“That all depends on what you mean by ready to go,” he answered, pulling her into his arms again.
She was melting against him. “I mean anything you want me to mean.”
Luke wished that she could be that cooperative in the squad room, but a man couldn’t have everything, he thought philosophically, and right now, he had more than he’d ever dreamed he would.
He didn’t leave until five the next morning.
* * *
Once in the squad room, he, White Hawk and Frankie spent the morning reviewing the case files again. Luke felt that it wouldn’t hurt to be as familiar as they could be with the killer’s mode of operating.
The afternoon was spent prepping Frankie.
The closer the time came for her first meeting at the coffee shop, the more uneasy Luke felt about the whole undertaking.
* * *
“It’s going to be all right,” Frankie assured him. She could feel the tension emanating from him as they got into the car to drive over to the Fast & Hot coffee shop. She held out her wrist for him to view. “Sean wired my bracelet. You and White Hawk will hear everything that’s said in those earpieces he gave you.”
He knew that. Knew all the details better than she did.
That still didn’t help reassure him.
“Why are you so calm?” he asked her.
“Because I want to catch this SOB so bad I can taste it,” she told him. “And this is the only way it’s going to happen—with luck,” she added, even as she made a show of crossing her fingers.
Crossing her fingers wasn’t going to be nearly enough to keep her safe, Luke thought. Only keen vigilance would accomplish that.
Luke glanced at his watch. It was ten after five. Her first so-called meeting was at 5:30 p.m.
“Almost showtime,” he told her. He parked their vehicle around the corner from the coffee shop. “I’ll go in first. Then you follow. White Hawk will go in the shop last.”
“I know,” she told him with a patient smile. “You already said that. Twice.”
“The landing on D-Day had less planning behind it,” White Hawk commented from the backseat.
“D-Day wasn’t my responsibility,” Luke retorted. Then, forcing himself to calm down, he looked at Frankie. “This is.” With that, he opened the car door but made no move to get out. It was almost as if when he did, he felt that he would lose some control over the situation. “Remember, give me a couple of minutes. Then you follow. White Hawk will be behind you.”
“Breathe, O’Bannon,” Frankie counseled, patting his cheek.
With a grunt, Luke got out of the car and started walking.
“Never saw him this nervous before,” White Hawk commented as he watched his partner walk up the street and turn a corner. “Actually, I don’t think I ever saw him nervous.”
“Probably because he’s working with me for the first time and he’s not sure I can handle myself,” she told the other detective.
“Yeah,” White Hawk said, a touch of sarcasm in his voice. “That must be it.” Just like his partner had a few moments ago, he looked down at his watch. “You’d better get out and be on your way. If you don’t walk through those doors in the next three minutes—” he nodded in what was the general direction of the coffee shop “—O’Bannon’s liable to go into cardiac arrest.”
She really couldn’t tell from White Hawk’s deadpan voice if the detective was kidding—or not. Either way, Frankie got out of the vehicle and walked down the street before turning the corner, just as Luke had done before her.
She might appear calm, but every bone in her body felt like it was on high alert. Because each of the three men she was meeting at the coffee shop tonight just might be the one—and not in the romantic way that The Perfect Date website meant, she thought.
Almost before she knew it, she found herself approaching the coffee shop.
Taking a deep breath and widening her smile, Frankie pushed open the coffee shop door and walked in.
Ready or not, here I come, she thought, silently addressing the shop’s occupants.
Chapter 22
Half an hour into her second coffee date, Frankie realized everything that she had been missing by avoiding the whole dating scene.
And she was sincerely glad that she had.
She was grateful, too, that despite avoiding all the awkward conversations and uncomfortable moments, she had still managed to connect with Luke. Connect with him in a good way.
For however long this personal relationship between them lasted, she felt that she had lucked out. Because, for the most part, this dating thing was really hard work.
Definitely harder than real work, she thought as she listened to Wade Bochner, the clean-shaven aerospace engineer, talk about how disappointed he had felt when his first marriage fell through.
She did her best to say some sympathetic things and look as if she cared about the nightmares he’d been having since his divorce.
On cue—and none too soon in her opinion—her cell phone rang. Frankie answered it on the third ring. “I’m sorry, I have to take this,” she apologized to Wade.
As she pretended to listen to the person on the other end of the line, she was quick to express the proper amount of distress.
“Oh, Lord, is he all right? Oh, okay. Yes. Yes, of course, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Ending the call, she put her phone away and looked properly apologetic.
“I’m sorry. That was my mother. My father was having chest pains and lucky for him, my mother bullied him into going to the ER. According to the emergency physician, she got him there just in time. The worst is over, but they’re going to keep him there overnight for observation, just in case. I told her I’d meet them there.”
“I heard,” the engineer responded, appearing somewhat dejected. “Is there anything I can do?”
“If you’re in the habit of praying, that would be appreciated,” she told him.
