Her relief was so complete that, if she’d been standing, she would have sagged onto the nearest piece of furniture. Her bones dissolved, her muscles went weak and her nerves quivered. She wanted to blurt out promises. Of course she would stay with him, never leave him, never break his heart again.
But it was a big promise coming from the bride who’d run away four times. In fact, she’d made that promise to him once before. You won’t abandon me like Kyle and Eric? They’d just fallen in love, just gotten engaged. Their faith in their love and each other had been 100 percent. Unshakeable. Never, she’d answered, and he’d pulled her close. I know.
She pressed a kiss to the palm of his hand. “I’ll do my absolute best. I’ll stay forever. Till death do us part.”
That last part made her shiver just a little. Happiness could be fleeting. Everyone knew of a love story where happily-ever-after had been cut tragically short. RememberMe could kill her or Daniel tomorrow. This day, this night, could be all they got.
Of course, she could get hit by a car the next time she was out. He could be tracked down by an ex-convict with a grudge. An airplane could crash into the house or a tornado could blow them away. No one got promises on how long they would live.
RememberMe just made their expectations a little iffier than most people’s.
“Till death do us part when we’re creaky old people surrounded by all kinds of Harpers,” he corrected her. “Big ones, little ones, young ones, old ones, pregnant ones, funny ones, smart-ass ones...”
“Those will be the ones who take after my side of the family.” Talking of having babies gave her warm and fuzzy feelings that she wanted to hug to her chest and bask in as long as she could. But it also stirred uneasiness deep inside her.
RememberMe was coming out of the obsessive-love stage, Dr. Armstrong had said, making him even more dangerous. His plan to kill Daniel in some sick effort to advance his nonexistent relationship with Natasha had failed spectacularly, pushing her and Daniel together instead, pushing her even more out of his psychotic reach. His jealousy had grown; based on his texts this evening, his control was giving way to rage.
He’d reached the if-I-can’t-have-you-I’ll-kill-you stage. Tomorrow, maybe the next day...
Either she would live or die. Daniel would live or die. Their future was out of their hands. If RememberMe succeeded, all these sweet, lovely things she and Daniel had discussed would be meaningless. There would be no marriage, no little Harpers, no anything in her future but an early grave.
She’d never wished harm on anyone, not seriously. Okay, there’d been a few times when she’d told Stacia to drop dead, when she’d shrieked at Nick that she wished he’d never been born. But tonight she was going to pray for death for RememberMe, whoever he was. She wanted the fear gone. She wanted to put an end to the runaway-bride legend. She wanted to marry Daniel and have his children and die an old, satisfied, well-loved woman.
She wanted to live, and dear God, most of all, she wanted Daniel to live.
* * *
Monday morning might have been the best morning of Daniel’s life. He’d spent the last three hours watching more dull and boring video, drinking too much coffee that was sitting heavy in his stomach, eating sugary snacks and nothing of substance, but he’d awakened with Natasha curled beside him, all sleepy and beautiful, and that made up for everything else.
“How many texts have you gotten from this guy?” Sam asked as he rubbed the kinks from his neck. He’d been reading the messages RememberMe had sent in order from the beginning.
“Twenty-nine,” Ben replied for Daniel. He’d taken possession of Daniel’s cell this morning, setting it on vibrate and making a point of being subtle when he read each incoming message. They’d bothered Natasha from the beginning and had set Daniel’s nerves on edge a couple of hours after starting. If he had to read each one as it came in, he’d have a stroke by five.
“And the IT guys still have nothing on his location.”
“He’s better at hiding his tracks than they are at finding them.”
“He could use a class on accepting rejection,” Sam muttered. “Hell, he could teach a class on it.”
From outside the conference room came the sound of feminine laughter. Daniel couldn’t help looking that way, even though he couldn’t see into the dispatcher shack, where Morwenna was entertaining Natasha between calls.
“Gotta admire a woman who can still laugh when things have gone to hell around her,” Sam remarked.
“Like Mila?” Daniel had been pretty amazed by Mila’s resiliency back when it had been her life they were trying to protect. He’d thought she was the strongest woman he’d ever known. Still did, but Natasha was coming in a close second.
“Mila didn’t have much to laugh about before things went to hell.” Sam gathered his stuff and walked to the door then looked back and grinned. “But she’s learned.”
Being raised by parents who were serial killers, who used her to lure their victims and abused her in between their kills, would have done irreparable harm to a lesser person. But no one would guess her history by watching or talking to her. She’d done a lot of healing in the years after her grandmother rescued her and a lot more since falling in love with Sam.
Daniel gave a moment’s thanks that Natasha’s biggest problem with her parents was that they loved not too little but too many. They’d welcomed everyone into their home and their family, and while Natasha and her siblings had a few issues resulting from their upbringing, abuse was never a part of it.
He turned his attention back to the computer screen. The footage he was currently viewing came from a traffic camera at the intersection where her apartment complex was located. She’d shown him last night just the glimpse of her balcony, all that was visible from this view. It was the second of the three apartments where she’d lived since acquiring the stalker, and at some time during regular business hours on the day this was recorded, someone had left a small bouquet of orchids and a card at her door. It could have been someone hired by someone else who was hired by someone else, or it could have been RememberMe.
