Dead By Morning

by Beverly Barton

  He had never known such pure pleasure as he did the moment she stopped breathing. A sexual orgasm paled in comparison.

  Lost in a haze of sweet memories, he barely heard the tapping on his bedroom door. Already aroused and ready for action, he walked across the room, opened the door and smiled at the woman standing in the hallway. He had met her in the hotel bar last night and had struck up a casual conversation. She’d been one of the women he had noticed Sunday night. A woman on the prowl.

  “Are you going to invite me in or do you want to do me out here and shock the other guests?”

  He grabbed her arm, pulled her into his room, and kicked the door closed behind them.

  Chapter 7

  Maleah had needed time away from Derek. Time to clear her head. Time to think. Common sense told her that Derek was not her enemy, that she didn’t need to do battle with him again and again just to prove a point.

  And that point would be?

  He could not control her. She would never allow anyone to have that kind of power over her, not ever again. Just when she thought she had finally come to terms with the terrors of her childhood and teen years, something or someone forced her to face those old demons.

  Admit it, you’re tempted to lean on Derek.

  The thought of being even partially dependent on someone else for any reason terrified Maleah. And that irrational fear demanded she never relinquish the control she vigorously maintained over her life.

  She had tried talking to her brother Jackson about their childhoods, about their stepfather, about the years they had lived under his tyrannical rule. But revisiting the past had proved painful for both of them.

  “There’s not a damn thing we can do to change what happened,” Jackson had told her. “There’s no need to dredge up the past. It’s better left there, dead and buried with Nolan.”

  Her brother was right, of course. But sometimes she felt as if Nolan Reeves was reaching out from beyond the grave to influence her decisions. Deep inside her, the little girl who had lived in terror of her stepfather still existed. The little girl who had not known that her older brother had made a bargain with the devil in order to protect her. Nolan had punished Jack for every perceived misdeed by taking him to the old carriage shed and whipping him unmercifully. He had whipped the blood out of Maleah’s legs and bottom only once. After that, although she lived in constant fear, he had never touched her again. What she hadn’t realized at the time was that Jack had taken all her beatings for her.

  She owed Jack more than she could ever repay. He had protected her as best he could and she would always be grateful. Jack’s bargain with Nolan had saved her from more physical abuse, but not from Nolan’s iron-fisted control over her life or his incessant verbal abuse.

  Maleah had undergone therapy, paid for by Jack, when she’d been in college. The months of in-depth counseling had helped her immensely, enabling her to live a reasonably normal life. Whatever normal is. But nothing short of a lobotomy could erase the memories that still plagued her, often on a subconscious level.

  “Damn you, Nolan Reeves. Damn your mean, blackhearted soul to hell.”

  Maleah’s hands trembled. Her stomach lurched as emotions from her long-ago childhood resurfaced.

  Don’t do this to yourself.

  Don’t let your fears and uncertainties weaken you.

  You have only one battle to fight, one enemy, one combatant that you have to outsmart and outmaneuver—Jerome Browning, not Derek Lawrence.

  Checking her wristwatch, Maleah noted it was nearly eight o’clock. She had turned down Derek’s invitation to join him for dinner that evening, but she couldn’t avoid seeing him again tonight. They had made a deal—he would coach her on how to handle Browning and he wouldn’t insist on accompanying her to the visitor’s area at the prison.

  She needed to freshen up and get her head on straight before Derek showed up at her door. He tended to be punctual, which meant she had less than ten minutes to throw cold water in her face, smear on a little lipstick and add some blush to her pale cheeks before he arrived.

  Jerome usually spent the hours after dinner working on his handbook, a sort of How to Get Away with Murder manual. The idea had come to him nearly a year ago after he’d had a dream about the night he had been captured. In retrospect, he could see quite clearly the mistakes he had made. If he had it to do over again . . .

  But there would be no second chances to get it right, only the opportunity to train others. He had no doubt that once he completed his work on the informative handbook, publishers would beat a path to his door. His book could make him even more famous than he already was. And how opportune that Maleah Perdue had come into his life today, just when he had begun plotting the chapter on manipulation.

  The chapter heading would be: How to Use Others to Get What You Want.

  And just what did he want from Maleah?

  Jerome smiled.

  Maleah was a delectable little morsel. She looked like nothing more than a sweet piece of blonde fluff. But looks could be deceiving. He knew that fact better than anyone. Hadn’t he used his handsome face to his advantage all of his life? How many people had trusted him without question because of the way he looked? Poor fools. They never suspected that behind the pleasing façade, the mind of a genius existed, a mind capable of executing brilliantly complicated plans.

  After being apprehended and charged with nine murders, hadn’t he used his superior intelligence to avoid the death penalty? He had been in possession of a valuable commodity, one that both law enforcement and the families of six missing girls had been willing to bargain for on his terms. The whereabouts of those six teenage girls had been his ace in the hole. Not quite a get-out-of-jail-free card, but the next best thing.

