“And I’m saying, fair enough,” Dan countered. “But here’s something that I’ve found when dealing with women—and you can take it or leave it, but for me, it’s a God-given truth. And it’s that the really drop-dead beautiful ones … ? They are all completely insane.”
“That’s a rather broad generalization,” Izzy pointed out.
“Okay, so maybe they aren’t all insane,” Dan gave him that. “But ninety-nine point nine percent of them are. Because they’re taught, from like the time that they’re two, that the world revolves around them. And you combine that with all the learned diva behavior from watching Project Runway and all those other bullshit reality shows where the camera lingers on the prettiest person who cries the hardest or is the biggest asshole … And the end result is a woman who is at best high maintenance, and at worst a raving, irrational lunatic.”
“So … is that why you’re forsaking women and going gay?” Izzy was looking pointedly at the book Dan had brought in and set down on the bed next to him.
He flipped it over, so that the title wasn’t showing. “Don’t be a douche. I’m being serious here. And yes, you’re partly right, but I’ve only sworn off beautiful women. When time after time, you keep coming up with a resounding no to the age-old question, Is the fucking you’re getting worth the fucking you’re getting? It’s definitely time to swear off something. But not sex. Thank God.”
Izzy shook his head. “I appreciate the fact that we’re having this conversation. At least I think I do. But I don’t really—”
Dan lowered his voice, glancing back at the door to make sure Jenn wasn’t done with her phone call. “Dude, everyone wants to get laid, all right? That’s just a fact of life. But there are ways to do it. Strategies. You don’t just automatically follow your dick. You use your head with the brain. You find the, I don’t know, the chunky girl with the really pretty friends.”
He’d done this for years, and he was doing it again, except … Somehow, with Jenn, it was different. Better. Probably because the sex was so great. Plus, he’d finally seen her naked and she wasn’t chunky, she was statuesque. “She’s low maintenance and low drama, plus she’s wired to believe that you’re too good to be true. She expects to be dumped, so when you do it, she lets go immediately.” As he said those words, he paused—not because they weren’t true, but because the knowledge that, yes, Jenn would let him go without high drama didn’t bring him the reassurance that he usually experienced. In fact, what he was feeling was a twinge of anxiety—what was that about? He tried to make a joke. “Unlike Ms. Crazy-Beautiful, who’ll spend months blogging about how she had to use a magnifying glass just to give you a blow job.”
But Izzy didn’t laugh, he just sighed heavily. “I don’t want to piss you off, man, but I’m in love with her. I’m not going to Germany because I’m hoping to get laid. I’m going because … maybe this time she’ll need me. Maybe this time we’ll talk. Maybe this time—”
“Excuse me, guys.”
They both looked up to see Robin standing in the door.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he continued, “but… Jenn just left.” He looked at Dan. “Aren’t you supposed to be with her at all times?”
“Oh, fuck!”
Danny launched himself up off the bed, and Robin stepped back so he could run for the hotel room door. As he threw it open, the FBI agent named John helpfully asked, “Was she supposed to leave …?”
“No,” Dan said. The elevators were around the corner to the right, so he shouted, “Jenni! Wait!”
Izzy was on Dan’s heels as they both skidded into the little elevator lobby—which was empty.
“Fuck!” Dan slapped the down button, pacing in front of the three elevator doors, even as he dug for his cell phone and punched in Jenn’s number. They were up too many floors even to consider taking the stairs. No way could they beat an express elevator to the lobby.
There was nothing to do but wait and pray.
Jenn’s voice mail picked up before the elevator door opened.
“Jenn,” he said, his voice actually cracking as he left a message. Christ, he was an idiot. “Please call me. I don’t know what you thought you heard, but you’ve got to call me.”
The elevator door opened with a ding, and Dan shut his phone and stepped in. Izzy followed.
