Take a Risk (Risk #1) (17 page)

Her mind didn’t sway towards the sinister when she realised that Ruger’s scenario hadn’t occurred to her. ‘If that’s the case, how do you know I won’t snitch to the police?’

‘If you did, we’d know,’ Ruger said and nodded at his brother. ‘He knows every corrupt cop there is. We have a great alibi too. We could off you and then claim the crazy stalker did it. So I feel pretty confident that you’ll keep quiet.’

‘No one is offing anyone,’ Colt said. Though he was irritated at his brother, his words were meant to soothe her, but Lyssa was fascinated.

Taking hold of the two front seats, she pulled herself as far forward as she could go to peer at Ruger. ‘You’re an awful lot more than a pretty face, aren’t you, littlest Warner,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose I could tempt you onto my couch?’

‘He’s going nowhere near your couch,’ Colt said.

‘Everything would be completely confidential,’ she said to Ruger, paying Colt no heed. ‘You have seriously hidden depths.’

‘Much as that’s a great offer,’ Ruger said. ‘If we’re going to be sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner together I’d just as soon not have you know all of my innermost secrets.’

‘I’ll know Colt’s,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ Ruger said. ‘But you’ve already pointed out a great difference between your relationship with him and mine. So unless you’re willing to take our relationship up to the next level and offer the same perks to me—‘

‘Sex is a defence mechanism for you,’ she muttered, then turned to Colt. ‘Who was the last serious woman in his life?’

‘They broke up at the beginning of last year, a woman named Eva.’

‘Hey!’ Ruger chastised him but Colt just shrugged.

‘What? She sucks my dick.’

Colt got a weird pleasure out of reminding his brother of that, like there wasn’t a thing Ruger could do to prevent Colt from being honest because she had special access to him. ‘Sex makes you more open,’ she said to him and he didn’t like that.

‘Don’t talk about our sex life,’ Colt said to her.

‘Why not? You just did.’

‘You started it,’ he said. ‘You brought up the sucking thing outside.’

‘I think he knows that I do that for you.’

‘You said that professional and personal were separate.’

‘Yes, but if I can’t get Ruger onto my couch then all he and I have is personal,’ she said.

‘Fine, you can talk to him,’ Colt said.

‘No way,’ Ruger chimed in. ‘I don’t need a shrink picking my head apart.’

‘Is that what you think I’d do?’ she asked. ‘Do you think that talking to a professional somehow diminishes your masculinity?’

‘I haven’t forgiven you for the women’s clothing dig yet,’ Ruger said. ‘You’re already on thin ice, are you sure that you want to keep going?’

‘You’re getting frustrated,’ she said.

‘Which is unusual for him,’ Colt said. ‘He’s usually cool and collected. Maybe you’ve hit a nerve.’

‘It’s not his masculinity that’s threatened,’ she said, edging closer to examine her rear-angle view of Ruger’s profile. ‘He fears being exposed because he thinks that it will make him vulnerable. That’s why he’s always making jokes.’

‘Alright, alright,’ Ruger said. ‘You’re never cancelling patients again, you obviously need your daily hit of deconstructing some poor schmuck. Leave me out of that mumbo-jumbo.’

‘Are you mocking what I do?’ she asked. ‘Do you not believe in psychiatry?’

‘I believe in proctology, it doesn’t mean I’m rushing to make an appointment. You do what you do and I’ll do what I do.’

‘You’re using your skills to help me. Why shouldn’t I do the same in return? There would be no charge.’

‘Yeah,’ Colt said. ‘Consider this one on me. I’ll pay her for you.’

Colt wasn’t taking it seriously and that only riled Ruger more. But she had been serious. Every once in a while Ruger revealed a hint of what lay beneath his surface and she wondered if he needed more help than he’d ever let on. He wasn’t the type of man to reveal weakness.

Sliding back in her seat, she didn’t push the issue because she didn’t want it to become a joke. But she did vow to talk to Ruger again, when they were alone and she could perhaps get him to take her seriously.

‘If it’s something dangerous or volatile then I don’t want it in my house,’ she said, running up her front stoop with her keys in hand as the men came up behind her, carrying the bags they’d brought from Pinch’s.

‘He’s volatile and you let him into your bed,’ Ruger said, nodding at his brother.

‘He doesn’t have the potential to explode and kill me,’ she said, putting the key in the lock.

Ruger snorted. ‘No? Sure about that?’

‘You shut up,’ Colt said. Coming up behind her, he kissed her shoulder. ‘It’s nothing dangerous.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, acknowledging that he had been honest to alleviate her concerns, as opposed to Ruger who was contrary for the sake of it. Obviously her suggestion that he might need a bout on her couch had upset him more than she had realised. ‘You two wait here.’

‘Why?’ Ruger said.

Colt crowded in behind her, ignoring her request. ‘You don’t have to worry or go through your ritual when I’m here. Walk behind me.’

‘So that if someone starts shooting you get the bullet? No,’ she said, digging her shoulder into him to try and force him back when she tried to overtake him.

