Their perp was smart. He’d made good use of the ocean tides with the briny water, sand, and predators doing their share to destroy the remains. They’d left little in the way of evidence behind other than a severed foot in a shoe.
Questions were mounting and the press were after him for answers he didn’t have. He turned and passed a tired glance over the news vans, wishing he could will them away. The woman had neared the end of the line and was getting ready to climb into a beat up old white Civic. His pulse jumped. She called to a guy dismantling a camera tripod, then opened the door to get in, but hesitated long enough for a last look down the beach.
He took an instinctive step forward, his hand lifting to catch her attention. Something elemental arced between them like a static charge. Then she climbed into her car and drove away without a backward glance and he lowered his hand, clenching it by his side.
Well, what did he expect? Just because he’d been hit by the attraction bug didn’t mean the feeling was mutual. And even if it had been, now was not the time.
“Boss.” A white-suited tech held up a baggie.
Connor grimaced and picked his way over the rocks and driftwood washed up from the surf. He had a good idea what they were going to find before he even got there. This guy liked to play games.
“Is it the same?” He held out his hand, not surprised to see a puzzle piece in the bottom of the bag.
“Yeah,” the tech said. “Edge piece, the name Cindy written lefthanded in cursive with black permanent marker on the back.”
Approximately one-inch long, another side piece, this one dark gray with shadowy lines running the length. The other two pieces had come from different parts of the puzzle, though the coloring suggested it was the same picture. The first one had the name Amanda, the second Betty. He was toying with them, leaving clues to the victims names, Con was sure of it. He just couldn’t prove anything. Yet.
They were running names through the NCMPUR Operations—The National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains. But with two of the three victims First Nations women their job was twice as hard. With over one thousand missing Aboriginal women alone, and pressure from their communities as well as the Federal government to get a handle on these crimes, Connor was under a lot of stress. Add to that the island was just coming into tourist season, and this whole thing just became a nightmare.
“Get this back to the lab. See if we can get lucky for a change. Even a partial would give us something to go on.” More than they had now.
“Okay, boss.” The tech took the baggie, labeled it, and stuck it in a black duffel before hurrying away.
Connor gazed out at the storm-tossed waves, his stomach twisting in knots, then sighed and made his way over to the group studying the grisly remains. The Medical Examiner, a silver-haired man in his late fifties, glanced up from his examination, and gave a short nod.
“Detective.”
“What do you have for me, doc?” Con dropped to his haunches and choked back bile at the gruesome sight of a sinewy ankle bone, tendons still attached, poking out of a dirty white and blue canvas running shoe.
“Size seven, women’s. Hard to tell until we get the test results back, but I’d have to say Aboriginal from the flat arch and the shape of the phalanges.” His gaze was grave. “It’s the left foot again, Connor.”
Shit.
The team had taken extra care to keep that information under wraps. The last thing they needed was a copy-cat.
Until now they’d assumed the missing feet were a coincidence, maybe caused by suicides. Jumpers as they called them—people who chose to end their lives by jumping off bridges—sometimes washed up on the coast, their bodies decayed by their time in the water. But with it being the same foot and those damn taunting puzzle pieces, it was becoming obvious this was the work of a killer.
He nodded and rose. “Thanks, doc.” A quick glance at his watch revealed they’d already been here a couple of hours. Most of the news teams had given up, leaving a skeleton crew behind to pick his bones, if he let them. He had no intention of doing so.
“I’m heading back to the office. You guys good?”
“Yep.”
“Sure thing.”
“When’s lunch?” This from Esposito, the walking garbage can. The guy was always hungry, didn’t matter how much he ate, and skinny as a rail.
Connor grinned. “Prudence didn’t fill your bottomless gut this morning?” They’d only been married six months and were still in the honeymoon phase, as he liked to call it.
“Nah, she wasn’t feelin’ too good,” Dan said, his brow furrowed. “Hey, you don’t suppose…?”
