Serial Bride

by Ann Voss Peterson

  “I want to know why you want to see her, that’s all. So I can pass along the message.”

  A lie if he’d ever heard one. And in all the years he’d spent in the courtroom, he’d heard plenty. Not only was he sure she was worried, the prospect that she was telling the truth earlier seemed likely, as well. Maybe she was Diana Gale’s twin.

  Just the kind of woman his brother Ty would have insisted on helping.

  A hollow twinge vibrated in his gut like a plucked guitar string. Bryce cultivated an immunity to beautiful women, but his brother had been another story. Ty would commit the resources of their law firm the moment a tear welled in a feminine litigant’s eye.

  But then, Ty had been the better man.

  “I have a case to discuss with your sister.” He peered over Sylvie Hayes’s blond head, trying to see into the apartment through the small space in the door. “Will you tell her I’m here?”

  “What kind of case?”

  “The confidential kind.”

  “Well, Diana isn’t here.”

  Was she telling the truth? Probably. She didn’t seem to be a very accomplished liar. Unlike her sister. “Where can I find Diana?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “I don’t know that, either. But maybe if you tell me a little more about why you want to talk to her, I can help.”

  “If you don’t know where she is or when she’ll be back, I can’t see how.”

  Her lips pressed into a thoughtful line. “You asked if I was worried about her?”

  Maybe now they were getting somewhere. “Yes.”

  “I am. If you tell me what this is about, maybe I can make some sense out of things. For both of us.”

  Okay. He’d roll the dice. Since the client in this matter was actually himself, the case’s confidentiality was as flexible as he needed. “I came across your sister’s name yesterday. It was on the sign-in sheet at the Banesbridge prison. She visited an inmate there several times in the past year. I want to know why.”

  Pale-blue eyes rounded in surprise. Or fear. Or maybe both. “Diana?”

  “Yes, Diana.”

  Her eyebrows pinched together, causing a tiny crease at the top of her slender nose. “I don’t understand.”

  “She signed in as part of a university research project under the supervision of a Vincent Bertram.”

  “Bertram?”

  He did his best to tamp down his frustration. He wanted answers, not to listen to her parrot his every word. “He’s a professor in the psychology department.”

  She shook her head. “Diana is earning her Ph.D. in English. I can’t see her finding a lot of twelfth-century poetry in prison. Are you sure it was her?”

  “I’m sure.” Her signatures on the sign-in sheets were burned on the inside of his eyelids like a brand. “Your sister is the only Diana Gale at the university. The guards recognized her picture. The only other person it could have been is you.”

  The tiny crease deepened. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  None of it made sense. Especially not his kid brother’s death. “Of course, your sister might have used her affiliation at the university to gain access, and the visit was personal.”

  “Personal? How?”

  “I was hoping you might have some idea.”

  Once again she shook her head. “I don’t.” She sounded certain, but her eyes blinked and shifted.

  “I would bet a lot of money you do have ideas. Plenty of them.”

  “I’m sorry.” Through the sliver of the opening, he could see her throat move under tender skin. “What prisoner was she visiting?”

  He hesitated. The idea of saying the man’s name to those delicate eyes already filled with fear felt cruel. And although Ty had accused Bryce of being heartless more than a few times when he’d hesitated to take his brother’s charity cases, he was not an abusive man. “My cell phone number is on that card. Have your sister call when she gets home. I’ll be up late.” He turned away from the door.

  Behind him, the door slammed shut followed by the rattle of the security chain. A second later the door flew open and Sylvie Hayes jolted into the hall. “Wait.”

  He turned to face her.

  He could tell she was attractive through the small space in the door, but he still wasn’t prepared for the full stunning view. The green dress flowed over smooth curves like water. Cheeks flushed pink under translucent skin. Wide eyes flashed with light-blue fire and more than a little desperation. “You have to tell me who she visited.”

  “It’s confidential.”

