“Can you disable the garage door and leave the rest of the system armed?”
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid if you want to open the door without setting the alarm off, you’ll need to disarm fully.”
“Right. Of course not. Thank you.”
“Is there a problem?” the man asks.
“No problem I can’t solve,” I say. “Thank you.”
He replies, but it’s just muffled words to me right now. I’ve tuned him out, repeating my own words to him in my mind: no problem I can’t solve. Except one, I amend. The one I left for Kane to solve. And that reality turns my thoughts to the alphabet row across the top of that letter left for me tonight. A is for Apple, it had said. And F, I decide, is for the fool I was for leaving myself exposed, a golden rule in law enforcement I’d learned in the police academy and later with the FBI. And yet, I’d done just that. I’d left myself so damn exposed I might as well be as naked as I was on that beach.
Memories assail me and I squeeze my eyes shut, mentally blocking out the images that want to be seen, but they persist, screaming in my mind like magpies. The impact is a punch in the gut that rivals the fat man in a clown suit who’d tackled me on Santa Monica Boulevard during my first week in LA. I’d tripped and cuffed that bastard, arresting him and then spending the night watching Stephen King’s It over a large cheese pizza. Because I’m Lilah-fucking-Love, and I’d owned the damn clown. My lips tighten. That’s the way I need to own my memories, and whoever wrote that note is trying to own me right now. I can’t let that happen. I have to think. I have to figure out what the hell just happened.
I shove off the door and walk to the counter, grabbing my briefcase and charging toward the office, my mind working as I do. Either Kane and I weren’t the only ones here that night, or he broke our vow of silence and told someone about it, someone who is now betraying us both, which I don’t believe. Not because I’m assessing his loyalty to me as rock solid, but he’s not stupid enough to give someone ammunition to use against him. I return to option A: we weren’t alone that night. And whoever was there kept silent until now. The night I came home. Why? What’s the motivation to taunt me now and not anytime in the past two years?
Reaching the office, I charge up the steps, and the minute I’m at the top, I cross to the desk, sit down, and pull my case file from my bag before tossing it onto the desk. Inhaling, I flatten my hands on the desk on either side of the file, but I’m not quite ready to open it again. Twisting my chair to the left, I face a wall decorated with nothing but three white boards on the left and a massive floor-to-ceiling bulletin board on the right. These were not my father’s. They were—are—mine, and as I stare at them, a piece of my mind sees all the many cases I once analyzed here. In fact, by the time I worked from this office, I’d already been labeled the “Murder Girl,” a joke made by a drunk coworker at someone’s retirement party that had stuck. The truth is that almost every single one of the cases I solved in this house started with a dead body. And I solved many of those cases because I wouldn’t give up. I locked myself in this room that I’ve come to know as Purgatory until I found a clue to follow. I reach for my badge, slip the picture out that I’ve hidden there, and stare down at a photo of me with Kane Mendez. I flip it over and stare at the pen marks that count down the perps I profiled, who my efforts helped convict: thirty-one. Thirty-one times that I’ve proven that the sins of my past, which include Kane Mendez, don’t define me.
I stick the photo back inside my badge and then stand up, walking to one of the whiteboards, grabbing a marker from the silver ledge beneath it, and stepping onto the wooden stool in front of it. Ripping off the cap, I start writing the names of the murders I’ve helped bring to trial. I stop ten names in and stare at them, picturing their victims, noting how bloody my life has become. And why is that? I write my answer in huge letters: BECAUSE I AM MURDER GIRL.
CHAPTER SIX
I don’t like the nickname Murder Girl, but standing here, staring at it now, written in my messy script on the whiteboard, I do not find rejection on my behalf. In fact, unlike this place, the title fits me. Irritated by this conclusion, I set the marker down, step off the ladder, and walk to my desk. Claiming my chair, I twist around, stare at my written words again: BECAUSE I AM MURDER GIRL. Murder-fucking-Girl. My fists ball on my jean-clad knees, tension knotting my shoulders. It fits. It’s me. It’s right even when I’m wrong.
I blame my parents.
