by Kaylea Cross
Even Bertha seemed to defrost a little.
“Can we give some cookies to Jack too?” the little girl asked the housekeeper.
As Bertha produced a second container, William Price appeared in the doorway.
“Detective Sullivan. I should be able to talk to you now.”
So Jack left Maddie and Bertha to pack the containers and followed the man back to his home office. Mahogany-paneled walls, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a sprawling desk, an antique globe bar—the place looked like a movie set from a period movie about the English aristocracy, the smoking room where the gentlemen withdrew for cigars after a dinner party.
The man pointed to a sprawling leather armchair. “Since you’re from Broslin, I assume this is about my daughter. I wasn’t aware that the accident was still under investigation. Isn’t it time to close the door on that unfortunate event?”
Didn’t sound like he knew about the latest trouble. Interesting. Jack sat. “I’m not here about Dylan Miller.”
The man stayed standing, leaning against his desk. He seemed the type who would enjoy the position of authority. Jack didn’t mind letting him have it if it would set him at ease and make him more talkative.
“I’m here about the recent incident on Miss Price’s property.”
The man shot him a blank look.
So Ashley had told her father nothing. Maybe they weren’t close enough to share things. Although, this was pretty big, and they did see each other regularly. He knew Price took his granddaughter nearly every weekend to visit her mother.
“What incident?” the man demanded.
So Jack filled him in, keeping to the basics, not mentioning the paintings.
“You can’t think that my daughter has anything to do with this,” Price charged Jack when he was finished.
“How close are you to your daughter?”
“Close enough to know what she’s capable of. You people harassed her enough. I don’t want you to talk to her again without a lawyer present.”
“That’s her choice, I believe.”
“If you think—”
“Why are you raising your granddaughter? Why isn’t she with her mother?”
The man flashed a grim look. “Ashley has had a hard time since the accident. Anybody would. Look, she’s struggling with depression. She’s taking medication, and she will get better.”
“You believe that her being alone is the best thing for her?”
“I offered her to come here.”
Another interesting tidbit. He wondered why Ashley hadn’t accepted.
“She has this…anxiety,” the man said. “She doesn’t like to leave her house. She’s mentally fragile at the moment. But not like her mother,” he quickly added.
“Her mother?”
He’d found the story of the woman’s meltdown and subsequent death in the online archives, society pages, but he wanted to hear Price’s version.
The man stepped to the window and stared out, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “My late wife was an actress. Broadway. She pushed herself. Stimulants to work, depressants to sleep, other drugs she thought would help her with emotions and creativity. I didn’t realize at the beginning, and then… She’s…” His jaw tightened. “I’m not sure what happened at the end. She began having hallucinations. And then her heart gave out.”
“How old was Ashley?”
“A teenager. A bad time to lose a mother.”
“I don’t suppose there’s a good time.”
Price nodded as he turned back to him. “I suppose you’re right, Detective.”
They shared a moment of silence while Jack thought of his own mother. He barely remembered her. He remembered Shannon a lot more clearly; the big sister who’d stepped into the mothering role and had taken care of him. Only he’d been too much of a snot-nosed teen to appreciate it. And then she was gone. Taken.
“Is Ashley seeing anyone?” he asked, although, all that time he’d spent watching her house, he hadn’t seen anyone go inside her place and stay.
“No. What does that have to do with anything?” Price strode back to the desk. “Is she in any kind of danger?”
“We don’t believe so. Nothing in the killer’s profile says that he would go after her. His victims have always been carefully selected, two or three at a time. Then he moves on to a whole other state. This time, he wasn’t hunting. He just wanted me off his trail.”
Price didn’t look reassured.
Jack watched for his reaction as he asked, “Can I ask where you were during the first three days of this month?”
“Now, listen—” he blustered immediately, but Jack raised a placating hand.
“I’m asking everyone I talk to regarding the case. No suspicion implied. Standard procedure.”
But the man shot him another dark look before he glanced at his calendar. “Thursday and Friday I was at work, then here with Maddie and Bertha. Saturday my granddaughter and I went to see Ashley in Broslin.”
An alibi easily checked, so no point lying about it.
Jack asked the man some questions about his job, about his relationship with Ashley, then more questions about his daughter, her childhood, her career.
William Price was a type-A, dominant personality. Ashley wasn’t, although she had fire inside her, part of her artistic passion. But crimes of passion were usually part of domestic violence. Being a serial killer required cold ruthlessness. She didn’t fit a killer profile, he thought for the dozenth time. But would she allow herself to be dominated by one? After all, she let her father call the shots regarding her daughter.
Could she be manipulated or forced into some sort of twisted relationship with Blackwell? Did Blackwell need an audience? Mementoes of his crimes? Was he using her for that?
But none of her paintings, other than the one of Jack, were of Blackwell’s known victims. A lot of those crimes had been solved, and he couldn’t find cracks, no matter how hard he’d looked, in the convictions.
Nothing made sense.
Frankly, her tale of dark visions came closest to an explanation, the only possibility he refused to consider.
