A Righteous Kill (31 page)

She kind of understood how they felt. This could have been it for them. They could have called press conferences, added this serial killer to their statistics, patted themselves on the back for a job-well-done, and moved on.

Not now. The hunt was still on, and she was still in danger. Though, it wasn’t
her
fault they had the wrong guy.

Rown returned. “Let’s go. We can wait for Ramirez in the parking lot. Shouldn’t be too much longer.” He showed her to a non-descript back door that led to a rear staircase. Just to change up the color scheme, the stairs were beige instead of grey, interrupted by dark wood doors with badge scanners on each floor. The entire building was dark but for auxiliary lighting and Hero found herself glad Rown had his gun with him. She followed him down three flights of stairs, through two separate doors where he had to swipe his government ID badge to get out of the building.

They broke out into the night through very heavy glass doors, and Hero was instantly grateful she’d brought her heavy jacket instead of her sweater. As they made their way to the parking lot, she felt the tension in her brother’s stride. His awareness of their surroundings. It made her feel safe.

“What happens to Mazure now?” she asked him.

“They’ll finish fingerprinting him, just to make sure he’s in the system. They’ll check his name against all the national and international databases, and probably talk to someone in the Marine Corps just to make sure no one wants him for anything.”

“Then?”

“Then, since you’re not pressing trespassing charges, they’ll have to release him. Though they’ll probably be watching him closely until all this is over.”

They stopped by Luca’s black Charger and Hero leaned on it, suddenly exhausted. “Luca was so… mean.”

“Don’t be too hard on him for that,” Rown said hesitantly. “Ramirez
did
think the man was a serial killer at the time.”

“I know.” Hero sank deeper into her coat, her eyes and shoulders incredibly heavy. “Watching that man fall apart, all I could do was wonder if that’s where Connor is headed.”

Rown let out a deep breath as they both watched an airplane take off and circle to the south. The flashing lights eventually became another one of the many mobile beacons in the night sky. His shoulders drooped as though they contained the same weight she’d only just been contemplating.

“I read the file on Mazure. In the last battle Ramirez mentioned, he was trapped inside a tank that had been set on fire. It would have felt like he was being cooked to death.”

Hero gasped.

“He got out, obviously, but he had serious burns over the lower half of his body and was medically discharged from the military after that. I guess that’s why he can’t be inside. He’s not only afraid of small spaces, but of buildings catching fire. Connor’s trauma, however severe, was nothing like that.”

“What did Father Michael say?” Hero felt an almost desperate need to be focusing on anything,
anyone’s
problems but her own right now.

Rown hesitated. “Not much, honestly. He said he couldn’t break a confession confidence.”

“That’s it?” That was less than nothing. Maybe Father Michael
had
been lying about the whole Connor thing to get her alone. Maybe it was good that Luca had barged in when he did.

“Well, basically he said that Connor had confessed something that worried him, but he stressed that he can’t mention the details unless Connor was going to be a danger to himself or others.”

“And he didn’t say either way?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Good thing he wasn’t being vague,” Hero muttered sarcastically.

Rown’s sarcastic noise was an explosion of breath and irritation. “None of us know what to do. Not Mom and Dad. Not even me.”

“He won’t talk to you?”

“I tried, but…” Rown stared into the darkness for a long time.

Rown had followed Connor into the Army right out of high school. While Connor had made a career out of it by swiftly snatching up an opportunity to become a Ranger, Rown had put in nearly a decade as a sniper while finishing his graduate degree and then he’d opted out to pursue his own career with the FBI. They had both been deployed to the Middle East, Africa, and places they weren’t allowed to mention. Being the two oldest boys, their deep bond as brothers had only increased as soldiers. Rown had been Connor’s best man at his wedding. They’d attended their Army buddy’s funerals together, even if it meant flying across the country. Everyone in the Katrova-Connor family was glad they had each other, because no matter how well-meaning and loving the rest of them were, they could never truly empathize or understand what the soldiers went through.

Hero leaned forward and put her forehead against Rown’s lapels. “Do you know what I’ve realized I hate more than anything in the world?”

“What’s that?”

