Profiling a Killer

by Nichole Severn

  “We’re going to find whoever did this to your sister, Aubrey.” He maneuvered the SUV off the main street onto a paved one-way road that ran along the length of a few warehouses. “But you’re right. I’m sorry. What I said was insensitive.”

  Salmon Bay glittered out beyond the windshield, rows of boats and waterfront condos bright against the reflection of the sky off the water. She hadn’t realized how long they’d been driving north, lost in her own head as the case grew even more complicated. “To be honest, it isn’t much worse than what I’ve heard from the men I’ve dated and my friends. People who aren’t in the medical field or law enforcement don’t really understand what I do. They see it more as morbid fascination than anything. It’s hard for them to relate, so I tend to alienate conversation when I talk about my job. My career choice and my dedication to my work has ended more relationships than I care to admit.”

  “Sounds like you need new friends. As for the men you’ve dated, anybody who doesn’t see you for the generous and understanding woman you are is an idiot.” The SUV’s shocks absorbed the speed bumps leading down to the waterfront, and Nicholas turned onto another side road, bringing them parallel to the bay before slowing. Parking, he studied the wide expanse of docks, boats and trees in front of them. “Here we are. It’s not much, but it’s more than enough to keep anyone from finding you for a few days.”

  Aubrey shouldered out of the car and dropped into pressed, tire-casted dirt. The wind blew her hair back behind her shoulders and kicked up the scents of salt, mud and algae. The industrial chic shipping container–turned–condo had been outfitted with oversize windows, sliding glass doors and a bright turquoise paint color that stood out among the rest of those on the same row. Lapping water reached her ears, and doubt curdled in her stomach. “This is a shipping container. The FBI uses this as a safe house?”

  “Wait until you see the inside.” Nicholas closed his door behind him and gathered their bags from the back seat with a wink in her direction. He hauled his duffel bag over his shoulder—something he must keep in his vehicle for any situation—and dragged her suitcase behind him. “Shipping containers are the new double-wide trailers, and if we get into some trouble, all they have to do is load us on a boat instead of a truck.” His laugh fed confidence into her veins, and she realized he’d made a joke. “Come on, Doc. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  She studied the configuration of three containers, two on the bottom, one stacked on top, and followed him around to the east entrance. The punch of a keypad reached her ears before Nicholas pushed inside, a glint in his green-blue eyes.

  Light gray wall paint with white trim registered as she stepped over the threshold. Equally light hardwood flooring ran the length of the two containers that’d been welded together to create a warm and unexpectedly inviting atmosphere. The kitchen off to her right with gray cabinets and a wood block countertop didn’t compare to the one back at her loft, but it promised to do exactly as Nicholas had suggested. Not much but more than enough. A small breakfast bar with two stools met her a few feet into the home, with a hallway on the other side leading to a dining room and living space at the back. A set of stairs branched off to her left, which she assumed led to the bedrooms on the second level and most likely a bathroom.

  Nicholas studied her with too much intensity—she couldn’t hold his gaze. He wheeled her suitcase in front of her, handing it off. “As you can see, it’s not hard to get the lay of the land. The bedrooms are up those stairs, and I use that term loosely. There are two queen-size beds on opposite sides of the house without doors. Feel free to take whichever your heart desires.”

  No doors. Just opposite sides of the shipping container he’d brought her to. Eighteen hours ago, her life had been as normal and routine as it could get. It hadn’t been reduced to hiding from a narcissistic killer who’d murdered her sister and started a mind game she couldn’t understand.

  She pressed the bar of her suitcase into the lock position. Someone had broken into her home, had gone through her things, studied her. She wanted to go back to her loft, to her routine, to pretending Kara hadn’t been strangled and mutilated by a sick murderer with a vendetta against her for helping put away a serial killer. Her voice shook despite the significant amount of control she’d practiced over the years. “Please tell me there’s a door and a lock for the bathroom.”

  “There is.” His smile sucker punched her out of nowhere, and Aubrey held her mouth in a tight line until she trusted herself to speak again. He didn’t give her that chance. Nicholas’s expression collapsed as though he’d read her mind, and he slung his duffel bag to the floor. Closing the distance between them, he reached out for her, but hesitated and pulled back. “Aubrey, this is temporary. We’re going to find who’s behind this, and we’re going to make sure he can’t hurt anyone else. Together. I give you my word. You’re going to get through this.”

  She licked dry lips, and his gaze instantly homed in on the movement, shooting awareness through every cell in her body. He was doing this to keep her safe. She knew that, but she wouldn’t be of any use here. She needed to see the photo of the second victim. She needed to help. “Agent James—”

  “Nicholas,” he said.

  “Nicholas.” She tested his name, felt the weight of it on her tongue and the flood of saliva from her salivary glands. Aubrey breathed through the burn of tears at the back of her throat. Kara was gone. Nothing would change that fact, but the agent in front of her gave her hope it was possible. Her gut clenched. No. This was a murder investigation. Her sister’s murder investigation. Whatever this...connection was between her and Nicholas wouldn’t go beyond professional. It couldn’t. “Maybe you’re right. I’m not thinking clearly. I think I’ll take a few minutes to myself, after all.”

