really like to get a look at those files. She’d seen the Marquis de Sade.
She’d looked at his work and known who he was deep inside. Now
she needed to see the man he presented to the world outside. She
needed to find the man the monster hid behind. Maybe if she looked
for the mask he wore every day, she could put the two together.
Maybe the motel was a better place to hole up than her cabin. Less
windows, less places to hide. Internet.
“You can’t stay with me. You’re in danger if you’re with me, and
I think Caleb would say no.” There was no way she was letting Holly
stay close to her. She’d panicked when Nate had said her friend was
dead. Nell was underground with Henry, so her mind had seen
Holly’s body, cold and still. She hugged Holly. “Stay with Caleb.
Promise me.”
“All right.”
There was a knock at the door. “Laura, we need to get dressed and
go. I put together some toast and eggs. You can eat it fast. I made you
coffee, too.” Cam sounded hesitant. If she didn’t watch it, they would
go with her when she needed them working.
“Sounds great.” She squeezed Holly’s hand and went to force
breakfast down her throat.
* * * *
He waited, his breath pulsing in and out of his body. It was a
rhythm, and he could hear the thud of his own heart. Had she gotten
the news?
He’d left her a gift. Her greatest enemy, torn to shreds. Not
shreds, exactly, but he had neatly eviscerated the bitch. She’d cried
and begged for her pitiful life. She’d thought that her career would
save her. Dumb animal. It had been anticlimactic to push the knife
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through her belly and watch as she writhed on the blade. He had
watched, sitting back and letting her believe she was alone. He would
never again underestimate one of his lady loves. She had cried and
begged and found some deity that she’d never believed in before. It
had been predictable and utterly pathetic.
She’d been an unsatisfactory substitute for what he really wanted.
His rabbit.
Now that he’d seen her again, he knew she was the one for him.
His cock hardened. The thought of her was the only thing that got him
hard anymore. There had been that one woman, but she was gone and
she’d been a whore. His rabbit was a whore, too. She couldn’t help it.
She was female.
She had to be put down, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy
her before he did it.
It would be a true gift. An honor to bestow.
It was the least he could do before he killed her.
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Chapter Seventeen
Cam stared at the computer screen, willing the damn thing to
move faster. It seemed like forever since they’d both kissed Laura and
let her leave with the sheriff. It had been one of the hardest things
he’d ever had to do, but she wouldn’t back down. She’d been adamant
about getting this “interview” over with. Laura wasn’t one to
procrastinate. She was a “rip the Band-Aid off” kind of girl.
The computer beeped quietly, the sound taunting to Cam’s ears.
“Hurry it up,” Rafe complained.
Rafe had his arms crossed over his chest as he stood behind Cam.
Everything about his attitude spoke of his irritation. He’d already
talked to Laura twice on the radio Nate Wright had given them.
Cam wanted to punch something. Rafe had been on his ass since
the second Laura had driven away. Laura hadn’t wanted Rafe to leave
him behind, so Rafe was waiting on Cam to get the files he needed.
“I’m going as fast as I can. When was the last time you used dial-up?
Seriously, if we’re staying in this town, we have to do something
about the Internet access.”
Rafe stopped and sighed, a long, heavy sound. “I’m sorry. It’s not
your fault. I just don’t like this. It feels wrong.”
Everything about it felt wrong. It was wrong that someone had
been killed in this sleepy little town. It was wrong that Laura was
having her life disrupted again.
Cam waved off the apology. It wasn’t needed. He knew why Rafe
was edgy. “Did you pull Laura’s profile?”
Rafe went to the bed where his briefcase sat and pulled out a fat
file folder. “Yes. I’ve gone over it a thousand times. We know he’s an
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organized killer. He almost never does anything without careful
planning. He’s disciplined and well educated.”
“He would have to be to have gotten into the FBI.”
Rafe was silent for a moment. “We have all kinds of measures in
place to keep something like this from happening. We have to go
through testing.”
“All of which a highly-intelligent, highly-motivated person with a
deep understanding of psychology could fake his way through.”
Those tests weren’t infallible. Nor were the psychiatrists who
administered them. “The screening process isn’t perfect. Nothing is.”
Rafe leafed through the documents. “This is interesting. She talks
about how she thinks the killer will use the media. She labels him as
intensely controlling and very interested in what she calls his ‘legacy.’
Sound familiar?”
“Given what we know now, yeah.” It was obvious that the
Marquis de Sade had used Jana Evans, probably even telling her what
to write, and when she had lost her usefulness, he’d killed her. “Do
we know where her cameraman was at the time?”
