FADE TO BLACK - Thrilling Romantic Suspense - Book 1 of the BLACK CATS Series (13 page)

“I know, but we’ve got to be thorough.”

He’d seriously considered doing a trade-off when they’d all broken for a quick lunch: letting Stacey partner up with one of her men, leaving him with just about anybody else. Because despite the fact that he liked working with her, those moments this morning when things had gotten a little on the personal side had been a bonehead move.

He had no time to get personal. No interest in getting personal. No room in his life for anything resembling personal.

Right?

Keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll start to believe it.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to hear himself say that when his head was filled with nothing but her words:
We both know there’s something here
.

God, she was so direct, one more thing he really liked about her. That and the way her sarcastic sense of humor emerged every once in a while. The things he knew about the woman—the details she’d let slip—only made him want to know more. And despite the way she’d answered his question the previous night, he suspected he understood what she was doing here in small-town Hell Valley.

April 2007. Virginia Tech. Christ.

“I dunno, I somehow think I’ve seen this tree before,” she mumbled as she leaned against a staggeringly tall pine. “Or maybe it was one of his nine thousand brothers.”

He got the point.

“Can I be honest?” she asked. She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I’m afraid this is a waste of time. The guy’s smart. Would he really have left anything for us to find?”

“It’s possible. You’d be surprised at the mistakes criminals make.”

“But he’s got to be a genius, right?”

“Not necessarily. Brilliant monsters are a Hannibal Lecter fallacy; most organized serial killers are of just slightly above-average intelligence. Disorganized types can have low IQs, but they’re cunning. In fact, the less intelligent the perpetrator, the more persistent and brutal he can be. Like an animal going after a treat, he just doesn’t give up. Doesn’t relent. Doesn’t see anything wrong with what he’s doing.”

“Doesn’t have a conscience,” she whispered.

“Exactly. No moral compass. Combine that with a bloody streak, a hint of cleverness, determination, and a good survival instinct and you’ve got yourself a John Wayne Gacy, who was no rocket scientist, yet killed dozens before he was caught.”

“He’s savvy, though. Using the Internet the way he does …”

“Every sixth grader in America is savvy enough to utilize the Internet. You’ve got teenagers beating each other up and proudly sharing the video on YouTube. While it might be unbelievable, it’s not that difficult. Any asshole with a digital camera and a DSL connection can get his fifteen megabytes of fame.”

She fell silent. The reality of what they were facing was probably worse than what she’d been imagining. Because a brilliant criminal, while hard to catch, might trip himself up through his own arrogance and certainty of his intelligence. An average one often escaped notice, his sheer blandness allowing him to fly under the radar. For years.

“Okay. So maybe he left something.” She shook her head, eyeing the hundreds of trees in all directions. “But seventeen months?”

There, he agreed with her. It was a long shot. And they were all exhausted. They needed more men, and they needed dogs.

About to call it a day and suggest he, Stokes, and Mulrooney start on their interviews of Lisa’s family and friends, he paused when Stacey’s staticky radio came to life on her hip.

“Sheriff? You better get over here,” one of her deputies said.

Their eyes met and locked. “They found something?” he asked.

“What is it, Frank? Over.”

“Sorry ‘bout that, Stacey. I forgot about the ‘over.’ Uh, over?”

Dean’s teeth clenched and his temples began to throb.

“It’s okay. Tell me what’s going on.”

“We got company. Damn it now, Warren, you put that away unless you want to get yourself shot.”

“Oh, hell.” Stacey’s slim body stiffened and she immediately began to move, her long legs pistoning as she blew past him. The radio at her mouth, she ran toward the next quadrant, where her three deputies had been working. Mulrooney and Stokes were south of them, too far to be of any use.

Dean took off after her, his feet tangling in mounds of overgrowth. Sharp branches and brush tore at his clothes, and he thrust them out of the way. Every instinct he had screamed at him to tell her to wait, and the sudden panic that she might be running into something dangerous made his feet fly over the ground. Still, he wasn’t as nimble as Stacey at maneuvering through this crap, so she beat him to the others by a few yards and a few deep breaths.