  Chapter Five

  Nicholas watched the medical examiner ascend the stairs, her suitcase in hand. He’d been assigned this case as he had any other in the BAU. Dealing with the victims’ families had always been left for the unit’s public relations liaison, Caitlyn Yang, to tackle. Not part of his job description. He hunted serials. He got inside their heads, profiled their victims in an attempt to understand what set them off, but with Aubrey...

  Something urged him to follow her up those stairs and make sure she was okay, even though he knew the truth. The doc was logical, understood life and death better than anyone he’d ever met, but losing her sister wasn’t something Aubrey would be able to explain away. He held himself in place. No. He wasn’t the person witnesses and families turned to for comfort. He was the one who brought the dead justice.

  Retrieving his duffel bag from the floor, he cleared the safe house room by room, which took all of five seconds, because it was the size of a shoebox. He deposited his overnight bag onto the sectional and unpocketed his phone. He studied the photo Dashiell West and Madeline Striker had recovered from the cargo van near Kara Flood’s death scene. They were still waiting on Dr. Caldwell’s autopsy results from the first victim, but he couldn’t ignore the fact a second had already been killed. Discovered less than twenty-four hours apart. Whoever’d gone after Kara Flood would’ve already had to have killed the woman in the photo in order to leave the Polaroid in that van in front of Kara’s apartment building.

  Nicholas pulled his laptop from his duffel and logged in to the FBI’s missing persons database. If the victim in the photo had been killed before Kara Flood, there was a good chance she’d already been reported missing. Brown hair, Caucasian, approximately five-six or five-seven. Business suit. He paused. The Gingerbread Woman had focused her retaliation on female colleagues within her law firm. If the killer who’d re-created the X Marks the Spot Killer’s MO with such detail was, in fact, the same killer who’d gone after Jane Doe, he would’ve followed the MO to the letter. It was possible the victim in the photo was also a lawyer or worked in a law firm. He scanned the list of potential victims, singling out a woman who’d been
reported missing two days ago by her mother. A woman who’d worked for a law firm in the city. “Paige Cress.”

  He swiped his thumb up his phone’s screen and messaged David Dyson, the BAU’s intern keen on following in Nicholas’s footsteps, to tell him to run a background check on the potential victim.

  “You found something?” Aubrey rounded into what passed for the living room and leaned against the wall sectioning off the space from the kitchen on the other side. She’d changed out of her business attire into a pair of drawstring sweatpants and a dark T-shirt. Her brown hair draped around her shoulders, and time seemed to freeze.

  In all the times they’d been in the same room, he’d only spoken with her in an official capacity. Autopsy reports, pathology, cause of death. Hell, he’d even read a few books by medical examiners to be able to understand her during their last investigation together. He’d gotten used to her hair pulled back in a ponytail, the professional distance she’d kept between them with her black slacks and button-down shirts she’d worn as though they emotionally protected her as well as a piece of armor. This was...something different. She was different.

  A hint of desperation rolled her lips between her teeth. “Did you find something about Kara, or does it have to do with the other woman your team believes was murdered using a different MO by the same killer?”

  “You heard my call with Agent West, did you?” He wasn’t sure why he was surprised. Dr. Aubrey Flood had broken every expectation he’d had of her from the beginning. She was highly intelligent, yet more personable than most academics he’d met, including her counterpart working this case. She was sincere, warm and didn’t believe herself better than anyone else. If anything, he sensed the opposite after her admission of bending herself backward for the benefit of others, how she described her job as helping the families of the deceased rather than a need for justice.

  He leaned away from the laptop, not entirely sure how carefully he should tread. The good doctor had been vital in capturing the X Marks the Spot Killer three years ago, but investigating the cause of death of strangers compared to her own sister were two separate departments. “Listen, Doc, I’m not sure—”

  “You think I can’t handle the details of my sister’s murder investigation.” She crossed her arms over her small frame. Her humorless laugh penetrated through the silence settling between them before she raised her gaze to his. Aubrey pushed off the wall, shortening the space between them, and his body shot into heated awareness. She took a seat beside him. “To be honest, I don’t blame you. It’s hard for a lot of people to compartmentalize their emotions when they suffer a loss like I have, but I’ve been burying my emotions for a long time. Whatever relates to Kara’s case, I can handle it.”

  He believed her. With an entire life of ensuring others’ needs were met before her own, Aubrey had the emotional awareness of her feelings, but she wouldn’t have acknowledged them in order to become the keystone of those who needed her. If anyone could compartmentalize that kind of grief, that pain, of losing someone they loved to such violence, it would be her. He turned his attention back to his laptop screen and away from the outline of her soft pink lips. He pulled up the photo forwarded from his team. “Agents West and Striker recovered a photo of a potential victim with Koko. A woman. At a glance, it looks as though she was killed using a different MO than the one used on your sister. The blue lips indicate—”

  “Asphyxiation.” Aubrey leaned against his arm to get a better view of the victim, and a hit of her light perfume—maybe even the same brand as the killer had stolen from her apartment—dived deep into his lungs. Something along the lines of jasmine and rose, maybe a hint of vanilla. “The victim was most likely suffocated, but I won’t be able to know for sure unless I’m allowed access to the remains.”

