Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  As she thrust open the door, she felt Jake’s presence over her shoulder. And now she couldn’t get rid of him.

  “Are you going to invite me in to discuss this? Discuss why you lied to me?” He placed his hand flat against the door, holding it wide.

  “Do I have a choice?” She floated inside her apartment, dropped the keys into a basket on the low wall that separated her small dining area from the entrance hall and placed her purse next to the basket. “You can close and dead bolt the door behind you.”

  The door was shut, and the gentleness of it caused her more dread than if he’d slammed it. Would he kick her off the task force? She couldn’t allow that to happen. She’d use every favor, every tool in her arsenal, to keep her place on the task force.

  She spun around, her fists clenching at her sides. “Why are you snooping into my background? Do you do that for every task force member or just the ones you don’t want to work with?”

  He clasped a hand on the back of his neck, and for the first time she noticed the weariness in his handsome face, the lines on the sides of his mouth etched deep, the hazel eyes, dark and unfathomable. “Is that what you think? Have I really shown you that I don’t want you on the task force? Don’t want to work with you? I invited you to survey the video footage with me today. I drove you to the murder scene last night.”

  She blinked her eyes. And she might’ve just messed up. She should’ve listened to Quinn. When had he ever steered her wrong?

  “Besides,” he sighed, and sank onto her couch, grabbing a throw pillow and dragging it into his lap, “I didn’t discover you were Marilyn Lake by looking in your background, although I tried. Your name and ID change are pretty thorough. There is nothing online that links you to that little girl.”

  “I hired the best to clean my background.” She perched on the arm of the chair across from him. “Then how’d you find out and why were you digging into my past?”

  “You raised my suspicions. You couldn’t have worked with Quinn on any of his cases. He retired before you would’ve been old enough to work.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She chewed on her bottom lip. She should’ve had a better story prepared, but she didn’t know Jake was going to drop in on Quinn the same night she was bringing him dinner. “That was it? I told you I knew Charlotte, had been her resource for one of her books.”

  “That wasn’t all.” He tossed aside the handmade pillow she’d gotten in Guatemala with no apparent regard for the effort required to bring that pillow home. “Today, when I walked you to your car and you stumbled, I watched you from the station as you got out of your car and retrieved something from the gutter.”

  Kyra felt the blood drain from her face, and she pressed her fingers against her cool cheek. There really was no fooling this man. Of course, she’d planned to tell him about the second card, but she’d had no intention of telling him she’d found it beside her car and had hidden it from him.

  “That’s what convinced you to look into my past?”

  He nodded, his face tight and wary.

  For the first time in a long time she felt the burn of regret for her deception, and it wasn’t just because she’d been found out. She had the feeling that Jake had endured lies from others, and now she’d become like everyone else in his life.

  She didn’t want to be like everyone else for him.

  Sliding down the arm of the chair to settle onto the cushion, she asked, “You said you didn’t find out who I was by looking into my background.”

  “That’s right.” He braced one foot against the edge of the coffee table. “I discovered your identity by looking at The Player case file.”

  Tilting her head, she wrapped her ponytail around her hand. “There are no pictures of me as a child in that file and no indication that I changed my name. Quinn assured me of that.”

  “That’s true, but there is a story about a hardened detective and his wife who were so overcome with pity for a motherless girl that they sought to adopt her and keep her out of the system.” He shrugged his broad shoulders.

  “You made the connection between that poor, pitiable little girl and me?” She shook her head. “That’s some hunch, Detective.”

  “It was a hunch that didn’t bear out when I discovered Jennifer’s daughter’s name was Marilyn Lake, but then I saw this.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pants pocket and shook it out. “Unmistakably you.”

  Kyra hunched forward and snatched the paper from his hand. Her mother’s eyes, so full of hope and optimism, met hers, and the scent of her mother’s floral perfume overwhelmed her. Her chest tightened, and her throat closed. The paper floated from her hand as she gasped for breath.

  She felt herself tumbling, tumbling through time and fear and sadness. The aching sadness gripped her belly and clawed at the carefully constructed facade that she’d been building for the past ten years since she graduated from high school and changed her name. The wound gaped open and the contents of her pathetic, tortured life began to seep out.

  She clutched her midsection and moaned, toppling onto her side. As she began to slide off the couch, into the narrow space between the couch and the coffee table, strong hands pinched her shoulders.

  She heard her name from far away... Mimi, Mimi, it’s me and you, Mimi. You’re my little good-luck charm.

  “Kyra, Kyra. Are you all right?”

  Rough, blunt fingers, not her mother’s cool, delicate ones with the coral polish on the tips, brushed her cheek. The male voice, low and urgent, pierced the fog of her consciousness.

  “Kyra, lie back. I’m going to get you some water, or something stronger if I can find it.”

  He left her, and the haze began to clear from her brain. As Jake knocked around her kitchen, she grabbed the arm of the chair and pulled herself to an upright position.

  She smoothed her hand over her hair and dashed the moisture from her cheeks.

