by Misty Evans
On the way through the living room, he not-so-accidentally knocked a couple of expensive East Indian vases off a side table, and stuck the KABAR knife in a big, expensive leather recliner that smelled like Ahmed’s cologne. The large painting above the fireplace, the one Sydney had liked, drew his focus upward. The woman in the painting looked down at him with sad, brown eyes. Her red lips were half hidden behind a shimmering veil, and there was something familiar about the tilt of her eyebrows and the dark eyeliner she wore.
Mariam Rashid. The woman in the painting reminded him of the murdered woman who’d been running for prime minister in Lebanon.
For her sake, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to fake some evidence on a dirtbag killer. Originally, Grey had been appalled by Donaldson’s scheme, but now? Amazing how fast his thinking spun around.
He would never see a woman in a veil in the same light after this, and for that, he hated The Lion all over again. Up until now, the veil had symbolized feminine allure and mystery. Now his mind linked it to rape and murder. His knife hand itched to destroy everything The Lion had ever touched, but he left the painting alone. “For Sydney,” he whispered.
The basement door had a lock, making him all the more suspicious about its contents. A strike with the handle of his knife, and the lock broke. He descended the stairs, took out his Mag-Lite, and performed a visual sweep. The clutter was jammed from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. An assortment of furniture, odd and end tools, bicycles and camping gear that hadn’t seen the outdoors in at least ten years. He climbed through some of it, got as close to the walls as he could, looking for any kind of safe. Boxes and boxes of stuff that would take a dozen agents and a week’s worth of time to get through blocked most of his path.
This was the perfect hiding ground for a killer to conceal his trophies. He wouldn’t need a safe to stick them in.
If only I knew what I was looking for.
The veils were apparently important to Ahmed, a tool that helped him get off, but they weren’t souvenirs that he’d taken from his victims. Outside of the murder weapon or a string of confirmed DNA matches, the trophies were hard evidence that would make a conviction stick.
Grey climbed the stairs back to the kitchen. Trophies gathered by serial killers had been found in boxes of cereal, flour bins, and even drain traps. He did a thorough sweep of the cabinets, garbage, freezer, and refrigerator, and even stuck his hand in the garbage disposal. A handful of yuck was all he got.
At the back door, he investigated the security system in depth. The system itself was simple but reliable. Much like the password on Nabil’s computer, it was enough to deter common criminals, but anyone smart enough to jump on an internet forum about burglar alarms could get the directions to disable it. Grey had already disabled it, but now he wanted more. A few strategic cuts with his knife and the ADT station monitoring the house would know someone was here.
Exactly what he wanted.
He took one last look at the mess he’d made. The message was personal and aimed directly at Ahmed. The bastard couldn’t miss the fact that Grey had targeted his stuff, leaving Nabil’s alone.
Slicing the KABAR blade through the circuits, Grey set off the silent alarm. If this didn’t make the killer nervous enough to move his trophies, nothing would.
And Grey would be waiting when he did.
Leaving the brownstone, he drove in circles for a while. His head clearer, but the veil thing nagging at him. Syd’s safety nagging at him. The voice, while not as loud, was still in the background like an alarm he couldn’t shut off. What would it take for a little peace?
Catch the killer and you’ll know.
He started for home, determined to hit his private gym and punch everything in it until he found release. But when he saw the off ramp that led to Sydney’s, he took that instead. He didn’t even know if she was there. She’d called him from work, but it was easy enough to find out. Turning on his cell, he found six messages from her. Using voice activation, he told his phone, “Call Sydney.”
When she picked up, the relief in her voice was evident. “About time you called me back. Where the hell have you been?”
“Are you at home or work?”
“Home. After Ian’s visit this morning, I had to distract myself. I brought some intake forms home to work on, but I’m getting ready to go back for the afternoon.”
“Stay there. I’m on my way.”
He hung up before she could say anything. When his phone rang, he punched the ignore button. Words wouldn’t cut it. Not today. No explanation would do the trick.
Twenty minutes later, he parked outside her duplex, got out of the car, and stood staring at her front window.
Don’t let her see you like this, the voice hammered at him.
Then she appeared in the window as if watching for him. Her face lit up and damn. His body refused to get back in the car.
Across the street, the duplex door flew open, and there was Syd, hand on hip, giving him that look that drew him like a magnet. He wanted her, and he wanted her now.
Fed Boy jogged across the street and leaped over the two steps leading to Syd’s front door. He had a look about him—all hard angles and set jaw. She knew that look. Feral. Hungry. Grey needed something, and she had a fairly good idea of what it was. If she guessed correctly, the next few minutes would be a whole lot of fun.
She opened her mouth and he grabbed her and kissed her, pushing her into the entry foyer and slamming the door shut with his foot. When he broke away, she narrowed her eyes, but stayed quiet.
Yep. Fed Boy needed to exorcise his demons. She shoved him against the wall, sized up his clothes. “Tell me you didn’t do something stupid on account of me and screw up your career.”
“I screwed my career long before you entered the picture.”
She slapped his arm. “Should I turn on the news? Did you leave Ahmed’s body on the steps of Capitol Hill? Haul him up the flagpole outside the White House?”
