Goddamn it, why did things have to be so complicated?
John hadn’t slept. He ate, but didn’t taste the food. He drank, but only enough to take the sharp edge off the crushing pain in his chest. Not even alcohol could make him that numb.
The one thing he had been able to do was work the case, which he’d done like a man possessed. He’d kept in close contact with Mitch. He’d called Benjamin Wainwright several times, but the old man didn’t return his calls. John didn’t blame him.
Sitting at the kitchen table in his tiny apartment, he stared down at the copies of the letters spread out before him and read the chilling words for the hundredth time.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves.
To his right lay a legal pad upon which he’d written a list of suspects. He knew that many times the stalking victim knew the stalker, and so he’d started with the people Julia knew. Rory Beauchamp, Claudia’s strange boyfriend. Jacob Brooks, her part-time clerk. Parker Bradley, Benjamin Wainwright’s assistant. Skip Stockton, her scorned date. Even her sister, Claudia.
He’d run background checks on every name he could come up with, friends and family and acquaintances. All had come back squeaky clean. Although that didn’t necessarily mean they were.
Out of desperation—and unbeknownst to anyone—he’d also run a background check on the Wainwright patriarch. Maybe the old man knew about Julia’s book. Maybe he wanted her to stop writing without having to confront her. Maybe he’d hired someone to frighten her.
But John didn’t buy it. He’d known Wainwright since he was a teenager, and even though the old man could be controlling, this wasn’t his style. He could see the old man sending a few harmless letters for what he perceived to be the greater good, but he couldn’t see him resorting to violence.
But if not someone she knew, then who? A stranger? A fan? A customer from the shop? A neighbor?
John closed his eyes and rubbed them. A glance at the clock above the stove told him it was after ten P.M. He’d been looking at the same scant evidence for almost two hours and he wasn’t any farther along than when he’d started.
He thought about Julia and wondered what she was doing. He wondered if she missed him. Wondered if she would speak to him if he called . . .
“She’s way too smart for that, buddy,” he muttered.
His voice sounded strange in the silence of his apartment. The best he could hope for was that someday she would realize he’d done what he had to protect her. Because she deserved better. His life was a fucked-up mess. Not only was his career over, but he now had the civil suit to contend with. Best case scenario, it would financially devastate him. The last thing he wanted to do was drag her down with him.
It was the thousandth time he’d found himself thinking about her. The thousandth time he’d arrived at the same conclusion. He had to let her go. But dear God it hurt to think of never seeing her again.
Rising, he crossed to the counter and picked up the bottle of gin. He expertly twisted it open and proceeded to pour. Just a little to kill the pain, he told himself. Yeah. Right.
He’d just taken that first, dangerous sip when his doorbell rang. Odd for him to have a visitor anytime. Even odder at ten o’clock at night. Setting down the glass, he crossed to the door, checked the peephole. Surprise rippled through him at the sight of Parker Bradley standing on the porch looking like he’d rather be anywhere but there. Benjamin Wainwright was conspicuously absent.
John opened the door. “You lost or what?”
“No.” The other man looked uncomfortable. “May I come in?”
John stepped aside. “Get you a drink?”
Bradley entered and shook his head. “I don’t drink.”
“What a surprise.” John didn’t miss the other man’s quick perusal of his living quarters. If he hadn’t been so damn depressed he might have smiled at the look of distaste on Bradley’s face.
“Mr. Wainwright wanted me to deliver this in person,” Bradley said.
“Why didn’t he deliver it himself?”
“He would have, of course, but he had a meeting in Baton Rouge tonight.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll be joining him there as soon as I finish up here.”
“Well then by all means finish up.”
Bradley actually flushed as he handed him the envelope. “For what it’s worth, I tried to talk him out of it,” he said. “For Julia’s sake. For some reason unbeknownst to anyone, she cares about you.”
John already knew what was inside the envelope. He opened it and looked at the check inside. Eight hundred and ninety-two dollars.
“That’s final payment for your services.”
