Assumed Identity (6 page)

Holding an ice pack over the deep bruise on her collarbone, Robin turned her head while Annie Hermann snapped a photo of Robin’s hand and then proceeded to scrape beneath her fingernails, collecting whatever she’d scratched off her attacker into a small manila envelope. “Looks like you got some trace off your attacker,” the criminologist speculated. “If we’re lucky, there’ll be enough here to get DNA.”

Nick Fensom shook his head. “Since when have we ever been lucky with this guy?” The CSI flashed him a chastising look and the detective quickly apologized to Robin. “Other than you turning this attack into an
attempted
rape, Ms. Carter, and not getting hurt any worse than you did.”

The EMT had said she was lucky, too. She might have a broken back and be paralyzed or dead if it hadn’t been for the diaper bag cushioning the most critical blows. As for the rape? She was still unsure why he’d opted for clubbing her in the head rather than pulling her pants down the rest of the way and completing the awful deed.

But luck had nothing to do with her surviving tonight. A mysterious man had stepped out of the shadows and saved her.

“Are you sure you didn’t see him?” Robin asked, turning the conversation away from accounting, serial rapists and possible motives. “He’s hard to miss. I can describe him for you.”

“Your attacker?”

“No. The man who rescued us.” She shifted uncomfortably in her chair as CSI Hermann processed the other hand. Robin owed him a lot more than a thank-you. “He had a broken nose.”

Spencer Montgomery pulled out his notebook again. “He got hurt?”

Robin shook her head, pointing out the details as if the marks were on her own skin. “They were old injuries. His nose was crooked and had one of those bumps from where it healed wrong. And he had scars—one here—” She traced a line along her jaw to her chin. “And there was one up here, running above his ear at his temple. He wore a buzz cut and his hair was silvery white.”

“He was an old guy?” Detective Fensom asked.

“Not with muscles like that. He was my age, maybe. Pale blue eyes. Very...”
Masculine
. She couldn’t think of a better way to describe her rescuer. He’d been all man, with no soft edges to lessen the feral impact he’d had on her.

“He was very...?” Detective Montgomery waited for her to finish her description.

She could hardly say that her senses were still humming with feminine awareness now that the shock of the attack and fear for Emma’s safety had receded. “When I was lying on the ground and first saw him, I thought he was a ghost. Or a giant. I don’t know that he was unusually tall—six-two, maybe. Not as tall as your Officer Taylor.” She stretched out her uninjured arm, indicating the breadth of those shoulders and chest. “But he was big. This is a guy who works out. He looked...dangerous.”

“Does this ghost have a name?” Detective Montgomery paused with his pen hovering over his notepad. “I don’t like it when potential witnesses flee the scene.”

At least the relentlessly inquisitive detective hadn’t called him a suspect. “He wasn’t fleeing. I get the idea he’s not a very social kind of a guy. I asked Mr. Lonergan if he saw the man who attacked me, and he couldn’t tell me any more details than the description I gave you. He stopped the attack. Got us safely inside. I don’t think he saw the need to stick around.” The two detectives exchanged a curious look across her desk when she mentioned her rescuer’s name. “What? Do you know him?”

Nick Fensom gave his partner a curt nod, and then excused himself from the conversation and exited the room. “I’ll check it out.”

“You
do
know him.” Ignoring both pain and fatigue, Robin pushed to her feet and laid a hand on the sleeve of Spencer Montgomery’s light gray suit. “I don’t care if he’s on your most-wanted list. Please don’t pester him. I don’t want to get him into trouble. He saved my life.”

“It’s my job to pester people. If I don’t ask questions, I don’t get answers. And I like answers.” Pulling away without betraying his suspicions about Lonergan, he folded up his notebook and tucked it away. “Is there anything else you can tell me about the attack?”

Other than the fact there wasn’t a muscle in her body that didn’t feel battered and in need of a long, hot bath? Robin shook her head. “I’d like to get back to my daughter. Are we finished?”

