Secure Target (Elite Operators) (2 page)

There was only one way to find out.

“I’m sure it’s all some kind of misunderstanding,” she assured Dr. Woodward and Dana, whose eyes were widening by the minute. “It’ll all be cleared up by dinnertime,” she added with a breeziness she didn’t feel at all.

“You get in touch if you have any trouble.” Dr. Woodward paused, frowning as he seemed to sort through the best way to say something. “For instance, if you need a lawyer,” he said haltingly, “I want you to call me.”

She smiled, but it was tight and forced. Of course, he paid her wages—he knew she could never afford legal counsel.

“I’ll be fine,” she chirped, and stepped out from behind the desk. “Officer”—she turned toward the blond one—“I’m ready when you are.”

Chapter Two

Detective Harris nudged the office door shut with his foot. His hands were full with a tray holding four cups of coffee.

Lacey gratefully accepted one of the steaming mugs, added a little milk and wrapped her hands around the warm ceramic. The snow was falling thick and heavy outside, and she’d noticed how much was sticking to the road during the short ride to the police station.

Once the coffee was distributed, the detective took his seat. Bronnik leaned forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees as he spoke to Lacey with a serious expression.

“Miss Cross—”

“Please, call me Lacey.” After the tense, silent drive to the station his formality made her even more nervous.

“Lacey,” he amended. “Let me get straight to the point. We have reason to believe you’ve been targeted by a known serial killer. We want to take you into protective custody as soon as possible.”

Her grip on the coffee mug suddenly felt dangerously loose. “A serial killer?”

“You received an unusual phone call earlier today, is that correct?”

She nodded. “He had a foreign accent—like yours.”

“The caller was Lloyd Hardy. He’s from Cape Town in South Africa. He’s a mastermind fraudster and con artist, and one of the most cunning killers we’ve ever faced. He killed his first victim a year and a half ago, and three more since then. The Special Task Force was called in to take over the case in August, and we believe that today he’s identified you as his fifth victim.”

Lacey shook her head in disbelief. This couldn’t be right—this was insane. “Why me? I’m nobody, I’m nothing special,” she insisted, and meant it.

“Like almost all serial killers, he has a basic pattern—but unlike the usual serial-killer profile, he also has a dangerous habit of occasionally changing things up.” Bronnik slid a manila folder from a nearby desk and opened it on his lap. “All of his victims have been brunettes with green eyes who work as front-desk personnel in medical or dental practices. He finds them all over the world, and his pace of travel is remarkable. His last victim was in a small town in England. He was in Italy before that. We don’t know how he got to this area.” He unfolded a newspaper clipping and passed it to her. “But we’re fairly sure this is how he found you.”

It was a half-page article from the
Topeka Capital-Journal
. The headline read: “Local Dentist Brings Smiles to Children in Mexico City”, and the story was accompanied by a color photo of herself and Dr. Woodward holding either end of an oversized novelty check, the result of a fundraiser to aid dental care at an orphanage.

“That’s crazy.” Lacey handed the photo back to Bronnik, her carefully controlled demeanor dissolving as his words sank in. “This whole thing is crazy, quite frankly.”

“We are absolutely serious.” Thando spoke from his chair by the door. “We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t deeply concerned for your safety.”

“But why you?” Lacey demanded, suddenly annoyed at this confusing, bizarre turn of events. She should be on her way home to brew some hot chocolate and fire up the sewing machine, not sitting in a police station being told a man had traveled thousands of miles to kill her. She glanced at Detective Harris for support, but his face was carefully neutral. “Why not the FBI?”

Bronnik and Thando did another one of their silent exchanges, and she rolled her eyes in exasperation.

“We are cooperating with the FBI,” Thando said carefully. “But as far as day-to-day operations, we find it’s best to keep the appearance of a small police presence. We’re hostage rescue experts, plus Hardy knows Bronnik and me, and we think he’ll be more…
responsive
this way.”

“Whatever that’s supposed to mean,” she muttered irritably. She wondered briefly if this sudden urge to be angry was a coping mechanism to keep from being afraid—then decided she had bigger things to spend her brain space on than self-psychoanalysis.

“He calls his victims,” Bronnik pressed on. “This morning, I assume he said something about the third day?”

She nodded, and he continued, “In his mind, the day of the phone call is the first day. The second day, he stalks his victim, and on the third he kills her.”

She didn’t really want to know the answer to the question pushing its way out of her mouth, but she felt compelled to ask. She stared down at her hands clenching the rapidly cooling mug. “How does he do it?”

“He slits their throats.”

There was a momentary hush in the room as the impact of his words resonated.

“Is there anyone you might need to call?” Detective Harris spoke up. “Any family or friends who need to know about this?”

She considered his request. Her mother was dead, her brothers were useless. She’d never met her father. She had lots of acquaintances but no particularly close friends. Her extended family was all out of state, and she hadn’t seen most of them for years.

Lacey drew a deep breath and lifted her chin. “No, I can handle this on my own. So what am I supposed to do?”

Bronnik’s stare was unblinking. “Whatever we tell you.”

Lacey fumbled with her keys as she opened the front door to her humble ranch house. Bronnik stood with his back to her, scanning the area of her tiny yard and the neighbors’ houses beyond. Snow blanketed the ground, muffling the sound of the few cars that passed down her quiet residential street.

“Come in,” she said as she opened the door, but he swept past her and into the entryway with a hand upheld to keep her in place. His right hand hovered over his pocket, and as his black ski jacket shifted she saw the gun holstered on his hip.

Somehow the sight of his weapon made the situation all the more real. She shuddered involuntarily.

