Erin watched a car carefully as they started to pull up. She could tell instinctively that it wanted to get over, and she could tell just as instinctively that it wasn't looking for two people on the back of a motorcycle about to pull up beside.
Just as she thought it, she felt Craig pull a little off the throttle and the car sailed harmlessly by them. She let out a little breath that she'd been holding and started to relax until she heard the bike roar to life below them.
Craig tugged the bike to the left and brought them up along the driver's side, taking a hand off the handlebars just long enough to rap on the window and make a vulgar gesture at the woman driving, who looked about ready to spill her coffee in her lap.
Then they pulled on past and slipped back into the center of the lane. They were leaving the city, even leaving the metro area, she realized. What sort of road trip was he taking her on? It would be an even bigger change of pattern to kill her out here, so in some ways it felt strangely safer out here, even as they became more and more isolated. He got them onto the interstate for a few miles, her grip getting that much tighter around his waist as the wind whipped at them both hard.
He pulled off into a bar that looked like they had more need for cops than the rest of the county, and the bike shuddered below them and expired as he turned it off, just the next in a long line of bikes.
"Not too bumpy," Craig said, as if he were making a general statement instead of asking her. She wasn't sure if that was intentional or not, but knowing him, he wasn't worried about her answer either way.
"No," she said, pulling the helmet off and trying not to think about what it had done to her still-damp hair.
"Come on."
Craig took her inside behind himself. There wasn't anyone at the door to stop them, but she got the impression that the wrong sort of person rarely walked into an establishment like this, and the few times that they did, it didn't take long for them to figure out the mistake and get the hell out before there was trouble.
Of course, that was part of the appeal for the men—and they were almost all men, save a few women who looked like they peed standing up—who came here. No outside interference. And as much as they probably had need for cops, she doubted that any, whether from the city or county boys, or even the staties, ever stepped inside the place. She might have been the first in years, and she was going to do her best not to stand out.
The clothes she was wearing weren't going to make it easy, but the company she came in with, she hoped, might be enough to get her free and clear out of trouble.
She had to hope, because otherwise things were going to get ugly.
Craig settled into a booth and let his eyes drift across the room, where they settled onto a couple of toughs playing billiards. Erin slid in across from him and waited to figure out what the hell was going on.
She didn't have to wait long, because a minute later, a familiar face turned around and made its way over to their table.
Nineteen
"Hey, Craig," the guy said as he slid into her side of the booth whether she wanted him to or not. Well, there had been plenty of things that she'd had no choice in, the past few years, and this wasn't going to be the thing that ruined her.
"Who's the chickadee?"
"Don't be crass," Craig said mildly. If it were someone else, Erin might have thought that he was letting it go. But she knew that wasn't what was happening. Rather, Craig was relying on the fact that he wouldn't have to say it a second time. If he did, she knew, there would be trouble.
The man beside her had been one of the faces on that sheet of men who had dated the previous victims. She wasn't about to assume that the both of them were all she needed to find. Two people didn't just meet each other and set off on a whirlwind murdering adventure like that. And the prosthetic work that would have been necessary to make Craig fit perfectly with the other two was prohibitive.
"Okay, well, are you going to introduce me to your friend, Hutchinson?"
"What, like we're friends?" Craig's face darkened. "Do you have the money, or don't you?"
Erin had to fight to keep her face straight. Maybe this was all set up to intimidate her, or maybe it wasn't, but she had stumbled into something that she wouldn't have been remotely privy to if they knew what she did for work.
"Relax, man. I got the money."
"Good."
The man slipped a fat yellow envelope across the table. Roy opened the top flap and looked inside. If he had any doubts that everything he wanted was in there, he didn't show it, and he didn't bother to count it.
She waited for the pass back, whatever it would be. Instead, the killer beside her waited a minute before asking, in his most nervous voice, "we good?"
"Yeah, we're good. Go on, now."
The broad-faced man got up and took a few hurried steps toward the door. Craig caught his arm.
"You try to conduct business when I'm here to relax again, and we're going to have trouble. You feel me?"
"Sorry, man. Won't happen again."
"You got it?"
"I got it!"
Craig let him go, and he pulled hard as he started to move away. Erin let out a breath and closed her eyes a moment, trying to relax herself.
"Sorry about that."
"What was that all about?"
"Oh, I did some work on his bike. It was making a mean bit of engine noise. Turned out he needed a complete rebuild."
"So he paid in cash?"
"You bet," Craig said, nodding softly to music that wasn't playing.
"Is that how all your business goes?"
"Not all of it," he said with a shrug.
"Who was that, even?"
"Oh, you know," Craig said. Evading the question again. "I met him around."
"Around, huh?"
"What is this, twenty questions? Yeah. Around."
"Sorry I asked." Someone finally came around, a guy who looked like he could serve double-duty as a bulldozer if the need arose, and Craig ordered them both beers. They'd take a basket of fries, as well, and make it snappy.
