I'll Be Watching You
Tracy Montoya
It might have been four years since Detective Daniel Cardenas had last seen Addy Torres, but she'd never been far from his thoughts…or his fantasies.Then, as a vicious stalker's latest target, the stunning recluse needed the relentless protection only Daniel could provide. But the more Addy turned to his strong arms seeking safety, the more he wanted to ease her pain and give her the release they'd both craved for far too long.As he watched and waited for a killer to make his next move, Daniel fought every urge and kept his hands to himself. Until one fateful night changed everything…
“I’m with you till the end, Adriana. However long it takes until we catch him.”
But there could be another end to this story—she knew that better than anyone.
“I’ll keep you safe. I swear.”
“What about the cop who tried to protect me the last time?”
His mouth quirked upward in the crooked half smile she was starting to recognize. “Nothing’s going to make me leave your side.”
Oh, my.
“Okay.” She barely realized she’d agreed to his protection until the word shot out of her mouth, against her better judgment. He didn’t deserve to be involved in this. He didn’t deserve to die because of her.
As if he could read her thoughts, something softened in his deep hazel eyes. He reached up to trace her jawline with his hand, making the barest contact with her skin. It stole her breath all the same….
I’ll Be Watching You
Tracy Montoya
To Kim Fisk. You earned this one with all of those blitz
critiques I made you do! I’m blessed to have you for a friend.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tracy Montoya is a magazine editor for a crunchy nonprofit 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 I has a 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 under-resourced school in Louisiana through the AmeriCorps Teach for America program.
Tracy holds a master’s degree in English literature from Boston College and a BA 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 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
Adriana Torres —Four years ago, Adriana’s fiancé was killed in the line of duty while hunting serial killer Elijah Carter. Now someone is leaving her mysterious threats, and dredging up all of her long-buried painful memories.
Daniel Cardenas —The Monterey police detective is determined to keep Adriana safe from the stalker whose threats seem to be escalating—even while she’s determined to shut him out.
Elijah Carter —A vicious serial killer whose struggle with police and FBI resulted in his falling into the dangerous waters lining Monterey Bay. His body was never found.
Stan Peterson —Adriana’s yoga student seems to have an unhealthy interest in his teacher.
James Brentwood —The Monterey police detective—and Adriana’s fiancé—was shot and killed by Elijah Carter.
Liz Borkowski —Daniel’s no-nonsense partner and Adriana’s friend, Detective Borkowski well remembers Elijah Carter, because she almost died under his knife.
A.J. Lockwood —The veteran detective knows Elijah Carter’s killing methods well—and he’s convinced Carter survived and is back to kill again.
Sean Cantrell —Could Adriana’s teenage neighbor be behind the threats left at her door?
Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Prologue
Stifling a yawn with his fist, Detective Daniel Cardenas wondered not for the first time what the hell he was doing up at oh-dark-hundred in the morning, several hours before his shift was supposed to start. His dashboard clock read 3:07 a.m. as he maneuvered his unmarked Crown Victoria slowly through the gauntlet of blue-and-whites lining East Alvarado Street, their flashing lights creating an eerie, pulsing red halo around the small neighborhood. It was normally considered one of Monterey, California’s, “safer” areas.
Not tonight, obviously.
When his partner had called him down here, she hadn’t bothered to give him any details. But something in her normally no-nonsense voice had sent his cop sense into overdrive, and he knew it was shut-up-and-go time. So he shut up, hung up and went. All without his usual morning jolt of caffeine.
God, he would have sawed off his right arm for some coffee.
Pulling his car alongside the curb, about a block away from the small shotgun-style bungalow at the center of all the activity, Daniel got out and made his way back toward 447 East Alvarado. Radio chatter had indicated a homicide had taken place, and from the fact that every cop in the metro area and then some seemed to be parked on this one street, it wasn’t going to be a pretty one.
He walked under a streetlight, and the sudden brightness of its tungsten lamp shining down upon him made his head throb. Ahead, some neighborhood residents huddled together in a tight, worried-looking group, occasionally craning their necks or shuffling from side to side to see what was going on. Unfortunately for them, an ambulance with two very jittery-looking EMTs leaning against it blocked their view. As if sensing his approach, one of the women onlookers turned around and broke away from the group when she saw him.
“Excuse me,” the woman said, tightly clutching the lapels of her ratty red bathrobe together with one hand. “Are you with the police? Because I didn’t know the girls who lived there well, but…”
“Ma’am, at this point, I don’t know any more than you do,” he said politely. “But—”
“It’s our right to know,” she said, falling into step beside him. “Our taxes pay your salary, young man. I won’t—”
Without breaking his stride, Daniel slanted a cool look at her.
“Oh, well, I—” Patting her hair, she scurried back among her friends, the rest of her statement hanging unfinished in the air. He wasn’t allowed to dole out any information to people who weren’t next of kin this early in the game. And he definitely wasn’t spilling his guts to the neighborhood gossip at any point. They were pretty much the only ones who tried to play the we-pay-your-taxes card.
Then again, if she’d come at him with a double-shot espresso, he might have been persuaded to make something up on the spot.
As he approached the yellow tape that cordoned off the scene, a street cop strode across the front yard to meet him, backlit by one of the homicide squad’s portable spotlights. Daniel flashed his badge, then ducked under the tape without waiting for the guy’s blessing. As expected, the uniform gave him a curt nod and backed off.
