Maximum Security
Tracy Montoya
BREAKING DOWN THE WALLSShe was the sole survivor of the deadly game of a serial killer–a man who'd ensnared women and eluded police for far too long. And since her daring escape from his evil clutches, ex-cop and bestselling crime writer Maggie Reyes had remained locked in her beach house, paralyzed with fear until "the Surgeon" was caught.Then Billy Corrigan came to her, demanding her help. For the sexy FBI agent, catching "the Surgeon" wasn't just a job, it was personal. So Maggie reluctantly agreed to work with him, but soon found renewed strength wrapped in Billy's arms. And as the killer closed in, Billy swore he'd lay his own life on the line if it meant freeing beautiful Maggie from her self-made prison….
“I trust you.”
She’d meant the words to be innocent, but as he reached out to take the container from her, his hands overlapped hers. Whether by accident or design, she didn’t know. She didn’t care.
Time stopped.
The comfort Maggie had felt in Billy Corrigan’s presence during the past four days was replaced by something different, something more. Attraction wrapped around her like a cloud of incense—seductive, heady, dangerous. She raised her head and met his eyes, which had turned from ice-gray to the color of a mountain lake. Then her gaze went to his mouth.
He took his hands away. She blinked and stepped back as the moment was broken.
She couldn’t possibly afford to get involved with him when everyone around her seemed to wind up dead.
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
At Harlequin Intrigue we have much to look forward to as we ring in a brand-new year. Case in point—all of our romantic suspense selections this month are fraught with edge-of-your-seat danger, electrifying romance and thrilling excitement. So hang on!
Reader favorite Debra Webb spins the next installment in her popular series COLBY AGENCY. Cries in the Night spotlights a mother so desperate to track down her missing child that she joins forces with the unforgettable man from her past.
Unsanctioned Memories by Julie Miller—the next offering in THE TAYLOR CLAN—packs a powerful punch as a vengeance-seeking FBI agent opens his heart to the achingly vulnerable lone witness who can lead him to a cold-blooded killer…. Looking for a provocative mystery with a royal twist? Then expect to be seduced by Jacqueline Diamond in Sheikh Surrender.
We welcome two talented debut authors to Harlequin Intrigue this month. Tracy Montoya weaves a chilling mystery in Maximum Security, and the gripping Concealed Weapon by Susan Peterson is part of our BACHELORS AT LARGE promotion.
Finally this month, Kasi Blake returns to Harlequin Intrigue with Borrowed Identity. This gothic mystery will keep you guessing when a groggy bride stumbles upon a grisly murder on her wedding night. But are her eyes deceiving her when her “slain” groom appears alive and well in a flash of lightning?
It promises to be quite a year at Harlequin Intrigue….
Enjoy!
Denise O’Sullivan
Senior Editor
Harlequin Intrigue
Maximum Security
Tracy Montoya
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Debut Intrigue author Tracy Montoya is a magazine editor for a nonprofit outfit in Washington, D.C., though at present she’s telecommuting from her house in Seoul, Korea. She lives with a psychotic cat, a lovable yet daft Lhasa apso and a husband who’s turned their home into the Island of Lost/Broken/Strange-Looking Antiques. A member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Society of Environmental Journalists, Tracy has written about everything from Booker Prize–winning poet Martín Espada to socially responsible mutual funds to soap opera summits. Her articles have appeared in a variety of publications, such as Hope, Utne Reader, Satya, YES!, Natural Home and New York Naturally. Prior to launching her journalism career, she taught in an underresourced school in Louisiana through the AmeriCorps Teach for America program.
Tracy holds a master’s degree in English literature from Boston College and a B.A. in the same from St. Mary’s University. When she’s not writing, she likes to scuba dive, forget to go to kickboxing class, wallow in bed with a good book, or get out her new guitar with a group of friends and pretend she’s Suzanne Vega.
She loves to hear from readers—e-mail
TracyMontoya@aol.com or visit
www.tracymontoya.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Maggie Reyes—A bestselling true-crime writer, Maggie has served on criminal task forces because of her first-rate research and sharp memory for details. Now one of her past subjects—an infamous serial killer—has made her the object of his brutal fixation.
Billy Corrigan—The loner FBI agent is going outside his investigative territory to bring down the man who murdered his sister. His search for vengeance leads him to the one woman who survived the vicious killer’s obsession.
The Surgeon—Always one step ahead of the authorities, this psychopath has stalked and murdered women across four states. Now he’s set his focus entirely on one woman—and the only thing standing between him and Maggie Reyes is a rogue FBI agent with a taste for revenge.
Adriana Torres—A friend from Maggie’s college days, Adriana has done everything she can for the past eighteen months to keep Maggie hidden from the Surgeon—but will her selflessness put her life in jeopardy?
James Brentwood—Adriana’s lover, local police detective James Brentwood is willing to put his own life on the line to stop the man who murdered nine women from killing again.
Elizabeth Borkowski—James Brentwood’s wisecracking partner, she knows Billy from way back. The no-nonsense detective wants to help Maggie, but she wonders whether or not to believe the woman’s unlikely tale of a serial killer who stalks across state lines.
To Tom and Ana Rysavy.
Thank you for that rarest of gifts—a truly wonderful childhood.
(Well, except for that whole sharing one bottle of soda thing, but we’ll just not mention it.)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
He was coming for her.
The now-familiar ache of dread crept through her body as Maggie Reyes traced her finger around the photo of the smilng girl’s face—a photo that now graced the front page of the Monterey County Herald with the words victim and homicide buried in the caption. Four murders in four states in four months. And now he was only minutes away.
Why don’t you run?
Maggie placed her palms flat on her desk and pushed herself up to a standing position. It was funny, even though her head was telling her to run and the fear in her heart robbed her of sleep every night, that odd sense of security she always felt in her cousin Esme’s Monterey beach home was still there. Raising her eyes to the map of the United States above her, Maggie fished a red-tipped thumbtack out of the wooden caddy meticulously placed in the upper left corner of the desk. Little Rock. St. Louis. Denver. All three cities had red tacks plunged through the center of their black dots on the map. And they had fat, corresponding files in the metal cabinet to her left, filled with articles from the dozens of newspapers she subscribed to, printouts from database searches, posts from a few true-crime listservs and other odds and ends pertaining to the cases. In one swift motion, Maggie pushed the fourth tack through Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, releasing the breath she’d been holding as she did so.
Carmel, sister city to Monterey, which she now called home.
Do you wanna live forever, Maggie?
Ignoring the persistent whisper inside her head, she turned her back on the map and padded across the plush Berber rug to the window seat in what she had come to think of as “her” office, where she could watch the white-capped waves break against the jagged black rocks jutting up toward the sky like sentinels. Monterey, California, was a beautiful, sunny city, except for in a few areas along the water that had their own peculiar micro-climates. The house Maggie lived in lay smack in the middle of one of them and was always enveloped in fog and mist. Not that it really mattered.
Folding herself into the small nook, she leaned against a wooden support and dug her bare toes into the brocade seat cushion. Her gaze wandered farther down the beach, past the point where the black rocks and dark, foamy water abruptly ended and a few intrepid surfers were paddling toward the horizon in search of the next big wave. Thinking of the wet suit that hadn’t seen action since the late ’90s, she listened to the muffled roar of the ocean and watched the surfers for what felt like fifteen minutes. When at last she glanced at the glowing red numbers of the digital clock on her desk, she found it was three-thirty. It had been over two hours.
How time flies when you’re stuck at home with no place to go.
Or when you’re avoiding something. Maggie’s fingers toyed with the slight fringe around the hole in the knee of her jeans. Gee, fringe. That could keep her busy for half a day if she let it.
And that was the thing. She couldn’t let it anymore. Four killings in four months, and every single one of them weighing on her conscience like stone. And now he was coming for her.
And now there was no one to call, nowhere to run. Esme was safe in her other home in Seattle, and Maggie had left her family in New Orleans, safe in their complete ignorance of her whereabouts. She routed letters through Esme to her parents or risked the occasional phone call through her alias Mary Smythe’s long-distance account, but that was all the communication she’d risk. Not the ideal arrangement, but there was no way she wanted anyone close to her in danger.