“What she thought she heard is pretty much exactly what she heard,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, I know,” Dan admitted, his heart in the pit of his stomach, and not just from the elevator free fall, as he mentally reviewed all that she’d no doubt overheard while lurking outside of the door. He purposely hadn’t used the word fat, but he had said chunky. “I’m a total dick.”
There was a letter, framed and on the wall of Maria’s office, from Pvt. Francis Bonavita, to the middle school students of the Chelsea YMCA’s after-school program, who’d written to him while he was stationed in Iraq.
In his letter, he urged them to get involved in their government, and to stay involved; to register to vote and never take their civil rights and freedoms for granted. He ended it by asking them to do him a favor and talk his sister—their volunteer program supervisor—into running for the New York State Assembly.
He’d signed it “Peace out, your friend in Iraq, Frankie B.”
Alyssa looked at Jules, who was reaching to take the frame from the wall. She watched as he brought it to the conference table, and flipped all of the clips that held the cardboard backing in place. He lifted the cardboard out, took the letter from the glass, and carefully carried it to the machine in the corner, where he made a copy.
“I’m going to have the lab run a comparison and analysis,” he told Alyssa. “But I’m pretty sure we’re going to find that the second letter is a forgery—Frank didn’t write it.”
“This is too bizarre,” she said.
“More bizarre than cutting out a woman’s heart and putting it in a desk drawer?” he asked as he wrote on the bottom of the copy, I will bring the original back ASAP, Peace Out, your friend in the FBI, Jules Cassidy.
Good point. She pulled off her jacket because it was just too hot in there. “Are we really thinking that Maria’s brother is telling us the truth? About everything? That the drugs your team found just appeared in his bathroom?”
Jules put the copy of the letter back into the frame. “We’ve already determined that our man had access to this office. He could have made a copy of this letter as easily as I just did. Could he have also gone out to Long Island, and broken into Maria’s parent’s home? If his intention was to frame Frank for the murders, or even just add to the chaos? I say, why not?”
“Why not?” Alyssa repeated. “How about not why not. How about plain old why? I know, I know, none of this makes any sense—but it’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to put us on edge, keep us rattled. Well, guess what? It’s working.”
And yet she’d managed to talk Sam into sleeping in this morning. He knew it as well as she did—sleep helped a body heal. And his caving to her pressure to rest was in direct response to her capitulation to his demand that she not so much as go to the store on the corner without Sam or Jules in tow. Which was just as good, since she didn’t want them out and about on their own, either.
“Are we back to thinking that Maria’s the target?” she asked Jules, who’d wisely remained silent during her rant. He’d rehung the picture frame.
But now he looked at her. “You know that scene in The Princess Bride where Wally Shawn is the guy with the iocane powder-remember that? And he’s sitting across from our hero, who knows that the poison is in one of the goblets of wine that he’s poured. And Wally goes something like But I know that you know that I know that you know that I know … That’s where I feel like we are right now. Trapped in a mind-game vortex, with someone who’s completely mad.”
“So I’m gonna take that as a maybe,” Alyssa said.
“SpongeBob tell you his theory?” Jules asked.
“That I’m the target?” Alyssa s
aid. Sam had mentioned that to her last night. “I don’t know, Jules. I think that’s just his own personal craziness showing. It gets ramped up into overdrive whenever I make plans to go to someplace like Afghanistan.”
“He surprised the crap out of me,” Jules said. “By offering to let Robin join him and Ash while we’re gone. He said he was going to ask Gina and the kids, too. And Ric and Annie for added security—a silver bullet assignment for them, on Troubleshooters’ dime … ? Pretty sweet.”
“Sam would rather be over there, with us,” Alyssa said.
“Yeah, but they asked for you,” Jules pointed out. “When they ask for him, it’s your turn to stay behind.”
“When?” Alyssa asked.
“If,” Jules said with a shrug. “Or maybe when, as in when you get the call and delegate the job to your equally competent second-in-command.”