“Cardenas!” A. J. Lockwood, a seasoned detective who’d been with the MPD since the beginning of time, bounded down the home’s front steps and crossed the yard to Daniel. Judging from his expression, whatever was inside was going to be bad. Generally, the grislier the scene, the blacker Lockwood’s dark sense of humor became. But tonight the man’s ever-present sardonic grin was nowhere in sight.
Not a kid. Please don’t let it have been a kid.
“Janie Sanchez, graduate student at the Language Institute,” Lockwood said in greeting, not even bothering with normal pleasantries like “hello” or “you look like hell.”
“She’s our homicide?” Daniel asked.
“Oh, yeah.” Lockwood’s square jaw clenched and worked, but instead of launching into a description of the scene, he merely narrowed his flinty gaze at Daniel. “So what do you look so chipper for? I’ve been up for an hour now, and I still feel like hell. Borkowski says she got ahold of you, like, two minutes ago, and you look as if you were lying in bed in that suit, waiting for someone to call.”
Truth was he felt about as chipper as a pile of roadkill. An uncaffeinated pile of roadkill.
Then again, he’d long ago realized that what was going on inside his head didn’t often show up on his face, whether he realized it or not.
“Who’s that over there in the bushes?” Daniel asked, jerking his head toward the cop bent over the shrubbery a few feet away, making the most god-awful noises.
“Rookie. He’s been yakking all over the place since he got here.”
Great, one of those cases. “That bad?”
Lockwood gave a small grunt that would have been a short laugh under normal circumstances. “Worse. I felt like yakking. Don’t tell anyone.” He glanced back at the house’s open doorway, which was blocked by a short, stocky uniform who looked like a human fireplug, standing guard. Someone had drawn the curtains inside.
“It’s…” Lockwood blew out a long, slow puff of air. “Damn, Cardenas, I think he’s back.”
With that one sentence, the fatigue Daniel felt abruptly vanished. There was only one “he” in their shared history on the force—maybe even in the history of the entire city—that could make a rookie lose his breakfast and put the fear of God into a veteran like Lockwood.
Impossible.
Pushing past Lockwood without so much as a goodbye, he propelled himself through the small mass of his colleagues milling around outside, past the cluster of EMTs standing around with nothing to do. Taking the three front steps in two strides, he entered the house, all but ignoring the crime-scene techs taking flash photographs in the front sitting room as he followed the noise to the living room in the middle.
The few detectives in the room parted like the Red Sea when he entered, revealing his grim-faced partner standing over a body. Detective Liz Borkowski looked up as he approached, her normally pale, Irish-and-Polish complexion gone as white as bone.
“Five-point ligature marks on the ankles, wrists and neck,” one of the crime-scene techs murmured from a few feet away, obligingly describing the horror in the room to another tech who held a video camera.
Janie Sanchez’s body lay sprawled out on a blood-soaked rug in front of the living room’s brick fireplace. She’d been deliberately posed in a demeaning, spread-eagle fashion, her head tilted to the side, giving her the look of a broken marionette. Her glassy, unseeing eyes stared at something beyond the ceiling.
He’d seen this all before. He could have described the scene to the crime lab’s video camera with his eyes closed.
Because he still dreamed about the others. They all did.
“…fishing line still wrapped around the victim’s ankles and wrists…” The tech’s monotone was the only sound in the room besides everyone else’s breathing. “…defensive wounds on her hands…”
The vulnerable, taut skin on Janie’s bare stomach had been carved through repeatedly with a knife that had left her abdomen raw and mutilated.
Somebody’s sister. Somebody’s daughter.
“…multiple lacerations on her body, concentrated mostly on her abdominal area, where they appear to be in a gridlike pattern…”
Detach. He had to forget about who she’d been, and focus on who had killed her.
But how did you tell someone their daughter, their sister, their friend and neighbor had been killed by a ghost?
A ghost that hadn’t walked for four years.
Where’ve you been, Elijah Carter?
The newspapers had come up with a more colorful name for the man who’d stalked and killed eleven women, who’d crossed the country from Louisiana and California, escalating until the last few had died not mercifully or quickly, but a long, slow, torturous death he wouldn’t have wished on the worst of criminals. They called him The Surgeon. Because he liked to carve up women in his special, singular, painstaking way.
Daniel refused to call him that. Whatever he was, he was still just a man.
A man who’d apparently risen from the dead.
He crouched down beside Janie and found himself staring at one of her hands. Her slim fingers curled slightly upward, tipped with bubblegum-pink, carefully tended nails that were now caked with blood. Her wrists were red and swollen from where he’d tied them.
He looked at her face. She’d been a pretty girl.
Somebody’s sister. Somebody’s daughter.
“Who found the body?” he asked Liz, as she knelt down beside him.
“Roommate,” she said, her voice slightly hoarse. “She’s outside.”
“…multiple lacerations to the abdomen, cuts most likely made with a serrated-edge blade,” the tech droned on.
Serrated edge. Because Elijah Carter liked to rip, not slice.
“What do you think, Liz?” he asked quietly, and every person in the room strained to hear his partner’s answer. Along with Lockwood, the two of them had been on the special FBI-Monterey PD task force four years ago that had cornered Elijah Carter on the rock-strewn shores of the Pacific Ocean. They’d been down this damn road before.