But now the impulse to bolt out the door and run for home as far and as fast as she could was almost overpowering. Almost. But once upon a time, she’d been a cop, not the silly caretaker of her rich cousin’s beach house. And she would have laughed if anyone had told her she’d be hiding thousands of miles away from her Louisiana home—in California, of all places—with blond hair and an assumed name. Mary Smythe-with-a-Y. She snorted as she rose from the window seat. At least she could have had the where-withal to choose something more glamorous. She walked into the hallway and caught a glimpse of herself in the antique mirror hanging near the front door. Thank God she’d asked Adriana for a box of Revlon Rich Auburn-Black 22 when she’d made out this week’s grocery list. The color suited her skin tone; she was never meant to be a blond.
Taking a deep breath, Maggie turned her head, gripped the brass handle of the ornate wooden door. With one push of her finger, one swing of her arm, she could be outside, just a mile away from sunshine and people walking their dogs, hand-dipped ice cream and a real bookstore. Only three miles away from the Monterey police station, ten from the gruesome murder she’d just read about in the papers.
Her hand started to shake, just a slight tremor, and she closed her eyes. One push, one swing. She had a job to do, and after a year and a half of insanity, she was going to do it. If anyone was going to stop the Surgeon’s murdering spree, they were going to need her. It was time for Miss Mary Smythe to stop being the crazy woman on the beach, time for her to rejoin the living, time for her to be fearless Maggie Reyes again.
Maggie pushed, Maggie swung.
And a hurricane-grade wind lashed through the hall. It whipped around the mirror, toppled the coat tree, sent the car keys that hung unused on a small nail crashing to the floor.
“Oh, God!” Maggie gasped, and then she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Something was wrapping itself around her neck, strangling her, and she clawed at her throat with frantic hands, trying to loosen whatever it was so she could breathe again. Tighter and tighter and tighter, until all she could see was black.
Her knees crashed to the hardwood floor, and she groped blindly outward until she felt the doorjamb beneath her fingers. Her other hand swung out and connected with the open door. The pressure on her windpipe eased a little, just enough for her to take one last gasp and use the tiny trickle of energy it gave her to heave the door closed.
She could still hear her own heartbeat, thundering in her ears while she took deep, gasping gulps of air. The invisible hands gently caressed her throat as they uncoiled, reminding her that they were still there. Waiting. And then they were gone.
Shaking, she turned her body around until she was sitting on the floor, her back leaning against the door, barring it from ever opening again and sending her tattered remains of sanity whirling out with the afternoon breeze. She rested her hands on her knees, watching as the tremors slowed, and then stopped. Listened to her heart return to its normal pattern, her breathing slow to a smooth, almost meditative rhythm. Her eyes darted to the coat tree standing straight and tall in the hallway corner; her keys hung on their nail by the mirror, undisturbed. Welcome to the grand delusion.
A single chime from the grandfather clock that shared the hallway with her was all it took to completely bring her back to the land of the living.
Four-thirty. She had a half hour before the police detective Adriana had recommended went home for the day.
Better try the phone, Miss Mary
MAGGIE WAS STILL sitting on the floor, cordless phone in hand, when the knock came. Darn. She knew she’d stayed on the phone too long leaving her “anonymous tip” with the Monterey police. Of course they’d traced it to her alias Mary Smythe’s account and were coming to ask her questions. The last thing she wanted was to be dealing with their questions—the same kind that had sent her spiraling down into her mad, mad world in the first place. Maybe if she just sat there and made herself as small and still as she could, the cops would go away.
Another knock came, harder and more insistent this time. Maggie gently put the phone on the ground and hugged her knees to her chest. Just go away. Just leave me alone.
No such luck. The next knock rattled her bones through the solid wood of the door. “Oh, go have a doughnut,” she mumbled, though she flexed her legs and slid her spine upward along the wall until she was standing. Resigning herself to the fact that she would have to face the police sooner or later, she turned to look through the peephole.
Odd. Rather than the casual business attire most of Monterey’s finest preferred, the man on her doorstep wore faded jeans and a dusty-blue T-shirt with the words Got Mojo? scrawled across his broad back in white letters.
“Charming,” she muttered, then cupped her hands around her mouth. “Got ID?” she shouted through the door.
He turned, shoulders arched back with the easy grace of an athlete, and Maggie sucked in a breath. Okay, so maybe the man had a little mojo. His still, gray eyes narrowed, and a corner of his mouth turned upward in an amused smirk, further accentuated by the pronounced bow-shaped curve to his upper lip. Okay, so he was cute. Being a white male between the ages of 30 and 35, the guy was also solidly in the demographic that included most of your average serial killers.
Which was not something Maggie took lightly anymore.
She watched him reach behind him to grab something out of his back pocket—and jumped back in surprise when his wallet smacked against the peephole, obliterating the tiny spot of light that usually shone through the door.
He drew the wallet back, and she moved closer once again, giving his badge—all she could see given her limited range of vision—as thorough a once-over as she could.
“I’m looking for Mary Smythe.” His voice was low and soft, even through the door, but with the faintest rough edge to it. Politely dangerous. It didn’t sound familiar, but then, there was a lot about her past that she’d worked hard to block out of memory.
Maggie leaned her forehead against the door, weighing her options. Would the Surgeon knock on her door in broad daylight? Improbable, given his preference for nighttime ambushes and drugs that stole your ability to reason.
The thought nearly caused Maggie to slide to the floor once more, but then she realized that there was no way the man on her doorstep could compare to the monsters inside her head, anyway. She’d never been afraid to face a threat head-on—it was living in constant fear of being watched, taken by surprise, attacked from behind that made her crazy. With a defiant snap of her wrist, she shot back the deadbolt and opened the door, careful to keep it between her body and the outside world. As soon as he’d stepped into the entryway, she pushed it shut again. And exhaled.
He didn’t say a word once they were face-to-face, almost scowling as he gave her a thorough scrutinizing with those pale gray eyes of his. Apparently, she’d surprised him by not being seventy-something, with rollers in her hair and twenty cats sweeping around her ankles. But he quickly got his face under control, shoving a hand through his thick brown hair so it spiked slightly.
“So. You must be James Brentwood, then,” she said a little too loudly, folding her arms and widening her eyes in an attempt to look as unhinged as possible. One good thing about being the crazy woman on Mermaid Point—no one expected you to waste time with social graces. And they usually were only too happy to leave you alone as soon as possible.
“That’s right.” He quickly flashed his badge once more, then folded up the wallet and jammed it into his back pocket. “Ma’am. I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m here about an anonymous phone call placed from this location at 4:37 p.m.”
A short silence stretched between them as they each pondered their next moves, like two grand masters over a chessboard. Maggie circled around him and took her time picking the cordless phone off the floor, placing it back in its cradle while her eyes darted ever so briefly to the panic button on her security system’s white keypad. “I thought the point of leaving an anonymous tip was that one remained anonymous,” she finally said.
“Usually,” he said. “But not with something like this, ma’am.”
“I’m not much older than you, so if you don’t stop ma’am-ing me, I might be forced to start screaming like a lunatic, right here, right now.” To her satisfaction, he blinked, apparently wondering whether or not she was serious. Good. Best to keep him on edge so she had the advantage. She so needed to remain in control of this conversation.
It didn’t take him long to recover. “I’ll call you Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, if it helps you answer my questions,” he said.
“Spare me your fantasies. Mary will do.” Well. Obviously she hadn’t made him that uncomfortable. “So you’re Brentwood, the one I talked to on the phone?”
At his nod, she motioned him ahead of her, into the spacious kitchen just beyond the entryway. “Come in. I was going to make coffee.”
“Nice place.” The man’s eyes skimmed over the room’s pale wood cabinets, ceramic tiles, and state-of-the-art steel appliances. A little too minimalist Pottery Barn for her taste, but she couldn’t be picky when Esme was willing to put a roof with an ocean view over her unproductive head.
The rest of Brentwood’s body remained almost preternaturally still. And despite the badge, the cop’s attention to detail, the standard issue semi-automatic Glock prominently displayed in the shoulder holster, Maggie felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle.
Maybe it was just the small gold hoop in his left ear, maybe it was the too-casual clothes, the too-relaxed stance, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was really, really wrong here.
He’s a cop, Reyes. Get a grip, she chided herself. However, the thought wasn’t enough to keep her from casually sidling to the left so the large kitchen island was between them. She gestured for him to sit down…in the chair farthest from her.
“Well, Mary, you mind if we get started?” he asked. The hoarse quality to his voice made the mundane phrase sound almost X-rated. And that was a little too much for a healthy woman in her early 30s who had been celibate for…way too long.
