Jillian stepped away from her date and walked in the opposite direction toward her black Eclipse. The smile clinging to her lips indicated she found the poor kiss satisfactory. David thought it a sad thing for Jillian to settle for less than perfection in a kiss.
For a moment, he considered Jillian unworthy of his work. It wasn’t the first time he’d had doubts about her. Over the past several days, she had exhibited many undesirable traits.
But as soon as he came in contact with Jillian, he recognized her as a conduit, and a strong one at that. Jillian could channel his abilities and direct them toward Emily, allowing him to connect with her. Born with the gift he needed to exploit to reach Emily, he could not deny Jillian the opportunity to participate in his work because she had bad taste in men.
Jillian stumbled on her high heel. She recovered before falling to the asphalt, but continued down the row of cars with a slight limp that pushed the smile away from her mouth and added one to his. Sprained ankles made the dirty side of his work easier.
Tomorrow morning, while Jillian finished her early shift at the coffee shop, David would wait in her small apartment for her to come home for lunch, and then convince her to get in his car. Once restrained in his basement, Jillian would become number seven, bringing him one step closer to reaching Emily.
Number seven for Emily, David thought, as Jillian climbed into her Eclipse. The others before Emily hadn’t been receptive to him. They denied his presence in their mind, shoved him aside, and gave up the chance to become one with him. After just a couple tries, he realized that each one refused to connect with him through the women chosen to die for them.
He had wasted too much time with the others. Even during the time he spent seducing them through the women he used as conduits to reach them, he knew someone else waited for him.
After years of searching the country, the moment David saw Emily, he forgot about all the others. Emily had brushed up against him in line at a coffee shop and gushed out a polite apology. In that moment, her immense psychic ability stilled his heart and he knew she would help him fulfill his work and make him whole.
Yet as difficult as it had been for him to find her, it had taken an even greater patience to connect with Emily. He had almost stopped trying after number three, but he pushed himself to continue. Then with number five, he made the connection, and number six strengthened it.
While successful, the last two connections had an unexplainable delay. He almost didn’t notice it at first, as he thought both girls connected with Emily when they screamed her name. It wasn’t until several hours after he dumped number five’s body that he sensed Emily and her reaction to the girl’s voice.
To reinforce the connection, he focused his thoughts on Emily and wrote the words “hear me” over and over, until he covered the fronts and backs of several sheets of paper. He resorted to writing the words on a whim, but it worked. With the last girl, number six, he achieved the same result of reaching Emily, but only when he scribbled the phrase on paper.
Much stronger than the other women, Jillian would close the time gap and help him forge a bond with Emily. If Jillian failed him, if Emily didn’t remain receptive to him, he would have to give up on her, too. He didn’t want to think about it, as it would force him to kill her, like all the others before her. Jillian wouldn’t fail, though, and soon he would be with Emily, forever.
Chapter Four
The cursor hovered over the print icon on the monitor and Emily punched the left mouse button. She waited until the printer started up before closing out of the case file on her computer. She disliked the hours wasted on necessary paperwork, but Cassie had spent that afternoon in the field, leaving Emily to catch up on case files.
When Monroe & Reid Investigators opened its doors seven years earlier, cases were hard to come by, the same as any other new business struggling for its place in the world. In those days, Emily loved the opportunity to do paperwork. Cassie’s five years as an officer with the Wichita Police Department paid off during their early search for clients. Well-liked as a police officer, Cassie had planned a lifelong career in law enforcement, but responding to one bad domestic violence call altered her plans. Shot in the thigh, she suffered through a lengthy recovery and resigned her position.
Due to her outstanding reputation as a police officer, business trickled in from her contacts on the force. It turned out to be a great source of referrals, and gave them an occasional case to work. Outside of Cassie’s contacts, Emily used every marketing trick she could find to bring in more cases. Between their hard work to drum up business and word-of-mouth, Monroe & Reid Investigators soon became exactly what they imagined.
With only the two of them on staff, they often turned away clients and could be choosy about which cases to take. Despite the onslaught of clients, they long ago decided against adding another investigator to the firm. Though some of Emily’s investigating skills were learned through trial by fire at the beginning of their partnership, the rest of her skills were ones that neither Emily nor Cassie were eager to make known to others. The public revelation of Emily’s psychic abilities would close the doors of Monroe & Reid Investigators forever.
They could not hold out much longer without adding new investigators, with both women working seven days a week. Their increasing workload and desire to expand made hiring a new employee a necessity, but Emily struggled with how to hire someone and keep them in the dark about her abilities.
Emily pulled the updated pages from the printer and placed them into the folder designated for Mrs. Linder. She turned to the file cabinet and placed the folder in the bottom drawer, where she kept her recently closed files. Emily turned the key in the file cabinet’s lock, but left it there instead of removing it. After a moment of hesitation, she unlocked the cabinet again and pulled out an unlabeled folder from the back of the top drawer.
Seated at her desk, Emily opened the folder and took out the only two sheets of paper inside. The erratic handwriting from the automatic writing incidents faced her, both with the same message: hear me.
