A Righteous Kill (41 page)

Luca’s dimples appeared, the fear draining from his face. “It may kill me,” he admitted. “But at least I’ll die smiling.”

He shrugged off his holster and carried it with him into the bathroom.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Give sorrow words.

The grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.”

~William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Luca almost fell off the couch as his arm flailed out to slap at his vibrating phone and push the button to shut it up. From where she sprawled on top of him, Hero made a sleepy noise and snuggled closer beneath his chin. His body ached from passing out on the too-small couch with one leg braced on the floor to support both of their bodies and sleeping for God-knew-how-long in the same cramped position. He checked the window, still disoriented from so much sex and so little sleep. It was still dark outside, but he couldn’t tell if the feeble glow through the slats in the blinds came from the neighbors’ lights or the beginning of dawn.

Who cared?

Luca squinted at the screen. A little indicator told him he had a text message. Neither Vince nor his boss ever communicated through text, especially about a case. The lab and everyone else could wait until after he’d had his morning after coffee.

Letting his phone drop to the rug, he adjusted his hips against hers, stretching his waking erection against her silk wrapper as he gathered her closer. God, she smelled good.
Felt
good. Felt… right. The clean musk of her shampoo reminded him of the long, hot shower they’d taken. Luca had helped Hero scrub until her pale skin grew pink and most of the paint was gone. He’d washed her intimately, worried that he’d bruised her delicate flesh with his brutal behavior.

With a mischievous smile, Hero had informed him that she’d enjoyed his loss of control, and went on to show him with her hands, and talented mouth, just how much. By the time the water turned cold, he had her pinned against the smooth shower wall as he pumped into her from behind, bringing them both to a shuddering climax.

Exhausted beyond words, they’d enjoyed takeout in relative silence, smiling like idiots at each other across the table, their meal interrupted by a casual caress or secret smile.

They’d crossed some invisible threshold last night and a momentary peace, a sense of true release, settled into the air between them. Perhaps that was why they’d said very little. There was still so much
to
say, and maybe the words would remind them of all the pitfalls they faced with or without each other.

No matter how Luca looked at this, a part of him knew this might be the biggest mistake he’d ever made. As grateful as he was for yesterday’s catalyst to their mind-blowing sex, he had to examine the reasons he’d lost control. What if he had found Hero and his partner in bed together? What would have happened?

Squeezing her closer, Luca fought over a difficult swallow. He knew exactly what would have happened.

It had happened before.

A familiar guilty disgust twisted in his gut.

“What?” Hero asked, pushing herself up on his chest to gaze down at him with those soft green eyes. “What is it?”

Luca tucked a wild piece of auburn hair behind her ear, crinkled from sleeping on it while still damp. His heart clenched painfully at everything he saw shining on her face.

Sleepy satisfaction—
damn right
—hope, tenderness, affection, and something that surprised him, because he usually considered it a masculine trait.

Possession.

That look on any other woman’s face would have sent him running in the other direction like his ass was on fire. He probably still should. Simply because it was the last thing he wanted to do. Because he couldn’t bear to see the day where the trust shining in her eyes was extinguished by disillusionment and fear. It would kill him.

“Stop thinking so loud,” she whispered, feathering her fingers over his lips before leaning down to kiss them softly. “You should be too satisfied to look so troubled.”

“I was wondering why you weren’t making me morning after coffee.” Luca covered his mounting disquiet with a teasing smile. “I think I’ve earned it.”

With a sound of outrage, she reared up and tweaked his nipple. “After what I did for you on my knees in the shower, I think
you
should be making
me
some damn coffee.”

Heat flared at the mention of it and he pressed his hips upward again, settling his hardness in the hollow of her thighs separated only by his boxers and her silk robe. “I could just return the favor,” he offered, his tongue snaking out to lick at her lower lip before catching it with his teeth and slowly drawing it out.

Hero’s breath hitched on a sigh, but interest and rejection warred in her gaze. “Wait until I recover feeling down there,” she smiled. “Or at least until I stop walking funny.”