“For now. CSI Hermann and her team need to finish processing your car before you can drive it home.”

With her home nearly forty minutes away out in the Missouri countryside, and dawn ready to peek around the corner in another hour or two, that wasn’t going to happen. “We’ll be staying in town tonight. At my friend Hope Lockhart’s apartment across the street.”

The detective nodded, added that information to his notepad, and turned to the dark-haired CSI still labeling items and packing her evidence kit. “Do you need anything else, Annie?”

CSI Hermann looked up from her work and frowned an apology to Robin. “Just so you know, we removed the severed seat belt so we can take it back to the lab and compare tool marks to see what kind of blade was used.”

One more thing for Robin’s to-do list—get her damaged car into the shop for repairs. “I understand.”

“We need to take the car seat, too, and the sleeper your daughter was wearing. We’ve already dusted for prints, but if the perp left any evidence behind—”

“He was wearing gloves.”

With a sigh that sounded like frustration, Annie Hermann brushed the dark curls off her forehead, giving Robin a glimpse of a fresh pink scar in her hairline. “I’m familiar with that scenario. But there could be a fiber or some other kind of transfer left behind that we can use.”

“I already changed her to keep her dry. Her clothes are here in the hamper.” Robin turned to get them, pulling out the baby towels she and Lonergan had dried off with and reaching back inside. But the criminologist asked her to stay put. She waved her gloved—sterile—fingers in the air as she circled the desk to collect Emma’s things.

Feeling that unfamiliar helplessness again, Robin hugged the damp towels to her chest and watched the woman bag and label Emma’s clothes. Since she wasn’t physically being allowed to do anything to reclaim control over her life tonight, Robin’s brain went to work. She put together Annie Hermann’s scar and frustration, and finally placed the younger woman’s face from shots she’d seen on the evening news. “You’re the CSI who was attacked at that murder scene on New Year’s Eve.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did you catch him?”

“We did.” The younger woman’s gaze bounced away, seeking out Nick Fensom as he reappeared in the doorway. Although he had a phone stuck to his ear, his blue eyes narrowed and focused on the petite brunette. She nodded at some unspoken message and turned back to Robin with a businesslike smile. “Unfortunately, the man was an accomplice, cleaning up after the Rose Red Rapist. Our serial rapist still eludes us—as does the woman who hired my attacker.”

“A woman?” Stunned by her answer, Robin set the towels on the corner of her desk and laid the ice pack on top. She’d read in the
Kansas
City
Journal
about the task force’s suspicion that the serial rapist had an accomplice who helped erase evidence of the crime after each attack. But how could any female want to help a monster like the Rose Red Rapist?

“Yes. Before my attacker died, he indicated that he’d been blackmailed into covering up the crimes by a woman.” She paled as she relived what must have been a terrifying experience for her.

Nick Fensom disconnected his call and tucked the phone into his pocket as he strode across the room. He curled his fingers around Annie’s and squeezed her hand. The movement was subtle, probably unnoticeable to anyone who wasn’t already curious about the relationship between the two of them. “Everything okay, slugger?”

There was no doubt that the two of them cared deeply for each other because Annie Hermann’s cheeks warmed with color at even that simple contact. She summoned a smile to ease his concern. “I’m okay.”

Robin wasn’t the only one in the room who’d noticed the trading of comforts between the stocky detective and the CSI.

“You two get back to work.” Spencer Montgomery excused his coworkers from the room before stopping across the desk from Robin and handing her one of his business cards. “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

“Wait a minute, Detective. Everything I’ve read about your task force says that the Rose Red Rapist abducts his victims and rapes them at another location.”

“That’s right.”

“Then why did he...rip my clothes right there in the alley? Like he was going to hurt me there?”

“Maybe you foiled the initial attack by fighting back so hard. You messed with his routine. He lost his temper.” She could tell he was only speculating possible explanations.