“Nothing that dramatic.”
“Do I need to get my shovel and help you bury the body? Because I will, you know.”
“I do know.”
He locked eyes with her, let her see how much he wanted her, and the power of all that energy barreling into her stole her breath.
Syd held his gaze. She wanted him back. Even if it was only angry sex on his part.
It was hard to know who reached for the other first. Mouths met, arms cinched tight, and the embers between them ignited. Syd lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist. He shifted the two of them around and pinned her against the wall.
Like the first time they’d made love, clothes tore as their bodies sought release in each other’s arms. But this time, Syd knew that for Grey it wasn’t just about what his body wanted. His heart needed something too. Mostly likely, he couldn’t explain it, and in his current jacked-up state, wasn’t about to analyze it. But she’d been playing this game with her emotions for years and recognized the storm of anger brewing behind his eyes. All that pressure building, begging for release. Begging for that moment when his world would explode into a maze of pleasure that, for just a little while, would make him forget.
All she could do was offer him what she thought he needed and let him know she understood. No judgment. No psych session. No conversation. Just some good sex that would knock his socks off.
This, she understood.
Consumed with needs he probably couldn’t name, Syd let him take her against the wall.
Breathless and laughing, she arched with every stroke, meeting his body as it slammed into hers. “Come on, Grey. Is that the best you’ve got? Let me have it.”
He pumped faster, harder, and—my, oh my—this man took angry sex to another level. She squeezed her legs tighter and gripped his torn shirt, waiting for the explosion about to come. Their bodies moved together, not rhythmic, but primal and crazy and extremely, extremely perfect.
“Fed Boy, I do love sex with you.”
He ra
mmed into her one last time, bringing her to release first, then following her over the edge.
Grey slumped against her, trapping her against the wall. “Holy shit,” he said
Whatever it was eating away at him, it had to be powerful. She buried her face in his neck, where salty moisture met her lips. Slowly, she dotted kisses down the slope of his shoulder while his chest rose and fell from the force of their efforts.
“Grey?”
“Damn, that was a workout.”
“It was indeed. You can put me down now.”
He laughed. “I would but I can’t move.”
She slid one leg down, then the other, but remained against the wall where Grey’s weight pushed into her. She liked the feel of him so close. All that heat just for her. Once on her feet, a quiver shot through her thighs, the humming pleasure of an orgasm so fierce her body almost didn’t have room for it.
Oh, how she loved angry sex. Angry sex got rid of the demons.
She knew all about demons. Understood their ebb and flow. How they battered the soul and taunted the mind. Sex like she and Grey had just experienced released the bottled energy from that forbidden place where rotting demons nestled and spewed their hate and misery.
Grey finally pushed off her and studied her face.
“Was I too rough?”
“You may have noticed I enjoy active sex.”
“Active. Good word for it.”
She slid her hand down his chest, then around his waist and tugged him closer until their lips were inches apart. “In case you were wondering, we just had angry sex.”
He kissed her lightly. “Yeah.”
“So you’re aware?”
“I am.”
“In that case, you can tell me what it was that so desperately needed to be blasted out of your system.”
Grey made a lot of work out of zipping his pants.
No way could he look Sydney in the face and tell her how he’d let his anger get the best of him. No way.
Still, he owed her some explanation. “I’ve always had a knack for figuring things out. People, machines, systems. I can profile a terrorist as easily as I can field strip my Glock and put it back together. I can fly a helicopter into enemy territory as easily as I can design a high-end security system. Systems. To me, everything is a system.”
“Even killers?” Syd asked.
He turned away, stared out her front window. “Especially killers. As a whole, they have similarities, but as individuals, they have minute differences. They’re the real challenge for me. That’s why I went to work for ViCAP. We don’t call it profiling, and there’s a camp of nonbelievers that say profiling is crap, but for me? Profiling is legit. It’s finding those minute differences in the killers that holds the key to nailing them.”
She fixed her clothes, sat on the sofa. “Like a tell in poker.”
“Sort of.”
“You haven’t found Ahmed’s tell yet so you can’t figure out the system. It’s driving you crazy.”
She was driving him crazy. “The thing he did today with the veil? I think that’s his tell, but I can’t put a finger on exactly how. I went crazy because he threatened you. In my internal system, that’s the chink in my armor. Anyone who threatens someone I lo…care about…is going to end up with my Glock up his ass.”
“But you said you didn’t do anything to Ahmed.”
“I sent him a message. To shake him up. See if I can get him to make a mistake that helps us.” He stretched, checked his phone and sent her the no-fail, I’m-done-talking signal. “I should get back to the brownstone to watch the fun. By now, he’s found my message. I want to see what he does.”
She hopped off the sofa, grabbed his arm. “Nice try, ace. No so fast.”
His antics had been worth a shot, but if he had learned anything about Sydney, it was that if she wanted answers, she wouldn’t let him leave until he told her something.
They stared at each other for a solid minute.
“You know I won’t give up,” she said. “You might as well get it over with.”
