A Righteous Kill (30 page)

“From who?”

“You know who. From
him
.”

Luca leaned in again, his eyes narrowed in consideration. “You got someone else up here, Mazure?” He tapped the man on his grimy forehead. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“You don’t know
dick
. You insolent kid. You
civilian
!” The Sergeant’s blue eyes cleared like a summer sky for a moment, revealing a stunning amount of intelligence.

“I know you’re too young to have fought in Vietnam.” Luca smirked as the other man resumed his squirming. “So who’s Agent Orange? Is he the one telling you to kill these girls?”

“No!
No
, I never killed a woman. Would
never
hurt one!”

Luca’s black eyes glittered, like they tended to do right before he was going to do something dangerous. “
Never
?” he repeated with that silky softness. “You’ve never caused the death of a woman? Not even over there?”

Mazure’s head lolled back on his shoulders. Then he used his legs to surge up once more, lunging for Luca who sat just out of reach. His speech dissolved into maniacal screams again.

Rown shook his head beside her. “I heard Ramirez was brutal but… damn.”

“Just wait until he
really
gets started,” Vince piped in. “Oh shit!”

Mazure had thrashed about so much that he tipped the chair that was supposedly bolted to the ground and rolled out of it, shooting for the mirror. Hero jumped back as he slammed his body into it. The cuffs still held his hands behind him. “Tell them it wasn’t me!” His wild eyes searched the mirror blindly, frantically. “I pulled you
out
of the river. I couldn’t leave you in there to die. Tell them to let me go!”

Luca recovered from his surprise quickly and had Mazure bent over the table with his face ground into the cold surface and his arm wrenched at an awful angle in one graceful move.

Hero’s eyes widened as the prisoner said a few choice things about Luca’s ethnic heritage that would have put that racist anchor from Fox News to shame.

Luca’s dimples appeared, though a smile didn’t exactly materialize.

The man writhed beneath his strong grip, though he had to be in considerable pain. “Let me go! Tell them to let me go! I can’t be in here. The walls. The walls will burn! I need to get out!”

“It’s not him,” Hero whispered.

Rown took her elbow. “Come on. Let’s go get a cup of coffee. You don’t have to see any more of this.”

“It’s not him!” she gasped. Wrenching her arm away from her brother, she lunged for the intercom and punched the speak button. “Let him go, Luca. He didn’t do it. It isn’t him.”

“Get her out of that goddamn room Di Petro,” Luca ordered through gritted teeth over the screaming man in his vice grip and Hero’s impassioned voice echoing back at her through a delay in the com.

“He can’t be in there any longer!” she insisted. “He’s afraid. Oh, God. He’s
just
afraid.”

Vince exploded into the interview room, righted the chair and helped his partner wrestle the squirming man back into it. Hero hadn’t even heard him leave the observation room or gather the other agents armed with tasers and more scary-looking restraints.

Rown grabbed her hand away from the intercom. “You can’t
do
that shit, Hero, not here.”

Director Trojanowski wrenched the door open. “What the hell was that?” Hero surmised he must have been watching the whole thing from one of the many cameras stationed in the corner ceilings of the interview room.

“It wasn’t him. I’m certain of it. Don’t let them lock him up. He’s not John the Baptist.”

Trojanowski visibly wrestled with his temper at her antics, obviously better at it than Luca. He was the kind of man that turned colors like red and purple when he was angry. “How do you know?” he demanded.

“He’s too tall. I couldn’t tell until he stood up, but his legs are way too long. Please get him out of there, he’s so scared!” Hero cried.

“Hero, he’ll be fine.” Rown stood behind her, blocking her view of the chaos in the interview room.

“He was still caught trespassing on your property,” Trojanowski pointed out. “And we can’t be sure he wasn’t involved, somehow.” He looked like a man with the answers to all his problems turning to silt and slipping through his fingers.

“I don’t
want
to press charges.” Hero begged, “Please let him go. Can’t you see he’s traumatized?”

Trojanowski’s balding pate shone with sweat even in the dim light of the observation room. “Are you one
hundred
percent certain it’s not him.”