Something small and vulnerable flickered across his partner’s face. She was probably thinking of her own daughters, one just a couple of years younger than Janie Sanchez.
“Copycat.” She lifted her head to look him square in the eye. “Unofficially speaking.” She pointed with a latex-gloved hand to the victim’s torn-up stomach. “Carter used to carve a very precise grid into his victims. Three lines down, four across.”
She would know.
“This victim has four lines down, four across. And that’s not the only thing that’s off.” Borkowski bent down to trace a finger gently along the vicious bruising across the young woman’s neck.
“That looks as if someone strangled her with a strap of some sort,” Daniel said, crouching down on the other side of the body. “Carter liked to use his hands.”
“Exactly.”
“Signatures can change over time, Borkowski. Sure we have some variation, but the overall theme is still there.”
Signatures were behaviors that went beyond what was necessary to commit a crime, and fulfilled a killer’s twisted psychological needs. Repeatedly strangling his victims and reviving them was one of Carter’s signature behaviors. Cutting that grid into her abdomen was a signature behavior. He’d changed things up a bit, but it still might be Elijah Carter. Or, as Borkowski obviously hoped, it might not.
“The M.E. will have to tell us for sure, but I think she may have been sexually assaulted, too,” Liz said. “Carter never did that. That would change his MO. Which just doesn’t happen.”
Daniel made a point to keep his focus steady on the contusions on Janie Sanchez’s neck. It seemed like another violation to look at the rest of her body while having this discussion.
“Dammit, Cardenas, it has to be a copycat.”
He jerked his head up in surprise—his tough-as-nails partner never let her emotions show. Not like that—imposing her own interpretation on a crime scene because she couldn’t bear to think of the alternative.
She didn’t meet his eye, instead rising from the ground. Squaring her shoulders, she came back to herself and started barking orders. She swept from the room, and everyone else hustled to comply with her commands, obviously relieved to have something to occupy their too-busy minds.
As Daniel rose, Lockwood approached him.
“Up until 1905, it was legal in China to execute someone for a capital offense by lingchi , or the ‘death of a thousand cuts,’” Lockwood murmured as he, too, stared down at the body.
Daniel knew what he was talking about. The ancient form of capital punishment was reportedly as gruesome as the name suggested, with the executioner inflicting multiple nonlethal cuts all over the victim’s body, prolonging death until said victim finally expired from his cumulative wounds.
“Janie Sanchez died of a thousand cuts,” Lockwood continued. “Borkowski might want to insist it’s a copycat, but I don’t know…I’ve never seen another man who did that to his victims.”
Chapter One
Hustling out the door on her way to work, Adriana Torres caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye that stopped her in her tracks. Her keys fell out of her suddenly slack grip, jangling loudly as they hit the ground.
A nasty-looking hunting knife protruded from her home’s siding. Pinned to the wood by the sharply gleaming steel was a folded slip of paper. She didn’t need to read its contents to know that the message would be very concise and very disturbing.
“Nice.”
Some people’s neighbors said good morning to each other as they started their day. Hers jabbed knives into her house. And por el amor de Dios, what had her house ever done to them?
Rolling her eyes heavenward and muttering a brief prayer for patience in Spanish, Addy grabbed hold of the handle, giving it a good tug. When it didn’t come out on the first try, she dropped her tote back on her front stoop with a thud and tried again with both hands until the knife chunked free.
She didn’t bother to glance around her quiet street, figuring it was hardly worth it to muster up the energy to be annoyed anymore. As one of the neighborhood dogs started up a faraway, staccato bark, she examined the latest addition to her growing collection of cutlery. It felt heavier and looked a little more expensive than usual.
Whatever. Maybe the idiot who’d put it there thought that spending more money would be scarier. As if.
Purposefully adopting a bored expression, just in case the nasty little twerp was watching, she picked up her keys and dropped them back into her purse. She’d always hated the thought of living in a wealthy gated community, but at times like this the idea had its attractions.
Pushing the door back open with one hip, she kicked at the slip of paper that had fallen to the ground after she’d freed the knife holding it. It fluttered inside the house, and she picked up her tote and followed suit. Without bothering to pick the paper up, she headed for the phone in her kitchen. She dialed the familiar number without glancing at the list of her favorite contacts stuck to the fridge.
“Borkowski,” came a woman’s curt response.
“Hey, Liz, it’s me.” Addy leaned against the counter, a frisson of annoyance tracking up her spine as she contemplated being late to work because of a stupid prank…again. But while she and Liz both knew that none of the teenage troublemakers who lived on her block was going to slink forward and confess, she’d promised her friend she would call each and every time someone stabbed her house. “Got another note.”
“Same deal as last time?”
Addy tossed the knife on the counter. “If by that you mean, one large, ugly knife that left yet another large, ugly hole in my siding, yes. Every time Halloween comes around, it’s the prank du jour.”
Liz swore softly—which was very uncharacteristic of her—and for the first time, Addy realized that the usual sounds she heard in the background when she called Liz at the station—papers shuffling, phones ringing—weren’t present. Instead, it sounded like Liz was outside.
“Is this a bad time?” Addy asked. “You out and about doing your cop thing?”