Rafe had talked to Nate, too. “He was in the van. Apparently there
weren’t any rooms left, and Jana wasn’t kind enough to let him stay
with her. He was on the computer, video chatting with a couple of
buddies. They had a satellite connection. Maybe we should break into
the news van. Anyway, they have him down at the station giving a
statement, but he didn’t hear anything.”
Another dead end. But maybe the cameraman knew something
about Jana’s source.
The screen changed, and he was in. “Thank god.”
Rafe got behind him, blocking out the light from the window.
“What can you tell?”
Impatient bastard. “Nothing yet. I just managed to get in the
system. Let me copy the files onto a thumb drive, and we can head to
the station. I don’t care what Nate says. I can go through what I found
quietly while we watch Laura. I’m done hacking into the server, so
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the sheriff doesn’t have to worry about me getting him in serious
trouble and bringing the feds down on the town. I don’t think we need
more feds.”
It was funny how easily he’d slipped into the role of Bliss citizen.
“And you?” Rafe asked. “How much trouble could you get into?”
Cam shrugged. “All they’re going to know is the ID on this
computer. I’ll dump it after I’m done. I’ll take it apart and toss out the parts. You think I haven’t done this before?”
He had. Many times. His fingers flew across the keys now that
he’d been
granted access. He’d been a snot-nosed, small-town hacker
before the feds had swooped in to show him the error of his ways.
He’d given it up for a long time, but in the last few years he’d taken it up again. Now he was damn happy he was up to speed. A nudge here,
a nudge there, and he was in. The files started to download. The FBI
kept copious files on their employees.
“I have the police report on Edward’s mother’s death.” He
scanned the simple report. “It looks like Toyota versus eighteen-
wheeler. The mom’s blood alcohol level was over the limit. Other
than that, it’s kind of boring. He went to Yale. Top of his class. He’s
been a dedicated agent for years. Here’s the complaint Laura filed.
Asshole. He made comments about women in the workplace and how
a woman like Laura is really just looking for a husband. I bet that
went over like gangbusters with Laura. She left before the complaint
could be resolved.” Cam read down the professor’s file until he came
to the newest tidbit of information. “He just moved. And listed his
emergency contact as a man named Cecil Newberg.”
Rafe’s lips curled slightly. “That explains a lot, actually. Good for
Edward. And we can eliminate him. He was out of town the night
Laura was attacked. I had forgotten, but he left for a convention that
night. At least two hundred law enforcement personnel attended a
seminar he gave in Atlanta.”
Cam breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t want to believe that one
of his coworkers was capable of this. If he could eliminate the
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members of his former team, he could move on. He closed the file on
Edward and moved on to Brad. “Brad wasn’t at BAU when Laura was
attacked.”
Rafe stared over Cam’s shoulder, crowding him just a little. There
was only one desk in the motel room, and it was barely large enough
to fit the laptop. “Don’t discount him. When he first became my
partner, he walked in the door with a file on the Marquis de Sade. He
said he was fascinated with the case. He requested the assignment.”
Cam pulled up everything he could on Brad Conrad. Star football
player. High school valedictorian. On paper, Brad Conrad was the all-
American hero. He’d given up his athletic dreams to pursue justice
after his high school girlfriend was killed. He’d single-mindedly
pursued a career with the FBI. And he’d fought to get on the BAU.
“He found the body,” Cam commented as he read through the
information on the girlfriend’s death. The police report listed the case as open, but Cam knew what it really was—cold.
“Yes,” Rafe replied grimly. “He went to her place. Her parents
weren’t home. He found her with her throat slit. He talks about it
when he gets drunk. I think it’s why none of his marriages worked
out. He can’t put another woman above her.”
“Doesn’t fit the MO.” The Marquis would never simply slit a
throat. He liked to play with his victims. He spent hours and hours
playing with them before he finally put them out of their misery.
“Could be the first one,” Rafe pointed out. “Serial killers perfect
their techniques over long periods of time. MOs evolve. This one
could be the inciting incident. A crime of passion that led him to more
calculated murders.”
Cam looked up at his partner. “You’ve worked close to this guy
for the last couple of years.”
Rafe’s eyes tightened, the lines around them becoming more
pronounced. “I wouldn’t say close. I worked with him. I had beers
with him on Fridays. It wasn’t a close friendship.”
“Still. You’ve spent at least eight hours a day with the man for the
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last couple of years. Did he give you any indication that something
was off?”
