Die for Me: A Novel of the Valentine Killer (11 page)

There was no hope in Amy’s eyes. There’d been hope before, just a few minutes ago. Until they called Katherine together.

The tip of the knife slid over her chest. Amy’s eyes were open.
No hope.

“It’s over now.” The blade sank into Amy’s heart. “At least, it is for you.”

But not for Kat. Not yet.

The life faded from Amy’s eyes. Such a beautiful sight.

The knife was wet with blood. So much blood.

There wasn’t time to linger or to enjoy this work. A rose was carefully positioned in Amy’s palm. Her fingers were forced closed around it.

The scene was set.

It wouldn’t be much longer until the cops arrived.
I have to hurry if I want to get a good seat.
It was guaranteed to be one helluva show.

“That telephone number traced back to an Amy Evans.” The captain’s voice rang through the station. “She’s thirty-one, brunette, dark eyes…”

A picture of Amy Evans was on the computer screen, being printed out, as Dane grabbed his keys and double-checked that his gun was holstered.

“Got the lock,” the tech John Baylor said from a desk two feet away. “The signal is coming from two-oh-nine Jamestown Avenue.”

The warehouse district.

The captain started barking orders, both to the men in the bull pen and to those listening on the police radio.

Dane rushed for the door, then hesitated for an instant as he glanced over his shoulder.

Katherine had inched toward the computer screen. She was staring at the image of Amy Evans, and Katherine looked lost and scared.

I’ll save her.
He didn’t give Katherine those words, though, because it wasn’t a promise he knew he could keep.

“I need to go with you.” Katherine’s voice was low, but when she spoke, the police captain immediately jerked his head toward her. Dane had already left, and Katherine knew the captain would be rushing out soon, too.

“Hell
no,
” he barked at once. “I’m not sending you to a crime scene. You’re too valuable to this case—”

“If the cops arrive in time,” Marcus Wayne cut in, “and Valentine is there with his victim, Katherine could be the only one able to get through to him. He
called
her. Dane said the victim specifically asked for Kat to stop the killer.” He nodded toward Katherine. “I’d say she’s exactly the person you need on-scene. She’s our only way to control Valentine.”

“Please,” Katherine said to the captain. “I want to help.” Valentine had let his victim call her. So maybe—maybe—he had let Savannah call, too.

Could I have saved her?

“Hell.” The captain gave a grim nod. Then he motioned to Ross. “You’ve been keeping her in check for years—so you
stay
with her, got it? I don’t want her out of your sight. You stay behind my men and you keep her back, too.”

Her breath rushed out.

“Yes, sir,” Ross said. His hand closed around her shoulder. He leaned close to her. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing? The whole purpose of witness protection is to keep you
away
from Valentine so that you’re alive when it comes time for the trail.”

But if they never caught him, there would be no trial. How could she keep hiding while others died?

She couldn’t.

They went in quietly. Dane led the team as they slipped inside the warehouse at 209 Jamestown. It was a tactical call. They could have gone in with sirens screaming, but the captain worried it would make Valentine kill the woman that much faster.

Don’t alert him. Just get close and take him down.
Those were his orders.

So Dane slipped through the run-down warehouse. The place seemed abandoned. Filled with the scent of old dust and mildew. The windows were broken. A rat scurried across the floor.

But he didn’t hear the sound of a woman screaming.

Be alive. Please be alive.

The cops were wearing bulletproof vests, but he barely felt the weight of his. His gun was gripped firmly in his hand. He motioned to the right, and Mac rushed into the next room.

He followed his partner, searching.

Five rooms so far…
all nothing.

But John had been certain that the cell phone signal was coming from this address. As far as Dane knew, the man had never been wrong on any case. When it came to tech, John was king.

Dane went back into the narrow hallway and followed two cops up the stairs.

Then he caught the scent of blood.

Be alive.
The thought slid through his mind once more.

At the top of the stairs, a door had been left open. Mac gave him cover while he hurried inside. His gaze swept the room—

And he saw her.

He rushed toward her with his heart racing in his chest. The scent of blood was strong in the room, heavy and cloying as it filled his nostrils.

Amy’s wrists and ankles were bound. Blood soaked the floor around her. Duct tape covered her mouth.

Deep slices lined her arms. A deep hole had been dug into her heart.

Amy had been screaming less than thirty minutes ago. But now she was dead, and fury had his whole body tensing. His breath panted out, hard and fast, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her frozen features.

Another victim.
Too late.
Dammit. He shook his head, hating the sight of her broken body.
We didn’t find her fast enough.

Dane backed away from her. Almost stepped on the smart-phone that had been placed on the ground. Why the hell was it there? Had the killer dropped it? Dane tapped the transmitter at his ear. Before he came into the warehouse, he’d gotten wired so he could transmit out to the others. “We found Amy.” He swallowed and said, “We’re gonna need the ME.”