It didn’t take a handwriting analyst to see the writing on both sheets originated from the same source, and differed from her own tidy penmanship. The disorganized letters looked like the person writing it had been rushed with incoherent thoughts crowding them while relaying the message to Emily.
She wondered what she needed to hear. Someone called her name and someone forced her hand to write these words. Whether both incidents were caused by the same person remained as much a mystery as the meaning of the words.
After committing the handwriting to memory, Emily spun her chair around so she faced the wall behind her, and closed her eyes. With the words written in the front of her mind, she shut out everything around her. She opened her mind and pushed out any stray thoughts, just as Aunt Susan had taught her to do.
Emily trained her mind on the voice that called her and tried to reconnect to that voice. It was a female; she had no doubts about that. The voice sounded frantic yet hushed, as if the woman called to her from a distance.
She reached out further with her mind, searching for a source for the voice, and found nothing but a recording in her memory. Emily replayed the voice several times, listening for anything she could use to determine from where the voice came and to whom it belonged. After a few moments of the voice running on a loop through her mind, she recognized a quality in the voice.
The woman was terrified.
Emily opened her eyes and rotated her chair back around to face her desk. She had not heard fear in the woman’s voice before. Now she not only heard it, but the woman’s fear penetrated Emily’s mind and body, as if she projected her emotions onto Emily. An invisible demon propelled the woman’s fear, and Emily wished that demon to remain masked.
Cassie bounced into Emily’s office, and Emily shut the file folder. She had not told Cassie about the automatic handwriting or voices and did not want to disturb her with the news of her evolving talents.
/> “How did it go?” Emily asked.
“Surveillance is surveillance is surveillance.” Cassie sat down and placed her Canon 70D on Emily’s desk.
Emily smiled. “You got photos.”
“I got photos. Mr. Friedman sure didn’t have much of a problem with his right arm when he bowled a 254 at Vinnie’s Pies and Pins.”
“A 254?” Emily let out a low whistle. “You must have been jumping with jealousy. The last time we went bowling, I beat you 96 to 48.”
Cassie glared at her. “And that’s precisely why it was the last time we went bowling. That won’t ever happen again.”
“You seem to have a far better score with these workers’ compensation cases than with bowling. That’s the third one you’ve caught scamming in the last month. I bet Heartland Insurance is going to throw us a lot more work.”
“They already have. I called Keith right after I got the evidence and he is thrilled. He said he wants to talk exclusive contract with us.”
“Congratulations,” Emily said. “Now we just have to start working 18 hour shifts, seven days a week to keep up.”
“If we get that contract, we have to hire someone else, or even two more people,” Cassie said. At Emily’s groan of protest, she added, “They can work solely on the Heartland Insurance cases and never know a thing about...your ways.”
“I guess we could manage that,” Emily said. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to give up any of the cases I like to handle to a newbie. We just have to keep any new employees away from all of my cases, no matter what.”
“Agreed,” Cassie said. “Speaking of case overload, Beverly said Uncle Leo called this morning.”
“I saw that, but I hadn’t had a chance to call him back.”
“I just spoke with him and he’s on his way over right now.”
“Did he say why?”
“Just a case he wants us to look at. He didn’t say much else.”
Emily grabbed the folder off her desk, took it back to the file cabinet, and tucked it away in the back of the top drawer. Locking the cabinet, she said, “Since I’ve wrapped up the Linder case, I can take on whatever he brings us. But he’s heading up the task force on the serial killer case, so I’m not sure what we can help him with.”
“It’s probably a case for another cop,” Cassie said.
“Whatever he has for us, it will be good to see him again.”
“Don’t forget about Shawn,” Cassie said. She raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. “His divorce went through last month.”
Emily laughed. “You sure don’t waste much time, do you? I don’t think Uncle Leo would approve of you hitting on his partner.”
“What does he know? He was lucky enough to find Aunt Barbara back in the days when finding your soul mate was as easy as finding a pair of eights in a game of Go Fish.”
“Why are you so focused on Shawn? Don’t you have a date tonight?”
“Stephen and it’s the fourth date.” Cassie said. She stood up and pushed the chair back to the desk. “Might as well be getting hitched, seeing how we made it this far.” Cassie pointed at her. “And since you’re going to this thing with me tonight, you’ll have the pleasure of meeting my future husband. If Shawn doesn’t come around first, that is.”
For the third year in a row, Cassie managed to snag an invitation for Monroe & Reid Investigators to the annual party hosted by Wolk, Trotter & Wolk, one of the largest defense attorney and family law firms in the country. Though an honor to receive an invitation, Emily dreaded the affair more than a root canal without Novocain. Conversation with narcissistic defense attorneys might result in high profile and top dollar cases, but Emily wished Cassie would handle the hobnobbing and let her sit in the office handling the case files.
Instead of making up an excuse to get out of the party, Emily shot her a superficial smile and said, “I can’t wait. I bought a gorgeous black dress just for the occasion.”
“I’ll be okay if you wear a burlap sack, as long as you don’t break your arm to get out of the party.”