Final payment. John did laugh then, but it was a bitter sound. “You can tell him to keep his check.” He shoved both the envelope and check at Parker.
“Take it.” Bradley raised his hands. “I’m sorry, man.”
Shaking his head, John tossed the envelope onto the counter. Bradley started for the door, but John stopped him. “Has Mr. Wainwright hired someone to keep an eye on her?”
Bradley stopped and turned. “He hired a private detective.”
John nodded. Now that Julia’s safety was out of his hands, he should have been relieved. But he wasn’t.
“How’s she doing?”
He hadn’t meant to ask. But he had to know. He met the other man’s gaze. He saw knowledge and a damning amount of sympathy in them.
“She’s doing well,” the other man said. “Still bruised, but she’s definitely on the mend.”
“She open the shop?”
“Not yet.”
“She still staying with her father?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said. But deep inside all he could think was there was nothing good about any of this.
He wanted to know more. He wanted to know how she was doing emotionally. He wanted to know about her frame of mind. What she was thinking. He wanted to know if she missed him as viciously as he missed her . . .
“I’ve got to go.” Bradley started for the door.
John watched him leave, then walked to the bar, picked up the bottle of gin and took a long pull straight from it.
Julia stared at the blank screen of her laptop, but the
words refused to come. She’d been trying to finish this same scene for going on two hours, to no avail. She wanted to think it was the turmoil in her life keeping her muse at bay. The stalker. Closing the shop. Temporarily moving in with her father. But she knew the reason for her writer’s block had nothing to do with any of those things—and everything to do with a troubled ex-cop from Chicago.
Every time the phone rang her heart pounded. Even though she desperately wanted to talk to him, she never answered. But John hadn’t called.
She missed him with a desperation she’d never before experienced. She longed to hear his voice. See his smile. She wanted to raise her hand and touch his cheek. For the first time in her life she understood what it was like to have an addiction. A compulsion. In the last few days John Merrick had become both.
Sighing, she looked down at the blinking cursor on her screen. She tried to concentrate, tried to put herself in the scene. But her muse refused to cooperate.
“Damn. Damn. Damn.”
Closing her laptop lid, she rose and left her bedroom for the kitchen downstairs. She wanted to talk to Claudia, but her sister was out with Rory. It would have been nice to pass the time with her father, but he and Parker Bradley were in Baton Rouge at an overnight meeting. As a last resort, she decided to make coffee and take a tall mug to the private detective parked outside the house. She’d only met Ellis twice. He was an ex-cop from Houston. Nice enough, but his personality was about as engaging as a head cold.
“Tonight you’re going to have to do,” she muttered as she entered the kitchen and flipped on the light.
A glass of wine would have been nice. Her father didn’t condone the use of alcohol, but he tolerated it. If she wasn’t mistaken, one of his non-church friends had given him a case of Portuguese wine for Christmas last year. If she was lucky, he’d forgotten about it and it was still in the garage gathering dust.
She ground beans and started a pot of coffee. While the coffeemaker hissed and bumped, she went to the garage and flipped on the lights. Her father’s Lincoln was gone. Her Volkswagen looked small and lonely sitting in the big garage all by itself.
“Looks like it’s just you and me, kid,” she said as she crossed to the shelving unit on the far wall. Spotting the case of wine on the top shelf, she looked around for something to stand on. The stepladder was nowhere in sight, so she opted for the wooden crate next to the garbage can. Removing the balled-up newspaper inside, she was about to turn it upside down when she noticed the mask.
Her blood froze in her veins when she realized it was a Mardi Gras mask similar to the one the stalker had worn. She told herself it couldn’t possibly be the same mask. But her heart quickened as she reached for it. Then she spotted the purple feathers at the crown and her heart began to pound. It wasn’t merely
similar
to the mask her stalker had used, it was the
very same
mask. But how in the name of God had it ended up here?
“I knew you’d figure it out sooner or later.”
