“Take me to the airstrip,” I order, bagging my gloves. I don’t give him an address. The one Kane uses works just fine for me. “And break the fucking speed limit.”
He turns around. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We need to wait for Kane.”
I pull my gun and point it at him. “He has my brother, so if you think I won’t shoot you and shove you out of the way to drive, think again.”
He curses and turns around, doing what he should have done in the first place, drives. I dial Kane. He doesn’t fucking answer. “Kane, you need to call me. Please. I’m saying please. Fuck Ghost. Tell him I said so. They’re going after Andrew. Umbrella Man is going after Andrew. I’m getting a chopper to the Hamptons and taking Kit with me.” I hang up and dial Andrew again. He doesn’t answer.
I dial my father. “Lilah?” he answers. “What the hell? It’s late and—”
“Where is Andrew?”
“I don’t know,” he snaps. “He’s a man, not a boy and—”
“Listen to me, and listen carefully. Your ‘friends’ hired a killer. He’s a serial killer, not a damn assassin. You don’t control serial killers. He’s supposed to come after me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you knew.”
“Lilah—”
“I said listen, and you better fucking listen. This is a game to him, and he’s playing it his way. He’s going after Andrew. He might already be dead. Call Pocher, and you tell him to pull the serial killer back and do it now. If he even can. And don’t go hunting for Andrew. Stay where you are and pull your security tighter.”
He’s silent three beats. “I don’t know what this is, but I’ll call. I’ll find out what I can.” He hangs up.
He doesn’t know my ass. I dial Kane again. I dial Andrew again. No one is fucking answering. I could call the precinct and send someone to look for Andrew, but I feel like I would be sending someone to their death. Maybe I’m even triggering the moment Andrew dies. “Kit, I need one of Kane’s men in the Hamptons to—”
My phone rings, and it’s Kane. Oh God, it’s really Kane. I kind of want to cry right now. “Kane,” I answer. “Thank God.”
“I’m on my way to you. I’ll meet you at the airstrip. I’m about twenty minutes out. I already called and got a chopper.”
“I can’t wait. You know I can’t wait.”
“He wants you there, Lilah. This is a trap. You can’t go without me. You will not go without me.”
“I cannot wait for you. A few minutes could be the end of him. If he’s not already gone. And I’m only three minutes out. Don’t you have a man watching him?”
“Yes, I do.”
“That’s it? Oh fuck. You can’t reach him.”
“Wait on me, Lilah. Please, beautiful. Wait.”
I can feel myself dying inside. Andrew. Not Andrew. “I can’t wait. But I love you, Kane. In all your dirty, dark, wonderful ways, I fucking love you.” I hang up.
“He’s going to kill me if I don’t stop you,” Kit says.
“I’m going to kill you if you try,” I say, declining Kane’s returned call. “So you can decide, Kit. Die now or die later.”
He curses and pulls us into the airstrip parking lot that, at this time of night, is a ghost town. I’m out of the door before he even puts it in park, holstering my weapon as I slam the door shut. I walk inside the building and into an empty waiting area. Kit joins me, and we walk to the desk. “I need the chopper you have reserved for Kane Mendez,” I tell the woman behind the counter.
The woman, a brunette with her hair pulled back so tight it looks like she could bust an eyeball, puffs up. “I’m sorry, but we have strict instructions—”
Kit groans. “Jesus, Lilah.”
I slap my badge on the counter. “FBI business. I need that chopper now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
It’s raining again.
I sit in the chopper and watch it pound the windows. Kit is next to me, clinging to his seat and looking like he might keel over. And all I can think is that this godforsaken weather needs to just go away. How many days can a sideswipe of a late-season hurricane create this kind of downpour? Too fucking many considering Umbrella Man seems to like this shit.