  By the time Jake made it back to the living room with a glass of water in one hand and a measure of something that looked like apple cider vinegar in the other, her breathing had returned to normal, although her heart still galloped in her chest.

  He held up the glass in his right hand. “Water or some really old Scotch?”

  “I’ll take the water. I’m fine.” When she took the glass from his hand, their fingers brushed and she wanted to drop the glass and grab on to his warm, strong hand for dear life.

  She gulped back the water. “I’m really okay. It’s just that I hadn’t seen that photo in a long time. It brought back...memories.”

  He crouched at her feet and rested a hand on her bouncing knee. “Terrifying, tragic ones. I’m sorry I sprang it on you like that. It’s a beautiful picture of your mother. The second I laid eyes on it I knew you were her daughter. You look so much alike, except for the eyes.”

  Her gaze darted to the picture on the floor. “The eyes? Really? People always used to tell us we had the exact same color of eyes. She assured me that it would be her eyes that would propel her to stardom, just like Liz Taylor’s. My mother lived for old Hollywood.”

  “The color and the shape are almost identical. It’s the expression that’s different.” He pinched the corner of the paper between two fingers. “Hers lack your cynicism, your distrust, your worldliness.”

  “Maybe if my mother had possessed a little more cynicism and a little less trust, she’d be alive today.” Kyra’s nose stung and she swiped the back of her hand beneath it. “You must’ve read about her extracurricular activities. She took the idea of the casting couch a little too far.”

  “I saw that.” Jake squeezed her knee and backed up to the sofa in a crouch. “Was your mother from LA? I noticed she was a young mother. What about your father?”

  Kyra pinned her hands between her knees and lifted her shoulders. “My mother was seventeen when she had me. She never told me who my father was
. Her small town in Idaho chafed, and she took off for Hollywood when she was twenty.”

  “Parents, family? Where were they when you were orphaned?”

  “I assume they’re still in Idaho. They disowned my mother and wanted nothing to do with me at her death. Her murder embarrassed them.” She squeezed her knees against her hands until her knuckles dug into her flesh. She had never told anyone this much about her life, except Quinn and Charlotte, and they knew it by heart. She never had to tell them anything.

  Tilting her head, she surveyed Jake through her lashes. Now she’d have to kill him.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you all right now? You looked like you were going to pass out.”

  “I’m fine.” She picked up the piece of paper with her mother’s picture and smoothed it out on the coffee table.

  Jake cleared his throat. “How come you didn’t tell me your mother was one of The Player’s victims?”

  She raised her eyes from tracing her fingertip around her mother’s face. “Nobody knows that.”

  “Except Quinn.” He dragged a hand through his messy, dark locks. “You didn’t think it was important information given the nature of this case?”

  “Important to me.”

  “Important to the task force lead? In fact—” he stuffed her Guatemalan pillow behind his lower back “—I would’ve thought you’d be eager to tell me.”

  “Eager? Whatever for? It’s my deep, dark secret.” One of her deep, dark secrets.

  “It would’ve given you cred, another reason why you belonged on the task force.”

  “The only reason I need for being on that task force is my experience with victims and their families.” She took another quick gulp of water, half of it landing in her lap.

  “You can’t tell me you didn’t want on this task force, Kyra. I know you pulled some strings to get assigned, especially because Castillo knows how I feel about working with therapists.”

  “When I heard the details of the first two killings, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew we had a copycat on our hands and, yeah, I wanted to be on the inside.” She hardened her jaw and thrust out her chin. “You can understand that.”

  “I do understand it. Under the same circumstances, you wouldn’t be able to drag me away from the investigation.” He scratched the sexy stubble on his chin. “I just can’t figure out why you didn’t tell me your connection to the case. Why hide it?”

  She formed a V with two fingers and pointed them at him. “That’s why.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “That look in your eyes—pity, sorrow. The only reason discomfort isn’t in the mix is because you’re a cop and accustomed to dealing with victims.” She drew back her shoulders. “I’m not a victim.”

  Jake threw up his hands. “Nobody said you were—not in the sense that you can’t take care of yourself or that you feel put-upon, but The Player put you in a particular class. You’re the daughter of a murder victim. That’s not your shame to bear.”

  “Shame?” She jumped up from the chair and did a quick, agitated trip around the small living room. “I’m not ashamed of my mother or the fact that she was murdered, but I don’t want that to inform my entire life.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Here you are—a therapist, specializing in victims’ rights, cops, working on task forces. You’re going to tell me your past didn’t inform those choices?”

  “It did. Of course it did.” She jabbed a finger into her chest. “I’m good at what I do. I’m good at what I do because I can empathize like nobody’s business. When I tell the daughter of a murder victim that I know how she feels, I ain’t lying. When I express sympathy for the loss of someone’s daughter, like the Lindquists yesterday, they can hear the truth in my voice, feel it in my touch.”

