No one. She saw no one.
“Nikki. My love . . .”
Her eyes widened. Panic, ice-cold fear, engulfed her.
In that moment of dawning, chilling awareness, she understood what she had done. She backed up slowly, perspiration dotting her forehead, as the realization that she had spent the last month exchanging emails with a madman caused her to feel as though she might vomit.
“Richard?” she asked in a small voice. “Richard, is that you?”
She knew it was. That was probably not his name, but it was the same man.
Scream, Nikki, damn you! Scream!
She wanted to scream—dear lord in heaven how she wanted to. But when she opened her mouth this time, nothing came out. Her lips parted, closed, parted, but her vocal chords were frozen.
The attack came swiftly, without notice, from behind. She had expected him from the front—how had he gotten behind her?
His hands were on her—
oh God!
The scream finally came, bubbling up from her throat and wailing out like a platitude to the heavens.
“Help meeee!”
He brutally slapped a palm over her mouth, struggling with her as she tried to fight him off. He was big, so damn strong.
The keys—yes, her apartment key ... !
She struck out at him blindly, trying to jab the key in her hand into his thigh. She was so hysterical and frightened that she had no idea whether or not the key had made contact. All she knew was that Richard was bellowing, that he had released her—
Oh God
—
run! Run Nikki! Run!
She fell to the ground instead, the jarring action of his abrupt release causing her to plummet. She cried out as she fell, pain ripping through her as her knees banged against concrete.
“Bastard! Fucking sick bastard!”
Nikki blinked. She had thought those words . . . but she hadn’t said them.
“Kim,” she whispered, her heartbeat racing like mad. “Oh my God.”
Nikki wrenched herself up off of the ground, crying out from pain as she did so. She maneuvered her body around with some difficulty, only to find the most horrific sight imaginable.
A man in a black leather jacket and ski mask—
Richard!
—pulling a butcher knife out of his wounded arm . . . and stalking toward Kim with it. Kim, whose leg lay battered beneath her, the ankle either sprained or broken.
“No!” Nikki wailed. “Nooooo!”
Richard stilled, his head twisting to the left to regard her. Intense, chillingly blue eyes clashed with her wide green ones.
“It’s me you want, fucker!” Nikki screamed, anger, fear, revulsion, and a million other emotions ripping through her. She clutched the key in her hand tightly, holding it like a talisman. “You spent an entire month planning this moment! Come and get me, coward!”
A police siren pierced the night, the loud wail sounding to Nikki’s ears like a trumpet sent from the gods. She cried out, tears of relief stinging the backs of her eyes, as she watched Richard take one last thorough look at her before disappearing into the shadows.
Nikki limped toward Kim, her breathing labored, her arms outstretched, her entire body shaking. She needed to hug her, needed to know she was all right.
“I’m so sorry,” Nikki said shakily.
One police car turned into two. Two into three. Then four and five. She ignored them all as officers scurried from their patrol cars and surrounded them on all sides. Her only thought was to get to Kim.
“Oh, Kimmie,” she cried out, her voice sounding guttural, as if tampering down on barely controlled hysteria. “I’m so damn sorry.”
Kim tentatively smiled, a black eye quickly forming from where she’d apparently been struck. “Hey,” she said, her voice a quiver, “all in a day’s work. We schoolteachers are used to stuff like this. Happens all the time.”
Nikki half laughed and half cried. She hobbled the rest of the way to Kim, then fell down to her knees, no longer able to stand. The pain was jarring, numbing. She ignored it. “How did you know?” she asked weakly, dizziness assaulting her. “The dreams? Oh God—”
“Are you two all right?”
Nikki’s head shot up, the sudden movement making her so dizzy she felt nauseous. She turned a wild green gaze up to the owner of the masculine, gravelly voice. She could hardly see him, headlights from police cars all but blinding her. On all fours, her hair hanging in limp clumps every which way, her eyes crazed, she looked more injured-animal than human in that moment.