Apparently the deal the day before had set him off. Well, she wasn't going to complain if it meant better service, but it told her something about the man across the table from her. All of it did.
Whatever he was getting paid for, it was worth more than the bike he was sitting on. Time rebuilding an engine might add up to ten grand, but that wasn't the kind of atmosphere that surrounded a mechanic getting paid, and this wasn't the sort of place a mechanic hung out at noon.
"You said you knew my sister."
"Yeah, I said that. Knew her voice, from over the phone, anyway. Saw a few pictures. We tried a video chat one time, but it didn't work out."
"You don't seem like the computer type."
"No?" Craig shrugged. "You have to keep up with the times, don't you?"
"I guess so," Erin agreed. The fries came out with the beer, steaming hot and overfull for the basket they came in. Craig dumped some salt on and took one.
"So. Between jobs, huh?"
"For now," she said, mildly. "They come and go. I could have a contract tomorrow, or I could be another few weeks."
"For real?"
"Sure," she said.
"How do you manage to pay for it?"
"My mom left me a little money." It was a lie. After Dad left, she'd been a wreck. Barely able to keep herself together. Erin wondered how bad Dad had taken it, but then she decided that she didn't need to worry about that. He probably took it as badly as he took everything. It would make a great excuse to drink, but not a great excuse to change anything about himself.
"We should all be so lucky."
"It is what it is."
"I hear that," Craig said, another tug of a smile at the corners of his lips. "But hey. We all do what we have to in this life, right?"
"Exactly."
Craig didn't know how true that was for her. She would do whatever she had to do, and if that meant spending time with this bastard until he
slipped up and gave himself away, she'd wait all year if she had to.
He took a french fry between his fingers and moved over to her side of the booth, wrapped his free hand around her shoulder and pulled her in.
"I think something happened to your sister. You heard from her?"
"No," she said. "Not in years."
"See, that's a shame, darlin'. Family's family."
"I know."
"I watch out for my family, and they watch out for me. We fight, sure. Who doesn't? But we at least got that much figured out. We're responsible for each other. Nobody gets off, and nobody walks away."
"What's that supposed to mean? Like—you have brothers?"
"Brothers and brothers. I was the youngest, and my brothers looked out for me. Now I'm older, I look out for them."
"I don't know what that's like. My sister and I split up a long time ago."
"That's how it is, sometimes. But I'm telling you, it's not good. You need to reforge those bonds."
"Well, if I get any word on her…" Erin forced herself to swallow the anger that was threatening to spill out. "Then I'll do just that. You're right. It's too precious to waste time on petty little fights."
"See what I mean?"
"Yeah, I see what you mean."
He smiled and stood up. Pulled another fry and put it between his lips. Like a cigarette or something. Then he went over to an old jukebox, old enough to still be using C.D.s, and thumbed a couple quarters in. A minute later it started playing something and he slid back into the booth opposite her.
"Of course, sometimes you have to take a hard line with them, too, you know?"
"What?"
"With family. I heard a little about your parents' situation. A year, it's a long time, you get to talking, and that sort of thing comes up. Bad stuff."
"Well, sometimes you have to deal with bad stuff."
"Oh, no, I ain't doubting that. But what I am saying is, I know your dad didn't do your mom right. As much as I care about family, as much as I'd do anything to keep my brothers safe—" he sucked in a breath through his nose and let it out like a bull about to charge. "—Someone did my momma like that, and they wouldn't be in no position to do it to nobody else. Not ever again."
Twenty
It wasn't the first time that she'd thought it. It wasn't going to be the last time. Dad would have deserved it, if either of his daughters had decided to take that route. But hearing someone else dropping a not-so-veiled threat had been jarring, to say the very least.
Erin forced herself to focus again for a moment. On the bike, with him driving, riding was easy. Painless. She could forget about the whole world, just let him control her weight and let him take her wherever she was going. But that wasn't the life she wanted, and it wasn't the life she was going to have for herself.
The minute he slipped up enough for the cops to get involved, she would get them involved, and she'd be free and clear. He pulled up in front of her building. To her surprise, he didn't get off or park. He just let her off at the door. Not that she minded.
She felt her phone buzz in her pocket as she slid off the side. If she didn't miss her guess, that would be Roy. She had an hour to get back to him, or the game was over.
The question, now, was whether or not to tell him what had just happened. He deserved to know. But there was the risk that he would be over-cautious. He could decide that they were putting her at too much risk, and with the clear connection now between Craig and the previous killers, they had what they needed to make a move.
She couldn't allow that. The picture wasn't complete. If they moved in now, then she would have wasted her time and all for a whole hell of a lot of nothing. That wasn't acceptable. Not remotely. Erin's keys came out of her pocket easily as she hit her floor. There wasn't any sign of a break-in. That, at least, she was thankful for. She fit the key into the lock and turned it.