  “I agree with everything you say. I’ve seen you in action.” He’d twisted in his seat to follow her progress across the room. One arm lay across the back of the couch, his sleeve rolled up to reveal the tail end of that tattoo. “I’m a cop because my old man was a cop. I have anger management issues because my old man had anger management issues. I have a... We’re products of our upbringing and our backgrounds, and having a mother who was the victim of one of the most notorious serial killers in LA is a helluva legacy to carry around.”

  “Okay, what do you want me to do?” She tapped her chest twice with the palms of her hands and then spread her arms wide. “Shout it from the rooftops? My mother was Jennifer Lake, the third victim of The Player?”

  Jake stood up and circled to the back of the couch. Folding his arms, he leaned against it. “You don’t have to shout it out to anyone. You should’ve told me, and I think it would be of interest to the rest of the task force.”

  Kyra’s mouth dropped open and prickles of fear raced across her skin. “I—I couldn’t do that. Don’t you do that. Don’t you dare do that. Don’t you dare tell anyone who I am.”

  Jake straightened up, his muscles coiled, nostrils flaring. “I wouldn’t do that, but why? Why in God’s name is it so important for you to keep your identity a secret from everyone?”

  Kyra glanced over her shoulder at the sliding glass door that led to her little patio and whispered, “Because The Player is still out there...and he knows who I am.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jake lunged forward, stopping inches away from Kyra, close enough to see the whiteness around her lips and the corner of her eye twitching. The cool, collected woman who seemed to float just above everyone else was rattled.

  He clenched and unclenched his hands. “What does that mean, he knows who you are?”

  “He knows his third victim left an eight-year-old daughter behind.” She tossed her head, flicking back her thick ponytail. She took a deep breath and swallowed. “And we know he’s still out there. He was never caught.”

  Jake knew backpedaling when he saw and heard it, and Kyra was pumping furiously. “Has The Player ever reached out to you?”

  “N-no.” She ran her hands over her face. “At least, not that I know of.”

  “You mean the playing card left by the dumpster out back?”

  “That and...” She swept past him, grabbed her purse from the divider where she’d dropped it and plunged her hand inside. “And this one.”

  She held up a red playing card, and he moved in to get a better look.

  He snatched the queen of diamonds from her fingers and waved it in the air. “Is this what you found by your car today?”

  “Yes.” She retreated to the kitchen and hung on to the handle of the fridge. “Do you want something to drink? Beer? Water? Juice? Soda?”

  The sheet of ice was coming down again, only this time he’d seen the cracks and knew where they were located.

  He ignored her offer. “Why would you hide this from me, especially after the first one? There’s no coincidence now, is there? Someone left these for you. Do you think it’s The Player?”

  “I was going to tell you about the second card.” She poured herself a glass of orange juice and raised the carton. “Are you sure you don’t want some? I don’t have AC in this apartment and it’s still warm from the Santa Anas, and you look...hot under the collar.”

  He ground his back teeth together and flicked the corner of the card. “You were going to tell me about the second card but not your connection to The Player.”

  “That’s right.” She leveled a gaze at him over the rim of her glass as she took a sip. “But you know that now, too.”

  He dropped back onto the couch, placing the card on the rough-hewn wood coffee table as if for a game of solitaire. He may as well have been playing solitaire for all the help Kyra was giving him.

  “Do you think The Player left these as some kind of reminder or warning?”

  “As if I need a reminder.” She swirled th
e orange liquid in her glass. “As a warning? I thought you were convinced that The Player was not responsible for the killing spree we’re witnessing now.”

  He tapped his finger on the card. “I was sure we had a copycat, but how would a copycat killer know about you? Especially with an identity change, how would some random person find you? In fact, how would The Player know you for Jennifer Lake’s daughter?”

  “There are a few people out there who know my identity. Quinn suggested it might be one of them.”

  “You told Quinn about this already?” He supposed he should feel happy that she was confiding in someone. He was sure Quinn was not advising her to keep this from the lead detective on the task force.

  She set down her glass and faced him. “I tell Quinn everything.”

  “Quinn suggested someone other than The Player and The Copycat might be responsible for leaving the cards?”

  “Matt Dugan.”

  “Who’s Matt Dugan?”

  “When my mom was murdered, I got shunted into the foster care system.” Her whole body twitched. “A few of the families took in multiple foster kids for the money. Matt Dugan was one of those kids with a family the same time I was there.”

  “So, sort of like a foster brother.”

  Her full lips twisted into a bitter smile. “You could call him that. Like many kids in the system, Matt had issues. He liked starting fires, he liked hurting people and he liked me.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Talk about hot under the collar. A flash of heat claimed his chest and clawed its way up his throat. How could a system be so broken that it would put a vulnerable girl like Marilyn Lake in a home with disturbed youth?

  “A few times before I caught onto him. Then I put him in his place.” Her blue eyes flashed with a look he was sure never emanated from her mother’s eyes.

  Maybe Marilyn Lake hadn’t been so vulnerable after all. “This Matt Dugan knows who you are?”