Icy fear touched her abruptly at the flash of anger in his tone. "Mac, you aren't...I'm the only Dom you're involved with right now."
"I told you, I don't--"
"I wasn't questioning your fidelity. I meant for your job." She came to him. With him sitting, she had a slight height advantage to stare hard into his face, try to impose her will on him through sheer determination. "Your undercover work."
"Yes, right now. There hasn't been a need to branch out, because I felt hooking up with a well-connected Dom in the scene would be enough, and I've been just trawling through on my off nights, watching the rooms and the action, trying to make connections. And see some connection I've missed," he added quickly, at her narrowed eyes.
"You won't go there alone anymore."
"Violet," he scraped back the chair, stood. "This is my job."
"And it's your ass you're carrying around, and it belongs to me."
She was riding on fear, because she could see clearly what he did not seem to. No safe words, no boundaries.
Silver eyes could become steel very quickly, she found, and she remembered the expression on his face when he had wanted to go after Jonathan, that first night. And the picture in the paper. The unbridled fury wasn't there, but the icy edge of danger was.
"Careful, sugar. There's a big difference between a sexual submissive and a lap dog. I don't take orders from anyone but the sergeant when it comes to my job."
"No," she shook her head, staving off his annoyed response. "She knows what she's doing, and as a sub, you could be vulnerable to that."
"Violet, I've been on the force for twenty years--"
"But you're too close to it--"
"And I'm with you," he finished, startling her into silence with the forceful statement. "I'm with you," he said, more softly, touching her face.
"I know," she put her forehead on his chest, closed her eyes, listened to his heartbeat. "I had to try. I care about you, Mac. I care a lot. Let me help you."
"You are."
"Why are you the undercover person for this? They don't usually put in an established detective. You'd be too easily made."
"Because it's plausible that a cop who is really a sexual submissive would choose to indulge it in a heavy security place like The Zone."
"Then why is your sergeant letting you be in there without back up?" She said, frustrated. "This isn't my area of expertise, but shouldn't somebody be watching your back?"
"Somebody is," he said. "She just wasn't aware of it until this moment."
"Not if you're going in there when I'm not around," she said, not mollified. "Don't try charm, Mackenzie. It will only piss me off more."
Patiently he explained the call-in contact arrangement he had with Darla. Violet's eyes widened as he briefly touched on their conversation.
"You told your boss." She shook her head. "I knew you had impressive balls, but they're even larger than they look."
"It wasn't easy," he shifted, obviously uncomfortable with the flattery. "It just had to be done."
She nodded. "I get that. So you're going to do two things for me."
"What?" he asked warily.
She went to her phone table, came back with another card like she'd given him, scrawled her cell phone, pager and home phone on the back. "You give that to your sergeant. Tell her I'll be the inside person watching your back."
"Violet, that means she'll know. I don't want to risk you or your reputation in your department. It was hard enough for me to do it. You know cops work on the streets, close to the hookers and peep shows, and they don't see a big difference between what we do and the criminal side of it."
"You trusted your sergeant enough to tell her. Now I will, too. We both want the same thing. You, alive. If you trust her, I trust her." She held his gaze. "I won't crowd you, I'll defer to your experience, but I won't let you be in there unprotected. This is a smart, smart Dom, Mac. If she figures out you're there for her, I'm willing to bet she won't run. She'll want to stand and fight. And because she's a woman, she'll fight dirty. She'll try to take you down when you're not looking."
"I'm hoping not. I'd like the chance to take her down."
"Then we can do it together. Though I expect to get my department a stroke if I'm right about the gym bag."
"A full month's worth of Krispy Kremes, I promise."
"Arrogant creep," she retorted, but some of the stress eased out of her as he raised his hand, threaded it through her hair and stroked.
"What was the second thing?"
"What--oh." Her eyes crinkled. "You ever call another woman 'sugar' again, other than me, and you won't sit down for a week."
