Take a Risk (Risk #1)

by Scarlett Finn

  Her hands went to her chest and she sought out Colt, but he was spreading the pictures he hadn’t gathered with his toe and Ruger was intent as Colt was.

  ‘Fuck,’ Colt said and his attention went to his brother. ‘Do you see this?’

  Ruger nodded and Colt dropped the pictures. He didn’t drop them out of shock though; both men turned and ran out of the room. She didn’t see what they did, but dropped onto her knees to fumble through the pictures to try and seek it out. Flattening her hands on them and sweeping them out from her in an arch, then she saw it. Pictures of her in bed, with Colt, taken from inside the property.

  Pouncing to her feet, she went after the men and heard them clattering around in her bedroom and then there was more cursing from Colt.

  ‘No!’ Ruger said.

  Lyssa got into the bedroom just in time to see Ruger shove Colt back against the wall and grab something from his hand, something small and round.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked. The brothers turned, but she already knew the answer. ‘He’s been watching us, hasn’t he?’

  ‘The pervert has been watching from inside,’ Colt said, jostling Ruger away from him to approach her.

  ‘Watching us,’ she said. ‘Together. He’s been watching us having sex?’ Her voice cracked and she cleared it to try and maintain the façade of strength and she needed to get her through this. But Colt took hold of her shoulders and pulled her against him. His strength bled into her and she was so very grateful for him now.

  ‘This is something else,’ Ruger said. ‘He’s been inside. Who has been inside your home?’

  ‘Anyone can get in,’ Colt said, without releasing her from the hug. ‘The question isn’t who, it’s when.’

  ‘When?’ she asked, leaning back to look at him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We need to know if he broke in, or if he just walked in when you were in session. Did he do it when you were here? How long has he been watching for?’

  ‘What difference does that make?’ she asked. ‘He’s been watching us having sex.’

  ‘Filming it more likely,’ Ruger said, examining the device he had in his hand. ‘It’s a webcam, wireless, motion activated by the look of it. I think it has a remote charging device too, which is state-of-the-art. I can take this back to Pinch and see what he thinks. Maybe he can tell us where it came from or where it’s transmitting to.’

  ‘Get on it,’ Colt said and Ruger vanished from the room and, she presumed, out of the house. Colt stroked her face. ‘We have to look at the pictures and put them in order.’

  ‘In order?’

  ‘A timeline. We have to establish when the first one was taken and where he’s been.’

  ‘But if he’s had a camera in here then he didn’t need to be here.’

  ‘One of the pictures was taken outside Risqué,’ he said. ‘Did you see it?’ She shook her head. ‘It’s of you and Suzette talking. He was there, the night of the shooting, he was there.’

  ‘We have to tell the police,’ she exhaled.

  ‘We’ll call them, but they’ll want to know when the first picture is and the last one.’

  ‘But,’ she said and a bitter taste moistened her throat. ‘They’ll see us together.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Colt said.

  He couldn’t be keen on the idea of the cops seeing them together in bed. Most of the guys at the station he knew, or had worked with, and sharing something like that of himself and of her, wouldn’t make him happy. But they couldn’t pick and choose. If this guy was killing people then they had to cooperate fully and modesty was the last thing they should be concerned with.

  This man, the stalker, had been there at Risqué, the night of the shooting. Knowing that made it all the more likely that he had been involved in Bobby’s demise. What that meant was that in an inadvertent way that poor man, her patient, had died because of her, for her. Putting the situation in that perspective – that she was fighting for Bobby and not for herself – made it much easier and she squared her shoulders.

  ‘Come on then, she said. ‘We better get to work.’

  They’d spent time putting the pictures in order, but had taken a brief break to bring the bags up the stairs and to the kitchen table. She just hadn’t been able to stomach the physical proof of this stalker’s intrusion anymore and Colt must have sensed her growing unease.

