by Ben Hopkin
But now she was intrigued. Hunting serial killers was what she had really created her company for. Chasing down penny-ante drug smugglers just paid the bills. If she took this job, it would be their first bona fide serial killer contract.
Did Locroft know that he was dangling the most fragrant cheese in front of her? She couldn’t give away her interest though. That would have been poor negotiation form.
“How much?” Kyra asked.
“Kyra,” Jacques hissed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, her filter was a little thin right now.
Locroft looked her up and down. “Your usual fee.”
Kyra shook her head even though her usual fee was twice what this smuggler job would bring in. “I’m committed here.”
“There is another bit of information that might help sway you,” Locroft stated, then fiddled with the edges of his mustache. “This is a case that taps deep into our country’s psyche. This isn’t just any killer that’s being copied.” Again, he paused as if the news he delivered were physically painful to him.
Kyra didn’t press him. Did he know that she had been raised in the UK? Was he thinking that he could stir her nationalist heartstrings? Not very likely, for numerous reasons.
Another swipe at his mustache, and the man finally spit it out.
“It’s Jack. He’s copying Jack the Ripper.”
CHAPTER 1
Kent breathed in a lungful of air. It smelled like bangers and mash, clove cigarettes and excitement tinged with desperation. That was London for you. The weather had gotten a little cold since their landing, so Nicole’s fingers were intertwined with his, shoved deep into his pocket. Her engagement ring and wedding ring rubbed against his skin.
It had been odd enough to only have the engagement ring, now the wedding ring? Let’s just say in high school he hadn’t been voted the most likely to get married. Nor in college or at Quantico, or… well no one could have guessed this. Especially not Kent.
“They aren’t lying about the weather,” Nicole commented as they slowed. The fog had gotten thicker. So thick it was nearly impossible to see even a few feet ahead. They had come to an intersection and the streetlight seemed it might be just a fragment of his imagination. Was it really green or was that a trick of the light?
Cars honked, using their horns as nearly a type of sonar device, letting all pedestrians know they were coming. This sharp noise cut through the unnatural calm of the fog.
A honeymoon shrouded in fog and mystery. Just how he liked it.
Finally deciding that the green shaped blob up ahead was in fact a green light for pedestrians, Kent urged Nicole across the street. They had a lot to do today before the jet lag really kicked in.
“No,” Nicole stated coming to a complete halt.
“What’s wrong?” Kent asked, trying to sound oblivious to her meaning.
“I may not be as smart as you,” Nicole commented correctly. “But I’m not an idiot.”
Again, Kent tried to play coy, although with Nicole it really didn’t work, as she jabbed an elbow into his side. His ribcage was literally painted with bruises up and down the skin, since Nicole’s favorite way to bust him was to shove that rather pointy elbow into the closest flesh she could find.
“What?” Kent asked, trying to play away her suspicions.
Nicole pointed to the vague shape of the building in front of them. “Seriously, Kent, I can read.” That she could. “The New Scotland Yard? Really? You are going to play dumb?”
“What? Isn’t that on every law enforcement officer’s sightseeing list?” Kent cajoled.
Nicole turned to him, crimping her eyelids, glaring at him. His casual indifference wasn’t cutting it today. Especially since they had needed to delay this honeymoon a week to take down a couple of serial killers back home. Okay, so it had been four, but who was counting?
Nicole had really been looking forward to London. She’d surprised him by being quite the Anglophile. She had somehow ordered a royal baby commemorative plate without him knowing about it. She’d whipped out her “London Calling” tee-shirt as soon as he’d booked the tickets.
It wasn’t until the plane though that his lovely wife had revealed her laundry list of sightseeing stops. And imagine that the New Scotland Yard wasn’t on it. Such an oversight.
Nicole cocked her head, looking him up and down. “Sight-seeing, is that how you are really going to play it?” She put a hand on her hip. His wife was serious now. “Like the Soho Slasher, the latest Jack the Ripper copycat killer hasn’t been all over the news.”
Okay, now he really was busted.
“You don’t want to just pop in and take a look at the evidence?” Kent suggested.
“Nooooo,” Nicole said really dragging out that vowel sound for effect.
“Come on, it will only take a minute.”
“Like they are really going to let two random US cops look at their murder board,” Nicole scoffed.
Kent knew he hadn’t heard the worst of it yet. “Well, they are kind of expecting me.”
He winced as Nicole took in a deep breath. She clearly needed plenty of air to voice her thoughts. “How? When?”
“Well, a colleague --”
Nicole held up a hand. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Kent rubbed up her arm. “You really don’t want to take a crack at solving the original Jack the Ripper case?”
“No,” Nicole said with a slight stamp of her foot. “I want to see Westminster Abbey and the crown jewels and go to H&M and get some serious shopping in.”
He’d had such high hopes for her. Granted he had tricked her into coming to London and gone behind her back to arrange the meeting at Scotland Yard, but still she might show just a bit of excitement at the chance-of-a-lifetime investigation.
Nicole waved toward the building, “Go! I’ll be fine on my own.”
“No,” Kent said tugging on her fingers to keep her near. “This is our honeymoon. We should spend it together.”