He grinned, the tension leaving his shoulders as well. "Yes, Mistress."
Chapter 17
Mac swore, viciously, as he knelt over the body.
Suarez stared down at the victim. "Might as well get a cookie cutter, the way she picks out exactly the same type of guy."
"Yeah." Only Edward Turner hadn't been a cookie cutout to his family, Mac thought.
"She moved on this one fast," Suarez observed. "They must have broken through that trust barrier fast."
It could happen that way. It was something about which Mac couldn't have claimed firsthand knowledge only a handspan of days before. But he knew he would trust Violet with his life.
"Which may mean they had a prior association, or a mutual friend. Someone will remember her. She's getting bloodthirsty, and that means she's getting careless. Or she's playing more than one at a time."
"She's also getting bolder." Consuela squatted next to him. "She wanted to see the parent arrive on the scene this time. Body was still warm when we got here."
"You seal off the block?"
"Instantly, but you know she's too smart for that. We're doing a door to door, but my guess and my gut tell me she slipped right between arrivals. Laughing her ass off, probably." She made a disgusted face.
"No, not laughing." Mac studied the body, his eyes marking every detail, evaluating its significance or lack of import to the crime. "This one snapped quickly. I think she's been carrying around her psychosis for quite a while. But something happened a couple months ago that manifested it. Suddenly, it was all clear to her. She could ease the ache with the kill. And now she's like a junkie needing the fix, it's rushing up so hard and fast in her. She's got a lifetime of pain to get rid of. Killing them wasn't enough. Seeing the parent find him tonight, she thought that might help, but it won't. She was in the house when he was discovered, I'd bet on it. Probably left out a back door while they were still standing over him in shock. She's going to keep varying her MO until she figures out what works for her, and nothing's going to work. She's starting not to care about being smart. Getting rid of the pain is what matters.
"Turner's on The Zone member list." Connie noted. "She's sticking to that, at least."
Suarez shook his head, looked like he would have spit if they hadn't been where they were. "She's got a pool to choose from. Seems like there's a rash of guys lining up to have a woman beat on them these days. Got dealers in school yards handing out coke patches to six-year-olds, and we're having to waste time with this freak who was begging to get iced."
Mac used his pen to lift the chin of Edward Turner, looked into the lifeless gray eyes. "Suarez, that was your daughter that came through the station the other day, wasn't it? The Britney Spears wannabe in hip huggers and crop top?"
"Yeah. She's into that stuff now. You know how teenagers are. Smart about some things, but hormones get in the way of good sense."
Mac nodded. "Even so, I guess if someone jumped her on the way home, raped her and left her dead in a ditch, we'd probably bend over her and say the same thing. I mean, with that outfit, she's got to be asking for it, a twelve-year-old dressed up in an outfit a hooker'd blush to wear?"
"Crime scene," Consuela snapped as Suarez surged forward a step, into her slapped palm. "Crime scene," she repeated. "Don't do this, guys."
"Look around
the room, Suarez," Mac said, his voice deadly and low. "What is it that says freak to you? The picture of his family on the dresser? The TV Guide with his favorite sports shows circled? The suit he'd laid out in the bathroom to wear to work tomorrow?
"Did you notice the display cabinet in the front hallway? This guy was the United Way fundraiser chair at his office, raised fucking fifty thousand this year. In the laundry room there's a dry-cleaned and wrapped set of suits he was planning to have the men's shelter pick up to help some down-on-their-luck guys get jobs." Mac's voice was raised now, and he was vaguely aware of the uniforms just outside the door, frozen in shock at the outburst, but there was something boiling inside him, a fire he had to unleash or it would consume him.
"But you know what? That doesn't matter. Even if he'd been a selfish yuppie prick who'd made less of a mark on the world than a twelve-year-old not old enough to make her mark on anything yet except her daddy's heart, he'd deserve our help. Less than twelve hours ago, someone stood in this room and played God. I don't need a repeat performance from an asshole like you. Get out of my crime scene and go find another one that you feel deserves your special touch more."
