The Forbidden

by Heather Graham

  “You’re very hard to get, Special Agent Stirling.”

  “Well, I just like to make sure. And I don’t...”

  “Don’t what?”

  He laughed. “I’m certainly not easy!”

  They’d reached the desk. He signed in, remembering that they hadn’t intended to stay, and asked for toothbrushes and toothpaste.

  “The young lady at the counter thinks that we decided on a rental room for a reason—a wild night of possibly illicit pleasure,” Avalon said.

  “I hope she’s right,” he said, and then paused. “Should you let someone know that you’re staying here?”

  “Yes. I’ll text Lauren—she’ll let the others know.”

  She sent the text. As they headed to the elevator, she noted that she had gotten a reply from her friend already.

  A simple text, reading, Go for it!

  Smiling, she shook her head as they went into the elevator. She wrote back with one word: Yep.

  They reached their floor. Avalon followed Fin into the room. He closed the door behind her and then leaned her up against the door, smiling at her briefly before finding her lips. His kiss was long, wet, deliciously hot. His hands slid from her face to her shoulders, sliding beneath the collar and shoulders of her jacket to allow it to fall to the floor. His mouth still lingered on hers as he found the buttons on her blouse and began to slowly undo them, one by one. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d wanted to touch him until her fingers brushed over his cheeks, before she entwined her arms around him.

  “Can’t,” he said.

  “Can’t...what?” she asked, a brief touch of dismay coming to her.

  “Can’t reach the buttons this way,” he told her.

  She laughed as they broke apart.

  “I mean, I can’t just rip them off in a movie display of undying passion,” he said, his fingers moving on the buttons again before his eyes met hers. “We didn’t bring a change of clothing.”

  “I’ll do my best not to rip your clothing off,” she told him seriously, and then they were laughing again, struggling, pausing to kiss again...and for him to set his gun and holster on the nightstand. At last their clothing was cast aside and strewn around the room and they fell together, naked flesh touching, to the bed, where the laughter dissolved in another deep kiss. Their lips and hands moved then, as if neither of them could give up the conquest to discover more about one another.

  He was an amazing, patient and giving lover. She felt as if she flew with emotion, torn between electric tremors deep within and the sweet sensation of writhing and arching in a sea of searing steam. His fingers brushed her flesh; his lips teased it. She whispered words against his body, sweet and evocative, and they were returned to her. She never wanted it to end, and yet she reached ever higher. She felt him inside her, the movement, the pulse, and somehow she felt as if she’d never been more intimate with anyone in her life as she was with this man.

  Sensation peaked cataclysmically; so much so that there was nothing but sweet oblivion for long moments after. And even then, she was in his arms, feeling his flesh, the life within him, the wonder of being with him.

  After a moment, cradling her close, he murmured, “I guess I like you.”

  She rose on an elbow and punched him in the arm.

  “Well?” he teased.

  “Now I may really dislike you!” she said.

  He grinned and pulled her close again, and said softly, “I wonder when it was that I realized you were probably the most incredible person I’ve ever met, and that I did, desperately, want to be with you.”

  She smiled, loving the dark green of his eyes, the way his damp hair was plastered on his forehead.

  “That was pretty good. Maybe you’re palatable now.”

  “I hope so. Because... We did only get one room.”

  She leaned her head on his chest. “When we go back...”

  He lifted her slightly, frowning as he studied her face. “Avalon, I didn’t mean we had to be together. We could have taken two rooms.”

  “When we go back, I’d like you to just stay with me, in my room in the French Quarter. I mean, I’m not putting any pressure on you—I know that your life is, well, pressure. And that you travel, and that your home is in the DC area. But for now, while all this is going on...”

  He nodded. “That will work. I’m afraid to let you out of my sight.”

  That caused her to frown. “Hey! I didn’t want an intimate relationship as a protection detail!”

  “Touchy! No, I’d have stayed on that damned sofa.”

  She smiled again.

  “I assumed you wanted more,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I mean, here we are...”

  “Ah, you’re that good!”

  He grinned. “I’m that crazy about you,” he whispered.

  She leaned against him then, sliding her body against his, feeling the damp glistening of their bodies brush together again. She found his lips.

  The kiss grew heated.

  He’d assumed right. She wanted more, and more.

  Sometime, they slept. She was startled to wake up and find that he had slipped into one of the room’s terry robes and was seated at the desk, studying his phone.

  “Fin?”

  “Hey, sorry, I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “What are you doing? Has anything happened? Something else?”

  He shook his head. “No, no, I’m sorry. It’s the—the post you saw that night, that Jodi and some folks in our tech department found long enough to download. I’m looking at the way it’s written, remembering voice patterns, just reading the words and—” He paused, looking over at her. “I do think that it was written by the killer—one of the killers.”

  She crawled out of bed and headed for the closet, grabbing a robe to put on, too. Then she walked over and stood behind, reading off his phone.

  “First, I’d stalk my prey. She’d be unknown, a goddess, but I would see her, and I would know. I would watch the way that she moved, the way that she breathed, the way that her eyes would light when she laughed. I would be close enough at times to smell the sweetness that emanated from her supple flesh. I might brush by her.”