“If that man was trying to rape me...” She breathed through that frightening possibility before voicing her real concern. “Then why endanger my daughter? Why bother cutting up my backseat? He said he didn’t want the car. What
did
he want?”

“I can’t answer that yet.” His cool gray eyes narrowed, as though assessing whether or not she could handle his response. She must look stronger than she was feeling at the moment because he continued. “After the Rose Red Rapist attacks this past year, our task force looks into any type of assault against a woman in this neighborhood. There’s an outside chance your attacker is the man we’ve been looking for, and something you did put him off his game. He could be copycat. He might have targeted you for some other reason. Any information we get that eliminates suspects helps us as much clues that point us to our unsub do.”

“Unsub?”

“Unknown suspect. Even without the mission of this task force, I’m a cop. We don’t like criminals hurting anyone here in Kansas City. Whether this attack is related to my investigation or not, I intend to look into it thoroughly.”

“Good. Because I like answers, too.” Answers to why her business was either missing money or keeping shoddy records in her absence. Answers to why that man had singled her out tonight—was she just a crime of opportunity because she’d stayed late? Or had she been targeted for more personal, more unsettling, reasons?

Seeming to appreciate that she was on the same page with him, the red-haired detective extended his hand across the desk. “Be safe, Ms. Carter. I’ll be in touch.”

Robin shook his hand. “Thank you.”

He left her office and turned down the hallway toward the workroom and back exit.

Robin picked up the wadded towels and wiped the lingering moisture from the corner of her desk. She tossed the ice pack into the freezer of her mini-fridge and started to gather her things to follow Hope and Emma to the apartment across the street.

But Robin didn’t get very far before the ache in her shoulder, the weight on her mind and the emptiness of her office suddenly overwhelmed her. She sank into the desk chair and hugged the towels to her chest, unsure whether she felt like cursing or crying. Her body was exhausted, her brain weary, and yet, she was too revved up to sleep. She couldn’t drop her guard like that again. She had Emma’s well-being to consider, not just her own. How could she make a selfish choice like working late, relying on a silly whistle to keep her safe? Only one thing had made her feel safe tonight. Only one thing had finally quieted Emma.

Lonergan. He looked more like the muscle-bound henchmen she’d seen in a dozen action-adventure movies than he did any Hollywood heartthrob.

And yet tonight, he’d been her hero.

She lifted the towels to her face and buried her nose in their cool dampness. The scent of her rescuer still lingered there, spicy and clean—dangerous, somehow. More dangerous than any threat lurking out there in the dark streets.

That
was what she needed to feel safe and in control of her world again. What she needed to keep her daughter safe.
He
was what she needed. No one could make her afraid if he was around.

Except maybe the man himself.

Ignoring a twinge of common sense that warned her she was putting her hope in someone she didn’t completely understand, Robin dropped the towels and dashed into the hallway to catch up with Spencer Montgomery.

“Detective?” Montgomery turned as he shrugged into a dark blue KCPD raincoat at the shop’s back door. “If you find Mr. Lonergan, would you let me know? I’d like to thank him.”

The detective offered her a curt nod before following his partner and the CSI out the back door.

Chapter Four

Forty minutes later, Robin shut off the lights in the empty shop and turned, breathing in the familiar scents of freesia, gardenias and chemical preservatives. Guided by the lights inside the refrigerated display case opposite the front counter, she opened a glass door and pulled out a lavender gladiolus that was sagging over the edge of its pot.

She looked at the broken stem in her hand, recognizing the tidying up for the stall tactic it was. With a groan of disgust at her seeming inability to function with any sense of urgency, she tossed the wilted flower into the trash and headed to her office. “Get out of here, Robin,” she chided herself.

There was no reason for her to be afraid to leave. KCPD felt confident enough in the security of her building that they had all gone. There was no more ambulance in the parking lot, no cadre of reporters waiting on the sidewalk for a glimpse of the Rose Red Rapist’s latest alleged “victim,” no reason to be fearful inside the business where she’d spent so many happy, hardworking, successful hours of her life.

