* * *
Silently, Lucien cursed his boss. Out loud, he greeted the man with a growly hello.
Although I should probably be thanking him, he acknowledged as the other man told him the forensics team had made a little bit of headway at the crime scene.
He’d been the barest heartbeat away from saying screw it to all the reasons why he couldn’t follow through on the need to kiss her. Another breath, and he would’ve dropped his lips to hers. Three years’ worth of missing her would’ve poured into it. All the regret. All the wishing things were different. And the phone call had very effectively ruined it.
Yeah. So I’m not exactly thankful, am I?
His boss’s voice cut through his battling thoughts. “You hear what I just said, Match?”
“Maybe repeat that last bit,” Lucien replied.
“Pig’s blood,” stated the other man. “That was what was on the walls. Forensics did a precipitin test, came back as good old-fashioned pork.”
“Not bad news.”
“Glad is wasn’t blood that should’ve been inside Jim Rickson, that’s for sure.”
Lucien glanced toward Raven, hoping she hadn’t heard the macabre statement. Thankfully, her attention was on her hot chocolate.
That damn mug, Lucien thought.
He’d grabbed it automatically because he knew she liked it, and because it brought back a few of his own fond memories. He hadn’t been considering the fact that it would draw attention to the little secret he was holding on to.
If an entire house can be called little.
Once again, Sergeant Gray’s voice cut in. “Lucien. Seriously, man.”
“I’m listening,” he lied.
“Then repeat it back to me.”
Lucien complied, more on autopilot than as proof that he’d comprehended what his boss had just said. “Pig’s blood, no fingerprint hits. Clean scene. Perp was careful.”
“That. And now we can’t find Mrs. Rickson.”
Lucien’s attention was abruptly hyperfocused. Why hadn’t the other man led with that particular revelation? If Jim was missing rather than dead, and his wife was AWOL, too...
Maybe I heard wrong.
“Say that again,” he ordered brusquely.
“Think you did hear me this time.” His boss’s tone was grim.
“Where the hell is she?”
“Nature of not being able to find someone is that you don’t know where they are.”
Lucien dropped an expletive, then asked, “How’d it happen?”
“One minute she was in the hospital bed with two armed guards, the next she was gone without a whisper,” said Gray, then added the suggestion that Lucien was dreading. “Sounds like it fits the pattern, doesn’t it?”
Lucien told himself it was too quick of a turnaround. The Kitsilano Killer had been meticulous in his ritual, perfect in his timing. First the husband, then the wife. Next the daughter, and finally the son. The pattern was spread out over days. Three weeks, to be exact. It included specifics. Details to the point of obsession. Hanes never strayed.
Unless he’s become impatient, said a little voice in his head. Serial killers escalate. That’s a fact. And who knows how desperate he’s become over the last three years? Behind bars...no outlet in sight.
There was another small thing, though. One the sergeant hadn’t mentioned and that gave him a modicum of hope that his conclusion might be off.
“What about the riddle?” Lucien asked, keeping his voice low. “Did forensics find one?”
“Find one? Not to try to make it sound remotely funny...but I know you saw the writing up there on the wall.”
The silence on the other end might as well have been a holler, but Lucien refused to break it. His mind insisted that the Kitsilano Killer’s notes were consistent. Utterly. Each one, two lines long, scrawled in crooked block letters across identical slips of yellow paper. They were hints—though sometimes so obscure that they were utterly indecipherable until after the fact—as to the locations of the kidnapped victims. The words written in blood were too on-the-nose to line up with Hanes’s MO.
At last, the sergeant sighed. “C’mon, Match. You’re not in the habit of glossing things over. You’re better than that. And—”
“The lack of paper is a consideration. But I’m more concerned about the words themselves.”
“Lucien.”
“Just a consideration, boss.”
“What consideration? That because it’s not on a yellow slip of paper, it can’t be what we both know it is?” The other man paused. “Why are you fighting me on this, Detective?”
Lucien closed his eyes. Why was he fighting? He knew what the truth was. He’d known it the moment he’d heard Juanita’s scream. Every subsequent detail added to that surety. Yet here he was, in total denial.
He opened his eyes and fixed them on Raven, who still seemed to be staring into her hot chocolate. There was the answer to the sergeant’s question, right there. He was fighting the logical explanation because he didn’t want it to be true. The detective in him knew the clues lined up, but the man in him was loathe to admit the danger.
There was a throat clear on the other end of the line, and his boss almost—but not quite—changed the subject.
“Anyway,” Gray said, “I figured you’d want the details. Didn’t know how involved you’d want to be, but I’ll leave it with you to decide. You know the case as well as anyone. Better, probably. So if you want in on the task force, you’re welcome. But if you’d rather stay with Ms. Elliot again, that’s no problem either.”
Relief made Lucien’s shoulders sag. “That’s what I’ll do, then. Keep me updated, boss?”
“You got it.”
