Heat poured from his body as a wave of adrenaline fed the rage that simmered like lava inside his brain. Suddenly his wool jacket was suffocating. He lowered the window and let the cold breeze whip around the interior of the car and flay his senses.
Brett had never questioned his professionalism before. He counted to ten as he contemplated turning the car around and heading back to Manhattan.
Controlling a coarse exhalation he took his foot off the accelerator and considered what had gone down. The all familiar stench of politics and power, poking meddling fingers into law and order, stirred up the murky water. It stank.
But Brett hadn’t fired him.
Yet.
Until he did, Marsh was going to track down the thief of Admiral Chambers’ painting and hope like hell the evidence was compelling enough to stand up in a court of law—no matter who’d stolen the damn thing. And Josephine?
Brett’s words had struck a raw nerve. Picturing her clear defiant gaze made him pause at his over-the-top reaction to the Director of the FBI. Her distaste for authority was rubbing off. She’d had a bad effect on him from the moment he’d first met her—spitting nails at everything he represented. But he wasn’t quitting on her. Ever. He just didn’t quite know how to get her to trust him.
He pressed his foot to the metal and sped toward duty and the job.
Josephine was safe.
That was all that really mattered.
* * *
Nelson bent over the photographs on his desk. It had taken fifty bucks and some genius detective work to discover the ID of the latest chick to get sliced and diced by the Blade Hunter. Lynn Richards—the woman he’d snapped two nights ago attending an art gallery opening with SAC Marshall Hayes. Nelson couldn’t believe his luck.
The babble in the office was cacophonous. The atmosphere in the city starting to buzz with fear and paranoia and all of a sudden Nelson’s mundane dealings with death, drugs and despair were getting the sort of attention normally reserved for movie stars and pop icons.
“Landry!” His pre-menstrual bitch of an editor stood at the door to her office and yelled across the floor.
He looked up uneasily, unable to measure her mood by anything except the glint in her eye. “Yes, boss?”
“Got anything new on the latest Blade Hunter vic?”
“Yup. Everything from her parents being at a VIP dinner at the time of the murder, to her dating a fed.” He waved Saturday’s NY News at her and pointed out Lynn Richards’ picture. Sweat dripped down the side of his face because this story could put him back in the game.
“That’s the vic? You’re sure?” Stalking over to his desk she examined him with a distrustful expression. Her natural look.
“Yup.”
There was a pause that spread across the whole office, everyone holding their breath.
“Get me copy in fifteen minutes and I’ll hold the front page.”
He grinned. “No problem, boss.” Excitement hummed through him even as he started typing his piece.
“What about the other girl?” She pinned the other woman on the front of The NY News with a crimson nail.
Nelson shrugged. He hadn’t got anywhere with that yet. “I don’t know who she is. I’m working on it.”
“The fed?”
Gonna wish he’d never fucked with this particular reporter. “Not available for comment.”
Her finely plucked brows arched. “I have my own sources. I’ll see what I can find out.”
Her Last Chance: Chapter Nine
“Do you ever sleep, Agent Walker?” Josephine eyed the deep lines gridlocking the fed’s face.
Sam Walker stretched his mouth grimly, shook his head, blue eyes lacking any real spark. “Not anymore.” He called Nicholl to say they were on their way back inside.
Vince hovered as her shadow and suddenly she was grateful. They started walking toward the concrete-and-glass building, flags snapping behind them with sharp cracks in the brisk wind. Walker touched her elbow with his hand and all Josie could really think about was the big gap at her side where Marsh should be.
And that freaked her out.
“There was another murder?” Vince’s deep voice rumbled like a bulldozer.
Walker glanced over his shoulder at the ex-SEAL. Nodded, but didn’t give any details. Cold stole over her flesh. Maybe if she’d remembered sooner, or admitted following her mother all those years ago, none of these women would be dead.
