Popping open a beer, Justin leaned against the counter and prepared for the task ahead. Again, his brain wandered as he began thinking about the woman who had become his sudden obsession. She was nothing like the other women he dated.
Who was he kidding? Justin didn't date.
He fornicated.
That was pretty much the extent of all the women in his life. They were a series of one night stands, or possibly a weekend shack up. They were nothing more, and in his mind, it was all for a good reason.
Now, he was stuck thinking about a woman who wouldn’t give him the time of the day if he hit on her. He could tell by the way she carried herself, the way she behaved, and her mannerisms that she wasn’t a common cop.
He’d met women before who were just like her. They were old money to the core and bred to be with men who fit their social class.
Not Indians.
Not bad boy Marines.
And certainly not Justin Trevor Littlemoon.
What he needed was to forget what was brewing in his brain and gut. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that he would get more than a business relationship with her. The only way he would get to put his hands on her body, was if she tripped or walked into him.
Then, he tried to rationalize it.
Look at his brother. He found Tori. Growing up, both men always believed that they would marry or cohabitate with someone of their ethnicity.
Yeah, his one sister and brother had found outsiders to marry and start a family with, but he never saw it for himself.
Whoa, where the hell did that thought come from? How did he get from sweaty sex to marriage? He was obviously delirious from lack of food.
And yet…
He found that he wasn’t as off put by finding a woman like Tori. He had to admit that he was enamored by her. Not in a sexual way, but as a friend and sister. She made him work harder and see things differently.
Plus, they were both soldiers, trying to re-assimilate back into a civilian world. It wasn’t easy coming home from war. Julian had told him some of the things Tori was battling, and he completely understood.
He was fighting the same demons, and thus the apartment exile.
Where she lost someone she loved and blamed herself, he had taken lives to save his own. Freedom had a cost, and there were days where he carried it alone.
Having Tori as his new sister, he had a lifeline back into the sanity. There were days where she would simply look at him and knew that the demons were close to catching him. On those days, she would offer him a hug and stare into his eyes.
She always understood.
Now, he found he wanted to move away from the one night stands that kept his mind occupied. In that moment, he wanted more of a chance at life. He’d sold his soul for his country, and now he needed to find something to fill its place.
Why he believed that it could be with the detective just proved one thing.
He was freaking insane.
At the knock at the door, he crossed the room to pay the pizza delivery guy. Pulling the door open, his voice vanished when he saw his visitor.
“Hi,” she said, staring at him.
Finally, the suaveness returned. “Hi.”
Yeah, or not.
Vivian was having a really hard time not noticing that Justin Littlemoon was in really good shape. She was also trying not to openly gawk at the tattoos across his body. For some reason, she wanted to trace her fingers over them.
Or even her lips.
She forced her brain back into compliance and stared into his eyes. “I don’t hate private investigators, and you found what we didn't bother to look for,” she stated, holding out her hand to him.
Justin stared at her palm, and in it sat a zip drive. “What’s that?”
“That’s the pictures that you took and the ones you were never going to get to see,” she answered.
“Why?” he asked, trying not to sound too suspicious, but this had taken him aback.
“Let’s just say that I only want to find justice for the woman who was taken. If she’s alive, she doesn’t have that much time left.”
He stared into her eyes. She knew something and wasn’t spilling it. “Okay, but why are you playing nice with us?”
She wished she could share it with him, but honestly, she didn't know where to even begin. How did you explain to a person that you had a dream, where you saw the victim, and she was begging for your help?
In fact, how did you explain that your whole life you always had countless dreams like this, and thought that you were half out of your mind?
“The more eyes that are looking for her, the better her chances of survival are,” she stated, unequivocally.
He watched her carefully. For some reason, he still believed that there was more to what was going. “Okay,” he answered. For now, he’d let it go, but it looked like there was another mystery brewing on the horizon.
When he didn't take the zip drive from her, she reached for his free hand and turned it over to give it to him. “If I find out anything more, I’ll get that information to you,” she said, knowing the risk she was taking.
Then, she recalled the urgency of the dreams.
This was a dire situation, and that meant drastic measures.
He stared down at her warm fingers against his flesh, and his entire body came alive at that one touch. He could have sworn that colors were brighter and sound was clearer.
“Why?” he asked again, only to have the pizza delivery man arrive at the worst possible moment.
She released his hand, as she fought the overwhelming need to simply run to escape. Just touching him, she knew that their journey together was just beginning. Justin Littlemoon was going to be trouble, but that was her fate to navigate.
The pizza man waited to get paid.
“Stay and have dinner with me,” he blurted, suddenly. Vivian looked over her shoulder as she walked away. “Ask me again another time, Justin, when you’ve had time to think it through.”
