“Right,” I say, and because he expects it and because it feels right, I add, “Fuck you, Mitch.”
“Same ol’ Lilah,” he chuckles.
Andrew and Rich step to my sides, and I introduce them. “I’d prefer to stick to two of you up there. The scene is pretty messy.”
“I’ll hang back,” Rich offers, which is what he should have said back in the Hamptons.
“What’s your take on the case?” I ask Mitch.
“I’ve met Kane Mendez on four occasions and all for business or charity events. No way that man left a calling card like this one. But that’s my opinion.”
“Isn’t this the Mendez signature kill?” Andrew says, clearly not happy with the direction this is going.
“Maybe in Mexico,” he says. “Not here, but hey. I suppose if someone really pissed him off, maybe he wanted to send a strong message. There’s a first.” He motions to the door. “Go on up.”
Andrew and I enter the building, and we’re handed booties and gloves before being directed to the sixth floor. We start the climb. “I suppose you think that means someone set him up,” Andrew says, falling into step with me.
“I didn’t say a word.”
Several cops appear in our path, sparing me his further comment, and by the time they pass, we’ve reached our destination, where we are greeted by an officer who clears us for entry. “Showtime,” I say, slipping my purse and briefcase straps across my chest and then putting on my booties, while Andrew does the same.
“You know why I wanted you to see this, right?” Andrew asks, pulling on his gloves.
“You want to tear down Kane,” I say, slipping on my gloves as well, “and prove that he’s brutal and scary while providing an alternative with Rich because I’m a girl and always need a man. I get it. And for the record, I know Eddie helped you come up with the Rich idea.” I reach for the doorknob, and knowing that he’s a Hamptons police chief with a rather sheltered service, I add, “Good thing we missed breakfast.” I enter the apartment, and an officer directs me through an archway. Andrew joins me and we enter the next room where the bloody nightmare has unfolded. There are two bodies, not one, a man and a woman, both tied to chairs and facing the TV, but, of course, their heads are sitting in their laps, and there are puddles of blood around the chairs.
“Son of a—” Andrew begins before he turns away and someone shoves a bag at him, where he proceeds to heave up what sounds like his lungs and someone else’s. Brutal indeed.
I motion to a cop who’s busy bagging evidence. “Has the medical examiner been here?”
“Come and gone,” he confirms.
I look down and I’m now standing in a puddle of blood. I really, really hate puddles of blood, and since this crime scene is clearly a message to me, you’d think the killer knew how I felt. Andrew rejoins me. “How’s the profiling going?”
“I could run down all the basics for a case like this,” I say, “but I think you know most of them and do you really want to do that here?”
“Not really.”
“Go, Andrew,” I say. “I’ll be a while.”
“This doesn’t faze you at all?”
“You find a way to compartmentalize when it’s what you do all the time.”
He turns to face me. “But you’re not so cold now that you can’t see how brutal this is, right?”
I’m not sure he can handle hearing me say that I have to respect the killer’s work to catch the killer. Or that I don’t see the brutality but the craft of the kill. I settle on, “That’s not how this process works for me.”
He stares at me with disbelief, like he’s seeing a monster, or maybe he’s seeing Murder Girl for the first time. “I’ll be downstairs,” he says, and I think, We are changed forever, the way I was changed the night a different monster found me. I return my focus to the bodies, and I stare at the man and woman, and think, Kane and me. It’s a crazy thought, but the idea that this is a threat sticks. I think of Junior’s note: W is for Warning.
