“The rookie at the Academy who drew women to him like a high-powered magnet didn’t,” she reminded him.
“The academy,” he told her, his fingertips languidly moving along either side of her body, memorizing each contour, tantalizing them both, “is years in the past. And I’m not.”
“If anything,” she countered, arching her body against his, every part of her being humming with yearning, “that rookie would be even more prone to keep moving from willing woman to willing woman.”
“Guess again,” he whispered against her mouth just before his lips covered hers.
It all sounded so pretty, so wonderful, but they were words he was saying, just words, Charley reminded herself. She had to remember that and not get too caught up in all this. As long as she was aware that this—all of this—was just temporary, she’d be all right.
At least, that was the plan.
* * *
Darkness slowly crept in and took possession of the room as the sun outside receded in the sky, moving on in its orbit.
The figure on the sofa didn’t move, hardly breathed.
The person who had been immobile for the past half hour, thinking, continued to stare at the bulletin board that hung on the opposite wall. The bulletin board where covertly taken photographs had been hung.
Photographs of police officers, all of whom were carefully selected and marked for death.
The first four photographs each had a large red
X
drawn through them. These were the targets that had been eliminated.
Men who could no longer draw a breath.
Men who
shouldn’t
have been able to draw breath for as long as they did.
But justice, long overdue, had been served in their cases. There was more justice to be handed out.
This was not the time for resting, for sitting and basking in past accomplishments. This was a time for action—because other targets were waiting to be taken out.
So many more targets.
And each and every one of them was guilty. Each and every one of the police officers on that bulletin board deserved to die.
Should
have already died.
The shooter beat back the wave of mounting frustration. It would take patience. With patience everything was possible.
Rising from the sofa, the tall, previously inert figure seemed to come alive.
Moving with purpose, the shooter crossed the Spartan-looking living room and came to stand before the bulletin board.
“Which one of you will be next? Which will be the next one to die? Any volunteers?”
Different people required different plans and everything had to be timed, had to go down just so. There was no room for error.
The shooter wouldn’t stand for it.
“Doesn’t really matter which one of you will be next,” the shooter finally said, an eerie laugh scratching the night air as it accompanied the words. “You’re all going to be in the same place soon. You’re all going to be dead.”
Relishing the thought, the shooter’s mouth curved into an icy smile of anticipation.
* * *
On his way home the next evening, Andrew Cavanaugh smiled to himself.
It had been a good, extremely productive and satisfying day.
It wasn’t often that he patted himself on the back for something, but this definitely was one of those rare times. Through his efforts of relentless investigation, he’d not only discovered the missing branch of his family that his father had charged him with finding, he’d made contact with them. Not only that, but he made arrangements to have the entire bunch—and it
was
a bunch—come out to his place a week from next Saturday so that they could get acquainted with a lot of family that they hadn’t even realized existed.
Who would have thought that the missing branch of the family was only a city away? And that those members were all, just as they were here, entrenched in law enforcement?
He didn’t normally believe in coincidences, but this, certainly, was one.
It was a damn small world, he thought with a chuckle.
He was really tired, but at the same time, he was very pleased with himself.
He’d called Rose before he left and shared everything. She was as excited as he was. He’d ended the call by telling her that he was coming home tonight, but it might be late so she shouldn’t wait up.
As if she’d listen to him, he thought with a soft laugh. The light of his life listened to him when she wanted to, did what she wanted the rest of the time.
It didn’t matter. He was a hell of a lucky man and he knew it.
He—
His breath caught in his throat as he thought he made out something up ahead.
Damn, what
was
that?
He felt for his shirt pocket.
Where had he put his glasses? He should have worn them, but they made him feel old.
Hell, you are old,
a voice in his head said.
Andrew squinted. He thought he saw something staggering up ahead in the road. Not wanting to take any chances, he swerved at the last minute to keep from hitting it.
As his car spun to the left, he struggled to regain control of it.
Andrew was so busy trying to steer into the spin, he didn’t see the person in the middle of the road raising a gun until it was too late.