That sounds cliché, of course, but in my case, it really is true. They forced me into acting classes in an effort to stir my desire for the spotlight. They wanted me to learn and understand characters. To get into their heads. I did learn. I know the murderers I hunt well. Too well. I’d never tell them that. They couldn’t handle it. Rich couldn’t handle it, which is why I should have told him already. Kane. Well, Kane would understand, and that makes him dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Death simply becomes me. In fact, some might say I’m so fucked up that I do death better than I do life. And while death is attracted to me, my own is not appealing. I mean, when does my note writer, who I think I’ll call “Stephen King Junior” for his or her creepy use of words, go from wanting to freak me out to wanting to bury me and be rid of me? Maybe tomorrow morning when I’m still here? And I’m not going anywhere until I finish the job I was sent here to do. Nor am I stupid enough to leave Junior alone and expect the same favor in return. Which means I need to focus on catching me an assassin and a King Junior before they catch me. And under tonight’s fucked-up circumstances, I’m going to need backup to allow me to focus.
This goal in mind, I roll my chair around and scoot to a second chest made of heavy black steel positioned under the wooden-shuttered window. Bending over, I grip the lock attached and guide it through a combination of numbers until it pops open. I open the lid and smile when I find my old friend just where I left him. Reaching inside to give him a friendly hello, I pick up Cujo, my version of a guard dog, a double-barreled shotgun that was once my father’s, but came with the house. I stroke it, my baby. My protection. Short, loud, and big, he only needs to be fed bullets.
After a quick inspection, I confirm that he’s locked and loaded. Ready to intimidate and ensure an attacker backs the fuck off. My service weapon is another story. It’s small, silent, quick, and lethal, and I don’t pull it to intimidate or make noise. I’ve trained long and hard, and to the point of near obsession, to ensure that if I pull it, you’re dead. Lowering the lid to the chest, I set the lock on top and turn in my chair again, rolling to the desk, where I set Cujo to my left, my cell phone to my right.
With my phone and my guard dog a reach away, I’m feeling much more at home now than minutes before. This might not be one of my preferred Otherworlds, but I’m starting to get back to embracing it. In fact, I was wrong when I said I don’t belong here. Damn it, this is my world. The younger, less-confident me forgot that, and I was reverting back to her by assuming her attitude. She ran. She let someone else take her home, this home and place, from her. Whoever left me that note tonight knows that, too. But that person knows the woman that I was, not the woman that I am. I was Lilah Love then, but now, damn it, I am Murder Girl. I’m her because dead bodies have a way of talking to me, and if they didn’t, there would be more dead bodies, more murders I didn’t stop. So yes. I’m Murder-fucking-Girl. I can hunt a killer and catch them. I can find a way out of this. My way out of this.
It’s at that moment that my phone rings, and I look down to find the expected number that belongs to Rich. Inhaling, I grab it and decline the call, texting him before he can call back with one word: Tomorrow.
He replies instantly: Now Lilah.
My jaw sets hard and I type: Please Rich. Tomorrow.
My phone rings again instantly, and I cave to the inescapable need to just get this conversation the hell over with. I hit the button and slide the cell to my ear. “Rich, damn it. What part of please did you not understand?”
“You never say please, Lilah. What’s wrong? What’
s happening?”
I frown. I never say please? “I say please.”
“No. You don’t. What’s wrong?”
My defenses bristle. “I do say please.”
“No. You don’t. And it’s okay. It’s how you are.”
“How I am?”
“You’re guarded, Lilah. You don’t show emotions. You have stuff you’re dealing with, and one day maybe you’ll—”
“Rich, I’m not—”
“I repeat. What’s wrong?”
“I arrived to a dead body and I’m now in self-exiled purgatory.”
“Okay then. That explains you not wanting to talk, but not the use of the word please.”
“I said please, Rich,” I snap. “Please can we talk in the morning times one thousand. See? Now I’ve said please at least one thousand and one times to you since I texted you a minute ago. Please can we talk in the morning? One thousand and two.”
