Realization came slowly, like an emerging photo in a tray of developing solution. The shapes of their faces. The length and color of their hair. Even some of their features.
It was like looking at a blurry image of her own face. Then she focused on the photos from the crime scene, particularly on the close-ups of their faces, and saw another similarity that nearly sent her to her knees.
It can’t be. Please, God, don’t let it be true.
But the truth was impossible to ignore. Her stomach rolled as the room began to spin. In panic, she grabbed for the stability of Mac’s arm, but something was wrong with her legs. The last thing she saw was the shock on Mac’s face as she slipped to the floor.
“She’s coming around,” Amato said.
Caitlin moaned. Something cold was being wiped across her forehead, and she could hear muted conversation in the background as she struggled to come to.
“Caitie…sweetheart…can you hear me?”
Her tongue felt thick, and her ears were ringing. When she spoke, her words sounded as if they were coming from the bottom of a barrel. Her eyelids fluttered and then opened.
“Mac? What—”
“Thank God,” he said, and tossed aside the wet handkerchief someone had handed him. “You fainted.”
“I don’t faint.”
Mac looked up at the detective and grinned. “She’s going to be fine.”
“How can you tell?” Amato said.
“She’s arguing with me.”
Now fully aware of what had happened and mortified by the fact that she was flat on her back on the floor and being stared at by at least a dozen people, Caitlin grabbed Mac’s arm.
“Help me up,” she muttered.
He did, then led her to a nearby chair.
“What happened, honey? One minute you were fine, and the next thing I knew, you were going down.”
“I don’t—” Her face paled as memory returned. She stood abruptly, pushing past the men and hurrying toward the wall where she’d seen the photos.
Mac followed, as Amato called out, “Lady, wait! You don’t—”
No one was listening. Cursing loudly, Amato went after them.
“Lady, this is off limits. You need to—”
But Caitlin wasn’t listening. She was looking at the pictures, and the longer she looked, the more certain she was that her first impression had been correct. She spun, her gaze fixed on Mac, her voice trembling in disbelief.
“Don’t you see it?” she asked.
Mac took her by the arm. “Honey, you shouldn’t be in here. This is obviously a very serious investigation in progress, and research is out of place.”
Caitlin felt like screaming as she shook off his grasp and turned back to the pictures. “It’s not research! Don’t you see it?”
She pointed to the pictures of the victims before they’d been murdered. One of them was an enlarged snapshot, the other two were obviously studio poses, but their resemblance to each other was startling.
“See what, lady?” Amato asked.
She turned, frustration evident as she waved her arm at the pictures.
“The resemblance. Dear God…look!”
And then she moved to the wall, standing just to the side of the third victim’s photo, and turned and faced the two men, just as if she were standing in a lineup.
Mac was the first to understand. He stared at their faces—Caitlin and the three dead women. And while they were definitely not identical, they were all, including Caitlin, of the same type—slim, attractive young women with dark, shoulder-length hair. Taken separately, the similarities would not have been noticeable, but adding Caitlin’s face to the mix had made everything click.
The first woman’s eyes and nose were almost identical to Caitlin’s, although her mouth and chin were different. The second woman’s smile could have been a clone of Caitlin Bennett’s, and the last woman’s chin had the same small indentation as hers. And they all had the identical hairstyle.
Immediately his gaze moved from their smiling faces to the crime scene photos and the obscenity of what had happened to them. In two cases their half-naked bodies lay sprawled in the snow, their faces horribly slashed. Slashes that…
He thought of the picture that had been sent with the rat.
“Oh God. Oh, no.”
“You see it, don’t you?” Caitlin asked.
Mac swallowed suddenly, fighting a need to vomit. He turned to Detective Amato, grabbing him roughly by the arm.
“We need Detective Neil.”
“He’s not here,” Amato said. “And I want to know what the hell is going on. I don’t know who you are, but you people need to get the—”
“She’s Caitlin Bennett, the mystery writer. Neil and Kowalski have been working on her case for almost a week now. For the past six months or so, Miss Bennett has been receiving threatening letters. Her publisher even received a bomb threat from the same source. Last week, while she was out, she was deliberately pushed in front of an oncoming truck, and it’s only by the grace of God that she isn’t dead. Two days after she came home from the hospital, the same lunatic mailed her another letter, along with a dismembered rat and one of her pictures that he’d slashed across the face. He told her she was next. Neil has it. You need to get that picture now.”