“It’s okay, Dr. Adenike,” the gravelly voice gently assured her. “You and your friend are safe. Officers are tracking your attacker as we speak.” His voice was very deep, very rusty, and very soothing. Not to mention very familiar. Why couldn’t she place it? “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“B-But—the man . . . R—Richard . . .”
“You’re okay,” he repeated. The gravelly voice drew closer. She squinted, trying to see him in spite of the headlights. She was certain she knew that voice, but couldn’t place it with a face. “Lucifer is long gone.”
“Lucifer?” she heard Kim call out. “L-Lucifer?”
Nikki blinked. Now why was that name familiar? She knew she was in shock, realized her thinking process was slowed and surreal from the adrenaline rush and crash. But she should know that name. . . .
Memories assailed her. TV news reports. Dead women. Raped. Tortured. Missing organs. A man they trusted.
Lucifer.
Oh. My . . .
Lucifer—
FallenAngel
—Lucifer.
Oh. My.
God.
Nikki clutched her heart, her breathing becoming dangerously rapid. She felt two strong hands grab onto her, holding her in a way that permitted her to feel secure enough to do something she’d never done in her life.
She fainted.
Chapter 10
Wednesday, July 16 4:07 A.M.
It was shaping up to be one hell of an enlightening
evening. Lucifer had escaped once again, but the CPD had collected more information on the serial killer and his predilections in three hours’ time than they had in the past several years.
1. The predator was now wooing women through the Internet—a fact the CPD had suspected with at least three of his previous victims, but weren’t sure about until tonight. The last email Linda Hughes had ever sent, for instance, contained a reference to meeting an online acquaintance named Allan for a drink. The CPD, however, had found no residual traces from any emails sent by Allan, or any other potential suspect, on the victim’s computer. They were forced to conclude that if Linda had been wooed via the Internet, she had set up a web-based email account through which to correspond with him, so that no traces of him could be located on her computer’s hard drive. Linda had most likely done that to protect herself professionally. She died never having realized that she had played right into her murderer’s hands, that her secretiveness was a predator’s twisted dream come true.
2. Like a fisherman who had discovered a new, successful lure, it was probable that Lucifer’s next strike would occur on a woman he seduced via the Internet. It made a lot of sense, though. He liked professional women, powerful women. Liked bringing them down, removing their power. But professional women don’t have a lot of time on their hands, tend to be too beat from a long working day to go out at night. The Internet makes for a convenient pickup scene and provides an endless pool of potential victims.
3. Lucifer considers himself an expert on D/s and bondage, and uses that knowledge to lure women looking for such an expert—again, the CPD had suspected this, but hadn’t been able to confirm it until tonight. This explained the whip marks on Linda Hughes’s corpse, as well as the bizarre markings on another victim. It also explained his proficiency with ropes and tying women up.
4. He had used the alias Richard Remington—a fact that probably wouldn’t do them much good because he likely changed his name every time. Still, the alias would be looked into.
5. He was a big man, strong and tall.
6. Blue eyes.
7. Black leather jacket.
8. Probably fancies himself in love with his victims, most likely believes the romantic delusions he spins to lure them in. This, if true, probably explained the removal of the victims’ hearts. Or at least explained it as much as it could possibly be explained.
9. Crazy as a two-dollar bill. That, however, the CPD had already known.
Thomas poured himself a cup of coffee from Dr. Nicole Adenike’s expensive brewer before shuffling into the den to watch Leon Walker work. Leon had been on the force for over twenty years and was the CPD’s resident computer whiz.
“Talk to me, buddy. You got anything new?”
Leon shook his head. “Not yet. Still working on it.” He sighed, his ebony face showing fatigue. “On top of everything else, the asshole knows computers, too.”
Thomas’s eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean?”
Leon glanced up. “
FallenAngel
looks like a legit email account. . . .”
“But it’s not,” Thomas ventured, frowning.
“Nope.”
Which probably meant the real
FallenAngel
was some fourteen-year-old kid into heavy metal who had no idea his account was being faked by a serial killer. Shit. “What is it, then?”
“Don’t know. Looks to me like the emails are rerouted to another server.”
