Kylie Brant - What the Dead Know (The Mindhunters Book 8)

by Unknown

  She drew up to fit her mouth more firmly against his. In heels they’d be nearly eye to eye, but stocking footed his height topped hers by a few inches. As their lips moved together for the first time, she interpreted the whisper of demand in his touch and wondered what else lingered beneath it. Because she’d learned enough about Finn Carstens to know there was far more to the man than met the eye.

  His hand stroked up her spine and down again, the simple movement imbued with sensuality. She caught his bottom lip in hers and scored it gently. It had been a long time since she’d been in a man’s arms. It shouldn’t be a near stranger’s embrace that felt like coming home.

  But Finn Carstens didn’t seem like a stranger. And that realization would have had a more rational woman running far and fast.

  His mouth went to the area beneath her ear, and her throat arched to give him access. Keira didn’t know when her hand had gone to his hair, but the feel of the strands tangled in her fingers, the sensation of his lips on her flesh had her pulse rollicking in a way that made distant inner alarms shrill.

  She wasn’t given the chance to respond to them. She could feel the stillness coming over him and knew reason had filtered through him, as well. And she was honest enough with herself to recognize that a part of her mourned the change.

  He straightened, creating a barely perceptible distance between them. “Ah....” It was gratifying to see the effort it took for him to collect his thoughts. “You’ve mentioned your dislike for bossy men, so consider this a suggestion. Go up and change. Maybe soak a while and I’ll take care of dinner.”

  She gave herself another second to enjoy the warmth of his body against hers, the sound of his thudding heart before stepping out of his loosened arms. “There isn’t a whole lot more than the soup, I’m afraid.” The idea of a bath was tempting. She’d been planning exactly that on her way home, before… Her mind skittered away from completing the thought. Before.

  “I don’t lack imagination. I’ll figure something out.”

  Because she was having trouble tearing her attention away from his mouth, Keira took the opportunity he offered and beat an almost too hasty retreat from the kitchen.

  _______

  By the time Keira returned downstairs clad in a Chicago Police Department sweatshirt and flannel pajama bottoms and thick socks, Finn had regained his composure. Her absence had given him time to recover a control that had threatened to slip its leash the moment he’d tasted her. For a man who had long ago mastered the art of restraint, that moment of near desperation was unnerving.

  Keira Saxon had fascinated him from their first meeting. Tough and beautiful. Poised, yet vulnerable. Casual sex held no interest for him, but in those brief moments he’d had her in his arms, there had been nothing casual about the surging in his blood. His gut had been in knots over her near death experience, but it hadn’t been concern that had fueled his kiss. That realization was more than a little troubling.

  “You must have raided the deep freeze in the garage.”

  “I did.” He set a bowl of soup and a cheeseburger in front of her along with a glass of the wine he’d found in the fridge. “Plenty of meat. No bread, though. We’ll have to make do.” It didn’t escape his notice that she reached for the wine before the silverware. He could have used something stronger than beer himself.

  He sat down beside her. “I almost nabbed the leftover Chinese in there. Figured maybe you were saving it.”

  Shaking her head, she set the glass down and picked up her spoon. “Tiff was here a couple nights ago. She brought Chinese and wine.”

  Finn cut into the cheeseburger. If he were going to be staying here for any length of time, he’d get some groceries himself. He hadn’t even been able to find ketchup. He wasn’t a fussy eater, but he did require the basic necessities. Who didn’t stock ketchup? “Do you need to call her?”

  Swallowing, Keira shook her head. “I sent her a quick text an hour ago. With the law enforcement presence here tonight it’ll be a wonder if she doesn’t hear something at Dizzy’s.” Reaching for her wine again, she added, “I didn’t have much to share even if I’d been free to give her the details. I’ve been over and over this and can’t figure it. Why would the killer try to engage me in this game of cat and mouse, ensuring that I knew about Danny and Atwood’s deaths…and then attempt to kill me? Where’s the payoff in that for him?” She drank and resumed talking as she lowered her glass. “Unless…Maybe he didn’t mean to kill me. Maybe it was just a scare tactic.”