He clicked the phone off and turned to find that Raven wasn’t so focused in her beverage anymore. She’d come to her feet, and now stood near the bulletproof window. Her face was pointed his way, though, and he could see that her already fair skin had paled to the point of sickly. Her eyes had a pinched, trying-not-cry look to them, too, and it made Lucien’s heart squeeze. The need to soothe away her suffering was intrinsic. He had to reach for her. He stepped closer, put a hand on each of her shoulders and rubbed his palms up and down.
“There was some good news in there,” he said.
She shook her head. “But it’s him, isn’t it?”
“We can’t be sure,” he said with as much diplomacy as he could muster up.
“But I am sure. I can feel it. I think I felt it before I even knew he’d escaped. I saw those flowers, and—” She cut herself off, and Lucien was sure it was because the unshed tears were getting closer and closer to the surface.
He wanted to pull her into an embrace, but with the almost kiss still fresh in his mind, he didn’t trust himself to keep a hug as platonic as it ought to be. He guided her to the couch instead, careful to put a space between them when they sat down. Her eyes found him anyway, holding him just as firmly as her hands might have.
“You don’t have to stay with me,” she said.
It wasn’t what he was expecting to hear. “What?”
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she told him firmly. “But your boss said the last bit a little loud. If you need to go and work on the case, I’ll be fine.”
It cut at him, that she thought he’d leave.
“You’d be fine?” he repeated back to her.
She just nodded.
He scrubbed a hand over his chin. “Even if I believed that, I wouldn’t go.”
She shuffled, and her knees were suddenly pressed to his. A hundred sparks ignited at the touch. Lucien didn’t pull away. He wasn’t sure if he could pull away. Especially when her hand snaked over to grab his. The hundred sparks became a thousand.
“I know you want to be a part of catching him,” she said. “I remember how frustrated you w
ere three years ago when you couldn’t be the one to solve it.”
He couldn’t really disagree with her. No bigger case had come before or since. He’d been the one who’d put the clues together to save Raven. He’d believed that his expertise would help the case along.
But then came Raven.
He swallowed a lump of thick emotion and answered her in an even voice. “That was before I dedicated the time to keeping you out of harm’s way.”
“I don’t want to box you in, Lucien.”
“Trust me. You don’t. You won’t.”
“And I don’t want to hold you back from doing your job.”
“Not possible. Taking care of you is my job.”
She met his eyes and leaned forward a little. The hand that held his freed itself, then crept to his forearm. Then his elbow. It slipped up to his shoulder. Her gaze never left his face. Like she was gauging his reaction. Assessing, to see if she should stop. Lucien held still. He was paralyzed by the contact, but in the most pleasant way possible. When her fingers at last reached the back of his neck, then slid to his hair, his breath came out in a near groan.
The thousand sparks buzzed into a hundred thousand. More, maybe.
How many nights had he lain awake, wishing she was there? How many times had he thought about being this close to her lips? Even just speaking to her again had been a part of his richly imagined world. He and Raven, together.
Her hand came around now to his jaw. Her thumb stroked across the two-day old stubble, and her face tipped up, full of intention. But achingly slow.
God, he wanted this. Wanted her.
He tilted his mouth, and though the touch was minimal—too minimal—the heat of her lips slammed into him. Those ten thousand sparks ignited. More than that. They exploded, lighting up every inch of skin. It was almost distracting—taking away from the feel of her soft, warm lips, which pressed a little harder now. Still tentative, still waiting.
Waiting.
He didn’t want to do any more of that.
He dipped his face down, preparing to deepen the kiss in a way that would matter. As he did, he spoke without meaning to, his lips vibrating against her.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
His words made her pause, and he couldn’t blame her for stopping. Who the hell said “sorry” in the middle of a first kiss?
Isn’t the answer to that obvious? He thought. Someone who knows he shouldn’t be having that first kiss.
“Raven.”
He didn’t get a chance to say anything else. She ripped herself away, shot to her feet and—muttering something so breathless that he could barely understand a word of it—she spun and strode toward the hall so fast it was nearly a run.
Lucien stared after her. He knew he should give chase. Offer some excuse for the apology.
Apologize for the apology?
He couldn’t do it anyway. Following her would just fuel the situation into something worse. An awkward one, where he’d be compelled to confess his lack of professionalism and be forced to relinquish her care to a colleague.
He was angry at himself for letting the kiss—however quick and minimal it might’ve been—happen in the first place. For not stopping it the moment she tipped her face up, and he’d become sure of her intentions. And anger wasn’t even the presiding emotion. That role belonged to a different feeling. Disappointment. Not so much in himself, but more in the fact that this moment had turned out how he’d always known it would. He’d wanted it to be different. To be some kind of miracle, where the line blurred and the not-right become not-wrong, and it didn’t matter that she was a witness and that he was the cop responsible for guarding her. Instead, it was the same as it had always been. Raven was still everything he wanted, and he was still the man incapable of deserving her.
