The Prey Read online

  “It’s fine,” she concurred. She started to open the package and Michael stopped her.

  “Let me.”

  Reluctantly, she put the package down and stepped back, balling her hands into fists. She hated being protected.

  She watched Michael’s hands cautiously work open the package, her heart beating fast, angry with herself that this delivery created an undercurrent of fear. The box inside the plain brown wrapping was white, a simple unmarked gift box the size of a videocassette. A single piece of tape sealed the edge. Michael broke it with his finger and pulled off the lid.

  Two bright red ribbons, tied in bows around locks of dark, curly hair. Human hair. As if two pigtails had been cut off, preserved by a loving mother after her daughter’s first big-girl haircut. Saved by a mother not wanting her little girl to grow up.

  Red ribbons, dark hair.

  No. No, not again.

  Dani.

  Tears silently streamed down Rowan’s cheeks as she stared at the open box in Michael’s hands. Deep sadness etched every crease of her face.

  “Rowan?” He put the box on the table and stepped toward her. “Rowan?” He put his finger under her chin, lifting her gaze to his.

  The raw pain in her face threw him for a loop. He had never seen such expressive eyes in his life, and they were filled with such agony.

  “What does this mean?” He peered carefully at the contents to make sure he wasn’t missing something. Dark hair tied in red ribbons. He put it down on the table, took her by the arms. She was shaking and he pulled her close. “Talk to me, Rowan. I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

  “Dani,” she croaked into his chest.

  “Who’s Danny?”

  She didn’t answer. Michael picked her up and carried her to the couch, where he held her in his lap and rocked her back and forth for several long minutes until her sobs turned to crying, her crying to whimpering, and then complete stillness. Somehow, the silence was the worst.

  She’d buried her face in his chest. Michael pushed her back. “Rowan, trust me. You have to trust me.”

  She looked into his eyes, searching for what? Honesty? Trust? He didn’t know. Her lips trembled, and he put a finger on their red fullness. “Trust me,” he whispered.

  She swallowed. “I—I—” She stopped, her voice hoarse.

  He kissed her lightly on the forehead. She needed him. This strong, independent woman needed him, and he was filled with intense longing and desire. Every protective instinct he had was focused on her, and he half fell in love right then.

  He pulled her tightly to him. “What? Tell me.”

  “I—I can’t.” Her voice came out a croak.

  He turned her face to his, searching her eyes, her mouth, the worry lines on her forehead. Her lips quivered. He desperately wanted to kiss her, to show her that he could protect her, that he would always be here for her.

  He couldn’t kiss her. She was too vulnerable, too needy. But damn, he wanted to taste those quivering red lips, soothe the pain on her face. If only she would let him in.

  She was out of his arms so fast he almost didn’t feel her push off of him. “Michael, this isn’t a good idea.”

  She had sensed their connection, too, and it gave him hope. Maybe—after all this was over—there was hope for them.

  “Rowan, I can wait.” Damn, that was hard to say. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted to be with her completely, entirely, right now. But he wasn’t going to make the same mistakes he’d made before.

  He swallowed and watched her face for some of the passion he hoped simmered under her skin. He didn’t see anything, but she was an expert at hiding her emotions. Surely she felt the tug at her heart as it—fate—tugged at his.

  Again, the doorbell rang.

  “Shit,” Michael muttered as he strode to the door.

  Rowan sighed in relief as she turned from Michael. She purposefully made her way to the dining room table. She liked Michael and was beginning to trust him—as a partner, not a lover. She wasn’t capable of giving any man more than sex. Long ago, her ex-boyfriend had told her she was ice cold.

  And she liked Michael too much to lead him into believing something about her that just wasn’t true. He’d proven to be competent, giving her both the space and support she needed.

  She picked up her coffee mug, averting her eyes from the box. Her hand shook. She willed for all of this to stop. She would not fall apart. Never again.

  She heard Quinn’s voice from the other room.

