Jaid Black (17 page)

Thomas snorted.

“We’ve got another lady missing,” Chief Williams informed him, coming straight to the point. “Normally we don’t respond to missing persons reports for twenty-four hours, but in lieu of that sick-ass warning Lucifer left behind for you, I’m taking all missing reports of any women like goddamn DEFCON 1—”

“Whoa! Back up.” Thomas frowned. “Lucifer left me a message?”

The chief’s bald head wrinkled.

“He just got here,” Ben muttered. “He hasn’t seen the victim yet.”

An ice-cold feeling lodged itself in Thomas’s spine. He began walking fast toward the dumpster, not waiting for any more explanations. He had no idea what it was he was about to see, but if Chief Williams was responding to every missing-persons report that came in, then . . .

He came to a halt before the dumpster, bile churning in his stomach in the way it had when he’d found Amy’s body six years ago. “Jesus Christ,” Thomas murmured, his eyes rounding in shock. “Holy son of God.”

Monica Baker-Evans had died as grotesquely as the others, the torture she’d undergone evident. But that wasn’t what had thrown Thomas for a loop. That wasn’t what was making his blood run cold.

The victim had sustained the same injuries, defacements, and brutalizations as the others before her had. She’d been slashed across the torso and legs hundreds of times. She’d been raped, most likely with use of a condom so no semen traces would be found. Her heart had been removed, probably while she was still alive. Same everything. Almost.

Ben had said that Monica Baker-Evans had once been a redhead—sort of. Now Thomas understood what the younger detective had meant by “sort of.” Her red pubic hair was still intact, but Lucifer had shaved her head bald, then used the long fiery tresses to tie the victim’s hands above her head. Taking the place of her natural hair was a very obvious light brown wig—a wig that resembled Nikki’s hair almost to a tee.

If that didn’t make the killer’s deadly intentions obvious enough, he had left two more calling cards behind. The first was a photograph of Nikki’s face. It had been sewn over Monica’s face with needle and thread, like he wanted to pretend that the victim was a different woman. Thomas could only pray that had been done to the victim postmortem, that she hadn’t had to live through that agony. (He would find out later that that had been the case.)

As if Lucifer had wanted to make certain that his messages weren’t somehow being misinterpreted, he had left behind a third and final calling card: A name badge had been pinned to Monica’s left breast, a badge that bore the name “Dr. Nicole Adenike.”

Thomas turned away from the corpse, unable to look at it any longer. “I’m taking Nikki away,” he rasped out to the chief. “Do you hear me? I’m taking her away.”

 

 

He came to her in the middle of the night, rousing her
from a deep sleep. She’d been given a sedative to help calm her nerves, so she was having a difficult time opening her eyes.

“Nikki,” Thomas murmured. “Wake up, sweetheart. We’re leaving.”

“Nik,” Kim whispered, shaking her, trying to wake her. “You have to go now. Listen to me! Wake up!”

Nikki softly moaned, trying her damnedest to open her eyes. But she was so tired . . .

“Shit,” she heard Thomas mutter under his breath. “Have your stepmother carry down her bag,” he ordered Kim. “I’ll carry Nikki to the car.”

A moment later, two warm, powerful hands picked her up and cradled her against a steely chest. She fell back into a deep sleep, lulled by the steady, secure beat of Thomas’s heart.

 

 

Nikki groaned as she slowly came to. Her mouth was dry
as cotton, her brain fuzzy like a cobweb. She opened her eyes against what felt to be terribly bright light, blinking a few times in rapid succession to keep them from watering.

“Where am I?” she said in a groggy tone as she carefully sat up. Her forehead wrinkled as it occurred to her that she was in the backseat of a station wagon. She stilled when her gaze came into contact with the back of Thomas’s head. “Detective?” she croaked, her voice sounding a bit guttural from sleep.

Their gazes met in the rearview mirror. “ ’Bout time,” he muttered.