Chapter 5
The splash of cold water on to her face did nothing to ease the heat of Raven’s embarrassment. She’d been so sure that she was reading Lucien right. And even with that certainty, she’d exercised caution. She’d looked for some indication that he didn’t want to kiss her as badly as she wanted to kiss him. She hadn’t found one. And for an instant, perfection had reigned.
Their lips had met.
A tether had formed.
Her heart had been full.
Then he tore it away.
“With an apology,” Raven muttered, staring at her reflection in the mirror.
What was he sorry for? Letting her just barely kiss him? That had to be it. But why, then, had he allowed it to get to the point of their lips actually touching?
Maybe it was less of an apology and more of a reminder. What did he say? Oh. Right.
“‘Taking care of you is my job,’” she said it aloud, solidifying the words.
In the heat of the moment, Raven had taken the statement to mean something good. But without their bodies close and their mouths almost touching, she could see it for what it was—a statement of fact. She was his job. Nothing more. And even if he was attracted to her—because she didn’t think she was that far off in her assessment of the physical signs—it could never mean anything. No matter how badly she wanted it. Lucien wouldn’t risk his job over some fling.
Her cheeks tried to warm even more, and she lifted another cupped handful of water up to her face. But she somehow doubted that even the biggest, iciest bucket of water would cool her humiliation.
For three years, she’d been holding on to some fantasy. One that fit with romantic reunions and sweeping declarations of emotion.
She eyed the closed door. She knew Lucien wasn’t going to come rushing at it, banging and begging to be let in. It wasn’t who he was. And she liked that about him.
Liked? prodded a voice in her head. That’s as far as you’re going to go?
She forced the thought aside. Because she did like Lucien just the way he was. His personality was what had helped drag her up from the abyss of loss. If he’d been the kind of man who wanted to talk every feeling through, she wouldn’t have made it through. She’d needed his quiet strength. She’d fed off it and used it to help herself become whole. And in the process, she’d grown to see that underneath his reserved demeanor was a passion for doing things right. People mattered to him. Goodness did, too. She knew where the gruffness came from. She respected it. Admired it. And even thinking about those qualities and what he overcame to become the strong person he was...it made Raven ache to be with him.
So, no...like is definitely not a strong enough word.
She let out a breath and shut the water off. For the last three years, she’d been able to keep her feelings at bay. A large part of that probably had to do with space. But clearly, now that they were back in close quarters, it was going to be an even bigger issue than before.
“And you can’t just keep throwing yourself at him,” she said aloud.
Not that she was going to. She wasn’t exactly a gushing teenager. And she had enough self-control to assume she’d be able to hold it in. But the problem was that she didn’t want to have to try. She didn’t want to have to consciously not touch him or force herself not to feel her breath catch every time she saw the warm brown of his eyes. She didn’t want to hope. And the emotions she’d pushed down obviously weren’t just going to go away.
“Self-respect,” she added, adjusting her ponytail in a smoother, tidier position.
She straightened her shirt and met her own gaze, willing herself to see some resolve there. She was going to need it in order to do what she was about to do. Lucien wouldn’t like it, either. He’d made it clear that her safety was a priority.
Too bad he doesn’t want to make my heart a priority instead.
“And thoughts like that are exactly why I’m going to march out there and demand a new bodyguard,” she said firmly.
She cast a final once-over at her reflection, then spun back
to the hall. But she didn’t make it back to the living room before she got distracted. It was the quick glance to her left that did it. She spotted her old bedroom door, and curiosity got the better of her. Had it changed at all? Or was it as untouched as the rest of the house? And why had Lucien avoided telling her why it hadn’t been used? Feeling compelled to take a look, Raven changed direction and headed there instead.
She drew in a breath, opened the door and flicked on the light. And she found things exactly as she’d left them. The same ivory duvet, flecked with blue flowers. The same cobalt bed sheets and pillowcases. On the nightstand sat the book she’d been reading before she left. She hadn’t thought of it in years, but at the time, she’d bought a replacement copy so she could finish it.
She stepped a little farther into the room, her gaze sweeping the space for more evidence. It was all there, out in the open. A little tube of her favorite moisturizer on the dresser. A sweater and a pair of pants visible in the partially opened closet. And Raven had a feeling that if she walked over to the en suite bathroom, she’d also find the toothbrush and paste she’d forgotten.
Maybe it should’ve been a little weird. Or more than a little, even. But it wasn’t. It just made Raven sad, and even more interested in knowing why nothing had been cleared away. Shaking her head, she started to move back to the door. But as she did, she bumped straight into Lucien, who stood in the frame. He brought a hand out to steady her, then stood back and looked around the room with an oddly sheepish expression on his face.
Raven stared at him. “Lucien...what’s going on?”
“I bought it.”
His answer startled her so badly that she thought she’d misheard, or at least misunderstood.
“You what?” she said.
Serial Escape Page 5