  ‘I can do the rest on my own,’ he said.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ she said. ‘You don’t know where I was at all times. I’m struggling to identify the times and places of some of the shots myself.’

  ‘The angles are strange and not what you’d expect from someone sitting in a car or standing on a street corner,’ he said as though it had been perplexing him.

  ‘What does that suggest to you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘It’s something, but I can’t put my finger on it.’

  ‘Chavez said he and Ronson would be over later?’

  ‘Yeah, I told them that we were going to work on putting them in order and that we were careful about disturbing prints.’

  ‘Do you think that we’ll get any?’

  He shook his head. ‘I could give you platitudes,’ he said, pouring her a glass of water. ‘But he’s been so careful in every other way that I doubt he’d be so stupid as to leave such obvious evidence now.’

  ‘He might not be on the system. If he’s not on the system then being careful doesn’t matter.’

  ‘True. But why take the risk? We’ve got no idea how long he plans to keep doing this or what his plans for you are. He doesn’t want to link himself to anything. Keeping his identity a secret is paramount to him, which is unusual. Most stalkers want to make contact with their victims eventually though, so we just have to hope that he reveals himself soon.’

  ‘Before anyone else dies,’ she said. ‘We’re waiting for him, taking the chance that a madman will make a mistake?’

  ‘I know it’s not comforting, but it’s the way that most murderers are caught, by accident, like a routine traffic stop, or because they make a mistake.’

  ‘Not much of an advert for your old department?’

  His smile was tight, but it was there. ‘I didn’t work homicide.’

  Glancing at the bags, she wondered what was in them and with bated breath she speculated on whether Colt would open them and show her so she could see the fruits of their labour and figure out the reason for their mission to Pinch’s place. Ruger hadn’t been back in touch, but she had faith that in time, or if he had anything useful, he would call.

  Before she had a chance to ask Colt about opening the bags there was a knock at the front door. It was the middle of the afternoon, sun was streaming in through her tall front windows, but the two of them tensed and looked at each other.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Colt said.

  ‘No, this is my house,’ Lyssa said, heading for the hall and the stairway down. Figuring that it was probably a patient who hadn’t got her message, or one who had but decided to come anyway, she was surprised to see Hoburn and his partner on her doorstep when she opened the door.

  ‘Doctor Cutler.’

  ‘Detective,’ she said. ‘Is something else that you need?’

  ‘We need to talk again,’ Hoburn said.

  ‘About what?’ Colt’s voice came from behind her, he stood halfway between her and the stairs. She opened the door a little further when she turned, and Hoburn caught sight of him.

  ‘Warner,’ Hoburn said. ‘I heard you were involved in this.’

  ‘And yet I never got your call.’

  ‘I think it would be clear that you’re the last man I’d be calling for help in an investigation.’

  ‘I’m wounded,’ Colt said without intonation.

  ‘What is it that we need to talk about?’ Lyssa asked. ‘Did you find out something about Bobby?’ She was about to say that they may have found something to aid their investigation but Hoburn spoke before she could.

  ‘We need to talk privately.�
��

  ‘I trust Colt,’ she said. ‘We can talk in front of him.’

  ‘No, we can’t,’ Hoburn said.

  She didn’t like the accusation in his eyes, but she granted them entry and unlocked her office to let them in there. ‘What do you think is going on?’ she whispered to Colt when he came to her side.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Colt murmured, watching Hoburn and his partner sit on her patient couch through the door. ‘Hoburn hates me, but he’s good at his job, he knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘You’re telling me that I should trust him?’

  ‘I’m telling you that we’ve got a good chance of finding out who Bobby’s killer is with Hoburn on the case. That’s about all I can say.’

  ‘Ok,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll do my best with the pictures that are left,’ he said. ‘So I’ll be right next door in the waiting room.’

  He kissed her and glared through her office door again. Hoburn and his partner had their backs to the door, so they missed Colt’s dirty look, but he bestowed it anyway, then he went into the waiting room to work. Lyssa cleared her throat and went in to join Hoburn.

