Hurt and embarrassed, Holly couldn’t do anything but shake her head.
Jack flashed a quick grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll be right back to give you a hand with dinner. I’ve got a trick or two I can do with chicken that only takes about a half hour.”
Holly nodded jerkily, feeling like a child who’d been scolded. She took a second to compose her face, then went inside.
J
ACK STOOD ON THE PORCH
cursing himself for reacting sexually to Holly. He was finding it harder and harder to control his growing desire for her.
He was no stranger to undercover work. He was used to setting himself up as bait. But not for one instant had he forgotten his primary goal—to free the victim or the victim’s family from their terror.
He’d only been with Holly one day and he’d already nearly gotten lost in her fascinating contradictions. She was strong but vulnerable. Rational and intelligent, but innocent. She was his assignment, but she was fast becoming more than just a victim who needed his protection. He twisted the gold band on his finger. Why was he having so much trouble staying detached?
He took a long, cleansing breath. The air didn’t smell quite as good since she’d gone inside. The taste of her skin lingered on his tongue.
He clamped his teeth and slapped his palm against the porch rail, hoping the sting of the blow would knock away the sweet, sharp memory of her firm backside pressed intimately against him. He had to keep a clear head, and for the first time in his career, he was finding it difficult.
He’d never been anything other than completely
professional in his relationships with victims. Caring, yes. Protective, certainly. But after the assignment was over, he’d always been able to walk away, knowing he’d done his best.
But Holly had knocked his orderly world out of balance. He found himself struggling with inappropriate desires. And feelings and thoughts were clawing their way to the surface of his consciousness for the first time in over twenty years. He didn’t like any of it.
He steeled himself as memories washed over him in colors of dark red and black and bright, bright light. His stepfather, raging drunk and defying his mother’s restraining order; himself too young, too weak, only half conscious after his stepfather’s offhand blow.
His mother screaming, then still. So very still.
He cocked his fist and aimed it at the porch rail, then lowered his arm and walked deliberately down the steps. It wouldn’t do any good to batter Virgil’s porch.
He’d spent twenty years putting all that fear and anger to positive use. Enduring his mother’s murder and testifying against his stepfather had taught Jack a number of things.
Emotions got in the way. Calm, icy detachment made it possible to bear anything. And putting away other scum like his stepfather was what he wanted to do with his life.
The sun was low in the sky as he walked down the sidewalk to the street, pulling his cell phone from his pocket.
He was glad he’d unabashedly eavesdropped on Holly’s conversation with her sister. He wasn’t sure yet if Holly would have mentioned the second car. But
the idea that someone was furtively parked near Virgil’s house could be vitally important.
Holly had told Winger they were coming over to Virgil’s tonight.
Jack thought back to the drive over here. He was certain no one had followed them. Holly had told him she generally cooked dinner for her aunt and uncle three nights a week, so he was sure the stalker knew her routine.
Several streetlights were broken, littering the ground with bits of glass. Maybe kids playing with rocks. Maybe someone wanting the cover of darkness.
He toyed with his cell phone as he took in every inch of the area. Not far from where he stood, he saw a dark smear on the curb. Had the unknown car parked too close and scraped its tires?
Pulling out a small envelope and his pocketknife, he glanced up and down the street, but didn’t see anyone. Quickly, he dropped to his haunches and scraped some rubber into the bag. He wasn’t sure this rubber was from the suspicious car, but he was taking no chances. He never did.
He owed a debt to Danny, his friend, who had trusted him. Today, twenty years after the first person he’d loved had been killed, he had experience, strength, and the power of the FBI behind him.
He wasn’t about to let this killer win.
Straightening, he checked again to be sure no one was watching. He considered the little street with its quaint houses and perfect lawns. It was one of the maze of quiet streets that made up this town, so aptly named Maze. No blaring music, no bright flicker of cigarette lighters or kids hanging out on porch steps, with nothing to do but get into trouble. Just the smell
of fried chicken and coffee and the sound of crickets chirping.
Somehow irritated, and missing the impersonal bustle of D.C., Jack walked back toward the house and dialed the Division’s profiler.