They passed through security, where Vince surrendered his weapon, before entering the building’s atrium. The doors of an elevator opened and a group of people poured out. One woman sobbed openly, her pale blonde hair raining down in an untidy mess. Josie sidled away, unable to bear witness to such raw hurt.
The woman saw her and stood rooted to the spot, oblivious to the people crowding behind her. “You.” Her face froze in a grimace of anguish that morphed into rage. “You know who did this. You know who killed my baby!” She launched herself, and for all her street-smarts, Josie stood there, immobilized by the hatred in the older woman’s eyes.
Bracing herself for the rake of nails down her face, she was stunned to be pulled backwards and placed firmly behind Vince’s broad back, unable to see a thing.
Bodyguard.
She’d forgotten about him.
The weakness in her knees surprised her. She leaned back against the wall as the poor woman was hustled away, the ensuing silence loud and echoing as people stood and stared.
Vince herded her into the elevator. Agent Walker got in beside them, rubbing his forehead. Maybe it was her fault. The killer’s malignant spirit was an essential part of the flames that had forged her.
“Sorry about that.” Walker sounded pissed.
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Getting off the elevator, Walker said, “Wait here for a moment.” Then he left them hovering in the corridor like unwanted guests at a party.
She and Vince watched him approach Special Agent Nicholl at the coffee maker, then pull him by a narrow lapel through an open doorway and out of sight.
“Looks like trouble.” Vince bobbed his eyebrows toward the doorway.
“What d’you mean?” Josie frowned at him—not getting it. Until suddenly the fog cleared. Nicholl had orchestrated that little scene downstairs.
But why?
To knock her off balance? That seemed the most likely reason, but why? What the hell could she tell them that she wasn’t already moving heaven and earth to remember?
Walker came back into the corridor with the look of a man who’d planted a punch on someone who deserved it.
“He really thinks I have something to do with this, doesn’t he? That I’m conspiring in some way?” Josie said. It was amazing that Nicholl could have such a low opinion of her.
Sam Walker said nothing as he led them to an interview room much like she’d been in before. He held the door for Josie, but put his hand in front of Vince to stop him entering.
“I’ll have to ask you to stay outside.”
Vince gave him a no way stare.
“If we’d done this at my apartment, Vince would have been there.” Josie pointed out. “Unless you want to take a break, Vince? Meet me back here later?”
“I told Marshall Hayes I wouldn’t let you out of my sight, ma’am.” Vince stated in a monotone. “Bathroom breaks excluded, provided I clear the room first.”
She crossed her arms and gave him a look. “Seriously?”
He cocked a brow. “Seriously.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Walker muttered under his breath. “Hayes leaves you a bodyguard but can’t be bothered to answer some basic questions—”
“What do you have against him?” She was baffled. The two feds were so alike—both dedicated, tenacious and so law-abiding they made her sick. She’d have thought they’d have been law-enforcement buddies.
“Nothing,” Walker answered quickly, then nodded Vince into the room. “Don’t interfere, okay?”
Vince settled his weight on one of the orange plastic chairs that had been born in the seventies. It creaked ominously, but Vince ignored it, braced his feet and crossed his thick arms.
Putting her knapsack—complete with Marion’s ashes—carefully on the floor beside the chair, Josie sat, realizing from the way Agent Walker refused to hold her gaze that something terrible had happened.
“Mind if I record this?” Walker asked.
Josie didn’t give a rat’s ass.
He flicked a switch and began by reciting the time, date and their names for the record.
“Where were you last night, Josephine?” Walker looked down at the table in front of him, staring at the files as if they were the most interesting things he’d ever set eyes on.
“What?” She squinted at him. Hadn’t he been there at her apartment until Marsh had kicked him and Vince out? She didn’t even know what time it had been, she’d been too wrapped up in memories. “You know where I was.” Her fingers gripped the corner of the table, her nails scratching at the thin veneer.