Julia yelped as she spun. The mask fell to the floor when she saw Parker Bradley standing in the doorway that led back into the kitchen. A sense of impending danger overwhelmed her when she spotted the nasty-looking pistol in his hand.
“Parker.”
“I see you found the mask.” He shook his head. “Silly of me to leave it where you could so easily discover it, but your father almost caught me with it when I was about to dispose of it.”
Her entire body began to quake as the situation crystallized. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.” He raised the pistol, pointed it at her chest. A chilling smile curved his mouth. “I see it in your eyes. You’re frightened of me, aren’t you?”
The roar of blood in her ears was so loud she could barely hear him. A terrible realization had taken root. Icy fear spread through her body.
“Why?” was all she could manage.
“I thought that would be obvious.”
“It’s not.”
“I love you, Julia. I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you almost three years ago. Do you remember that night?”
She didn’t. Thin and ordinary, Parker was not the kind of man a woman remembered. He’d been her father’s executive assistant for three years.
“Parker, you don’t even know me. You can’t possibly love me.”
“I know all I need to know.” Gooseflesh prickled her arms as his gaze swept slowly down her body. “Your religious convictions are strong, like mine. Your beliefs parallel mine. You’re kind and beautiful. The kind of beauty that elicits lust in a man, you know?” The smile turned self-deprecating. “Even a wimpy guy like me.”
“You’re not—”
He cut her off. “But we all know beauty is only skin deep. I fell in love with you the instant I met you. I knew that one day we would be married. That we would have children. All this time I’ve been saving myself for you.”
Julia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Never in a million years would she have suspected Parker Bradley of being her stalker.
The kind of beauty that elicits lust in a man . . .
The words made her shiver. She glanced around the garage, seeking an escape route. There was one window on the north side of the garage, but there was no way she could open it and get through before he reached her. He was standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen and the button for the garage door opener. There was no escape.
“I’m thirty-two-years old and I’ve never had intercourse with a woman.” He looked intense and embarrassed at once. “But I’m only a man. A sinner. I’ve lusted. After you mostly.”
“Parker, don’t do this.”
“God knows I tried to fight it,” he said. “I tried to exorcise these feelings from my psyche. From my body. Then you came to me in a dream and I saw you for what you really are. It was a message from God, Julia. A message telling me it was my responsibility to save you from yourself.”
Julia could hear herself breathing hard. Her heart hammered like a freight train in her chest. She measured the distance between her and the door. The nearest phone was in the kitchen, on the wall next to the bar. Her cell phone was charging in her bedroom. There was no way she could reach either . . .
“You were so innocent. Virginal. So . . . perfect.” His lips peeled back, revealing small, straight teeth. “Then I found out about the book and everything changed.”
“Parker, how did you know?”
“You think I’m stupid?”
“No, it’s just that—”
He cut her off. “I heard you and Claudia! At the shop. Whispering about the book. You were
laughing.
I didn’t understand at first. I didn’t want to believe you could write filth. To prove myself correct, I went to the post office where Elisabeth de Haviland’s address is listed in the bio of her book. And I waited.” His voice cracked. “My heart broke when I saw you. When you used your key and opened the box for your dirty fan mail.” Fervor of the righteous gleamed in his eyes. “Immoral filth. Writing of fornication and lewd acts between unmarried men and women. Masturbation. Oral sex. Anal sex.” A dark red blush colored his cheeks. “You
glorified
it.” He wiped his mouth as if the words had dirtied his lips. “My God, how could you do that to your father? How could you do that to God? To
me
?”
“It’s just . . . a novel, Parker. A fantasy—”
“A fantasy that is perpetuating the downfall of a society.”
“No—”
“I saw you with Merrick!” he shouted abruptly. “You let him put his hands on you. You took him into your bed. Into your body. It is his seed inside you, not mine!”
A profound sense of violation shook her. Julia stared at him, her only thought that he had somehow seen them together. That he was insane and there would be no reasoning with him. At least not in rational terms. “Parker, it isn’t too late to stop this. Let’s go outside and get Ellis and we’ll talk about it.”