  She looked at Fin and said, “He knows his victim or knows of her. Maybe he just sees her every day, or has seen her somewhere, and knows how to get close to her.”

  “That’s what it sounds like.”

  Avalon read again.

  “Beauty knows no bounds. I have seen these goddesses in every ethnicity. Beauty covers the continents. True beauties are rare, but they come from every continent—they are Asian, African, Australian, South and North American, European...a little laugh here, okay, I’ve yet to encounter a goddess from Antarctica.”

  “Strange paragraph. A serial killer trying to prove that he’s an equal opportunity killer, and trying to make a joke at the same time?” she asked.

  “I do think that this man finds beauty everywhere, and you have to remember, he probably doesn’t even consider himself to be bad or evil. He has an agenda, and he has desires and needs—and those desires and needs outweigh the wants or needs of anyone else. This killer is a psychopath. He feels no remorse, only pleasure in memories.”

  “But...we don’t believe that it’s just one man.”

  “No. A shared fantasy. But someone seems to have the need to put it out there—he’s proud of himself, like a trophy-hunter in Africa stalking a lion. The lion means nothing. As much as he applauds the beauty of his victims, they mean nothing to him.”

  This time, Fin read.

  “But I am good. I am a hunter, a stalker, and I know how to smile and laugh and charm. And I find my beauties... Fantasy. So... I find my goddess. I am a gentleman, a rugged, charming gentleman. We play and we tease, and we drink, and it’s divine. That’s ju
st it—it’s all divine. I did say goddess. I wait until we are so relaxed. She’s at ease with me. I make it clear that I don’t expect intercourse...yet. And when she is laughing, playing, enjoying me, looking at me with that divine sparkle in her eyes, I strike...

  “It’s so beautiful.”

  “Whoever Cindy met when she left that pizza shop, she knew,” Avalon said. “And that seems to be...he’s charming. And you don’t have to be handsome to be charming, just nice, someone nice, capable of laughter and putting someone at ease.”

  “The most frightening kind of monster,” Fin said. “The monster you don’t see in the darkness of the closet, but, rather, the wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

  She looked at the phone again and read aloud.

  “Watching her. Because she cannot fight—she knows and knows that she cannot fight. And I hold her and assure her and watch the light slowly fade. She’s in my arms—she’s still warm. There’s a perfect temperature and I wait for that...and then, I give her the divine ecstasy of my love. There is no greater high. When we are done, I take her so tenderly. I care for her. I lay her out in beauty. Eternal beauty. And it’s all as it should be, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, with all that is beautiful and divine in between...”

  “Oh, God! This is so—so depraved!”

  “I told you that you didn’t need to do this.”

  “I thought that...well, here you go. You’re wrong. I know the people I work with. None of them wrote this, and none of them is sick like this! But, yes, I know, especially after today, you’re going to be suspicious of Boris.”

  He shook his head, looking at her. “Avalon, I like Boris. I want him to be everything it seems that he is. But we have to look at all possibilities.”

  “Julian Bennett,” she said.

  “Why Julian?”

  “He’s...slimy. In my mind, he thinks that he’s God’s gift to women. He goes from one to the next. He’s charming—he could probably persuade most women to go with him, especially if he’s being polite and respectful.”

  Fin nodded, studying her. “Possibly.”

  “Or—or Kenneth Richard.”

  “Hardly charming.”

  “But he could be the second. There are two. Maybe he’s the dreamer, the writer, and Julian just shares his sick fantasies, and Julian has the ability to lure the women and both... They both commit murder and then...”

  “I’m going to get in touch with Ryder. I want to start bringing people in. For tomorrow, I want to know that he has his eyes on them.”

  “But Boris?” she said.

  “Avalon, that’s for Lauren’s safety, as well. As I told you, I like Boris. He seems like the real deal—a talented man out to help others in his field. But he’s been in the places where things have occurred.”

  “He hasn’t done any film work in Mississippi that I know about.”

  “And Mississippi is a short jump from here, and from Christy Island. Avalon, it might not be a bad idea to have the Christy heirs think that we’re looking at Boris.”

  “You could ruin his reputation forever.”

  “Not if he’s innocent—didn’t someone say that no publicity was bad publicity?”

  “They lied.”

  He was looking at the screen again.

  “‘My turn,’” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I think that the writer here is part of the duo—and his partner has made the choices so far or done the killing or even chosen the display or intended display. And he has a victim in mind—and now considers it his turn.”

  “Oh,” she said. She shook her head. “I don’t know the others as well as I know Kevin. He’s like my brother. He’s with Lauren. He won’t let anything happen to her. Besides,” she added quickly, “trust me, Boris is innocent.”

  He hit a button on his phone and the screen went blank.

  “No more of this tonight,” he said softly. “We’ll wake up to it. I shouldn’t have done this tonight.”

  “Time is of the essence, and you don’t want anyone else falling prey to this monster,” she said softly.

  He nodded, stood up and swept her into his arms.