"C'mon, Suarez." Consuela tugged on his arm, giving Mac a quelling look. "Let's take it outside. Walk it off."
It took a full moment for him to recall himself, take a deep breath, realize with grim amusement that the cops on the scene were tiptoeing around outside the door, unsettled by the outburst from their usually stoic Oak.
Tensions were high. This many murders in such a short time frame meant a lot of pressure on the squad to solve it, and Mac could feel it, see it in the face of every uniform present. He felt it crawling in his own gut as he stared down at another dead kid. He'd spent the past two days at The Zone without Violet, risking the wrath of his pixie, but she was on a twelve-hour shift for the next several days and he wasn't going to wear her out. He'd turned down several offers to play, evaluating those who offered and knowing they weren't whom he sought, knowing he was out of the age range anyway. Three FemDoms had brought in twenty-somethings, and he'd had them tailed, but he suspected Violet was right, that whoever their killer was kept them away from The Zone, so the connection was never made. So he watched the FemDoms that trawled, or sat in the shadows watching, and came up with nothing.
"The neighbor remembers a gray Grand Am in the driveway." Consuela had returned. "Lost plate tag. My guess is we'll get a stolen vehicle report later from one of the downtown neighborhoods, find it stripped and the inside trashed, just like the last two times. I've also got some info on the gym connection, a list for you down at the station, if you think you can pull that railroad tie out of your ass long enough to listen to another cop."
"Don't start, Connie. He was out of line."
"Suarez'll do his best on this case, like he does all of them. We're all frustrated, Mac. He was just blowing it off. He didn't want this kid to die. I don't understand this lifestyle choice anymore than he does. Most people don't. It doesn't mean we won't do our jobs."
"I know." Mac ran a hand over his face, the back of his neck. "I'll say I'm sorry. Even buy his daughter the latest Britney CD."
"Well, let's not go crazy." Consuela allowed him a small smile, her sharp eyes studying him. "You may need a vacation after this one yourself. That wasn't like you, you know. You're looking a little ragged around the edges."
"He's looking worse." He nodded at Edward Turner. "Are the parents still here?"
"The father. Mother died when Turner was in his teens. The dad is with the victim's sister, in the next door neighbor's kitchen."
Ten or fifteen minutes of wading through the initial flurry of questions and confused anger of the father, patiently probing through that for anything that might have unconsciously been knowledge of his son's killer, resulted in very little. Just like the two victims before him, Turner had kept this an aspect of his life his family never suspected existed.
"Why...what kind of person...she didn't just kill him, she humiliated him." Mr. Turner was a spare man, tall and lean. Mac suspected his leanness came not from an ascetic appetite, but as a permanent physical brand left from the death of his wife. He'd seen enough death and the way it affected those left behind to know some always carried it visibly, either through irreparable stress lines around their eyes, a nervous twitch, or a gauntness like this man had. His son had been a strapping kid with wide shoulders, and he didn't think Edward had gotten that from his mother.
Mac nodded. "Mr. Turner, I need you to think carefully about any friends your son has, and give that contact information to the officer I'll leave you with when you and I are done talking. That includes any names he might have just mentioned in passing, his regular hangouts, that type of thing. Any very close friends of his will be important, any confidantes to whom he might have told something about more private details of his sexual life."
"You think...someone he knew did this? That wasn't Edward in there. He wasn't...like that."
This was the hard part, and Mac kept his eyes steady, his voice calm. "If it fits with the pattern of the two prior murders we're investigating, he would have been having a relationship with this woman. It's not likely he would have brought her to meet you, even mentioned her. Your son was a sexual submissive, a very discreet one."
Mr. Turner flushed red. "That's a lie."