Con stifled his envy and clapped his friend on the back. “What are you asking me for? Go home and see your wife, Dan. Give her a hug from me. The rest of the team can finish up here.”
Dan looked at the shoe, the excitement dimming from his gaze. “We gotta catch this bastard, Con.”
His buddy climb the embankment to his patrol car, leaving Connor haunted by the thought of three women who would never get the opportunity to share another moment with their loved ones.
Newly minted angel Lucas Carmichael sat in the back seat of his quarry’s rattletrap car and grimaced. He needed a lead on her dead husband, but didn’t know how he was going to get it.
The woman’s attention was on the action down the beach. Men dressed in paperwhite suits with little white booties on their feet roamed up and down the beach like a horde of flies. He didn’t know what they were doing, and he didn’t care—all he wanted was Natalya. And the only way to find her was the woman getting into the front seat of the car.
Julie Crenshaw.
She looked a lot better than the last time he’d seen her. On that occasion fright had twisted her face into a Halloween mask of horror as their vehicles hurtled toward an unavoidable collision.
Eighteen months had given her skin a peachy, healthy glow. She leaned forward to start the ignition and her hair flowed over her shoulder in bright golden-brown waves. All except for one thin streak of silver, like a moonbeam stuck in the strands behind her ear.
She shifted into gear and glanced over her shoulder to back onto the road. Lucas froze, though of course she couldn’t see him in his angel form.
“We need to hurry. The boys will be home from school soon.”
Lucas sucked in a harsh breath. Was she talking to him?
“C’mon car, don’t let me down now.”
Her car. She was talking to her car. He smiled, liking this woman who had been through so much in the last year-and-a-half. If not for his split second of inattention while driving, none of the preceding month’s events needed to have happened.
But that in no way excused the boy’s father for stealing away with the love of Lucas’ life.
Someone had to pay.
Chapter Four
“You may as well sit down, you’re not going anywhere.”
The masculine voice rumbled from the darkest reaches of the cave. The beast had returned.
Natalya wrapped suddenly cold arms around her body and slowly turned to meet her enemy's gaze. He stood near the back of the stone cavern, in a section she’d searched inch by tortuous inch. She would have sworn there was nothing there other than the well where she drew water and the rustic bathroom he must have built in preparation for her stay. How did he get in?
“You can’t keep me here forever,” she snapped, though he was doing a damn fine job of it so far. With no windows the only source of light in this godforsaken pit was the candles she’d found on a shelf against one side of the eight-by-ten room. She knew the exact dimensions; had spent more than enough time pacing the makeshift prison. After two months of scratching out calendar marks whenever she estimated another day had passed, she’d given up.
But not her dreams of escape.
“I brought food. Sit.” The hulking brute dropped a bag onto the rough wooden table and pulled out a chair, lowering himself down with a heavy sigh. “C’mon, I won’t bite.”<
br />
So he says.
Nat edged closer, her stomach knocking against her backbone, but unwilling to place herself in any more danger. Normally he brought the food while she slept, so she rarely saw him—hours, days, alone with nothing more than visions of the past to haunt her dreams.
Lucas.
He would be half out of his mind with worry. Ever since she could remember he’d been their guardian, hers and Scott’s. Small wonder she’d carried a severe case of hero worship for the gangly boy who’d befriended the new kids on the block and stepped in to protect them from the neighborhood bullies. As they grew the adoration changed to attraction, and attraction to love. Not that he’d known, or would have appreciated it if he had. He and Scott had bonded like brothers and both men made it their priority to shelter her from everything, whether abusive parents or amorous boyfriends.
The flame on the white candle flickered and danced, the wax leaving fat globs like tears drying on the side, and shadows jumping on the wall. Her abductor barely acknowledged her presence, his attention on the heaping plate of crispy chicken pieces in front of him. He took a big bite out of a leg, his white teeth flashing in the light. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, then pushed the plate her way.