He didn't know if that was a good or bad thing. She did just admit there would be another opportunity, if he wanted one.
“Vivian!” he called.
Turning, she stared him in the eyes as she walked backwards. “Oorah, Marine,” she answered, and then disappeared into the night.
After the pizza was paid for, he stood there in his doorway, not sure what the hell had just happened. He glanced down his body, as if he couldn’t remember if anything gave away his past. The only tattoo that had anything to do with the Marines was on his back.
She’d never seen his him shirtless and from behind.
His hair was growing out and the stanch military cut was gone.
Justin thought back to all of their conversations.
Maybe she had run him.
There was no other way to explain any of it. That had to be the most logical reason.
Closing the door, he carried dinner back inside and was now more stirred up than before. It wasn’t only because she touched him, although that had a lot to do with it, but because she confused the hell out of him.
The woman had him completely off balance.
And that was saying a great deal.
Before this was over, Justin was making her his next mission. He needed to find out everything he could about Vivian Graves.
Everything…
* * *
He watched her once more and made notes in his journal. While stalking the next part of his collection, he knew that he needed to keep detailed notes.
One mistake would ruin it all.
He had hated leaving his house tonight. What he wanted to do was spend more time with the woman, in the cage, and enjoy the evening.
So far, she’d been very uncooperative.
If she believed him to be stupid, she was in for a big surprise. There was no doubt in his mind that she was biding her time until she could plan her escape.
It wasn’t ever going to happen. She was his now, and that me
ant that he was in control.
Oh, wouldn’t she be shocked to hear that, and to know that she was going to be getting company tomorrow.
Tonight was the trial run of his next gathering. Soon, his one woman would be multiplying into two.
He had the next victim marked and knew her routine inside and out.
All it came down to was her regular art class on Wednesday nights. As she drove home, that was when he would take her. Getting her after work had been an option, but he’d found it too high of a risk. She left the same time as everyone else, and that meant someone might notice him.
He prided himself on being unseen.
On blending into their worlds.
Vanishing into the surroundings.
He was invisible to them, and it had to stay that way. Once he got his treasures back to his house, he would be the center of their attention.
Without a doubt, they would fall in love with him, eventually.
For now, he needed to be cautious or someone might notice them missing and draw parallels. The last thing he needed was someone trying to stop him from completing his mission.
He needed to do this.
It had been a collection in the making for so many years.
The woman crossing the parking lot grabbed his immediate attention. As she hopped in her car, he followed at a safe distance.
Now, he would stake out the route to and from her home, and if that ended up being too busy, he’d just hide by her house.
One way or another, he’d make her his.
He needed a blonde, and then he could mark it off the list.
And she was the one.
Chapter Four
Wednesday Morning
Littlemoon Investigations
Wandering down from their apartment, they found Kane and Christina in the room that they used for meetings. The two were sitting side by side and working.
If Julian had worried that having them be partners at work would be distracting, he seemed to have been wrong. There was no drama going on and lots of productivity. It kind of reminded him of how he and Tori worked together.
Okay, score one for Team Littlemoon. Sometimes, it was good to be wrong with an initial impression.
“Coffee?” Tori asked, handing Julian a cup.
He took it and grabbed a seat. “Are you both ready to give us what you have?”
Kane pulled out a piece of paper. “We did a search online for Melissa Lagerfeld and found out a great deal.”
Christina continued for him, “It wasn’t as easy as with the FBI, but I love a challenge,” she said, grinning. “Apparently, the woman liked posting personal information online for the world to see,” she added.
“Like what?” Julian asked.
“A prime example would be how she was going to work out classes, or what shift she was working at the emergency room. I even found an old post where she was eluding to a sexual encounter at the workplace.”
Tori shook her head in disgust. “Social media is the downfall of society. This is why we don’t use it,” she stated.
Her husband corrected her, “We don’t use it, because I don’t want someone breaking into our business when they think we’re on vacation,” clarified Julian.
On this, Tori and he agreed completely.
“Well, fortunately for us, she didn't have a single problem using it.” Kane slid a paper across the table towards his bosses. “I printed out anything pertinent before the cops decide to have the site taken down.”
“Good idea,” Tori said, as she read the paper in her husband’s hand.
Julian looked up as his brother strolled in, late as usual. “You look like hell, Justin,” he added.
That had Tori’s attention. She knew they both sometimes had bad days. When the man took the seat beside her, she placed her hand on his arm. “You okay, Marine?”
He knew what she was asking, since she only called him that when they were challenging each other in sport, shooting, or if one of them looked like they were emotionally beat down. Since there wasn’t a basketball court or shooting range in the office, the jig was up. “Yeah, I had a rough night.”
Tori rubbed her hand back and forth across his shoulders reassuringly. “We can talk later,” she stated.
