She believed he had. “Pope, how long have you been working in law enforcement?”
He swallowed and wiped his palms on the front of his pants. “Four years.”
Longer than she’d thought. “You worked a lot of crime scenes?”
“Not ’til lately.”
Yeah. Not until their killer started terrorizing the town.
“With Jones… that was… bad.” A stark whisper. Monica remembered that he’d known Jones. Gone to school with him.
“My old man died like that.” His shoulders were so stiff. “Ate his gun.” A fierce shake of his head. “You got to be desperate to do that.”
Jones had been. As for Lee’s father…“I’m sorry.” Would the words always seem hollow?
He shook his head, seeming to shake off her sympathy. “I’m not like him. I’m not. I can help. I can do—”
“Pope! Get movin’! Dante needs more men!”
He flushed. “I can help,” he said once more, then hurried out at the sheriff’s command.
Monica watched him leave. “Sheriff, how long has Pope been on your team?”
“About six months.” He took his time coming to her side. “Got me some new recruits when Barnes and Lakely retired.”
Interesting.
“He worked over in Gatlin County for a few years.” His voice lowered a bit. “Word was that he’d had him a bad break-up so he got out of Jasper.” Of course the sheriff would know the gossip. He shrugged. “But then he finally transferred back home early this year.”
Home. Jasper County. The not-so-safe place to live. And he’d been in Gatlin, where Saundra had been killed.
Could be coincidence, or it could be one hell of a lot more.
“Sam? Sam, everything’s all right.”
She heard the voice from a distance. A man’s voice, muted. Drifting to her so slowly.
She tried to open her eyes, but it was hard, and just when she’d get her lids up a bit, they’d fall again.
Where am I? What’s happening?
Someone grabbed her fingers and held tight. “We’re taking you to the hospital.”
Hospital. Why?
Because she’d been in the water, drowning, over and over and—
Sam shot up, screaming. Wrenching cries that hurt her throat.
Strong hands clamped around her shoulders. “Hold her, we need—”
“Sam.”
A voice she knew. Blinking, she turned her head and saw Kenton. His clothes were wet. His handsome face tense.
Safe. Kenton wouldn’t hurt her. He was on her team. Trust the team or trust no one.
She sucked in a sharp breath. Another, but still tasted only the bitter water on her tongue. “Did you… get h-him?”
A slow shake of his head.
Fear squeezed her heart, a tight grasp that had her gasping.
“We will,” he told her, his voice intense. “We’re going to get him. Monica’s after him. She’s going to track him and stop him. He won’t hurt you or anyone else.”
Her body sagged, and he eased her back onto the stretcher. “She found you,” he said, “and she’ll find him.”
Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. Monica. Sam remembered seeing her. Black hair, soaking wet. Monica had been there, holding her on the dock. “S-saved… me.”
“Yeah, Monica pulled you out. Damn, you scared the hell out of us, Sam. You weren’t breathing.”
No, because that last time, he’d held her under too long. He’d grown tired of his game.
How many times had she been in that water? “He… knew,” she managed. The man had known just how to break her.
Kenton just stared back at her. She saw the lines of worry near his eyes.
The killer knew her fears. This case wasn’t just about random vics in a southern town. Had it ever been?
If he knew her fears, he could have targeted the other SSD agents, too. He could have set up the original kills to lure them in to his game.
“It’s going to be okay,” Kenton told her, but right then, she didn’t believe him.
She wondered if even he believed the words.
CHAPTER Thirteen
Music blared from an old jukebox, a slow country beat with someone doing someone else wrong. Folks packed the inside of Pete’s Bar. Smoke filled the air, curling lazily over the pool tables, and glass beer bottles clinked.
The people of Jasper were out having a good time. Relaxing, dancing, flirting. Acting like there wasn’t a killer preying on their streets.
Luke had a cold beer in front of him, a fellow agent who was alive, and he knew he should have been celebrating like the deputies seated in the corner booth, but he couldn’t.