“Huh,” Daniel murmured, stopping the video. He shrank the screen, opened another of Flea’s files and scanned through before stopping it, too. “That gray sedan you mentioned last night... I know the tag wasn’t visible, but did it have any identifiable marks?”
Ben’s gaze narrowed in thought. Despite his notorious list-making, he had better recall than anyone Daniel knew. Pay attention to details was his golden rule, and he did it well. “Yeah, a sticker on the rear window, lower left side. Most of it had been scraped off, but there was adhesive and a little strip of blue on the bottom.”
“Where was the video taken?”
“Stoplight near her first apartment. You have the same car?”
“Yeah. Once outside the second apartment, once outside her work.”
“How many gray sedans do you think are in Los Angeles?”
“A lot.” Daniel blew out his breath. “This guy could live and work in the same neighborhoods she does. It wouldn’t be unusual.” Was he grasping at straws? Probably. It was frustrating to be so completely in the dark about a suspect, especially one who wanted him dead. But prisons were full of people convicted because of a lucky break on the cops’ part, because coincidence or maybe the grace of God saying take a closer look at this.
They went back to working in silence. Natasha and Morwenna’s occasional laughter made the job less tedious, but that wasn’t saying much. By noon, Daniel needed a break, but first he wanted to watch one more video: the traffic cam at the entrance to Kyle’s neighborhood. He’d seen it three times now, but clicked start yet again. The street was the only way in; anyone who’d gone to Kyle’s house the day of his accident either climbed a ten-foot wall or drove down this street.
And there it was. The view from the front showed the gray sedan completing the
turn into the neighborhood just as the light turned red. The driver’s face wasn’t visible—he was pretty sure it was a man, though—and the front tag looked as if someone had smeared a handful of thick mud over it. The only thing he could say was that it was a California tag.
He fast-forwarded through the next sixty-seven minutes then watched at regular speed before stopping once again on the car. “This is him.”
Ben looked up, his usual placid expression replaced with sharp anticipation. He came around the table and bent over Daniel’s shoulder, his gaze fixing on the car. “Can’t see his damn face,” he muttered.
“This is the camera closest to Kyle’s house. He went in, stayed a little more than an hour, then came out. Kyle was discovered by his girlfriend twenty minutes after this was recorded.” Frustration vibrated through him. If RememberMe had gone back the same way he came, they could have gotten a look at the rear license tag, though it was probably obscured as well. “I’ll call Flea and see if they can track his movements through other cameras on that street.”
He was reaching for his phone when Ben said, “Hang on a minute. I want to bounce something off you. He sent this to Natasha last Tuesday, after she’d left LA.” He circled back to his chair to read from the computer. “‘Are you too sick to answer your phone? Should I ask Dispatch for a welfare check?’”
Daniel leaned back, relaxing muscles that resented too many hours hunched in front of a computer. “We do welfare checks on a pretty regular basis.”
“Yeah, we do, but most people don’t say I’m gonna call Dispatch. They call the police. And they don’t usually say, ‘Will you do a welfare check on my grandmother?’ They say, ‘Granny’s been sick and she isn’t answering the phone and we’re three hours away. Could you send someone by to check on her?’”
A knot formed in Daniel’s gut. Too much coffee, he wanted to think. A very bad feeling, he knew. “LAPD has a lot of those cars for unmarked units.”
Ben shrugged. “A cop can find out information. He knows what kind of inquiries will lead back to him and how to avoid them.”
“And it’s easier to stay two steps ahead of the investigation when you know what the next move will be.” Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d rather not believe that RememberMe was one of their own. He knew a lot of people in the Los Angeles Police Department, and even the ones he didn’t know, the job itself was a bond. They’d all been through the academy, made it through their probationary periods, done the patrols and put up with the crap. They’d all worked for too little pay and too little gratitude. No matter what colors their uniforms were, they were the thin blue line. The brothers in blue.
They were—geez, now he was teetering on hokey—family. Family didn’t do this to each other.
Another thought occurred to him, choking out a bitter laugh. “All this time Natasha’s been feeling guilty because she brought the stalker into my life. If this guy is a cop, there’s a fair chance that I was the one who brought him into her life.”
Wasn’t that a kick in the teeth?
* * *
Natasha looked at Daniel blankly. Of all the questions he could have asked her, this was one she hadn’t expected. “Cops in LA?”
“Do you know any?”
She shrugged and continued to pass out bags from the deli with names written on them. Hers, she’d been informed, was the bag marked “Sam 2.” She slid the sandwich out of the bag and reached for a pile of napkins at the center of the conference table. “There’s Flea—Detective Martin, of course. I met dozens of them when we were together, at dinners, parties, cookouts, but I...no. I still see some of them around, and we say hello, but I wouldn’t say I actually know any of them.” Nausea curled in her stomach. “Do you think RememberMe is a cop?”
Daniel avoided answering, which was, of course, an answer. The possibility angered more than it frightened her. She’d already been afraid of crazy-man, but it pissed her off that a cop, the person who was supposed to protect and defend people, could be the biggest danger of all.