He patted her hand in a silent signal of gratitude. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
Kane glanced back down at his paper before continuing. “Our victim worked in the ER at the local hospital. She was a trauma care nurse. She graduated from college six years ago from a small university not far from here.”
“Okay, all this we could have found out from her father,” Julian said.
Christina picked up where he left off, “As you can see, she was currently single. Her last post was about meeting a few girlfriends to ‘get their drink on’ at a local bar Saturday night. She was off from work and needed to de-stress.”
“So, our young, pretty girl was single, but you mentioned a workplace interlude,” Tori stated.
Kane took over, “If you go back into a few months’ worth of posts, you’ll see that she was dating, and it was pretty serious. The two of them were sending pictures of kittens and hearts back and forth.”
Justin snorted and closed his eyes. “That makes me want to toss my cookies.”
Everyone at the table looked over at him.
“Oh, sorry. I forgot that everyone here is in love but me.”
The edge to his voice may have been missed by Kane and Christina, but Julian and Tori heard it loud and clear. Justin’s mood had ‘woman’ written all over it.
“Anyway,” Christina continued, “The suitor in question is Brock Edwards. We searched him and came up with only one possible person by that name, in this city.”
Tori was happy that the Fed was assimilating into their family so easily. “It’s much harder, isn’t it?”
Christina nodded. “At first, I wanted to be sneaky and call Chris Leonard at the FBI and get him to cheat for me, but I decided to think of it like a game. Who knew that the white pages search thing actually worked. To think, the FBI paid millions for their database.”
Julian pointed at her. “No cheating.”
She raised her hands in surrender. “There are ways around everything. I can get you a viable fingerprint with a lead pencil, razor and tape if you find one.”
Tori snickered and gave her a fist bump. “Go Team Littlemoon.”
Kane leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, and then realized what he did. “So,” he continued quickly, “I printed out pictures of them cuddling and here’s the visual on him.”
He slid them across the table.
“Works for us,” stated Justin.
“Do you want us to keep digging? I can search courthouse records and anything else to find more information on the two of them,” Christina offered.
“Yeah, have at it,” Julian stated, as he waited for them to gather their things and head out. When they had the room to themselves, he glanced over at his brother. “Are you having nightmares again?”
He laughed. “Not again. It’s more like still having them, but believe it or not, they’re not the problem. Have you ever had something on your mind, and it was bugging the shit out of you and you couldn’t let it go?”
“All the time,” they stated together.
He pulled the zip drive from his pocket and waited for Tori to plug it into her laptop. When they pulled up the pictures, they both stared at him incredulously.
“These are all the pictures from Melissa Lagerfeld’s abduction case!” Julian stated. “Where did you get these? God, I hope you didn't steal them.”
When no one spoke, he started to look worried.
“Shit, you did steal them, didn't you? This is where you offer me some sort of reassurance, Justin.”
Tori was the calmer of the two. “It’s called creative appropriation, Jules, not stealing. If he managed to grab these, right out from under Detective Crankypants, more power to him.”
Justin took
a deep breath and spilled it all. “Last night, Detective Graves showed up at my place.”
They both stared at him.
“And?” Tori asked. No wonder he was a hot mess. It looks like their suspicions were confirmed.
“She came to give me that zip drive.”
“So, we have inside help?” Julian asked, getting excited. “If she’s going to play nice, then that means our job is going to be that much easier.”
Justin wasn’t sure that he liked where this conversation was heading. He didn't want to use the woman.
Well, not that way.
“We’ll let her funnel us anything that she wants.”
Tori was watching Justin’s face. Like her husband, he wasn’t really all that good at hiding things from her. The emotion danced in his eyes. “Hey, Jules, you should go print these out and make a copy of the zip drive. You know, just in case the cops figure it out.”
Julian merrily went on his way. He could now see the scenes up close and personal. That meant a better chance at using his tracking skills.
When he was gone, she stared at Justin. “Spill it, Marine.”
He started laughing. “She knew that I was one.”
Tori just waited.
“I never said that I was in the service, and she knew. When I stare into her eyes, I feel his sense of falling. It’s like I’m tumbling and can’t get away from her. She knows something, Tor. I can tell. I just don’t know what it is.”
“You’re bothered by using her.”
“Yeah, this time I am. That’s saying a lot, since we both know that I have no qualms with using a woman for my own needs.” There wasn’t gloating in his tone. It was more a heady mix of disgust and abhorrence.
When it came to Tori and Julian, he had no need to hide what was living inside him. They knew him too well.
Tori squeezed his hand reassuringly. “Then don’t do it. I’ll talk to your bother. Just let her give you what she can, and we’ll go from there. We’ve had harder cases to solve. This one isn’t any different.”
Blood Red Rage (LIttlemoon Investigations Book 1) Page 7
