Authors: Lynde Lakes
“Is that one of those understated FBI apologies?”
He was pressing, but she wouldn’t let him goad her into more harsh words.
“Just think over every sentence before it goes to print. Don’t give that maniac any breaks. Please, for all the potential Charmaines out there. For Tess.”
He looked at her levelly. “Your confidence and trust was short-lived, Jill.” He narrowed his eyes. “Or was that all a bunch of crap?”
She wanted to stay and thrash this out, but she was bone tired and afraid she’d make things worse. “Get some rest,” she said evenly. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Then we’re still in this together?” His voice lost some of its edge.
“Nothing has changed.” She wished that were true. Everything had changed, beginning with the tumultuous emotions he’d set off earlier with his kiss. Was it disinterest, or thoughts of his family that caused him to break it off? Whatever reason, it was for the best. She had to concentrate on the case. And she had to be there when he picked up the package from Charmaine. She’d learned long ago not to burn her bridges completely—he was still useful. If she hadn’t started to care for him, it would have been easier to convince herself he was only a means to an end. Jill started her car and pulled slowly out of the parking lot.
****
Dane followed Jill to her home and waited until he saw her living room lights come on. He was so damned angry, at her, at himself, at the whole situation.
He’d felt guilty about the kiss. He was still in mourning, for God’s sake
.
The way he felt now, perhaps he would be for the rest of his life. He loved Laura and Davy. Always would. But his love hadn’t protected them.
He would never let himself love again.
But he wanted Jill.
You’re going to make a fool of yourself, Dane
. Falling for an FBI psychologist spells sure disaster. He resented her getting under his skin, resented her job, resented that she was good at it. Get into the eighties, he chided himself.
But dammit, Jill was thoroughly exasperating. Still, she was the most exciting and self-confident woman he’d ever met. And under her conservative suits and understated make-up was a vulnerable, fiery, sexy woman. Just the same, it would be insanity to get involved with someone who had a tougher, more demanding job than his own. He pitied anyone married to a reporter, and commiserated even more with anyone married to an FBI psychologist. Marriages like that could never be conventional. And why get married, if it didn’t include the whole package, wife, kids, home? But he’d had all that once and lost it.
He’d started something tonight with Jill that was impossible. Physically, he could love a woman. He’d be hard, throbbing and ready, then the image would stop him:
Blood had splattered in a mural of red horror on the gray walls. Laura and Davy were lying on the concrete floor, gunned down. Cold. Dead.
Weeping silent tears, he’d gathered them in his arms. The bitter, metallic taste of his sorrow burned like acid in his throat. His body was hot with rage. He knew who had done this.
His family had been taken from him because of one of his stories. And the FBI could’ve prevented it. They had the evidence to lock the killer away, but had delayed acting on it. Until Jill, he’d hated them all for their incompetence.
He couldn’t deny his own guilt. That day long ago, he’d believed he was so clever arriving at the lighthouse first before the cops, Feds, or medics. He planned to get the story from the beginning, snap his pictures before they could keep anything from him, before they could make him back off. He had good people looking out for him, tipping him at the first blush of trouble. He paid them well, and they kept him at the top of his field. The image gripped him again:
As the lighthouse keeper led him to the bodies, he heard waves smashing against the rocky cliffs and the mournful cry of the gulls. The foreboding sounds and eerie feel of the salt air didn’t prepare him for the horror. He stopped.
No! It was his own voice he heard moaning like a wounded bull. How small and fragile his son—how still his wife. Never had he felt such cold before. It was as though the blood in his body had turned to flowing chips of ice.
Sounds came to him in disconnected bits: A distant horn of a boat. Wind. Gulls. Sirens. Feet of paramedics running on concrete.
Someone pulled sheets over the faces of his wife, his son.
His life as he knew it was over.
He’d wanted to be left alone to lick his raw wounds. He was still licking them. Forever, he would see that macabre scene. He vowed to never forget his wife or son, never to stop loving them.
He couldn’t go through a loss like that again. But he hated letting Jill go. She was everything he wanted.
He’d done the domestic thing, maybe trying something unconventional this time would work. No, he couldn’t risk it. Even as he thought that, he was counting the moments until he would see Jill again. In spite of his arguments against it, all he wanted was to love her.
Under her FBI facade was a core of sweetness and vulnerability that brought out his protective side. It was good to have that feeling again.
He remembered the innocence in her sparkling blue eyes just before he kissed her, then her hot response. It was more than he could have hoped for. Still he was afraid to get in any deeper. Once he stepped over that invisible line, it would be impossible to end it. Yet, if he closed off his emotions and allowed her to walk out of his life, he would lose her as surely as if something had happened to her. She’d fought their involvement as hard as he had. But his heart told him it was already too late. Right or wrong, win or lose, they were involved.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jill arrived at her office earlier than usual and immediately checked with the Missing Persons Bureau to see if anything had turned up on Tess. Nothing. Hands clasped, prayer-like, she began to pace the floor. It was as though her younger sister had been swallowed by the earth. No one had seen or heard from her for two days. Although she was impulsive, it wasn’t like Tess to go off without telling someone her plans. And it wasn’t like her to miss classes. The bait that lured her away must’ve been something she wanted very much.