She crossed the lobby to check the front door again, even though it had never been unlocked since she’d closed it at nine. Bolted tight. Alarm sensors on.

She could relax her guard and leave now, right?

Only, there wasn’t a brain cell in her head or a bruised muscle on her body that seemed to be relaxing.

The rain outside was still coming down in buckets, although the thunder and lightning had finally eased their fury. An eerie sense of déjà vu washed over her. Not five hours ago, she’d stood in the same place, thinking of how the rain nourished her flowers and grass. Her biggest concerns had been a few lousy numbers and a daughter who wouldn’t sleep. She’d felt more confident—more naive, perhaps—the last time she’d stared out this window. Five hours ago, she’d mistakenly thought that a purposeful walk and a steel whistle would keep her and Emma safe.

Now she was more aware. More alert. More suspicious of the dangers that lay in wait for them out there in the night.

Raising her chin against the wary uncertainty she wasn’t used to feeling, Robin’s gaze tilted up to the row of windows over the Fairy Tale Bridal shop. Hope had turned a light on in the guest bedroom, no doubt as a courtesy for her late arrival. Robin’s mouth eased into a smile. She wasn’t alone. She didn’t have far to go to find warmth and welcome and a chance to regain the emotional equilibrium tonight’s attack had stolen from her.

The smile lingered on her lips as she let her gaze follow the line of windows to the end of the redbrick building. She nodded, telling herself she was reassured by the security camera and lights installed at the corner of Hope’s shop. Detective Montgomery had already requested any footage that might have recorded Robin’s attack. She could do this. She could be independent again. Like any other challenge she’d faced in her life, she’d refuse to let the fear defeat her.

Almost hyperaware of her surroundings now, on guard against any threat that might approach her or Emma again, Robin dropped her gaze down the sidewalk, past the row of cars parked there for the night, visually scoping out the path she’d take across the street. She followed the wooden, ivy-twined fence that framed the parking lot beside Hope’s shop. Gaining confidence with every moment of this silent pep talk, she looked into the emptiness of the alley beyond that fence and...her heart stopped.

“Lonergan.”

She breathed his name. Leaning closer to the window, she peered through the rain, fogging up the glass for a moment as she identified the ghost lurking in the shadows. Arms folded across that massive chest, leaning against the bricks at the edge of the alley across the street. Black T-shirt, broad shoulders, silver hair.

Icy blue eyes meeting hers.

“Lonergan!” she shouted, pulling away from the window. Recognition jump-started her focus out of that anxious lethargy. Purpose energized her steps.

Robin ran through the swinging doors into the hallway and dashed into her office where she grabbed her raincoat and purse. She stuffed Hope’s spare keys into the pocket of her jeans and ran through the workrooms. She never questioned the anticipation coursing through her, never wondered what propelled her out that thick steel door.

He’d stayed. He’d come back. He was still watching over her, protecting her.

She had to see him, had to thank him, had to find out his damned first name.

The splash of cold rain on her skin startled her from the blindly eager rush. She paused beneath the edge of the awning to pull on her coat and blink the moisture from her lashes. By the time she’d cleared her vision, he was gone.

“Son of a...” Slightly breathless and unsure whether she felt disappointment or anger, she clutched her slicker together at the neck and trained her gaze onto the alley where she’d seen him. She moved closer to the street, looked up to the stoplight on the corner and deliberately scanned her way down the block, past every recessed entryway and parked car where he might hide. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Her gaze stopped at a dark green sedan, parked next to the entrance to Fairy Tale Bridal. Her breath stopped, too. It filled up her chest and squeezed out any false sense of security she’d felt at seeing Lonergan again.

There was a man inside the car, dressed in dark clothes. But there was no startling thatch of silver-white hair, no battered face—no face at all that she could see—only shadows.