  His jaw clenched, making it impossible to continue eating. “If so, I’d say mission accomplished.” And Keira hadn’t been the only one scared. “But it wasn’t. If you hadn’t ducked at that precise moment, you’d be dead right now. A head shot. In the dark.” He saw her almost imperceptible wince, and mentally throttled back the words that had been bottled up inside him, fueled by fear. “Did you find any brass out there?”

  She shook her head, scooped up some soup. “Hank will rent some metal detectors tomorrow. They will be our best chance of retrieving anything. There were three shots and fresh snow on the ground. It would have been difficult for the shooter to find anything in the dark.”

  Three shots. Finn took a long swig from the beer. Which made her three times lucky. It was impossible not to wonder if and when Keira’s luck was going to run out.

  He put the bottle down. Picked up his fork and tried to tamp the fear the thought brought. It could fog thinking. Cloud objectivity. And it was imperative that it be allowed to do neither.

  “Tonight took a specific skill set. One hundred yards out, in the dark, through the trees. And he was able to put a hole directly through the center of the passenger window.” Savagely he stabbed at another piece of hamburger. “Not a spectacular shot, but well above average. We’ll take another look at the list of names with grudges against your dad. Start digging to see which have marksmanship skills. It’s natural to assume this is linked to your dad’s killer, but we can’t be sure it is. Not yet.”

  Keira reached for the bottle to tip more wine into her glass. He didn’t object. Finn knew few women who demonstrated nerves as reliably steady as hers. But they would be understandably frayed now. “I realize that. I just have trouble believing that all of a sudden we have two crazed killers in Alger County.”

  “Has Bielefeld been released yet?” The man was facing a stiff prison term based on their findings on his property, and once the drug investigation was completed might even be charged under federal drug laws. Revenge could be a powerful motive for a man looking at the possibility of a thirty-year sentence.

  She shook her head. “No, and he won’t be. The judge denied him bail. The prosecutor successfully argued that he was a flight risk, plus he was slapped with multiple parole violations. His buddies haven’t been able to pay the bail yet. Given the amount it was set at, maybe they won’t.”

  Finn nodded. “Doesn’t mean none of them were involved, just that they weren’t the ones to pull the trigger.” And what better alibi than to be in jail when someone tried to take out the sheriff who arrested you?

  Keira sat back, her fingers toying with the stem of her wine glass. “Hank Fallon dug into his portion of the list you gave him. He discovered Bruce Yembley lost a long ago marksmanship contest to my dad.”

  “Interesting.” He got up and carried his dishes to the sink. “Fallon has some skills in that area, as well. So does Milestone.” He turned in time to catch the shock on her features. “Hank has taken part in law enforcement sponsored contests all over the upper Midwest, from what I was able to discover today.”

  “You were busy.” Her flat tone told him more than her words how unappreciative she was of his efforts. “Cops have to re-qualify on weapons regularly. Hank has placed at some National Police Shooting Championships. Just like Phil did in his time. And my dad. I recognize we need to look at everyone, but I find it hard to believe any of my deputies is capable of this.”

  Because she seemed to be finished eatin
g, he cleared her dishes, as well. He realized how difficult it would be to suspect co-workers in a case like this. But it didn’t matter if Keira was able to be objective about it. That’s what he was here for. He started to rinse and load the dishes in the dishwasher. It was a measure of her distraction that she didn’t object.

  “I began combing the DNR records for those with hunting, fur harvesting and fishing licenses. Figured we’d cross-reference them with the list of Danny’s enemies.”

  “We will.” Finished with his task, Finn shut the dishwasher and grabbed the dishrag to wipe the stovetop and table. Then he poured the last of the bottle into her glass and picked it up with his beer. “Let’s finish these in the family room.”