Even so, her overactive hormones weren’t quite enough to make her overlook the absence of an evidence-gathering notebook in his hands.
“So. Coffee, Officer Brentwood?” she asked, taking the glass pot out of the coffeemaker to her right and filling it up with water. “Adriana brought some Kona beans from her last trip to Hawaii. I haven’t tried it yet, but she says it’s wonderful.”
“Adriana’s your neighbor?” he asked.
Maggie glanced out the windows, past the patio she never used, and watched the waves break against the rocks for a moment. “A friend,” she murmured, biting her lower lip. The rush of cool water over the hand holding the pot brought her attention back to her task.
“Mary, I don’t want to be rude…”
Here it comes.
“…but you said on the phone you believe a serial killer called the Surgeon might have left his New Orleans territory and is on his way to Monterey. Since that’s all you felt like telling us, I’m here to find out what gave you that impression.”
Reaching for the blue ceramic sugar canister, Maggie undid the metal clasp and peeled the sealed lid back, stuffing her hand inside. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the man had stood and was leaning against the table, facing her. “I’m sorry, officer. I don’t mean to waste your time—”
With that, Maggie pulled her hand out of the canister and swung around. She switched off the safety of her Firestar M43 and aimed the small gun right for his mojo-covered heart. “But if you’re James Brentwood, then I really am Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.”
Chapter Two
“So we’re even.” With that disturbingly cryptic statement, the man’s voice seemed to go a couple of octaves deeper than it had been, sending goosebumps down her arms for all the wrong reasons. He slowly raised his hands, keeping his elbows close in by his sides.
“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response, Stalker Boy.” She kept the Firestar aimed at his chest, adrenaline making her peripheral vision narrow until all she could see was him over the sights of her gun. “Just put your weapon on the floor and keep your hands where I can see them, because I will not hesitate to shoot you if you even breathe too hard in my direction.”
“How did you—?”
“Drop. The. Gun.” She gestured impatiently with her own weapon. “Now.”
He complied, stretching his arm out to drop his Glock as close to her as possible. “Okay, it’s on the floor. I’m not here to hurt you,” he said, never taking those still, gray eyes off her.
“Whatever. Now the one on your ankle.”
He shook his head. “I don’t have—”
“Spare me. Your leg drags when you walk.”
With a hiss of breath, he bent over and pushed up the frayed hem of his faded jeans, unstrapping the small .38 from the ankle holster she’d known was there. He casually tossed the gun aside, sending it skittering across the ceramic tiles and through the arched doorway into the formal dining room. Then, raising his palms, he opened his eyes wide with what she was fast beginning to realize was his “trust me” look—which really wasn’t working. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he repeated.
“Great,” Maggie responded calmly, trying not to think about what was going to happen to her nerves once the adrenaline high wore off. “Then why don’t you sit down in that chair and tell me who the hell you are?”
“Billy Corrigan, FBI Computer Crimes Division.”
“Get your hand back up where I can see it,” Maggie snapped as Billy’s hand froze on its way to his back pocket. “Back up in the air, there we go.” Making a wide circle around the table, she stopped directly behind the chair nearest the small mission-style phone table. All telephones in the house were programmed to dial 911 at the push of a button, and it couldn’t hurt her to be as near one of them as possible. “I don’t want to see your ID, Billy Corrigan, if that’s really your name.”
“It is,” he replied calmly. “But it’s funny. You don’t look like a Mary Smythe.”
“Says you.” Her gun arm was beginning to grow tired, probably from the months—no, years now—she’d been off active duty. She tightened her grip on the Firestar, hoping he wouldn’t notice that her hands were shaking.
He shrugged, the casual gesture belying the intensity of his pale eyes as they skimmed across her face, seemingly memorizing it. “Black hair, nice tan, despite living under constant cloud cover. You look more like a Maria.”
“So my parents are Honduran. So what?”
“In fact, I’d even say you look exactly like a Magdalena. Don’t you think, Maggie Reyes?” he asked softly, pinning her with those other-worldly eyes just as surely as if he’d slammed a hand against her throat.
Maggie gasped, backing into the kitchen counter so suddenly, she felt a burst of pain as the edge jabbed into the small of her back. “How—?”
“I read all your books,” he said, anticipating her question. “Including the author bio. You were a cop for four years before you turned to crime writing full-time. You’ve written eight true crime books for a major publisher, about half of which have landed on some bestseller list somewhere. You used to have a dog named Andromeda, although I don’t see any evidence of her here. And you like surfing and any other sport connected with water.”
Maggie could only stare at him, unsure whether to be impressed or deeply frightened.
“I recognized you from the book jacket photo,” Corrigan continued. He hitched one shoulder in a singular shrug. “Nice shot. It does you justice.”
Before she could react, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, tossing it on the table so it landed with a loud smack. It fell open, the large, blue FBI at the top of the ID she’d never gotten a solid glimpse of reassuring her slightly.
“You’ll find a business card inside with Fay Parker’s name on it,” he said. “She’s the SAC of the San Francisco field office. Call her. She’ll tell you I’m legit.” Corrigan sat down and leaned back in one of her kitchen chairs, lazily stretching his lean, denim-encased legs out in front of him.
SAC. It took her a few minutes to remember that the acronym meant Special Agent in Charge. Darn, it had been a while since she’d been in the game. Maggie tore her gaze away from the man’s wallet on the table, keeping the gun between them as she tried hard to keep her fear under control. “I don’t understand what you’re doing here. If you’re assigned to the San Francisco office, why would a serial killer who, until now, has stuck to his Louisiana territory, interest you?” She braced her tiring right elbow on the Formica and shot him what she hoped was a skeptical look. “Especially if you’re in Computer Crimes. What’re you going to do if you find him—throw old motherboards at him?”
Before she could react, he sprang out of the chair and pinned her with his body against the counter. She instinctively raised her hands to protect her face, a whimper escaping her lips before she could quell it. She didn’t even notice that the Firestar was no longer in her possession until she heard the magazine clatter to the floor, soon followed by a sharp clink indicating he’d ejected the chambered round as well.
“I’ll figure something out,” he said softly, making her all too conscious of just how vulnerable she was.
“Get out,” Maggie whispered, disgusted with herself. That wouldn’t have happened to her two years ago, when she’d been in the best shape of her life—and most likely able to defend herself against the charms of a too-handsome man with scary reflexes. She swiped her hand at the empty gun he held over their heads, knowing as she did so that it was a futile gesture.
It was. Instead, Maggie contented herself with wrapping her hands under his left wrist, which was braced against the counter. With a speed that came from years of training and eighteen months with nothing better to do, she brought the arch of her foot down hard along his shin, ending the move by crunching her weight down on his instep. In the split second where Corrigan slightly lost his balance, Maggie pushed back on his wrist, ducking under his arm and finally pinning it to his back at an awkward angle.
“You like to play rough, Maggie?” he asked through gritted teeth.
Jerk. She pushed the offending limb into an even more impossible position. “Drop my gun. Drop it now, or I’ll break your arm,” she snarled.
He dropped the Firestar, but twisted out of her grasp when her attention was momentarily drawn to the fallen weapon.
“Okay,” he said, backing away from her and holding his hands out so his palms faced her. “Okay. There’s no reason to get upset. I need your help, Maggie. I swear, that’s the honest truth. I never meant to frighten you.”
“Right,” she retorted. “So your whole ‘speak softly and flash a big gun’ schtick was meant to be reassuring? Was this before or after you were going to stop impersonating an officer and tell me who you really were?”
“Maggie—”
“Stop using my name so much. You sound like a used car salesman.” She advanced toward him and nearly stepped on the Glock she’d made him discard when he first came into the kitchen. She kicked it savagely across the room, far out of reach of either of them. A strand of black hair fell across her forehead and she blew it back in a huff. “You’re not going to be in my house long enough to establish any sort of rapport with me, so get used to it.”
He stopped backing away. “I’m not lying to you now. I am with the FBI. My badge is right there. You can trust me.”
“A lot of women trusted Kenneth Bianchi, Paul Bernardo, Ted Bundy. All good-looking, charming men.” Finally next to the kitchen phone again, Maggie snatched the receiver out of its cradle. “Homicidal maniacs, the lot of them.”
“Maggie—” She cut him off with a sharp glare. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I believe you. About the Surgeon coming here.”
Her finger hovered over the automatic dial button, but his words stopped her cold.