  “There’s been another murder. Where’s Rowan?”

  Rowan almost dropped the mug, then carefully placed it on the table before sinking into a chair. Closing her eyes, she swallowed hard. Another murder. The pigtails. She hadn’t written about any of her villains taking hair from a victim, but she knew this was related to her.

  He so desperately wanted to hurt her.

  “I don’t think—” Michael began. Rowan opened her eyes. Quinn stood at the edge of the dining room, a frown etched in his handsome face.

  Quinn’s partner, Agent Colleen Thorne, stood behind him. Rowan remembered Colleen from her days in the Bureau, a quiet, no-nonsense cop whom Rowan had respected, though never been close to. That wasn’t a surprise; Rowan hadn’t been friendly with most of her colleagues. It was easier to keep people at arm’s length than to develop attachments that could hurt.

  Colleen nodded her hello and Rowan returned the gesture, then turned to Quinn.

  “Who’d he kill?” she asked.

  “Divorced mother and two daughters,” Quinn said.

  “Portland. Harper. Crime of Clarity.” She closed her eyes, still seeing the pigtails in her mind. “Get an evidence bag.”

  “What’s going on?” Michael asked.

  “One of the victims was a five-year-old girl who appeared to have her hair cut. Brunette,” Quinn added.

  “Another copycat crime.”

  Quinn shook his head. “Yes and no. In the book, a family by the name of Harper was killed, a mother and her two teenage daughters. This is the same family name, one teenage daughter, but one five-year-old. In Rowan’s novel, no hair was missing from the murdered girl.”

  “But you’re sure this is the same person?” Rowan asked, even though there was no doubt in her mind.

  “Left your book at the scene,” Quinn said, his face grim. He sat down at the table across from Rowan. “The deviations from the story could be personal, perhaps his own sick fetish. Maybe he couldn’t find a Harper family in Portland that matched the description, so he compromised.”

  Quinn put on his own gloves and slid the box, wrapping, and hair into an evidence bag. He handed it to Colleen. He mumbled something to her that Rowan couldn’t hear, and Quinn’s partner left the room.

  Rowan’s book. Rowan’s fault. She closed her eyes and put her head in her hands, willing herself to keep it together. She knew the killer had intentionally deviated from the book because he knew about her past. And somehow she was sure he was going to kill her when he was done destroying her.

  Who was this bastard? Who knew about Dani? She didn’t believe in coincidences. He had to know about her little sister.

  But no one knew Dani had been murdered.

  Something clicked. What she’d been thinking about the Franklin murders the other night. That little girl was a brunette, too. It was seeing her butchered in her bed, with the dark pigtails, that had forced Rowan to turn in her shield.

  Another connection to Nashville. A typical murder-suicide? Maybe not. Maybe there was something more.

  “Quinn. This has to be connected to the Franklin murders. I talked to Roger about it. He said he’d get me the files.”

  “You didn’t work that case,” Quinn said, frowning. His eyes narrowed in that suspicious look he got when he interrogated someone.

  She resisted the urge to clam up. She hated having to bring up her weakness again to be examined for the world to see. “It was my last case. I did the initial walk-through
. Then I quit.”

  Both Michael and Quinn were silent, standing in front of her like questioning sentries, waiting for her to break. Maybe not. Maybe that was just her own fear. That she would break. Again.

  She forced herself to stand straight, keep her hands loose in front of her on the table. Avoided fidgeting with her coffee mug. She didn’t know if she had the strength to fight this unknown evil, but damn if she was going to show her weakness to the rest of the world.

  “We’ll get the hair down to the lab and process it to confirm that it’s from the victim,” Quinn said. “I’ve put a call in to Roger—he went to the scene—to find out what he thinks of the hair. This is the second time the killer has contacted you directly, Rowan. It’s coming to a head.”

