“What are you think—” She turned to Cole and broke off in midsentence as she saw the ghastly look on his face. He was frozen, his eyes completely blank as he went somewhere far away in his head.
“Cole?” She snapped her fingers in front of his face, but he didn’t respond. Didn’t so much as blink. She looked down at the pendant again, ran her fingers over the hastily scratched initials. And realized, for the first time, that they were his sister’s initials.
Frightened for him, she called his name again—a little more cautiously than she had before—and was relieved when he finally moved.
“Who the hell is this guy?” he growled, shouldering her aside to pick up the pendant. She knew she should object, but the water would have destroyed any fingerprints, and he definitely didn’t look like he was going to take no for an answer.
“If I knew that, I’d be able to sleep at night, instead of imagining his next victim.”
“Yeah, well, this is bullshit.” He slammed the pendant on the desk so hard that her heart stopped as she imagined explaining to Chastian how the evidence had cracked in half. Thank God it was more sturdy than it looked.
“Cole—” She opened her mouth, unsure of exactly what she wanted to say. Knew only that she wanted to comfort where she should question, soothe where she should antagonize. But every thought in her head went out the window as a shrill scream echoed through the building.
It was quickly followed by another, more bloodcurdling than the first. And another one after that.
She and every other cop in the room leapt to their feet and hit the door running. Following the screams, she wound her way down the hallway until she got to the supply cabinet off the lobby. The screams were loudest there, and a crowd of cops had gathered around the clearly distraught woman.
“Hey, what happened here?” Genevieve leaned forward, asked one of the vice cops she knew a little.
Somebody gagged, rushed away, and then the crowd parted and the desk sergeant on duty looked at her with frantic eyes. “You’re homicide, right?”
“Yeah.” The sick feeling in her stomach grew until it was all she could do to keep her breakfast down.
“Then you need to see this.” He pushed his way through the crowd, yanking her behind him in his wake. And pointed at the open door of the supply closet.
Chapter Twenty
Her own gag reflex kicked in as she took in the scene in front of her. Behind her she heard Cole swear, right before he took off. She wanted nothing more than to turn to him. To comfort him. But she couldn’t do that, not now. Clenching her fists until her nails drew blood from her palms, she concentrated on breathing through the pain until she got her emotions—and her stomach—under control.
Then yelled, “No,” as someone stepped forward to touch the body.
“She might still be alive!” The cop turned and she recognized Morales, one of the men who had asked her out about a year ago. He was one of the few who hadn’t let her rejection get to him.
“She isn’t alive, Edgar. And going in there will only contaminate the scene.”
“We can’t leave her like that!” The anguish in his voice was so real it had her taking another look at the body. And cursing as she realized who it was. Sharon Duval, one of the lab techs. Rumor had it she and Edgar were quite the item.
Sympathy had her glancing at Edgar’s face, laying a hand on his trembling back. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.”
The eyes he turned to her were glazed with shock. “Who … what—” He grabbed Genevieve and buried his head in her shoulder as the crowd watched.
Her arms came up of their own volition, rubbed his back as she murmured senseless words of comfort. Everything inside of her was straining to dig into the crime scene, but she took a few moments to hold her friend. To give him what little she could.
She didn’t know how much time had passed, but suddenly the forensics guys were there—as shaken and angry as Edgar as they stared at what was left of one of their own. After catching one of the other officer’s eyes, she slowly disengaged herself from Edgar as other hands reached out to take him.
Then she moved forward, met Jefferson and the rest of his crew. “What the f**k is going on here?” he muttered in a vicious aside. “Who would do this?”
She understood his anger, felt her own burning in her gut. Sharon had been one of the nicest people Genevieve had worked with—and one of the few other women at the station. To see her like this—naked, strung up, her body mutilated to the point that she was barely recognizable as human—was almost more than she could bear.
When Jefferson gave the okay, she grabbed a pair of gloves from his kit and moved forward. Stared at the incredibly unscathed face. And cursed low and long.
“He wanted us to know who she was right away.” She said it softly to Jefferson, felt the other man sway a little before locking his knees.
“Why do you say that?”
She circled the body, stared at the mutilated back. “Her face is the only part of her he didn’t ruin.”
“Fuck.”
As one, she and the crime scene techs put on booties and entered the crime scene. There was blood all over the floor, buckets of the stuff that continued to drip from the long slices on Sharon’s body.
Her stomach started to revolt again, but she steeled it. Refused to lose it here. She had a job to do, and by God, she would do it.
On some level, she was aware of her lieutenant showing up, along with Captain Wesley. They got the crime scene cleared, and then entered the closet. She realized, distractedly, that neither one bothered to put on the booties to keep their shoes clean.
“A lot of this was done postmortem.” Jefferson said what ’Genevieve had already been thinking. “Thank God.”
“No shit.” She crouched down, got a closer look at the victim’s feet. She was missing two toes. “But why? That isn’t like our guy.”
“Our guy?” The captain’s voice cut like a whip. “Are you telling this animal has struck before? And I wasn’t notified?”
Oh, shit. Unsure of how to answer him, Genevieve glanced at her lieutenant. Chastian’s mouth was tight, his eyes grim, but his anger seemed self-directed. “We think so. But we can’t be positive—the MO of each murder is completely different.”
“Each?” Wesley’s voice was livid. “How many women have died without me being notified?”