His smug smile drove her off of him, and Luca enjoyed watching the way her silk robe billowed as she padded to the kitchen. Yeah, she was going to make some coffee. He was such a lucky bastard.

A chill in the air shuddered through him now that the heat of her body was gone, and Luca scrubbed his face with his hands, reached for his gun, and went for his duffel bag in search of clean clothes. His slacks and shirt from the night before hadn’t survived the ordeal unscathed by paint, and he couldn’t contain what was no doubt a dopey smile as he dressed. He’d thought that when it came to sex, he didn’t have any ‘firsts’ left. Sometimes being wrong wasn’t so bad.

He had to filch his belt off of yesterday’s slacks, but it looked no worse for wear. Tucking in his shirt, he zipped up, checked his gun, donned his holster, grabbed his phone from the rug, and wandered to the half-wall to check on coffee progress.

His timing was perfect. Hero set a cup with sugar on the ledge for him with an impressive yawn before grabbing hers with both hands and curling her upper body around it like an addict would his next score.

Luca’s phone vibrated deep in his pocket, reminding him he had an ignored text. It was only five a.m., which was about the time Luca usually woke, but was still incredibly early for Hero. Their sleep patterns the past week had both been so fucked-up and they’d passed out early on the couch.

Taking a tentative sip, he hissed cooling air in over the tongue-burning ambrosia as he fished out his phone and rubbed his thumb over the screen to unlock it.

“My parent’s invited us to dinner on Christmas Eve and also to Midnight Mass,” she said through a lazy yawn. “It’s kind of tradition. They put your name in for the gift exchange and Mom said you pulled Pop, and Andra pulled your name. We’re not supposed to spend more than…”

Her words drifted into the background as the coffee turned to ash in his mouth. Luca read the words on his screen again and again, wishing desperately that they didn’t mean what he knew they meant.
Son of a bitch
. He needed to act. Now. But it was already too late. He knew he’d have to kill the light in Hero’s eyes at some point. He just hadn’t known that moment would come so soon.

Hero’s words died and her eyes became huge. She’d seen the look on his face. The one that told her someone was dead.

***

“Who?” She sounded like a deranged owl, but couldn’t help herself. Hero’s mug grew heavy and began to shake, so she set it down on the counter hard enough to slosh the liquid over the side. Dread stormed through her stomach, pitching its contents and squeezing a band around the center of her chest. “Tell me,” she demanded hoarsely.

The creases of his fingers had gone white where he clenched his phone. “Hero… Maybe you should sit down.”

“Who
else
has he murdered?” Hero could hear her voice raise a full octave as she raced out of the kitchen and around the half wall. “Someone I know. I can see it in your face!”

Luca looked down, came to a decision, and extended his phone to her.

She has been freed from sin.

A simple, single line turned her heart to ice. The note left with the goat head in her freezer only weeks ago had scripture with a line similar to that one.
He that is dead is freed from sin,
it had said.

A sharp sob escaped Hero as she read the name of the text’s sender. There was only one bubble, as no text had ever been passed to Luca previously, though the screen indicated they’d talked on the phone recently.

“Angora?” Her face crumpled, and the phone slipped through her fingers. Bewildered, hurting, and utterly shocked, she looked up at Luca, whose jaw worked bitterly and a vein at his neck jumped and pounded against his mocha skin. “
No
,” she gasped. “Why? Why her?
Why
?”

The question kept ripping from her in gasping sobs. Luca’s arms pulled her in and braced her weight as her knees gave.

“I have to call this in, Hero,” Luca mumbled softly against her hair. “I have to get a team over there.”

Hero stiffened as a horrible thought dawned on her. “Mr. Winthrop! Josiah! Do you think he’s all right?”

The look on Luca’s face told her he doubted it as he bent to retrieve his phone before pulling her against him with one arm while punching the screen with his finger.

“John the Baptist doesn’t kill men,” Hero found herself insisting desperately. “Maybe he left him alive. Maybe he’s hurt.”