"I have no reason to lie to you, sir. He had an active membership at several fetish clubs in Tampa, high-priced, very discreet. He was very careful not to mix this part of his life with the rest of it, to protect his family and career, I'm sure, but I'm thinking there might have been someone to whom he told--"
Mac had lost him, he could tell from the panicked movement of Mr. Turner's eyes, as a vicious flood of possibilities scattered like bowling pins what little composure the man had been able to collect.
He had to shatter their fragile illusion that the submissive posture and props were the act of only one mind. It was the worst aspect of this case, but it had to be done, to be sure his murderess had not been a peripheral part of Edward Turner's life that had come in contact with the family. The sister sat pale and silent, her hand on her father's arm, that touch staying with him even as he jerked with impatient, grief-ravaged movements. She was so still that Mac was afraid she might be in shock, and made a mental note to have the EMTs look at her as soon as he and Mr. Turner were done.
"You aren't going to rub that filthy accusation all over my son's name. My lawyer--"
"Mr. Turner." Mac deliberately lowered his voice, made sure the man met his gaze, saw the patience and understanding, the lack of threat. "No one is accusing your son of anything. He's the victim, a very good man, his life taken away long before it should have happened. We're trying to find and stop his killer."
"But he didn't ask for this."
"No more than any man who takes a lover home to his bed does," Mac agreed. "Mr. Turner, I know this is very difficult, but your understanding of your son's lifestyle may make you remember things that can help us."
"Lifestyle." Turner surged up from his chair, knocking it over. The sister flinched, but her fingers had curled into his sweater sleeve and clung to her father's arm, even as his movements half-yanked her out of the chair. "My son was not some twisted weak pervert who liked having a woman...beat on him. He was a junior varsity quarterback, and a wrestler. He took care of his sister for four years when my wife died and I had to work two shifts, put off college when he was an honor student with scholarships to go anywhere he wanted to go." The man had tears running down his face now and Mac was sure he wasn't aware of it. "Saved her from a mugger one night, when there were no cops to be found. Knocked the bastard's lights out. He wasn't weak."
"No, he wasn't," Mac ignored the lead weight that had settled in his stomach, effectively compressing all his vital organs. "He was a conscientious man who lived a good life and kept his sexual preferences in the bedroom, a place he thought was safe."
"You're supposed to help. I'm calling my attorne
y, and if one word of this preposterous story gets out, I swear to God --"
"You do what you have to do, Mr. Turner," Mac took out a card, laid it on the table. "But remember I'm out there looking for the killer, before she does it to somebody else's son. If you think of something, you call me."
After the shocked numbness and the furious denials died away, if the man loved his son, Mac knew he would think it through, try to skirt around the edge of what he couldn't accept to find a killer's footsteps.
The man swept up the card, flung it at Mac's face. It was a distraction that he should have seen coming. Turner's knuckles slammed into his jaw, and then Mac was trying to fend off the man, trying not to strike back and cause him more pain. Several uniforms came to assist, along with the police counselor. The sister sat at the table, her head bowed, her chin pressed to her chest, her shoulders shaking with a grief hard enough to shatter. Mac stood back from the uniforms trying to calm Turner down. As if Turner's sister was on a separate stage, he watched her fight the pain that, up until this moment, could have been assuaged in the arms of her father or brother.
Every sub thought of this scenario, or something like it. That's why most never took the play outside of a club, not ever. To have one's sexual preference exposed, one that ninety-five percent of the world considered deviant, to embarrass one's family, a spouse...it was unthinkable.
But when it was a part of a person that couldn't be denied, it manifested itself one way or another. For most of them, the desire eventually overrode caution. Like most, Mac just hoped never to do anything stupid enough to have something like this happen. But Edward Turner had not been a stupid man.
The police counselor gestured, the subtle movement clear. Mac left the room, knowing his value to the family lay elsewhere, out of their sight. Even if he caught the killer, delivered her head to Mr. Turner and his daughter, they would never welcome the sight of him again, a man associated not just with their son's death, but a truth they never wanted to know.