The Killing Edge (11 page)

“So, tell me about your designs,” Rene said to Luke.

Chloe found herself enjoying the next few minutes as Luke played designer. Luckily Rene was excited about swimsuits, and she filled in every gap in the conversation. Eventually they finished their dinner, and Luke drove back to the mansion.

They didn’t drive in, but Luke got out of the car at the gate and waited until Rene was safely inside the house. But then, instead of getting back in the car, he still stood staring up at the mansion.

Chloe opened her door and stepped out.

“What’s the matter? What is it?”

“Nothing,” he told her, turning back to the car.

But by then she was staring at the house herself.

The moon was out, but there was a haze over it, and the color was mixing with the mansion’s security lights and the mist drifting along the coast.

The house appeared to be bathed in red.

Bloodred.

He was restless that night. So restless.

He was God’s warrior, but he had to be patient. Planning the perfect battle against evil took time.

God wanted his warriors to be skilled and ready. And God had given him what it took to fight the battle and then escape from those who would never understand his cause.

Of course, he had to be honed to the perfect sharpness, like the weapon he was. Honed and ready at all times, so it was only just and right that he kept his edge by killing while
he waited for the battle to commence. He was an animal, a predator, and he had come to love the pursuit, the cunning he used, the look in the eyes of those who knew they were about to die. They had sinned, and they were therefore both sacrificed and saved by giving him pleasure in their deaths. He knew that he had a higher calling than others, so he had to kill at other times. A killer couldn’t lose his edge.

And he liked it. He had to like it. God knew that. Liking what he did kept him from faltering. It gave him the brilliance to wield the knife and then disappear into the fabric of everyday life. And he played his role well.

He only killed selectively.

Not children. Never children. God did not condone the murder of children.

He chose only those who were going down the wrong path. Only those who were vain and obsessed with material goods. Only those who teased and taunted men with their sexuality. Who drank and fornicated freely. They were his for the taking, and what he did with them, to them, was right.

Tonight…he watched.

Tonight…he waited.

Tonight…

The moon was strange tonight. It bathed the world in red.

Red. The color of blood.

He looked at the moon, and he knew that his chance was coming. Another chance to save another soul through death.

As the blood-soaked moon cloaked Miami and the Keys, he knew that his time was coming.

And he was honed, practiced and ready.

C
hloe had a hard time waking up on Tuesday morning.

She had slept restlessly.

Badly.

She knew that it was all because of the past resurfacing. She and Luke had talked about the massacre, and then they had talked to Rene about Colleen’s disappearance.

She shouldn’t be surprised that she was having dreams. It would be surprising if she
didn’t
.

But it wasn’t only the dreams. She was seeing things when she was awake, too.

Last night, Luke had been as proper as ever when they got back to her house. He had gotten out and opened her door, and he had waited not just until she had gone in the gate, but until he saw her go into the carriage house.

She had almost turned around. Almost asked him to come
in. She’d wondered what he would say if she casually mentioned that he was
wickedly hot
, then told him that she didn’t trust people easily but she trusted him, and that she had never felt such an overwhelming desire to be with someone. That just knowing he had watched her go inside was incredibly arousing, that his least touch awakened feelings she barely dared to acknowledge.

He would probably have looked at her kindly, before apologizing and turning her down.

She knew almost nothing about his past, and yet…she was sure he was somehow damaged, afraid of intimacy. Just as she was.

Afterward, upstairs in her room, she’d been unable to sleep. All the lights out as she lay in bed, she’d turned on the television for company. The television, that was it. It must have been the reflection from the television that had led her to believe she saw Colleen’s ghost sitting in the chair in the corner of her room, watching her.

She had bolted straight up in bed, then forced herself to walk over to the chair to…find…nothing. The image had disappeared.

She had nearly started screaming, ready to race over to the main house, and sleep on the floor at the foot of Uncle Leo’s bed. Instead, she had turned on every light and turned up the TV volume.

At least Colleen hadn’t spoken to her that time.

With all the lights on and the television blaring, she had managed to sleep off and on, but she had awakened far too many times to look around her room. She hadn’t seen the
ghost again, but she had been grateful, though still tired, when it was time to get up.

Time to bask in the daylight, anathema to ghosts. Why was Colleen haunting her, even if only in her own mind? She knew all the logical explanations. She was worried about the other woman, certain she was dead, so she was trying to prove her case in the recesses of her mind. Giving herself an excuse to keep on investigating.

Great. She needed help, but there was no time for it now. She was off to try to help others.

She had a decent morning at work.