“Then your father really did have chest pains?” he asked, surprised. “Because, well, I thought this was just an elaborate brush-off,” Wade confessed. “You know, a girlfriend calling, giving you an excuse to beg off.”
“I’m not that creative,” Frankie told him. She glanced at her watch. “And now I’ve really got to go. My mother’s going to pieces.”
“Sure, sure, I understand. Email me when everything settles down. I’d like to do this again—not the part where your father has chest pains, but the rest of it,” he told her, stumbling over his tongue.
“Of course. Yes, but I’ve really got to go,” she told Wade. With that, she left the coffee shop quickly.
Frankie hurried down the street and got into her car, just in case Wade had left the coffee shop and was watching her. She slowly circled the entire block, waiting for Luke to call and give her the all-clear sign.
Twenty minutes later, she was back in business, listening to Roy Anderson, an accountant, tell her how he thought that trendy coffee shops like the one they were in charged too much for what they served. He felt the different kinds of coffees that Fast & Hot offered were pretentious.
* * *
And by the end of the day, while relieved that the three minidates were over, Frankie felt that none of the three men met the criteria of a serial killer.
It was the same the next day. And the next. By Friday, the end of the fourth day, she was convinced that maybe she, White Hawk and Luke were barking up the wrong tree altogether.
“Maybe we need to consider that the killer found his victims some other way than through a dating site,” Luke suggested.
“I don’t know,” she said, not ready to give up just yet. “I think maybe we should widen the net, get in contact with some of the men on the list that we ruled out.”
She could tell by Luke’s expre
ssion that he didn’t agree, and she did her best to try to convince him that she was right.
They’d all driven to the coffee house separately this time. White Hawk had gone home for the evening and she was standing outside of the coffee shop, trying to make Luke see her point.
“It’s too much of a coincidence that the last three victims were all on that dating website—and we don’t believe in coincidences, right?” Frankie stressed.
“Right,” he said, but with a certain lack of conviction. “I’d like to have another go at that florist before you start putting yourself out there again. Maybe he knows more than he told us—or maybe he’s our serial killer.”
She’d thought that initially, but on reflection, she felt that she’d been wrong to suspect the man. Still, she didn’t want to just butt heads with Luke. “We can do both.”
“Let’s put a moratorium on the dating site thing until we rule the florist out once and for all,” he told her. “I’ll have White Hawk tail him for a few days to make sure he’s really on the up-and-up. While White Hawk’s doing that, I’ll check out a couple of other things. When we rule all that out,” Luke concluded, “then we can get back to your coffee dates.”
Frankie knew what his objection was. He didn’t want her meeting the men from the website without backup. “I don’t have to stop ruling out guys from the dating website just because you and White Hawk aren’t going to be hovering around me like undercover guardian angels. I can take care of myself, you know,” she insisted.
For a moment, Luke’s temper got the better of him and he wound up shouting at her. “At this point, the guy’s killed nine women,” he stressed. “Maybe even more women that we haven’t uncovered yet. I’m sure that at least some of those women thought they could take care of themselves, too. Get it through your head, DeMarco, you’re not some super cop who can bend perps with her bare hands. You’re five foot one, for heaven’s sakes,” he reminded her. “You barely cast a shadow.”
Frankie narrowed her eyes until they were almost laser pinpoints. “I went through academy training, same as you!” Her point was that she knew how to protect herself.
He struggled not to shout at her again. “Look, we’re not arguing about this—”
“You could have fooled me,” she retorted. Turning her back on him, she marched over to where she’d last parked her vehicle.
Luke was right behind her. “We went through the twelve top candidates. Coffee shop dating is on hold until I say otherwise,” he ordered.
“Yes, Your Highness,” Frankie said in a singsong voice. Getting into her vehicle, she slammed the door shut.
She drove away from the coffee shop before Luke could say anything else to her.
Angry, he watched her go.
Damn, but she was the most infuriating woman he had ever had to deal with. This undercover gig to find a serial killer was putting a strain on both of them. He needed a cooling-off period, as did she. With the weekend here, they could use the two days apart to get back into gear—
If that was possible, he added to himself, fighting the urge to take off after her. He wanted to give her a piece of his mind since she seemed to be so free with hers.
Taking a deep breath, Luke got into his own vehicle and after a long moment, he turned it around and pointed it toward his home.
* * *
Trying to calm down, Frankie struggled not to let her temper get the better of her—especially since the angrier she became, the harder she pushed down on the gas pedal. She was doing sixty-five on a regular road before she realized it.
Coming to a stop at a red light, she took several deep breaths, then slowly let them out again. She was desperately trying to simmer down before she either hit something or got pulled over for speeding.
That would be just her luck. Because somehow or other, Luke would find out and then he’d really call her reckless—with reason. She’d never hear the end of it. If she got a speeding ticket, that would just give him something to prove his point. That she was impetuous, given to taking chances and not thinking of the consequences.