Heavy silence fills the line. One beat. Three. Four. “I know you well enough to know that means you’re in your zone and I won’t get answers. But I don’t like it.”
And yet we’re still talking. Which, actually, is the definition of me being so bad at relationships I can’t even save the guy and end this one. “Tomorrow,” I repeat, because never wouldn’t end this call.
“If you need—”
“I told you—”
“I get it,” he supplies as if he senses where I’m headed, and just that quickly, he ends the call. “Purgatory. But we’re talking tomorrow if I have to come there to see you to do it.”
My eyes go wide. “Rich, I—”
“Good night, Lilah.”
He ends the call and I huff out a frustrated breath before setting the phone on the desk opposite Cujo. He can’t come here. I can’t let that happen. “And I say please,” I grumble, grabbing a wooden box on the desk in front of me and sliding it to me. And I don’t show emotions because I don’t feel them anymore. Not since I left this place, which I don’t intend to explain to him or anyone. Furthermore, and considering the damn burn in my chest that tells me the sooner I leave, the better, I need to get to work.
I lift the lid of the box and remove a stack of index cards from inside, and thanks to having the weekly maid service exclude this room from their duties, the dust clinging to them becomes a cloud in my face and open mouth. Because why wouldn’t my mouth be hanging open? I suck in dust that hits my throat, and it triggers a tickle that becomes a burn. My best attempt at hacking up a lung follows, a skill my mentor back in my NYPD days had mastered almost as well as his job. Roger Griffin was—is—my idol. He’s also a hard-ass old man and a chain-fucking-smoker who seemed determined to give me black lung via secondhand smoke.
Recovering from my dust-induced near death, I think of him now and how much I’d like to see him. But I won’t call him. I can’t call him. Not when I’ve avoided him for years, and in fact, he was one of the reasons I left New York. He was good at his job. So damn good that I didn’t want his sights turned on me should the unfortunate circumstances present themselves. He might love me like a daughter, but he’d hate me like a monster if he saw beneath my skin.
Really. Truly. I’m not sure how he didn’t see who I really am, but maybe I needed to see it for him to see it. Which is just another reason I will never let myself look in that man’s eyes again.
That said, if I did, and if Mr. Too Intuitive for His Own Good were here right now, he’d tell me to document what I know about my perp, of which I now have two. Perp Number One is my assassin, or rather the serial killer, if I listen to everyone else rather than my instincts, which has never worked for me. Perp Number One is an assassin. And Perp Number Two is King Junior. Unless, of course, Perp One and Two are the same person. A far-fetched thought, but then the tattoo is a common denominator, and I’ve seen crazier things since I started profiling. I need to treat them as two people until I know otherwise, and right now, the one who left me the note on the door is the direct threat that could stop me from doing anything else, including solving the assassinations. Perp Number Two is now my new King, until I dethrone him, which I will, and officially gets the starring role for now. But I’m not sure that’s what King Junior wanted or thought would be the outcome of tonight. And since I hate giving assholes what they want, I really hope it’s not.
I grab a pen from the silver holder to my left and start writing single words on note cards, one per card:
—EDUCATED
—DEVIOUS
I tap the pen on the desk and think about my mother and every movie-star friend she subjected me to, thinking of all the egos they represent, before snatching up another card and writing EGOTISTICAL on it. And because no one, not even my mother, is that ego driven unless they’re covering up the truth of their insecurity, I grab another card and write INSECURE. I tap my pen again. This was someone who was there the night of the attack, who could be someone connected to me, to Kane, or to both of us. I need a list. I need a list, which means a new stack of cards.
I label my newly created stack KING JUNIOR and then scratch it out. “You don’t get to be King,” I say, and write just JUNIOR. Liking the way that looks and sounds a whole hell of a lot more, I stand up, walk to the wooden step stool under the bulletin boards cluttered with pushpins, and climb the three steps to the top. Once there, I place my “Junior” label at the center top of the board and then line up the word cards. Once done, I step off the stool and stare up at the beginning of my creation and grimace at the words: Insecure. Egotistical. Educated. Devious. I just described every politician and attorney on Planet Earth and, according to the guy that came before Rich, myself. Kane, as well, if you remove the word insecure—his confidence is something that has always drawn me to him. Damn it, Lilah. Don’t do that. Don’t think about Kane. I refocus on my board and the words I’ve written. I’m off to a worthless start, but then, I remind myself, every puzzle starts out with a seemingly impossible amount of pieces.