“Is that what you think I should do now, for this op?” she asked. Some of the Troubleshooters operatives, people that she’d worked with for years, some of them women themselves, had assumed, now that Alyssa had had Ashton, that she’d be staying far from any danger zones.
“Absolutely not,” Jules said. “This one you’ve got to do. This is where you show everyone that it’s business as usual. Get your Helen Reddy on: I am woman, hear me roar. Ash needs to know that his mommy has a very important job.” He paused. “At the same time, I’m in agreement with Sam. The time for you both to go out on the same high-risk assignment has definitely passed. You know I love Ashton, and God forbid something terrible happens? Robin and I will be there for him, completely. But.”
“I hear you,” Alyssa said. “Believe me, Sam and I have talked about this a lot. It’s just… how do you define high risk? And what do we do when we’re on a low-risk assignment like this one, when body bags start coming into play?”
“I don’t know,” Jules answered honestly, as he started going through the mail they’d brought in with them. “I was going to send Robin home, but…” He shrugged. “He’s safer at the hotel, with Navy SEALs standing guard. I mean, talk about overqualified. This is weird. Heads up, I think our man has made contact.”
Alyssa moved to look over his shoulder.
Jules was holding a postcard—plain and white—similar to the one that had arrived with the message Bottom Drawer.
Maria’s address was printed onto a label affixed on the front. And on the back was another message.
Alyssa read it aloud. “The number will be seven.”
Jules looked at her. “Oh, goody,” he said. “I just love riddles from fucking maniacs.”
Alyssa’s phone rang—it was Sam. She answered. “Hey.”
“Where are you?” he asked, extra brusque.
“Maria’s office,” she reported. “I’m here with Jules. What’s up?”
“Check the floor for me,” he said. “Underneath the desk—the other one in the outer office, not Jennilyn’s. I’m pretty sure when I was down there, on the floor, I saw it.”
“Saw what?” she asked, getting onto her hands and knees, phone tucked between her chin and shoulder. Jules was looking at her as if she were crazy. “There’s nothing here, not even a dust ball. It’s clean.”
“I saw a pen,” Sam told her, his voice tight, “and a paper clip, and … a tooth. I’m pretty sure I saw a tooth.”
Dan was calling her again.
Jenn took a deep breath and opened her phone. “Hello?” Now that she’d finally stopped crying, she didn’t have to worry that her voice would wobble pathetically.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m running some errands,” she told him. She was heading across town to pick up a new batch of business cards from the printers. Maria handed them out by the dozens, so it was actually cheaper to have them professionally made.
Because even though the things Jenn had heard Dan say had hurt her feelings, life still went on.
And it wasn’t as if she were surprised by what he’d said. He’d been honest with her from the start. It was just… hearing it that way, summarized as a strategy for getting laid …
When he’d talked with her, he’d always referred to sex as making love. But that was, no doubt, part of his strategy, too. Find the chunky girl with the pretty friends …
“Where are you, as in give me the address so I can meet you there,” he said. He sounded pissed, which was kind of funny. Him, being pissed at her. “Haven’t you seen any horror movies? It’s when the girl goes off alone that the killer gets her.”
“I’m in a cab,” she said evenly, “that I’m pretty sure is killer-free.”
“Heading where?”
“To the printers,” she said, “and then back to the office.”
“Where is the printers?” he asked.
“I’m picking something up,” Jenn told him. “I won’t be there long enough—”
“You will if you wait for me.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Someone’s supposed to be with you at all times,” Dan said tightly. “This isn’t a game, Jenn.”
Oh, and the irony of him saying that was just too intense. “You told me yourself that it’s a just a precaution,” she said, instead of laughing hysterically and calling him names. “That if anyone’s a target, it’s Maria—”
“That was before her brother took you at gunpoint.”
“He’s in custody,” she reminded him as the cab pulled to the curb. “And I’m at the printers. I’ll be back at the office in a half hour. If you’re really that concerned about my safety, in the middle of the day, in a city filled with millions of witnesses, feel free to send someone over there to meet me. Someone who’s not you though, please.”