“No,” Nicole rebutted. “We should enjoy ourselves. You clearly want in on the Soho Slasher and I clearly want to sightsee. We can both be happy. Just promise to be home by 11pm and satisfy me in any fashion I ask and we’ll be good.”
It was Kent’s turn to narrow his eyes. This all sounded too good to be true. Nicole letting him off the hook like that? With no real consequences? Pleasuring Nicole was one of his all time favorite things to do. So clearly something was up.
“Spit it out,” Kent said. “No way would you go for this without a play of your own.”
Nicole tried to shrug nonchalantly. She was worse at it than he was.
“Well?” He demanded.
“Fine,” Nicole said with a pout, kicking a pebble with her shoe. “I was kind of looking for a way to ditch you.”
“Ditch me?” Kent asked for clarification. That sounded wrong, all wrong.
Nicole shrugged again, this time honestly. “Come on, don’t act all surprised,” his wifey-poo stated. “We got kicked out of the cab from the airport, and even the concierge at the hotel won’t talk to you anymore. And this is all within the first two hours of being in London.”
Kent frowned. “Any cabbie worth his salt knows not to take M3 at this time of day.”
“And the concierge?” Nicole asked.
Kent sighed. “The best restaurant within four tube stops is not The Laughing Gravy. That was five stops away. Clearly an idiot.”
Nicole sighed. “As will be any other tour guide or docent. I didn’t want to spend the entire trip getting booted from one exhibit to another. I want a nice, quiet, relaxing stroll through London.”
Kent wanted to argue. He could get into nice. Quiet. Relaxing. Okay, so he couldn’t really do any of those three. Could married life really be this simple?
“You are sure you okay with this? That we won’t get home stateside and you complain we spent our honeymoon apart?”
Nicole leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek, as he laid her hand on
his arm and squeezed it. “I promise. It is enough we are in the same city together and spending our nights together.”
Her knee slid up his thigh and kind of convinced him she was telling the truth.
“11pm then,” Kent said, kissing the top of her head, “I’ll call if I’m going to be earlier.”
Nicole chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll be holding my breath for that.”
With a squeeze of his arm, she pulled out a tourist map of London, turned and walked off into the fog until she disappeared completely.
Anyone else he might have worried about going around London by themself, but his wife was more than capable. Anyone trying to mess with her was going to find out very quickly exactly how capable she was.
Even pregnant. It was weird to think that Nicole was carrying his child. Until she started showing, it would all seem so surreal to him. Again, he’d never been up for the “Most Likely to Have a Kid” nomination. But here they were, married and expecting. The world worked in such mysterious ways.
And to find out Nicole wanted to ditch him? That just made him able to walk into Scotland Yard without any regrets. And he’d annoyed her without really trying. Perfect.
* * *
Kyra stood in the large reception area of the steel and glass building that was the New Scotland Yard. It was a testament to Britain’s legacy of fighting crime. Of course, today they required two foreigners to help them out. Such is life.
There was a feeling in her gut. It was unpleasant. It made her feel like she might get ill. Strange and unfamiliar. Kyra closed her eyes, trying to make the sensation go away.
Pure focus usually solved any feeling that might bubble to the surface. Ignore something long enough and it would usually go away, but not this one. This one was only getting worse as she waited for Kent to show up.
Gulping, Kyra realized that she was nervous. How very odd. She didn’t get this feeling facing down a serial killer.
But how could she not be nervous? Not only was she about to welcome the world’s most efficient profiler for the first time since she’d become a profiler herself, but he was also the man that saved not only her life but the lives of how many other women?
Kyra balled her twitching fingers into a fist. Normally she was creepy even keel. Most people found her reserve off putting, but this was Kent Harbinger. Even Charles Manson would have been nervous meeting Harbinger.
The door swung open and a swirl of fog entered before the profiler. He couldn’t have staged it better himself. Kent emerged from the fog, striding forward, his eyes as sharp and intelligent as she remembered. His features weren’t as classically handsome as say Hugh Jackman, but to her that only made him more attractive. It wasn’t his body she was after, but his mind.
She stepped forward, her heels clicking against the tile floor, ringing in the large atrium-like reception area.
“Kent,” she said, holding her hand out.
The profiler seemed slightly taken aback, his feet stalling before he reached her. “Kyra?”
She wasn’t surprised by his reaction. The last time he’d seen her in person, she had been eight years old. The picture she’d sent him was her high school graduation shot. She wasn’t being immodest to think that she had changed a lot since then.
“Yes,” Kyra stated, stepping forward, closing the distance. The profiler recovered quickly, shaking her hand affectionately, putting his other hand over hers.
“It is so good to see you looking so good, Kyra. You really have fulfilled your potential.”
An uncomfortable pressure swelled in her chest. Growing up an orphan she had learned long ago not to care about what other people thought of her, but Kent wasn’t other people. This was Kent. Her savior. None of the normal rules of her very orderly life and thought process applied.
Kent’s hand fell away but the smile on his lips didn’t. “So I hear we are finally going to solve the Jack the Ripper case.”