Nikki’s eyes darted about, taking in the scenery of cornfields and hilly highway all around them. “Where are we going?” she asked. She was about to climb into the front seat, then stopped, noticing that she still had on her bedclothes. Her heartbeat went into overdrive. She glanced up, frowning at Thomas’s amused expression visible in the rearview mirror.

“I already saw your outfit when I carried you to the car,” he drawled. “No use going all shy on me now.”

She flushed, regardless of the fact that her bedclothes weren’t exactly risqué. The white and red striped cotton pajama bottoms she wore were loose-fitting and cinched together at the waist by a drawstring. That didn’t bother her.

What made her self-conscious of her body was the leaves-little-to-the-imagination spaghetti-strap top that went with the bottoms. It was made of sheer white cotton, came down to her waist, and clung to her braless bosom in a way she’d rather it didn’t. Making matters that much worse was the fact that her nipples weren’t in the mood to cooperate and go soft. They were standing as stiff as two embarrassingly awake soldiers wearing flashing neon signs around their necks that screamed, “Look at me! Look at me!”

She frowned as she glanced around for something to cover herself with.

“The suitcases,” Thomas murmured, drawing her attention back to the rearview mirror, “are on top of the car.” He grinned, the first time she could recall seeing him do that.

Nikki harrumphed, and decided she wouldn’t let him goad her. Decided, too, to ignore the way her heartbeat had kicked up at that grin.

“So,” she said in a professional, to-the-point tone, “care to explain just what in the hell is going on here?”

Fifteen minutes later, a clingy top no longer registered
as significant to Nikki’s horrified mind. Then again, there was very little that registered as significant after listening to the disturbing facts Thomas had laid out for her.

“I think I’m too shocked to speak,” Nikki whispered, now seated next to the detective in the front seat. “I can’t believe this is happening. I don’t understand . . .” She blinked, turning her face to Thomas. “Why me?” she asked. “I want to understand—”

“Nikki,” he interrupted. Thomas sighed as he watched the road. “Damn near every victim of a sex crime on earth has asked herself that question. Don’t look for a logical answer. You won’t find one.”

“But . . .” She swallowed, getting her salivary glands to start working again. “There has to be a reason. Do I remind him of somebody or something, do you suppose?”

“Maybe,” Thomas replied. “Maybe not. What you have to understand is that what’s logical to you and me won’t necessarily be logical to him, and vice versa. And sometimes, as hard as it is to fathom, there aren’t any reasons. Sometimes wackos like him do what they do simply because it gets their dicks hard, excuse my bluntness.”

Nikki blew out a breath as she settled back against the seat. “I feel like I’m living a nightmare,” she murmured. “My life went from wonderful to horrible in the blink of an eye.”

“But you’re still alive,” Thomas said softly. “That’s what’s important here.”

Something about the way he’d said that awakened a suspicion in Nikki. Not in a bad way, like he’d harm her or anything, but in a way that made her think perhaps the detective wasn’t as much a bystander in all this as he let on.

“Yes,” she whispered, “I’m still alive.” She cleared her throat. “And what’s more, I intend to stay that way.”

Silence ensued for the next ten minutes. Thomas watched the road, Nikki watched cornfields. Millions of thoughts pounded away at her brain, all of them competing for attention.

What was going to happen now? Would she be forced into hiding for the rest of her life? What about her apartment? Her job? Would she be allowed to see Kim? Were Kim and Megan safe back at the Cox estate?

But more than anything else, she thought about Richard. Who was he? Nikki asked herself for the hundredth time. And why was he so obsessed with her in particular?

She forced herself to relive the night she’d been attacked. She hated reliving it, but she knew she had to. If she could just remember something significant . . . there had to be
something
there. But it had been so dark out that night, and the shadows had been pitch black. She hadn’t been able to make out much about Richard except . . .

“Those eyes,” she murmured.

