Wanting You

by Leslie A. Kelly

  A few nods.

  “I just learned she has gone back to the house to pick up some things, and now she’s not responding. I am concerned, sir.”

  Avery glowered, but Andochick nodded slowly. “You want to send a car out to check on her?”

  “Yes, that would be a good idea. Her address should be on file with Captain Avery’s office.” Rowan was still standing. “But I’d also like to go myself. As I said, Miss Fleming can give you a lot more information about this than I can anyway.”

  Andochick looked around the table and then waved him off. “Fine. Go. But plan on being back in here tomorrow. And bring her with you.”

  Rowan mumbled something and then strode out the door. He was dialing her number before it even swung closed behind him.

  No answer.

  He redialed. It rang and rang. Back to voice mail.

  “Evie, please, call me back right away and let me know you’re all right.”

  He thought about all the other things he wanted to say. Things like God, please be careful, and What were you thinking? And You’re precious to me, don’t take risks like that, you’ll give me a heart attack, I’m falling in love with you, please be okay.

  But words weren’t going to help her if she was in trouble. And something deep inside him, some intuition that had served him well throughout his life, told him she was.

  “Uh, Winchester?” a voice said behind him.

  He glanced over his shoulder, seeing Lieutenant Carlson emerge from the conference room. He hadn’t had much to say during the meeting. Probably just absorbing everything he could so he could report back to his asshole uncle.

  “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Just wanted to ask if you need some backup.”

  From this guy? Oh hell no. But he merely shook his head and started walking again.

  Carlson fell into step beside him. “I’m really sorry to hear what’s going on with Evie. I hope I didn’t…I mean…”

  Rowan stopped and looked at the other man, hearing a nervousness that he couldn’t understand. “You hope you didn’t what?”

  Carlson quickly shook his head. “Oh, no, I didn’t do anything.”

  Other than acting like an annoying jerk.

  “I just meant, you know, I never gave out any information to anyone who wasn’t completely trustworthy.”

  This time, Rowan didn’t just stop, he swung around to face the man, grabbing the front of his starched uniform shirt. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Carlson’s face reddened, and he quickly stepped back, but Rowan had a tight grip on the shirt and he didn’t go far. “I mean, it’s not like I gave out her address randomly or something.” His throat bobbled as he swallowed. “If somebody found out where she lived and was stalking her, that couldn’t come back on me. I only told one person, and he’s very trustworthy.”

  Rowan was torn between wanting to shake the guy and wanting to hear what he had to say. Although anger roared to life inside him that Carlson had given out Evie’s private information, he kept it hidden, needing answers.

  “Who?” Rowan inching even closer until he could smell the mints this dickhead sucked down after every time he kissed some ass to get ahead. “Who did you tell, and why?”

  “Phil, that’s all. Nobody else.”

  Phil? Who the hell was that?

  “He’s a fan. He wanted to thank her for looking at some cold cases he’d worked on, so I gave him her address. But nobody else.”

  He suddenly got it. “Phil Smith? The retired detective?”

  Carlson nodded. “Yes.”

  Rowan’s confusion mounted, but even as it did, he felt the blood surging harder in his veins. “When was this?”

  “I guess about a week or so ago.” He nodded. “Yeah, it was the first day she came in. She filled out some paperwork to get the files she was requesting, and her address was on it. He called that afternoon and asked me if I had it, and I did.”

  This was making even less sense. “A week ago? But she didn’t even go see him until Friday.”

  Carlson shrugged. “But she called him before that to set up their meeting. He was excited to talk to her and wanted to be sure he had her address so he could send her a little thank-you.”

  A thank-you? For bringing up a couple of unsolved murder cases to a retired detective, reminding him of failures that obviously still haunted him?

  “He said he was gonna send her flowers.”