  “Confidential? I can probably pick up the phone and find out tomorrow.”

  “Good luck with that.” At least he wouldn’t be the one to break it to her, to see fear swamp her beautiful eyes. He could keep his focus right where it belonged. On the vow he’d made at Ty’s grave. On justice.

  “Who did she visit? Please.”

  He should walk the hell away. He should keep things easy, clear. Yet Sylvie Hayes obviously knew more about her sister than she was letting on. Far more.

  Down the hall, a neighbor’s door creaked open. A young man’s spiked red hair poked out. Narrowing his eyes, he watched them with interest.

  Bryce spared him a quick glance, then stepped toward Sylvie. “Invite me in.”

  “Tell me his name.”

  Bryce shook his head. He didn’t need the whole building to hear the inmate’s name. Not this inmate. “Invite me in. We’ll talk.”

  She backed into the apartment, pushing the door wide.

  He followed her inside and closed the door behind him.

  Sylvie stood her ground between the living room and a small dining area. “Okay. Tell me.”

  “As long as you tell me everything you know about your sister.”

  She nodded.

  “Diana has been visiting Dryden Kane.”

  He’d thought it impossible for her eyes to grow larger. He’d been wrong.

  “The serial killer? The one who hunted women down and gutted them like deer?”

  “That’s the one.”

  She covered her lips with trembling fingers. “Are you sure?”

  He didn’t want to tell her more, but now that she knew, it was only fair. “Your sister visited him once a month, starting seven months ago.”

  “Seven months? That’s a month before I knew her.” Her eyebrow ring dipped in a frown. “She never said anything about it. About him.”

  “You were worried about her. Before I came to the door tonight.”

  She nodded.

  “Why?”

  “She was supposed to be married today. But the wedding never took place.”

  That explained the fancy green dress—a dress, he now realized, marred with brown smudges. “Is that blood?”

  She nodded. “Right before the ceremony, I found Reed—the groom—unconscious and bleeding. Diana was gone.”

  “You called the police?”

  She dropped her hand from her mouth and curled her fingers to fists at her sides. “The police think she did it.”

  In light of what Bryce suspected about Diana Gale, the police were on the right trail. “Do you know for a fact that she didn’t?”

  She glared at the suggestion as if considering leaving Bryce unconscious and bleeding if he didn’t zip it. “Reed is a cop. The detective in charge is out to get him. And now he’s out to get Diana, too.”

  Interesting, though he doubted it was the case. But Sylvie believed it. It had been easy to see through her previous lie. She wasn’t lying now. “So why aren’t the police here? If they really suspect her, I would think they would be searching her apartment.”

  “I imagine they’re on their way.” She glanced down the hall.

  “And that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To search her apartment before they arrive.”

  She looked down. Her fingers tangled together. Busted. “If there’s something that might tell me what happen
ed to Diana, I have to find it.”

  And he’d like to find it, too. More than she knew. “Then why are we standing around wasting time?”

  She stared at him a long moment, as if trying to decide whether she should trust him or not. Finally the press of time seemed to win out. “I thought I’d start in her office.”

  “Lead the way.”

  Sylvie marched down the hall, pushed a door open and led him inside.

  The office was a neat but obviously well-used workspace. White walls and desk gave the room a clean, fresh feeling. Papers rose in orderly stacked piles. But it was the splashes of color, the artwork and figurines dedicated to female superheroes, that made Bryce’s lips twist in an ironic smile.

  Too bad Diana herself was no champion of justice.

  Sylvie stepped to the desk, sank into the chair and wheeled in front of the file cabinet. She scanned the stack of student papers on top before gripping the handle of the top drawer and yanking it open.

  Bryce stepped close behind her, reading the files over her shoulder. Together they skimmed the contents. Student evaluations and files dedicated to her dissertation jammed the first two drawers. Sylvie had thumbed through most of the contents of the third drawer when Bryce noticed an unmarked manila folder peeking from the back. “What about that one?”