Chloe worked with a series of children who were destined for special classes unless she could discern the cause of their behavioral problems. It never failed to amaze her how accurate shapes and colors could be in discerning problems. It was easy to deduce that a child who drew himself inside a box or a house with no windows felt trapped. If he chose to color with unrelenting blues, purples and black, he was almost always dealing with a deep sadness. Reds and yellows indicated energy and warmth, but the constant use of red indicated feelings of hostility and anger. The children’s art gave Chloe insight into their situations and characters before she spent time in session with them.

She finished with the children by noon and was delighted to discover that she had nothing else scheduled for the day. She needed to review the morning’s work and make notes, of course, but she would be able to leave early.

She wasn’t sure if she was pleased or dismayed when Jim
buzzed her to say that there was a Jack Smith in the outer office, waiting to see her.

Again she felt that annoying pounding of her heart. She lay her head down on her desk for a moment. What a wreck she was becoming, seeing a ghost in her bedroom and mentally undressing Luke Cane every time she saw him.

The students’ drawings were spread across her desk, and she quickly collected them, not wanting to be influenced by anything he had to say, much less to take the chance that he might belittle her chosen methods.

Jim opened the door to her office, ushering Luke in.

“What? Do you have radar?” Chloe asked, gathering the last of the pictures and glancing over at him.

“No,” Luke said, grinning. “I have a phone. I called to see if there was a possibility of scheduling lunch with you.”

“And you didn’t think to ask me first?” she asked Jim, shooting him a frown. Then she relented.

“It’s all right, of course,” she said. Jim was too valuable for her to stay annoyed with him.

“I told Mr. Smith that you’re free all afternoon,” Jim admitted. “And I cleared your schedule entirely for the week of the shoot—I just rearranged the last of your consultations.”

“Thank you, Jim,” Chloe said. “That’s wonderful.” The rescheduling was wonderful, anyway; she wasn’t at all sure about the afternoon. She needed time away from Luke.

Jim smiled and closed the door behind him.

“Art therapy?” Luke asked her, nodding toward the stack of pictures she was still holding.

“Color diagnostics, at the moment,” she said. “Want to draw a picture?”

“You wouldn’t like what I would draw,” he said, striding across her office to look out the window down to the street below. His tone had been gruff, and she found herself thinking again that he was emotionally damaged, just like her.

Who had he lost—and how? she wondered. Was he ever going to tell her?

“Nice place,” he told her.

“Thanks.” She watched him for a moment. “What do you want?”

He turned around. “How do you feel about taking a drive?”

“Where?” she asked warily.

“First lunch, then the Keys. The agency’s private island.”

“It’s an hour from here just to Key Largo—”

“And another hour down to the island.”

“I can’t take you out there now,” she said.

“Why not? I called Myra and asked her if I could go out and take a look around, choose some of the settings I’d like to use.”

“So why do you need me?”

“I’d like an insider’s view of the place.”

“I’m sure one of the real models would go with you. Like Jeanne or Lacy.”

“Jeanne scares the hell out of me.”

“You are such a liar.”

“Come with me. Please?”

Even before he had shown up, she’d been certain that something bad had happened to Colleen, and she’d been de
termined to find out if anyone in the agency was behind it. Admittedly, she hadn’t turned up a single reason for suspicion, but now he was handing her an opportunity for further investigation on a golden platter. She would be a fool to refuse.

“All right.”

He grinned, pleased and, she realized, surprised.

“I want to drop my car off at home, then change. It will take about an hour all told.”

“Works for me,” he said. “I’ll be at your place in an hour.”

He left, and she frowned as she noticed that she was trembling slightly. She liked him. She didn’t want to, but she did. She was wary of the strength and immediacy of her feelings, but there was something about him that was undeniably compelling. It wasn’t just his looks—though there was certainly nothing to complain about on that score—it was something about his manner and the contradictory elements of his character. He was smooth, yet he also had a rugged edge. He was gentle, yet somehow macho. And the sex appeal that emanated from him was so scary it ought to be illegal.

She should have refused to go with him because she just knew she was going to humiliate herself somewhere along the line.

She shuffled her papers into her desk, grabbed her purse and headed out of her office.

Jim was at his desk, and he grinned up at her. “You take your time. But when you land one, he’s a prize.”

“He’s a friend, Jim. A colleague.”

“Right.”

“I mean it.”

“I believe you,” he said innocently, but he was still grinning like the Cheshire cat.

“I’m out of here,” she said. “And you, Mr. Brilliant, are welcome to take the afternoon, too, since it seems you have everything covered.”