  Every bit of air left Rowan’s lungs. He couldn’t replace it, unable to draw in a breath for a few seconds, though his heart was pounding wildly. A rushing sound filled his head, like a massive wave washing over him, and he would swear the floor started to roll beneath his feet. It was like being on the deck of a ship during a storm, everything was off-balance, out of focus and dizzying, but for a few seconds, he couldn’t even understand why any of it was happening.

  “Flowers,” he finally managed to mumble, trying to make sense of the thoughts spinning around in his brain. The words weren’t connecting with the mental pictures; a suspicion was trying to formulate, but his reason and his memory were getting in the way.

  “Uh-huh. That was it. No biggie, right? I mean, no harm done?”

  “Phil…he was your uncle’s partner.”

  “Right. He was with my uncle’s family all the time when I was a kid. Didn’t have any of his own, couple of bad divorces, I think. No kids, no other family.”

  Just a mother whose picture still stood in a place of honor in his living room.

  “He was a good cop. Sad about the arthritis. If not for that, he’d probably outwork all of us.”

  “What about the other health issues?” he asked, remembering the oxygen tank, the weight, the slowness, the diabetes. “Isn’t he pretty sick?”

  Looking confused, Carlson shook his head. “Nah, he’s healthy as a horse otherwise. Just his fingers went on him. But he’s still strong as an ox—could probably out-bench-press me if he could keep a grip on the bar.”

  “Jesus,” Rowan muttered, seeing the real man through the role Smith had been playing when they’d gone to see him. Good old slow-moving retired cop with his twisted fingers, his sad cookies, and an oxygen tank trailing him like a dog on a leash.

  An act. All an act. Except for those hands he could not disguise.

  Why? What possible reason could there be?

  Only one. The one that had been trying to come together in his brain. Now it exploded with the power of a bullet, appearing with complete clarity and certainty.

  “Flowers. Oh my God!”

  Carlson opened his mouth to say something, but Rowan was already sprinting down the corridor. He knocked into people, mumbling excuses, but not slowing down for anyone. He was behind the wheel of his car within five minutes and out of the parking lot into traffic one minute after that.

  When the phone rang, he glanced at it, praying he would see Evie’s name. Instead, he saw Raine’s.

  “I need you. Now,” he barked as soon as the call connected.

  His brother didn’t ask questions. He never would. “Where?”

  “Evie’s in trouble. I think one of the people we talked to last week is a murderer and he wants to shut her up.”

  “Where, Rowan?”

  He snapped the street name but couldn’t remember the house number. “Just look for my car out front.”

  “I’m thirty minutes out.”

  “I’m twenty,” Rowan replied. “I won’t wait for you.”

  “I wouldn’t either in your position. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

  Twenty minutes.

  He flipped his siren on. That would cut out five or six.

  Not enough.

  It had been fifteen since Evie had texted him that she planned to go into that fucking house and had then disappeared into radio silence. Whatever was going to happen may already have taken place.

  She could be fine. She might be avoiding his calls because she didn’t want to argue with him over the phone. M
aybe hers had died. Could be she and Candace had gone to a bar for happy hour. Maybe she was packing up the last of her stuff.

  Or maybe none of those things.

  If Phil Smith really was the flower killer—and Rowan knew in his gut that he was—the retired detective would have planned on getting rid of Evie as soon as he found out she was looking into those old cases. He knew what she did for a living and had to fear she was about to shed light on murders he thought he had gotten away with. Which was why days before he even met her, he’d had good old Carl give him her address.

  He wouldn’t give up just because she was away from home for a while. He was a former cop. He understood surveillance. He knew people almost always came back around to the places with which they were familiar.

  He would have watched her house. He would have been ready.

  In which case he would have had Evie in his grasp for twenty minutes already, which was far less time that it had taken the bastard to kill some of his victims.

  But not all. Not all of them had been lucky enough to die quickly. Rowan had no doubt some of them had been begging for death long before their murderer had granted their wish.

