneeling in front of her. He took both of her hands, folding them between his own. “You were a teenager. You were his student and he was your professor. He was in a position of power over you. That shit is predatory.”

  Her eyes shone with unshed tears as her hands tightened in his.

  “It only happened a handful of times before I came to my senses and realized the damage I could cause,” Grace said. “I tried to break it off. I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. When I started looking for a new faculty adviser, he went off the rails emotionally, calling me twenty times a day. Showing up outside my classes, outside my apartment. Telling me he couldn’t live without me.”