“Eat. I don’t need you getting sick again.”
Natalya stiffened. The illness he spoke of was his fault. If he hadn’t attacked Lucas and then shoved her when she tried to stop it, she wouldn’t have fallen and smashed her head against the hearth. When she’d woken up days later, she’d been here, in purgatory.
Defiant, she snatched the biggest piece of chicken she could find and took a mouthful, her gaze defying him to comment. He only grunted and continued to chew on his own food. For a while silence reigned while basic necessities took over. She’d forgotten how a simple thing like tasty chicken could make her feel. Alive. Human.
Something she’d never be again.
Appetite gone, Nat threw her scraps into the bag and wiped her fingers with one of the napkins on the table. Goosebumps crawled up her spine and broke across her arms as her fingers stuck to the paper. Hmm, so much for losing phobias after you died.
She eyed the man finishing his meal and wondered what his biggest fear was, and how could she use it to get out of this mess.
“He’ll find me, you know,” she said. “Lucas won’t give up. Why don’t you take me back and we can forget this ever happened?”
Yeah, like she could forgive or forget the months of solitary confinement this brute had subjected her to. It wasn’t her fault he’d lost his family. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. The accident had destroyed lots of lives.
“I don’t want him to give up,” he growled. “I want him to suffer.”
He pushed away from the table, the chair catching on the thick pile of the carpet lining the floor. The candle hissed and sputtered as he rose to his full height, casting a dark shadow across the wall.
Natalya’s heart jumped and she backed up a couple of steps before she could stop herself. She clenched sweaty hands into fists and glared. “Why are you doing this? It won’t bring your family back.”
His head reared as though from a blow. He stared at the ceiling, his jaw clenched and throat working. His gaze when he turned it on her a few moments later burned with green fire. “You think I don’t know that?”
He kicked the chair and it went over with a crash. “I live with that fact every god-damn day. I will never hold my children again. Or teach them to drive. Or be best man at their weddings.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sucked in a harsh breath. “And then there is my wife.”
The raw pain in his eyes was agonizing to see.
“Jules dreamed of having a little girl. She loved the boys so much, but a girl…” He turned away, his shoulders hunched under the weight of his loss. “We were choosing a name for the baby that day.”
His words were so low Nat had to lean closer to hear him. She lifted a hand to offer comfort, then slowly let it drop. He wouldn’t appreciate it coming from her—the enemy.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, at a loss as to what she could say that might ease his agony.
His back stiffened and he turned on her, his hands fisted. “I don’t want your apologies,” he snarled. “All the sorrys in the world won’t bring my family back to me.”
He strode to the rear wall of the cave, then hesitated, his gaze almost regretful as it rested on her. “The food will last you for a few days. I’ll be back with more.”
Natalya couldn’t help it, the thought of being all alone sending her stumbling forward. “Please,” she begged. “Let me go.”
He shook his head and lifted a hand, freezing her in her tracks. A dark hole opened in the wall and he stepped through, the opening sliding closed behind him.
The force field eased and Nat fell to her knees, tears sliding down her cheeks. She crawled over and desperately clawed at the rock face but couldn’t find any triggers to let her out. She kept trying long after her fingers were cut and bleeding and jagged sobs turned her throat as raw and aching as her hands.
Chapter Five
Julie pulled into the paved driveway and parked in front of the single car garage just as the school bus stopped down the street and let off a rag-tag bunch of laughing, talking kids. All except her boys, last to step down from the vehicle. They barely glanced up from their inspection of the sidewalk when the doors slid closed and the bus signaled away from the curb.
She sighed and waited while they trudged the half block to their front gate. There were no waves or yelled plans to join the other kids in a game of street hockey after their dinner. No suggestions of an impromptu basketball match using the hoop above the garage door, or a bike ride to the nearby park. Nothing at all. In fact, Dustin looked like he had another of his perpetual mad-ons happening, with hunched shoulders and downcast expression. Meanwhile, Freddie tagged along behind, casting envious glances at the neighbor boy running down the street toward the others setting up for the hockey game.