He thought about the absurdity of her claims all the way back to Broslin, with two batches of grossly misshapen cookies on the passenger seat.
He wanted to give the cabin in the woods another look.
He found nobody there this time, so he picked the lock, eased inside, inch by careful inch, ducking low and watching for a trap.
He looked through the arsenal, opened the boxes—ammunition and water bottles, no instruments of torture, no Taser, no human remains. He could see nothing he could tie to Blackwell, dammit.
* * *
Ashley looked at the small chunk of cheese and wilted celery in her nearly empty refrigerator. She was going to have to brave the grocery store tonight. She needed bread and milk, cold cuts, some microwave dinners for herself when Maddie wasn’t here, and the makings for a healthy, homemade meal for her daughter tomorrow.
Her father and Maddie were coming, finally. Which meant she couldn’t put off the shopping trip any longer. As much as she dreaded the store, the thrill of seeing her daughter again gave her strength to do it. Their way-too-brief visits were the only thing that kept her going.
She closed the fridge door, then tidied up the old-fashioned tile countertop a little. Not that her small kitchen was messy. She’d already mopped the ancient glazed-brick floor. Once she filled the fridge and her plain oak cabinets, she’d be ready for visitors.
She’d go shopping after midnight; by then the store was usually deserted. She wasn’t looking forward to sleep anyway. The night before, she’d dreamt of Detective Sullivan, had awoken with a start, then dreamed of him again. And again, variations of the same dream over and over. Always the dream started with him coming for her. Sometimes he took her to jail. Sometimes he made love to her.
She really was going crazy now, she thought as her phone rang. Her father.
“I just heard about th
e incident on your property. Good God, Ashley, why didn’t you tell me?”
Her jaw clenched; a headache blinked awake in the back of her head and quickly intensified. “It was no big deal.”
“A Detective Sullivan came to see me about a serial killer.”
“They don’t know that for sure. And the…victim is fine. It’s over.”
“I don’t know if I feel comfortable bringing Maddie out there.”
Her throat tightened. “But I didn’t see her last weekend either.”
“You shouldn’t be out there alone.”
Her head pounded too hard suddenly to point out that Broslin rarely had any violent crime, while there were half a dozen murders on the average day in Philadelphia where her father lived.
Nausea rolled in her stomach. Her palms began to sweat, and with a shock, she realized what it meant. She knew what was coming.
So damned unfair.
She squeezed her eyes shut. She shouldn’t have another stupid vision. She’d saved a man’s life. Shouldn’t that have bought her some sort of salvation?
She fought back her rising desperation and focused on keeping her voice steady. “The police and the FBI were here for days on end. They checked every ditch and bush.” She stared out the living room window into the moonlit night but barely saw the road or the fields on the other side. “Everything is perfectly safe.”
“Why don’t you come to my place? You could stay with us for a while. I’ll even have Bertha set up a second room as a studio so you can paint.”
The first impulse was to say no. Half a dozen excuses sprang to her tongue. She swallowed them.
If she could somehow go… She would see Maddie every single day. And she would never be alone in her father’s eight-room penthouse that overlooked the art museum. She wouldn’t have to jump at every noise the wind made in the trees. Her father would be there in the evenings and at night. During the day, she would have Bertha and Maddie. Maybe she wouldn’t have another spell if she wasn’t alone.
But if she gave up her hard-won independence, she wasn’t sure if she could regain it again. She needed to fight the anxiety, not give in to it, or her life would become smaller and smaller.
That was the truth, and she knew it, but she also knew that she was using that truth as an excuse because she was terrified of driving into the city. If she were well, going to stay at her father’s for a few days would be no big deal.
Then Maddie came on the phone and said, “Mom, Grandpa said you could come here.” The little girl squealed. “Can you come today?”
Her sweet voice reached inside Ashley and got hold of her heart. She drew a deep breath, pushing down on the nausea. “How about tomorrow?” Her forehead broke out in cold sweat as she added, “First, I have to pack.”
“She’s coming! She’s coming!” Maddie’s voice wobbled as she probably jumped around with excitement. “Grandpa says we’ll be expecting you. We’ll be right here.”
A black car shot down the road, slowed as it reached the end of her driveway, turned, its headlights cutting through the dark. Ashley’s stomach dropped as she recognized Jack Sullivan’s Crown Victoria. Her headache kicked up a notch.
“I better go and find some bags.” She smacked a kiss into the phone. “Tell Grandpa I’ll see you both tomorrow, okay?”
“I can’t wait to tell Bertha. I’ll help her make a room for you next to mine.”
“I love you, Peanut.” She hung up the phone as her body screamed, invisible powers pulling her toward the loft. She needed to paint, get the darkness out, and get it over with. But first, she had to get rid of the detective.
She unlocked the door and yanked it open before he had a chance to ring the doorbell, the last thing her blinding headache needed.
“Miss Price.” He gave a curt nod, his expression closed, his tall frame and his fighter’s stance more than a little intimidating.