The single, resounding shot went into his windshield, shattering it.
The last thing Andrew Cavanaugh was aware of was the windshield glass falling inside his vehicle like so many bits of fragmented snowflakes.
The pain in his chest consumed him, blotting out the entire world.
Chapter 16
T
he bent, ragged, homeless man who had appeared to have been so preoccupied with pawing through the overflowing trash cans that were lined up in the alley instantly came to attention at the first sound of tires squealing.
Eyes on the fishtailing white sedan in the middle of the deserted road, the undercover DEA agent heard the gunshot screaming through the night air and then saw the shooter walking toward the immobilized vehicle.
By then he stopped pretending to be a spectator and was sprinting toward the car and the victim he glimpsed inside it.
That was when the shooter realized there was someone else in the vicinity besides the driver who was presumably taken out. Swallowing a livid curse, the shooter dropped the note that was meant to be stapled to the newest victim’s chest, turned around and ran back into the shadows, seeking the cover of night.
Intent on survival, the shooter didn’t see the ragged man dragging the former chief of police from his car. Otherwise, risky or not, a second shot would have pierced the night air.
Just to be sure the deed was done.
* * *
The landline on her nightstand rang insistently, intruding into a hard-won slumber that had claimed Charley as well as the man sleeping beside her. What had begun as a one-time effort to comfort her had turned out to be something beyond that. Something with a little more breadth and substance than just a mutually enjoyed seduction.
After putting in a more than full day today, going through all the surveillance tapes they had confiscated, neither Charley nor he had any desire to say good-night. So Declan had come home with her. Again. And he had made love with her. Again.
Charley silently lectured herself not to expect this to turn into a regular pattern. She knew better than that. Thought she knew
him
better than that. But while it was happening, she intended to enjoy every single second for as long as it continued.
Disoriented for less than a second, Declan, not Charley, sat up and reached for the phone, picking the receiver up by the third ring and placing it to his ear before his eyes were fully focused on anything.
And when they were, it was on the woman in bed beside him. Charley had turned out to be one hell of a wild woman in bed—who knew?
“Cavanaugh,” he said automatically, momentarily forgetting that it was Charley’s phone, not his, that he had answered.
“Declan?” the deep male voice asked uncertainly.
The voice registered at the same time that a feeling of dark foreboding took hold. Something was off.
“Shane? What are you doing, calling at this hour?” And why was his brother calling Charley?
Charley sat up, watching Declan, feeling the same sense of restless, formless fear that he was dealing with. Something was wrong. She could feel it in her gut.
“It’s Andrew,” his brother said grimly. “He’s been shot.”
Declan felt his stomach drop down to his toes. “When?” he asked. “How? Is it serious?” He fired the questions rapidly as he looked around the room, trying to remember where his clothes were.
“We don’t know yet. He’s in surgery. Aurora General,” Shane replied.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Declan said. Shane was still talking as he dropped the receiver back into the cradle.
“What’s happening?” Charley asked.
Declan was already hurrying into the clothes he’d hastily shed last night, when the only thing that mattered at the time was making love with Charley again, of revisiting the incredible exhilarating feeling being with her generated.
Now that seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Someone shot Andrew,” he told her. “Shane said he’s in surgery. I don’t know any more than that.” But he intended to find out.
Charley’s feet hit the ground as she grabbed for the first clothes that were handy. She was dressed half a beat after he was. She could be exceptionally quick when the need called for it.
“I’ll drive,” she said.
He didn’t argue. There was no time for that.
* * *
They made it to the hospital in what amounted to record time. There was very little traffic on the road and Charley had flown through the yellow lights as well as the green ones.
When they reached the hospital’s parking lot, it looked as if it was the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night. The lot right behind the E.R. entrance, as well as the one adjacent to it, was crammed with vehicles. Vapors of heat still hovered over the hooded engines of a large portion of them.
Parking as best she could, she and Declan hurried out of her vintage vehicle and hurried to the E.R.’s automatic doors.