  He had been barely sixteen when he had killed Mary Jane Ivy, a meek little mouse of a girl who had lived down the street from him. He had never killed a person before that, although he had fantasized about it for years. During the next four years, he had killed five other girls. And he had gotten away with all six murders. No one suspected the good-looking high school jock, the boy voted most likely to succeed by his senior class. Not being found out had been almost as exhilarating as the kills themselves. Almost.

  He had been locked up in this godforsaken hellhole for nine years now, with only occasional opportunities to participate in conversations that he found intellectually stimulating. A rare visitor from time to time. An intelligent, young minister certain he could save Jerome’s soul. His former lawyer, who hadn’t been in touch since his final appeal had been denied.

  But tomorrow, Maleah would return for a second visit, this time without her watchdog. He did not like the man with the dark eyes who had studied him as if he were a specimen under a microscope.

  If he played this just right, he should be able to gain hours of pleasure from holding out a carrot stick in front of Maleah, letting her see it, smell it, lick it, even nibble a tiny bite.

  Jerome laid his journal aside, fell back onto his cot and rested his hands behind his head. Closing his eyes, he visualized the way she would look tomorrow morning, all blond and golden and sweet. So very sweet.

  “Ah, Maleah . . . Maleah . . .” He whispered her name. “Sweet Maleah.”

  The moment he tapped for the second time, Maleah swung open the door and much to his surprise actually smiled at him.

  “Come on in.” She waved her arm through the air, inviting him to enter.

  He held out the plastic bag he had brought with him. She eyed the offering.

  “Thin sliced turkey on wheat,” he said. “Lettuce, tomato, and mustard only. No mayo. No onion.” When she accepted his gift, he added, “A small bag of baked chips and an unsweetened tea, with several packets of Splenda.”

  He watched the play of emotions on her face and knew a part of her hated the fact that he remembered her likes and dislikes, that he knew she never used mayonnaise and ate only cooked onions. And she always preferred tea over cola, if tea was avai
lable.

  She grabbed the sack. “Thanks. I appreciate your thinking of me, but I’m really not—”

  “You’ve been skipping too many meals,” he reminded her. “You need to eat.”

  He closed and locked the door behind him, then waited for her to blast him for daring to tell her what she should do.

  But she surprised him again by taking the bag over to the desk, emptying the contents and saying, “You’re right. I need to eat. And actually, I am hungry.”

  He eyed her suspiciously. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her who she was and what she had done with the real Maleah Perdue.

  “Sit,” he told her. “Eat.”

  She pulled out a chair and sat; then she removed the paper wrapping from her sandwich and took a bite.

  “I’ll put on a pot of decaf coffee,” Derek said. “Coffee will be good with our dessert.”

  She looked at the two small Styrofoam containers she had removed from the sack. “I usually don’t eat dessert.”

  “It’s Italian Cream cake.”

  Maleah moaned. “My favorite.” She set aside the cake containers, tore the paper from the straw and inserted the straw through the hole in the lid of the iced tea cup.

  Derek had observed Maleah on a daily basis while they had worked as partners on the Midnight Killer case and knew she struggled to maintain control over every aspect of her life. Being short and curvy, maintaining an ideal weight was a challenge for her. Under ordinary circumstances, he would never tempt her with a fattening dessert, but in an odd sort of way, tonight’s meal paralleled the last meal served a person before they were executed the next day. In the morning, she would be walking into an arena to do battle against an opponent who would go for the jugular. He would do it subtly, hoping to take her unaware.

  Derek rinsed out the coffeepot, poured in fresh bottled water, filled the reserve tank, and added the decaf provided by housekeeping. Once he set the machine to brew, he glanced at Maleah, who had a mouthful of the turkey sandwich in her mouth. He grinned.

  “I spoke to Sanders this afternoon,” Derek told her. “He wanted us to know that, by sometime tomorrow, they should have the names of everyone who has visited Browning and the dates of the visits.”

  Maleah swallowed, wiped her mouth on a paper napkin and said, “It’s possible that our copycat killer and Browning exchanged letters and that Browning may have called him, but both the letters and the phone calls were probably monitored since he’s a high-risk prisoner. Browning would have had to be very careful about what he said over the phone.”

  “Yes, he would have,” Derek agreed. “My guess would be that if there has been any contact between the copycat and Browning, it started with a visit.”

  “I understand that my meeting with Browning in the hopes of bargaining with him for information is my top priority, but I don’t want to be excluded from the investigation. I want to be part of every aspect of—”

  “No one is going to exclude you.”

  “But if I’m at the prison every day—”

  “Who said you’d be visiting Browning every day?”

  “I just assumed—”

  “You assumed wrong.” Derek strode across the room, his gaze linked with hers as he approached. “You’ll see him tomorrow, but after that, we will take it slow and easy. We want him playing this game by our rules, not the other way around.”

  “I understand.” She nibbled on the sandwich.

  Derek reached over, grasped the back of a chair by the windows and dragged it over to the table. After he sat, he picked up the bag of chips, opened it and offered it to her. She shook her head. He pulled out several chips and popped them into his mouth.

  “When the time comes, I want to be the one who questions each of Browning’s recent visitors,” Maleah said.