Hero nodded. “He’s at least a
foot
too tall. He’s almost as tall as Luca—er—Agent Ramirez. John the Baptist was
not
. If I know anything, I know that. It sounds like he was the one who pulled me
out
of the river, doesn’t it? That he’s just been watching me?”

“Take her somewhere to relax,” The director ordered Rown, still staring at her as though she’d taken away his birthday. “I’ll take care of this.”

“Yes, sir.” Rown took up her elbow again. “Come on, Hero.”

“What are they going to do to him?” she asked as she allowed her brother to drag her away. She tried to peek over his wide shoulders back into the interrogation room.

“They’re not going to hurt him, Hero. They’ll do their best to keep him from hurting himself.”

The observation room dumped them into a hallway with a glass wall. The wide, open room on the other side of the glass took up one entire floor of the Federal Building. Outside walls were lined with offices, supply closets, record rooms, and one very large conference room which offered a view of the airport. Herman Miller cubicles bisected the rest of the open floor with shoulder-level grey walls the texture of the fuzzy side of a Velcro strap. Some people tried to brighten and personalize their allotted spaces with family pictures, inspirational calendars, and comic strips hung by push-pins. As Hero allowed herself to be steered past them toward the conference room, she stifled a feeling inside not unlike the ones Sgt. Mazure had demonstrated in the interview room. If she had to spend eight-plus hours of her life in one of those grey boxes every day, she’d be as loony as he was before long.

“What happens now, Rown?” She looked up at her brother and he shook his head at her, flicking a glance at the handful of agents milling around the doorway to the interview room. They all watched her, some with mild interest, and others with frank and intense curiosity. Hero supposed that for a homicide unit, she was somewhat of an anomaly. A survivor. A victim that remained among the living. Someone who carried the wounds of death on warm and vibrant flesh, and the memories of a serial killer locked inside her head.

She took Rown’s unspoken hint to stay silent and studied him for a minute. He belonged to this place. To the grey fuzzy walls and uniformed suits. He was so structured. Out of everyone in her family, he was what people would call the most
normal.
Not exotically handsome like Luca, but large and angular with an almost barbaric masculinity that contrasted with his savvy ways and clinical acumen. This was his world in a way that it would never be Luca’s. Luca attacked every case as though his own redemption depended on it. He took down each criminal as though they’d done him a personal slight. He looked evil in the face and saw himself.

Rown enjoyed the puzzles, the mysteries, and knowing things that were stamped
Confidential
. She bet he even liked the politics and the mind games. The travel and the overtime. The hours of dedicated monotony punctuated by moments of adrenaline-fueled danger.

“I bet you’re good at your job,” she told him as he settled her into a grey swivel chair by the door. He took the one across the corner from her at the head of the table, looking like he belonged there.

His grim mouth turned up at the corners. “What makes you say that?”

“Those men out there, they respect you. I can tell. And you’re obviously terrified of your wild, hippie little sister doing anything to embarrass you at work.”

That dragged a laugh from him. “It’s not like that, Hero. This isn’t my case. Hell, this isn’t my floor. I have to maintain a certain level of professionalism if they’re going to allow me to be here with you.”

The yells and screams of the restrained man still filtered down the hall, along with the commands and cajoling of the agents. Rown stood to shut the door before sitting to face her again.

“I guess everyone has to be a little different here at work. Not quite themselves.” She murmured, peering out the glass wall at the sea of dark and empty cubicles. Talk about Federal transparency. The place was a ghost town on a Sunday. The only people here were called in for the special circumstance and likely lingered to log overtime hours and be present just in case the suspect turned out to be the killer.

“You mean Ramirez?” Rown correctly assessed.

Hero exercised her Fifth Amendment rights.

Rown considered her for a moment, his fingers templed in front of him. “What you just saw
is
Ramirez, Hero. That’s who he’s always been. The man who sat at our table tonight was just an agent doing his job, and I’ll admit, he’s damn good at it.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying he’s been at
many
tables. He’s dined with Mexican drug cartels, got drunk with the Highway 101 rapist to get a confession, and most recently partied with a bunch of South Asian sex traffickers. Our parent’s table isn’t any different in his mind. It’s the job, Hero, nothing more.”