“Elizabeth Borkowski, a detective with the Monterey PD, is married to an old friend of mine from school. She knows about my interest in this case,” he continued, his eyes never leaving hers. “Do you really think the police are going to pay attention to you otherwise, without proof? Liz told me they’d filed your tip.”
Maggie dropped the receiver back in its cradle, feeling her entire body slump a bit at his words. She wrapped her arms tightly around her body, as if literally holding herself together while the adrenaline drained away as quickly as it had come.
“But I noticed the similarities between the New Orleans murders and the Carmel murder.” He closed the gap between them and placed a hand gently on her arm. Comforting, not threatening. A good way to approach the mentally unstable. “And when the cops at the Monterey station mentioned Little Rock, St. Louis and Denver, I plugged in my laptop and pulled up the files,” he said. “I knew you were on to something. But I didn’t expect…” He paused, cleared his throat. “You.”
“You expected Mary Smythe.” She looked down at where he had touched her. It was just a gesture, she told herself. Just meant to inspire trust now that there was a tenuous connection between them. “The crazy woman on Mermaid Point.”
He searched her face, probably trying to ascertain her craziness for himself. “I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Maggie hitched her shoulder abruptly, shrugging his hand off her, surprised when she missed the warmth of his touch once she was free.
“You’re not crazy.” His low voice wrapped around her, making her feel almost safe for the first time in two years. “I don’t know what made those cops think so, but I know your work. You have one of the best research minds out there. I saw you at Quantico.”
Where she’d given several guest lectures. She turned to look out the window at the waves, tugging on the end of her braid. Oh, God, make him stop.
“You blew my mind.”
Bringing her hand up to her forehead, Maggie pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to harden herself to his words.
As if sensing how close she was to her breaking point, he asked, “Case in point, how’d you know I wasn’t James Brentwood? Liz said no one at the station has ever met you.”
She took a moment before responding, praying her voice would come out strong and steady, even though she didn’t feel that way. “Detective James Brentwood is a fidgeter.” He flinched at her emphasis on detective, since he’d answered to officer. She gave him a small smile of sympathy and continued. “On the phone you can hear him clicking pens or drumming his fingers while he talks. You’ve barely moved since you came in. And you didn’t know who Adriana was. I took a chance.”
She turned and met his gaze. He raised a questioning eyebrow at her.
“James’s girlfriend of five months,” she said. “She’s a friend of mine, which is why I asked specifically for him.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah.” They stared at each other for a long moment, the silence stretching between them.
“Why do they—?” He stopped, obviously aware that the question he was about to ask was too familiar, too much of a breach of civility. She finished it for him.
“Think I’m crazy? Try whisking me out of the house for a wild night on the town. You’ll find out in about two seconds.”
“Tempting offer.”
She whirled on him, not in the mood to flirt no matter what her sarcastic comment had implied. “Get out,” she said with more venom than she’d meant to deliver. Her vision blurred, and she closed her eyes to stop the sudden tears from spilling out of them. She rubbed a hand against her cheekbone. “I’ve got something in my contact lens,” she lied.
“Maggie—”
She flinched when he took a step toward her, his hand outstretched as if to comfort her. Heaven help her, she was so far beyond comforting. “Get out of my house, Agent Corrigan. You lost any amount of trust I had in you when you brought two weapons into my home and lied to me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
She wrapped her arms around herself and dropped her gaze to the floor, all of her tough-girl pretenses gone. She figured they’d been transparent enough anyway. “Just go.”
Corrigan grabbed his wallet and pulled a card out of it, pressing the small piece of paper onto the bleached wood of the table. “If anything—” He paused. “If anything happens, if you need anything, call me. My cell phone number is at the bottom.”
She snorted in response.
He stepped close, so close, until leaning forward just an inch would have brought their bodies into contact. “I’ll be there,” he said, and she could feel his breath on her cheek.
“Why is this so important to you?” she asked, focusing her gaze on his elbow.
The almost gentle air he’d had abruptly vanished as tension simmered through his frame. He spun around and stalked away, pausing only to pick up his weapons before he headed for the door. Despite the fact that she knew she shouldn’t, Maggie followed, careful to stand to the side when he wrenched it open. “Remember the Riverwalk?” he asked suddenly, his back to her. “The one he took in broad daylight?”
“Jenna—” she paused, almost choking over the next word as understanding dawned “—Corrigan.”
His head turned so she could see a glimpse of his profile in the blinding ray of light streaming in from the outside. “My sister.”
And then he vanished behind the door, to a place where she couldn’t follow.
Chapter Three
Billy floored the accelerator of his FBI-issue Crown Victoria sedan, zipping down Highway 101 as he headed toward San Francisco. Parker was going to have his ass if he didn’t submit that electronic search affadavit for the DigiSystems case. But first, he had one more stop to make. Those computer files weren’t going anywhere.
As he approached the city and his exit, he brought the pale tan car to a slow crawl behind the stalled traffic, his thoughts returning once more to Maggie Reyes. Beautiful, crazy Maggie Reyes. The only woman to survive the Surgeon’s lethal obsession. But had her brilliant, analytical mind survived?
With everything he’d read about the attack, he couldn’t exactly blame her if she wasn’t the same afterward. The newspapers had bled all the terror out of her story, leaving only the ugly, sensational words guaranteed to sell papers—phrases like severe head trauma and blitz attack, coupled with entire paragraphs about how the Surgeon had carried her into the Atchafalaya and sliced off her dark business suit with a sharp knife, leaving shallow cuts marring her once-perfect skin. He’d seen the photos. Nightmare didn’t even begin to describe it. That she’d managed to escape said a lot about how strong she was.
But then there were the rumors he’d heard—whispers of paralyzing fear and even agoraphobia echoed in the classrooms and auditoriums where she’d conducted her famous lectures. For two years, there had been no more books from Maggie Reyes. No more talks. She’d simply disappeared without a trace.
Until now.
Although he’d been deliberately vague about how he’d found her, to avoid freaking her out any more than he already had, he’d actually been looking for Maggie Reyes for some time.
Billy could find just about anyone, as long as the person used a computer hooked up to the outside world. Most people, he’d learned, simply trusted that no one was watching when they logged on. A few months ago, he’d released some specially modified search bots into the Internet, where they’d floated out in the ether, just waiting for one Maggie Reyes to log on anytime, anyplace, and enter her name and address. A few weeks ago, she’d purchased a copy of Through the Looking Glass from an online bookstore, and the bots had come running back to daddy with the news. Child’s play.
And now that he’d found her, practically in his backyard all this time, could he get her to trust him? Her assumption that he was Monterey PD had bought him an invitation inside her home and enough time to assess her state of mind, but it probably hadn’t been such a great idea if he wanted her to warm up to him. Truth was, he wasn’t supposed to be poking his nose in cases that had nothing to do with Computer Crimes, and he needed someone outside the system to help him get the man who’d attacked his sister. He needed Maggie Reyes.
But he hadn’t expect her to be so—
The cars ahead of him suddenly lurched forward, and he abruptly shoved aside thoughts of the woman he’d left behind. Jenna was all that mattered. The image of his sister, her pale, crumpled body covered in blood and grime, came to him in mercilessly clear focus, just as it always did whenever he said or thought her name. Jenna. Jenna. Jenna.
How that image had haunted him, haunted him still. He’d gotten distracted by a case in Silicon Valley. He’d been so close to bringing down the CEO of a high-powered software company on computer embezzlement. So he’d postponed a trip to New Orleans to see his sister, the only remaining member of his immediate family. Then he’d gotten the phone call.
Blitz attack…. He turned down Van Buren Street, the words coming back to him with so much more force than they had when they’d merely been black ink on newsprint. …heavy blood loss…so sorry…. With a sharp twist of his hand, Billy jerked the steering wheel, threading through the line of cars to get to his Mission Street exit ramp. A few minutes later, he pulled the Crown Vic into the driveway of his turn-of-the-century bungalow near the heart of the city, his jaw clenched so tight, it felt like his teeth would shatter. No, he couldn’t ever forget.
He looked up at the house, all but oblivious to the peeling white paint on the wooden siding and the riot of unruly flowers surrounding the walkway. Taking a deep breath, he shoved open the car door and climbed out.
When he reached the house, he batted aside a climbing vine and pulled open the screen door. Inserting the key in the lock, he pushed through and entered. A gaunt, pale woman greeted him at the doorway, wrapped in a thick, worn quilt even though it was 80 degrees outside. Her large blue eyes, red-rimmed from constant tears, had dark hollows beneath them. Despite the air of pure despair that surrounded her, so sharp he felt it cutting into his own skin, she smiled weakly at him. “Hey, Billy,” she said in a voice that sounded as if it hadn’t been used in decades.