“He’s an agent. He works crappy hours for government pay in one
of the most stressed-out units in the FBI. Does he have problems?
Hell, yes.” Rafe ran a hand through his hair. “He drinks too much. He
sleeps around. He’s got a bad temper.”
Well, Cam couldn’t blame the guy for that. He had a bad temper
himself. This was going nowhere. He could bring up all kinds of stuff
from their past, but it wasn’t hard evidence. Hell, he’d have taken a
little soft evidence. But it looked like everyone had some dark secrets.
“I don’t know what I thought I would find in here. I need a board. We
need to skip the profiling crap and figure out who was where on the
nights of the murders.”
That was something he could use.
Rafe stepped back and started to pace around the small motel
room they had checked in to but never used. While Cam had been
hacking into systems, Rafe had packed up the few things they had left
here on the morning they had checked in. They wouldn’t be coming
back here. They would move into Laura’s cabin.
Cam thought of all the things he was going to have to do to make
the cabin livable. Locks. Lots of locks. An alarm system. Motion
detectors. He might have to buy a guard dog.
God, his heart felt like it would stop every time he thought about
the fact that this guy was after his woman. Until he was caught, how
was Cam supposed to think about anything else?
“When do you get your gun?” Rafe asked, pulling him out of his
dark thoughts.
That was a good question. “As soon as the paperwork is done, but
I bet I could convince the sheriff to give me one now. And there can’t
be a shortage of shotguns around here. You don’t need a license to
carry a shotgun in Colorado. Hell, up here I bet people expect you to
carry.”
He would feel better once he had a gun in his hand. For now, Cam
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felt completely impotent. He couldn’t defend his woman. He couldn’t
even figure out who he should defend her against. What use was he?
The least he could do was hurry so she wasn’t alone. Cam trusted
Nate. More importantly Laura trusted him, but Cam wouldn’t feel
better until she was in his sight.
Cam looked down and made sure he had all the files he planned
on taking. He could very cautiously review them at the police station.
Maybe he could piece together some dates from the information. He
would hole up in Nate’s office, and Rafe would make sure he wasn’t
disturbed while he tried to put together what he needed.
The last file he was waiting on, a police report, downloaded. On
instinct, Cam opened it up just to make sure he’d gotten it all. He
flipped through the report to the pictures the police had filed. A
woman lay on her back, her unseeing eyes face up to the camera. It
wasn’t anything Cam hadn’t seen before, but something about her lips
triggered his memory. That color, a shiny mauve. It stuck out like a
sore thumb.
Laura’s words came back to haunt him.
He put lipstick on me. It was the weirdest thing. It was like he was making me up to be someone else.
It was the one thing the killer had left on all of his victims.
A
high-end lipstick called Purple Passion. The same lipstick on the
woman in the photo. Cam had just found the Marquis de Sade’s first
victim. The one the killer had never planned on sharing.
Rafe opened the door letting the sunlight in. “Damn it, Cam, are
you ready to go? It’s been an hour.”
Cam turned, his stomach in his throat. It was far worse than he’d
ever expected. “I know who the Marquis de Sade is.”
* * * *
Laura forced herself to get out of Nate’s Bronco. All she could
think about was the fact that Jana was dead, and there was no denying
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the truth. The Marquis de Sade was here in Bliss, and he was someone
she knew.
Someone she knew had tortured her. He’d drugged her and tied
her down and cut her. He’d terrified her and caused her more pain
than she’d imagined she could survive.
He’d taken pieces of her.
“Laura?” Nate stood in front of her. He reached out a hand. “Stay
close to me. I won’t let anything happen. I promise. Your men will be
here before you know it.”
Her men. She liked the sound of that and the way Nate and the
rest of the men had welcomed them. Rafe and Cam wouldn’t find it
hard to fit in here.
She knew they would hurry. Rafe had sounded miserable when
she’d talked to him earlier, but the truth was, she wanted that
information. Anything Cam could pull out of the system, legal or
illegal, would be welcomed. She wanted to sit down and build a
profile. It was there, she just knew it. It was all there in the
background. Now that she had concrete suspects, all she had to do
was fit the pieces of the puzzle together. The truth would be in their
history, hidden in the small documents that made up a life.
She could catch him if she tried.
But first, she had to get through this.
“I’d like to see the letter he left for me.” She didn’t really want to
see it, but she had to. It could give her insight.
Nate nodded. “They have it inside. They brought the physical
evidence here, but the body was taken to the morgue. I can probably
get you in there if you want to witness the autopsy.”