Lovegame

  He finds nothing.

  It should be a relief—it is a relief—but it’s also upsetting, because it means I did turn that bathwater on. I did choose that scent. And I did, somehow, forget all about doing both of those things.

  I apologize to Jesse profusely and give him a substantial tip for going above and beyond. He tries to refuse the money—says he’s just doing his job—but I insist. Dealing with crazy movie stars has to get old quickly.

  In the end, he takes the money and leaves with a cheerful wave, after warning me to set the alarm after him. As if I need the warning. I may show hints of being crazy, but I’m not reckless. Surely that has to count for something.

  Still, as I head back to my bathroom to finish cleaning up the mess, I get more and more upset. How can I not remember doing this? How could I have just blocked it out so completely? It doesn’t make any sense. I’m not forgetful. I’m not absentminded. I’m not crazy, present circumstances not withstanding.

  But here I am anyway, on my hands and knees scrubbing water off my bathroom floor. It makes absolutely no sense. And yet, as I use towels to mop from one side of the bathroom to the other, I get a glimpse of myself in the mirrors that line the back wall.

  What I see chills me to the bone.

  It’s all so familiar. Too familiar, if I’m being honest. Because I’ve been here before, right here, before. Acting out this very scene at least once in the not-so-distant past.

  I was in a black silk robe then, too. I was on my knees on another bathroom floor. My face was this pale, my hands this cold, my hair falling down around my cheeks just like this.

  The only difference is that this time it’s water I’m wiping up. Then it was blood. Gallons of the stuff that had poured out of my victim, Stephanie Jayne, when I dismembered her. When I chopped her into pieces.

  No, not me. The Belladonna. She did that. She killed Stephanie. She desecrated her body. She scrubbed her bathroom clean. I only pretended to.

  All the blood I cleaned up in that scene was fake. Man-made. Pretend.

  Just like me.

  God.

  I take a deep breath, lower my head. Force myself to turn away from the too-familiar image in the mirror. But just because I don’t look at it again doesn’t mean it’s not still there—in the mirror and in my memories.

  By the time I finish cleaning up the water, I’m shaking. Even after I climb to my feet, after I deposit the sodden towels in my washing machine and turn it on, after I get dressed in a pair of yoga pants and a tank top, I can’t get the shivering to stop.

  I walk from room to room, trying to quiet my mind. Trying to settle into my normal evening rhythm. But I can’t do it. My mind is whirling, my stomach churning and this house…this house that has always been my sanctuary suddenly feels a lot more like a prison.

  It’s that thought that tips me over the edge, that has me grabbing my cellphone and slamming my feet into a pair of running shoes. If I can’t shake it off, maybe I can run it off.

  Chapter 11

  She isn’t coming.

  The thought circles my brain, beats in my blood, pours through me like battery acid as I glance at the clock for the tenth time in as many minutes.

  Veronica isn’t coming.

  It’s ten-thirty and I told her to be here at eight. Not that I thought for one second that she would actually follow my directions and show up on time. She’s way too rebellious for that. But I did think she’d show—if for no other reason than to tell me to go to hell.

  Shows how little I know…

  I cross to the bar in the corner, pour myself a tequila. I drain it in a couple of long swallows, then pour myself another one. If I don’t have an interview to do tonight, I might as well drink. Maybe it will distract me from how totally disgusted I am. With the situation. With the way I handled the situation. With myself in general.

  I’m supposed to be good at this. I’ve interviewed serial killers, for Christ’s sake. Interviewed victims and family members, police and district attorneys, people wrongly accused and people who literally got away with murder. Very few of them actually wanted to talk to me. Nearly all of them had something to hide. And still I got inside their heads. Still I got every single one of them to talk, got every single one of them to tell me something they’d never told anyone else.

  Compared to that, interviewing a Hollywood actress on her accomplishments should be a piece of cake—even with my less than forthright agenda. And yet here I am, alone and totally fucked because I sent the woman I want to talk to more than anyone else—the woman I want more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else—running for the fucking hills.

  Shit. Just…shit.

  I think about texting her, about calling her. But what am I supposed to say? I already blew my wad telling her to be here tonight. And while I’m not normally one to give up when I want answers, I’m afraid that’s exactly what I’m going to have to do here. Maybe if I hadn’t slept with her, I’d be able to pursue this. I’d be able to push.

  But I did sleep with her. I did blur the lines. And now everything is so fucked that I don’t think there’s any way to fix it. Not with the way she looked at me in her trailer today, lost and confused and vulnerable. Even when she was spitting at me, even when she was telling me to get out, she looked vulnerable.

  And that is why I won’t pick up the phone and call her right now, no matter how much I want to.

  The interviewer in me wants to exploit that vulnerability—wants to push a little harder until she breaks wide open and her secrets start spilling out—but that’s not what the rest of me wants from her. Not after I held her and fucked her and felt her fall apart all around me. I may be a single-minded bastard when it comes to my work, but even I have lines I won’t cross. There is no way in hell I’ll use our sexual connection against her.

  Which means I really am totally, one hundred percent screwed.

  Fuck.

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

  Fuck.