He was silent at that, but then he said, “I don’t know what you thought you heard—”
“Is the fucking you’re getting worth the fucking you’re getting,” she recited. “And right now? I’m gonna have to say no, it’s not.”
“Jenni—”
“And I prefer big-boned to chunky, thank you very much.”
“Jenn, I wasn’t talking about you,” he said.
“Oh, please,” she said. “You like me because I’m smart, remember? Cute but also smart. And you also apparently like me because beautiful women are insane, and I’m not beautiful, ergo I must not be insane. Except I am, because what did I think I was doing, believing I actually had a shot at finding something real—even just for fourteen stupid days—with someone like you?”
She hung up because she was crying again. She’d walked out of the suite for the same reason.
She was not going to let him know that he’d made her cry.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
Robin wrestled Ash’s legs back into his bunny suit, put the baby into his crib for a nap, and went to find Sam.
He was sitting at the suite’s dining table, frowning at whatever he was reading on his laptop computer.
He was also wearing a shoulder holster. The sturdy black straps stood out in stark relief against the light blue of his T-shirt.
He looked up as Robin approached, giving him an invitation to speak that was heavily tinged with his impatience. Interrupt him, BW, but do it quickly.
“Did Dan find Jenn?” Robin asked.
“Not yet,” Sam said, turning back to his computer, already dismissing him.
“I’m sorry,” Robin said, “but the garbage is getting pretty toxic. Normally, I’d just call for maid service to come and get it and put the can outside the door—”
“I don’t want you going anywhere near the door,” Sam said sharply, his full attention back on Robin.
“Okay, then, I won’t,” he said. “I just didn’t want to come across as a diva. Empty my trash, bitch! As if you guys with the guns don’t have enough to do than to be my servants.”
Sam smiled, but it wasn’t quite enough to erase all of his grim. “No one thinks you’re a diva. Divas don’t change their own diapers, let alone someone else’s. I’ll take care o
f it. Trash and … need some towels, too?”
“Yeah, thanks.” Robin nodded and Sam made a note on a pad of paper that was next to the computer.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“You want to tell me what’s going on, that you feel the need to be armed?” Robin said. Come to think of it, getting that holster on and fastened must’ve involved a fair degree of wincing and cursing. So Sam’s need to wear it was pretty dang high.
“Jules ever tell you about a serial killer called the Dentist?” Sam asked, leaning back in his seat.
“The guy who took some of his victims’ teeth.” And suddenly Sam’s preoccupation with the mention of teeth in both autopsy reports made horrible sense.
“Not some of their teeth,” Sam corrected him. “All of ’em.”
Ew. Robin didn’t say it aloud, but he made a face.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “And he wasn’t real careful about how he got ’em. He had the tendency to break his victims’ jaws. Or remove their lower jaw entirely. And not always after they were dead.”
Jules hadn’t told him that part.
“Alyssa and I found one of his victims,” Sam continued. “We were on this missing persons case. A woman named Amanda Timberman had vanished about six months earlier and … The fact that her body wasn’t found until then was an aberration from the killer’s usual MO. He was into the notoriety, and he always contacted the authorities and the media with the location of the body. Bodies—he usually killed in clusters, once every five to nine months or so. It’s pretty gruesome stuff—you sure you want to hear this?”
“Are you really sure the same guy killed Maggie and Winston?” Robin countered.
“Nope,” Sam said. “I’m not sure of anything. It’s all gut.”
Robin nodded. Jules, too, relied heavily on instinct and what he teasingly referred to as “his spidey senses a-tingling.”
It sometimes helped for Jules to talk about a case—to think aloud and work things through. Despite Sam’s earlier impatience, he looked as if he wanted to keep talking. So Robin braced himself for the awfulness of it all as he sat down across from the former SEAL and asked, “So after killing Amanda, he didn’t contact anyone?”
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