He could already imagine the expression on the captain’s face as he heard the news—an expression that would match Dane’s own.

They hadn’t arrived fast enough to save the victim, but the sonofabitch could still be close by.

“Keep searching,” Dane ordered the men around him. “Every single room. Every crawl space.
Everywhere.
”

He led the men. They took their time, doing their best not to destroy any evidence. They searched room after room. Air-conditioning ducts. Closets. Storage spaces. Every damn place.

Then Dane headed outside with his men. Bright sunlight beat down on him. He saw the line of police cars that had assembled and saw the captain glaring at the scene. Uniforms had fanned out and were searching all the nearby buildings.

They won’t find him.

Because the killer was just screwing with them all.

Harley moved to the side, and Dane caught a glimpse of Katherine’s face. Just seeing her so close to the murder scene was like a punch to his gut.
No. She shouldn’t be here.

He ran toward her and the captain. He tried to hold back his anger, but it broke free as he glared at Harley and demanded, “Why the hell would you bring her here?” How could the captain not understand what the killer was doing? He’d called her, lured her there.

“Valentine wanted her out here for a reason,” Harley said, his voice rough. “And she insisted on coming.”

Dane was starting to think the woman had a death wish.

But the captain was right. The call to Katherine had been deliberate, and Valentine would have been too smart to use the victim’s phone—knowing they could trace both the victim’s identity and the phone’s location through that call—
unless he wanted us here.

The bastard was jerking them around.

Because he wanted to watch
.

“The men need to fan out more.” His gaze left the closer buildings and drifted farther away, then rose. “Get uniforms up there.” He motioned to the buildings on the far right. “He set the scene, and he lured his players out here. I’m betting he stayed to watch.”

Valentine liked to think he was in control of the game. A twisted game in which he was the only one having any fun.

Harley sent the uniforms scrambling. They rushed toward the first building that Dane had indicated, a four-story warehouse that would have given the killer a perfect view of the cop cars as they arrived.

“He saw us coming,” Dane said. “He watched us every step of the way.”

Katherine touched his arm—a light, hesitant touch. “She was dead?”

He nodded. The ME’s van was already there. Ronnie would be heading in soon to check the body. “She was still warm.”

Katherine’s breath shuddered out.

His gaze shot over her head and landed on the marshal. “Take her back to the station,” he told Ross. He couldn’t leave the scene yet or he’d have been the one to take her. But Dane didn’t like having her out here. She was too exposed. Whatever game Valentine
thought
he was playing,
he needs to think again
.

Ross nodded, even as his gaze drifted to the buildings on the right.

“Keep her safe,” Dane added. The last thing he wanted to see was Katherine tied to a table. With duct tape over her mouth. And blood dripping down her arms.

The woman in there, with her dark hair and pale skin, could have been a substitute for Katherine. Would the killer be coming for her soon?

Dane glared up at the buildings.
You can’t have her.

Cops guarded the front door of Katherine’s house. A patrol car was stationed at the end of her driveway. If she’d had any neighbors to scare, the poor folks would have been terrified.

But she didn’t have neighbors. Because she didn’t want them to get too close. She didn’t want anyone to get too close.

“Do you know anything about the victim?” Katherine asked as her fingers curled around the cup of coffee in front of her. It was nearing eight p.m., and she probably shouldn’t have been drinking coffee so late, but there were plenty of things she shouldn’t have done in her life.

Coffee wouldn’t be what killed her. Valentine? He just might be.

Ross gave a slow shake of his head. He’d been her shadow all day, a shadow she was grateful to have. “Her name is Amy Evans. She’s divorced. Thirty-one.” He expelled his breath in a rush. “I learned that, then got—”

“Sentenced to babysitting duty with me,” she finished, shoulders hunching.

The kitchen chair groaned beneath him as he shifted his weight. She looked up and saw that his gaze had hardened. “Do you still have the gun?” Ross asked.

He was always Ross to her. Never Anthony, never Tony. He’d been her handler for three years. Given her two new identities in that time. But she always called him Ross because she wanted to keep distance between them.

Because she didn’t trust him.

I don’t trust anyone.

Not even the men with badges.

“Katherine.”

She blinked.

“Do you still have the gun?”

He’d given her the gun the day he got her out of Boston. She didn’t know if it was standard procedure to give a witness a gun. She doubted it, but there had been shadows in Ross’s eyes. A story she hadn’t been brave enough to ask about. He’d given her the gun and said, “
If the bastard ever finds you, don’t waste a breath talking to him. Just shoot
.”

Her fingers curled tighter around the mug. “I still have the gun,” she said. She most certainly still had it, and she spent ten hours a week at the firing range making sure she knew exactly how to use it.