“Feeling helpless. It’s got to be the worst kind of torture. Helpless to stop someone else’s hatred. Helpless to stop someone else’s pain. Or crawl away from your own. It blows.”

Rown squeezed her shoulders. “Get used to it, baby sister. In my experience, you spend most of life pretty damn helpless on both accounts.”

She smacked him in the ribs, mostly because they were accessible, and pulled away from him. “Good thing you never opted to become a therapist. You would have sucked at it.”

He laughed, but the smile didn’t permeate the sadness in his eyes.

“Also, I’m not your baby sister. I’m twenty-six.”

“You’re twenty-five.”

“I’m going to be twenty-six in, like, three months.”

“I think you’ll stop being my
baby
sister when you’re old enough to not to round up a year anymore.” Rown winked. “Then you’ll just be my little sister.”

The crunch of the door handle drew Hero’s attention to the front of the building. Her heart clenched as Luca and Vince emerged from the building on either side of Sgt. Mazure, whose hands remained locked behind his back. Luca was saying something to the man, giving some kind of orders in his serious, don’t-fuck-with-me voice.

Mazure stumbled into the open air and took in great gulps of breath, as though the oxygen inside had been contaminated somehow.

Hero was vaguely aware of Rown grabbing for her as her feet carried her across the black top. The golden lights of the parking lamps blurred as moisture burned in her eyes. She blinked it away, picking up speed as she jogged over to the front of the building. Mazure’s own lurching steps toward her were shuffling and uncertain, as though his boots were suddenly lined with concrete.

“Stay back, Hero.” She didn’t have to look at Luca to know exactly which scowl of disapproval he directed at her.

Her feet didn’t stop until she stood directly in front of Sgt. James Mazure’s chin, looking up into his craggy, bearded face. The red rims of his eyes made the piercing blue that much more stunning. The whites had gone pink from tears, and the puffy bags beneath deepened the wrinkles born of age and exhaustion. Under the grime and the sun damage, he was pale, as though he’d just seen a ghost. In fact, he stared down at her with the expression of a cynic witnessing a miracle.

They stood for an eternal moment just like that, the parking lot and its inhabitants disappearing in the wake of the rare and intense connection that existed between them. Savior and victim. If not for his horrific experience and the resulting emotional disturbance, she wouldn’t have survived.

His face crumpled and fresh tears began to run into his beard.

Hero threw her arms around him and supported his weight as he buried his bushy face in her neck and sobbed. He trembled in her grip, his grief interrupted by body-wracking gasps and hiccups. Hero held onto him as though he would drop if she let go, filling her palms with huge handfuls of his oversized jacket. Soft, unbidden noises of comfort escaped her throat now swollen with emotion. They were the sounds someone offered to a screaming baby in the middle of the night, or an overwrought child after a traumatic fall.

She refused to look at anyone, to see the censure on their faces. This man was, in a word, a hero.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.” Her eyes kept blurring with tears, and she let them fall onto the canvas-like material beneath her cheek.

A few repeating metallic clicks sounded, and she blinked Luca’s face into view. He didn’t look happy, but he gently removed the cuffs from Mazure’s wrists. That done, he kept his eyes averted as he stepped back to stand with Di Petro, who gave a suspicious sniff.

The man literally crying on her shoulder made no move to hold her, he just stood passively, trying to contain himself.

“I’m sorry,” he finally whispered against her hair. “I’m sorry about that night.”

“What could you possibly have to be sorry for?” Hero pulled back, taking his cheeks between her hands. “You saved my life.”

“I
left
you there.” His voice was raw, the words having to find their way through the thickness of his mustache. “I tried to stick around, but they—they threw me in that police car and I—I panicked.” His shoulders tightened on another hiccup and a noisy sniff. “Then I scared you—with the flowers.” He stood straight and looked down at his big, scarred hands like a chastised boy. “I usually head to California for the winter. But knowing that bastard was still after you, I couldn’t leave. I wanted you to know that I was still around. I didn’t think what it would look like.”

“Why didn’t you just approach me?” she asked softly. “I’ve wanted to thank you ever since that night.”

