Into the Dark (The Cincinnati Series Book 5) (Cincinnati 5)

by Karen Rose

  He flipped a pancake. ‘Is this a competition?’ he asked mildly.

  She blew out a breath, sending her hair flying back from her face. ‘Of course it isn’t. Except when it is, but that’s just me and not your fault,’ she said firmly.

  He plated two pancakes and set them in front of her. ‘Except when it is my fault,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been in a relationship before, but I know how this thing works. When in doubt, it’s always the guy’s fault.’

  She should have been distressed that he’d called this odd thing between them a relationship, but she found herself chuckling. ‘Adages exist for a reason.’ She tasted the pancakes and couldn’t stop the low moan that hummed from her throat. ‘You’re a good cook, too?’

  He shrugged, his muscles flexing. ‘I like to eat, so I took lessons.’

  ‘In your vast amounts of spare time,’ she said dryly, noting with interest that his cheeks darkened, his blush charming her. Diesel Kennedy was a dangerous man. I want him. I don’t want to, but I do.

  God, please don’t let me hurt him.

  Straightening her spine, she shifted her train of thought back on track. ‘Maybe she isn’t dead, then. LJM, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, I think you were right. I’m pretty sure she’s dead.’

  When he said no more, she gestured with her fork, as if she was conducting an orchestra. ‘Because?’

  His big hands clutched one of her stoneware mugs. ‘Remember I said that those last three companies had been established later than the others?’

  ‘Yeah. Seaheaven with the Lake Erie coordinates and the other with the remembrance flowers. Lilies, rosemary, and poppies. Plus the Brothers Grim.’

  ‘Exactly. They were established at the same time as Raguel Management Services, last June.’

  ‘Nine months ago. Okay. And?’

  ‘More like but. Do you know what I mean by parent and child companies?’

  She made a face. ‘I’m a doctor, Jim, not a business manager,’ she said, pleased when his warm chuckle told her that he’d caught her Star Trek reference. ‘But it sounds like the parent is first and the child is connected, like a franchise.’

  ‘That’s exactly what it means, Bones,’ he said, smiling when she smirked. ‘LJM is the main parent company in this mess. Raguel was formed by LJM, so Raguel is a child of LJM. All of the other companies are ultimately connected to either LJM or Raguel, but most list one of the other companies as the parent. Some of the companies are parents of the other children. That’s how it got so tangled up. You have eighty companies all tied to each other in different ways.’

  ‘Got it. Tangled. But who formed LJM?’

  He nodded in approval. ‘Good question. LJM was formed by Raguel, two months before Raguel was formed.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘It shouldn’t be. I checked the documents attached to Raguel and found that it had a name change in June. Raguel’s previous name was LJM S&R, which was established in January, so before all the others. When Raguel was formed in May, LJM changed the name of its parent company from LJM S&R to Raguel. I’m not sure why it wasn’t caught by the small business office in Columbus, but it wasn’t.’

  ‘LJM S&R. Search and rescue,’ Dani murmured. ‘Was it a search and rescue business?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I can’t find any mention of it online.’ And he’d searched all night for one. ‘Plus, it was only active from January to June.’

  ‘When the name was changed to the angel of vengeance.’ She rubbed her temples. This was like a circular puzzle made of only one color. ‘If we take the business name as another clue, we can assume that LJM went missing, probably in January last year. Why would someone need a company to search for a missing person? I guess they might if they hired a private detective or something and wanted to keep their spending separated from their day-to-day accounts for tax reasons. Is that possible?’

  ‘Yes. But I wouldn’t know for sure without seeing their financial records, and I haven’t figured out where to start with that. This is a tangled-up mess.’

  ‘You’ll figure it out,’ she said, confident that he would. ‘But the name change itself is the most significant thing. Whoever was searching for LJM stopped searching. They established Raguel, Seaheaven, and the poppies and rosemary businesses because they knew she was dead.’

  He nodded. ‘Then their mission became vengeance.’