  Sylvie plucked the unlabeled file folder from the drawer and flipped it open. A photo stared up at them—ice-blue eyes in a face that looked much younger than its years.

  The back of Bryce’s neck prickled at the sight of his former client’s cold, hard eyes.

  “Who is this?” Sylvie asked.

  “Dryden Kane.”

  Her shoulders tensed. “I thought he looked familiar. Except that in this picture he looks so normal. Like the boy next door.”

  Bryce couldn’t argue. Dryden Kane did look more like an average suburban neighbor than the brutal killer he was. Some might even say he was good-looking. And that was exactly what made him so dangerous to the women he’d charmed into trusting him. God knew Kane’s civilized appearance had fooled him. He tried to swallow the bitter taste in his mouth. “What else is in the folder?”

  She turned the photo face down. Piled behind it were copies of old newspaper articles. Sylvie flipped through the first few, twenty-year-old articles detailing Kane’s brutal murders of blond college coeds and his circus of a trial. Behind those were articles half that old telling the story of his prison marriage to the misguided Dixie Madsen and their notorious escape and recapture. More recent articles poked out from underneath in the original newsprint.

  Bryce pointed to the photocopies on the top of the stack. “These look like they were made from microfilm.”

  “Microfilm? Like from a library?”

  “Yeah. See how a few of them are in negative? That happens with some machines. And the library is one of the few places she could get her hands on articles this old.”

  “Why would she copy all these articles?”

  Bryce didn’t know, but he had his suspicions. Of course, he wasn’t about to share them with Sylvie Hayes. “Whatever the reason, she had to be pretty dedicated. It takes a lot of time to go through microfilm.”

  A piece of paper stuck out from behind the stack of articles: an envelope addressed to Diana Gale, complete with canceled stamp and postmarked last month.

  Bryce’s heart pounded so hard he could feel each beat in his throat. “Is that a letter?”

  Sylvie let the copied article she was reading fall back into the folder and reached for the envelope.

  A loud thump sounded from the other room. “Police,” a muffled voice shouted from the hall. “Open the door. We have a warrant to search the premises.”

  Bryce met Sylvie’s desperate eyes. They’d barely scratched the surface. He needed to study the folder, to find out exactly what Diana Gale saw fit to collect, what she knew about Kane, and when she knew it. And most of all, he needed to read that letter. If it was from Kane and he had sent it last month, it might give him everything he needed to prove that for whatever reason, Diana Gale had acted as Dryden Kane’s conduit to the outside world. And that at Kane’s bequest, she had arranged Ty’s murder.

  Sylvie stuffed the letter back into the folder, snapped the cover shut and thrust up from the chair. “I’m not giving them this folder.”

  His feelings exactly. But there wasn’t much they could do to keep it. Not with the police right outside. “What are you planning to do?”

  “I don’t know. But I can’t just hand this over to Detective Perreth. He’ll only use it to twist things, to blame everything on Diana, not to find out what happened to her.”

  “If the police believe as you say, taking this folder amounts to removing evidence. It’s a criminal action.”

  “I don’t care. It might be my only chance to find Diana. To find the truth.”

  And Bryce’s only chance to find out who helped Dryden Kane murder his brother. A chill wound down Bryce’s throat and lodged in his gut.

  Sylvie ran her hands over her gown. “I was going to change clothes. Why didn’t I change clothes?”

  There was no room in that dress to smuggle a folder, that was for damn sure. The chill inside him grew until the walls of his stomach ached from it.

  Sylvie dropped her hands to her sides and started for the door. “I’ll throw it in my suitcase. I’ll say I came to pack my clothes.”

  “No good. If this Detective Perreth has a brain in his head, he’ll ask to search your suitcase before he lets you cross the threshold.”

  Another thump sounded on the door. The jangle of keys reached them.

  Sylvie looked around the room like a trapped animal. “What am I going to do?”