  “If we can locate them, and that’s a big if, we will question them together, as partners. If the copycat visited Browning, I don’t think he would have used his real name or given his current address, do you?”

  “No, of course not, but the Powell Agency has a high success rate of tracking down people who do not want to be found.”

  “We’re overlooking one other possibility—our copycat may not have visited Browning. He may not have ever been in contact with him.”

  “Then how could he possibly know so many details about Browning’s murders, details that were never released to the press?”

  “He could be in law enforcement.”

  Maleah frowned.

  “Or he could have hired a PI or be a PI himself and found a way to dig up the info.”

  She shook her head. “I think Browning knows something.”

  “Browning wants you to believe he knows something.”

  After finishing off one half of her sandwich, she washed it down with the tea and dumped the rest in the wastebasket by the desk. She wiped her hands off on the napkin and tossed it, too.

  “You’re practically psychic when it comes to reading people.” Maleah might not be Derek’s biggest fan, but she respected his ability as a profiler and more recently as a detective. “Paint me a picture. In your opinion, does Browning have any personal connection to the copycat?”

  “I’m intuitive, yes. Psychic, no. I leave all that paranormal stuff to Dr. Meng and her protégés.”

  “I’m surprised Griff didn’t enlist Yvette or one of her protégés to interview Browning.” Maleah eyed the cake container.

  “I doubt Browning would have agreed to see anyone other than you. Griff knew the right person to send. Neither Griff nor I think it was a coincidence that the copycat chose to mimic the killer who murdered your former boyfriend. It’s as if he chose you for a specific reason.”

  “Yeah, but the only problem is that we have no idea what that reason is.”

  “We can make some educated guesses.”

  “Such as?” she asked.

  “Such as you’re the copycat’s ultimate target.” When her face paled, Derek quickly added, “Or you were chosen because you’re Nicole Powell’s best friend. Or because the copycat is using your connection to Browning as a red herring to send us off on a wild goose chase.”

  “What’s your intuition telling you?”

  “The copycat and Browning have, at the very least, met and talked. I don’t know if Browning is pulling the strings and the copycat is a disciple or if the copycat used Browning’s knowledge for his own purposes.”

  “Neither Griff nor Nic were involved in Browning’s capture and arrest, nor was I. Why would he be targeting the Powell Agency?”

  “Excellent question. Griff has a theory, as does Nic. And I have several scenarios in mind, too, but we have absolutely nothing conclusive at this point.”

  “We need information from that son of bitch and he knows it.” Maleah grabbed the cake container, flipped open the lid and eyed the cake hungrily. “He’s going to want to bargain with me, to see what he can get out of me in exchange for what he knows.”

  Derek slid the other cake container over in front of him, then removed the cellophane wrap from two plastic forks and handed one fork to Maleah. She eyed the fork as if it were a snake and then grunted and snatched the fork out of his hand. He sliced his fork through the moist cake, balanced a bite on the fork and lifted it into the air, saluting her with the delicious morsel. She watched while he put the bite into his mouth.

  “Just one piece of cake won’t hurt you,” he told her. “Think of the pleasure it’ll give you. There’s nothing quite like a sugar high to perk a girl up when she’s down.”

  “I don’t need a crutch of any kind. Not alcohol or drugs or gambling or shopping . . . or sugar!”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, she jabbed the fork into the cake and then shoved her piece of cake, container and all, across the table and into the wastebasket.

  Stunned for half a second, Derek stared at her, then burst out laughing. My God, she had no idea that her biggest weakness, the crutch she relied on every day of her life, was being a maj
or control freak.

  When they returned from a moonlight stroll on the beach, they found a gift basket waiting for them outside their suite. Errol lifted the basket while Cyrene opened the attached card.

  “It just says Happy Honeymoon.” Eyeing the bottle of wine, the box of gourmet Swiss chocolates, the luscious in-season fruit and a sampling of imported cheeses, Cyrene moaned with anticipation. “I can’t think of anything better than a glass of wine before bedtime.”

  Hoisting the gift basket so that he could hold it with one hand, Errol reached out and unlocked the door to their suite. As his bride slipped past him, he whispered, “I can think of something better than wine.”

  Understanding the implication of his comment, she giggled and began undressing the moment he closed the door behind them and dumped the basket on the table in the entryway. Taking his cue from Cyrene, he unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it on the floor. By the time he loosened his belt, she had already stripped down to her panties.

  He couldn’t get out of his slacks and briefs quickly enough, but for a full sixty seconds, he stood and watched—totally spellbound—as his wife slowly, provocatively slid her bikini panties down, down, down, and off. His heart beat wildly. His penis hardened.

  When he reached for Cyrene, she evaded his grasp. Instead, she raced over to the bed, the covers already turned down by maid service, and placed herself in the center. She arched her back, the action thrusting her breasts up and inviting him to touch and taste and enjoy. Errol kicked his briefs aside and moved toward the bed, never taking his eyes off the long, slender naked body of the woman he loved.

  He straddled her hips and positioned himself over her. She lifted her arms up and around his neck, pulling him down until it was flesh against flesh. His penis probed for entry. She opened her thighs, lifted her hips and took him inside her body.