It’s a warning. My brow furrows and I note that the bodies seem to be posed. I turn and face the direction of the bodies. I’m now staring at a big-screen TV. My gaze lands on the DVD player where a DVD is sticking out. I walk to it and remove it with my gloved fingers to read the title: Take Me to Church. This crime scene is meant for me. The question is, was it ever about Kane at all? Or was it about getting me here?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Blood has a way of silencing people, or maybe it’s just seeing your sister for who she really is, because Andrew doesn’t have much to say on the way to the airport. Even Rich seems to feed off his mood, and the result is peace in the car during the ride to the airport, or at least, quiet. Once we’re at the chopper and in the air, my mind goes to work, dissecting what I’ve learned today, and I keep coming back to the connection between this case and me. My past and this case. My attacker’s tattoo and the one victim with the same tattoo. That crime scene was not only meant for me but also meant to be a direct reflection of my hunt for the tattoo and encounter with the old man. My dilemma now becomes, how do I solve this case and not convict myself in the process?
We land in the Hamptons at nearly five, and when we exit the chopper, my brother grabs my arm, halting my intended rapid departure. “I love you, Lilah, but I don’t understand you and Kane. I’m going after him and I’m not going to stop until I take him down.” He turns and starts walking away.
Rich, seemingly having waited his turn, claims Andrew’s spot beside me. “And I’m going to help him. I’m requesting that Murphy let me remain here until you return home.” He doesn’t wait for a reply, following Andrew toward the terminal.
I decide, for the time being, to let them both go work off some of their testosterone overload on their own, for now. I have a killer chopping off heads and leaving me messages. Chip ’n’ Dale are the least of my worries. At least Kane was smart enough to just zip it and be quiet after that earlier text message he sent me. Avoiding pretty much anyone breathing, I dart a path to my car, and fifteen minutes later, I pull into my garage, then go straight to Purgatory where I unload my briefcase and prepare to work. This is it. It’s time. This is when I don’t sleep, or communicate with others, until I catch my killer.
By nine o’clock, there isn’t a white space left on my boards, the floor is covered, and I’m starving. I order a pizza and when it arrives, I take it and a couple of diet Sprites back to Purgatory. I open the box and sigh as I find a note attached to the inside. “Enough,” I growl at the same moment my phone starts ringing. I ignore it and the note, taking a bite of my pizza. I’m hungry. I’m tired. I’m pissed off. My phone rings again. And again. It’s going off like a kid hitting a buzzer incessantly for the fun of it. Andrew. Rich. Andrew. Eddie. Eddie? I answer the call. “Why are you calling me?” I demand.
“Woods is dead.”
My head sags forward. “Where’s the body?”
“There is no body.”
I straighten. “What does that mean?”
“He videotaped a long confession, then set himself on fire. Andrew e-mailed you the video.”
“I’m pulling it up now.” I hang up and pull up my e-mail, downloading the video.
I punch Play and watch as a thirtysomething man with a scruffy beard who identifies himself as Kevin Woods names all five of the murder victims as part of a hit list he’d created based on random encounters with rude people. He then apologizes and says he’s worthless and sets himself on fire. I hit the close button and then e-mail it to Murphy, about the same time my phone rings, with Andrew on caller ID. “You saw?” he asks.
“I saw. Where did it happen?”
“Upstate New York. I’m talking to the officials up there. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Yeah. Do.” My phone buzzes. “That’s going to be my boss. I need to go.” I end the call with Andrew and answer Murphy’s.
“What the hell did I just watch, Agent Love?”
“I don’t know,” I say. ??
?I really don’t know.”
“Is he our man?”
“No. He is not our man.”
“He looks like our man.”
“He looks like a man drugged or tortured into that nightmare.”
“This is going to get challenging, especially if it hits the news, which I suspect it will.”
“I know.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow. Early, Agent Love.”
We end the connection and my gaze lands on Junior’s note. I pick it up and open it, to read:
M is for Murder.
Murder
Murder
Murder
Murder
All the way down the page.
I flip it over and the opposite side reads:
K is for Kane.
Kane
Kane
Kane
Kane
All the way down the page.