They struggled for first position until they were in the hall at the bottom of the stairs and their wrestling made them laugh. But Ruger had stopped just inside the front door. He dropped his bag onto the floor. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

Following his line of vision, she saw a thick white envelope that must have been pushed out of the way by the front door when she opened it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, going towards it.

‘Don’t touch it,’ Colt said. ‘We might be able to get prints from it.’

Ruger turned it over with his boot, but there was nothing written on the front, it was completely blank. ‘It’s from him,’ Ruger said like he just knew it.

The pressure building in her chest knew it too and without need to call on her professional training she recognised that her blood pressure was rising. ‘What do you think it is?’

Ruger reached into his jacket pocket and produced a pair of latex gloves, which he handed toward her. ‘Take a look.’

‘Who would be carrying around latex gloves?’ she asked, taking them from him. ‘I have gloves upstairs but I’m a doctor. What’s your excuse?’

‘I’m a germ freak,’ he said without expecting her to believe it because he said it with no conviction. ‘Are you going to look or not?’

Taking the gloves, she snapped them on and retrieved the envelope, which she took into her waiting room behind the office, because the office was locked. Sitting on the couch, she peeled open the self-adhesive envelope.

‘No DNA on the flap,’ Colt muttered. ‘But there could be fibres.’

Continuing on, she reached in to grasp a pile of documents but on pulling them out she saw that they weren’t documents at all, they were photographs – of her. All of them were black and white, but the implications of them didn’t fully sink in until she moved the top one aside and saw that the next one was of her, alone in her bedroom, getting changed.

She gasped and dropped the pictures, sending them cascading across the floor in a waterfall of violation from her lap to a well in the middle of the hardwood floor where their momentum stopped them.

‘Jesus,’ Ruger muttered.

Colt was bent over trying to scrape them together, using his jacket sleeves as protection and she saw flashes of the pictures. Her outside with Suzette, her on her back step holding flowers, and her in her house. There were pictures of her living room, her bedroom, of her cooking, and putting on make-up, mundane things as well as the more intimate ones.

Her hands went to her chest and she sought out Colt, but he was spreading the pictures he hadn’t gathered with his toe and Ruger was intent as Colt was.

‘Fuck,’ Colt said and his attention went to his brother. ‘Do you see this?’ 

Ruger nodded and Colt dropped the pictures. He didn’t drop them out of shock though; both men turned and ran out of the room. She didn’t see what they did, but dropped onto her knees to fumble through the pictures to try and seek it out. Flattening her hands on them and sweeping them out from her in an arch, then she saw it. Pictures of her in bed, with Colt, taken from inside the property.

Pouncing to her feet, she went after the men and heard them clattering around in her bedroom and then there was more cursing from Colt.

‘No!’ Ruger said.

Lyssa got into the bedroom just in time to see Ruger shove Colt back against the wall and grab something from his hand, something small and round.

‘What is that?’ she asked. The brothers turned, but she already knew the answer. ‘He’s been watching us, hasn’t he?’

‘The pervert has been watching from inside,’ Colt said, jostling Ruger away from him to approach her.

‘Watching us,’ she said. ‘Together. He’s been watching us having sex?’ Her voice cracked and she cleared it to try and maintain the façade of strength and she needed to get her through this. But Colt took hold of her shoulders and pulled her against him. His strength bled into her and she was so very grateful for him now.

‘This is something else,’ Ruger said. ‘He’s been inside. Who has been inside your home?’

‘Anyone can get in,’ Colt said, without releasing her from the hug. ‘The question isn’t who, it’s when.’

‘When?’ she asked, leaning back to look at him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We need to know if he broke in, or if he just walked in when you were in session. Did he do it when you were here? How long has he been watching for?’

‘What difference does that make?’ she asked. ‘He’s been watching us having sex.’

‘Filming it more likely,’ Ruger said, examining the device he had in his hand. ‘It’s a webcam, wireless, motion activated by the look of it. I think it has a remote charging device too, which is state-of-the-art. I can take this back to Pinch and see what he thinks. Maybe he can tell us where it came from or where it’s transmitting to.’

‘Get on it,’ Colt said and Ruger vanished from the room and, she presumed, out of the house. Colt stroked her face. ‘We have to look at the pictures and put them in order.’

‘In order?’

‘A timeline. We have to establish when the first one was taken and where he’s been.’

‘But if he’s had a camera in here then he didn’t need to be here.’

‘One of the pictures was taken outside Risqué,’ he said. ‘Did you see it?’ She shook her head. ‘It’s of you and Suzette talking. He was there, the night of the shooting, he was there.’

‘We have to tell the police,’ she exhaled.

‘We’ll call them, but they’ll want to know when the first picture is and the last one.’

‘But,’ she said and a bitter taste moistened her throat. ‘They’ll see us together.’

‘Yeah,’ Colt said.

He couldn’t be keen on the idea of the cops seeing them together in bed. Most of the guys at the station he knew, or had worked with, and sharing something like that of himself and of her, wouldn’t make him happy. But they couldn’t pick and choose. If this guy was killing people then they had to cooperate fully and modesty was the last thing they should be concerned with.