“Huh?” Thomas looked from the road long enough to glance at her. “You say something, Doc?”

“His eyes.” She cocked her head and looked at Thomas. “They were so blue. Too blue. Feral, almost.”

The detective’s body seemed to still. He chewed that information over for a moment, looking lost in his own thoughts. “Too blue,” he slowly repeated. “Interesting.”

 

 

“I feel like a trapped rat.” Kim sighed as she stared
absently at Megan, her stepmother’s hands wringing in her lap, where she was seated in a chair across from Kim’s bed. “I doubt he wants either of us, but I’m still freaked out.”

“As am I, dear,” Megan agreed tremulously. “Detective Cavanah is fairly certain Lucifer couldn’t have followed Ben when he brought us here, but ‘fairly certain’ isn’t precisely what I wanted to hear. Unfortunately, having officers parked outside isn’t lessening my anxiety, either.”

Kim snorted at that. “If we leave Ohio, we give up police protection. If we stay, we give up sanity. This sucks.”

“Yes,” Megan agreed. “It’s like being married to your father all over again.” Her blue eyes widened. “Oh goodness. I’m sorry, Kimmie. What I meant was—”

“Megan,” Kim said softly. “Quit apologizing. Okay?” She blew out a breath as she flopped back down onto the duvet. “He was an asshole and we both know it.”

“Well,” Megan said in that soft, demure voice of hers. “That was one of his better points, dear.”

Before she knew what came over her, Kim found herself laughing. “That was almost, well . . . that was downright funny, Megan.”

Megan blushed, but grinned back. She watched Kim for a drawn-out moment, her eyes twinkling. Her smile slowly faded as she stared at her stepdaughter, her expression serious. “I’m sorry I wasn’t a good mother,” she whispered. “I should have grown a backbone and learned how to protect both of us from Roger. I should have left him and took you with me.”

Kim’s nostrils flared. She flipped over onto her side, giving Megan her back. “You and I were getting along just fine for once,” she bit out. “Why bring this up now?”

Megan was quiet for a long while. So long, in fact, that Kim had begun to wonder if she’d left the room. But then she spoke, her voice even softer than normal.

“I wasn’t able to have children of my own,” she said reflectively. “Like you, I was raised in a wealthy household, but back in my day the women’s movement was barely off the ground. I wasn’t pushed toward a career or finding an identity outside of a man. Not being able to have children . . .” She sighed. “It was like wearing a scarlet letter. When I wasn’t able to conceive after ten years of trying, my first husband, Frank, divorced me for a younger woman who could. After that, my parents pushed me toward the first wealthy man that wanted me.”

Kim listened, but said nothing.

“When I met Roger,” Megan continued, her voice sounding wistful, “he was very kind to me. Very charming, very handsome and elegant.” Kim could hear the smile in her voice. “And when he introduced me to you, this blondehaired, blue-eyed beauty who looked like the little girl I’d always dreamed of having . . . I was lost forever.”

Kim closed her eyes, swallowing against the lump of emotion in her throat.

“You had just turned fifteen, but you were so small back then you looked more like ten. Do you remember?” Megan didn’t expect her to respond, so she kept talking. “I knew you were older, so I could never replace your dead mother in your eyes, God rest her soul, but I wanted so much for us to be close.”

She paused for a moment before continuing.

“I don’t think Roger wanted that, though,” Megan murmured. “In his childish mind, if you and I were close, it took away attention from him, made him no longer the center of the universe or something.” Her voice sounded far away. “I’d never been obliged to deal with a man so overwhelming as Roger before,” she quietly admitted. “I might have been thirty-four, but I was a naïve thirty-four. When he was abusive, or took to other women’s beds, or any of his other various activities, I blamed myself. I thought it was something I was doing wrong. If I were thinner, or younger, or prettier, or could have babies . . .”

Kim took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She blinked back tears, understanding only too well how good her father had been at laying blame.