“Yeah?” Eric’s familiar voice sounded distracted.
“Baldwyn? You’re answering your phone?” There was a joke around the office that paying for a phone for Eric Baldwyn was a waste of money. When the Division’s profiler was working on a case he rarely spoke to anyone, even in person, and he never answered the phone. Jack had planned to leave him a voice-mail message.
“Very funny, Ice Man. How’s married life?”
“Did Decker tell you to say that?” Jack sat down on the porch steps and leaned back against the rail.
“No, why?”
“Never mind.” He shot a quick glance toward the screen door. He could hear Holly’s musical voice and Virgil’s rumbling answers floating out from the house. “What have you got on the items that have gone missing from Holly’s house?”
“Your UnSub is a collector,” Eric said patiently. “You’ll probably find a shrine to her when you find him.”
“Yeah. That’s what I figured. But usually they keep photographs, newspaper clippings. Stuff collected at a distance.”
“Right. This guy is either arrogant or desperate to risk exposure by entering her house. You didn’t include the exact date or time any of the items disappeared.”
“Don’t know that. But here’s a flash. Today an En
glish lit textbook was left on her floor, open to a passage by Browning.”
“Today?”
“Yep. It was a message for me. I’m sending the book and some photos to the lab.”
“So, he knows you’re there, and you’ve rattled him. Likely suspects?”
“Just everyone in town—and no one in particular.”
Eric made an impatient sound.
“I’m serious. Everybody in town knows her, cares about her. I’ve only met a few people but I’ve been threatened by every one of them.”
“Threatened?”
“Never mind. Bad joke. Every male in town has this ‘you better be good to her or you’ll answer to me’ attitude.” Jack arched his shoulder, which had started to ache, and switched the phone to his other hand, checking one more time that nobody was listening at the door or lurking around the yard.
“Okay, assuming most of them are just concerned friends, who does bother you?”
“Nat ran a list of boyfriends for me. There are several possibles on it. And I’ve got the dead husband’s father, who blames her for ruining his son’s career. The son gave up a pro football slot to marry her. Then there’s a big chunk of policeman who acts like it would be his personal pleasure to take me apart if I let Holly break a fingernail.”
Jack paused as a car drove by. He raised his hand in a casual wave. “Think it could be the father-in-law? Motivated by revenge?”
“Making the assumption that the husband’s death was an accident?” There was a long silence. Jack waited. He knew Eric worked intuitively. He seemed
to have an empathic link with victims. Finally the younger man spoke.
“The father-in-law could be a candidate for a revenge-motivated stalking. But…” Eric paused for so long that Jack started to fidget.
“The UnSub went into her house in broad daylight?”
“Yep.”
“I assume she lives in a close-knit neighborhood? Probably knows everyone and everyone knows her?”
“You got it.”
“And even though she knows everybody in town, she doesn’t leave her house unlocked. The missing articles and the coincidences of the deaths were already getting to her, but she defends anyone you ask about?”
Jack sat up. Eric’s intuition was kicking in. He had Holly described perfectly. “That’s my girl,” he said wryly.
“So she’s started to act differently. That plus your presence has agitated the UnSub, which is why he has already acted outside of his usual pattern by taking the chance of entering her house in broad daylight to leave the book there.”
“Exactly.”
“He’s escalating.” Eric drew in a swift breath. “I don’t think the husband’s death was an accident,” he said, his voice muffled as if he were wiping his face. “I don’t feel revenge.”
Jack stood and paced the sidewalk. He knew Eric was the best, but he didn’t understand the profiler’s
feelings.
He listened to the facts, but then he just sort of
felt
something. The thing that most bothered Jack was how often Eric’s feelings were right.
“I still think it’s an erotomaniac. You’re in the
house, right? As far as everyone knows, you two are married?”
“Right.”
“I mean
married.
As in, if someone walked in unannounced or looked in the window, you would still look married.”
Jack swallowed, recalling Holly’s soft breathing in the night. His thumb touched the wedding band. “Yeah. Mostly.”
“If you’ve fooled him, if he knows that behind those doors you’re really intimate, I believe he’ll continue to escalate and probably get careless. Are you?”