  “You know what’s beautiful?” he asked her.

  She grinned. “Were you going to say me?” she asked.

  “Sleep,” he said gravely. “It’s really beautiful stuff.”

  She grinned and nodded, and he carried her to the bed.

  They didn’t sleep right away, but when they did, he was right.

  It was beautiful.

  Friday

  Avalon could have slept a lot later, but they were on their way back to Christy Island at just about nine thirty. Fin had set the alarm for eight thirty, claiming when it went off that he was glad that they weren’t in a terrible rush and that it had been good to sleep late.

  She realized that they had different conceptions of the idea of sleeping late, but she also understood his sense of responsibility.

  The night had been good. Amazing.

  Except for trying to enter the mind of a killer.

  They were in the police cruiser and Avalon had just been appreciating the feel of the salt breeze in her hair, the cry of seabirds overhead in a crystal-blue sky, when she suddenly turned to Fin and told him, “Whoever wrote that blog post, Fin, he’s getting anxious. I think the writer has been playing second fiddle. He’s been doing the main body of the work, maybe even as an apprentice to the other man. But if everyone is being watched...”

  “He has to wait,” Fin said. “Which may cause him to grow reckless, which means that hopefully, he’ll trip up before managing to kill again.”

  She nodded. “You’re ready for the mansion?”

  “I hate it with a passion, but yes.”

  “Take care up there,” the boat captain warned as they arrived at the dock. “We have a few officers left on the island—one at each of the docks—but there’s nothing else here, you haven’t cleared it for any kind of work to begin again.” He paused, shrugging. “We both know you can get here without using either of the docks.”

  “Right. We’ll be careful,” Fin promised.

  They waved and went on through the cemetery.

  Fin had Avalon’s hand. They walked slowly, and she knew that he was waiting for Vanessa and Henri to see them and join them.

  “Unusual, don’t you think?” Avalon said.

  “What’s that? This whole situation?”

  “Well, yes, but...they stay here. Vanessa and Henri. It’s an island and for so many years, it was so isolated. In my experience...well, those who linger do so for a reason, and even when they’re not sure what that reason is, they prefer life. Yes, sometimes they may return to a cemetery or a battlefield, but...well, I can see haunting Bourbon Street—there’s so much life. Lafitte’s maybe—pirates reliving their glory days. But for Vanessa and Henri...”

  “They hop on boats and go into the city now and then. I believe that they were both enamored with your whole group.”

  “Yes. I guess I just found this place depressing—no matter how perfect it was for what Boris needed—even before Cindy was left here.”

  “I can only tell you that I don’t begin to understand why some people do...linger. Or how time goes by for them, but I’ve always assumed a person who was decent in life is going to be decent in death, and face it, there are things we don’t understand now about living, much less dying.”

  “Miss Avalon! Fin!”

  It was Vanessa. She was weaving her way between a tomb and a giant winged angel.

  Henri was behind her.

  “I’m so glad you waited for morning,” she said.

  Avalon tried not to smile as she said, “So am I.”

  “You had a nice night?” Henri asked them.

  “Yes, thank you so much,” Fin said, a twisted smile on
his lips.

  “And now a bright day, blue overhead! Yes, much better to see the mansion. There is electricity and it’s still on,” Vanessa said. “But the shadows in that place! It’s better by day. And Lord knows! You must be careful while digging into things. There are those awful spiders—”

  “Brown recluses,” Henri said.

  “Yes—deep in the drawers. And they’re very dangerous,” Vanessa warned.

  “More so than black widows,” Henri said solemnly.

  “We will be very careful, I promise,” Fin assured them. “We will be careful—how sad it would be for an experienced lawman to be downed by a spider.”

  “Hey, that’s not a joking matter,” Avalon said.

  “I wasn’t joking.”

  They reached the front of the house. Avalon stared at it: a Victorian mansion, painted gray with white trim, the gray darkened and chipping through the years, the white turned to something almost darker than the gray. The windows looked out at them like a multitude of eyes, gables over the attic seemed like hunched eyebrows and the whole of it was decaying and eerie.

  Even below a bright blue sky.

  She remembered sitting in the great room or grand parlor, waiting her turn to be questioned. Sitting with the others, knowing that Cindy was dead... She felt her fingers curl into fists at her side. There was something in that mansion, she was certain.

  She turned to Fin. “Let’s do this!” she said, and she was determined. She wanted the truth; the truth required courage.

  She was suddenly grateful to Fin for more than a fantastic night.

  Somehow, he had also given her something she had lacked.

  The courage she felt she needed.

  The house was just a house. And she wanted the answers it might yield.

  Thirteen

  Fin wondered how anyone had lived in the house, even if it was a “mansion.”

  The dust and grime were enough to have killed anyone living there.

  “Boris’s room,” he said quietly.

  “Of course,” Avalon said dryly.

  They headed up the wooden staircase. Fin wasn’t sure which room, though he knew that the police and the forensic team had been through the house. He’d never thought that Cindy West had been killed on site, in the mansion—anyone creating such a display of her body would have been careful enough not to be easily traced through the house.