  For the first time, she seemed to realize that he’d cleaned up. A small smile curved her lips. “You’re a handy guy to have around, Carstens.”

  That smile punched into his chest like a rocketing right jab. It took a moment to summon a response. Another before he had the breath to utter it. “Glad you’ve changed your mind.” He moved out of the room, feeling a sudden need for distance. For the first time he questioned the wisdom of being the one to spend the night—and all nights in the foreseeable future—under the same roof as Keira Saxon.

  The curtains had been kept drawn since the first break in. He put the drinks on the coffee table and busied himself switching on the fireplace. When he turned, he saw her on the couch, powering up the computer. He realized she’d be reviewing the security footage at the front of her property. And he knew it would be futile. “You’ve been in contact with your deputy who’s been monitoring the cameras?”

  “Chase called in the shooting as it was going down. Probably sped up response time by at least a minute.” She glanced up from the screen as he sat next to her. “I told him he could knock off for the evening, but I know him better than that. He’s likely been over this feed three or four times by now.”

  She had no more brought up camera one, however, than she bounced up off the couch, reaching for her phone. “Rose Atwood,” she said, seeing his quizzical look, and again he realized what she was about. He didn’t pretend not to listen as she placed the call to Matthews, who in turn would inform Joseph Atwood’s mother that her son was indeed dead. The single thread of hope the woman no doubt harbored would be snapped. Her life would be forever altered.

  Just as Atwood’s life had irrevocably changed the moment he came into contact with his killer.

  Keira’s face was grim when she rejoined him. “We need to comb through the victim’s life,” she said flatly, her gaze trained on the monitor. “See if we can find any more intersections besides the outdoors one that would link him even remotely to my father.”

  “We definitely will.” Maybe this wasn’t the first time the man had lived—or trapped—in the county. Finn reached for her wine, handed it to her. “I also ran the tests on the hair we collected at your break-in. I’m over ninety percent certain that it came from a beaver.”

  Her head jerked around to stare at him. “It was on the intruder’s clothes. His gloves maybe.”

  He nodded. “So we have scat and an animal hair left behind at the scene. I looked it up. Beaver is in season right now.”

  “It could have been shed from a fur hat or a vest of some type.” But he heard the thread of excitement in her cautionary words. He’d felt a similar surge of interest at the finding until her text had shattered all thoughts except getting to her side, as fast as humanly possible.

  “You say you’re only ninety percent certain?”

  He lifted a shoulder, flicked a glance at the screen. There was nothing but stillness showing. “There’s no law enforcement database of mammalian hair, but Raiker does have a contract with a forensic biologist to compile one. It’s still going through the verification process. Hence I can’t be one hundred percent certain. And I considered fur clothing. But there was a tiny amount of animal blood on the hair shaft. And no evidence that dyes or chemicals had been used to treat it.”

  She brought the glass to her lips. Drained the rest of the wine before leaning forward to set the glass on the table. “So we have an indisputable link to trapping. Which connects again to his second victim, but not to Danny. That narrows our focus for tomorrow, cross-checking individuals with fur harvesting licenses and those who resented him for some reason.”

  “The prints we collected after the break-in were a bust.” He supposed it had been too much to expect otherwise. “I didn’t find one on the ear, but I had sent the clear ones from the window frame, counter, fridge and plate in to a fingerprint examiner at Raiker’s lab. I received the results tonight. Because you and Danny are law enforcement, your latents were in the system and both popped up. There were other prints found, but they had no hits.”

  Her cell rang and she brought it up to check the screen. Her shoulders slumped a bit. “My mother.”

  Finn looked at the time on the computer. “At this hour?”

  Keira was already getting up from the couch. “She’s in LA for a couple weeks. She can never seem to keep the time zones straight.” She strode a few paces away. “Hey, Mom, what’s up?”