She lingered in the doorway, trying to imagine what her house must look like to him. The creaking floorboards. The sagging window frame in the kitchen. The broken tiles in the bathroom. The mismatched, second-hand furniture. He must be taking in how small, how shabby it was, exactly the sort of ramshackle dwelling appropriate to the type of virtuously blue-collar yet ultimately anonymous woman whose photo might appear in a newspaper article about her violent, unprovoked death.

Those newspaper photos were always happy. Provided by the family postmortem, no doubt—little one-by-one-inch glimpses at a person’s whole life. She wondered if they would use the photo with the novelty check for her—but then clamped down hard on that line of thinking.

She may not be exceptional, but she wasn’t going down without a fight.

Eventually Bronnik returned and nodded for her to proceed inside the house. He cast a last glance over the front yard before shutting the door.

“The bedroom’s through here. I’ll just grab some clothes and be right out.” But he trailed her into the bedroom wordlessly and watched while she unearthed a duffel bag from the back of her closet.

She followed his gaze around the room, regretting every crumpled article of clothing strewn across the floor. She sighed inwardly. At least the rest of the house was tidy.

“What’s all this?” He gestured to the cluttered table that held her sewing machine and design projects in various stages of completion.

“Oh, sometimes I make clothes,” she said dismissively, as though it were a trivial hobby rather than the serious entrepreneurial ambition she’d been developing for some time. Thankfully the detailed business plans were tucked safely in the drawer, away from his restless, inquisitive gaze.

She tried to focus on the task at hand, to gather up any clothing and toiletry essentials she might need over the next few days. Thando was waiting for them at the hotel so she really shouldn’t dawdle, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate while Bronnik was in such close proximity. The room seemed smaller than ever with him in it, like he filled every spare inch of space.

Lacey waved toward the bed, which for once was free of laundry. “Have a seat. I won’t be long.”

He lowered himself onto the bed, a little stiffly, she noticed with curiosity. She felt better without him looming behind her and turned her attention to her drawers with a renewed sense of purpose.

His cell phone rang just as she began to line the bottom of the bag with a few pairs of jeans.

“Sorry,” he muttered from behind her, and answered the phone. “Hello?”

Lacey could just make out a tinny female voice on the other end of the line. He spoke in a language that was unfamiliar to her, although she could tell his replies were curt and a little impatient.

She moved to her vanity to gather up her cosmetic essentials, and as she swept them into a bag she paused to steal a glance at him in the mirror mounted over the table.

At least she had a good-looking bodyguard. He had close-cropped, wheat-colored hair, a high forehead and steely-blue eyes. The straight line of his nose had an almost imperceptible bump on the ridge, suggesting it had been broken, and a small scar cut through the stubble toward the back of his square jaw and trailed a short way down his neck.

The thought of a blade on his neck brought her present reality crashing back down around her. She was inching further out of the numb disbelief that had enveloped her like a blanket from the moment three policemen stormed into her place of employment. Her sense of imminent danger—and the accompanying fear and panic—became more palpable with every passing minute, threatening to consume her.

Lacey shook her head resolutely and zipped her makeup case shut, then threw it in her duffel bag.
Keep it together
.

Bronnik ended his call and shoved his phone back into his pocket. As she moved to her closet to grab some shoes, she glanced at him over her shoulder.

“What language was that? German?”

The ensuing pause made her wonder if what she’d thought was a perfectly reasonable question was perhaps the dumbest thing she’d ever said.

“Afrikaans.”

“Oh, okay. Is that what they speak in South Africa?”

“Some people do.” Now he sounded bored. She hustled to choose the last few articles of clothing with an exasperated sigh. It wasn’t like this was her idea of fun either.

After another minute she turned and hoisted her bag onto the bed where he sat. His expression was expectant, and she dropped to the floor, sliding her laptop out from under the bed. She followed its power cable to where it was plugged into the wall socket, and as she yanked it free and began to roll up the cord she asked, out of sheer boldness, “So was that your girlfriend?”

When she straightened, he was wearing a bemused half smile. Just that hint of warmth transformed his face from stony and intimidating to slightly boyish, and Lacey wondered what it was like when he grinned.

Probably as bright as a thousand-watt bulb.

“It was my sister.”

“What did she want?” She plunked the laptop in the bag and zipped it closed.

He shrugged as he rose from the bed. “She likes to check in on me. She’s very maternal. I thought when she had children of her own she might stop, but instead she’s gotten worse.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Ready?”

To leave her house for what could be the last time as she prepared to face down a serial killer with a perfect success rate? Sure. Absolutely raring to go.

She nodded and reached for the bag, but Bronnik took it first and threw it over his shoulder. When he looked at her again his face was all business.

“Back out the same way we came in. I’ll let you know when it’s okay to come through.”

She waited while he gave the house another once-over, and then she stood by the front door while he prowled all around the yard and the car. Finally he opened the passenger-side door and motioned for her to get in.

“Quickly.”

She darted across the lawn, her feet sinking into the snow. There was almost no traffic on the street now—everyone was holed up inside, waiting for the blizzard to run itself down. The silence that only a few hours earlier would have been cozy and comforting was now heavy with secret threats and hidden dangers, and she shuddered as she leapt into the car.

With a last glance up and down the road, Bronnik swung into the driver’s side, threw her bag into the backseat and started the engine.

Bronnik guided the car carefully over the snow-packed roads, stealing a glance at the clock on the dashboard. Thando should have had plenty of time to inspect the hotel by now. If there were any problems, he would’ve called.

He cast a quick look at Lacey. She was staring out the window, her chin on her hand.