“No, no,” said Liz, sounding somewhat preoccupied despite her denial. “I’m at a scene, but this is important.”
“After seven of these notes since…” She let her voice trail off, not wanting to think about the event that had divided her life into before and since. “I don’t think it’s all that important, Liz. The sky hasn’t fallen yet.”
The first threat had also come in October, exactly a year after the love of Addy’s life, Monterey Police Detective James Brentwood, had been killed in the line of duty while hunting a prolific serial killer—a serial killer who was now dead, thank you very much. But a bestselling book about the case had made her little corner of the city rather notorious, since the killer known as The Surgeon had drowned just a few yards away from Addy’s home in an FBI-Monterey PD undercover operation.
And suddenly the kids in her neighborhood had found it amusing to leave notes on her door, pretending to be the resurrected killer of her beloved fiancé by mimicking his favorite way of terrorizing his intended victims.
Sometimes you just had to wonder what was wrong with people.
The first time, the message had terrified her beyond belief, coming on the grim anniversary as it had. Then, more notes came, and they were always the same—someone would leave a cheap knife embedded in her wooden door, along with a childishly scrawled note saying he was “coming for” her.
So she’d bought a security system and a steel front door, and the notes kept coming, until there had been so many, all they sparked in her was contempt. If someone was really out to get her, she figured they’d have done something by now, rather than simply continuing to write about it. And on one occasion, she’d seen a suspiciously gangly, teenager-looking shadow lurking about her front door when another note had appeared, which had led her and the police to believe that she was merely the target of a few young pranksters in the area with tragically inept parents.
“I’m sorry, Addy,” Liz said, breaking a silence that had stretched out for too long. It seemed as if all of her conversations did that, in the four years since James had died. “This has to be so hard on you, especially now.”
Especially now. October again. The month when she’d lost James.
Addy picked at a hangnail as she watched the cold waves of the Pacific Ocean crash spectacularly against the jagged black rocks that lined the shore outside her window. Four years. She’d gotten to the point where she could handle being left behind most days, where the intense, indescribable grief she’d felt at losing him was just a dull memory, hanging in the background of her everyday activities—always there, but something she could live with. Like Liz lived with it, although she and James had just been work partners and friends.
And then sometimes, out of the blue, it sucker-punched Addy in the stomach, leaving her gasping for air and wondering whether she’d even be able to function into the next hour, much less the next decade. And all the ones that would come after.
Too long. Too long to be without him.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to pull herself together enough to finish the conversation, so she could hang up, call in sick and scream into her pillow until she fell into an exhausted sleep, the way she’d done too many times to count. Unfair.
Unfair-unfair-unfair-unfair-unfair….
“Addy.”
“Yeah?”
“Have you seen the news this morning?”
She shook her head, swallowing hard a couple of times before she answered so she wouldn’t sound half-strangled. “No. I don’t watch the news until after dinner. It’s not a positive way to start your day.”
“Look—” Liz exhaled sharply into the phone “—I can’t leave just now, but I’m sending someone over—”
“No.” Clenching her teeth together so hard, she thought they might crack, Addy shook her head and willed herself to function. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Put James back in the little box inside her head where she kept him, so she could interact with others like a semi-normal human being. Howling at them in grief never made for good conversation. “No.”
“Addy, I mean it, stay there.”
Grabbing a paper bag from under the sink, the phone tucked between her shoulder and chin, Addy stuffed the knife into it and headed for the door. Just before she reached it, she picked up the note from the floor and put it in the paper bag, then shoved the whole mess into her tote. “No. I’m sick of letting these idiotic pranks disrupt my life.”
Liz let out a muffled groan, and Addy could visualize the exasperated, because-I’m-the-mom look on her face. “I can’t tell you what’s going on right now, but you really ought to stay put.”
“I’m going to my car,” Addy singsonged, feeling stronger now as she locked her front door. Defying Liz’s prudent sense of caution always had that effect.
She made her way to the boxy little Scion XB that sat in her driveway. Fortunately, no one had yet jabbed a knife into it. “I’m getting in and turning the key. Screw you, socially stunted neighborhood children.”
“Adriana, could you stop for a minute and tell me where the note is?”
Addy turned the key and put the car in gear, backing slowly out of her driveway. “Sitting next to me, along with the knife. You can send one of your lackeys to the studio to get it.” Addy owned a yoga studio on Cannery Row, the trendy, store-lined street in Monterey made famous by John Steinbeck, and she had no intention of being late to her first class of the day because her neighbors were jerks. Not this time.
“Okay, look,” Liz said, “I need you to pull over and read the note to me.”
“Dear Miss Torres, We’re coming for you. This time we mean it, just like the other seven times. Love, your friendly neighborhood troll children,” Addy droned.
“You know,” Liz said, her too-polite tone barely concealing her growing impatience, “you really should talk to my new partner—he’s the department go-to guy for stalking cases. He could tell you some stories about why this isn’t funny.”
“Okay, fine.” Addy sighed and fished around in her tote for the paper bag while keeping her eyes on the road. Hearing the telltale crinkle, she opened it up and picked the note out of it, unfolding it against the steering wheel. As she hit an open stretch of road, she glanced down at the contents.
Her hand involuntarily jerked the wheel; the car jolted to the right.