“Why can’t we, Dusty?” Freddie tugged on his older brother’s jacket, barely slowing him down. “I want to play.”
Dustin stopped short, glaring at the laughing kids down the block. “They’re a big bunch of dummies.” He kicked at a stray pebble, sending it skittering down the walk.
Julie hiked her satchel higher on her shoulder and closed the car door. Dustin glanced her way, then trudged into the house without a word.
Julie’s welcoming smile flat-lined, her son’s continuing anger creating a hard ball of tension in her gut. She’d taken him to counselling after his father’s death, but it hadn’t done much to alleviate the guilt he carried. He felt the accident was his fault and nothing Julie could say would change his mind.
“Mom, can I go play?” Freddie giggled as the neighbor’s dog dropped a beat up ball glove at his feet.
She forced a cheerful expression and held out her arms. “Do I get a cuddle first?”
Young enough not to care who might be watching, he ran into her embrace, his chubby arms wrapping her waist in a bear hug. She held on a moment too long, reluctant to give up the scent of bubblegum and sun that clung to his soft skin.
“Mom, you’re squeezing me to death,” he laughed into her chest.
She gave one last clench, half teasing, half desperation, and let him go. “Be back in an hour, and watch out for traffic.”
“Okay, love you, Mom,” he said, grabbing the glove and heading for the street, his attention already half a block away.
“Love you, son,” she answered, and he was gone. Leaving her alone. Deflated.
She turned for the house, coming to a halt when she noticed Dustin standing on the other side of the screen. There was that knot again. Much as she loved her eldest son, Julie hated the undercurrents that ran between them like a tide of noxious gas. He’d been daddy’s boy, had followed Mike wherever he went, questions flying a-mile-a-minute. They’d often joked that the only time Dusty was quiet was when he was asleep.
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Mike.
She missed her husband every day. The guilt bit again.
In the beginning, after the accident, the combined loss of their unborn daughter and husband and father had left the three of them lost. Floundering in a mire of heartbreak, depression, and agony. Her boss and best friend, Taylor Monroe, had recommended family counselling. But it was only when Dustin ran away and was almost killed by the agent of the man who crashed into them, movie star, Lucas Carmichael, that she agreed. It turned out to be the right decision. It hadn’t happened overnight, but slowly she and the boys came back from the deep pit of loss they’d fallen into. And when Taylor was offered a temporary promotion too good to pass up—in Canada—she’d persuaded Julie to make a fresh start and move with her.
Julie balked. Her husband was buried in Graceland Cemetery, their daughter in the same plot. How could she leave them? But then she’d looked into Dustin’s green eyes and his stubborn attitude, Freddie’s cowlick and love of life, and she realized Mike would always be with them, wherever they were.
“Don’t you want to go with your brother, Dusty?” she cajoled, hoping to tempt him out of his funk.
He stared at her, his eyes almost an eerie green through the dark screening. “I have homework.”
Well, that was a first. Usually she had to fight with them to do their schoolwork. She climbed the cement steps, vaguely noticing her planters filled with hydrangeas needed watering. Dustin turned away and slunk into the living room. He flopped onto the couch, picked up the remote, and turned on the television, ignoring her when she entered the house.
Julie was just about to remonstrate him when the news came on and there she was, front and center. Dustin glanced at her curiously, then refocused on the report, turning up the volume to subsonic.
A competing news team had the story out on the early news broadcast. Taylor was going to be pissed.
She watched in dismay as they panned over the beach and the swarms of police and technicians, before sweeping out to encompass the crowd. They obviously didn’t know she’d found the remains—that was something at least. But the cameraman had zeroed in on her as she stood talking to the detective, so it was only a matter of time.
The Beast Within: Mended Souls #2 Page 2