“Look, I can see how disturbing all of this might be, but it has nothing to—”
Mac turned Amato toward Caitlin. “Look at her, man. They all look like her. And see the way their faces have been slashed? Her picture—the one that came with the dismembered rat—it was slashed the very same way.”
Amato’s mouth dropped. Could it be? Was this the break they’d been waiting for? For the first time he looked past their intrusion to the woman before him. The longer he looked, the more he began to see what they meant.
“Wait here,” he muttered, and bolted out of the room.
Mac went to Caitlin. Her expression was still blank with shock.
“Caitie…darlin’, are you—”
“Oh, Mac. What have I done?”
“What do you mean?”
“The reporters…the newspapers. I’ve just dared a madman to come and get me, haven’t I?”
He’d forgotten about the reporters. But he couldn’t let her see his fear. One of them in panic was enough.
“It will be all right,” he said. “It has to be. You may not want to hear this right now, but I can’t lose you, girl.”
“Then don’t,” she whispered, and buried her face against his chest.
Moments later Amato was back, accompanied by another man Mac assumed was their lieutenant. He was right.
“This is Lieutenant Franconi,” Amato said. “I told him your theory. Thought he should see this and judge for himself.”
Caitlin watched as Amato sifted through J. R. Neil’s file, pulled out a bloodstained photo and then pinned it on the wall next to the other three.
Then he looked at Caitlin. “Miss Bennett, if you would stand as you were a few moments ago?”
Caitlin did as he asked, her gaze fixed on the three men’s expressions.
Mac looked sick. She knew he understood.
But it was the police who had to be convinced.
“Christ almighty,” Amato said. “She’s right.”
Del Franconi frowned. “I want to know why someone didn’t see this earlier. Who the hell is working on this woman’s case?”
“Neil and Kowalski, sir. But in all fairness, if you’ll remember, we’ve pulled almost everyone off their normal work and put them on this slasher case, and I’m sure their other work has suffered accordingly.”
“Find them,” Franconi said. “Get them in here now, and the four of you start putting two and two together for a change. Miss Bennett, on behalf of my staff, you have my apologies. Rest assured that you will be taken seriously, very seriously, from now on. And if you don’t mind, would you please stick around? I’m sure there are some questions my detectives will be wanting to ask.”
“We’ll be here,” Mac said.
“Who are you?” Franconi asked.
Before Mac could answer, Caitlin slipped under his arm and laid her head against his chest.
“He’s with me,” she said softly.
Franconi shrugged. “Fine.” Then he pointed at Amato. “Looks like this is the break you’ve been looking for. Use it.”
Thirteen
C
aitlin leaned forward, her head resting in her hands, and stared down at the table. Her head was throbbing, her stomach growling from hunger. The interrogation had been going on for what felt like hours, and she was ready to cry.
“Detective Neil, for the last time, to my knowledge, I have not made any enemies. This person…whoever he is…has fixated on me without reason.”
“There is always a reason,” he said.
She looked up at him then, her gaze like a wounded doe.
“Then explain it to me,” she said, her chin trembling. “Because I damn sure don’t know what it could be.”
Until now, Mac had purposefully kept silent, but when he saw her on the verge of tears, he’d had enough.
“Look, guys, she just got out of the hospital less than a week ago. She hasn’t eaten in hours, and from the look in her eyes, she’s got one hell of a headache. She’s told you all she knows. Maybe we could go at this from another angle. You tell us what you know and see if any of it clicks with her.”
J.R. frowned. He didn’t like Caitlin’s bodyguard, and it showed.
“I don’t think that’s—”
Amato interrupted Neil. “That’s a damn good idea,” he said. “Did anybody tell you that you would have made a good cop?”