As the note fluttered to the car floor, Addy managed to steer the Scion to the curb, where, hands shaking, she put it in Park. She pitched forward, until her forehead rested against the steering wheel. A sickly, clammy feeling prickled across her skin, and she gripped the wheel as if it were the last thing anchoring her to the sane world. Not that. She couldn’t have seen that.
“Addy?”
“Just a minute.” Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she slowly raised her head and picked the note up off the floor. Instead of the childish penciled scrawls or cut-out magazine letters affixed to a page of loose-leaf that she’d received in the past, what she held was a computer printout of a photo. The image was slightly pixilated, so maybe she had been mistaken….
But then it snapped into focus. A low, soft, keening sound filled the car, and it took a moment to realize she was making it.
“Addy?” Liz snapped, the urgency in her voice carrying through the phone.
“Oh, God.” Scrabbling for the driver’s-side armrest, Addy punched the button to activate her automatic door locks. She twisted around to look back down her street, her pulse kicking into overdrive.
Deserted.
But who was hiding out there? Who had left this?
Who would do this to her?
Suddenly furious, she let the note fall as she smacked her hand against the window. A stinging, fiery pain shot across her palm. She curled her arm against her chest and sank back in her seat.
“Addy, for heaven’s sake, tell me what the note said!”
She doubled over, trying to regain control and finding that for the first time in four years, she just couldn’t. “Liz, it’s awful,” she gasped, trying desperately not to cry, not to lose it completely until she’d told her friend what she’d seen. “I can’t breathe.”
“I’m coming over.”
“No. I can’t go back there.” Focus. She had to focus. “God, Liz, I’m afraid to go back to my own home.” Pressing her palms against the steering wheel, she narrowed her focus to the space between her thumbs, inhaling through her nose, exhaling through her mouth. In. Out. In. Out. “It’s different this time,” she said, her voice regaining some of its former calm.
“It’s James.” Inhale. Detach, just like her first yoga master had taught her. Detach. What shows up must be accepted without upset. “It’s a picture of James. Someone took a picture of his body the day he…” Exhale. Accept. She glanced at the slip of paper and the tremors in her body worsened. “Liz, I think this was taken right when he died.”
Chapter Two
Adriana hugged her elbows, feeling cold and almost painfully brittle, as if someone had opened her up and exposed her insides to the world. “You don’t think it’s just a prank?” she said into the phone. To tell the truth, she didn’t think it was just a prank, but something in her was holding on to that idea all the same, with the desperation of a shipwreck victim clinging to a piece of driftwood.
“No, I don’t,” Liz replied softly. “I was there, remember?”
The day Addy had lost James wasn’t one she could easily forget. But while her experience had been confined to getting the long-dreaded visit from a cop who wasn’t her fiancé, Liz’s had been far more physically painful. James had been shot in the line of duty while pursuing a killer, and Liz had been right beside him when it had happened. James’s murderer had taken Liz hostage for several hours, an experience she never talked about, which had landed her in the hospital for over a week. If the rumors were true, her clothes concealed some nasty knife-wound scars.
Addy looked to her right, where the ocean was barely visible between two of her neighbors’ houses. She could just glimpse a tiny corner of the sharp rocks that lined their portion of the beach, around which the cold sea boiled and churned, filled with riptides ready to drag down anything that fell into it.
Elijah Carter, aka The Surgeon—the man who’d killed James, who’d nearly killed Liz—had fallen into that water, in his final confrontation with the FBI and Monterey PD. His body had never been found.
“He couldn’t have survived, could he?” she asked, not taking her eyes off that sliver of blue-gray. In all the years that she’d lived on Monterey’s Mermaid Point, she’d never heard of someone falling into that water, and living.
Liz didn’t answer, and Addy’s vision blurred, until all she could see was the mental image of James as he was in the photo lying beside her. His cheek pressed into the wood-chip-lined ground, his glasses half off his face, one lens cracked in a spiderweb pattern, the rumpled brown hair she’d loved to smooth off his forehead partially obscuring his unfocused stare. He’d been breathing just seconds before that picture had been taken. She knew it. He’d been alive, and somewhere across town she’d been coming home after a day at work, engaged and in love. She’d been happy.
“Why?” The word came out broken, and sounding so lonely and scared, she wanted to take it back as soon as she’d said it.
“I don’t know, Addy. I’m so sorry.”
Wanting to get as far from Mermaid Point as she could, Addy said goodbye to Liz, who promised to wrap up her work at whatever scene she was at to meet her at the studio. Calling ahead to ask her office manager to cancel her classes for the day, Addy didn’t stop driving until she reached the bustling street. She pulled into the little parking lot behind her studio and took the keys out of the ignition.
And then found herself unable to get out of the car.
If he survived the fall off those rocks…
The thought of leaving the Scion and walking out into the wide-open street where anyone could see her made her stomach clench. He could be anywhere. He could be watching her. She glanced at the piece of paper lying facedown on the passenger seat. Who else but the man who murdered James could have taken that photo?
The man who got off on torturing women. The man who’d stalked and nearly killed two of her friends.
She glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror, all too aware of just how neatly she fit The Surgeon’s victim profile: unmarried students or working women in their twenties and thirties, with dark hair, who live alone.
All alone.
