by Gayle Wilson
Jenna was wearing the same clothes she’d worn at the police station. Her eyes were wide and dark in a face that was a couple of shades paler than it had been the last time he’d seen her. So much so that he wondered if, despite having called him, she might already have opened the box to discover what he suspected would be inside.
He pushed his way in, conscious of her nearness as they literally brushed shoulders. The same sexual awareness he’d experienced when he’d taken her arm at the precinct tightened his groin.
Not the time nor the place, he told himself, just as he had then. And certainly not the woman.
The admonition had as little effect on his physical response to her as it had then. Despite the increasingly obvious gap between their circumstances, he’d been attracted to Jenna Kincaid from the moment he’d first seen her.
That would be Dr. Kincaid to you, Murphy. Why can’t you get that through your thick Irish skull?
Even if he hadn’t undertaken a mission that demanded every bit of experience and skill he possessed, thinking about the differences between them, and wondering how he could ever bridge them, should be discouragement enough. No matter how strong his attraction.
Despite the fact he was more than a little rough around the edges, he’d never had trouble making a connection with any woman he wanted. His reluctance to try with Dr. Kincaid was more the result of his realization that even if she was, by some stretch of the imagination, interested as well, he wasn’t sure he could keep her interested.
With the strength of the sexual pull he felt, that was a chance he wasn’t willing to take. Not now. Not with everything else going on.
He watched as she closed the door, engaging the dead bolt and then replacing the security chain. When she turned, he could sense her tension, vibrating beneath the surface of her composure like a tuning fork that had been struck. It was obvious she was holding herself together by sheer willpower.
Grudgingly, he admitted he was impressed. Most women would have been hysterical by now.
Another mark in her favor. Not that she gave a damn whether or not he was handing those out.
However well she was handling this, she was only a distraction to what he’d come here to do. “Where is it?”
The harshness of his tone reflected the dichotomy of his feelings. Thankfully, she’d have no way of knowing that.
“On the counter.” She looked past him, lifting her chin in that direction.
He turned and realized the box was exactly as she’d described it over the phone. The red satin ribbon, tied neatly into a bow on top, gleamed invitingly in the glare from the light above the sink.
In spite of its innocent appearance, the same anxiety he had sensed in Jenna flared within his chest. If this had been left by Makaela’s killer, then no matter how macabre its contents, it was a link to his sister.
To her death. And to her suffering.
He wondered if Jenna was aware of the trophies that had been taken from each of the bodies. She must have been, he realized, or she would have opened this by now. If not, she would have had no reason to suspect the box was anything other than what it appeared.
“Could be a Christmas present.”
His suggestion had been an attempt to delay the inevitable. Right now he was no more eager to untie that ribbon than Jenna obviously had been.
“In my refrigerator?”
“Something perishable.”
Which was, of course, exactly what he feared.
The sense of dread that thought evoked nauseated him, but there seemed to be no other reason to put this where it had been found. He jerked his mind away from the possibility he’d been considering.
There was really no point in speculating on what the package contained. Either he opened it and found out, or he called the cops. Either way, he would know soon enough. And so would she. Probably before either of them really wanted to.
“Any idea how long it’s been there?”
“The last time I can remember opening the door was Monday night. I think I would have seen it if it had been there then.”
But she wasn’t certain. So any time since Monday. And in actuality, maybe sometime before. Of course, if this were what he believed it was, given the timing of the Cummings girl’s disappearance…
He resisted the urge to relieve his growing tension by expelling several quick breaths through his pursed lips. That was what he always did before his unit went into action. A stress-release mechanism that was both habit and talisman.
Of course, the woman beside him would probably think he’d lost his mind. Again, he questioned himself angrily, What the hell would it matter if she did?
Surprisingly, he discovered it did. Despite the almost constant animosity between them, he didn’t want to look like a fool in front of Jenna Kincaid.
The sensation was so foreign to his normal attitude about women that it took him a moment to identify what he was feeling. Another to understand why.
That was surprising, too, although it probably shouldn’t have been. Jenna Kincaid was a desirable woman. One who, despite his initial impression, was both smart and courageous. Two qualities he’d learned to value in his life.
He pulled his eyes away from hers to look back at the box. It wasn’t going away, no matter how long he delayed.
“Gloves?”
“What?”
“You have any gloves? Plastic ones, preferably.”
“I think…” She started forward and then stopped as if reluctant to get closer to the box. “I think there are some under the sink. The maid uses them.”
The maid. She was definitely the kind who would have one, he thought with a touch of bitterness. Anybody who could afford this apartment would.
And just as his mother hadn’t to the people she’d worked for, Dr. Kincaid’s hired help didn’t seem to have a name. Just “the maid.”
“Would you get them, please?”
He understood why she didn’t want to. If she hadn’t made the comment about who used the gloves, he would have retrieved them himself.