  ‘You couldn’t find any record of a missing med-school student? No police reports or newspaper articles or anything?’

  ‘Nothing. Of course, this might be because there was no med-school student who went missing, then died. This tangled-up mess of companies could be completely unrelated to Brewer and the bald man and Michael.’

  ‘But you don’t think so.’

  ‘No, I don’t. We know that LJM and Brewer are linked, both through Brewer’s house and through the copy of LJM’s bank statement on Brewer’s hard drive. What we don’t know is if or how any of this mess’ – he waved at his computer screen – ‘connects to Brewer. That LJM was a real person feels . . . right, though.’ Another shrug of his shoulders, this one sad. ‘I want to believe that someone’s been actively looking for her. That someone missed her.’

  She leaned close, her hand covering his before she could stop herself. ‘Then let’s find out who that someone is.’

  Eleven

  Harrison, Ohio

  Sunday, 17 March, 10.30 A.M.

  Cade opened one eye, groaning when bright sunshine hit like a sledgehammer. He’d forgotten to pull the shades in his bedroom when he’d tumbled into bed the night before. Who put a bedroom window facing east, anyway?

  Evidently the guy who’d built this house, an old pedo who’d gotten what he’d deserved after luring a kid into his van with the tired old story about a missing puppy. Weren’t parents supposed to be teaching their kids not to fall for that shit?

  And weren’t parents supposed to be watching their kids?

  Luckily for the child in question, Cade had been there to save him, because the child’s parents had failed on both counts. The pedo had made all the usual excuses, of course. Cade hadn’t listened. The man had already drugged the little boy.

  Cade had left the child on a park bench, then waited out of sight until a beat cop had come by and taken him to the hospital. Then Cade had taken the old man to the woods at the river’s edge, cut him up while he’d still been alive to feel every slice, and fed him to the fishes.

  Now he wondered if the man’s bones would be among those the divers pulled out of the Ohio River. Probably not. It had been four years since Cade had dumped him. Silt would have covered any remains by now.

  And even if the cops did find the old man, Cade wasn’t sorry. The piece of shit had needed to die. I’m just happy I was there to do it.

  The old pedo had been the first, but there had been others since. The home health nurse in Indianapolis who’d stolen the life savings of her patients. Several other pedos – male and female.

  There was also the man who’d beaten his wife nearly to death in front of their son, but who’d been out on bail the very next day, returning home to finish the job a few months later. That one hit far too close to home, and he’d taken particular satisfaction in hearing the murdering bastard’s screams.

  The cops hadn’t protected any of those victims. So I did.

  Not all of the doers had ended up in the river. Some, like Richard, were staged as accidents, especially if they were people Cade knew. Some, like his father, had lived in spite of Cade’s best efforts. Some, like the good doctor last night, were simply unfortunate collateral damage. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.

  Speaking of which, he was starving. He’d skipped too many meals yesterday. He swung his legs over the side of the bed with a grunt. He’d pulled a muscle as he’d run to his S
UV after killing Dr Garrett.

  ‘I’m getting too old to be jumping fences like that,’ he grumbled aloud. But some ibuprofen would take care of his aches and pains. Thirty wasn’t that old.

  He fried a few eggs on the ancient stove that had come with the house. All the appliances were tottering on the edge of life, but now that he was leaving town, he was happy that he hadn’t cared enough to replace any of them.

  Clearly the old pedo who’d built the place hadn’t cared either. The man had had money. Cade had found piles of cash in a lockbox in the basement, which was fitting, because the basement was where all the pedo’s money had been spent.

  Cade had been in heaven when he’d discovered the secret room filled with weapons behind a fake wall. So many handguns. Rifles – new AK-47s and AR-15s – and vintage sub-machine guns dating from World War II and Vietnam. Then there were the grenades. So many grenades. And they still worked, too. Cade had checked. He hadn’t checked the potency of the Claymore landmines, though. The old pedo’s house was a mile from its nearest neighbor, but a Claymore explosion might be heard or felt from that far away. He wasn’t sure, so he didn’t risk it.