  The word is my new mantra, and I think it about a million times as I take my drink back to my computer and pull up my files on William Vargas. There isn’t much here yet—I was counting on Veronica to help fill in some of the blanks about this one of Liam Brogan’s aliases. But if she won’t talk to me, I’m going to have to find someone else who will.

  Maybe her mother? I wonder as I scroll through the pages of questions I have about this time in Brogan’s life. Melanie Romero is known to have a soft spot for the press. And a definite affection for the spotlight. She is the one who hired him, after all. Even though everything I’ve dug up points to her being a hands-off kind of parent, surely she knows quite a bit about the man she entrusted her young daughter’s safety to for nearly three years. A man who left that post rather abruptly and then, weeks later, started killing girls and young women. And not just any girls and young women—ones who all bore a striking resemblance to her daughter and whose ages all coincided with Veronica’s at the time of the murders.

  Admittedly, Melanie doesn’t know any of that and neither does Veronica. No one does, outside of Mitch and me. I’m the one who discovered the Vargas alias and I’m the one who has put the pieces together since. It’s precisely because I do have those pieces that I’m unwilling to push Veronica any farther than I already have.

  Not when my suspicions all point to her being Liam Brogan’s first victim.

  Just the thought makes me furious, another clue that blurring the lines with sex has shot my objectivity straight to hell. I take another swallow of tequila to dull the rage, then pull up the photos of Alicia Corning, the first documented victim in Brogan’s sixteen-year-long murder spree. She was twelve when she was taken from her solid middle-class neighborhood in Mesa, Arizona. A sixth grader at a local middle school, she’d disappeared when walking home one warm November day—three weeks after Brogan lost his position as bodyguard and nanny for Veronica Romero and shed the identity of William Vargas once and for all.

  She was a pretty gir
l, with golden blond hair and bright, blue eyes. She had clear, porcelain skin, a happy smile and a small smattering of freckles on her nose. She was also—for all intents and purposes—close enough in size and build to Veronica at that time to pass for her from behind.

  I look at the pictures provided to the FBI by Alicia’s family for long seconds, then flip to a second file that contains hundreds of public photographs of Veronica through the years. Not for the first time, I pick out one from when she was eleven or twelve and place it up against one of the before pictures of Alicia Corning. The resemblance isn’t perfect but it isn’t just superficial, either, especially when you consider the rest of Vargas’s fifty-four victims.

  I save Veronica’s photo to Alicia’s file, then pull up the crime scene photos of Alicia. These will never make the book considering her age when she died—and the fact that I’m not a monster and would never consider making them public even if it was legal—but they’re extremely useful in evaluating Vargas’s psyche considering she was the first kill the FBI attributes to him. He didn’t have his techniques developed yet, didn’t have the set M.O. that would later tie him to so many crimes. In fact, one of the only things that ties Alicia’s murder to the later ones is the red ribbon she was strangled with. A red ribbon that came from the dress she’d been wearing the day she was taken.

  Everyone—the local police, the FBI, me—all thought that he’d used that ribbon because it was convenient. And had incorporated it into his M.O. later because of the feelings he associated with his first kill. But now, after seeing that photo in Veronica’s parents’ bedroom, I don’t think that’s the case at all. Instead, I think it was the red ribbon that originally drew his attention to Alicia.

  My stomach churns at the thought and I drain the last of the tequila in my glass before opening the first photos. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen them and she’s far from being Vargas’s most gruesome murder. But none of that matters when I’m looking at pictures of a dead child—especially one who so easily could have been Veronica.

  I open a couple more photos, study them with the new bits of knowledge I’ve gained since meeting Veronica. I worked for the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime for nearly a decade as a behavioral analyst and then a profiler before writing my first book. I looked at tens of thousands of photographs just like this in those years at NCAVC and still it’s my least favorite part of the job.

  I do it anyway, because I understand exactly how important every detail in these photographs is. Understand exactly how much they can tell me about why Brogan did what he did. And that’s what this is all about for me—every case I’ve ever worked, every book I’ve ever written. The why, not the how.

  I have my second and final interview set up with Brogan in the Massachussets supermax prison, Souza-Baranowski, in two months—just weeks before he finds out the result of his latest death penalty appeal. There are things I want to know before then. Things I need answers to so that I can ask the right questions—so I can get the real answers, answers he still hasn’t given anyone.

  I pull up photos from the second crime scene, and the third. Cara Delveggio and Moira Gentry. These are only the second and third murders—or at least the second and third that we know about—but he’s already begun refining the process. Already started to find his routine, and the message he wants each body to send.

  It’s obvious he thought about it a lot between Alicia’s murder and Cara’s, obvious that he went over it in his head again and again and again. What he liked, what he didn’t like, what got him off, what he wanted to do better…

  Alicia was dumped naked and bruised in a forest, limbs splayed in whatever position she fell in and the red ribbon tangled carelessly around her body. The same can’t be said of these two. They’re naked and bruised like Alicia was, but that’s where the similarities end. Both of them were posed by someone after death, their legs closed and hooked together at the ankles, their fingers tangled and hands joined where they rest in an almost prayer-like position on their stomachs. Scarlet lipstick is smeared across their mouths. And as for the red ribbon that would become Brogan’s calling card…the red ribbon isn’t twisted and dirty and wrapped around their bodies as it was Alicia’s. No, in both Cara’s and Moira’s cases, the ribbon is tied neatly around blond hair that’s been styled in long, perfect ringlets.