But she had. And so he didn’t. A petty revenge that he acknowledged.
She glanced at him again, a quick look under her lashes, before she refocused on the other side of the room. Her lips tightened, but she didn’t argue.
She crossed the ceramic tile floor, her heels clicking in the apartment’s well-insulated stillness. She didn’t look at the counter where the box sat, but homed in on the cabinet under the sink. She opened it and located what he’d asked for by spinning a carousel that held cleaning supplies, neat and well ordered—probably the job of “the maid.” Then she turned, holding a pair of yellow plastic gloves out to him.
Once more she’d passed the challenge. And had made him feel like a jackass in the process. All without saying a word.
He walked over and took the gloves from her hand. As he did, his fingers grazed hers. The same jolt of awareness was back again. Stronger than before.
This hadn’t been part of the plan. Sometimes nature, however, in the guise of testosterone, trumped intellect and intent. Even his.
“Thanks,” he said brusquely, an attempt to destroy this very different kind of tension.
Her eyes were still wide and dark, but now there was a flush of color along her cheekbones. Seeing it, his arousal strengthened.
It was pretty obvious by her blush that she knew exactly what he was experiencing. Women usually did.
Neither of them had time for this, even if they had the inclination. And he didn’t know that she did. He only knew that he shouldn’t.
Jenna Kincaid was his ace in the hole. And if he allowed himself to become involved with her…
Mentally backing away from the possibility, he deliberately broke the contact between them by turning to look at the beribboned box. The bow was a simple one, tied like a child’s shoelace. The kind that could be undone by pulling on one side.
There were no visible wires. No tape. No oily stains that might indicate plastic ex
plosives.
It still looked exactly like what his first impression of it had been. A gift. One obviously intended for Jenna. And all he had to do to find out what was inside was to pull the end of that narrow ribbon.
“Step back.”
“What?” Her tone was sharply questioning.
“Step away from the counter.”
“You think it’s going to explode?”
“No.”
“Then why—”
“Because I said so.”
She laughed, the sound short. “Sorry. You’re going to have to do better than that. That one hasn’t worked since I was five.”
“Okay. How about I want to check out what’s inside without having you looking over my shoulder while I do it?”
“This is my apartment. And that—” she nodded again toward the box “—was left inside my refrigerator. Because of that, I’m going to assume it’s something that was intended for me. At least for me to see.”
The last phrase had been less confident. Maybe she had begun to figure out some of the possibilities. After all, she was a psychologist. Despite her initial disclaimer, she knew more than the average person would about serial killers.
“Suit yourself.”
He laid one of the pair of gloves she’d handed him on the counter and then tried to slip his right hand into the other. Whoever the maid was, her hands were obviously a hell of a lot smaller than his. He turned the cuff back until he could insert his fingers into the openings designed for them.
Then, expelling one long breath, he reached over and, taking the end of the ribbon between his gloved thumb and index finger, tugged on it. The satin slipped free of its knot, the other side falling onto the counter.
He carefully laid the end he’d pulled down, straightening it with one finger as he considered his next move. Although he didn’t look back, he was aware that in spite of his injunction, Jenna was leaning forward, putting herself into position to look into the box when he opened it.
Realizing that he’d forgotten to breathe during the past few seconds, he took another breath, this one slightly unsteady. Then, before he had time to change his mind, he reached out with the same two fingers he’d used to untie the ribbon. Still holding his breath, he gripped the lid and lifted it up and away from the box.
Thirteen
As soon as he’d lifted the lid an inch or two, Sean made a sound. One Jenna couldn’t begin to identify. One she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Despite the sense of horror that had grown the closer he’d come to revealing the contents of the box, she had instinctively taken a step forward. And then another. Moving closer until she was standing so near she could hear him breathing.
Air ratcheted in and out of his lungs, the inhalations ragged. Ugly.
Gathering what courage she had left, she peered around his shoulder. Compared to what her imagination had suggested might lie on the square of cotton wool, what she saw there was anticlimactic. A gold ring, its styling antique and its dark red, heart-shaped stone clouded with age or dirt, was centered on the pristine white liner of the box.
For a few seconds she thought it might really have been intended as a present. Of course, there was no one in her life right now who would give her something like this. Not as a token of a romantic relationship, which was what it looked like.
Since she’d never seen the ring before, she knew it didn’t belong to anyone in her family, which seemed to indicate…
“Why would he put that in my refrigerator?”
She didn’t want to accept the obvious answer to her question. That he had taken the ring off Carol Cummings’s hand and sent it to her as a warning that she was next.
Sean dropped the lid down over the box, hiding what it contained. As he straightened, his shoulder brushed her cheek.
She immediately stepped back, increasing the distance between them. Despite her response, she admitted that she wouldn’t have minded remaining that close to him.