  Warmth leached from his veins, chills circulating through his body. He was an officer of the court. He couldn’t interfere with a legal search warrant. He couldn’t risk his livelihood, his freedom.

  He couldn’t.

  But could he just surrender the folder? Could he give up the only lead he had to nailing his brother’s killer before he even got a look?

  Oh, hell. “Give it to me.”

  “What?”

  It was crazy. Deluded. Definitely criminal. He watched his hand extend toward her, palm up. As if it was part of someone else’s body. As if someone else was taking this leap into the abyss. “Give me the folder.”

  She handed it to him.

  He tossed his briefcase onto the desk, popped the locks and stuffed the folder inside. “Go ahead and pack your clothes. Quickly. I’ll answer the door.”

  Chapter Three

  Sylvie jammed jeans, sweaters and toiletries into her suitcase. Her fingers were shaking so badly, she could barely grip the zipper and force it closed. In the other room she could hear the hum of voices. Perreth’s blunt rasp followed by Bryce’s level baritone. When Bryce had hidden the folder in his briefcase, she’d been shocked. Sure, she’d asked for his help, for an answer to her dilemma, but she hadn’t been expecting him to give her either. She certainly hadn’t expected him to stick out his neck for her. No one had ever stuck their neck out for her before.

  So why had he done it?

  He had to have his reasons. But she didn’t have time to discover them now. The only thing that mattered right this second was that she and Bryce leave Diana’s apartment with that folder. She needed to get a look at the letter, the clippings. She needed some sort of break if she hoped to find her sister. And she needed that break now.

  She finished closing the zipper, set the suitcase on its wheels and extended the handle. It was time to get out of here and get back to finding Diana.

  Before it was too late.

  She marched out of the office and down the hall. A small handful of police officers had already fanned out in the living room. Near the center of the room, Detective Perreth glowered at Bryce from under his bushy brows. Sylvie could smell his cologne of stale cigarettes as soon as she entered the room.

  “Nice to see you again, Ms. Hayes.” He glanc
ed at a uniformed officer who had begun sorting through the drawers in the coffee table. “Thomas?”

  “Detective?”

  “Take a look through Ms. Hayes’s suitcase, will you? We wouldn’t want her removing anything other than her personal clothing from the suspect’s apartment.” He grinned, showing nicotine-yellowed teeth. “It’s all right if he takes a look, isn’t it?”

  “Of course.” Giving him an equally phony smile, Sylvie left her suitcase at the mercy of the officer and stepped toward Perreth. “I want to see the warrant.”

  “I already showed it to your boyfriend here. And the super. It’s legal.”

  Towering next to Perreth’s squatty frame, Bryce gave her a confirming nod.

  “I asked you to stay at the church,” the detective said. “Care to explain why that didn’t happen?”

  “I had things to do.”

  “Like what? Rushing to your sister’s apartment to remove evidence of premeditation?”

  Hot pressure built in her head until it made her ears ring. This whole situation was so stupid. A figment of Perreth’s imagination. An attempt to smear Reed and Diana. To get revenge for Reed’s reaction to Perreth hitting his wife. And all the while he was wasting his time suspecting Diana, she was in danger. He should be finding her, not blaming her.

  She gripped the stained satin of her gown in her fists and choked down the words she wanted to spit at him. Making Perreth angry would get her nowhere. She needed to get out of here and find Diana. “I came back to change out of this dress and move my things to a hotel. That’s all.”

  He eyed her gown. “What stopped you?”

  “I did.” Bryce’s voice rippled like waves in water. “We had some things to discuss.”

  Things to discuss? Sylvie bit the inside of her cheek. Bryce wasn’t going to tell Detective Perreth about their conversation, was he? No. That didn’t make sense. But why would he want to draw Perreth’s attention with a vague claim like that? Surely the detective would want to know more. Maybe enough to detain him for questioning. Or to search his briefcase.

  Next to her, the officer finished turning over her clothes and makeup.