Feeling his eyes on her as surely as she’d felt Lonergan’s, Robin instinctively backed away. She’d go back into the shop. Call 911. Demand to speak to Spencer Montgomery and tell him there was someone outside the shop again. The same man who’d attacked her? Someone else?

Since she couldn’t see his face, for all she knew, the man could be sleeping and was no threat at all. Still, that possibility of danger, that hypercharged suspicion of the unknown, prompted her retreat. Keeping her eyes on the car, she backed up beneath the awning until her fingers brushed against the reassuring hardness of hard, cold steel.

“Ma’am?”

Robin screamed. A dog barked and she screamed again as she spun toward the uniformed officer and his German shepherd. She clutched her hand to the quick rise and fall of her chest, unable to summon anything resembling relief. “Officer Taylor. You startled me.”

“Sorry.” He held up a gloved hand in apologetic surrender and backed away a step. “I don’t make a habit out of scaring people, I swear. Detective Montgomery asked for a volunteer to patrol the neighborhood and I...I just...” His blond eyebrows arched into a frown as he fumbled for the words he wanted to say. “I felt so bad about your friend earlier, Hans and I wanted to hang around to make sure you got to where you’re going.”

“I’m only going across the street.” When she pointed toward Hope’s apartment, and Pike Taylor’s attention shifted to the bridal shop, the engine of the car that had alarmed her turned over and roared to life. Pike’s shoulders straightened, taking note of the green car pulling out and disappearing over the rise of the intersection at the top of the street.

Had the uniformed officer scared off the driver? Or was the sudden departure a mere coincidence?

Pike Taylor wasn’t taking any chances. “Across town or across the street, we’d be happy to walk you, ma’am.” Clearly, his vow to serve and protect was no joke to him. “I wanted to do the same for Miss Lockhart, but she wouldn’t... I mean, she was more comfortable with Officer Wheeler. Maggie’s a good cop, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not a horrible... I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

Her terror eased into something approaching motherly concern at his struggle to express himself. Robin inhaled a deep breath that seemed to calm them both. “I’d be relieved to have you walk me over to Hope’s apartment.”

“Okay.” With a brusque command to Hans, the three of them crossed the parking lot. Robin noticed how Pike Taylor’s gaze scanned up and down the street with every step, just as Lonergan’s had when he’d taken her and Emma inside the shop.

Robin, too, searched the lights and shadows as they stepped off the curb. “Did you see him?”

“The guy in the green sedan?”

“No, the...” Lonergan was gone. Again. He was a mystery who fascinated as much as he frustrated her. But the message was clear. For whatever reason, he wanted nothing more to do with her. He’d said he had only one good deed in him, and she’d already taxed his quota for the night.

She tried to block out her curiosity about her rescuer and concentrate on the young man beside her. “So staying late is Hans’s idea, too?”

Pike Taylor grinned. “The two of us think a lot alike.”

Robin smiled at the idea of a man and his dog thinking as one. “My friend Hope bought the bottom two floors of this building from the same man who sold me my space across the street. She’s converted the entire level above her bridal shop into storage and a generous-size apartment.”

“I remember her, from interviews and security sweeps early in our task force investigation. She usually wears her hair all up in a bun so I didn’t recognize her tonight. I thought she was older.” He followed Robin through the parking lot gate to the building’s side entrance. “She’s not.”

Robin was beginning to wonder if Pike’s interest in Hope had to do with something other than guilt. “She’s younger than me,” Robin assured him. They reached the brick archway framing the door and she pulled out the keys to unlock both the outer entrance and the inside door that led upstairs to the private apartment. “Thanks for the company.” She smiled up to the man holding the glass door for her and then looked down to her other escort. “Is he friendly?”

“Unless I tell him not to be.”