He exuded strength. He had from the first day, despite his obvious anger.
Her sense that he was in command, both of himself and the situation, was something she needed as her own world spiraled out of control. That was the same reaction that had sent her scrambling into her parents’ bed when, as a child, she’d been unsettled by a nightmare.
What was happening right now was a nightmare. One Sean wanted to bring to an end as much as she did. The difference between them was that he possessed the skills to make that happen.
She didn’t. And she knew it.
“He needed to make sure you were the one who found it,” Sean said. “Putting it there was the surest way to guarantee that.”
The cops, who had finished their cursory examination of the apartment only minutes before, wouldn’t have opened the refrigerator door. And if the maid had, she would have assumed it was a gift.
Jenna had to wonder if the killer had also chosen the refrigerator because he wanted her to think exactly what she had thought. That whatever was in the box required preservation. A stupid assumption, perhaps, but one she’d made all the same. And it had both terrified and horrified her.
“What’s the ring supposed to mean?”
For a long time there no answer from the man still standing in front of her. He took another breath, but he still didn’t say a word.
“Sean?” Jenna realized this was the first time she’d called him by his given name.
The fact that she’d asked him to come when she found the box instead of the police would make a mockery of calling him anything else. For whatever it was worth, they were in this together, inextricably bound until it was resolved.
He turned so that, for the first time since he’d lifted the lid, she saw his face. It had gone gray beneath the tan.
Only then did she realize what she should have known immediately. She wasn’t the one who was supposed to recognize that ring. He was.
She was simply the conduit through which it had been conveyed. As the killer intended her to be. He had known all along that when she found it, she would call Sean rather than Bingham.
The nausea that had eased with her identification of the object in the box, something far less grisly than she had prepared herself to see, churned through her stomach again. How could he have been sure what she would do when even she hadn’t known? Not until her hand had closed around the phone.
“It’s Makaela’s,” she said. Not a question, but a conclusion. The only one that made sense.
“It belonged to my grandmother. Makaela always wanted it, even as a child. My mother finally gave it to her on her twentieth birthday.”
“And the killer took it when…” She hesitated, unable to say the words.
They would make what had happened to Sean’s sister too real. Too close.
Makaela’s murderer had slipped this ring off her finger, obviously as one of his trophies. An object he would touch and feel and look at over and over again in order to re-create the pleasure her suffering and death had given him.
“I looked for it when I cleared out the house. I thought maybe she’d lost it. Pawned it. She would have done that if she’d had to. It would have been for a good reason—to feed the kids or pay the rent—but she would have done it. And she would have gotten it back as soon as she could. I even looked for a ticket. Checked with a couple of nearby shops.” He shook his head, the movement small. Almost regretful. “I guess I could have asked the kids if she’d been wearing it, but they were still babies. I didn’t want them to ever think about what might have happened to it. Somewhere inside, I think I always knew.”
Other than the tirade in her office, what he’d just said represented the largest number of words she’d heard him string together at one time. That he was willing to share this much of his anguish over his sister’s death was undoubtedly the result of shock.
That would be natural, considering what he’d just discovered. And that meant, as much as she wanted to deny her own admission, it was up to her to think clea
rly right now.
“We need to call Bingham,” she said. “There may be trace evidence—”
“There won’t be. There never has been. Not on any of the bodies. No fibers. No hair. No prints.”
“He’s human. He makes mistakes. Or…he will eventually,” she hedged, knowing Sean was right, at least about the ring.
This wasn’t something that had been left behind, overlooked at a crime scene. The killer had given it to them. And he was smart enough, and careful enough, to make sure there was nothing on it or the box that could lead the police back to him.
“It doesn’t matter,” she argued. “We still have to let the police know.”
“This isn’t about them.”
“What?”
“This is between me and him. That’s the way he wants it.”
“I don’t care what he wants. I don’t even care what you want. I’m calling Bingham.”
She turned to put her intent into action. Before she had taken a step, Sean’s hand shot out, long hard fingers closing around her wrist.
Shocked, she looked up into his face again. His features were drawn, his skin still almost devoid of color.
“It’s a challenge.”
It’s a challenge… From the killer? He was challenging Sean? To what? Some kind of duel? A duel of wits? With more victims as the stake?
“I don’t care what he’s doing,” she said again, twisting her arm in a vain attempt to free her wrist. “We have to call the police. We have to tell them about that.” She glanced back at the box sitting innocently on her counter, its red ribbon gleaming beneath it.
“That ring belongs to my family.”
“I’m sure they’ll give it back when all this is over.”
“It won’t be over. Not if they’re allowed to stop me. And if you’re determined to do that—”
Had he finally crossed the line between desire and obsession? Enough had happened that she couldn’t blame him if he had. Burying his sister. Seeing to the disposal of her house and her possessions. And dear God, seeing to her children as well.