Mac grinned. By now, everyone here knew his past and his reason for associating with Caitlin. What they didn’t know, and neither did Caitlin, was that his loyalty to his brother had been superseded by his love for her.
Amato pointed at his partner, Paulie.
“Hey, Paulie. Go get the Dubai tape. There’s not much to see that will help us, but we should have shown it to them before on the off chance something about the perp rings a bell in Miss Bennett’s memory.”
“It’s in the lieutenant’s office. Be right back,” Paulie said.
Trudy Kowalksi leaned forward, momentarily laying her hand over Caitlin’s.
“I know this is tough, Miss Bennett. Bear with us, okay?”
Caitlin nodded.
“Have you people checked into her father’s background?” Mac asked, looking pointedly at Neil.
Sensing McKee’s disapproval, Neil stood defensively.
“We had no reason to assume that her father is connected to any of this. The letters are obviously from a deranged fan, and Miss Bennett is a writer, not Devlin Bennett.”
“According to the profiler I contacted, the letters don’t mention her work at all, only that she has to pay.”
Neil flushed angrily. “Your profiler? And what rock did he crawl out from under?”
“She,” Mac corrected. “And I believe that would be the rocks around Quantico, Virginia. My profiler is a Fed, Detective. What are your qualifications?”
Neil’s flush grew darker.
“You contacted the FBI? Without our knowledge?”
“You weren’t doing anything to further her case, and crimes aren’t private property, Detective. Besides, if they belong to anyone, they belong to the victim.”
Amato stepped between them. “Gentlemen—and I use the term loosely—I’m only going to say this once. Back off!”
Both men took several steps back.
“Thank you,” Sal said. “I trust this won’t happen again.”
“I don’t work for you, sir,” Mac said shortly. “My interests are entirely focused on Caitlin’s safety.”
“Noted,” Amato said. “However, we’ll get a lot more done without animosity. Now, tell me exactly what your profiler told you. Please.”
Mac nodded. “She seems to think that the person sending the letters has a personal grudge. She says he’s probably in his early to mid-thirties, never married.”
J.R. snorted softly and threw up his hands in disgust. “Oh…and how does
she
know that?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe the takeout pizza sauce on the letters…who the hell knows?” Mac said. “I’m not the expert, she is.”
Amato glared at Neil, who reluctantly took a seat.
Caitlin was so numb from all the questioning, she was past caring what came next. All she wanted to do was go home.
“Anything else?” Amato asked.
“She suggested that Caitlin might be nothing more than a Judas goat for someone else’s crimes. She says his letters are very nonspecific toward Caitlin. In other words…he’s never blamed her or named her as the villain. He simply keeps repeating the phrase that she has to pay. I’ll give you the agent’s name and phone number. She’ll be more than happy to help. Just mention my name.”
Amato nodded.
“Miss Bennett, did your father have enemies?”
Caitlin resisted the urge to laugh. “A man like my father would probably have made hundreds, even thousands, of enemies in his lifetime. He was rich and powerful and a hard man to know.”
Amato frowned. “Think, please. Are there any who come to mind?”
“Detective, I knew little about the business side of my father’s life. He kept that separate from us.”
“Meaning you and your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Would she know?”
“She died years before my father, and he’s been gone a little over five years. I have no siblings, no aunts, no uncles, no cousins.” She glanced up at Mac and then added, “Only a few very dear friends.”
Mac wanted to argue. He didn’t want to be her friend. He wanted…Then he frowned. What exactly did he want? He wanted to be her lover. That was a given. And he wanted her to love him back. But did it go further? He looked at her sitting there in all her casual elegance and remembered how she’d looked earlier, in mismatched sweats and those damned puppy slippers, and felt his stomach beginning to knot. That was what he wanted. Her. Forever. In whatever getup she chose—railing at him for whatever his latest sin was and then sleeping in his arms every night.
The breath caught in the back of his throat. Here he’d spent the better part of his adult life convincing himself that he wasn’t the marrying kind, and now that was exactly what he wanted. His ring on her finger, and her bearing his name and his children. In that order.
“Yeah, friends,” he echoed.
“What about associates?” Amato asked. “Is there anyone who was connected to your father who might know more than you?”