  ‘Can I get you men something to drink?’ she asked, hoping that they would say no because she really wanted to know why they were here and didn’t want to deal with pleasantries.

  ‘No,’ Hoburn said. ‘We have some important questions and we’d like to get on with it.’

  ‘Ok,’ she said, taking her regular seat. ‘Carry on.’

  As he had the last time, Hoburn took out his notebook. ‘How many of your patients are you having sex with?’

  The shock of the question struck her dumb. She had hoped that they were going to ask her specifics that might give her clues as to their line of enquiry. ‘It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of sexual therapy that the therapists are intimate with their patients,’ she managed to say while maintaining her professional exterior, for which she was very proud of herself.

  ‘I’m not talking about others in your line of work, I’m talking about you.’

  ‘Me? Why would you have reason to believe that I would be so inappropriate? I’d lose my license.’

  ‘We have more than a reason to believe it, we have witness testimony,’ he said. ‘Being honest with us now is your best course of action.’

  ‘I have never had sex with a patient,’ she asserted. ‘I would never do such a thing. Your witness is lying.’

  ‘The eyewitness is dead.’

  ‘What?’ The gravity of those words made her search for their implication. ‘You’re saying that Bobby… I never had sex with Bobby.’

  ‘No, but he caught you in the act, on the very same day that he died… Why didn’t you tell us that when we were here the first time?’

  ‘Bobby… No—‘

  ‘He told Deshana what he saw, and she stated that your patient was angry at Bobby for interrupting the deed.’

  At least she didn’t have to worry about anyone spreading lies, she relaxed and a smile began to form, which made Hoburn’s eyes flare. ‘I wasn’t having sex with a patient. I was making out with my boyfriend, we hadn’t got to the actual act yet. Yes, Bobby walked in on it, but it was the end of the day, and we thought we were alone. I was off-duty.’

  ‘Your boyfriend?’

  ‘He’s in the next room if you want to talk to him.’

  ‘Warner?’ she nodded. ‘So the stories of you and him are true?’

  ‘That we’re in an intimate relationship, yes.’

  Hoburn closed his notebook and whispered something to his colleague who got up and left the room. The ominous act confused her, but Hoburn met her eye. ‘You ought to be careful with him.’

  ‘Who?’ she asked.

  ‘Warner. He’s not the good guy that he makes himself out to be.’

  ‘You came here to accuse me of breaking ethical rules, and now you’re warning me off the man I’m seeing?’

  ‘I don’t know what he’s told you about why he left the force.’

  ‘He hasn’t told me anything.’

  ‘And that doesn’t raise any red flags for you?’

  Now that he pointed it out, it did. He’d been honest about his family and his ex-wife, he’d even invited her into his parent’s home. But he’d never spoken about his work in the police, other than to mention he’d done it, and that his work interfered in his marriage.

  ‘He’ll tell me in his own time.’

  ‘He killed a woman. A woman under his protection,’ Hoburn said and she tried not to react to that news. Part of her training was to remain neutral despite the confessions of her patients, and she pulled on that training now more than ever.

  ‘If that was true he’d be in prison.’

  ‘He didn’t pull the trigger, but he set her up for it,’ Hoburn said. ‘He set her up to die, he put her right where they wanted her to be and turned his back on her. It was jump or be pushed, that was why he left the force.’

  Lyssa wanted to jump to Colt’s defence because she couldn’t believe that he’d ever do something so unbelievably callous. Except she had no information of her own that she could rely on to show that he hadn’t done such a thing.

  Hoburn tucked his pad away and left the couch. ‘Take care of yourself, Doctor Cutler, that’s all I’m trying to say to you. You’re an intelligent woman with a lot to lose, don’t sacrifice it for a man who hasn’t been honest with you about his history.’