  He was coming after her. She knew it. If the police or FBI didn’t catch him first, he would come after her. The weight of the Franklin murders rested heavily on her heart. If she hadn’t quit the Bureau four years ago, would something have changed? If she had ridden the case out like the good law enforcement soldier she’d been trained to be, putting all her personal baggage aside, would there have been a different outcome? She didn’t know, and not knowing added to the weight on her already heavy conscience.

  So much death in her life. Maybe her own death would finally set her free.

  “There will be one more,” Rowan said, her voice cracking. The killer had picked one murder from each of her three books. Were they random? Or did they hold special significance for the killer? She cleared her throat. “Crime of Corruption. There were seven murders in that book. Can you do anything to get the word out? There are seven women in jeopardy.” She picked up her coffee and sipped. It was cold, but she needed something to do with her hands.

  “We’re on it,” Quinn said. “The D.C. police are on alert. The press is eating this up and already printed the names of the women killed in your book. I’ll bet you’re selling out in all the bookstores.” He began to smile, then realized he’d put his foot in his mouth. “I’m sorry, Rowan, I didn’t mean—”

  Rowan slammed her coffee mug so hard on the table it cracked. The rage she’d focused inside, on the unknown killer, she now turned on Quinn. How could he even say it? As if she hadn’t thought it herself. As if she were not physically ill over the desperately unwanted publicity. This killer had stolen the one cathartic joy she had in her life: writing, penning novels where good always triumphed over evil. She didn’t know if she would ever write another word.

  “How dare you! It’s blood money. I will have no part in it!” She pushed her chair back and stormed past Michael, down the hall to her den.

  The door slamming sounded final.

  “Aw, shit.” Quinn ran a hand through his hair. “I should apologize.”

  “Why don’t you give her some time?” Michael said. Damn if he was going to let Quinn anywhere near Rowan. They obviously had a past.

  Quinn looked Michael up and down. “Mr. Flynn, Rowan and I have been colleagues and friends for a long time,” he said. “I’m going to talk to her.”

  Michael blocked Quinn’s path. “Give her time,” he repeated. They were the same height, but Michael had at least fifteen pounds on Quinn, all of it muscle.

  They stared at each other for a full minute, Michael firm in his resolve to refuse Quinn access to Rowan; Quinn weighing the pros and cons of confronting the bodyguard.

  Quinn broke the silence. “I’ll give Rowan tonight, but she needs to come down to FBI headquarters tomorrow to review some of her old cases.”

  “She’s been doing that here,” Michael said.

  “We’ve pulled out a few that merit further attention. Her insight and familiarity with these crimes is important.”

  “I’ll bring her over.”

  “Thanks,” Quinn said as he opened the front door. “I appreciate it.”

  Rowan listened to the front door shut, relieved that Quinn was gone. He was a good agent, but dammit, she thought he knew her better. Money. She didn’t care about the money. She wrote because she had to, a purging of the pain she’d kept locked up for so many years. In her books, justice always won. In her fantasy world, the villains always died. Victims were avenged, good persevered over evil.

  But in the real world, none of that was true. Sometimes victims received justice. Sometimes villains were punished. Sometimes good defeated evil.

  But just as often, evil won.

  She heard footsteps approach the door and stop. She didn’t want to talk to Michael. He meant well, but he couldn’t possibly understand. Fortunately, he continued on, his steps fading away on the tiled floor.

  She released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and eyed the gun in her hand. All her pain could disappear now with one well-placed bullet.

  She was a coward. She couldn’t take her own life. She only hoped the bastard came after her before anyone else died.

  Assistant Director Roger Collins had taken the earliest flight to Portland to see the latest crime scene of the “Copycat Killer”—the name the media had attached to America’s newest serial killer. Three hours later he was heading east again, but not for Dulles.

  “What’s the ETA to Logan?” he asked a passing flight attendant.

  “We expect to land at 4:10 P.M. Eastern time.”

  Taking out his wallet, he extracted a card from underneath his driver’s license. He stared at it for a long time before pulling out the phone from the back of the seat in front of him, typing in his credit card information, and dialing the number. He identified himself, then asked to speak to the director.