Kyra chuckled. He hadn’t changed a bit since she’d met him twenty years ago. His arrogance was a palpable force. Which, when you were the child of a serial killer, you kind of liked about him. The profiler had made her feel safe for the first time in her life. Any time she had ever felt that secret darkness well up in her belly, she just thought of Kent’s face. That cocky smirk when he said she’d never have to be afraid of her father again. That she didn’t have to be her father.
From others that might have sounded condescending, promising a child what they most wanted to hear, however from Kent, it had been a blood-sealed promise. And he’d gone far beyond that, contacting the International Romi counsel, finding her a proper, stable Romi family to adopt her, paying for her college education, and then writing her letter of recommendation to Quantico. He had been the most awesome fairy godfathermother any girl could ask for.
“Well, in theory we have only been called in to help solve the copy-cat, the Soho Slasher case,” Kyra tried to clarify.
Kent patted her on the back. “You just keep telling yourself that.”
When she’d first spoken to Locroft back on that hillside in Italy, Kyra had never considered solving the original, centuries old case that had paralyzed London. This latest case was bad enough. The killer was recreating the Ripper crime scenes down to the last grisly detail, yet had eluded the Yard’s extensive drag net.
The press was hammering the Yard, creating a public relations nightmare. Unlike the US, the UK and Europe didn’t have the sheer, startling number of serial killers. The entirety of the British Isles, including Scotland and Ireland, had a total of a maximum of 30 active serial killers.
The US had over an estimated 500 on the loose at any one time. Even if you took all of the UK, continental Europe and the Mediterranean countries you couldn’t even come close to that number.
Which in the end meant the law enforcement agencies weren’t very well equipped to track a down and capture a sophisticated serial killer. They simply didn’t have the practice. And if that serial killer crossed borders? It was nearly impossible.
Interpol had a hard enough time tracking cross-border drug trades, let alone a prolific serial killer.
Which is where she came in. Once she realized that she simply didn’t play well with authority, Kyra had formed International Hunters, Inc. She had the skills necessary to track international serialists and after two years had started making inroads. They still caught flak, especially from Interpol, but they were progressing. Enough that the Lord Mayor of London had reached out to Scotland Yard and demanded that they hire her firm to bring this Soho Slasher to justice, or at the very least get him to stop killing in his fair city.
It had only been a couple of days, but the progress had been slow. Slow for Kyra, at least. So when Kent emailed her to tell her he was going to be in London, she’d jumped on the chance.
Kyra flashed her badge at the security guard and he handed her Kent’s “Visitor’s” badge. He eyed it suspiciously.
“After I solve this, do I get an ‘Owner’s’ badge?” Kent asked, accepting the flimsy plastic placard.
Kyra shot him a look as the guard frowned. The Brits were as uptight and fussy as their reputation. She needed at least a little bit of help from Kent before he got ejected from the building. Kyra had read his file. She knew not only his reputation, but him. This was going to be interesting very quickly.
Kent shrugged and clipped the badge onto the lapel of his coat. Kyra guided them to the elevator. She punched the up button, then stepped back.
“So you’ve gone rogue?” Kent asked. Always baiting. Always probing even his colleagues’ intentions, searching for weak points. Leverage.
“We’ve gone international,” Kyra answered, as the polished stainless steel elevator doors slid open with a whisper. Kent backed a step to allow Kyra to exit first. That was not chivalry. That was his not wanting to show his back. For all that Kent might try, Kyra felt like she knew as much about him as he did about her.
“So is that what the kids are calling it these days?” K
ent queried. A smirk on his face. She loved that smirk. It meant his brain was working overtime. Most people hated Kent for that smirk, but she knew that each time he got it, he was about to save people’s lives. Like whichever prostitute named Mary Jane who was set to be killed to follow Jack the Ripper’s MO.
“Oooo,” Kent said as he looked to the numbers on the board. “The twentieth floor. We must be special.”
Kyra ignored the obvious attempt to bait her. This was going to be a rough morning. Not for Kent of course, but for anyone else in the room with Kent. This was his chance to take on Scotland Yard. He was not going to waste it, she was sure.
They exited the elevator and walked by a glassed-in room. There were several laptops open, working even before their owners had arrived.
“My team is on their way. They were finishing up a case in Italy when we got the call to come here.”
“And which of that information was supposed to impress me? The fact you were in Italy or that you have a team?”
Kyra smiled. She could see why people found Kent trying. He did not miss a beat when it came to needling even his closest associates. Which is why she had learned to ignore most of his goading.
Therefore she walked past several offices in silence until they reached a larger conference room. This is where the Scotland Yard detectives had set up the “war room” for the investigation.
On one side of the room were two large murder boards. One that contained all the information regarding the original Jack the Ripper cases. On the other side of the room stood the other murder board with all of the new killings.
Kent ignored both and headed straight across to view out the window. Right now there was just a blanket of fog. It was like the world didn’t exist outside their room anymore, let alone London. You couldn’t even see Big Ben, which normally dominated the London skyline.
“I can only imagine when the fog lifts this is a pretty spectacular view of the city,” Kent said without his usual sarcasm. Kyra didn’t know quite how to handle that.