Because something wasn’t right. One thing kept nagging at his mind, and he just couldn’t get past it.
That rose. That damn bloody rose. What kind of message had that been?
When Monica had seen the rose, all the color had blanched from her face. He’d been reaching for her, to hold her, to keep her on her feet, when her spine had straightened and she’d shoved back her shoulders. Whenever she felt threatened, she did that. Stood tall, straightened those shoulders and acted like she wasn’t scared.
When he knew she was. He was surprised the woman still thought he bought that act.
The fear that had flickered in her eyes had vanished almost instantly, but he’d been left thinking…
That message is for her.
But Monica wasn’t sharing anything with him. She was working on her profile, talking to the crime scene guys, huddling with Gerry the tech, and not telling him a thing.
“What’s got you looking so angry, Agent Dante?” Gravelly, rough, and, of-piss-course, his boss’s voice.
He lowered the beer and turned slowly to face Keith Hyde. What had him angry? Take your pick. “The asshole dicking around with us.”
Hyde’s lips quirked. “Yeah, it’s time for the bastard to go down.” He pulled up a stool and motioned to the bartender. “Water.” Hyde didn’t drink alcohol. Ever.
Or at least, he hadn’t in over fifteen years.
A.A. If the stories were true.
“Sam can’t identify him.” Hyde’s fingers rapped on the bartop. “I saw her right after I flew in. She doesn’t even remember being at the airport.” He exhaled a rough sigh.
“What does she remember?” Had to be something. Something they could use…
“Just being at the cabin, being in the water.” Hyde paused when the bartender slid a glass of water his way. “She lost her glasses, so she couldn’t see her attacker clearly. She could only say he was tall, over six-foot-two. Probably weighed about one eighty to two hundred.” A shrug. “More info than we had before, a whole lot less than we need.”
Yeah, it was better than nothing, but still close to jackshit. “What about his voice? Did she say—”
“He whispered to her.” Hyde took a long swallow of water. “No accent.”
“How is she?” Christ, to have gone through that guy’s sick games.…
“She doesn’t know how many times he put her in the water. The guy got off on keeping Sam in the water until she nearly drowned. Then he’d let her out, let her think she’d survived—but every time, he just kept throwing her back in.”
Sick fuck.
“Monica…” Hyde rubbed a hand over his face. “She told me that he probably only stopped when Sam gave up trying to survive. There wasn’t any fear anymore, so he let her go.”
He let her drown.
Luke raised his bottle. The beer looked like piss and tasted like water. Loud laughter broke out from one of the pool tables. He glanced over and saw Deputy Vance Monroe. Vance had one of the waitresses up on the table. His mouth was locked tight to the blonde’s.
Huh. At least someone was having a good night.
“Monica lives for the job, you know.” Hyde’s attention hadn’t wavered. Not for an instant.
Luke lowered the bottle and turned back to his boss. “Yeah, I figured that one out
a long time ago.” When it came to Monica’s priorities, he knew exactly where he fell on her list.
Hyde smiled. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The guy really had a shark’s grin. “Such a smartass. Do you really think I don’t know about you?”
Uh, what—
“I know about her past. I know about Quantico, and I know about you.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Sir, I think you need to watch your step.” He might respect the man, but Hyde wasn’t about to get between him and Monica. No one was. “If you want me off this team because of an involvement I—”
Laughter. Not from the pool table group this time, but from Hyde. “Dante, I knew you’d slept with Monica before I brought you on the team. Hell, that was one of the reasons she gave me for not bringing you on.”
What?
“Monica told me if you came on board, it might just happen again.” Hyde shook his head, and a wry smile curved his lips. “Guess she knew what she was talking about.”
Holy hell. Luke tried to shut his gaping mouth, but he had to ask, “And you approved the transfer anyway?”