“Jenna,” was all he could say in reply, as part of him begged her not to disappear. Again.
BACON. With a single-mindedness only the house-bound possess, Maggie meticulously searched the contents of the freezer for bacon to go with the Cobb salad she’d just tossed. Shoving aside microwave dinners, plastic bags of vegetable medley and a box of frozen peach yogurt pops, she finally found the package of bacon and tossed it on the counter with a frozen clatter. She’d cook it up fresh, of course, because there was no way she’d have those horrible crumbled bits that came in a bottle and tasted like small shards of plastic.
For now, she ignored the package, carefully piling the frozen foods she’d displaced back into the freezer—TV dinners she had for lunch went on one side, and the packaged foods requiring more preparation on the other. Dessert boxes and vegetable bags went on top of the entire arrangement, since they were the least stable.
A faint, icy mist caressed her face, sending a chill down her entire body and raising goosebumps on her forearms, exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of her sweatshirt. She took her hand away, letting the freezer door fall shut.
So cold. That night in the swamp, so long ago. Naked, alone, and so cold. With only the sounds of cicadas and owls and the smell of the dank, fetid waters of the Atchafalaya to keep her company. Until he came back to the decaying cabin, with a sharp knife and the look of a starving man in his dark eyes—things she’d only read about in her books before that spring night. The chill had gotten worse while he studied her, his mouth forming the words that would haunt her long after that night: “Why don’t you run?” But that was the joke, with her hands and feet completely immobilized by fishing line, she couldn’t run. Not even when he’d started cutting.
She slammed the heavy frying pan she’d taken off the stove onto the counter, the force of the blow reverberating up her entire arm. Bacon, dammit.
A little bit of cooking spray. A dash of oil. Bacon. She defrosted the package in the microwave, then peeled a few tepid slices off, tossing them into the pan with shaking hands. Breathe, Maggie. After adding a couple of extras in case Adriana wanted a salad when she came over with the week’s supply of groceries, she turned on the stove burner. Bacon. She could do this. Bacon, bacon, bacon baconbaconbaconbacon…
Whump. Maggie whirled around at the sound, like a hand smacking the glass panes of one of the windows in the next room. Hard. Operating on pure instinct, she focused her senses on pinpointing the potential danger, only noticing that she was brandishing the frying pan over her head when she felt a slice of slimy, lukewarm meat slide down her arm. It fell to the floor with a soft smack and was soon followed by a larger clump. Warm oil slid down the pan and dribbled onto her hand and wrist.
The sound of laughter drew her gaze outside the bay windows. A young couple walked near the rocks by the ocean, tossing a tennis ball for their Irish setter, which scampered ahead of them, tongue lolling out of its mouth as a breeze blew back its shiny red coat. Grinning sheepishly, the man—a sandy blonde wearing a backward Angels cap and baggy shorts that went down to the middle of his tanned calves—held the ball in the air and shrugged apologetically at her.
“Maggie, you paranoid idiot,” she muttered through her teeth, smiling back at him and raising the frying pan in salute. She deliberately relaxed her shoulders, feeling some of the tension leave her body while she watched the boy throw the ball again for the dog. His girlfriend ran to catch up with them and grabbed the brim of his cap, starting a laughing game of tag that continued until they were out of the range of Maggie’s window.
She set the pan down on the counter with a wistful smile, noticing that her pulse had returned almost to normal. Or as normal as it had been since Billy Corrigan, the FBI agent with more than his share of mojo, had walked through her door.
The thought made her laugh as she turned off the stove, then pulled a clump of paper towels off the stand near the sink to clean up the mess on the floor. It really had been too long since she’d been on a date. At this rate, she’d be attacking the UPS man the next time he came over with a delivery. A disturbing image popped into her head of herself dressed in Saran Wrap, draping herself across poor Leonard Hobbes in his brown shorts and knee socks while she told him how much she loved a man in uni-foh-am.
She made a mental note to do a few extra miles on the treadmill that night.
The sound of the doorbell brought her out of her thoughts. With a hurried swipe, she picked up most of the bacon on the floor with her paper towels and deposited it in the stainless-steel trash can. After quickly washing her hands, she yanked the sunflower-patterned towel off the oven-door handle, drying her hands as she went to the door. One glance through the peephole told her Adriana had arrived.
When she pulled the door open, Adriana Torres practically skidded inside, the panels of her red tartan miniskirt swirling around legs encased in black tights that were cut off at the ankles. She quickly dropped the groceries, snapping her gum nervously as she ran a hand through her caramel-brown hair, which was streaked with fire-engine-red highlights—temporary, Maggie hoped. Adriana owned a clothing resale boutique—Maggie knew better than to call it a thrift store—on Cannery Row in Monterey, and she had a tendency to look as though she’d just stepped out of a punk-rock musical.
“What’s up?” Maggie asked, not yet sure whether to laugh at Addy’s drama-queen tendencies or to sit her down and force her to spill whatever was bothering her.
With a whimper, Adriana lurched forward and enveloped Maggie in a surprisingly strong embrace for someone who couldn’t have weighed more than 110 pounds wet. True confessions time it was, then. “What’s going on?” Maggie asked, her hands curling upward as she adjusted to Addy’s strong embrace. “You sound like you just sprinted down all of Seventeen Mile Drive.”
“Ay, I’m just glad you’re okay.” Adriana leaned back and stared at her for a moment, then hugged her tightly again, cracking her gum with a vengeance.
“Of course I am,” Maggie said, her voice calm and strong as she assumed the once-familiar role of caretaker in a crisis. “Why wouldn’t I be? Girlfriend, you’re scaring me.”
Adriana put her hands briefly on Maggie’s cheeks, a “poor shut-in Magdalena” look on her face. Then she backed off, twisting the silver bangles on one wrist and muttering to herself in Spanish. One thing about Adriana—she’d been an American citizen for eighteen years, but her English, which was perfect in most circumstances, almost completely deserted her under stress. And if Maggie knew her correctly, she would mutter for a few more moments and then…après muttering, le déluge.
Addy didn’t disappoint. She took a deep gulp of air and then let it rip. “Okay. First thing we have to do is call James. He’ll know what to do. Then we have to get you over to my house somehow without your flipping over. Maybe with good drugs you can leave the state, even—”
“Flipping out,” Maggie corrected her automatically. “Addy, breathe.” She was dying to know what had gotten Adriana so spun up, but she knew she’d never find out if the woman passed out in her entryway.
“But—”
“Breathe.”
Adriana threw her slender hands in the air, her rings sparkling under the skylight, and cursed rapidly in Spanish. “Por el amor de Dios, Magdalena Luz, I’m a yoga instructor. I know how to breathe.” The yoga was a new thing. Addy taught classes after hours in the upstairs rooms of her shop in an effort to share her latest obsession with the world.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Maggie responded. But when a film of water grew over Adriana’s large green eyes, Maggie knew it was serious. “Addy, tell me what’s going on,” she said softly.
Adriana shook her head, a thin line of worry forming between her eyebrows.
Tension coiled like a tightly wound snake between Maggie’s shoulders, and she felt the cold wrapping around her body once more. “Tell me.”
“Go stand over there.” Biting her lip, Adriana turned her slender body and swept a graceful arm toward the living room to her right. Maggie stepped around her and walked into the room, bracing herself for whatever was coming.
But you know what’s coming, Maggie. You’ve known all along.
Grasping the brass handle, Adriana pulled the heavy wooden door open. From her vantage point, Maggie could see the door clearly, but her view outside was completely obscured. Then Adriana stepped back, and she could see only the door.
Someone had stabbed a long, serrated hunting knife in the center of the wood.
Chapter Four
Not a ghost, or a vision. Just a too-vivid memory that echoed in the stark halls of his empty home. He would have thought that the months would have eased the pain of Jenna’s death, but every day, every damn day, Billy could see her and hear her as clearly as if she were actually standing before him. Everything but touch her.
“Jenna,” he said again. And then his sister was gone.
This one had been from three years ago—her high-school prom. Biggest night of her life, up to that point, and she’d come down with food poisoning. She’d met him at the door, wrapped in an old quilt with a weak smile on her face. He’d helped her into bed, held her long, sand-colored hair while she was sick. He’d called her boyfriend Tom and apologized for her, then convinced her to stay in bed when she’d wanted to crawl to the Mission High School gym, bad breath and gray complexion be damned.