The door was finicky. It didn't like to come unlocked; there was a little hitch in the motion that she'd learned to deal with over the years. It came open easily enough, though. She flicked the light on. Same as she'd left it. Erin didn't know why she had expected any different, but now that she was there and everything was okay, she let out a sigh of relief.
The laptop was still closed on her desk. The place looked exactly the way she'd expected it to. Her wallet, still sitting out on the counter. Still closed.
Something about the way that he'd come on such short notice, the way that Craig had told her to leave everything. It had driven her to think that someone was going to come around after. If someone had, then they had done a very good job hiding it. Then again, she was just being paranoid. Craig was a thug, and he was perfectly capable of getting inside. He'd already proven that.
The only reason that a guy like that demonstrates anything, though, is so he doesn't have to use it. She knew that. If he was showing off that he could get in, it was so that she wouldn't try to hide anything. Because it wouldn't work.
And besides that, as much as she suspected that he would belong to a gang—suspected even further that whatever she'd just seen was gang-related payment—that didn't mean he had the clout with them to send some kind of fixer by her apartment.
Unless he suspected something was up, there was no reason to send anyone in the first place. The whole idea made no sense, none of it did. Erin dropped her jacket over the back of a wooden chair and then pulled her phone out of her pocket. Roy's number showed a message. She read it.
Just checking in.
She said that she was alright, she was at home.
The question of whether or not to tell him was still bothering her. She had to have a free hand. That was the whole purpose of doing it this way. Of not doing it alongside the police force, of not telling her damn Captain the whole plan from the beginning.
If she reported every little thing to Roy, then it was only a matter of time before he decided that she was taking too many risks, that she was putting herself in 'too much' danger.
There was no such thing as too much danger, though. She knew that instinctively. Her sister had put herself in too much danger, and she was dead. Craig was a shock in a lot of ways. She didn't know how to feel about his sexual appetites. Didn't know how to feel about the way that he treated her like his little rag doll. Like his property.
But she knew he was right about one thing. It was her job, as the sister, to protect Becca. She'd failed that job utterly, which meant that there was only one alternative.
Now that it was done, she had to see it finished.
Erin clicked her phone off and slipped it back into her pocket. She had a long time to think. That much was good, at least. She needed the time.
The questions were piling up again, and she wasn't finding the answers she needed fast enough. It was only a matter of time before one of them slipped. Either Craig slipped up and let on that he knew what happened to Becca, or she slipped up and let him know that she was on to him.
Once that happened no more nice guy. No more friendly visits. It would be open season on her ass.
Who was the guy he'd made that hand-off to? Who was he really?
She had to assume that the names from the online profiles were all fake. Craig's too, she knew, but that didn't change that she had nothing else she could call him.
There was at least one other, unless she was wildly underestimating them.
Given how similar the broad-faced man had looked, though, she wasn't keen on believing that just yet.
Which meant that one more, minimum. There might have been two more, maybe three. Maybe there were others that they hadn't made the connection to, yet.
Erin took a breath.
What was the significance of the pattern? If it was one person, then they could profile that guy. Maybe it was worth something, maybe it wasn't. Roy didn't put much stock in it, and they didn't have any cause for profilers in the L.A.P.D.
But if they were a group, and all of them did it the same way, then there was something else to it
. Someone, maybe the first killer, maybe someone else entirely, had told the others that this was going to be how it was.
Seven stab wounds in the gut. Alley in the bad part of town. She was missing something, she knew it. There had to be some sort of connection. Some reason that three or more people would get involved with a murder game like this.
Erin's hands were shaking, she realized. She pressed them flat against the bed and let out an unsteady breath. This wasn't how she was supposed to feel. She was supposed to be in control. She was supposed to feel like she knew what was going on with her life. With the case. She was supposed to feel like she was in the driver's seat.
Instead, she felt like she was on the back of that damn motorcycle. Someone was taking her for a ride, and she could wonder all she liked why they were doing what they were doing, but she wasn't going to get any answers. Not at this rate.
Erin tried to calm her mind. It was still early. She'd been working the case for less than 48 hours. That was more time than she wanted it to take, but sometimes these things took time.
She already had a solid lead on a suspect, she already knew what he was doing. She already had a solid link between him and the prior murders. The only question now was why she was feeling so much like she had nothing at all.
Was she building a house of cards? What was she going to do when it fell? She shook her head.
House of cards or not, she wasn't going to let it get to her. She needed to keep herself focused. That was the only option Erin had left, now, and she would be damned if she was going to let some motorcycle punk take her for a ride when it came to her sister's murder.
Twenty-One
Waiting for Craig to call wasn't going to get anything done. She knew that, but he hadn't told Erin near enough to track him down. She slipped into the old Jeep. The only connections she could make were that bike and that biker bar. Well, looking for a single motorcycle in a city this size wasn't going to turn into anything. Not for someone working off the books.
BITCH (A Romantic Suspense Novel) Page 8