His face really did have some interesting lines, especially the strong jaw. And that cerulean gaze too drew the eye. She imagined that another woman, one he wasn’t trying to pin any crimes on, would find his masculine energy attractive. She had, in her dreams.
But not now. Now she was just pissed at him.
“You had no right to talk to my father.”
He cocked his head as he watched her. “Interesting that you wouldn’t share something as big as this with him. Why is that?”
“I didn’t want to worry him.”
“You hide too much,” he observed coldly.
Part of her wanted to slink away, to hide from him. But she was done accepting defeat. She would face down her demons and Jack Sullivan today. Tomorrow, she would go and see her daughter.
He towered on her doorstep, ready to go at her.
She hadn’t played much sports since college, but she figured the best defense still had to be a good offense. She stuck her chin out as she said, “I want my paintings back.”
As much as she hated those monstrosities, she hated someone else having them even more. If he hadn’t shown them to anyone yet, she wanted to keep it that way.
He raised an eyebrow, looking utterly unimpressed with her newfound assertiveness as he pushed by her. “I brought you something from your daughter.” He handed her a plastic box and a piece of paper she hadn’t even seen him holding.
She closed the door against the cold and took what he was offering.
Cookies and a drawing, with “I miss you MOM” scribbled on top. Warmth spread through her chest for a second, then a blast of cold as her gaze flew to his. “She doesn’t know, does she?”
He gave her a hard look. “I don’t entertain five-year-olds with tales of serial killers.”
She relaxed a little, then snapped when he still kept the displeased look on his face. “What? You can assume the worst of me, but I can’t do the same of you?”
“She’s a good kid,” he said.
Which, for some reason, got her dander up. “And that’s a surprise because I’m a crazed criminal? Are you here hoping for a confession?”
He watched her carefully, his full attention on her. “Anything you want to tell me, I’ll be happy to hear it.”
“I don’t have time for you. I’m in the middle of a project.”
She had been working on a new painting earlier but had not planned on doing more today. She didn’t like working with artificial light. It messed up her colors.
“Make time. Because I’ll be coming back as many times as it takes. Count on it. Hope you don’t have plans to leave town.”
“I was going to stay with my father for a couple of days.”
He reached up to unbutton his coat.
Oh God, he can’t possibly mean to stay. Her gaze slipped to his hands, the scars that crisscrossed his skin, to the tape that covered his missing fingernails. His knuckles looked like they’d been busted a couple of times. His fingers moved stiffly. He’d never be able to paint, she thought for a weird, disjointed moment, and felt sorry for him. She shook that off. He was the enemy.
Which he proved by saying, “I don’t think so. For the time being, you need to stay here where we can reach you with further questions as needed.”
As his wide shoulders emerged from the coat, tense, she imagined every muscle in his body was coiled, the predator ready to leap at a moment’s notice. And she was the prey he’d set his eyes on, God help her.
Her headache pulsed. She had to paint. She’d stood up to the detective; now time to get rid of him.
“I really do have work to do. You can let yourself out.” She walked toward the stairs.
Instead of taking the hint and leaving, he followed her all the way up to the loft. “You can talk and work at the same time.”
Not when she was like this.
She looked around, anywhere but him, her stomach rolling. Her abstracts lined the loft, a sign of progress that encouraged her. She could do what she had to. She faced the man and put some force into her voice. “This is harassment. You need to leave.”
Fury washed over her, and she shoved against him. “You know nothing about me and my love for my daughter!” She stabbed his chest with her index finger, pushed forward, went on the offensive.
“Blackwell is a sick killer,” she agreed. “Maybe I’m sick too. But so are you. You’re so obsessed with the man you can’t see straight. You’re a no-good, messed-up, obsessed cop. Now get your hands off me.”
She got right up in his face, rose to her toes so they were eye to eye and he could see that she meant every word, that she was done cowering before him.
“Fine. And you’re a freaked-out, loopy artist.” For a moment, raw heat flashed in his gaze and his hands tightened on her arms. He held her like that for a split second, their faces inches apart, both of them breathing a little hard with their own fury. Then he set her apart and let her go.
“I will get him, one way or the other.” His tone carried warning.
She wanted to point out that Blackwell was not here, so he should look elsewhere, but suddenly the dam broke and a torrent of images flooded her. Her headache intensified to the point of being unbearable, her peripheral vision darkening.
She strode to a shelf, grabbed a prepped canvas board, and slammed it onto an empty easel, hoping he would leave at last, now that he’d done his best to intimidate her. She couldn’t fight him anymore, not right now. What she faced now, what dark force threatened to drown her was bigger than the detective and his accusations.
Dizziness swirled through her, too much to handle suddenly. She reached for the wall to steady herself but got the detective’s arm instead.
“What is it?” His tone was cold and hard, his eyes full of suspicion.
“Bad headache.” She rubbed her temple. “Migraine.”
“A play for sympathy? I’m afraid that doesn’t work with me. Why don’t you just tell me the truth?”
“Why don’t you leave?” She wanted the words to be an order but found herself nearly begging.