There was no need to say anything to the receptionist on duty. The second they entered, the woman in the blue livery pointed to the doors on her left that led down the hallway.
“Can’t miss it,” she assured them as she continued typing something into her data program.
The second they went through the swinging doors, Declan saw what the woman meant. It looked like another one of Andrew’s get-togethers, except that everyone there seemed grim.
A very harried-looking nurse was trying to find a way to contain the ever-growing crowd. This wasn’t her first time at the rodeo.
“Please, people, find waiting rooms to disperse into. You’ll be notified the second the chief is out of surgery. I promise.”
No one made a move, not wanting to be the last to receive any sort of word, good or bad, all waiting for someone else to step aside.
Failing to get anyone to leave, the fifteen-year nursing veteran sighed, shaking her head. “You people need to get your own hospital,” she muttered under her breath, retreating into one of the side rooms that lined the hallway.
Declan saw his father and Rose, Andrew’s wife, at the same time. Undecided for a moment who to speak to, he approached his father. He didn’t want to say anything that might possibly upset the chief’s wife any more than she already had to be.
“Dad?” Declan said the second he and Charley were within hearing range. “How is he?”
Sean shook his head. “They won’t tell us. All they said was that he was still breathing.”
Well, at least that was good, Charley thought. “What happened?” she asked.
“We think the cop killer ambushed him,” Sean answered grimly. He motioned toward someone to his left to come forward. “I’ll let the guy who saved him give you the details.”
Declan and she turned in unison to look at the man Sean was referring to.
Disheveled, with matted hair and a week’s growth, the aromatic man who stepped forward was the kind who faded into the background of any urban street. Here, amid the Cavanaugh family, he stood out like the proverbial sore thumb, looking every inch the homeless man he’d been portraying for the past six months.
Only the intelligent, alert eyes gave up the persona he was projecting.
“You’re undercover?” Declan guessed.
The other man grinned, shaking his head. “It’s not supposed to show,” he said, knowing he’d pretty much blown his cover if anyone had been watching when he rushed to the former chief of police’s aid. “Brennan,” he said, shaking first Declan’s hand, then Charley’s.
“Declan Cavanaugh.” Declan introduced himself, then nodded at Charley. “And that’s Detective Randolph. You want to tell us what happened?”
“Not all that much to tell, really.” What there was he had repeated several times over already, at this point he recited the words by heart.
Brennan went over the details of the event as succinctly as he could. When he finished, Charley realized that as horrible as this all was, it could also represent their first real break in the case.
Excitement vibrated through her as she asked, “You saw the shooter? You saw the guy who shot the chief? Can you describe him?” she asked, her voice growing in intensity.
Before Brennan answered, she looked at Declan and said, “We can get him together with a sketch artist and maybe we can finally start cramping this SOB’s style.” Her eyes shifted to Sean. “We’re going to get him. I can
feel
it.”
“Funny thing about that,” Brennan said. “I didn’t get really close, so I could be mistaken, but from where I was, the shooter looked like a woman—at least, the shooter’s movements made me think that ‘he’ was actually a ‘she,’” the undercover agent confessed.
Charley’s mouth dropped open as her brain connected two stray items.
“What is it?” From his vantage point—Sean was standing directly opposite Charley—he was the first to see the startled expression cross her face.
Maybe she was forcing this—but her gut told her she was right. “Those surveillance tapes I was reviewing yesterday, the one from the restaurant where they found the last victim in the alley, it showed that teacher from the second murder, the one we previously interviewed going into the restaurant. I thought it was an odd coincidence at the time,” she confessed, “but maybe it wasn’t all that much of a coincidence. Maybe that teacher is our cop killer.”
She knew that her sentence bordered on the ridiculous—but stranger things turned out to be true. The woman was tall, she recalled. And big boned. Strong enough, Charley thought, to be able to move the body of an average-sized man.
“What are you talking about?” Declan asked, trying to follow her line of thinking.
In her excitement, she realized that she was getting ahead of herself. Charley took a deep breath. She needed to slow down.