I spend the duration of the flight thinking through everything that might happen on the ground. I don’t let myself think about Andrew being dead. When we finally land and I’m in the lobby of the airport, I have a voicemail from Kane: By the time you hear this, I’ll be in the air coming for you. Wait for me, woman, but since I know you aren’t going to fucking listen, there’s a car waiting on you with one of my men. Fernando’s a good man. The man guarding your brother was one of my best, too, but he’s still off-grid, which is why I sent Fernando to you. Safety in numbers. And I didn’t want to risk Fernando being the reason Umbrella Man did something he hasn’t already done. Andrew’s alive. You stay alive. I love you, Lilah. Damn it, stay alive. Kill him.
I disconnect and tell Kit, “Fernando is waiting for us.” At just that moment, a tall Hispanic man walks into the room.
“Fernando,” Kit confirms, and I’m fast to cross to his position. “Anything from your man here on the ground?”
He gives a grim shake of his head. “Nothing.”
“Because he’s dead,” I say.
His expression is grim. “He’s my brother.”
Kane had one brother guard the other. And now, he knew the two siblings fighting for their siblings would fight well together. Kane knew that would win me over, and he’s right. It does. “Then let’s go get our brothers back.”
He nods and the three of us exit to the driveaway, where a black SUV idles, light rain falling. “Go to the chief of police’s office,” I say before I run to the front of the vehicle and climb inside. Fernando follows to take the wheel while Kit settles in the back.
I dial Andrew.
No answer.
I try his desk at the chief’s office.
No answer.
I call my father back.
No fucking answer. If he warned Umbrella Man I’m coming, I might kill him myself.
Fernando doesn’t ask me for an address, but five minutes later, we’re at the station where four cars are parked and the lights are on, too many cars for this time of night. One of the cars is my brother’s. “That’s Andrew’s car.”
“That means my brother is here,” Fernando says, glancing at me. “Because we never desert those we protect. That’s Kane’s rule. Kane is good to me,” he adds. “You don’t die today.” He pulls up his hood and starts to get out.
I catch his arm. “Don’t be a hero. Follow my lead.”
“We’re not going in the front door.”
“We’re at the front door. He knows we’re here. The best way to take him off guard is that I go through the front.”
“I’m going through the front with you,” Kit says. “The end.”
“I’ve got the rear,” Fernando says, and I nod my approval. If Kit is with me, Umbrella Man may not expect Fernando.
I yank my hood into place and exit into the rain, my hand settling under my rain jacket to rest on my weapon. Kit is by my side at the front of the vehicle, and we wait for Fernando to make it around the building before we start walking toward the door.
Once we’re there, out of the line of view of the windows, Kit pulls his weapon. I reach for the door, and he comes over my shoulder to aim. Kane’s men are better than half the law enforcement I’ve worked with. I open the door and listen. There are four cars outside and not one voice. Not one sound of movement.
I pull my weapon and force myself to mentally settle into my zone. I am not Andrew’s sister right now. I’m an FBI agent. I enter the building, which forces me into a narrow hallway. I ease forward, stepping lightly, and glance in the office around the corner. Ralph Norton is face down on his desk. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I fight the urge to call out to Andrew. I fight the urge to run forward and just find him now. I hold up a hand at Kit and then glance back and motion to the office, p
ointing my finger at my head to tell him what’s going on.
His jaw sets, and he nods. I move forward again and motion for him to check the man down. He slips away behind me. I bring a galley of offices into view. There are three dead officers, one leaning back in a chair with a bullet in his forehead. Another face forward on a desk. One on the floor. None, I realize, are Andrew, and I feel no guilt for my relief.
Fernando enters and comes toward me down a hallway. “Anything?”
I motion toward my brother’s office, and Kit rejoins us. “They’re all dead.” He eyes the office and us. “I’ll go.” Weapon in hand, he moves forward and steps into the room. I can’t even breathe as I watch him enter. Fernando pants out a breath feeling the same.
Seconds tick by before Kit steps out of the office, a grim look on his face. “Your brother isn’t here, Lilah.” I have a moment of relief before he looks at Fernando. “Yours is.”