  Exactly as Veronica’s had been in that Christmas picture.

  I’ve never felt sicker about being right about something in my life. Not even when I was working a big case while with the NCAVC. Not even when I was working this case.

  I start to pull up pictures from crime scenes four and five—Stacy Chambers and Tamra Adams—but a knock at the door has my eyes darting to the clock in the bottom corner of my screen. It’s eleven-fifteen.

  Would she really come this late? I wonder, even as I close down the open files and shut my laptop. If it is actually her I’m not taking any chances with her seeing anything that might freak her out more than she already is. Then I shove the computer in my briefcase and try not to trip over my feet in my haste to get to the door.

  I’m half-convinced I imagined the knock, even as I pull open the door. But it turns out I didn’t. Because she’s here.

  For long seconds, I just look at her, taking in her pale face and dark, shadowed eyes. She looks like she’s seen a ghost—or more, like she’s well on her way to becoming one.

  “What’s wrong?” I demand, stepping back so she can come in.

  “Nothing. You told me to be here, and here I am.” She might be pale, but the look she gives me is pure, unadulterated Veronica. Part Disney villain and part Jessica Rabbit, it’s sultry and defiant and a little bit of fuck you all wrapped up in a solid punch to the dick.

  “I told you to be here three hours ago.”

  “Yes, well, beggars can’t be choosers, darling.” She all but pats my cheek as she saunters on by. “Hollywood’s a busy place. People to see, people to…do.”

  Fuck. She’s been here five seconds and already I’m itching to put my hands on her—to show her she’s not the only one with moves in this game we’re playing.

  I turn to watch as she prowls around the room—looking at this, picking up that—trailing her fingers along the edge of the bar, the sofa, the bed. For a moment I can’t help but see her there, spread-eagled. Naked. Her wrists and ankles bound to the iron bed frame as she begs me to fuck her.

  It’s what she intends—it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know she’s here to seduce me—and it’s a plan my cock is totally and completely on board with. But as I step toward her, an image flashes through my mind. Poor, broken Alicia, lying violated and spread-eagled on that forest floor, a red ribbon wrapped carelessly around her.

  My arousal dies a quick and terrible death.

  I walk over to the desk where I was working, pick up my phone. “So, do you want to get started?” I sound abrupt and I know it, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Not when the violence of the past is mixing so brutally with the reality of the present.

  But Veronica just lifts a brow, puts a careless hand on her hip and somehow manages to look every ounce the goddess, even in yoga pants and a hoodie. “Not even going to offer a girl a drink first, hmmm?”

  “Nice try, but I’ve been down this road with you before. I’ll offer you a drink. After you answer one of my questions.”

  “So it’s going to be like that, is it?” The bored look on her face doesn’t fool me. Not when I can see the bruises lurking in the depths of her eyes.

  “If it is, it’s because you made it that way.” I move over to the winged arm chair in the sitting area of the suite. Gesture for her to take a seat on the sofa opposite it.

  “Which way is that, exactly?” she counters as she slowly unzips her hoodie and drops it to the floor. Then she’s sauntering toward the sofa, hips swinging and nipples poking through the thin fabric of her tank top. “Oh right,” she murmurs as she passes me, her hand reaching out to pal
m my stiffening cock. “The hard way.”

  Fuck. It’s amazing just how easily this woman could have me by the balls. I know what she’s doing, can see her tricks coming from a mile away. And still she gets me every damn time.

  Because I want to give in to her, I grab her wrist instead. Then spin her around until her ass is nestled against my cock and my arms are tightly wrapped around her body. “Is this what you came here for?” I whisper against her ear. It’s a taunt and we both know it, especially as I work to get my fingers around both of her wrists. Once I do, I hold her hands in front of her body this time, pressed up tight against her abdomen.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she tells me.

  But she’s wiggling her ass against me, getting me harder with each shift of her hips. In retaliation—or self-defense, at this point I can’t tell which it is—I bring my free hand up and cup her breast, squeezing her nipple between my thumb and forefinger.

  Her breath hitches, breaks, and as her body melts against mine it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to kiss her. I manage it, but it costs me, even before she digs her nails into the back of my hand.

  “I don’t have to flatter myself,” I answer when I can finally trust my voice again. “Not when you’re so good at doing it for me.”

  “Letting you scratch an itch isn’t flattery.”

  “Maybe not. But knowing I’m the only one who can is.”

  “Touché.” She turns her head then, presses a hot, openmouthed kiss against my jaw. “Now, are you going to give me what I came here for, or am I going to wander downstairs to the bar and find someone who doesn’t ask nearly as many questions as you do?”

  I laugh. I can’t help it. She’s a fucking handful. And I’m a fucking idiot for being so turned on by it. By her.