“You don’t know that,” Hero whispered.

Rown made an exasperated sound. “What scares me is that
you
don’t know that.” He leaned forward and took her hand, green eyes glimmering with deep emotion. Her father’s eyes. Her own eyes. “You’ve been through hell, are still facing fear and danger and a lot of uncertainty about the future. You’ve got to be emotionally vulnerable right now.”

“Do
not
patronize me, Berowne,” Hero warned, pulling her hand away.

“Do
not
fall for this guy, Hero,” he warned back.

“What makes you think I am?”

“Well, you didn’t deny it, for one,” he said pointedly. “And I watched you grow up. I know how you are.” Rown grabbed her hand again, gripped it this time with the strength of his emotion. “Remember when you were eight and got bit on the hand by that Pitt Bull you were trying to pet?”

Hero nodded, looking down at the hand held within Rown’s. A larger, deeper scar covered the old bite wound now.

“You sat next to that dog’s cage at the shelter while they put him down. I remember Mom and Pop trying to drag you away, but you were having none of it. You cried and cried while he snarled and snapped at you from the metal cage, and you didn’t move away from him until the drugs kicked in and he was gone. You were apologizing to him the entire time.”

Tears pricked Hero’s eyes at the memory. She’d felt so guilty, because
she’d
reached through the chain link fence. The dog had been so obviously maltreated and neglected, she’d only wanted to offer it friendship. The owners hadn’t even shown up or fought for the dog when animal control had taken it away. In the end, she’d understood why she’d been bitten, and couldn’t live with the idea of the animal dying alone.

“Agent Ramirez
is
that Pitt Bull. If his leash ever snaps, he’s going to hurt someone. And I’ll be damned if that someone is going to be you.”

Hero nodded. She usually didn’t like when her family got high-handed with her. She hated being treated like the baby sister. Well, most of the time. But the love in Rown’s words was demonstrated honestly and carefully. He usually wasn’t the most demonstrative of the bunch.

Her brother leaned back in his chair with a tired smile. “On the other side of that coin, Pitt Bulls make the best guard dogs. There’s no one else I’d rather have working this case, or watching your back. So long as he keeps his eyes where they belong.”

Hero gave her brother a chastised look. Luca had tried to behave himself, and she’d been acting like a shameless flirt. Going so far as to blatantly invite him to have sex. More than once. Was this the adult version of sticking her hand through the chain-link fence? In the past, she’d been able to open her bedroom door, but keep her heart closed. This time, she’d done things differently, through no fault of her own. In the space of a few weeks, Luca had punched a hole through quite a few firsts that had been denied almost any other man. He’d slept at her house more than a few times. He’d gone to church with her. Had dinner at her parent’s house. All without having sex with her, or even a date. Had she put more emotional importance on that then she should have? She
knew
it was his job. But did she assume that it had been more than that to him?

She thought of the possessive, desperate kiss they’d shared only hours ago. The heat and the tension swirling between them like a separate, tangible entity. Something dark and wild and very forbidden.

I’m not your boyfriend, Hero.

I know.

Do you?

Did she?

“I don’t think you make it easy on the guy,” Rown said perceptively. “Not dressing like that.”

She looked down at her mini dress. “I’ve always dressed like this.”

He released her hands, adopting a very put upon frown. “Don’t I know it? You’ve kept four older brothers very busy over the years.”

Hero tossed her head unrepentantly, but rose with Rown to give him a warm hug. “I know, and I love you for it.”

“I love you, too.” He held her close for a minute. “I don’t know what we all would have done if we’d lost you.”

“Don’t even think about that.” She swallowed some more emotion and stepped away from him. The screams had stopped, but it seemed that Sgt. Mazure’s claustrophobia was somehow contagious and Hero wanted to be anywhere else but this cold, grey office building. “Can you get me out of here?”

Rown nodded. “Yeah, let me, ah, get an update on what’s going down.” He left her to confer with Trojanowski and a few others for a moment. The director and his men cast disappointed, almost antagonistic looks at her.