  Tuning out the rest of the conversation, Finn turned his attention to shutting down the computer. Screening the feed was useless. The cameras probably had a range of up to forty feet. Unless the shooter had actually been in the drive, he wouldn’t have been caught on screen. He froze in the next moment as the image on the computer showed headlights approaching the house. But they didn’t belong to the shooter. The time stamp on the feed told him that much. Finn sat transfixed as Keira’s vehicle drew closer.

  A sense of fascinated inevitability filled him. The SUV slowed. Because he knew where to look, he saw the muzzle flash and then the shattered window. A fist squeezed his heart as the vehicle stopped and the door opened. Keira hurtled through it. The next shot was inches away from her.

  “Okay, I’ll talk to you later.”

  He pressed the power key and shut the lid of the computer when he heard her sign off. Forced a smile when she crossed back over to him. “That was short.”

  “She’s off to a party. She’ll call tomorrow to give me a detailed rundown on what everyone wore, their hair and a hundred other details that I have zero interest in.” A corner of her mouth kicked up as she sat down again. “But I’ll listen because it gives us something to talk about, and with my career off limits, those topics are in short supply.”

  “I take it she doesn’t approve.” His own parents had a bit of difficulty adjusting to the fact that he wouldn’t be using his medical degree anymore, at least not full-time.

  “That would be a polite way to state it.” Keira eyed the laptop. “You shut it off?”

  “Pointless to watch it.” Somehow he’d find a way to forget the images captured there. “He was too far away to be caught on camera.”

  Her gaze went to his face. “You saw the scene on screen?”

  His lips tightened. But all he said was, “And there’s no point in watching that either.”

  “Not if I expect to sleep tonight, I suppose.” She didn’t move, falling silent for several minutes as she gazed into the fire. He imagined she was pondering the near-death experience. But her next words proved it wasn’t her death she’d been contemplating.

  “What did you mean, earlier? About autopsying bodies of people you cared about?”

  He folded his arms, aware of the tension creeping through his muscles. Sorting through possible answers, he offered her a slice of the truth. But not all. “I was with DGR, which is a DC organization for doctors providing global relief in needy spots internationally. Did one mission annually for about five years running. The last was in an Afghan hospital a couple of years ago. A terrorist ran into the ER area with explosives strapped to his chest. He detonated them.” Her hand crept up to rest on his arm. Finn stared at it unseeingly. “Thirty medical personnel were in that clinic. At least triple that number of patients. Twenty were killed, half of them staff. The victims had
to be identified.” The thread of desolation that worked through him was all too familiar. “For some I could only do that by matching DNA with body parts.”

  Her fingers squeezed his arm. Long and slender, they’d look right at home poised over the keyboard of a baby grand. But they appeared equally proficient holding a Sig Sauer pistol.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He recognized the sincerity tracing through the simple phrase. For an instant it summoned the rest that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—bring himself to tell.

  “Yeah.” A long slow breath escaped him. He turned to look at Keira, who seemed closer than he’d remembered. “Sometimes what we do sucks.”

  “And sometimes it makes a difference.”

  And those were the moments they worked for. He wondered if that was the source of the connection he felt between them. One that had nothing to do with familiarity or long friendship, and everything to do with the recognition of a kindred spirit.

  Her cell pinged, and she straightened, removing her hand from his arm to read the incoming text.

  “Tiffany?” Finn was a bit surprised the woman hadn’t called and demanded a full explanation for the message she’d received. From their only meeting she hadn’t seemed the type to be put off.

  “Chase. He just wanted me to know he’s watched the feed a couple more times and can’t make out anything. He suggested sending it in for enhancement, but that’s a long shot, with the cover the shooter was using as a screen.”

  “He was too far away to be picked up by the cameras,” Finn agreed.

  There was a slight frown between her brows as she scrolled through her messages. “Now that you mention it, I am a bit surprised that I haven’t heard from Tiffany. It’s Friday night. The restaurant is probably packed and she hasn’t had a free minute to check her phone. Which is fine with me.” Rising, Keira stretched tiredly. “Further explanations can wait until morning.”