Someone tapped on the driver’s-side window, and she jerked backward in her seat. Her hand flew to her mouth to muffle her instinctive shout.
One of her students. Stan, an inexperienced yoga practitioner who’d just started coming to her beginner class a few weeks ago. Forcing a smile, which made her skin feel too tight and her jaw ache, she rolled down her window.
“Hey, Stan.”
He shoved his overly long hair out of his eyes and smiled shyly at her, revealing a slight gap between his two front teeth. One of them looked slightly gray and off-kilter, as if it had been knocked out in the past and then haphazardly glued back into his mouth. “Hi, Addy.”
She waited for him to let her know what he wanted, but when he remained silent—for far longer than was socially acceptable—she grabbed her bags and the stupid note and busied herself with getting out of the car. As his yoga instructor, she was probably supposed to be radiating Zenlike patience, but something about Stan had rankled from the first day he’d walked into her studio. For one thing, she’d never asked him to call her Addy—most of her students called her Adriana.
“Can I help you with something?”
“Oh, I just saw you coming, and I thought I’d wait for you.” He nervously fingered the hem of his gray T-shirt, which hung a little too high over his tight bicycle shorts to be flattering. “To walk to class together, you know.”
Deep breath. Maybe as Terri, the office manager, often pointed out, the more difficult students who came their way were secret bodhisattvas, put on earth to teach everyone patience. And really, Stan wasn’t the worst they’d ever had—just a little socially awkward.
Slamming the door shut, she pressed the button on her key fob to lock the doors. Twice, just in case. “I’m sorry, didn’t Terri put up a sign yet? I’m having to cancel classes today.”
“Ohhhh. Oh, yeah. Umm.”
His stuttered reply gave her the distinct feeling that Terri had put up a sign and he’d seen it. But she pushed the thought out of her mind—she was just being paranoid. She’d read about conditions like Asperger’s where people had trouble reading social cues—Stan probably deserved patience, not condemnation.
Slinging her bags over her shoulder, she started walking toward the studio, and he fell into step beside her.
“Well, um…”
“I’m really sorry,” she said. “I have an emergency I’m having to deal with. We’ll add a free class to your prepaid schedule to make up for it. I know how I feel when I have to miss my morning yoga.” She gave a laugh that had been an attempt at being pleasant, but sounded hollow and artificial even to her ears.
“Sure, thanks, uh…”
She felt a rush of relief when they turned the corner onto Cannery Row and were suddenly playing Dodge the Tourists. Crowds. Crowds were good. Resurrected serial killers would have a hard time coming after her in a big crowd. She stopped underneath the hand-painted sign for her Laughing Lotus Yoga Studio and scanned the busy street, but she saw no evidence of Liz’s car.
When she turned toward the studio, she saw that Stan had planted himself in front of the doorway, where he was simply watching her with wide, staring blue eyes.
“Do you have a question for me, Stan?” His eyes were a nice blue. A perfectly normal shade of blue with the slightest smile lines at the corners. There was nothing wrong with him—no reason for him to be setting off her alarm bells this way.
Nerves. It’s just nerves.
“No—well, yes, actually, but it’s not about yoga.” Interrupting himself with a loud sigh, Stan rolled his eyes skyward. “Say it. Just say it. You can say it.”
Her eyes flicked back to the street, and as the silence stretched between them, she willed Liz’s car to appear. “Uh, Stan?”
“Would you go out with me? This Saturday, maybe? There’s a great little ice cream shop in Carmel, and we could walk on the beach afterward, and I’ll pick you up at one, if that’s okay with you.” He skimmed his hand along his hip bone during his entire nervous, rapidfire monologue, as if trying to shove his fingers into a pocket that wasn’t there. “I mean, if it’s not too drizzly on the beach. It always seems to rain on the public-access parts even when the rest of the area is sunny—”
“I’m seeing someone,” she blurted, cringing inwardly at the lie.
She should have known. Ever since James had died, shy, awkward men had come out from every corner of Monterey to ask her out, as if sensing that something was slightly off-kilter inside her, too. But she wasn’t socially awkward—she just didn’t want to socialize. She didn’t want to go out on dates, she didn’t want to go shopping with friends, she barely wanted to go to work in the morning. It all seemed so superficial and…unfair, since James couldn’t do any of it anymore. Maybe that’s why she’d upped her class load and spent more of her free time teaching, after selling the clothing boutique she used to own…before. At least teaching made her feel as if she was doing something useful with her life.
“Just as you should be,” Stan murmured to the sidewalk. He shuffled his weight from side to side, his hands moving awkwardly. He really wasn’t bad looking—he had a pleasant face, a healthy head of hair and a fit physique, if a little on the skinny side. But dating wasn’t something she did anymore—she just couldn’t drum up the energy to be attracted to someone.
“I’m sorry.” She really was. And now she knew why Stan had made her uneasy—she must’ve known at some unconscious level that they would be having this uncomfortable conversation soon.
He nodded several times, opening his mouth once to respond and then closing it again. Still nodding, he started ambling down the street. A few seconds later, he turned around and came back to stand beside her.
“I’m sorry to put you in that position.” He waved off her reflexive denial. “I don’t want my being in your class to get strange. It’s just…” His gaze darted across the street, and he shrugged. “My mother is in the hospital. They think she might be dying this time, and I just feel peaceful when I’m around you.” He looked back at the blue-and-green sign hanging over the studio door, showing a laughing woman sitting cross-legged and holding a lotus. “I bet you have that effect on a lot of people.”