Fernando balls a fist on his forehead and murmurs in Spanish before charging forward. He starts forward. I don’t stop him. It’s a crime scene. It needs to be secured, but I just don’t have it in me to deny him this moment of grief. And this ends tonight anyway. I follow Kit, and I enter the office to find Fernando leaning over his brother on the floor. My gaze lifts and lands on the desk. There’s another badge wallet there. Holy hell. I cross to the desk, grabbing a pair of gloves and a bag before I flip it open. It’s Andrew’s badge. It’s an invitation to go to Andrew’s house.
CHAPTER FORTY
I dial the neighboring station. “Sheriff Jack here, how can I help you?”
I know Jack. He’s a good guy. “Jack, it’s Lilah Love. FBI Agent Lilah Love.”
“Well hell, Lilah L—”
“Listen to me. I pursued a killer here. I’m at my brother’s office. He’s gone, and his people are dead.”
“Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
“Deep breath and listen. I don’t have time to chase down the rest of his officers. I need you to come here, secure this crime scene and get them all here safely. The perp is a serial killer. Do not, I repeat, do not try to help me catch him. I need to handle this. One mistake and people die. Do you understand?”
“Andrew?”
My chest burns. “I don’t know. He was kidnapped to get to me. Come now and do not blow this.” I hang up and motion to Kit and hold up the badge. “It’s an invitation I’m accepting. You coming?”
“Hell yeah, I’m coming.”
Fernando stands up, his shirt stained in blood. “I’m coming.”
“You’re too emotional.”
His jaw clenches. “I don’t get too emotional. Ever. I do, however, get even.”
The look in his eyes is familiar. It’s me. I get it. Kane understood it when he connected us. This man’s brother died trying to save my brother. He deserves his revenge. “Then let’s go,” I say, leading the way down the hallway and we step into the lobby.
I push open the door, and a downpour greets me. I have a flash of me on the beach in the rain, stabbing my attacker. Déjà vu. I have a sense of coming full circle. The three of us pile back into the SUV, and Fernando drives us to my brother’s house, or rather, a little cottage a few miles from my place just off the beach. He used his inheritance to buy it, and he loves that damn cottage. Fernando parks a block down and kills the engine and lights. “He knows we’re coming. We’re walking into a trap.”
“Yep,” I say, pulling up my hood and getting out of the vehicle, drawing my weapon as I do. Rain pummels me, but I push through it. Kit and Fernando frame me.
“I’m going straight in the front door,” I say. “He won’t expect me to come at him directly. That means you two come at him when he’s off center. The property is gated. We’ll go over the gates. Both of you go over the top.” Neither argue with me.
We reach the gate, and they each split away from me and disappear in different directions. I climb over and land in mud, but I could give two shits. He knows I’m coming, but I want those few seconds he would expect to have with the security gate beeping. Once I’m there, I pull my weapon and peak in the window. There is no movement. That is until I see Fernando enter through an open patio door.
“Damn it,” I murmur, reaching for the door. It’s not locked. I enter, and suddenly it’s me, Fernando, and Kit standing in near silence, but for a tick of my mother’s favorite grandfather clock. I motion one left and one right again, and a knot forms in my belly. No sound. No confrontation. He might already be dead.
I head up the stairs toward the only room there—Andrew’s bedroom, holding my breath as I enter. He’s not here, but there is something on the bed. I ignore it, for now, walking to the closet and the bathroom to find them both clear.
I return to the bed to find a picture of my mother lying there. My cottage used to be my mother’s. I grab it and run down the stairs, shouting, “They’re at my place!” already headed to the front door. The bastard is playing with me, telling me all the law enforcement in the world and Kane’s men can’t stop him. Telling me he has all the time in the world, but my brother does not.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I hold the picture of my mother in my hand, and I wonder if this asshole killed her, if that’s part of his message. Fernando parks a block from my cottage as he had at my brother’s. I fold the photo and stick it in my pocket before I reach for the door. Fernando catches my arm. “What’s the plan?” he asks.