Sighing, I drag a hand through my hair and walk back to the desk. Sitting down and deciding I need fuel for my brain, I open my right-hand drawer. Bingo. My stash of chocolate is still intact. I pull it out of the drawer and set it on the desk, and, as is my ritual, I line up a dozen pieces of chocolate in a neat row in front of me. Each will be a reward for filling in a puzzle piece, and since I haven’t eaten all day, I don’t even have to suffer a morning jog to pay for them. Chocolate motivation in place, it’s time for a new card and a new direction. Whoever this is knows one of two people or both—me and/or Kane. I can’t avoid him. He’s a part of this and my life, forever after, because of that night.
I write my name on a card and then his on another. Now. Who was close to me back then? My inner circle. I grab a stack of cards and use one per name. My father, Grant Love, then the police chief and running for mayor. My brother, Andrew Love, who was training to take over as police chief. Eddie “Asshole” Rivera. I actually write ASSHOLE on the card because it simply makes me feel better. Roger Griffin, my mentor. Logan Knight, my NYPD superior. From there, the cards start flying. There is my father’s campaign manager and staff. A woman Andrew was dating back then. My then—and now ex—best friend, Alexandra Harris. I stop at twelve cards, keeping the inner circle my focus, at least for now.
I move on to Kane and stare at the blank cards. There is only one person I know that has ever been close to Kane. Me. Well, and one other. I write that name on a card: Miguel Mendez, Kane’s dead father. A man who ran a cartel that he hid under layers of legal operations, with a savvy never seen before. A man who had enemies that Kane inherited by association. This has to be about Kane, not me. I’m going to have to involve him in this. No, I think immediately. Not that fast. Not until I rule out other options directly linked to me, not him.
I grab the note cards and walk to the bulletin board, and wanting to start high and work low, I climb the step stool, pinning my name and Kane’s side by side and above my head. When I’m done, my long list of names is under my name, and t
here is simply one under Kane’s name—Miguel. I scan my list and keep going back to Eddie, but my eyes pull to the name Miguel Mendez. Again, I think this has to be about him. He died not long after that night. Was there a connection to my attack and his death? Was it an attack on Miguel or Kane? I don’t like where this is leading me, which is to Kane’s doorstep. I grab a piece of chocolate and rip it open, shoving it in my mouth, only to choke on the horrid taste of mud.
“Ah, yuck.” I sit down and grab the trash can under the desk, spitting out the monstrosity in my mouth labeled as chocolate, looking for water I don’t have anywhere nearby. Opening the drawer, I grab a tissue and start wiping my tongue, like this will help, but I’m desperate here. I need this out of my mouth. Finally, I cross over from disgusting to a lingering chalklike sensation in my mouth, and I toss the tissue. I then grab the bag of candy and search for an expiration date to find my chocolate is two years past the “best by” date. Obviously not the thing to take with you into a bomb shelter.
My cell rings, and frustration with Rich and my chocolate fiasco wins my irritation. This man must let go. He’s going to make me hurt him, and that sucks big, fat bananas. I grab my phone and swipe my finger across it to answer. “I said please,” I bite out harshly.
“Please isn’t always good enough. You know that.”
At the deep, arrogant rasp of Kane’s voice, his words laced with a sexual undertone, I stiffen. “Kane,” I say coldly, and I do feel cold. Mostly cold.
“Lilah,” he answers, my name spoken with the tiniest bit of Latin accent that is both sandpaper and silk on his tongue.
A hot spot forms in my chest, and I bite out, “How did you get this number?”
“I’m resourceful. You know that.”
All too well, I think. “Why are you calling me now?”
“I wanted to call you many times.”
But he didn’t. He never called. Not once. “What is this about?”
“Are you at the beach house?”