She was officially a monster. The poor guy’s mother was dying, and she’d been acting all uncomfortable just because he’d paid her the compliment of asking her out. “I’m so sorry, Stan. Has she been sick long?” Making a conscious effort to relax her body, she glanced down at her hands to discover she’d woven her fingers through her set of keys while they’d been talking, so a key stuck straight out between each pair—instant brass knuckles.
Stan didn’t seem to notice. “Yeah. She had cancer a while back, and now it’s in her lungs. They told her she has about a month left.”
“I’m sorry.” What do you say to something like that without resorting to clichés and stale platitudes? She couldn’t even imagine going through what the poor guy was dealing with, as her own parents were strong and healthy. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
Instead of replying, Stan suddenly lifted his arm in the air to flag a passing taxi. With a murmured goodbye, he got inside, and the cab disappeared down the street.
A few minutes later, Liz screeched into view in her off-duty Dodge Charger, black with dark-tinted windows. Nobody loved an American muscle car better than Liz. Leaning her body against the door, Adriana curled her fingers under its handle, then stopped.
A flash of gray out of the corner of her eye. The sense that someone was staring at her.
Stan was gone—the awkward moment had passed—and yet, something still felt…off, somehow. And all she had to go on to prove it was a feeling. She watched the street, as people strolled in and out of the vibrant little shops and art galleries lining the historic street. Some paused to admire the explosions of flowers planted near curbs and on the road dividers. Many were undoubtedly headed toward the far end of the street, to either visit the famous aquarium or just for a glimpse of Monterey Bay itself. It was a pleasant scene, one straight out of the glossy, free, tourist brochures inside her studio.
And something was so wrong about it all. But what?
Still looking down the street, she opened the door and got into the car.
“S ORRY I’ M LATE ,” a deep voice said to her left, the masculine sound very unlike Liz’s no-nonsense alto.
Whipping her head around in shock, she discovered that Liz wasn’t inside waiting for her…and that she herself wasn’t even in Liz’s car. The sleek black Charger looked exactly like Liz’s from the outside, but the gray interior lacked the crumpled soda cans and ballet and basketball gear her daughters perpetually left inside. Come to think of it, the familiar Truth or D.A.R.E. decal on the rear side window touting the police-run drug education program was also missing. And there was also the small detail that in the driver’s seat, instead of Liz, was a man she hadn’t seen in four years—one she remembered all too well.
“Lieutenant Borkowski sent me,” Detective Daniel Cardenas said without preamble, which was enough to stop her from apologizing and scrambling out of the vehicle.
“You two have the same car,” she replied, immediately wanting to kick herself for sounding so stupid.
“There’s a Dodge dealer in town who likes cops. Nice discounts.” He hit a button on the door armrest, causing all four doors to lock down with a loud thud. “Buckle up.”
She clicked her seat belt into place, knowing that if Liz had sent him, she’d had a good reason for doing so. “So, Detective, you want to tell me why Liz isn’t picking me up herself like she promised?”
“She said she promised you a ride, Ms. Torres,” he said, as unfailingly polite as she remembered. Despite the Latin last name—he was Puerto Rican, she remembered—his English was unaccented, until he said her name with the rolling R and musical tone of a native Spanish speaker.
“Adriana. Or Addy,” she said. He didn’t invite her to call him Daniel—and she knew he wouldn’t. If Cardenas was going to have anything to do with her case, he would keep things professional.
Concentrating intently on the road, he pulled the car away from the curb. He didn’t smile—she couldn’t remember ever having seen him smile—but his face was relaxed, pleasant. “She thought we should talk.”
“Oh?” Obviously, getting information out of Mr. Strong and Silent was going to be about as easy as bathing Liz’s cat. When Cardenas didn’t offer any further information, Adriana sat back in her seat, seeing if waiting patiently would produce some results.
Four years ago, at the age of twenty-eight, Daniel Cardenas had become the youngest detective sergeant in the City of Monterey Police Department’s history, James had told her. Known for his sharpshooting skills and a constant, almost preternatural cool under pressure that had earned him the nickname “The Zen Master,” the quiet detective with a rumored genius-level IQ had a case-solve rate that rivaled the best in the department, including Liz and James.
At one of the police department’s social events, Cardenas’s date had confided to Adriana that she referred to him as “The Kama Sutra Master” with her girlfriends, because “he had really great hands.” Fortunately, Addy had managed to excuse herself before the woman had provided any more details.
He was now dressed in a blue-gray silk tie and a tailored white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His dark gray suit jacket lay abandoned in the backseat, a fact that made her realize she’d never seen him look that rumpled. He’d always been buttoned up, pressed and coolly professional, usually with a pair of mirrored aviators hiding his dark eyes and making him look like Secret Service. Even his short, black hair was cool, the cut a combination of artfully mussed style and low-maintenance casualness that you couldn’t get from a discount barber.
She glanced at his hands, loosely clamped around the steering wheel at three and nine o’clock, the tendons standing out in sharp relief underneath his tanned skin. No rings.