  He loved the weapons room. Unfortunately, to get to it, he had to walk by the other special rooms the pedo had built behind the fake wall. One was a small jail-like cell, with a bed, desk, sink, and toilet. No windows. One door.

  The other room had been the stuff of Cade’s nightmares. The size of a small closet. Airtight. Soundproofed. Cade had unlocked the door with the keys he’d removed from the pedo’s pocket after he’d killed him, and found the body of a teenage boy.

  He shuddered now, standing in the old man’s kitchen, remembering the horror he’d felt at the sight. Then soothed himself with the knowledge that the boy’s parents had closure. He’d put the body in the old man’s van and left it where the cops could find it. The kid was identified pretty quickly. He hadn’t been dead long. He’d been fourteen when he was killed, eleven when he was taken.

  The old man had kept that kid a prisoner for three years. Then left him to die in that airtight room when he was finished with him, which, Cade guessed, was why the old man had been in the park – to get a new kid. The ME had confirmed that the boy had died of cerebral hypoxia as a result of suffocation.

  But the parents got closure, he reminded himself. I did that. I also took the filthy pedophile out of the breathing population, like I did last week and last night.

  He’d saved Brewer’s little stepson. Hell, he’d saved countless kids.

  Cade wasn’t sorry for any of the things he’d done. He was, however, sorry that he hadn’t been more careful this time.

  Flipping the fried eggs onto a plate, he sat at the table, his tablet in hand. He forced himself to click on the Ledger’s front page, wondering – with not a little dread – what the paper had to say about George Garrett’s death.

  He’d been sloppy last night. And lucky.

  But still skillful. He’d made it in and out of the doctor’s house in thirty seconds. He hadn’t heard the alarm blare until he’d cleared the back door. That hadn’t been sloppy or lucky. That had been talent.

  Even so, seeing Garrett’s gun pointed at him had left him rattled. And that he had raced out to the crime scene yesterday without a disguise?

  The hell of it was, he probably hadn’t needed to. Once his panic and adrenaline had faded, Cade had considered the layout of the forested area near the river dump site. There was no way Garrett could have seen his face. He’d done all that nonsense last night for nothing.

  Disgusted with himself, he pushed his plate away, no longer hungry as he read the Ledger’s headline: KEY WITNESS MURDERED. He let out the breath he’d been holding as he scanned the article. Nobody had seen him enter or exit the house.

  It had been a clean kill. The article did mention the 911 call and quoted Garrett as saying, ‘I was afraid you’d come’, speculating that the man had recognized his killer. That was okay, though. Nobody knew who the intruder was. Garrett’s security cameras had captured him, but the picture quality was poor and his face had been covered with the ski mask anyway.

  Cade clicked to the TV news website to see if they provided any more detail. When the homepage loaded, his breath froze in his chest.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he whispered. Because there he was.

  My face. It was there. For everyone to see.

  For a long moment, he could only stare. It was a sketch, but a damn decent one. Anyone who knew him would recognize him. Anyone who saw this sketch would know he was a person of interest.

  He gritted his teeth, breathing through his nose to calm his suddenly racing pulse. No one can find me here. This place still belonged to the old pedophile, who as far as the government knew was still alive and collecting his social security. Cade kept the taxes and the utilities paid. There was no one to tie him to this house. His check from the casino went to a PO box. The address the nursing home kept on him was his childhood home – not that he’d ever set foot in that place again, unless it was to burn it down.

  Which he’d considered doing, many times. But the equity in the house was keeping his father in the nursing home. Without it, Cade would be expected to care for the old bastard. Which was not gonna happen because—

  Dammit. Pay attention. He jerked his focus back to the very real and present danger – that his face was on the news.

  Garrett had seen him. But how? And was that even important anymore? He’d killed the man. Garrett couldn’t testify against him. But that wouldn’t stop the cops from putting Cade in a cage.

  ‘I need to get out of here.’ Merely starting a new job somewhere else was no longer an option. Run. He needed to leave the country. He needed a new life.