Carefully, Hyde sat his empty glass down on the table. “I don’t care what you do with your dick.”
Yeah, good to know.
“I do care about how you do your job. My division isn’t like others. We have our own rules. And rule one—your team members, all of them, have to be able to count on you.”
“They can.” He’d always done his job and done it well.
“If you let your feelings for Monica blind you, then you’re no good to me.” Blunt. “Keep your control, keep your cool, and keep your job.”
“You giving this same sweet talk to Monica?”
Hyde shoved away from the bar and took a moment to straighten his suit. “Don’t have to. Monica doesn’t lose control.”
“Then you don’t know Monica,” the words came out too fast. But he was tired of everyone thinking she was some kind of ice queen. She had the same needs and hungers and feelings that everyone else did. And her control was starting to crack. He’d seen the fissures today. Maybe it had been cracking for a while.
“Ah, let me guess. You think you know her, right?” A shake of his head. “Son, I thought you were smarter than that.” Hyde turned and pushed his way through the crowd.
He kept his eyes on Hyde’s retreating back and watched him head for the door. Just when he reached the double doors, Monica stepped inside. Luke saw her say something to the boss, then her eyes rose and met his.
The woman might as well have punched him in the gut.
I am so screwed.
Keeping his distance today had been torture, and, yeah, he’d broken. That kiss in the hall ranked as a moment of idiocy. But he’d had to touch her.
Keeping control—not possible. He’d never had control with her, and he doubted he ever would.
“Meet me tonight.” A man’s gruff demand.
Luke’s brows shot up, and he glanced over to see Vance stroking the arm of the blond waitress. “When you get off work, come meet me.”
She laughed and stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. From the looks of things, the lady had to be whispering a “yes” before she eased back and hurried behind the bar.
His brows rose. Seriously? That guy was scoring? Luke’s fingers closed around the cold neck of his beer as Vance sauntered toward him. Luke shook his head and said, “Didn’t take you for a Romeo, deputy—”
Romeo. Not likely. Not that sick, twisted sonofabitch killer who’d carved up his girls and marked them. Marked them.
An image of the bloody flower flashed through his mind.
Luke stilled, a memory from an old crime scene photo pushing through his thoughts. That flower. Romeo had marked his victims with a flower. He’d branded the mark onto their flesh within hours of taking the girls. A mark to last forever.
A mark on the back of their shoulders, a raised, rigid rose.
Oh, shit. The beer glass shattered beneath his fingers.
“Whoa, man!” Vance’s eyes bulged. “You all right?”
Hell, no. He threw a wad of bills onto the bar. Didn’t bother answering Vance. Red coated his vision. His body vibrated with fury.
Monica came toward him, slowly easing her way through the crowd.
He just shoved the drunks out of his way. I touched her body, every inch. Should have known.
Then she was there. “Luke, I wanted to—”
“Come with me.” He could barely get the words out as he locked his fingers around her wrist and pulled her back toward the front door. They had to talk, fast, and not here, with all the eyes and ears surrounding them.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
His fist slammed into the front door, and he thrust it open. Lee Pope jumped and spun around, a cigar dangling from his fingers. “What’s the—”
Luke glared at him and pulled Monica around the side of the building. No audience. Not for this. No damn way.
Voices were muted, drifting in the air and through the thin walls of the bar. He had to go farther, get her away and—
“Stop it, Luke!” Monica jerked her hand free. “Just—stop!”
He whirled on her, his body tight. “I can’t believe I didn’t fucking see it. All the signs were there, staring me right in the face!” He caged her between him and the wooden wall of the bar. “He knew, he knows everything.”
Her face seemed to pale in the moonlight. “What are you talking about? What did Hyde say?”
“That we can fuck, but I can’t lose control.” Control? Yeah, what was that? He slammed his fist into the building behind her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Rage. Pain.
For her.
Christ, her. “Why?” he snarled.