His numbed brain started working again as soon as he skidded to a stop beside her, seeing that she was fine and totally in control.

Tense. But in control.

Stacey had unsnapped her holster, and the tips of her fingers hovered over the grip of her weapon. She didn’t betray the effects of her hundred-yard dash by so much as a gasp, and neither her hands nor her chin trembled in the least. She was entirely focused, as she warily eyed the metal fence topped by that vicious razor wire.

On the other side of it sat a hulk of a man on an ATV.

With grizzled gray hair cut close to his skull, his dark green camouflage clothes, and combat boots, he could be nothing other than a vet. Something kick-ass and violent had shown this guy some action and had left his brains a little scrambled up about whether or not it was peacetime. The scowl—not to mention the shotgun lying across his lap—made that obvious.

His own hand went to his hip. But Stacey shot him a warning look, silently telling him to wait.

“Did he point that shotgun at you?” she asked one of her deputies, not turning her head, keeping her attention on the man glaring at them through the metal fence.

“No, Sheriff,” one of them said. “Just waved it around a little.”

She nodded but didn’t lower her hand. “Warren, you want to fire up that four-wheeler and ride on back to your house right now, you hear me?”

Warren. The name sounded familiar. And suddenly Dean knew for sure who they were facing. This was Warren Lee, the man who owned the property on the other side of this fence. The violent one who Stacey seemed certain hadn’t been the man in the tape.

Dean wasn’t so sure. The shadowy figure who’d killed Lisa and the others had been covered from top to bottom, a black hood hiding his entire head, a shoulder-to-toes cape doing the rest of the job. But he’d been tall, and obviously strong, given the way he’d overpowered his victims. He’d also been disgustingly impressive with weapons.

The proximity and this man’s violent personality meant they could be looking at the man who’d killed those women. Tensing, Dean slowly removed his sidearm from its holster, keeping it low, down by his side. He didn’t want to inflame the situation, but damned if he’d be caught unawares if that mean-looking bastard started shooting.

Noting that none of the deputies had done the same, all following Stacey’s lead, on alert, but not unholstering, he gave her the benefit of the doubt that she knew what she was doing. This was their territory; the man was one of their townies, whom they all knew.

“What’s going on? What do you people think you’re doing on my property?”

“This isn’t your property,” Stacey said, maintaining her cool so easily he wondered if she had a little ice in her DNA. “We’re on federal land and we have every right to be here. Now, I mean it, get on back to your house and put that shotgun away before you wave it at the wrong person and end up with a bullet in you.” Despite the words, her tone was even, not exactly threatening but not one bit weak, either.

Damn, the woman was cool under pressure.

“This is my fence …”

“And we’re not touching it,” she snapped.

“I got a right to protect my property and make sure you don’t come on it.”

“We’re officers of the law performing a legal search, who have the right to respond if we find ourselves threatened. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mr. Lee?” Her hand wrapped around the butt of her nine-millimeter. She’d reached the end of her patience with the man. “I don’t care if you’re on your own property; if you point that gun at one of my men, or any other officer in these woods, they will be perfectly within their rights to take you down.”

The man’s eyes narrowed and he remained still for a moment, engaging in a staring contest with the female sheriff whose entire posture said she would not back off. Then, as if someone had whispered some sense into his ear, he pushed the shotgun, muzzle-down, into a scabbard on his ATV. “Saw activity, had the right to arm myself to come out and see what was going on.”

Dean wondered just how much this man actually knew about his rights. Because if he was stupid enough to shoot and kill anyone merely for stepping over his property line, the guy would be looking at manslaughter at the very least.

“We’ve talked about this, Warren. There’s a big difference between protecting yourself if someone breaks into your house and you coming out here to look for trouble.”

The tension drew out a moment longer, as the big, gruff-looking man continued to glare. Then, slowly, as if someone had poured a modicum of malicious pleasure into his brain, a creaky smile cracked his face. It looked more menacing than friendly, like it didn’t get a lot of use.

“Good luck on your search,” he said with a sarcastic salute.

The smile widened, going from creaky to crafty.