This man, the stalker, had been there at Risqué, the night of the shooting. Knowing that made it all the more likely that he had been involved in Bobby’s demise. What that meant was that in an inadvertent way that poor man, her patient, had died because of her, for her. Putting the situation in that perspective – that she was fighting for Bobby and not for herself – made it much easier and she squared her shoulders.

‘Come on then, she said. ‘We better get to work.’

They’d spent time putting the pictures in order, but had taken a brief break to bring the bags up the stairs and to the kitchen table. She just hadn’t been able to stomach the physical proof of this stalker’s intrusion anymore and Colt must have sensed her growing unease.

‘I can do the rest on my own,’ he said.

‘No, you can’t,’ she said. ‘You don’t know where I was at all times. I’m struggling to identify the times and places of some of the shots myself.’

‘The angles are strange and not what you’d expect from someone sitting in a car or standing on a street corner,’ he said as though it had been perplexing him.

‘What does that suggest to you?’

‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘It’s something, but I can’t put my finger on it.’

‘Chavez said he and Ronson would be over later?’

‘Yeah, I told them that we were going to work on putting them in order and that we were careful about disturbing prints.’

‘Do you think that we’ll get any?’

He shook his head. ‘I could give you platitudes,’ he said, pouring her a glass of water. ‘But he’s been so careful in every other way that I doubt he’d be so stupid as to leave such obvious evidence now.’

‘He might not be on the system. If he’s not on the system then being careful doesn’t matter.’

‘True. But why take the risk? We’ve got no idea how long he plans to keep doing this or what his plans for you are. He doesn’t want to link himself to anything. Keeping his identity a secret is paramount to him, which is unusual. Most stalkers want to make contact with their victims eventually though, so we just have to hope that he reveals himself soon.’

‘Before anyone else dies,’ she said. ‘We’re waiting for him, taking the chance that a madman will make a mistake?’

‘I know it’s not comforting, but it’s the way that most murderers are caught, by accident, like a routine traffic stop, or because they make a mistake.’

‘Not much of an advert for your old department?’

His smile was tight, but it was there. ‘I didn’t work homicide.’

Glancing at the bags, she wondered what was in them and with bated breath she speculated on whether Colt would open them and show her so she could see the fruits of their labour and figure out the reason for their mission to Pinch’s place. Ruger hadn’t been back in touch, but she had faith that in time, or if he had anything useful, he would call.

Before she had a chance to ask Colt about opening the bags there was a knock at the front door. It was the middle of the afternoon, sun was streaming in through her tall front windows, but the two of them tensed and looked at each other.

‘I’ll go,’ Colt said.

‘No, this is my house,’ Lyssa said, heading for the hall and the stairway down. Figuring that it was probably a patient who hadn’t got her message, or one who had but decided to come anyway, she was surprised to see Hoburn and his partner on her doorstep when she opened the door.

‘Doctor Cutler.’

‘Detective,’ she said. ‘Is something else that you need?’

‘We need to talk again,’ Hoburn said.

‘About what?’ Colt’s voice came from behind her, he stood halfway between her and the stairs. She opened the door a little further when she turned, and Hoburn caught sight of him.

‘Warner,’ Hoburn said. ‘I heard you were involved in this.’

‘And yet I never got your call.’

‘I think it would be clear that you’re the last man I’d be calling for help in an investigation.’

‘I’m wounded,’ Colt said without intonation.

‘What is it that we need to talk about?’ Lyssa asked. ‘Did you find out something about Bobby?’ She was about to say that they may have found something to aid their investigation but Hoburn spoke before she could.

‘We need to talk privately.’

‘I trust Colt,’ she said. ‘We can talk in front of him.’

‘No, we can’t,’ Hoburn said.

She didn’t like the accusation in his eyes, but she granted them entry and unlocked her office to let them in there. ‘What do you think is going on?’ she whispered to Colt when he came to her side.

‘I don’t know,’ Colt murmured, watching Hoburn and his partner sit on her patient couch through the door. ‘Hoburn hates me, but he’s good at his job, he knows what he’s doing.’

‘You’re telling me that I should trust him?’

‘I’m telling you that we’ve got a good chance of finding out who Bobby’s killer is with Hoburn on the case. That’s about all I can say.’

‘Ok,’ she said.

‘I’ll do my best with the pictures that are left,’ he said. ‘So I’ll be right next door in the waiting room.’

He kissed her and glared through her office door again. Hoburn and his partner had their backs to the door, so they missed Colt’s dirty look, but he bestowed it anyway, then he went into the waiting room to work. Lyssa cleared her throat and went in to join Hoburn.

‘Can I get you men something to drink?’ she asked, hoping that they would say no because she really wanted to know why they were here and didn’t want to deal with pleasantries.

‘No,’ Hoburn said. ‘We have some important questions and we’d like to get on with it.’

‘Ok,’ she said, taking her regular seat. ‘Carry on.’

As he had the last time, Hoburn took out his notebook. ‘How many of your patients are you having sex with?’

The shock of the question struck her dumb. She had hoped that they were going to ask her specifics that might give her clues as to their line of enquiry. ‘It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of sexual therapy that the therapists are intimate with their patients,’ she managed to say while maintaining her professional exterior, for which she was very proud of herself.