Skye narrowed her eyes. “Letting me? I had this.”
“You most certainly did not.” Prepared to argue his point more fully, he pointed out, “You could’ve handled three, maybe four, unarmed. But three of these bastards had knives, Skye. And five? No way could you take down five. I’m not watching you walk out the door anymore and into this kind of combat on a nightly basis.”
“Damn it, Josh. We’ve been all over this. I know you’re upset with me, upset because I didn’t answer you before when Brad Jones called.”
Josh held up a hand. “This isn’t the time or the place for a discussion about our relationship. So don’t confuse the two, as it seems we have several things we need to deal with in order to wade through.”
“Agreed.”
“Good. Because right now it’s about you not doing this alone—”
“Don’t start this crap now! Especially after Travis and I went another round about this very thing just this afternoon.”
“I’m not Travis,” Josh stated flatly. “Whatever you and Travis discussed doesn’t enter into play here, not tonight, not right now when we’re standing in the middle of the street after we just took care of a bunch of meth heads.”
Skye huffed out a breath. “We need to call the cops and get this scum off Seattle’s streets before we go toe-to-toe. Again…tonight.” Skye glanced around at the bodies littering the road. “I’m pressing charges.”
Josh took out his cell phone, dialed nine-one-one himself. “Damn straight you’re pressing charges. We both are. But there’s no need to argue with me about this. I mean it this time, Skye.”
While Josh relayed the information to a dispatcher, Skye waited for her opening. When he disconnected the call, she pounced. “I wasn’t alone here, Josh. Kiya took corporeal form tonight just as Travis told us she would. These idiots heard her growl. It distracted them long enough to give me an advantage. Both of us charged and it worked.” Skye glanced over at Kiya, still holding onto the man’s arm with her teeth. At Skye’s command, the wolf finally relinquished the thug’s arm. When the man slumped to the pavement, Kiya trotted over to rub up against Skye’s legs.
“See? We had this,” Skye said again.
As Josh laid a hand on Kiya’s head, he reasoned, “Not good enough.”
“Says you.”
“That’s right. And I’m tired of sitting at home while the woman I love does this alone. Even with Kiya here, there are times, like tonight, you’ll be at a disadvantage.”
While they stood in the middle of the street debating the issue, the sound of sirens grew closer.
“Might,” Skye emphasized in disgust. “Why make a big deal out of something that might happen once every month or so? There’s no need for you to give up sleep and do this with me. Do you want your company going into the toilet without you sharp every day?”
Just as stubborn, Josh said, “I’m not willing to bet the law of averages will not eventually catch up with you, Skye. And I’ve decided my company will be just fine if I don’t drag in to the office until ten or so in the morning.”
Their difference of opinion came to a halt when three cop cars pulled to a stop. Six of Seattle’s finest popped out of their older model, light blue cruisers.
“Is either of you armed?” one of the cops wanted to know as he got out of his car.
“Do we look armed?” Josh retorted. He threw out an arm in the direction of the gang sprawled out in various locations on the street. “Those are your bad guys—a gang of thugs from Spokane who thought they’d attack a woman walking down the street alone.”
“Hey, I recognize you two. Josh Ander and Skye Cree, right?” another cop said as he approached the pair. “You’re the woman who finds all those missing girls, right?”
“No missing girls here tonight,” Skye pointed out. “But we were accosted by these drug dealers without provocation.”
While the cops started picking up bodies and slapping handcuffs on wrists, Josh and Skye went over their statements. The senior officer wanted all the particulars about the newly-minted Artemis Foundation, which Skye and Josh were happy to provide.
It took almost an hour of details and relating what had happened before the uniforms let them go. Afterwards, they picked up their tiff in progress, deciding it was best to argue over a late-night stack of pancakes.
They walked to a retro eatery with dated décor in a section near downtown that saw plenty of Seattle’s nightlife. Musicians, third-shift medical personnel, or any other night owl awake at two or three in the morning could feed a craving at Country Kitchen.
The place was like stepping back into another era. It wasn’t fancy but you could order breakfast anytime of the day or night or get a chicken fried steak with gravy at four in the morning. Diners could opt to sit at the counter on one side and watch the fry cook or sit in one of the booths with a view of the foot traffic on the street.
Even though Travis had owned the place for more than twenty years, he’d never changed the color scheme. It was still blue-green or as Velma called it, “tacky turquoise.”
As soon as Josh and Skye took a seat in one of the booths, Velma appeared with a coffee pot in one hand and dirty dishes in another.
“You kids eating or drinking?” Velma asked.
“Eating,” Skye replied. “Pecan pancakes with a glass of orange juice for me.”
“Blueberry for me and a side of bacon, but I’ll drink milk.”
When Velma left to put in the order, Skye grumbled, “We don’t have to be joined at the hip twenty-four-seven, Josh.”
“Is that what you think? Just because I’m pointing out you were outmanned tonight and you needed backup other than Kiya.”
“We took care of it.”
“After I showed up.”
Skye huffed out, “You don’t intend to let this go, do you? You’re determined to jeopardize what you’ve worked for by stubbornly refusing to let me take care of myself. I’m perfectly capable of doing that while you continue to get a decent night’s sleep.”