“Can you say it for the tape, please?” Walker looked innocent enough. Tired and weary. Maybe this was routine.
“I was in my apartment.”
“Did you leave your apartment at anytime last evening or before seven a.m. this morning?”
She straightened her back, the edges of her vertebrae cutting into the unforgiving plastic. “No.”
“Were you alone in the apartment?”
“No.” She frowned, her fingers tapping a rapid tattoo on the table and wondered what that said in the police handbook on body language.
Walker looked up, and she felt the temperature drop forty degrees. “Who was with you?”
She stopped tapping. “Special Agent in Charge Marshall Hayes was there with me. You know all this.”
“Marshall Hayes was in your apartment all last night? You’re certain?”
Damn, what the hell was going on?
“Absolutely,” she said loudly for the benefit of the tape.
“You’re positive Marshall Hayes never left your sight?” Walker’s eyes bored into hers. After her and Marsh’s heated exchange last night, she’d locked the door and never come out. Marsh had knocked on the door at eleven and told her he was sleeping on the couch. She hadn’t seen him ’til dawn. She stared straight at Sam Walker’s tired eyes and lied. “Marsh spent the whole night right next to me.”
Walker’s lips pinched together. Vince shifted, clearly ill at ease.
Playing the slut suited her better than playing the victim and she’d found over the years, people would rather believe the worst anyway. “Why?” Josephine asked.
Sighing deeply, Sam Walker pulled out a headshot of a young woman. The eyes were dull. Mouth flaccid. She’d been young once. And beautiful. “Do you know her?”
Josephine picked up the photograph of the woman. Tears blurred her eyes. The bastard had done it again. Her finger hovered over the girl’s face. They could have been sisters. The woman in the lobby could have been her own mother…
“I’ve never seen her before.” She bit her lip. “Who is she?”
Agent Walker slid the cover of the yesterday’s NY News in front of her nose.
A glossy photo of her and Marsh leaving for this building two nights ago was emblazoned front and center.
“I was on the cover of The NY News? I still don’t get—” But then her eyes slid to the picture beside it, and she picked up the photograph of the dead woman and placed it next to the picture of Marsh attending a gallery opening earlier that same evening.
“Oh, no.” Her eyes swung from Walker to Vince. “Does he know?”
Vince lumbered to his feet. Leaning heavily on the table, he stared down at the picture. “I doubt it—he wouldn’t have gone off like that if he did.”
They both turned their gazes on Walker, but Josie got the question in first. “You really think he’s capable of this?” Marsh was the most decent human being she’d ever met. He was so decent it was nauseating. “Marsh would never do this to anyone.” He was going to be devastated—blame himself for putting the girl in a killer’s bull’s eye. “And why would I be within a thousand yards of him if he were the guy who attacked me—”
“You said you didn’t see his face.”
Walker’s reply was stony—like she’d blown his most viable suspect. Well, the FBI must be grasping at straws to want to nail one of their best.
“You don’t need to see someone’s face to recognize them—it’s in the voice, the shape and breadth of someone’s shoulders.” She opened her palms wide. “It’s in the feel of someone’s hands, the scent of their skin.” Holding Agent Walker’s gaze, she willed him to believe her. “The guy who attacked me wasn’t Marshall Hayes.”
Vince straightened and moved back to his orange seat. “You know she’s right, Walker. You just don’t wanna let go of your nice juicy bone.”
Walker pulled his lips up in a bitter smile and shrugged as if conceding the point.
“Fine,” he shuffled the papers, “I ran your mother’s Social Security and driver’s license numbers through the system—neither has been used since she disappeared the night of your attack.”
The breath whooshed out of her body like she’d been slammed against a wall. “So she’s dead.” She stared down at the table, noticed graffiti marked the well-worn surface.
“Not necessarily…”
Josie jerked up her head. “What do you mean?”
“She could have moved abroad. Or be living under an assumed identity.”