This isn’t a coincidence any more than the crime scene today. And I don’t know whether Junior is telling me Kane is dangerous or Kane has answers. Whatever the case, I want answers and it’s time to get them. I stand up and walk to the closet, open the chest, and grab a pair of handcuffs, and this time I leave my work in the office and head downstairs where I slip on my shoulder holster and a jacket. At the garage door I hit the security button. “If the system is disarmed before I call you back, it’s not me and you need to send help. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am, but—”
“Just do it,” I order, exiting to the garage and climbing in my car. Next stop: Kane Mendez’s mansion by the beach.
A few minutes later I pull up to the gate of his sprawling property and key in the security code, hoping it still works, and thankfully it does. I drive to the front of the house, park, and grab the cuffs from my seat. Not giving him a chance to prepare for me, I march straight to the house, ring the bell, and wait. And wait. Finally, he comes to the door, and before he knows what hits him, I have a cuff on one of his wrists and my gun pointed at him. “Put the other one on.”
“As much as I enjoy this concept, this isn’t a good time for this, Lilah.”
“Put it on, Kane.”
“I have a situation in the garage. I can show you and you’ll understand.”
“Kane—”
“Garage, Lilah. Then if you want me to put on the cuffs without you shooting me first, I will.”
“Fine. Show me.”
“Are you going to keep pointing the gun at me?”
“Yes. Show me.”
He gives a heavy sigh and turns, walking down the hallway and turning left into the kitchen with no pause before he crosses to the garage, opens the door, and exits. Not sure what to expect, I follow him and find a man tied to a chair and gagged. The old man himself. “What the hell is this?”
“This is old man Romano. The patriarch.”
A Romano tied to a chair after two were beheaded today.
A SNEAK PEEK AT THE NEXT LILAH LOVE NOVEL—COMING SOON.
Editor’s Note: This is an early excerpt and may not reflect the finished book.
CHAPTER ONE
It’s Sunday night, and like many people, that means catching up on dirty laundry. Unlike most people however, my list rarely includes jeans, shirts, and socks, though some might say it probably should. And it would, if my list wasn’t consumed by blood, bodies, and random crime scene nastiness. Tonight, that list includes Kane Mendez, my ex-lover, who swears he’s clean when we both know he’s dirty—as in the-head-of-the-Mendez-Cartel dirty. A complicated piece of the puzzle that is my life, since Kane runs a powerful yet legit business as well, while I’m an FBI profiler, and at one point he and I have killed and hidden a body together, or rather in some combination of together. I did the killing. He did the hiding. Even more complicated is the fact that despite that secret, I’m presently standing in his garage, pointing a gun at him, while the patriarch of the Romano family, who doesn’t exactly get invited to Mendez family outings, is tied to a chair and gagged several feet away. Of course, he’s not the man we in law enforcement believe to be the patriarch, but Kane would know. And now I know, which is a weapon Kane has handed me, and not by accident. Kane does nothing by accident.
I give this newly discovered patriarch a quick once-over, confirming that he’s the same sunbaked old man in jeans and a T-shirt, his gray hair braided down his back, that I remember cornering me at the tattoo shop in the city. He’d given me a lead I’d like to know more about, which means I need him alive, thus one of the reasons I confirm he’s not dead, which isn’t hard, since he’s presently fast-blinking at me. That’s enough for me to know he’s not feeling really warm and fuzzy right now, and also enough for me to dismiss him, at least for the moment, and for the obvious reason: he’s tied up and Kane is not.
I eye Kane, who is now two feet away and between me and the door, my gaze dropping to the silver cuff dangling from his wrist where I’d latched it the minute he’d opened the door. I part my lips to command him to cuff his second wrist, but in my mind, I play out exactly how that scene might be enacted:
I’d give him the same once-over I’d given the old man, as I do now, taking in his casual wear that’s replaced his business suit—his black jeans and snug black T-shirt that reads “Mendez Enterprises,” which we both know translates to Mendez Cartel, and that would piss me off. I’d lift my gaze, look right into those dark-brown eyes, and issue my command. “Finish cuffing yourself.”
He’d say, “I’m not going to do that.”
I’d then say, “I won’t kill you, Kane, but I will make you bleed and at least two of the three of us will enjoy it. Cuff your wrist.”