Her eyes were so wide. So deep. They looked black in the moonlight, but they were blue. Such a beautiful blue. That’s right, because he’d had a type and Romeo liked—
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you need to calm down.”
He kissed her. Crushed his mouth to hers and just took.
Because nothing was going to change between them. He still wanted her more than breath. It didn’t matter what had come before or what would come after him. He still wanted her.
Always.
At first, she seemed to freeze beneath his touch. No, no, just—
Then she kissed him back with a fury to match his. Her lips sucked his tongue. She tasted. She took. Her hips rocked against his. His cock was up, swollen and ready, for her.
Monica.
His hands closed over her shoulders. Squeezed. Held tight.
How many times had he seen her roll her shoulders? When she was working a case, when she was pressured at the Academy—
Her shirt had a long, V-necked collar, one that dipped to reveal sweet cleavage. His fingers slipped under the collar, found her soft skin.
His mouth hardened on hers. All these years.
His fingers curved around her right shoulder, pushed the fabric down, yanked it. Heard it rip.
Her mouth tore from his. “Luke, you can’t—”
He’d bared her shoulder. Creamy skin. Soft flesh. Choking back the lust, he spun her around and saw the mark on her right shoulder blade.
Just enough light to see. The raised skin. White. An old scar. In the rough shape of a rose.
The mark of the Romeo Killer. The same fucking rose that had been in that godforsaken cabin.
His hands were shaking. He was shaking, about to splinter apart. He touched the mark—no, not a mark, a brand—because Romeo had used a homemade brand on his girls. Burned their flesh as they screamed.
As she’d screamed.
“Baby…” His head fell toward her. His lips hovered over the mark. He’d touched the brand in the darkness before. Skimmed his fingers right over it and never realized.
She whirled around and shoved him back a good two feet. “Get your hands off me!” A voice he’d never heard from her. No control. Just fury.
He shook his head and stepped to
ward her, closing that distance. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her chin came up fast. “Tell you what? That I have a scar on my back? Big deal, you’ve got—”
Oh, she wasn’t going to bullshit him. Not anymore. “That’s Romeo’s mark.” That bit hadn’t ever made it to the press. The cops and agents had held the detail about the branding out of the briefings to the media. They always held something back in a case like that, something to try and trip up the killer later.
Luke had learned about the brand at Quantico. A profiler, Dr. Mark Brown, had been doing a talk on serials for the Atlanta office.
He’d said some of those killers liked to collect souvenirs from their kills. They’d take out the tokens and relive the murders, over and over.
But some serials preferred to mark their prey. A way of forever claiming the victims.
“Romeo believed he owned his victims. Their bodies were his to do with what he wanted. He cut them, he carved them, but first, he marked them with a brand. A rose on their flesh, a gift from their lover.”
“Get away from me,” Monica told him, her voice shaking.
But he didn’t move back an inch. “That newspaper clipping—the one this freak left—it was about you, wasn’t it?” Sole survivor. Oh, Jesus, how had she survived? He knew what Romeo had done to his girls. The torture that would last for days. “I thought it was about the town, but it was about you.”
She exhaled on a hard breath. “I’m not talking to you here, I’m not—”
“You’ve never fucking talked to me!” Too loud, he knew it, but he couldn’t help it. “This bastard out there knew. He’s been using this against you all this time.” What scares you? The bastard had been tormenting her. “Monica, he’s coming for you! You needed to tell me. Shit, this is your life!”
Her lips seemed to tremble. “You’re wrong, this mark isn’t what you think.”
“You’ve got his brand.” And he remembered Romeo’s type: Young girls between fifteen and seventeen, dark hair, blue eyes.
Monica. Years ago, she would have been Romeo’s perfect prey. “You were the girl who got away from Romeo.” The girl he’d kept with him for months. While he slaughtered the others.
A tear slid down her cheek.
Fuck. Luke yanked her into his arms, ignoring the push of her hands, and held her close.