Jack raked fingers through his hair, stood, and began pacing the sidewalk. Eric’s matter-of-fact questions were making him squirm. “Are we what?” he parried.
“You want it in four-letter words? Intimate.”
Jack snorted. “Of course not. I’m on a job, Baldwyn. It’s not necessary.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this a unique situation for you? You’ve never had an Unknown Subject with both stalker and serial-killer characteristics and a live victim at precisely the same time, have you?”
Jack didn’t answer. Eric was right. In his previous cases, either the victim knew her stalker all too well, or the stalker had already turned violent and the vic was dead.
“So, you don’t know who the stalker is, where he is, how closely he watches her or her house. You can tell, you know.”
“Tell what?”
“When two people are in an intimate relationship. If your stalker is obsessed with your vic, he’ll be at
tuned to every breath she takes. He’ll know if she’s—”
“Crap, Baldwyn. Are you deliberately screwing with my head?”
“Not at all. Come on, Ice Man. Anything to catch the killer, right?”
“I’ll make it work,” he said hoarsely, as an unwanted vision rose in his brain: Holly’s hair spread across his pillow and her perfect breasts bared to his touch.
“What about the items the UnSub chose? What’s he going to go after next?”
“I’ve studied the list. It’s obvious he’s preparing a place for them to be together. A love nest.”
The words hit Jack like a punch to the stomach. He’d expected Eric to say exactly that, so why the instantaneous adrenaline reaction? Why the barely controllable urge to break something?
“What?” He’d missed Eric’s last remark.
“I said, I’d expect something virginal, but he’s already got that white nightgown. So maybe symbolic of a wedding? A bridal veil or gown? Or if nothing else, her wedding pictures with the dead husband cut out.”
Apprehension sliced through Jack. “You think he’s escalating that fast?”
“You showing up unexpectedly married to her may have disrupted his plans by a year or more. He could strike at any time.”
Jack rubbed his jaw. “Good. Do me a favor will you? Tell Nat to check Theodore ‘T-Bone’ Polk.”
“T-Bone?” Eric sounded amused.
“Jack?” It was Holly, calling his name through the screen door.
He froze. “Yeah. Tell Nat to run him. I’ll talk to you later, kid.” He pocketed his phone.
“Ready to start dinner?” he said, trying for casual but coming off hard.
Holly stood haloed by the light from the kitchen. Jack couldn’t take his eyes off her. The backlighting accentuated her slim, toned body. The ache of desire that hadn’t gone away since their encounter on the porch flared, fueled by Eric’s words.
“Well, around here, unless you dress up and go to a fine restaurant it’s called supper, but yes,” she said, a smile in her voice. “You promised me great tricks with chicken. Come on in and have some iced tea. You’re probably getting eaten up by mosquitoes out there.”
As if conjured by her voice, a place on his neck began to itch. He slapped at it, cursing quietly at himself, at the UnSub, at whatever strange power Holly held over him that made the thought of making love with her unendurably attractive and scared him more than the worst foe he’d ever faced.
If Eric was right—and Jack hadn’t seen him wrong yet—then the stalker was watching their every move, and escalating fast.
What the hell was Jack supposed to do now? Seduce his wife to catch her stalker?
Chapter Seven
After a strained dinner, during which Aunt Bode mumbled incoherently and hardly ate anything and Uncle Virgil seemed distracted, Holly and Jack had washed the dishes.
“We’re all done cleaning up the kitchen,” Holly said, kissing her great-uncle’s cheek. “We’re going to go. We didn’t get much sleep last night.” Realizing what she’d said, she rushed to explain. “I mean, getting in late from the airport and getting Jack settled.”
She rubbed her temple. The migraine medicine she’d taken was making it hard to think, and everything she said seemed colored by the memory of Jack’s arms encircling her and his kisses tantalizing the sensitive skin of her neck.
“You’ll call the Home Health Agency tomorrow?”
She nodded wearily. “I’ll check with them first thing in the morning.”
“Thanks for cooking supper, Jack. That was good chicken. Even Bode ate a few bites.”