A gusty sigh disrupted his whiskers. “The news kind of made it sound like I coulda done it. And I didn’t know if they were after me for breaking the police car’s window to get away. Plus, I’m… well I just don’t approach ladies. You know?”

Hero tossed a questioning look at Luca and Vince.

“There may or may not be an attempt to locate on a suspect for destruction of police property and evasion of arrest that night,” Luca muttered.

“Your name’s not attached to it, because no one knew it before now,” Vince said to Mazure as he flicked a careful glance at Rown. “We sort of didn’t bring it up to Trojanowski on purpose.”

“Not my department.” Rown nodded.

Mazure gave a jerky nod, but didn’t turn away from Hero. His stance was uncertain, his eyes full of shadows and tears. “I was gonna just leave you alone,” he said wobbly. “But I kept seeing you in that little bundle, bleeding and pale and so tiny… I didn’t want you to go through that again.”

The bouquet
had
frightened her. It had also confused the details of the case, causing the investigators to wonder if there had been someone working with John the Baptist. But Hero couldn’t bring herself to blame the man in front of her for the trouble he’d unwittingly caused.

“They told me that I can’t watch out for you anymore.” He threw a surreptitious head tilt toward the agents behind him.

Hero smiled. “It’s a free country.”

That drew a smile from Mazure’s eyes. Again, she couldn’t be sure what his mouth was doing.

“Can we drop you somewhere? Can you go in a car if we keep the windows down?”

Swiping his jacket across his face did little but smear the tear tracks in his weathered cheeks. “Maybe back by the river behind your place. I left Agent Orange there.”

Ignoring Luca’s death glare, Hero asked gently, “What’s Agent Orange?”

Mazure’s eyes softened and he sniffed again. “He’s my cat.”

Luca said something foul beneath his breath.

“Of
course
we’ll take you to him.” Hero took a turn of her own glaring down the three agents in her vicinity, heedless that other federal personnel began to file out of the building, tossing them goodbyes and curious glances. If Luca refused, she’d get her car and drive the man her
damn
self. It was the least she could do seeing as he saved her life and all.

Mazure’s beard twitched and his eyes crinkled a smile at her again. “Do something else for me kid?”

“What’s that?”

“Stay close to that agent man of yours.” He leaned in, but didn’t really bother to lower his voice. “He’s a military-grade asshole, but he’s a dangerous man hell-bent on keeping you alive.”

That produced a choked laugh from Vince.

Hero gave a little two-finger salute. “Yes, sir.”

Any trace of a smile disappeared. The solemn clarity that turned those blue eyes to ice must have served him very well in the military all those years ago. “I mean it, Hero. He’s the only chance you got against the evil that’s after you.”

Chapter Twenty

“Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.”

~William Shakespeare, Henry V

Hero could barely hear Luca muttering to himself as he drew his gun and put her key in her deadbolt. “Agent Orange. His
damn
cat. Frickin’ ridiculous.” They were the first words Luca had spoken since they’d left FBI headquarters. Needless to say, the drive home had been quiet and uncomfortable. Which made sense, she supposed. They all had a lot of thinking to do. After they’d retrieved the cat, Hero had sent Mazure to St. Andrew’s with a note to Father Michael. They had outbuildings and garages that might work as a temporary but open shelter, and Mazure seemed more than grateful for a respite from the winter chill.

“I don’t know, I thought the name was clever.” Vince said from behind her. He’d followed them home in his Camero, as Luca’s Charger wasn’t an official transport vehicle with the safety cage, and no one liked the idea of the unstable Sgt. Mazure sitting behind them while they were at the wheel. “Little orange bastard was kinda cute.”

“He tried to bite you.” Luca said mirthlessly.

“Yeah, but all the kitties do that,” Vince replied with a wicked grin.

Hero turned to Vince with a laugh. “My father would call you a scallywag.”

Vince gave her his most winning smile. “Your father would call me a lot worse than that before I was through with ya.”

“Consider me warned.”

Luca pulled the slide to his weapon back and let it chamber a round with a little more force and noise than was strictly necessary. “Let’s just clear the house so I can get some sleep,” he said testily as he opened the door and went straight to the alarm pad to enter the code. “It’s been a long day.”