All Dean’s senses reacted to the change. He almost smelled the malevolent humor rolling off the man, as if he had a great, dark secret and knew the sheriff was wasting her time. He stepped forward, wanting to question Lee about whether he really knew something, as his expression and tone seemed to indicate. Before he could, though, Mr. Lee started the engine and revved it up.

“Stay on that side of the fence,” Lee called before speeding away.

When he was gone, Stacey questioned her deputies. “Tell me everything he said and did.”

Exactly what Dean wanted to know. Seeing her deep frown, he wondered if Stacey, too, had been struck by the unfriendly man’s strange mood swing.

Her men, despite their rusty radio skills, proved pretty observant. They succinctly related the details of Mr. Lee’s arrival, his belligerent attitude, and his comments. One thing was apparent: He did not immediately question what they were doing. He had been focused only on whether they were coming too close to his own property.

“He didn’t ask what you were looking for?”

The deputy who’d been doing most of the talking, a middle-aged guy with a bulbous red nose, answered, “Nope, he never did. Only …”

Stacey stiffened. “Only what?”

“Only, Carl mighta said something about us investigating a murder.”

“Shit,” Dean muttered.

The last thing they wanted was to tip off the Reaper that they were onto him. Getting out here and conducting a search as secretly as possible had been one reason for keeping the response team so small, despite the availability of some of Stacey’s other officers. They did not want to scare the guy off and send him into hiding.

The revelation also made his impressions of Warren Lee tighten to a sharper point, a tension that pounded into his gut like every good instinct did. Because that man had
known
something. Dean would stake his career on it.

“God, I don’t want to deal with this.”

Stacey’s heavy sigh reminded him that there was yet another reason they didn’t want word to get out. When he saw her rub a weary hand over her eyes, and noted the slump of her shoulders, he knew what she was thinking.

“I’m going to have to go talk to Winnie Freed,” she mumbled. “Lisa’s mother.”

Dean stepped closer, instinct making him drop a hand on her shoulder. “So soon?”

She nodded. “Warren’s going to be screaming to anybody who’ll listen that we’re trampling on his rights while looking for a murder victim. There’s only one missing person in this whole town. Word will get back to Winnie by nightfall.” She finally appeared to notice Dean’s hand. Staring at it, then casting a quick glance at her deputies, she stepped away, but not before offering him a small nod of appreciation. “I’ve never had to do that before. Personally notify the next of kin.”

It was her job; she’d have to do it sooner or later, but he didn’t envy her. He’d delivered that kind of news enough to know she was in for a rough scene. And her friendliness with the family was going to make it harder.

“Let me come with you,” he offered.

The idea made sense. He, Stokes, and Mulrooney would need to question the victim’s family and friends. They’d intended to start after completing the entire search, but the potential exposure of the reason for their presence in Hope Valley had put them up against a ticking clock. Interviews were the better bet right now. Compiling a list of suspects, people who’d known Lisa, who’d been at the tavern that night, who frequently left town, who flashed new money around. There were lots of questions to ask, lots of people to talk to. The victim’s soon-to-be-grieving mother was as good a place to start as any.

There was another clock clicking even louder in Dean’s mind. The one at Satan’s Playground. Another auction was going down soon; it could already have taken place. As much as he wanted to locate Lisa’s body, he already feared that any evidence they found wouldn’t give them enough to nail the bastard in time to stop him.

Or to save whoever he targeted next.

Amber Torrington’s day had blown from the start.

First, her lame parents had refused to pay the deductible to repair her dented car. Like it was her fault dumb-ass drivers kept pulling out in front of her, or going too slow, causing her to hit them.

She’d broken a nail and couldn’t get an appointment to have it fixed for two days. Time to find another nail salon, because they’d been rude on the phone when she’d demanded that they squeeze her in.

Then Justin had told her he hadn’t been able to score tickets for tomorrow night’s concert she’d been dying to go to. That fat cow Kelsey had acted all disappointed for her, rubbing it in that she had tickets. She’d even had the nerve to ask Amber to use her employee discount so she could get something new to wear to it.