I don’t bite off his hand. He’s had enough pain today. “I’m not making an arrest today. We kill the fucker. We kill him.”
“All right,” he says and releases me, reaching for his door while Kit curses. My cellphone vibrates in my jacket pocket, but I let it ring. It’s Kane. He’ll tell me to wait. I’m not fucking waiting. I exit to what is now a light drizzle, and I start walking with my new army at my side. Once we’re at my property, I don’t even think about sneaking up to the door. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t get his message.
With both men by my side, I walk right up to the front door, but when we get there, Kit cuts around the side of the house. Fernando and I share a look, and I open the door. It waves open, and I can see straight through to the open patio door. He’s on the beach with my brother. The same damn beach where I was raped, where I killed my attacker. He’s telling me he knows it all. He’s telling me he planned it all. My mother’s murder, which is why we’re at my mother’s house. My attack at my mother’s getaway home. Rage burns inside me, but it’s a comfortable rage that fits like a glove. It’s not wild. It’s not erratic. It simply sits in the deepest part of my chest and waits to be unleashed.
I start walking while Fernando cuts left to search the rest of the house because he doesn’t get it. They aren’t in here. They’re on the beach. I cross the living room and exit the house to the patio. Rain drizzles around me, but I leave my hood down. I step outside the overhang, and in a few steps, I can see my brother there on the beach, on his knees, a gun in his hand. He’s alive and that’s the gift that keeps on giving. A man stands behind him, holding a gun to his head.
I want to run to Andrew. I want to save him. But I walk slow, steady, calculated until I can finally make out the man: it’s Sergeant Morris.
There is no satisfaction in me about being right about his identity. There is just my readiness to kill him. “Stay back, Lilah!” Andrew calls out. “Stay back!”
I don’t stay back. I keep moving, aware of the lights on the water near the dock half a mile away, certain that is how he got to the island, certain that is how he plans to leave, though I’m not sure how he thinks he’ll ever make it the boat. Just that he has a plan. He thinks he’s leaving. He’s not. “That’s close enough!” he shouts when I’m two feet away from the spot where I killed that bastard who raped me. Where I’m going to kill him as well.
I halt and say, “Throw your weapon down.”
The rainfall quickens, and I am momentarily back in that night, that man on top of me, his sticky, sweet breath sickening, the drugs drowning me.
I tried to fight. I couldn’t move. This time. I can move. This time, I’m not drugged.
“Throw down your weapon!” he shouts.
I don’t throw my weapon down, but I do lower it to my side. “What is this, Morris? What are you doing?”
“Ending this. That’s what they want. An ending. You’re as much trouble as your mother was.”
“He killed her,” Andrew says. “He killed mom. And he killed all those people to make it look like we’re victims of a serial killer.”
He killed mom.
The confirmation is brutal. She was murdered. “He is a serial killer,” I say. “Pocher hired him to kill for them.”
“And granted me an army,” he gloats. “Because you just wouldn’t stay out of his business. Because you just couldn’t appreciate his plan to make your father President one day. I told him I could end you and Kane, and your brother here as a bonus. And here we are. Because I’m sick and fucking tired of hearing Roger talk about how good you are. This is how good you are. I was right under your nose, and you didn’t know it. And now, you’re about to watch your brother die before you die.”
Kane is dead.
No.
Kane is not dead.
But Pocher must think he is. Ghost must have told Pocher he killed him. And Pocher told Morris.
My mind races with plans A, B, and C but discards them all.
Morris laughs, a cackling sound. “They tried to kill you right here on this beach, now, didn’t they? And all that fool they hired got was a fuck out of you before you killed him. He wasn’t me.”
“Lilah?” Andrew says. “What is he talking about?”
I ignore Andrew, I buy time, I keep going back to plan A and telling myself it’s a mistake. “What did Detective Williams have to do with this?”
“Pocher’s side bitch. She’d do anything for him and his money. Fuck me. Kill her sorority sister.”
“Why Redman? Why’d you pick him?”
Love Kills Page 17