  Crime scene photos he had reviewed at her own kitchen table just a few days ago exploded in his memory. If he weren’t behind the wheel, he would have scrunched his eyes shut to try to force the images out of his vision.

  “No, no, no, Evie, no.”

  Rage warred with fear for her. He couldn’t tell which was making his pulse rocket.

  He only knew he had to get to her.

  And pray that not only was she still alive…but also that she wanted to be.

  Chapter 13

  I guess you aren’t quite as weak and ill as you let on,” Evie said as she watched Phil Smith drag a dead body into her bedroom.

  The retired cop—no longer wearing baggy clothing that made him look overweight or shuffling when he walked, with no oxygen tube in sight—smiled at her, though only with his mouth. His eyes remained flat and dead. “Maybe in another life I was an actor.”

  “While in this one you’re just a sick monster.”

  Smith dropped the body onto the floor beside her bed. That was fortunate; she could no longer see the remains. Tied as she was, unable to move from the center of her bed, she could see very little other than the hateful face of the man who had gotten away with murder for so many years.

  Completely at his mercy, she tried hard to remain calm, to not show her fear. A man like this thrived on fear he inspired in others. So while deep down she was utterly terrified, she managed to watch, and even speak, calmly while he worked around her. That was a miracle, considering her heart was pistoning in her chest, and had been ever since she looked up into the barrel of his gun, certain she was going to die in one second.

  But he hadn’t pulled the trigger. In fact, his swollen finger barely fit in the opening, though it had worked well enough when he’d shot Candace. Instead of shooting her, he’d ordered her to the bedroom, tied her up, and gotten busy on whatever he was planning.

  “You really shoulda minded your own business, you know. I was retired.”

  “From everything?”

  “Yep.”

  “People like you don’t just stop doing what you do.”

  He snickered, as if he were a little boy letting her in on a secret. “Well, maybe just once in a while.”

  Right.

  “Not so easy these days, though.” He lifted his hands with the swollen joints and bent fingers. “The mind is willing, the flesh…”

  “I suspect they’re not as twisted as your soul.”

  “Oh, clever with words, aren’t you?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve read your books. You’re not that good. Oh, and by the way, you got Angstrom by sheer luck. But you won’t get me.”

  “I believe I already did.”

  He looked at her, trussed up on the bed, and then at himself, moving around her room, stepping over the body he’d just brought in here, as spry as a teenager. “Doesn’t look that way.”

  “But I figured you out. Right down to the birth month flowers.”

  For the first time since Phil Smith had ordered her at gunpoint to go back into her bedroom, he appeared startled. “Whad you say?”

  “The flowers,” she replied. She nodded toward the ones on her bedside table. “My birth flowers. You found out when your victims were born and left the appropriate flowers.”

  “Huh.” His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “Think you’re smart, don’t ya?”

  She managed to hold on to a normal tone, despite how very much she wanted lightning to strike this man dead right here and now. “My friend, the one you killed?” She blinked rapidly but didn’t let any tears fall. She would cry for Candace plenty in the future. Right now, she had to focus on staying alive herself. “She said something that got me thinking about it. When I saw the gladiolus, I knew for sure.”

  “Well, she wasn’t that smart,” he said, almost petulantly, like a child. “Not smart enough to run out the door when you yelled. She ran toward you instead.”

  Evie sniffed. Oh God, Candace, I’m so sorry.

  “So why the birth flowers?” she asked, wanting to keep him talking for as long as she could. The longer he talked, the more time that gave Rowan to get here.

  She knew he would come. Knew it down to her bones. Her last text would have upset him; the silence that followed must have signaled him that something was seriously wrong.

  He’s coming.

  “My father had a shop. Used to give flowers to the whores he cheated with.”

  She was no shrink, but she got the picture, knowing enough about serial killers to know some of what drove them. “I bet that made your mother unhappy.”

  The mother whose picture still stood in a place of honor in his home.