  He’d tossed his tablet to the table and pushed out of his chair when he froze again. The next story had popped up. This one with video.

  AREA TEEN QUESTIONED IN DEATH OF RIVER VICTIM.

  He sat down slowly and turned up the volume. A reporter’s voice-over accompanied the video of a young man being walked toward CPD headquarters, escorted by the two cops he’d seen on the news story in his father’s nursing-home room. The white-haired Fed, Deacon Novak, and his CPD partner, Adam Kimble. There was a third person with them, a woman who had her hand on the kid’s back. Both she and the kid wore ball caps that hid their faces, but every so often the woman would look up and glare at a reporter who came too close.

  ‘Michael Rowland, stepson of river victim John Brewer, was brought in to CPD for questioning this afternoon regarding the apparent murder of his stepfather.’

  Cade frowned. ‘That’s not Brewer’s stepson.’ Brewer’s stepson was a little kid. Five years old, tops. The kid on the screen was a teenager.

  Shit. Did Brewer have two kids?

  ‘Police have withheld the teen’s name due to his minor status,’ the reporter continued, ‘but his mother has come forward claiming that her son both killed her husband and assaulted her, beating her on numerous occasions.’

  The video of Michael walking into the police station switched to a clip of a woman wearing wrinkled but expensive clothes. Her skin was sallow and her hair was snarled and dirty.

  ‘He killed my John,’ she said tearfully. ‘I tried to control him, but Michael was just too angry, all the time. He was always a difficult boy, but in the last year he’s become violent. He kept threatening to kill John and now he has.’ Big tears gathered in her eyes and spilled down her face. ‘And now I’m afraid for me and my little boy, Joshua. I’ve lost my husband. Are they going to take my little boy, too?’

  They cut to the reporter, who stood in front of a large school building. ‘Michael Rowland is a freshman at Albert Sabin High School. We were here earlier during the annual Spring Fling dance talking to faculty and students, who were stunned at the news. Many expressed disbelief that Michael could be involved. School administrators declined to comment
, and we were told by his fellow classmates that Michael keeps to himself. But the students believed that this was due to the teen’s disability. Michael is deaf and uses an interpreter during his school day.’

  The video cut again, showing the reporter standing in front of the courthouse, looking concerned. ‘We should note that the victim’s wife, Stella Rowland Brewer, was released on bail for drug possession charges this morning and Michael and one other child were removed from her custody into emergency foster care.’ She made a pained face. ‘So this story is far from straightforward. We’ll continue to investigate. I’m Kelly Henry and this is Action News.’

  Cade stared at the screen long after the segment had ended. He hadn’t known about another kid when he went to Brewer’s house to check that the five-year-old was safe. He’d looked in the other bedrooms. One was the master, where he’d packed Brewer’s clothes into a suitcase so it would look like he’d gone on a trip.

  The other was a stark guest room, bed made with military precision, the furniture and walls devoid of anything personal.

  The third was Joshua’s room, where the boy had been sound asleep. But he hadn’t looked for any other kids. I should have. Why didn’t I?

  Because he’d considered his job done that evening. He’d killed John Brewer and Blake Emerson, the guy who’d tried to buy Brewer’s stepson. He’d cut them up and dumped their parts in the river. He’d gone back to check on the kid, for God’s sake, because it was the fucking right thing to do. He’d been exhausted, dammit, so he’d come back here to sleep.

  He clenched his eyes shut, trying to focus. ‘Okay,’ he said aloud, the sound of his own voice anchoring him in the empty kitchen. ‘Either way I have to get out.’ Because his face was on the damn news. ‘At least they don’t know my name.’ They didn’t know any of the names he’d been using, real or fake. ‘Yet.’

  He could run right now. He could be in Canada in five or six hours. But if they caught him? They had an only-decent sketch at this point. They’d need an eyewitness to make any charges stick. If Garrett had been the one who’d seen him, that loose end was snipped. But if Garrett hadn’t been the witness?