“No,” he’d say, offering me nothing more as an explanation, because that’s Kane. A man of few words because he means every damn one he speaks. But then he’d ask, “Would you like to have a private conversation in the kitchen?”
And I’d consider shooting him, but then I’d remember what my mother of all people told me when speaking of Hollywood: “When you are swimming with sharks,” she’d said, “and one of them wants you alive, you feed that shark and defang the others.” And so I would say, “Yes, Kane. I would like to have a private conversation in the kitchen.” And if it went down like that, old man Romano would know the dynamics of our push-and-pull, right-and-wrong connection that I won’t call a relationship, which he would most certainly exploit. And I can’t let that happen, especially since as Kane’s enemy, I should have long ago considered Romano in my attack.
And so my gaze collides with Kane’s, and the arch of his brow dares to challenge me to be stupid enough to act on the fantasy scene in my head, while the glint in his eyes says he knows exactly what I’ve been thinking. He does. He knows me too well. He understands me in a way no criminal should understand a law enforcement officer. And I usually like it, which really fucking pisses me off, but this moment isn’t about my anger issues with Kane. It’s about what my gut says Romano should be allowed to see and hear, which is not division between Kane and me.
And thus, I act out another scene.
I holster my weapon, and remove the key to the cuff, dangling it in the air. “You were right,” I say. “Sadly, now isn’t the time for these types of games.” I walk to him, lift his hand, removing the cuff before returning them both to my pocket with the key.
Kane smartly doesn’t push his luck and touch me, but instead says exactly what he’d said in my fantasy scene. “Would you like to have a private conversation in the kitchen?”
So, I say what I’d said in my fantasy scene. “Yes, Kane. I would like to have a private conversation in the kitchen.” I sound sticky sweet and sarcastic, but I figure that isn’t really a misstep. Ask around and you’ll know. I’m not exactly the agreeable type, even if I like you. Okay. Accept you. I don’t really like people. Any of them. Which is perhaps the answer to why I’m so comfortable with dead bodies.
I don’t wait for him to motion me forward, already walking toward the kitchen, which is another one of
those push-and-pull things between Kane and me that I make obvious. I’m not in his control, but I dare to give him my back, actions that tell Romano the story I want him to believe: I trust Kane. I’m intimate with Kane, but he doesn’t own me. Lies. I don’t like lies, but they can sometimes keep you alive and catch the bigger liars, the perps. That I have fucked one of the two perps at my back right now too many times to count and enjoyed every moment . . . Well, at least I know what makes him tick: Me. I do. I’m his weakness, but he’s not mine. I’m my own weakness. I let a man who is not only off-limits but also should be my target get to me, and that’s a problem I need to fix.
I open the door and enter the kitchen, dark wood beneath my feet, lighter shades, even a hint of blue, streaked here and there, but it’s still dark. Everything about Kane is dark, which is exactly one of about ten reasons I am certain I could list to put space between myself and him, now and always. But my intent to place myself at the end of the heavy wooden island, my gun on the surface of the navy-blue marble top, ready to aim, falls as lame as my denial that I understand Kane, because I am like Kane in too many ways for comfort. The door shuts almost the moment I’ve passed through it, and Kane is on my heels.
I whirl around to face him. “Consider this official business. I have two dead bodies sitting with their heads in their laps, Kane. Romano’s people, and now you have him in your garage.”
“Exactly why he’s in my garage, Agent Love,” he says, as if that should absolutely make it all right. “He followed you. That was a threat, and I wasn’t giving him time to act on those murders and go after you.”
My eyes go wide. “Did you kill his men, behead his men, because he followed me?”
“No,” he says without so much as a blink. “But I should have. Our women are off-limits. Always.”
“I’m not your woman, Kane. Not for two years. And I thought you didn’t chop off heads like your father?”
“Beautiful, I can still smell you on my skin. Taste you on my lips if I try hard enough.”