The killer claimed to have Tess. It was a claim she had to take seriously. Yet without proof of foul play, and because her sister had packed a bag and left on her own, she couldn’t direct a full scale FBI search. She’d already commandeered as much help as she could justify. Gary, Ray and a few other close coworkers had already stuck their necks out for her.
She dropped to her chair, and buried her head in her hands. She needed leads. Now.
It was time to bring in a private investigator to find Tess. Hash Kilmier’s name came to mind. He was a former heavyweight boxer with connections that reached into the bowels of the underworld. Hash could do things she couldn’t authorize. He’d been a lifesaver on several other cases.
She dialed his number with steady hands. While waiting for the P.I. to come on the line, Jill shifted in her chair to release the rising tension in her shoulder blades. Hash was always in demand. Would he fit her in?
When he answered, she explained the problem. And the urgency. Jill sighed in relief when he gruffly agreed to get right on it. She immediately faxed pictures and a file with information about her sister. With that done, she moved on to her next task.
She added Charmaine’s funeral to her list of places to be covered by her field agents. She’d learned by studying and questioning death row inmates that serial killers frequently attended their victims’ funerals, even video taped them. It wasn’t guilt that drew them there, as psychologists had formerly believed, but their desire to relive the experience. That was why she’d ordered an around-the-clock stake out on the video studio. She would get this psycho, and she had to do it be before he struck again.
Jill glanced at her watch. Why hadn’t Dane called? The post office would be open soon. She had to be there when he opened the package.
Armed with a cup of strong coffee, she dialed his number.
Gary came through the doorway and slapped a newspaper onto her desk. Startled and annoyed, she hung up the phone without completing her call. “What’s bugging you?”
“See the morning
Chronicle?
The chief wants to talk to you after you’ve read it.”
Jill quickly scanned the headlines, then the column circled in red. The report was critical of the FBI for not staking out the university. She frowned. But there’d been no reason to stake it out until last night. What was going on? She read on, her face growing hot. The story gave away critical information about the purse, the placement of the body and the anonymous call. Dane had given the killer confidential and privileged information. He’d betrayed her. And he’d put Tess in greater jeopardy.
“Don’t worry. I’ll erase his ink for good.”
But not until the journal is in my hands
, she thought.
“Then do it.” Ray pounded his desk. “Today. He’s damaged the investigation. And the FBI doesn’t need this kind of publicity.”
****
Now what was she going to do?
Jill stared at the newspaper on her desk. Suddenly losing her hold on a rising fury, she grabbed a pencil from a leather holder and stabbed it into the front page, breaking the lead. Damn Dane. Damn him. She hated him for putting her sister in greater danger, for putting every potential victim in more danger. And she hated him for putting her in this tricky situation—ordered to stay away from him, yet needing to see him one more time.
She rolled the pencil with the broken lead between her palms. Ray was right, Dane had to be cut from the game, but first she had to get her hands on Charmaine’s parcel. It would take too long to arrange to intercept the package without the claim slip. She had to be at the post office when he arrived.
Jill frowned. Because of Dane, she was stabbing newspapers, breaking pencils and thinking of mayhem. It burned her that this man could reduce her to such childish behavior and thoughts. She snapped the pencil in half. Opening her fingers, she dropped it into the wastebasket.
Stuffing the newspaper into her over-sized purse, Jill grabbed her jacket, and ran out the door toward the car. The main post office was less than a dozen blocks away.
Dane’s red Porsche was parked in front. She skidded into the space next to his car and hurried inside.
There he was, fourth in line. It was impossible to miss his tall, broad-shouldered frame. Her heart thudded against her chest. She paused in the doorway. Unwillingly, she recalled his kiss from the night before, imagining his brand still on her lips, burning, possessing.
“What’s up, frosty rose?” he asked. “Your smile doesn’t quite jibe with those combative blue eyes. Is your nose out of joint over something special, or did you just get up on the wrong side of the bed?”
After what he’d written, she couldn’t believe he could ask that with a straight face. The man had absolutely no conscience. Perhaps he even knew more about Tess than he was telling. Maybe he was a part of the snuff gang. Whoa, girl...anger was sending her off the deep end. She inhaled deeply. She had to keep her mouth shut about the news story until she had the package in her hands.
“It
is
the journal.” The rectangular shape of the package made her sure of it.
“Very likely,” Dane agreed.
He stepped to a side counter. With a jerk, he snapped the heavy cord from the wrapping, and began ripping the brown paper from the package. Jill stood close, her heart thumping. Their gazes met—their anticipation mingled, heightened. Jill became acutely aware of his body heat, his tensed muscles.
We’re enemies
, she reminded herself.
His expression hardened. He tucked the journal inside his leather jacket and zipped it up. “Get your court order,” he said, whisking her outside. “I can make a hundred copies by then.”