Point taken on both counts. Grey puffed out his cheeks and blew air. “I went to Ahmed’s and tossed the place. Not Nabil’s stuff, just The Lion’s. I wanted to put some fear in him, see if I could get him to mess up and move his trophies.”
“You went to his house alone? What if he’d caught you?”
“I needed to do something, Syd. He got too violent with you, too threatening, and the voice in my head was…”
Grey trailed off and Syd’s forehead creased. “The voice in your head?”
Shit. Now he’d done it. There was no other way to explain, so he just went with the truth. “Yeah, I’m certifiable. You may have to check me into Edwin with your mother before this is all over.”
She blanched and he mentally kicked himself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be flippant. I’m a dumbass. It’s just…ever since my sister died—”
He needed to stop talking. Forget the disappointment on her face when he admitted he’d lost control and trashed The Lion’s house in a fit of anger—now he’d told her about his sister too.
Still, the words rushed out, and his heart did a little squeeze, but Syd wasn’t looking at him with disappointment in her eyes. She wasn’t turned off about his crazy, mental voice problem either. If the way her eyes were shining told him anything, it was that she wanted to know more.
“Your sister’s dead?”
“Yeah.” Deep breath. “Molly’s death was my fault, and after it happened, the best way I found to flagellate myself was mentally. I’ve been on a massive guilt trip ever since. The Lion getting violent with you triggers every hot button I have.”
He glanced at Syd, looking for…for…what? Sympathy? Understanding? No.
Support. That’s what he wanted. Someone to tell him that yeah, maybe he’d screwed up, but it shouldn’t be a reflection of his life as a whole.
She soaked it in. “What happened to her?”
Molly. Ten years. It had been almost ten years, and the pain in his heart felt like it had happened yesterday. He shifted so he could stare at the floor. “I let a killer into our parents’ home and he murdered her while I was in the back yard.”
Syd grabbed his hand and led him to the sofa. She laid a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry, Grey.”
Finally, someone who offered him sympathy that didn’t make him want to scream. That didn’t make him feel more wretched than he already did. “My dad was a hardass, riding Molly and me about everything. She was younger and in high school. I was home for a few days from West Point, waiting on an important call from JSOC. My father had a doctor’s appointment and my mother drove him, and while they were gone, Molly wanted this boy to come over.
“She was a straight-A student. Never said a bad word about anyone. A real sweet kid who couldn’t wait to get away from our dad, just like I’d done. My father hated this boy and refused to let her date him. He claimed there were rumors around town that the boy pressured girls. I figured the kid was just a horny teenager. After my parents left, my sister begged me to let the kid come over so they could play some stupid video game and hang out. I couldn’t say no. She was such a good kid and I felt guilty for abandoning her when I went to West Point. Besides, she was a smart girl. She wouldn’t let him talk her into anything. And I was right upstairs.”
“So the boy came over and what happened?”
He flexed his fingers. “One of my instructors was a CO in an elite black op Delta Force unit and put a bug in some ears about me. I had perfect grades and had passed all the physical requirements with ease. My knack for evaluating systems and coming up with better ways of doing things had been well received.
“This was only fourteen months after 9/11. The army had this Delta Force group doing hit-and-runs in Afghanistan and Pakistan trying to ferret out Bin Laden and his lieutenants. The Delta CO wanted me on board. The only problem was, I wasn’t a West Point grad yet, nor had I gone through the proper training, but I
had skills they could use. Some of the bigwigs were going back and forth over the details and I was waiting for that phone call to find out if I was going on the next run. I couldn’t tell my parents or my baby sister. Not even my friends at West Point. I was nineteen years old and about to drop smack dab into a war zone with a top-secret unit to profile terrorists. I was scared out of my mind, but damn if I wasn’t going to do it anyway.”
He took a second, his mind going back to that day. The outside heat. The happiness in his sister’s eyes when he said yes. “The kid came over and he was nervous, wired. I figured he was intimidated by me, so I blew it off. I left them in the house alone and paced around the backyard. The call came, and during the twenty minutes I was nailing down the details of my new job with Delta Force, the kid got mad at my sister because she wouldn’t put out and killed her. Later, we found out he was on Ecstasy.”
The few people he’d ever told always came back with, “you couldn’t have known”, but that wasn’t true. He should have recognized the signs that the kid was on drugs. Should have listened to his old man for once and followed his rules.
Sydney didn’t offer any platitudes. “I understand your guilt, Grey. The voice you hear is a symptom of that.”
“Ever since I put you in The Lion’s path, the voice has been beating the hell out of me.”
She wrapped her arms around him, pulled him close. “Tell it to shut up. You carrying around this guilt can’t bring her back. I’m not Molly. And I’m definitely not a teenage girl who doesn’t know how to defend herself. If something happens to me that I can’t handle, I know I have you. No matter what The Lion tries.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, swallowed the tightness in his throat. “There’s more.”
“Oh, honey, there always is. Tell me and get rid of it. I’m your partner, remember? You don’t have to carry everything on your shoulders,” she bit his shoulder lightly, “although I have to say, they are very fine shoulders. The rest of you is pretty nice too.”