He’d thought there’d be a hundred more dates. A thousand more dances.
He shook his head with a sharp jerk, half wishing the violent movement would clear the images once and for all. But they were still there. They’d always be there. At least he could be thankful that the brutal slide-show memories of the crime-scene photos only assaulted him on special occasions.
Billy strode through the house he and Jenna had shared before she’d gone off to college. He went into the living room, tearing off his T-shirt and shedding the rest of his clothes as he went. Empty picture frames hung on the pale-green walls, the contents torn out and the glass long since swept away. As usual, he paid them no mind. Stripped down to his boxers, he picked up a pair of gray sweatpants that had been carelessly tossed over the back of a battered blue recliner and put them on. Some white athletic tape lay in the chair’s seat cushion, and he scooped it up to wrap his hands. His slender hacker’s hands with their wiry tendons and fingertip calluses from rapid typing. His good-for-nothing hands.
He’d destroyed most of the living room furniture long ago, other than the recliner and the TV set. The other half of the room was bare, except for the Everlast punching bag hanging from the ceiling by a thick metal chain. Billy figured it was probably the only thing standing between him and the deep well of insanity Maggie Reyes had fallen into.
Beautiful, crazy Maggie.
He punched with his right hand, then followed with a quick jab from his left. Right. Left. Uppercut. Jab. Right. Left. Uppercut. Jab. He would not think of Maggie.
Controlling his breathing, he fell into the familiar rhythm of hard exercise for the next couple of hours. Small drops of sweat flicked off his hair and forehead with every movement, but he didn’t stop to wipe his face. He didn’t need to. After an hour or two of a punishing workout, he didn’t feel much of anything. And that was the point.
Right. Left. Uppercut. Jab. Right. Left. Uppercut. Jab.
Jenna.
The next punch went wild and his fist skimmed off the bag, tipping him off balance, and he crashed to the floor. His right hip and elbow hit the bare wooden boards with a loud smack.
“Jesus,” he breathed, unsure whether it was a curse or a prayer. He rolled over onto his back, his arms flung out from his sides as he caught his breath.
“Nope, just me,” a voice said above him. “Not that I haven’t been confused with the divine before.”
Billy swiped the back of his hand across his eyes and pushed himself up into a sitting position. “Agent Parker,” he said calmly, as if his boss wandered into his house uninvited every day.
“Special Agent Corrigan.” Somewhere in that ageless territory between fifty and infinity, Fay Parker, Special Agent in Charge of the San Francisco field office, strode into the room and sat down on the edge of his recliner. She smoothed the skirt of her black power suit before crossing her ankles and fixing him with the stare that had earned her the nickname “the Basilisk.” One slight move of her head, and her gold wire glasses slipped far enough down her nose so she could eye him over the rims. “You’re a goddamn mess, Agent Corrigan,” she said finally, her deep, raspy voice the hallmark of too many cigarettes.
Billy leaned back against the wall and drew his knees up so he could rest his elbows on them, only slightly breathless from the two hours he’d spent at the bag. “I am.” He paused. “Ma’am.”
She raised an eyebrow at the hint of challenge in his tone, but chose to ignore it. “Well, now that everyone’s in agreement.” Her voice was soft, but cold. “Judge Randall told me she hasn’t seen hide nor hair of you or the affadavit for the DigiSystems case you told me you were going to submit today. Where is it? And where’s the cell phone you’re supposed to have with you at all times?” She tapped her fingers rapidly on the chair arm, but otherwise gave no outward sign of her agitation. But she was agitated.
“I’m sorry, Agent Parker,” he said, not bothering to point out that he’d never been late with a paperwork at any other time in his career. Except when they’d called him about Jenna. “I thought it could wait until morning.” The T-shirt he’d tossed away earlier lay next to him, and he grabbed it, using it to wipe his face before he put it on. “But my guess is you didn’t come here for that, or to remind me to turn on my cell phone.”
She didn’t even blink. “Okay, Billy, then how about you enlighten me as to why you were sniffing up Maggie Reyes’s skirt this afternoon?”
Nothing the all-seeing Parker said should have surprised him, but he was still taken aback.
“Oh, yes, I know where you were today. I’ve been watching you for a long time.” She took the glasses from her face and leaned forward, the thin line of her mouth softening slightly. “I make it my business to know when one of my agents is about to sabotage the hell out of his career.”
He sat up a little straighter at her remark, feeling suddenly pinned down by her gaze.
“It’s been two years, son. I know you never get over losing a family member, but you’re killing yourself over this.”
He shook his head, but couldn’t bring himself to form the words of denial that automatically rose to his lips.
“You work all the time. You cut off all contact with the people you used to see socially. You rarely talk to anyone outside of the job.” She shrugged, a faint trace of pity in her dark eyes. “Not that that’s abnormal in a unit full of techno-geeks, but it’s never been normal for you. Driving your body and mind to the brink of exhaustion every damn day for nearly two years is eventually going to take its toll.” She folded her glasses into her fist with a small snap. “And I don’t want any of my agents in the field with you when you finally crack, Corrigan. This has to stop.”
He didn’t even bother to ask her what. “He killed my sister. And he’s coming here.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Says who? Certainly not Violent Crimes.”
“Maggie.”
“Oh, it’s ‘Maggie’ now, is it?” Parker stood, her iron-gray bob swinging along her jawline with her sudden movement. “I don’t care if the entire city of Monterey decides to throw a parade in the Surgeon’s honor. This is not a case for the Computer Crimes Division. And, given your position in the Bureau, this is not a case for you.”
Billy rose off the floor. Parker was only five foot six to his six-three, but she had the presence of an Amazon, and he wasn’t about to let her loom over him. He hated people who loomed.
“I know what you want, Corrigan, and I’m warning you now, I will not have vigilante justice in my department. I’ll say it again.” She punctuated her words by shaking her glasses at him. “This. Is. Not. Your. Case.”
Billy relaxed his stance, as if in preparation for physical combat rather than a battle of wills. “Jenna was everything I had,” he said quietly. “I won’t stop looking for him. You can fire me now, if you have to, but I won’t ever stop.”
She didn’t even blink. “Turn in your badge and your gun.”
Without hesitation, Billy walked to where his jeans lay on the floor and took his badge wallet out of one of the pockets. His gun rested on the fireplace mantle, and he picked that up, too, then handed both items to her.
The room grew quiet for several seconds as they stared at each other. Parker was the first to crack. “Damn you, you stupid, stubborn male.” She sighed and shook her head. “This is an extended leave of absence. When you’re ready to give up any and all delusions that you’re John Wayne, give me a call.”
She placed the items he’d given her onto the recliner she’d just vacated. “Now. Promise me one thing, Corrigan,” she said.
“If I can,” he answered.
“If, through some giant stroke of luck, you run into that son of a bitch before the Violent Crimes Division does, you follow the law to the letter. Because if I hear just a hint of the words excessive force in a sentence with your name in it, I will not lift a finger to save you.”
She spun around and walked to the door, then stopped just before exiting. “Live, Billy,” she said. “Please, just live.”
MAGGIE’S VISION CLOUDED and tunneled until all she could see was the vicious hunting knife, the serrated teeth on its top edge tearing into the wood on her door. She remembered that knife. The Surgeon had worn a mask when he’d taken her, and she’d never seen his face, but she’d remember that knife for the rest of her days. Every time she looked at the scars on her stomach.
“Addy, get a plastic bag from the kitchen, would you?” Her own voice sounded tinny and remote to her ears. She didn’t notice Adriana leave the room, but suddenly, the plastic bag was in her hand. She wrapped it around her fingers and pulled the knife out of her door. A piece of paper fluttered to the floor.
Then her vision cleared, widened, and she could see beyond the door, outside, down her sand-strewn driveway to the copse of trees across the street, so thick she wouldn’t know if someone were standing among them right now, watching.
The tremors were small, at first, starting with her fingers and vibrating up her arms, but soon, her entire body was shaking and jerking hard enough to make her teeth chatter. Her hand loosened its grip on the knife and it clattered to the floor, but still she stood in the open doorway as if rooted to the spot. Staring at the trees.
Adriana gripped her shoulders and steered her toward the couch. She pushed a glass of water in Maggie’s hands before moving away to shut the door. She was saying something, or her mouth was moving anyway, but Maggie had no idea what was coming out. She barely managed to catch the words “—calling 911.”