“I’ve got a little bit to finish up, and then I’ll take you up on that,” he told her. “Have fun with your ‘friend.’”

There would be no getting through to him. Chloe gave up, waved and left.

After she had changed into jeans and a tank top, sneakers and a denim jacket, she let herself into the main house to leave her uncle a note, telling him that she was heading down to the Keys with Luke. She noticed that his laptop was open on a desk in the family room, alongside a stack of printouts.

Curious, she walked over to the desk. She never went through her uncle’s papers—but then again, he rarely brought files home from the office, and he certainly never left them sitting around out in the open.

The laptop screen had gone into hibernation, but she couldn’t miss the top printout.

It was a copy of the front page of a fifteen-year-old British newspaper, and she couldn’t miss the headline.

Murderer Slain by Police Office—Enquiry in Process

She picked up the page, tension and dread filling her. She knew that she was going to see Luke Cane’s name. He was the police officer who had slain the murderer. She knew it.

But she wasn’t prepared for the rest of the facts, and she gasped.

A horn beeped outside the gate and Chloe jumped, sending the paper fluttering to the floor.

She scrambled to pick it up and put it back, and ended up knocking over the entire stack.

Taking a deep breath, she collected the papers. Her heart was still thundering. She wasn’t afraid of Luke, but maybe she was starting to understand him.

How did she feel about what he’d done? If she’d had the power and the opportunity that night, wouldn’t she have happily dismembered the men who had so brutally slain her friends?

Then again, she had never been a sworn officer of the law.

She finished straightening the papers, though Leo would probably know that she had seen them. Maybe he had left them there for her to see. Why? Did he wonder how she would feel about Luke once she knew the truth—or did he just think she should be warned.

He had come home to find the murdered body of his wife. No wonder he was damaged.

His wife had been murdered.

And he had slain her killer.

She ran out, fumbling for the right key to lock the door,
then stumbling over the code to unlock the gate, then lock it again behind her.

Luke was out of his car, waiting to open her door. She glanced at him nervously and slid in.

He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I was just hurrying. I stopped to leave my uncle a note, in case he was expecting me to be around for dinner. I don’t have to leave notes. I don’t like to worry him.” She knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t stop. “I knocked over some of his papers…I was just hurrying.”

“We’re not in that big a rush,” he told her.

She ought to tell him the truth, she thought. Spit it out.

He wasn’t truly violent. Was he?

“You look as if you think you’re out with Jack the Ripper,” he said. “If you’re afraid of me for some reason, you don’t have to come.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Oh?”

She looked over at him. His eyes were an intense gray, like deep smoke, and his brow was furrowed in genuine concern. “Look,” he said, “I may not be a psychologist, but something’s definitely upsetting you.”

She let out a breath. “You were married, and your wife was murdered. And you killed her killer.”

He stared back at her. She couldn’t tell whether he was surprised or had assumed she would find out sooner or later. “Yes,” he said simply, and didn’t even try to explain.

“The paper said you killed him.”

He turned to stare out the window. “That’s true.” He was
quiet for a brief moment. “He cut her throat, but she fought him first. Hard. He still had the knife, and he tried to use it against me, but I was stronger than he was. Even so, I had a difficult time wresting it away from him.”

“Did he fall on it?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

He looked at her again. “Did I go a little crazy when I found my wife? Yes. Did I torture him to death—no. I came in, I saw blood on the stairs and I followed it, and then I saw her…on the bed. I went over to her, and he leaped on my back. The paper probably neglected to mention that he stabbed me in the shoulder first. We fought, and I got the knife away from him. When he went for it again, I fought back, not thinking, just reacting. I stabbed him in the stomach. Naturally there was an inquiry. I didn’t feel like answering questions, but it was deemed a righteous kill. Even so, I quit. I was furious that the authorities expected me to explain myself when the facts were evident.”

“You quit and came to the United States?”

“Something like that. I wasn’t running away, but after a few years I just couldn’t stay there anymore.”

They sat in silence for a minute.

Finally Chloe cleared her throat. “We should go. The traffic will start getting bad soon—and I’m getting hungry.”

“I meant it when I said you don’t have to go. I don’t want to be with anyone who’s afraid of me.”

“It takes a lot to scare me,” she told him.

He didn’t smile, but something about his eyes softened. “You probably should get scared more easily. A certain amount of fear can be healthy.”

“Fear in a dangerous situation is healthy. But I’ve driven with you—you’re a safe enough driver. Seriously, the traffic gets bad quickly.”

He smiled slowly. “Yeah. I even drive on the right side of the road.”