“Me? Stubborn? Since you wrote the book, right back atcha. I know you’re more than capable of defending yourself. Did I say otherwise? Why are you making such an issue out of this? I own the damn company. I’ll go in later in the morning. Issue solved. I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner. Probably because on some level I knew I’d meet with this kind of resistance. But prolonging this won’t change the fact that tonight you were in real danger with those assholes.”
“Okay, okay. Maybe I overreacted.”
“Maybe?” He dazzled her with a smile and reached his hand across the table to hers just as Velma rattled their plates down on the table. “Besides, if I go out with you at night, we can make this part of the regular routine.”
“Eating late-night flapjacks?” Skye shook her head. “And probably gain five pounds before the end of the month.”
“Not the way you train,” Josh said.
“Okay, I admit I’ll relish having a partner. But you have to promise me two things.”
Clearly skeptical of what she wanted, he put down his fork and picked up his milk. “What?”
“If things start falling apart at work, you have to level with me and take care of business first.”
That didn’t sound so bad. “Okay. Not a problem. And the other?”
“You won’t talk my ear off while we’re walking down some dark alleyway at two in the morning doing our damnedest to be discreet.”
Josh laughed. “I’ll try to contain myself. How’s that?”
She reached her hand across the table to shake his. “Then I guess we have ourselves a deal.”
They dug into their food.
They had no way of knowing that less than seven miles away from where they ate, a serial killer was just hitting his stride…yet again.
Chapter 5 Book 2
The temperature had dropped to sixty-seven degrees as the clock ticked toward one a.m. What had started out as gray and overcast was now clear enough that a beam of moonli
ght radiated around him like a halo.
The wind picked up making the leaves dance on the cool August breeze. The lone figure watched as a string of fat clouds hung low in the sky and drifted overhead soft as cotton.
Standing across the street from a three-bedroom townhouse in downtown Ballard, he stopped stargazing and refocused on his purpose. It had taken almost two weeks for twenty-nine-year-old Frank De Palo, Jr. to stake the place out. What with three women living inside, with three distinct schedules, it had taken some creativity on his part to make his visits count.
Frankie, as his mother had been fond of calling her only son, had already spent enough time scouring the stylish residence to make him feel as though he knew the occupants—intimately.
He was about to know at least one of them a good deal more.
Tracy Lewis, a twenty-four-year-old Seattle native, manned the phones as a receptionist at a chiropractor’s office not five blocks from this spot. Tracy’s longtime roomie, Erica Bentley, was a twenty-nine-year-old flight attendant who worked for Alaska Airlines and flew the Minneapolis—St. Paul route. But it was the third female, Julie Freeman, the newest arrival in town who had first caught his attention. He’d been perusing the neighborhood when he caught sight of Julie getting out of her car. With such long legs and flowing brown hair, Julie was a looker. It saddened him to learn she didn’t exactly have a stellar job history or the smarts to do any type of work other than customer service rep for the local cable company.
Even now, Julie was alone outside, soaking in the steamy hot tub located off the back patio. He could surprise her now. But of course, he would not. One didn’t rush things no matter how he was tempted. She might start screaming out in the open or worse, break away and he’d lose control. No, best if he waited for her to crawl out of the water and head back inside the house before he made his presence known.
It was more of a challenge that way, to wait for her to feel safe and secure, to wait until she’d settled under the covers. He liked the idea of surprising Julie once she’d tucked herself in between the sheets, just as she dropped off into a deep slumber. In his experience, it made for a better shock, made for more abject fear and confusion in the victims. Not only that, it gave him more of an adrenaline rush, more of an advantage.
But tonight he envisioned going a different direction. It was time to shake things up. That is, if he could put the brakes on long enough for Tracy to come in from her date, it would work. Although the woman was taking her sweet time about getting home on a Thursday night, he thought now. He couldn’t very well stand in the same spot for this long without drawing attention to himself. One never knew when a nosy neighbor might panic and decide to call the cops.
He let his mind drift back to Tracy. The black-haired beauty more than likely had stayed over with Kyle, the new boyfriend of three weeks. After considering how late it had gotten, he wasn’t sure it was worth the trouble to wait for Tracy to come home. Bearing in mind what he knew about Tracy, the slut would probably not crawl through the door until morning.
Since that feeling had already started to wash over him, he knew he was getting itchy. That urge to dominate, to control every part of the act was beginning to snap at the outer banks and take hold as it usually did. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep the urge at bay.
That initial fear he always saw in the eyes of his victims kept creeping into his brain. He recognized it for what it was. The pure joy of the hunt, to subdue, to conquer, to watch the last breath go out of their bodies as they slowly took the final gulp of air they would ever take.
Now, he desperately wanted two at the same time in the same place. He hadn’t done two since… It had been a very long time.
That probably meant he was out of practice on that score. He hashed that out and began to do his mental checklist of the townhome’s layout. He hoped to Christ he wasn’t getting it confused with the one four streets over on Sedgwick Way, the one with the petite little redhead. At some point, he intended to get around to her. That thought had him glancing across to the similar design and shape of the townhouse itself. It struck him then. Both addresses had a festive front door decoration with the same shade of trim. Both had a white mailbox.