  “She was a saint.” His eyes, flat and lifeless, now sparked with anger. “He might’s wella killed her himself. She died of a broken heart.”

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured, trying to keep him calm. Please hurry, Rowan.

  He mumbled something else, averting his eyes and crouching down to the body. “He’s coolin’ off. Don’t have as much time as I’d hoped,” he mumbled.

  Evie still didn’t understand how, exactly, the dead man on the floor tied in to all of this, except for the fact that she recognized him as the one who’d attacked her last week. How he’d gotten here—and gotten dead—she didn’t know.

  “Did you hire him to attack me?”

  “Nah.” Seeing her confusion, he gave her an evil wink. “I hired him to kill ya.”

  She swallowed hard. Be cool, be cool, be cool.

  “I guess he let you down, hmm?”

  “You could say that. You believe this guy came here to try to get you to pay him to tell you who he was workin’ for?” He swung a leg back and kicked the corpse. She didn’t see it, thank heaven. The thunk was enough. “Piece of shit. He was a CI for me back in the day, thought he could be relied on to finish a job.”

  If not for Rowan’s arrival last Monday night, he would have. Bile rose in her throat at the thought of it. She had been thinking the attack was about robbery or sexual assault.

  Murder hadn’t really entered her consciousness. Not until now.

  “So that’s why you killed him?”

  “Yep, he made it easy. Him showing up here just brought everything together all nice and neat. The flower killer came here to kill you but didn’t expect you to be with your friend. So he had to shoot her. All true so far. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer, merely staring at him.

  “He got you, did awful things to you, but somehow you fought and got away.”

  Did awful things to you.

  Oh God. She knew some of the awful things this man had done to his victims.

  She’d been priding herself on being calm and smart, but right now a scream was locked in her throat, bulging and throbbing, dying
for escape.

  “Despite how fucked up you were, you managed to get his gun, staggered into the bathroom. He came in after you and you shot him. That explains all the blood in there. You were able to kill him just before you died of your horrible injuries.”

  Knowing he was trying to torture her mentally, she tried not to think of all the ways in which he hoped to make her suffer. Franklin Lee’s body had been in the bathroom when she arrived home, not that she’d known it at the time. “Then why bring his…why bring him in here?”

  “Oh, he’s still got a role to play. Gotta make sure good old Firecracker’s DNA is found right here in this bed where he did all those nasty things to you.”

  His grin and the expectant look in his eyes were enough to tell her what he wanted her to do, to say. He wanted her to beg, wanted her to scream and cry. Wanted her broken and terrified.

  Maybe his poor victims had reacted that way. But Evie had seen evil before. Horror had brushed up against her life when she was very young, and she had soaked herself in research of it from then on. Somewhere deep inside her, in the hard, iron core of herself that had been forged by her experiences with Joe Henry Angstrom, she found the strength she needed.

  She held his stare. She focused on appearing calm and rational. And not afraid.

  It was one of the hardest things she had ever done. Looking into the face of pure and unfiltered evil should have been enough to break her; he’d been counting on that. But she’d looked into that face before, though it had a different shape, different eyes, hair, and mouth. She was on a first-name basis with evil, and it hadn’t broken her yet.

  Their stare-off lasted for almost a full minute.

  He was waiting, mentally ticking off the seconds until she broke.

  But fucked if she would break.

  Finally, he looked down at his first victim of the day. “Wish I’d held off a little longer killing him.” He smiled at her again. “Can’t let his body temp get too much colder than yours since you killed each other. I guess you and I won’t get to have too much fun.”

  Gagging silently, she forced herself to reply, “What if I hadn’t come back here today?”

  He shrugged. “I was betting you would, but it didn’t really matter. If you hadn’t, I woulda dumped Frankie somewhere and gotten at you another way. But this works out so well. Franklin Lee was responsible for all those unsolved murders, and brave little Miss Fleming figured him out, which was why he had to kill her.”