Luca didn’t answer as he held the phone to his ear. He rocked her softly for a minute as she sobbed out equal amounts of pain and guilt, feeling as though the warring emotions would rip her apart. She knew he didn’t say anything because he couldn’t get her hopes up.

He called an ambulance, a CSU team, and local PD to Josiah Winthrop’s house, Hero cried even harder as he told them to expect a dead body. Luca then called Trojanowski, and they spoke about triangulating the whereabouts of Angora’s cell phone. His next call was Vince, and all the while he supported her weight with his body and rubbed his free hand up and down her spine.

Because of the timing, Vince had been dressed, ready, and drinking his own coffee before heading to her house. He and Luca made somber plans to meet at Winthrop’s residence ASAP.

Hero tried not to think of how her friend might have suffered. How the same fear and pain could have been inflicted on the frail but vibrant older woman.

“I’m coming with you,” she insisted.

“I can’t take you on scene,” Luca said grimly. “And I can’t leave you here alone. I’ll need to drop you at headquarters with Rown.”

“Take me,” she begged. “Angora was like family to me. She doesn’t have anyone else.”

“I can’t, Hero.” Luca held her face tenderly and wiped a tear from her eye. “Let’s get you dressed. I have to go.”

Hero had every intention of dressing quickly, but she took one moment longer than she should to cling to Luca, to his strength, his solid, masculine, wonderful-smelling body that pleasured, shielded, and protected her so well.

“I’m sorry.” His hands moved to either side of her head, and he gripped her gently as he pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “I’m
so
sorry about your friend.”

Hero nodded, though the hot tears streaming down her face and the swelling lump in her throat kept her from responding.

Luca supported her while she staggered into her bedroom. She started going through her closet, not really making out any of the clothing through her tears.

The sound of her phone vibrating on the bathroom counter distracted her. She’d left it there while painting because it seemed like a safe place. It was one short vibrate, not a long succession of them.

Which meant she had a text waiting.

Her eyes collided with Luca’s before she raced into her bathroom and snatched it up. Her toes gripped the shaggy lime-green bath matt and her hands shook so badly she almost couldn’t navigate the screen to recover the message.

Letting the counter hold her weight, she handed the phone to Luca, who’d been at her heels the entire time. “It’s nothing we don’t already know,” she said, sounding as hollow as she felt.

Luca’s
modus operandi
was equally as predictable at this point. He slammed his hand against the wall and said things that would cause a sailor, a truck driver, and even a soldier to blush.

Hero took her phone back, fearing for its safety in his hands and stared down at the words still illuminated on her screen, sent the same minute the text had gone to Luca’s phone.

Tell Agent Ramirez he can’t stop me from setting you free.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“It will have blood, they say;

blood will have blood.”

~William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“We found the cell phone.” Trojanowski’s weary voice sounded tinny on the line as Luca sped toward Josiah Winthrop’s house after dropping Hero with Rown at FBI Headquarters.

“Was it with the body?”

“No. It was tossed in a dumpster downtown.” Trojanowski sighed. “Mrs. Steinman washed up on a Hayden Island sandbar. I’m at the scene. The Medical Examiner just got here, and he said she’s likely been deceased for a couple of hours, though we can’t tell how long she’s been in the river yet.”

Shit
. That meant she was dumped in the middle of the night. “Same M.O.?”

“Mostly. Hands, spear, everything. Though, the wounds look like they’re
post mortem
, thank God. She put up a hell of a fight.”

“Mostly?” Luca queried.

“Well, it looks like the bullet from a .38 was what did her in. Di Petro said they haven’t found a gun at the scene yet, but Mr. Winthrop was also shot in the chest.”

Luca wondered how much of this information he could protect Hero from. “As far as I knew, Mrs. Steinman wasn’t a redhead,” he remembered.

Trojanowski was silent for a moment. “He put a wig on her.”

Luca reigned in his mounting rage in front of his boss, but barely.
Damn
. He’d liked Angora. She was—had been— a vibrant, funny, generous old broad who, under all that makeup and melodrama, was one of the most genuine people Luca had ever met.