He took a bite of his sandwich before going on. “His first message—he sent a picture of a sunset. Said it reminded you of the day you two met. Said you probably didn’t remember because you had been surrounded by admirers. There were always a lot of guys hanging around at department functions. They all wanted to meet you, talk to you, figure out how solid we were, whether they had a chance. And you probably don’t remember most of their faces or any of their names.”
He was right. There had been a beach party where she’d been introduced to fifty people or more in one afternoon. A barbecue with close to forty. A Halloween party with so many guests that she’d become practically claustrophobic in the crush. Stacia and family had dominated her and Daniel’s social life, but they’d spent a good number of evenings with small groups of officers and their significant others, even if it was just a drink at a bar at the end of their shift. So many people she wouldn’t know today.
“What about dates?” Morwenna asked. She pointed her index finger at Daniel when he frowned her way. “You said everyone wanted to meet her, to figure out whether they had a chance. Did any of them ask you out?”
“Yeah, a couple did. One, while I was still with Daniel. A nice kid, just out of the academy, very young and brash, but it couldn’t be him.”
“Why not?”
Natasha looked at Daniel, who wore the same sorrowful look she was sure was on her face. Under the table, he stretched out his leg and bumped hers, the action reassuring, then answered for her. “A month into his probationary period, he stopped a car on traffic, walked up to the driver’s door and the driver shot and killed him. Shot his training officer, too, but the FTO survived.”
“Oh.” Morwenna was silent a moment before asking, “Anyone else? Especially after you did a runner on Daniel?”
The runner phrase made Natasha wince inside, but it was nothing less than the truth. “There was the guy whose career path included being the youngest chief of detectives in LAPD history. Remember him, Daniel? Always bragging about his connections to the chief and the mayor?”
He grimaced. “We figured if he stuck around long enough, one of our own people would shoot him. How’d he take it when you said no?”
“It rolled right off him. It was like an odd thought popped into his head, he asked and he blew it off. Didn’t do a lot for my ego, I’ll tell you, though the next one was a little more insulting. Cop was working traffic at a concert. He asked me out, and I said no, thanks. So he turned to Stacia, standing right beside me, and asked her. She said no, and he asked her friend, right in front of us. She agreed to meet him when he got off. That was four years ago, and they’re still together.”
“See why I’m still single? Who wants to be someone’s third choice when there are only three to start?” Morwenna shuddered. “I would’ve shoved his baton someplace special.”
“See why she’s still single?” Ben said in an aside to Daniel.
Morwenna stuck her tongue out at him. “So that’s all of your police officer date candidates?”
“The last one’s a financial crimes detective. I met her through a friend of Stacia’s, though, not Daniel. And she didn’t want a date so much as a hookup.” Natasha picked up her sandwich, spilling ingredients on the wrap, then set it down again. “A cop. Damn.” Aside from the fact that it was just ugly to think about, it offended her that her tax money might have gone to give RememberMe some of the training he was now using against her. “What makes you think so?”
“This car keeps showing up.” Daniel turned the laptop so she could see the sedan. “We’re thinking it might be an unmarked car.”
Natasha stared at the image, a side view: midsize, four doors, adequate transportation without any hint of style. She wished some insignificant little memory would pop up from the shadows of her subconscious mind, connecting it to anyone in her life, but nothing popped. It was jus
t a gray car.
After wiping her hands on a napkin, Morwenna turned the computer slightly to get a better look. “Of course it’s an unmarked car. Look at that.”
She jabbed her finger at the screen, at a spot somewhere around the rear passenger window. Natasha looked and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe a bit of a bump on the roof, or maybe it was just blurry from the movement of the car.
Daniel leaned across Natasha to look, and Ben got up from his chair. She wheeled her own chair back, giving them room, and saw the look they exchanged a moment later. Ben was smiling, relief in his dark eyes, but Daniel looked absolutely radiant, if that were a word he would bear without grimacing. He grabbed Morwenna in a hug, smacked a kiss on her cheek then jumped to his feet. On his way around the table, he snatched up his cell phone. “I’m going to call Flea.”
“I’ll tell Sam Morwenna deserves a raise,” Ben replied.
In the abrupt stillness that followed, Natasha slid forward again, squinting at the picture. All she saw was that the car looked inconspicuous, which unmarked units should be, and the city needed a better quality camera. “Okay, I give. What do you see that I don’t?”
“See this little round thing here, looks like a hockey puck?” Morwenna pointed to the maybe-a-bump. “It’s an antenna. There’ll be one on the other side, too. All our unmarked units have them. All the departments in our area use them or the stubby little cylindrical kind, but hockey pucks are more popular.”
Natasha studied it, leaning close for a better view. Hmm. Maybe she just needed to see it from a different angle, because it still looked like a bump. But she was deeply grateful for Morwenna’s help and said so. “Thank you.” She squeezed the other woman’s shoulder.
Morwenna patted her hand reassuringly. “Oh, the guys would’ve seen it sooner or later. They’re just tired from looking at so many cars.”
Killer Smile Page 21