He’d been at her doorstep. In the trees outside her home. And all she could do was stay holed up in her house like the proverbial sitting duck, practically inviting him to come inside and finish what he’d started. She glanced at the thin panes of glass that separated her from the Surgeon’s terrible hands. How had she ever thought this house, that glass, could keep her safe when it would shatter so easily?
“Little pig, little pig, let me come in…”
Oh, no.
She stood up and backed away from the window.
“…Maggie? Maggie, please.”
Maggie glanced down at the hand on her arm. Focused on the thin silver rings and graceful fingers. Focus. She had to focus.
“Maggie, James esta aqui. I have answered most of his questions but you have to talk to him, por favor.” Adriana’s voice brought her out of her thoughts. “Please?”
She shook her head, scrubbed her hand over her eyes. She’d obviously been in la-la land for some time, it didn’t seem like enough time had passed for the police to be here already. “Sure, Addy. Of course I’ll talk to him.” She tightened her mouth upward in what she hoped was a smile and looked around until she zeroed in on the real James Brentwood, a tall, brown-haired man in a rumpled shirt and tie, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. He wore a pair of trendy brown glasses, behind which were sparkling brown eyes, set deeply in a face that seemed to crinkle into a smile naturally. There was an almost frenetic energy about him—even his hair cowlicked wildly about his head, as if it, too, couldn’t stand still. “Hello, Detective Brentwood,” she said, putting on her best I’m-a-sane-productive-member-of-society voice.
He reached forward and clasped her hand in his in a brief handshake. “Maggie Reyes. A pleasure.” Brentwood introduced her to his partner, Detective Elizabeth Borkowski—Billy’s friend, she noted—who had gathered up the knife and the note in plastic bags. Borkowski was a petite brunette with short, curly hair, milk-white skin dotted with pale freckles, and a wedding ring on her left hand.
Borkowski quickly excused herself and headed outside to check the yard and exterior of the house. Maggie gestured for Brentwood to have a seat. He sank down into the overstuffed, sage-green sofa in the living room and had a brief battle of wills and elbows with the throw pillows piled up near the armrest. When they’d been beaten into submission, Brentwood leaned back and settled in. Adriana lowered herself next to him.
“So,” Brentwood began after they’d dispensed with the kind of pleasantries that usually made Maggie irritable. This time, however, they were a welcome delay of the inevitable. She really didn’t want to think about what that knife or that note meant just now.
But obviously, Brentwood wasn’t going to give her the reprieve she was craving. He placed the note, bagged in plastic, on the table and shoved it toward her. “Any idea what this means?” Sitting back, he batted his too-long brown hair out of his eyes.
She scanned the letter that had been impaled to her door moments before. Someone had scrawled Do you want to live forever? in heavy, uneven letters. Underneath was scribbled, S10 M0. Seemingly meaningless, but if she knew the Surgeon, the message was just as important as the words she knew well.
As soon as she saw the three men in black come through the door of the rotting cabin, she instinctively jerked against her bonds, the movement nearly exhausting what remained of her strength. A sharp pain shot through her wrists as the fishing line cut into her skin, and then she could feel something wet dripping down her arms. Her mind felt thick, ponderous, and it took her a few moments to comprehend that her wrists were bleeding.
She blinked, her eyelids closing and opening in the slowest of motions, and the three men before her coalesced into one. One man, with a neoprene ski mask on his face and a nylon stocking over his hair. One man with a starving, frenzied look in his too-bright eyes.
The springs of the rusty cot creaked as he climbed on top of her, and she heard the sound of metal sing against leather. Slowly, ponderously, she turned her head and saw the large hunting knife he held next to her cheek. With one hand, he looped a leather cord around her neck; the other brought the tip of the knife to the hollow in her throat.
“Do you wanna live forever, Maggie?” he whispered, and he trailed the knife down her breastbone, leaving a thin red line in its wake.
Lost in her thoughts, Maggie barely noticed as her hands jerked upward to clutch at her throat. At the sudden movement, Adriana sprang up from her perch on the sofa arm. “Maggie?” she said.
Maggie shook her head, coming fully back to the present. She waved her friend off with an apologetic smile. “That question—” She picked up the bagged note Brentwood had passed to her and tapped its shiny surface with a fingernail. “—was something the Surgeon asked me when—” She swallowed, trying desperately not to remember any more. “That night.” She trusted that Brentwood would know exactly what night she was referring to.
He did. He took off his tortoiseshell glasses and chewed on one of the bows while his right leg bobbed up and down like a sewing-machine needle. “You think he’s followed you from Louisiana to Monterey.” It was a statement, not a question, but she nodded anyway.
“I know how that sounds,” she said, handing the note back to him. It sounded crazy, that’s how it sounded. She knew it; he knew it.
James nodded grimly. “Serial killers don’t normally stalk across long distances. Especially not after a victim has gone into hiding.” His brow was furrowed in a look of concerned understanding laced with pity. He didn’t believe her.
“I’m no ordinary victim,” Maggie responded.
“You think he’s following you because of your books?” James asked.
Maggie had to admire the man. By now, most people would have passed into the “you flaming idiot” phase of the conversation. “In the criminal world, I’m something of a celebrity. You want to live forever? Just have Maggie Reyes write your story.” She got up and paced to the fireplace, focusing her attention on a photo of herself and her parents that rested on the mantle. She didn’t remember when it had been taken, but it must have been years ago; they were outdoors. Not to mention she hadn’t seen them for eighteen months.
“What you’re talking about is uncharted territory.” James said behind her. “According to the feds, the Surgeon is your basic organized lust killer. He’s smart enough to plan and cover his tracks, but he kills from compulsion.”
“No killer cannibalized his victims with the enthusiasm Jeffrey Dahmer had. No one put up a better guise of sanity than Ted Bundy. No one broke more of the profilers ‘rules’ than the DC snipers.” Maggie turned to face him. “They’re all uncharted territory, Detective Brentwood. And no one has ever tracked victims with the single-mindedness of the Surgeon.”
“So he’s communicating with you so you’ll write a book about him?”
Ah-ha. Now she was getting polite disbelief. Time to bring out the big guns. “The woman who was killed in Carmel—Abigail Rhodes. Did that look like an ordinary murder to you?”
Brentwood put his glasses back on his face and pushed them as far up his nose as they would go. His leg continued to keep time to some rhythm only he could sense. “I’m not at liberty to discuss—”
“Abigail had reported harassing phone calls to the police three days prior to her death,” Maggie broke in, recounting what she knew of the case. “The night of the murder, someone broke into her apartment. There was no sign of forced entry. She was quickly incapacitated by a blow to the head, then tied to her bed and stabbed repeatedly in an almost ritualistic fashion. You found no fingerprints, few fibers, and nothing that would let you point to a particular suspect with any certainty.”
James cleared his throat. “That was all in the papers,” he began, his manner still unfailingly polite.
“And here’s what wasn’t.” Moving quickly across the room, she sat on the edge of the chair across from him, the coffee table between them. “He used fishing line to tie her wrists and ankles. She was strangled, but that’s not what killed her. The cause of death was heavy blood loss due to several cuts on her abdomen arranged in a particular pattern resembling a grid.”
The detective’s leg stopped bouncing.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Maggie said. “He took something off her body—like a piece of jewelry or a scrap of clothing. It’s his trophy, Detective Brentwood. He’ll touch it and look at it and relive his crime over and over and over again. And when reliving it isn’t enough, he’ll find some other young woman and he’ll do the same thing all over again. Unless you’re there to stop him.”
Her macabre litany finished, Maggie sat back against the soft upholstery of the chair, feeling strangely tired. Ever since she’d read about Abigail Rhodes, she’d been so damn tired.
The detective stared at her for a long moment, then steepled his hands and brought them to his lips, resting his thumbs under his square chin.
“I told you she knew what she was talking about,” Adriana said behind him.
“Why is he so fixated on you? Will he come here?” the man finally said.
“Eventually,” Maggie replied. “He’ll kill me because he wants immortality.”
“Right,” James said. “Kill the woman who immortalized the Green River Killer, the Zodiac murders, Mohammed and Malvo, and you’d have yourself a hell of a biography.”
The three of them grew suddenly quiet, remaining motionless until Adriana started fishing inside her purse. The sound of crinkling wrappers broke the silence, and then Addy shoved a piece of gum in her mouth and began snapping away. She tossed the pack on the table. “Nerves,” she explained. “Help yourselves.”