“Can you find that server?”
“Gimme time, Cavanah.”
Thomas sighed. After all these years he should have guessed that Lucifer had covered himself from all angles. “I’m going to go speak with the victim again. See if she can remember anything new.”
Leon nodded, his attention once more riveted on the computer screen. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
Nikki was in a daze, recovering from the greatest shock
of her life. Lucifer. She could still scarcely credit it.
For a month she had been emailing back and forth with a serial killer, had even started to feel the beginnings of love for him. Like a fool she had believed the things he’d said to her, had believed
in
him.
Good Lord in heaven, she was a moron. A moron who had escaped being raped, tortured, and murdered by the skin of her teeth. She shivered, the realization as numbing as it was terrifying.
“Feeling any better?”
Nikki glanced up, the familiar gravelly voice breaking her from her reverie. Detective Thomas Cavanah. Her nemesis. On a typical night, anyway. She decided that a truce was in order, at least for this particular night.
She studied the homicide officer for a prolonged moment, getting her first good glimpse of him since this entire ordeal had begun. He was a big man, she noted just as she had back in the grocery store, muscular and solid. As tall as he was broad. His hair was dark and cut short, his eyes brown.
Thank God his eyes were brown, she thought. It made conversing with him easier. That last officer, Ben O’Rourke, had possessed blue eyes—she doubted she’d ever again look at blue eyes quite the same way.
“Yes. Thank you.” Nikki cleared her throat. She offered him a half-hearted smile as he handed her a cup of coffee. She blew at the steam rising up from it, then took a long, measured sip.
“It’ll get better, you know,” he murmured, taking the seat on the sofa beside her. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but eventually it’ll get easier.”
She could see how muscular his legs were even through the material of his denim jeans. The muscles seemed to ripple as he bent his legs and sat. She glanced up at his face. “I hope so,” she whispered. “Because right now I’m about a step away from needing to be institutionalized.”
He didn’t smile, but his dark eyes gentled. She sensed he wasn’t the type who smiled much.
“Well if you do need to be institutionalized, at least you’ll get some good drugs for your trouble.” He winked, winning a small smile from her. “See there,” he drawled, his gravelly voice a purr. “You’re doing better already.”
Her gaze clashed with his. His brown eyes flicked down to her lips, then back up. She glanced away, blushing for reasons she couldn’t fathom.
He was just being nice, she reminded herself. He was trying to provide calm and hope where little existed.
Thomas cleared his throat. “I know it’s been a difficult night . . .”
“But?”
He sighed. “This is the part of my job I hate. I know you’re just wanting to retreat to your shell to lick your wounds. . . .” He waited for her to make eye contact. “But I need to find this bastard, Dr. Adenike.”
“Please, call me Nikki.”
“All right, Nikki. And you call me Thomas.”
She nodded. “Okay,” she whispered.
“Have you been able to recall anything else about your attacker?” he asked, his tone patient. “His shoes? Any tattoos? Any . . . anything?”
She sighed, her eyes briefly closing. “I wish I could say yes, but . . .”
“But you can’t.”
She frowned, her head slightly shaking in the negative. “No. I’m sorry.”
Thomas was silent for a moment as he studied her face. Finally, he inclined his head. “If there is anything else you remember, anything else at all . . .” He held out his business card to her. “I jotted my home phone on the back. My work phone and cell phone are on the front.”
Nikki breathed deeply before responding. “I’ll let you know if I come up with anything, but you have copies of all the emails we sent back and forth. That was the extent of our relationship. Oh, and I did have him—or Richard Remington, rather—checked out by a detective agency.”
Thomas’s eyebrows drew together, though truthfully the information didn’t exactly surprise him. It was just further proof of what a careful woman Dr. Adenike was. She had done everything she could do and then some to play it smart. “And?”
She shrugged. “The report is laying on the counter in my kitchen. Feel free to take it. Anyway, Richard Remington is definitely a real man. As a matter of fact, he’s a teacher at a middle school. But I’m willing to bet my last dollar he isn’t the man you are looking for.”