  “The way she was killed fits an MO for another serial killer the press started calling the Gingerbread Woman. All the victims were attacked in parking garages at their law firm, suffocated with their jackets and left with a photograph of another victim.” Nicholas splayed his fingers wide, palm up. “No witnesses. No surveillance footage. That led us to believe the killer was actually working inside the same building the victims were killed in. We were able to identify Irene Lawrence by a strand of hair that’d gotten stuck to one of the victim’s jackets during a struggle. Five in all. All female, all working for the same law firm she did.”

  “She was leaving the photos of her victims like bread crumbs.” A visible shiver chased across Aubrey’s shoulders, and he drowned the urge to trail his hand down her back to soothe it. “The Gingerbread Woman was leading you to her next kill like the X Marks the Spot Killer was leaving maps for family members to find their loved ones.”

  “During an interview with a psychologist who was writing a book on female serial killers at the time, Irene Lawrence admitted she’d been inspired by the X Marks the Spot Killer. Just as our current killer seems to be. The only difference is, I believe whoever murdered Kara and this woman isn’t simply inspired, he’s re-creating the MOs of his heroes in order to prove he’s surpassed them.” Not simply a copycat. Something far more dangerous.

  He turned the laptop toward her and switched screens back to the FBI database. “Paige Cress, a paralegal who worked for a firm downtown, fits the description of the woman in the photo and was reported missing two days ago. Given the fact her photo was recovered near Kara’s apartment, it stands to reason she was killed before your sister in order to keep law enforcement playing the game. Does the name sound familiar? Did Kara ever mention a friend who worked in a law firm or have reason to reach out to a lawyer? Maybe they were friends?”

  “No. Not that I can remember.” Aubrey shook her head. Distance swarmed into warm eyes that urged him to get closer. “As far as I knew, most of her friends were other teachers from her school, and as I said before, she rarely went out.”

  “I have our intern, David, running a background check on Paige to see if there are any other connections.” He studied the photo once again, searching for any detail that might give them an idea of where the remains had been left. The killer was playing with them, and Nicholas couldn’t see the endgame—not yet—but that didn’t unnerve him as much as the mesmerizing woman beside him. He scrubbed a hand down his face. One fact they could rely on: Paige Cress’s remains would be another piece of the puzzle. One that would lead them either to the next victim or to the killer.

  “The body was disposed of on top of what looks like worn wood, possibly a dock or a pier, but that’s not enough to narrow down a location given Seattle is one of the largest coastal cities in the United States. There are hundreds of docks and dozens of piers.”

  “You said he’s a narcissist. That’s why he left Kara’s body in such a public place, so he could show off his handiwork. It’s about pride for him, and a need to be recognized as a master compared to his heroes. He’d want to do the same for this victim, too, wouldn’t he? He’d leave her somewhere busy enough no one would be able to pinpoint when the body was dropped or give a credible ID. Maybe a dock or a pier that gets a lot of foot traffic.”

  She circled the photograph on the screen with her index finger. “This wood is distressed, as though it’s been exposed to salt water for years. Assuming the victim has been kept within the city limits, only battering winds, tides and rains, most likely from a large enough source such as Puget Sound, would’ve been able to age the dock like this.” She latched her hand on to his forearm, and a shot of heat bolted up through his veins. “The waterfront. The city had to close down one of the piers due to it shifting away from land last month. They’re not scheduled to make repairs for another few weeks, but the piers on either side would still be open to the public.”

  She was right. Nicholas reached for his phone and hit Madeline Striker’s number. Raising the phone to his ear, he nodded toward the stairs as the line rang. Her logic made sense. “I’ll call it in. Grab your gear. We need to fin
d that body.”

  * * *

  EXHAUSTION PULLED AT her ligaments and muscles as she stepped out of Nicholas’s SUV. Waves of heat gave the illusion of a dreamlike state across the pavement and long stretch of Puget Sound. One of the few thunderstorms of the summer had begun its approach from the north, dark clouds forming a few miles off the coast, and had cleared out most of the tourists and waterfront visitors. Despite the stereotype of Seattle’s weather patterns, the city didn’t see as much rain as most of the people in the country believed, but when the storms hit, they hit hard. And looking at the formation of clouds out across the sound, the BAU had a limited amount of time before the victim’s remains might be compromised.

  Another SUV parked beside them as Aubrey rounded the hood to meet Nicholas, and the two agents she’d noted at the crime scene this morning exited the vehicle. Agents West and Striker. She didn’t know much about the male agent experienced in cybercrimes, with only a few short interactions between them over the years, but Agent Striker had been quite useful in searching for serial victims over her career within the BAU. Without the missing persons expert, Aubrey doubted they would’ve recovered a number of victims before their killers had finished what they’d started.