He gone through so many homes he couldn’t keep them all straight. Without his notebook handy, which he used to jot down specific details, he would have to wing it tonight.
How could he have been in such a hurry that he’d gone off without bringing what he considered his bible along with him? Why did he go to such great lengths to keep painstaking facts and figures about his victims if he went spacey and left it behind? How could he maintain the source of all his hard effort if he didn’t keep the book with him at all times?
For several minutes, he fretted over it and wished he had his notes. But wishing didn’t do him any good at the moment. He’d have to remedy that next time. Bitching about it now didn’t help while he stood in the dark on a street corner.
How is it he remembered how much money each woman had in her individual checking and savings accounts but not whether he had the correct house? Maybe he was losing his touch. It wasn’t like him to lose focus. He considered that and thought about calling it a night.
He tried to get his mind back on track by going over each woman’s stats, each bedroom, the placement of the furniture, the insides of their closets, their personal belongings. Keeping to the finite details helped the process once he got inside.
But then the difference in locations suddenly came to him, like a fog lifted. The redhead’s townhome on Sedgwick Way didn’t have a hot tub. Confident he had the right address now, he forced his attention back to his target.
Of the three roomies, Julie was the one overdrawn at the bank. He considered that fact for a moment longer and decided he was probably doing poor Julie a favor by putting an end to the financial struggle she’d been having for the past six months.
He would take care of her monetary woes tonight—along with a few other things he considered essential. He certainly had that urge to take it up a notch. The timing seemed right. The stars had lined up just so. But the idea of harmony converging and him being a part of that made him chuckle. He was more into delivering chaos bordering on hell than anything harmonic. Besides, the same old thing became boring after so many years.
When Tracy’s bright yellow bug pulled into the driveway, a grin spread across his face. Oh yes. When opportunity presented itself a man would have to be an idiot not to kick in the door. Tonight, he would give the media a little something special to put on the front page of their newspapers.
As always, he had the option of adding a different spice to the punch. It would make for an interesting night.
There was no doubt about it. Julie Freeman’s life had taken a turn for the better. For the first time in months, she could almost see the light at the end of a dark tunnel. Okay, so maybe she was still having a few money problems. But she was employed now. She’d been trying to catch up on her bills. And she couldn’t believe her luck in the roommate department. She’d really hit the jackpot when she found Erica and Tracy. It wasn’t just the hot tub either, although who in their right mind would turn down a nice soak on a rare starlit summer evening like tonight? Certainly Julie Freeman recognized a good thing. Maybe it was all those years she’d struggled to catch a break back in her native Los Angeles that had her appreciating things now.
No more worries. Things were definitely looking up.
With her eyes closed, Julie slid farther down into the bubbling froth of the heated water. She let the stress of the day fade away. Unwinding, she moved her shoulders up and down and let her head fall back on the cement lip of the pool.
After she’d finally made the decision to relocate from the crowded, smog-infested confines of her hometown to the much friendlier city of Seattle, she managed to nail down a customer service job. It wasn’t much but it had taken her almost nine tough months to find anything that paid more than minimum wage.
Since las
t January there was no denying she’d had a tough time of it. But after all that, she’d found a position that at least paid her enough to cover the bills. Finding an affordable place to live had been an equally challenging ordeal. For the first three months in Seattle, she’d lived out of her car. But now she had two kickass roommates she’d found on Craigslist.
Erica wasn’t even around all that much and when she was here in town, she spent much of her time with her long-time boyfriend. Same with Tracy, only Tracy went through men pretty fast. Sometimes it was like a revolving door and Julie had a difficult time keeping up with all of the men Tracy brought around. For the past few weeks it had been Kyle, a guy who couldn’t string two sentences together without talking about himself.
At the rustle of leaves in the alleyway, Julie’s eyes popped open. She brought her head up to scan the darkness beyond the pool lights. Except for the soft sway of the row of tall evergreens surrounding the backyard, she saw nothing out of the ordinary.
She settled back down in the water. It was silly to be this jumpy. But lately, no matter what she did, Julie couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that someone was watching her. For the past couple of weeks she had the nagging suspicion someone followed along behind her wherever she went. Just the other day while she picked out vegetables at the marketplace, she felt a man standing way too close. And she knew how crazy that sounded. But when she’d gotten home, she even thought someone had been inside her bedroom. Her earrings were out of place. Each pair had been lined up in a different but neatly arranged way. Not the messy, unorganized place on the nightstand where she’d left them, but an almost too tidy lineup. Which was ridiculous she thought now, even silly since she’d only been living in Seattle a short time, not long enough to make that many acquaintances. Except for the people she worked with, no one even knew where she lived.
At the sound of a car engine, Julie tilted her head to listen, once again, on alert. But the noise sounded like Tracy’s VW bug pulling to a stop in the driveway. Julie relaxed again, letting the bubbles and the foam relax her body.
Skye Cree Boxed Set Books 1 - 3 Page 35