James patted her knee gently and then turned his focus back to Maggie. “What about these letters and numbers?”
“I think he might be keeping score,” she replied. “Ten murders for him, no leads for me. In New Orleans, I was on the task force that was trying to catch him.”
“Hmmm.” Brentwood turned the note over. “And this?”
Taped to the back was a photo. Maggie stepped closer, too intrigued to be frightened yet by the picture she hadn’t known was there. She picked up the bag and examined its contents. The photo was severely out of focus; the only thing she could tell was that it was taken inside a room with generic beige walls, and the subject was a woman with curly black hair.
“Maggie?” Brentwood’s voice broke her concentration.
“Well, that’s new.” She licked her lips. “He’s definitely sending a message.” She put the note down and pulled the rubber band off the end of her braid, combing her fingers through her hair until her black curls cascaded freely over her shoulders. From the look on Brentwood’s face, it was clear he knew what she was going to say next. “I think that’s me.”
Brentwood narrowed his eyes and squinted at the photo. “You don’t recognize anything in the background, do you?”
She shook her head. “That beige wall could be anywhere. This house, my home in New Orleans, any one of the places I used to give lectures.” She gave him a small smile. “Unfortunately, I’ve always had huge hair, so I couldn’t even tell you when this was taken. Especially since the face is so out of focus.”
Brentwood continued asking questions, and she answered, doing her best to keep herself divorced from the reality that was coming out of her mouth. Finally, the questions stopped, and he simply looked at her, with Adriana cracking her gum on the couch next to him. Brentwood’s mouth flattened, and he clenched his jaw tightly. The man wouldn’t have made a very good poker player.
“You can’t do anything,” she said. “I know.”
He stood, played with his tie, though his eyes never left hers. If he had to leave her at the mercy of a madman, at least he’d be honest and forthright about it. “It could be a prank. A lot of kids in this area know about your…condition.”
The crazy woman on Mermaid Point. Oh, yeah, they knew all right. “Sure,” she said.
“Even if he were stalking you, serial killers normally don’t stray from their comfort zones. This would be highly unusual.”
“Right.” Her gaze traveled out the window, to the shadows between the trees across the street.
“We’ll check for fingerprints on the knife and the note. If it’s any of our known offenders—”
“You won’t find anything,” Maggie interrupted flatly. “He’s better than that.”
Adriana, who’d been listening carefully to the entire exchange, finally burst out, “James, can’t you do something? What if she’s really not safe?”
“I’ll arrange for extra patrols past your house.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, then pulled them out again. “I’m sorry, it’s all I can do at this point.”
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. How many people had been apologizing to her lately? Would they keep saying it, even if she were dead? “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
He shoved his hands in the pockets of his tan trenchcoat, looking a little as if he ought to be in a black-and-white noir film. “I’m listening, Maggie. Call me if you have anything else.” Then he turned to leave.
Maggie turned and walked into the kitchen, only half listening to Adriana argue with Brentwood as she went outside to see him to his car.
She traced her fingers around the smooth, cool lid of her blue sugar canister, the Firestar nestled inside once more, loaded and ready. There were other weapons hidden around the house—guns, knives, Mace. Would they be enough?
They had to be.
Last time around, she’d had the protection of the entire NOPD and a few FBI agents, and it hadn’t been enough. She’d had her gun, her martial arts training, her normally flawless intuition that had warned her of approaching danger countless times. None of it had kept her safe.
Now, she had what her former colleagues politely called “a psychological condition,” she jumped at mere shadows, and she had all the credibility of an alcoholic bag lady. Sure, her friends and family would be there for her if she asked, but she couldn’t involve them. Keeping them far away from this crazy game, more than anything, had to be her first priority. This time, despite the fact that Addy’s detective might believe her, she was alone.
Her eyes fell on Billy Corrigan’s card.
She palmed it off the table, then curled her fingers around it until it was crushed inside her fist.
All alone.
Chapter Five
Maggie balanced her weight evenly on the soles of both feet and slowly raised her arms upward to greet the sky—well, in her case, the ceiling. Tadasana—mountain pose. Adriana had told her that the yoga posture improved alignment, balance, confidence, and was good for people who constantly felt cold.
So far, it wasn’t helping with any of it.
She exhaled and bent her body at the waist, dropping her hands in front of her until her fingertips swept the ground. Shifting the bulk of her weight to her palms, she pushed one leg backward into a lunge, then brought the other leg back to meet it. Plank pose. The second part of a sequence that was supposed to “invigorate the nervous system” and relax her.
Whatever.
Do you wanna live forever, Maggie?
The whisper was so real, Maggie could almost feel the Surgeon’s breath on her cheek, the tingling steel of the knife blade as he trailed it down her spine with soft, butterfly touches that would soon turn vicious. Her arms gave out and she landed hard on her stomach. One breath. Two.
How would she ever stop him this time? Closing her eyes, she dropped her head forward until her forehead touched the soft surface of her yoga mat. Her hands curled around her face, creating a barrier that blocked her peripheral vision and reduced her world to one small square of blue foam. One breath. Two.
If you run, he can’t getcha. If you run, he can’t getcha. If yourunhecan’tifyourunifyourunifyourun….
“I can’t,” she moaned, a small pathetic noise from a small, pathetic person. “I can’t.”
A loud banging noise echoed through the house, abruptly bringing an end to her latest mental mini-collapse. The front door.
Maggie closed her eyes and listened to the muffled sound of the waves hitting the beach for a moment. Thank heaven for this house near the ocean—water always managed to relax her when she needed it most. Even through a barrier of stucco walls and thick panes of glass.
The banging on her door grew louder and more insistent. With a sigh, Maggie slowly rose to her feet, bringing her hands to the ceiling to stretch her spine one last time. Then, she pulled the coated rubber band out of her hair and quickly finger-combed it before redoing her ponytail. No sense looking like a crazy person, even if it was probably just Adriana kicking the door because she held a bag of groceries in her hands.
With one hand on the wall for balance, Maggie started to rise on her tiptoes to look through the peephole, but then dropped back down. She reached out and clamped her fingers around the small yellow spray can that sat on the nearby phone table. Just in case.
When she did glance through the peephole, what she saw made her wish she hadn’t bothered interrupting a perfectly good nervous breakdown. “I have Mace,” she called through the wood.
“It’s important,” came Billy Corrigan’s muffled reply.
She didn’t answer, preferring instead to remain quiet and see how long it took him to give up and go away. But instead of walking to the other side of the house, she stayed in place, watching him through the small bit of magnifying glass. Today his T-shirt was plain gray, and his jeans were the dark, smoky blue her Abercrombie & Fitch catalog called “dirty wash.” Trendy guy.
Maggie turned around abruptly and leaned her back against the door, folding her arms and making a mental note to avoid scrutinizing Billy Corrigan’s wardrobe or any other part of him. Then again, since she wasn’t about to open the door, she probably wouldn’t have the chance. He’d probably leave for good if she could just keep him out this one time—out of her home, out of danger, out of her life, so she wouldn’t be tempted to make the mistake of depending on the FBI to save her. Because that had worked so well the last time around….
“Agent Corrigan, do you have a subpoena?” she called through the barrier between them.
Pause. “No.”
“Then I am not required by law to open this door or talk to you?”
“Maggie—”
“Right then. Off you go.” With that, she finally managed to make herself walk away, ignoring the fact that part of her was dying to let gray-eyed Billy Corrigan inside.
OUTSIDE, BILLY SMACKED his palm against the pale stucco exterior of Maggie’s house. What would it take for her to open the damn door and let him in? Why couldn’t he find the right words, for once? Just this once, when it really mattered?
“Do you know what day tomorrow is?” he called. Then he waited.
Nothing. Not even the mention of October 8th got a response.
“It’s an anniversary, Maggie. Two years ago tomorrow, the Surgeon killed his first victim in New Orleans.”
This time, he waited for what felt like half the afternoon, but still Maggie refused to open the door. He pressed his ear to the wood, and the silence that greeted him made him wonder if she hadn’t walked out of earshot, into the depths of her house.
He pushed away from the door, nearly growling in frustration. “Dammit, Maggie, people are going to die. Doesn’t anyone matter to you anymore?”
Abruptly, the door swung open, and then Maggie stood before him with eyes that had changed from brown to angry black since the last time he’d seen her.
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