  He left the office and she remained in her seat, but she saw that he didn’t go out of the door, he went right and toward the waiting room where Colt was. She had questions of her own for Colt, but they would wait, they would have to.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Colt had stayed to have dinner with her, but he didn’t tell her what Hoburn had said to him during their conversation downstairs. She hadn’t yet plucked up the courage to ask him about why he left the force either, or if anything that Hoburn had said to her was true. That being said, Colt wasted no time in plying her with questions of his own about what Hoburn had discussed with her about the case. She spent more time talking to Colt about what Hoburn had said to her than she’d spent talking to Hoburn himself.

  They’d turned the pictures over to Chavez and Ronson when they arrived before dinner, and the cops asked a million questions of their own. Her head was spinning with all the information and activity taking place. Colt had gone over her whole abode, as she was cooking, looking for any hint of further surveillance equipment and although he didn’t find anything that didn’t prevent him from lecturing her about safety throughout the meal.

  During their spell washing the dishes he’d asked her to come and stay with him at his apartment. She was grateful that he asked, as opposed to ordering her, but she’d known he’d push the issue until he got his way, so a command might have been quicker. She wasn’t going to fight too hard against the prospect of living with him while this was going on. Knowing that this person was watching gave her the creeps, and she had hard evidence now that he really was watching so she couldn’t ignore the possibility that had, until now, existed on the periphery of her mind. This man was everywhere that she was, she just couldn’t figure out how.

  Packing up a bag with her essentials, she was surprised when Blaser appeared in her house. Colt had apparently filled him in, and then they were packing up more stuff for her. They seemed determined that she take anything and everything that might be remotely important or necessary as though there was a chance she would never come back to this house at all.

  When they found this guy she’d be back, this was her home, but she’d be happy to spend a few days at Colt’s place, even if it meant cancelling on more clients, until she could request a work space at the hospital. The hospital had a floor of office space that they rented spaces to private practitioners. It shouldn’t be too hard to get lot there because she already had privileges at the hospital.

  So she bundled up patient notes and the basics that she needed for work, then climbed into the car that Blaser h
ad brought to transport her and her things to Colt’s place. While she was unpacking into the closet in Colt’s bedroom, the brothers spoke in the kitchen. Then Colt came through and told her that they were going out; not her and him, him and Blaser. He’d gone through the safety spiel again, made sure she had her pepper spray, and told her that Gus was home if she needed reassurance or protection. Without giving her a chance to respond, he thoroughly kissed her on promise of following through when he came home.

  By the time midnight came she had given up on waiting, so she’d gone to bed. She didn’t want to call and pester him but she was worried. Sleep didn’t want to come; she tossed and turned for a while, but must have eventually drifted off.

  A loud bang woke her some time later and she sat bolt upright. The shuffle of feet and mumbling got her out of bed. From the ruckus of people coming from the living room she knew that something had happened, and that the bang was most likely from the door being thrown open.

  ‘Lys!’ Colt shouted and she grabbed a pair of panties to pull on. ‘Lys!’

  ‘I’m coming!’ she replied and pulled on a tee-shirt then rushed out to see what the emergency was. From the tone of his voice there was an emergency, because there was an urgency in him that was unusual.

  Hope remained that she was overreacting and that there wasn’t really emergency. But the minute she got out into the living room she saw that there was. Colt and Ruger were manoeuvring a pale Blaser toward the couch, they laid him down and she hurried over. A reddened rag on his shoulder was being pressed in by Colt, and it didn’t take her long to comprehend what she was looking at.

  Tying her hair back with the band on her wrist she went to Blaser’s side and fell to her knees to peel back the rag slightly giving her a view to assess the injury. ‘He was shot,’ Ruger said.

  ‘I see that,’ she said, checking for an exit wound, except she didn’t find one. ‘Ruger, I need towels and water. Get him a blanket and some water to drink. Colt, my medical bag is under the bed.’ The brothers ran off to complete their tasks. ‘Blaser, honey, you’re ok. We’re going to look after you. Can you wiggle your fingers for me?’