“May I?” Pike nodded at her request to pet the sleekly muscular dog. Feeling the closest thing to normalcy that she had all night, she scratched around the shepherd’s wet ears. When he pressed his head up against her palm in silent approval, she petted him again. “Thank you, too, Hans. Now you tell this big guy to get you a treat and a warm, dry place to sleep for what’s left of tonight.”

“I will.” Pike tipped the bill of his KCPD cap and twisted his mouth with a wry smile. “And, please, give my apologies to Miss Lockhart. I’m really not that scary of a guy.”

Tilting her face into the rain to assess his height and the equally brawny dog at his side, Robin begged to differ. But there was such a boyish earnestness in his blue eyes, she didn’t have the heart to argue. “I’ll tell her. And thanks.”

Such a simple word—
thanks.
Such a relief to get to express gratitude where it was due.

“You’re welcome, ma’am. Good night.”

“Good night.” Robin bolted the door behind her and watched as Pike and Hans jogged back across the street. She turned to unlock the door that led to the upstairs apartment when she heard a sharp rap on the glass behind her.

Wishing her startle mechanism had fritzed out for the night so she’d stop jumping at every little noise or movement, Robin pressed a hand to her racing heart and turned—fearing her attacker had returned, hoping Pike Taylor had forgotten something.

She didn’t expect to see a ghost.

“Lonergan,” she whispered, quickly unlocking the outer door and pushing it open. “I thought I saw you. You came back.”

He squinted against the rain pelting his face. “Are you and the kid okay?”

“Yes, I...” She invited him to step into the vestibule, but wasn’t surprised when he chose to remain out in the elements. Somehow, the unforgiving downpour that soaked his hair and plastered his shirt to every intimidating cord of muscle fit his wild, dangerous looks. Fine. He had an aversion to civility? Then she’d enter his domain. Letting the door close behind her, she joined him out in the parking lot. Her hood fell back and the rain chilled her skin even as her temper brewed. “What kind of game are you playing? The police wanted to talk to you. What’s with the magician’s act of showing up and disappearing without a word?”

“I wanted to make sure you got from point A to point B without another incident. Glad Officer Taylor there had the gumption to do the same.” Cryptic dodge of her questions. And how did he know Pike’s name? Just how closely had he been watching and eavesdropping? And for how long? “The guy in the green sedan back there pulled up and started watching your shop—waiting for you to leave, maybe—as soon as the cops cleared out. Couldn’t get a clear look at the driver without giving away my position.”

Giving himself away to whom? The driver or the cops?

“I did get a license number you can hand over to the K-9 Corps there. Tell him you saw the guy watching your place and you want to see if you can get an ID.” He nodded toward her shop across the street. “Did the suits give you any idea why someone wanted to hurt you? Why they’d still be following you?”

“What?” She glanced down at the scrap of paper he pressed into her hand and read the make and model of the green car, as well as the plate number scribbled there. The man was thorough as well as observant. Shaking her head, she crumpled the note in her fist and tipped her chin, looking beyond the forbidding angles of his face to meet his cool blue glare. “I don’t understand you. You’ve been here this whole time? Hiding out and watching this nightmare? Are you afraid of the police? Have you done something wrong? Did I say something that offended you? I know I screamed at you when we first met, but I was under a little bit of stress. You startled me.”

“No. I frightened you. It’s part of my charm,” he added in a self-mocking tone. “I’m used to it.”

Robin bit down on the urge to argue her point. One look into those craggy, distorted features and she knew he wasn’t exaggerating. It wasn’t a handsome face. There was no friendly vibe here. Still, there’d been other things she’d noticed—his strength, his protective nature, his willingness to help a stranger in trouble—that she’d been attracted to, that she’d longed for tonight. “I’d hoped you’d stay with me. I needed you.”

“You don’t know me, lady. I’m not what you need.”

“It’s Robin, remember? And you have no idea what I needed tonight. I needed to feel safe. I needed to believe that no harm would come to my daughter. I needed an anchor in the middle of all that chaos. You said you’d stay.”