“The second victim was found in the parking lot of a middle school, remember?” Declan nodded as she continued, doing her best not to talk too fast. “We interviewed a teacher, a Mrs. Miller who was the only one who was at the school at the time the victim was found there.” The moment she said it, things began to fall into place. “Why didn’t I think of this before?” she cried.
“Think of what before? Charley, what the hell are you trying to say?” Declan asked.
“Take it from the beginning, Charley,” Sean advised.
Her enthusiasm kept tripping her up. “I think that maybe we’ve been looking at this from entirely the wrong angle.”
“I’ll bite, what angle should we have been looking at this from?” Sean asked. They were now joined by an extremely worried-looking Brian. Sean put his arm around his younger brother and said, “He’s going to be all right, Brian. Andrew is tougher than all of us.”
“Yeah,” Brian replied, his voice sounding exceedingly hollow. He turned toward Charley. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. You were saying?”
Charley felt decidedly strange, airing her newly formed theory before men who’d been solving crimes since before she was born, but sometimes, the obvious was easily missed.
“That maybe the killer isn’t a former police wannabe or someone who was let go or fired in disgrace. Maybe the killer is related to someone like that. A loved one of someone who became so despondent because they either washed out or were terminated that they went off the deep end or maybe even killed themselves. And this person is looking to avenge them.”
She of all people should have seen that this was a possibility, Charley upbraided herself. After all, she had refused to sit out the investigation because she wanted to get justice for Matt. What if the killer, in her own twisted way, wanted the same thing? What if the killer was a woman who was looking to avenge a brother, a father, a husband or a son?
Declan realized where his partner was coming from. “We need to get back to the precinct, review the records for any former policeman or academy washout who took his own life, say in the last couple of years,” he said to his father. It was a starting point, Declan thought, growing hopeful that they were finally on the right trail. “You’ll let me know the second Uncle Andrew’s out of surgery?” He made the request of Kendra, one of his sisters, feeling that his father and uncle had enough to cope with right now.
“Count on it,” Kendra promised.
Nodding at her, he turned toward Charley. “Okay, let’s go.”
“I don’t know how I missed this,” Charley said once they were in her vehicle and peeling out of the parking lot. “It seems so obvious now,” she castigated herself for the umpteenth time.
“Nobody else thought of it, either,” Declan pointed out. The reason for that was simple. “That’s because when people think serial killer, they usually think of a male behind the spree, not a woman.”
Charley nodded. While serial killers were predominantly men, it was irresponsible of them to rule out a woman.
“Obviously a mistake,” Charley agreed. “Ain’t equality grand?” she murmured sarcastically, more to herself than to Declan.
“Damn,” he muttered, annoyed with himself. In his hurry to get to the hospital as fast as possible, it was as if he’d left his brain behind.
“What’s wrong?” Charley asked, sparing him a quick glance.
“I should have gotten that guy’s cell phone number—Brennan,” he interjected in case she didn’t know who he was talking about, “so we could send him a photo of that teacher you found on the surveillance tape, see if maybe he recognizes her from the shooting.” As he said it, Declan saw the corner of her mouth curving. Had he missed something else? “What?”
“I already got his number.” She’d obtained it as Declan was asking his sister to notify him when his uncle came out of surgery.
Declan could only laugh shortly. “Of course you did.” He grinned his approval. “You’re turning out to be one hell of an asset, Charley.”
“Is that what I am,” she said innocently, “an asset?”
She was a hell of a lot more than that, he was beginning to realize. Funny how you could go through life, not realizing that something was missing until you found yourself face-to-face with it, wondering how you’d managed to go all this time without it.
Declan didn’t intend to be without it any longer if he could help it. But now wasn’t the time to discuss what was on his mind. They’d talk once this case was safely resolved.
“We’ll talk about that later, after we get this shooter,” he promised.
“Whatever you say,” Charley replied. There was nothing more important to her than getting Matt’s killer—and nothing more important to him and the rest of his family, she knew, than getting the person—male or female—who’d almost succeeded in wiping out the Cavanaughs’ acknowledged patriarch.