  “Roger.”

  Dr. Milton Christopher’s voice was deep and gravelly, and hadn’t changed in the twenty-some years Roger had known him.

  “Milt, wish I were calling to chat.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m on a flight to Boston right now and need to see MacIntosh.”

  There was a long pause. “There’s been no change.”

  “I know, but I need to see him. It’ll be after visiting hours.”

  “Does this have something to do with that serial killer on the West Coast?”

  It was Roger’s turn to pause. “Could be.”

  The doctor sighed. “I’ll be here.”

  “Thanks.”

  Roger hung up and looked out the window. He had one more call to make. He dialed the number.

  “Shreveport Penitentiary.”

  “I need to speak to the warden about an inmate.”

  When Roger parked his rental sedan in front of Bellevue Hospital for the Criminally Insane, he’d just gotten off the phone with the Texas Prison Authority. He glanced in the rearview mirror and wasn’t surprised to see dark circles under his eyes. The gray hair Gracie always called “distinguished” today made him look older than his fifty-nine years.

  Heads were going to roll for transferring that spawn of Satan without informing him. But after four and a half hours of calls, transfers, and threats, Roger had found out where he was and spoken to the warden of Beaumont, a high-security federal prison in Texas. Warden James Cullen had answers to all his questions and was overnighting a copy of all pertinent records.

  Roger was getting out of the car at Bellevue when his cell rang. He almost didn’t answer it; it was well after six and he didn’t want Milt to wait much longer. But he glanced at the number anyway and immediately recognized it as Rowan’s.

  His gut clenched, knowing if the truth ever came out she’d never forgive him. The fact that everything he did was to protect her wouldn’t help his case.

  “Collins,” he answered.

  “Did Quinn talk to you today?”

  “Yes.” That was the reason he was in Boston, but he couldn’t tell her that.

  “You have protection for Peter, right? If he knows about Dani, he might know about—”

  “Peter’s safe, Rowan.”

  “I’ll hire a guard if I have to. If money’s a problem, I have plenty.”

  “It’s already done.”r />
  “Thanks.” She paused, and Roger felt the urge to tell her everything.

  He didn’t. “Anything else?”

  “No, nothing.”

  She sounded defeated. He wished he could be there for her, be the father she needed but had never had. Even when she’d lived with him and Gracie, he’d worked twelve, fourteen-hour days. Especially in the beginning, when she’d needed him the most.

  “We’re going to catch this asshole.”

  “I know.” She didn’t sound like she believed it. “Goodbye.”

  “Wait—” But she’d already hung up.

  He snapped the phone closed and hit the roof of his car with his fist. Damn, damn, damn!

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  Roger swung around. Milt Christopher had gotten the drop on him. He really was too tired to be effective. He shook his head. “Just show me MacIntosh.”

  They walked in silence through the grounds. The wide, lush lawns were supposed to calm the insanity that lurked within the walls.

  Milt used his security pass to open a door at the far end of the courtyard. Both he and Roger had to sign in with the guard, and then they proceeded down a wide, white hallway, through two more secure doors, until they reached the entrance to Robert MacIntosh’s room.

  “Are you sure you don’t trust me on this?”

  “I trust you, Milt, but I have to see him myself.”

  Milt nodded, then unlocked the door with a key.

  Robert MacIntosh sat in a chair facing a wide, barred window that looked out at the courtyard they had just walked through. It was nearly dark, but by the vacant look in his blue eyes, Roger didn’t think MacIntosh knew or cared. He pulled a chair in front of MacIntosh and stared at him, wanting to see something, anything other than the vacuous expression he remembered.

  Roger didn’t believe most people were insane when they committed heinous crimes; by all public accounts Robert MacIntosh had been normal twenty-three years ago. What had caused him to break? What had severed the thin thread of sanity? Had he been insane when he killed his wife, or had her brutal murder emptied his mind to join his hollow soul?