But she did think of the consequences. She just thought that, in this case, the possible consequences were worth it. Worth it if she could finally catch Kris’s killer.
“Give it a rest, Frankie,” she told herself out loud. “Monday morning he’ll have calmed down and you’ll get him to see things your way. The killer’s got to be in those profiles. He just has to be.”
After pulling into her parking space, she sat for a moment, her eyes closed as she struggled to center herself. “A killer hiding behind a profile of respectability.” She opened her eyes again, determined as she looked into the night. “And I’m going to find you,” she promised.
Once out, Frankie pressed her key fob. Her car made the appropriate noise, telling her that it was locked. She proceeded up to her apartment.
She unlocked the door and went inside. She put her keys in her pocket as she paused to lock up again. Just because she was angry was no reason to get careless, she told herself.
O’Bannon made her angry. Added to that, she felt really drained.
She didn’t know if it was from the tension she’d felt going through those so-called dates, or because of the argument she’d just had with Luke.
Maybe both, she thought, too tired to figure it out. Either way, she intended to finish off the leftover Chinese food in her refrigerator and then go to bed. She wanted to forget about Luke’s Neanderthal attitude and the last four days of marathon dating.
She needed to recharge her batteries.
Kicking off her shoes, Frankie went to the kitchen and took out the two half-empty cartons of Chinese food. She was going to take them to the table, then decided that there was no point in getting any plates dirty. She could eat out of the carton while standing at the sink. Somehow, it seemed more efficient that way.
O’Bannon was getting to her, she thought in annoyance.
She’d hardly gotten started on the first carton when she heard her doorbell ring.
Luke!
He’d come to apologize, she thought, feeling her pulse accelerating a bit. Well, O’Bannon was going to have to suffer a little bit before she saw her way clear to forgiving him.
She didn’t answer the door right away, and to her surprise, the doorbell didn’t ring again. She stifled the impulse to open the door. If he wanted to play games, she’d wait him out.
Walking back into the living room, she swallowed the gasp that rose to her lips. She hadn’t heard him come in. Somehow, the man standing in her living room had broken in despite the security locks she had on all her windows and doors.
It wasn’t Luke.
It was the college professor, her second to the last “date” of this evening.
“Bill, what are you doing here?” she asked, startled to see him there. “How did you know where I lived?” She hadn’t used her real name in the profile and she hadn’t given any of the men she’d met her real address.
Her gut tightened.
The college professor held up a small black notebook. “You left this behind at the coffee shop when you hurried off to the hospital. I thought you might need it.”
He was lying.
Frankie could feel herself growing more agitated. She’d left her weapon on the side table.
“That’s not mine,” she told the man calmly.
“It was under your chair,” he said, holding the notebook out to her.
“Still not mine.” Maybe it was an honest mistake on his part, but she wasn’t about to be sidetracked. The man had broken in. “And you haven’t answered my question. How did you know where I lived?”
“I guess I’m just a resourceful guy.” The smile that she had thought of as shy and boyish when she was sitting across from the man at the coffee shop now made her uneasy a
s her blood ran cold. “And patient,” he continued. “I watched you, you know. You didn’t really rush off to the hospital. Instead, you doubled back and went to the coffee shop again. So I waited across the street until you left again—for real, this time.”
His eyes narrowed as an expression of cold satisfaction crossed his face. “I guess that guy you picked up at the coffee shop didn’t work out, did he? I saw the two of you arguing. You looked really mad. So I followed you home. I thought maybe you needed someone to comfort you. I’m good at that, you know, comforting women when they’re all upset.”
He was crowding her. Crowding her without taking a single step in her direction. This was his method of intimidation. He was out of luck, though. In her case, it just succeeded in making her angrier.
“No, I’m fine, thank you,” she told him curtly, then said in a low, authoritative voice, “You need to leave, Professor Williams.”
“No,” he contradicted in a steely tone. “I think I need to stay. Besides, I brought something for you,” he told her.
The man refused to give up. Frankie dug in herself, trying to keep him talking until she could get to her weapon. “I already told you that’s not my notebook.”
“No, I brought you something to make you feel happy,” he said. “You know, just like in the old days.”
He was crazy. She could see it now. There was a strange look in his eyes, as if he was seeing something that wasn’t there.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told him. She tried to keep him distracted as she slowly edged her way to where she had left her weapon.
“Sure you do,” Williams insisted. “I read your profile. Very honest of you to admit you had a drug addiction once. But the trouble with addictions, you know, is that you’re never really over them.” He took out a small case from the pocket of his jacket. He flipped it open. There was a syringe inside the case. Williams held it up so that she could get a better look at it. “See? It’s all ready for you. Don’t you want some?” he asked in almost a seductive voice as he took a step closer to her.
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