Josie frowned. “The guy she was with was a missionary from Africa—”
“Africa?” Vince straightened up, suddenly attentive.
“Didn’t I say so yesterday?” Josie frowned.
Walker shot Vince a glare that told him to be quiet, then bent to check his notes. “You just said some guy from St. Mary’s Church.”
“He’d only been in the country a couple of weeks.”
“Where in Africa?” Vince demanded.
Walker glared at him again and looked like he was about to curse, but he glanced at the tape as if remembering it was on.
“I don’t know.” Josie shook her head, thoughts moving so fast they were spinning. Vince stood, all six-foot-seven of uncompromising muscle and stalked over to the recorder and turned it off.
“What are you doing?” Walker spluttered and then stopped as Vince shrugged out of his jacket and started unbuttoning his shirt, the holster where his Desert Eagle pistol usually sat empty, dangling beneath his left arm.
“Putting a different perspective on things.” Vince spread his shirt wide open, revealing a magnificent ebony chest and marks that made Josie’s heart knock against her ribs.
Six long deep scars ran over each side of his torso emphasizing his ribs. A tiny row of dots punctuated the top of each scar.
“A few years ago, I traced my family history back to a small village in Mozambique.” Satisfied he’d made his point, Vince pulled his shirt front back together and started redoing the buttons. “I went to visit and they tried to pressure me into a scarification ceremony—told me I wouldn’t be a real man unless my body matured in the way of my ancestors.
“I told them there was no way I was letting them near me with their old rusty knives.” He laughed, a boom of sound and shrugged his massive shoulders. “But I got sterile instruments from a nearby clinic and let them cut me—not because I wasn’t already a real man, you understand, but because I thought it looked cool.” He cocked a brow and tucked his shirt into his pants. “Lucky for me, I was already circumcised.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Josie tried to wipe the shock off her face, but failed. “So that,” she placed her hand on her ribcage, beneath her breast, “is common in Africa?”
“Not as much as it used to be, but yeah.” He nodded his head. “Tattoos don’t work well on black skin.”
“Did it hurt?” Walker couldn’t hide his distaste and she caught the look on
his face. His eyes dropped to her chest. An involuntary male response? Or was he thinking about her scars? She looked away.
“Like crazy, but women love it.” He winked and his diamond stud flashed.
Josie snorted, “Probably says more about the women you date than your sex appeal.”
“My point is…” Vince suddenly turned serious, “the cutting could be a link to Africa. I didn’t mention it before because I didn’t want anyone jumping on the race bandwagon. But even if this dude is white, he could have a connection to Africa,” Vince concluded.
Walker pulled on his lip with his thumb and forefinger. “If I recall some of my basic anthropology courses, scarification is also big in other indigenous populations in Australia and South America.”
All the moisture in her mouth dried up. “He uses those women like they’re a canvas to work on.” She shuddered.
Walker turned the tape back on. “Josephine. Let’s go over everything you remember about the man you believed ran off with your mother.”
* * *
The headache raging in Marsh’s skull had nothing to do with the naphthalene that radiated from Pru Duvall’s business manager’s office and everything to do with the staggering humidity of a brewing storm. Although, come to think of it, his head hadn’t stopped hurting since he’d found out Josephine was the target of a serial killer.
Despite being early October, the temperature was in the high nineties and the humidex was off the charts. Moisture clung to his upper lip and rolled a pathway down his body.
His hand tailored wool suit might be perfect for the insidious cold of the eastern seaboard, but was like wearing a wet blanket in Savannah, Georgia. He took off his jacket, waited for Thomas Brown to finish pouring a glass of iced tea. The cool liquid condensed on the outside, pooling on the dark wood for a moment before Brown handed it over.
“Thank you.” He took the glass from the neat little man and swallowed half of it in one gulp. His body temperature dropped a fraction of a degree.
“You’re welcome.” Brown smiled back. “More?”
Marsh accepted gratefully.
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