“This is the fifth one, sir.” Genevieve spoke softly, hoping to diffuse the already tense situation. All she needed was for the captain to explode in the middle of her crime scene.
But all he did was grind his teeth together and say, “When this is over, I want to see both of you in my office.” He paused, looked at something over Genevieve’s shoulder. “Make that all three of you.”
She turned to find Shawn standing there, a look of abject horror on his face as he surveyed the room. He took a minute, then did exactly what she had done. Shrugged it off and said, “Where are we?”
“Just getting started.” She went back to looking at the victim’s feet. Something in this one was ringing a bell, taking her back a few years. But she didn’t say anything, not yet. She’d work the scene unprejudiced, gather as much evidence as she could. Then she’d check out the database and see if her instincts were as right-on as she thought they were.
* * *
Oh, shit. Fuck. Goddamn son of a bitch. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Cole dragged air in through his mouth as he searched desperately for a bathroom. He was going to lose it and lose it big, and he really didn’t need anyone else to see him when he did.
He found the bathroom at pretty much the exact second his stomach revolted. Slamming through the door, he dashed into the nearest stall and puked up everything in his stomach—and it’s lining to boot.
And still he wasn’t done, the dry heaves racking his body again and again as he struggled for control. But for once, it eluded him—his body and everything else completely out of his power.
The bastard had killed that poor woman the same way Samantha had been killed. Had strung her up, nude and cut all to hell, the same way his sister had been hung. Tears burned behind his eyes, and for the first time in nearly a decade he let them fall.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. How could this be happening again? How could he be expected to live through it a second time? Every instinct he had told him to get his ass up and leave this place, leave this city, and never return.
But he couldn’t do that, not now. Not when the nightmare was repeating itself. And not when Genevieve was here, trapped in the middle of everything.
But isn’t that what he’d wanted? Her to wade in and get her hands dirty? He thought of the woman he had just seen; it didn’t get any dirtier than that.
It was a message and he knew it, even if Genevieve didn’t. He might be so twitchy and disturbed that he barely recognized himself, but he was still together enough to realize this whole thing had been done for his benefit.
It had been choreographed, staged, with just this result in mind. He didn’t know exactly how he knew that, but he did. It made him even more furious, that he was reacting with such utter predictability that even a murdering a**hole like this could figure him out.
But how was he supposed to react? This bastard—this sick, sociopathic fuck—was after her now. Maybe he’d always been, and Cole’s interest in her had made the guy snap. He didn’t know, and frankly, didn’t care. But he couldn’t leave Genevieve like this—a lamb for the slaughter.
This son of a bitch was sick, demented. Totally twisted, and he had his eye on Genevieve.
And she knew it.
She’d been shaken by the crime scene—he’d seen it, even if no one else had. She hadn’t wanted to go into that closet, hadn’t wanted to look at what had been done to that poor woman any more than he had.
But she’d done it.
What kind of strength did it take to do that, he wondered. To walk into that shit day after day, year after year? To look at the dead, and more, to take a stand for them? He didn’t think he had it in him—hell, it had taken him close to a decade to take a stand for Samantha, and look what a fine job he was doing of that. Puking his guts up in a police station bathroom, too shaky and too disturbed to get off his knees and try to do some good.
He wanted to stand up, to get back to Genevieve, but he was man enough to admit his legs wouldn’t yet support him. While his body might be out for the count, however, his brain was working perfectly well. And he realized that he was going to have to tell Genevieve the truth. Have to give up some control to keep her safe.
And he would keep her safe. Somehow, in the past few days, she’d become more important to him than anything else. She’d become his world, and the idea of her being in jeopardy because of him … he shook his head. No, that wasn’t going to happen.
Tonight, they would sit down and he would tell her everything. He no longer had a choice. Pushing himself to his feet, he kept his head down as he left the bathroom and headed down the hallway to the nearest exit. He couldn’t be here right now, couldn’t deal with this newest outrage. Couldn’t face Genevieve until he knew how to explain everything to her. Because after today, one thing was clear. He was becoming a liability, and Genevieve had the right to know about it.
* * *
Back at her desk, Genevieve stared at her friends and fellow detectives, all of whom looked as sick as she felt. “How did he get in here?” she demanded, more than aware of how wild she sounded. “We need to look at the film. There’s a camera aimed directly at the waiting room next to the supply closet. We need it.”
Shawn was already on the phone with the front desk. She didn’t know what the desk sergeant was saying to him, but it sure as hell didn’t look good. “The camera’s fried—has been for three days. There’s a requisition form in on it, but so far no one’s gotten to it yet.”
“Are you kidding me?” She stared at him in disbelief. “What about the one by the front door?”
He shook his head. “The whole system is down.” Shaking his head, his expression revealing the same impotent fury she was feeling, he said, “This guy is always one step ahead of us.”
She snorted. “Don’t you mean three?”
“Well, somebody had to have seen him. We’ll ask around, find out—”
“Come on, Shawn. A guy good enough to commit bloody murder right under our noses is good enough to keep from being seen.”
Shawn looked like he wanted to argue, but in the end he shut his mouth because she was right and he knew it. They were exactly where they had been all along—totally screwed.
“I can’t trace the flowers.” Luc came up behind them. “Someone dropped an envelope in the mail slot with a hundred bucks in it, asking that the roses be delivered here yesterday afternoon.”