“You’re giving me a choice between breaking my arm and going to the party?” Emily lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “How high do you think the roof of this building is?”
Cassie laughed. “Don’t you dare try to jump off the roof just to break your arm and get out of going tonight.”
Emily’s phone buzzed and she pressed the speakerphone. “Yes, Beverly?”
Beverly’s kind voice came through the speakerphone. “Lieutenant Edwards is here to visit with you and Cassie. Shall I take him to the conference room?”
“That’s great, Beverly. We’ll meet him in there.” She turned off the phone and looked at Cassie. “Don’t worry. I’d rather suffer through this pretentious gathering than land myself in the ER with a broken arm. I’m not that masochistic.” Emily locked her computer and stood up. “After you,” she said, gesturing toward the door.
“You want some coffee?” Cassie asked, as they walked toward the conference room. “I think I might grab a cup before we start.”
“I’m good, thanks.” Emily turned into the conference room, and Cassie wandered toward the break room.
When Emily entered the conference room, Detective Lieutenant Lionel Edwards closed his notebook and stood to meet her. A lean, impressive man at just above six feet tall, Lionel’s strong features disappeared under animated facial expressions whenever he spoke. Grey brushed his temples above the earpieces to his reading glasses, but his otherwise young appearance seemed to defy aging.
Though not her biological uncle, Lionel always treated Emily like part of the family, and she considered him just that. He smiled, took off his reading glasses, and held out his arms to embrace her. “Good to see you again, Emily,” he said, his arms swallowing her petite body.
Emily chuckled and released him. “I just saw you last week at Aunt Barbara’s birthday dinner.”
“Must be that old age getting to my memory again,” he said. “Of course it helps that Barbara is four months older than me.”
“She robbed the cradle with you.”
Cassie walked into the conference room with her full coffee mug. “Uncle Leo!” She set down her mug and hugged him. She looked around the room and frowned. “Is Shawn joining us today?”
Emily stifled a laugh and sat down at the table.
“He had to give a deposition to the prosecutor for the Madison murder trial that starts in a few weeks.”
“Such a sad case,” Emily said. “Hopefully that one goes away for life.”
During a nighttime home invasion, a frantic burglar shot Clive and Tonya Madison point-blank while they slept. In a room down the hall, their newborn escaped the killer’s wrath.
“Nah, he deserves the death penalty and he’ll probably get it,” Cassie said. “Uncle Leo and Shawn built up a pretty solid case. The good guys win again.”
“I would rather we didn’t have to battle that case,” Lionel said. “There are times when nobody wins.”
“It sounds like more is weighing on you than the Madison murders.” Cassie took a sip of her coffee. “Do you care to elaborate?”
“You know me too well,” Lionel said. He reached beside him and picked up his briefcase. “I have a case that I would like for you to take a look at.” He pulled an unmarked file out of his briefcase. At least four inches thick, tape reinforced the torn seam.
Cassie’s eyes widened at the sight of the file. “That’s a lot of case for us to look at.”
“Unfortunately, this is one of eight folders,” Lionel said. “I can’t leave you this copy of the file, but you can look at it briefly now, and if you want to see more you can come down to the station. I figured we’d start with the most recent and work our way backwards on the timeline.”
“I can come down on Monday morning to the station,” Cassie said. She paused and held up her hand. “Wait a second. What do you mean by most recent?”
Emily’s fingertips grazed the edge of the folder, and a shado
w crossed her mind. She pulled her hand back. “This isn’t a missing person or theft case,” she said.
“I would like you to help out on the serial killer case,” Lionel said. “We found a new body this morning, so that makes six victims in ten weeks.”
“Serial killer case?” Cassie asked. “As in the one all over the news right now? The same case Aunt Barbara complains about because you’re never home? The case that makes you tell us to be aware of our surroundings? That serial killer case?”
Emily would have laughed at Cassie’s diatribe, but the file still held her mind in its grip. While plain and unthreatening, the flaps of the manila folder contained something dark.
Though difficult to tear her eyes away from the file, Emily gathered her resolve and looked at Lionel. The wrinkles on his brow and displaced corners of his mouth revealed the wear of his job and the toll this case had taken on him. Extreme emotion, especially distress or pain, gave her something to latch onto and ignited her abilities. Once she grasped onto a strong emotion, she sensed and even saw things that gave her weeks of insomnia.
“This case is getting bigger than BTK,” Lionel said, referring to Wichita’s infamous serial killer. “I know both of you are professional, but I still need to say that everything I tell you must stay with you.”
“Of course,” Emily said. “The news has been overactive with reports and I’m sure there have already been leaks that you didn’t want.”
“Some leaks here and there, but there has been a lot we’ve kept out of the news to help weed out false confessions and quirky tips.”
“Why do you need our help?” Cassie asked. “Isn’t there a task force set up?”
“I’m heading up the task force. The FBI profile is here, and the feds are sending in a team a week from Monday to help on the case.”
“You mean take it away from you,” Cassie said.
“If you want to look at it that way,” Lionel said, “but FBI agents aren’t always the bad guys.”
“Why is it taking them so long to come and help?” Emily asked.