She remembered those hands. They’d held her for hours after he’d come to her door to tell her that James had died in the line of duty. They’d wiped her tears and had dialed the phone to call her family. They’d stroked her hair and had given her something to hold on to when she thought she’d die because it hurt so much. Seeing him again was like a handsome, polite reminder of the worst day of her life.
The car crawled slowly through the tourists on Cannery Row, and since Cardenas seemed more focused on his driving than on enlightening her, she decided to start playing twenty questions. “You’re the one she was telling me about?” she asked, more than a little glad her voice sounded more normal than she felt. “The MPD ‘go-to guy’ on stalking cases?”
A corner of his mouth quirked upward. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was closer than she’d ever seen. Not that they’d crossed paths all that often. “Something like that.”
“But this might be more than just a stalking case.”
He nodded, a small, economic movement, quickly glancing in the rearview mirror before responding further. “I know.”
She turned her face away from him to stare out the window.
Arriving at the Hoffman Avenue intersection in time for a break in the tourists meandering through the crosswalks, Daniel made a sudden left. He followed that with an immediate, sharp right onto Lighthouse that had her grasping for the armrest so she wouldn’t careen into his side. She could have sworn she heard the tires squealing.
As she peeled herself off the door, she noticed he was driving calmly, as if the two Indy 500 turns he’d just made had never happened.
“Uh, Detective,” she said. “Is there something you need to tell me?”
“I like to drive fast.”
Okay, now he was just messing with her. And she was about to let him have it when everything clicked into place—the off-duty car, the rolled-up sleeves, the slightly askew tie.
“This isn’t official is it? You’re off duty.”
“I’m never off duty,” he replied, extremely focused on the road. “But I’m officially on the clock in exactly two minutes, if it makes you feel better.”
“Look. I don’t know what Liz told you, but I don’t need to waste the department’s time—and yours, since you’re not even on the clock at the moment, and I know they just cut the overtime budget because Liz has been ranting about that for weeks.”
Another glance in his mirrors. He slipped a pair of expensive aviators out of his shirt pocket and put them on, hiding his eyes. “You’re not wasting my time, Adriana.”
The rolling R again. She was a native Spanish speaker, and his accent still sounded sexy to her. “I am. I’m not rich or important enough to pull police off the streets—or out of their homes—for my personal protection. We’re not sure that The Surgeon is still alive. Frankly, I don’t see how he could be.” Liar. “Take me back to work, Detective, and then go do whatever it is you need to do for the day.” She just wanted to get out of the car, away from the hot guy with communication problems. Away from the memories he’d brought with him.
“Adriana Maria Imaculata Torres, age thirty-six,” he said, calmly staring at the road. “Parents are Ana Maria and Juan Roberto Torres of Carmel, net worth approximately $1.6 billion, mostly from the sale of the Asilomar Tire Company they inherited in 1972, which had been in the family for approximately three generations. Today the family owns a small vineyard that boasts several award-winning chardonnays and a tragically underrated merlot.”
Adriana could only stare at him.
“You are that rich, according to the Monterey County Herald, ” he supplied, making a puzzling series of right turns that had them going pretty much in a circle through downtown. “And everyone’s important enough to make their safety paramount.”
Safety paramount? Who talked like that?
“Detective?”
“Hmm?” They’d hit Asilomar, one of the busier roads. Cardenas glanced in his mirrors and accelerated past two cars that had been meandering along.
“How about we not mention my middle name ever again, please? No one should ever saddle their child with something as horrible as Imaculata, even though it was my great-grandmother’s name, God rest her soul.”
The almost smile appeared again. “Catholic family?”
“You know it.” She didn’t know why, but it had suddenly become her challenge in life to make him smile outright, or maybe even laugh. Maybe because it kept her from thinking too hard about why Liz was so afraid for her safety, she’d pulled a hardworking detective off of his undoubtedly heavy caseload to babysit her. “Do you really think The Surgeon might be back?”
“I know you’re not asking for my advice, but call him Carter. It’ll remind you that he was just a man.”
A man who liked to carve people up for fun.
“Let me ask you a question,” Daniel said gently when she didn’t respond. “Is there anyone else it could be?”
Her hands flew briefly into the air, palms upward. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure at least some of the notes I’ve gotten over the years have been from some teenagers who live near me. I even got a glimpse of one once, and he was definitely just shy of puberty. But this…it seemed different.”
“Let’s assume it is different,” he replied. Darn those glasses. She couldn’t see his eyes, and without that, she didn’t have a prayer of reading his expression. “Who else might want to upset you?”
She had to think about that one. Truthfully, she tried to avoid conflict and didn’t have any enemies she could think of. “Well, there’s…” She let the sentence trail off.
“There’s who?” he prompted gently.
“It’s nothing.” She shrugged. “Just a stupid thought.”
“Coworker? Customer? Some guy who passes you on the street every day and acts a little strange?”
“I was going to say there’s this guy in one of my yoga classes—a student. But he’s harmless, really. Just because someone is a little socially awkward—”
He took the glasses off and tossed them on the dash. “Adriana, I’d really like it if you’d give me permission to come into your house when I drop you off. There are a couple of things I haven’t told you yet.” He flicked a glance at her, and though she’d known his eyes were hazel, she hadn’t noticed the almost hypnotic combination of green and gold, until that split second. And then she remembered—when Daniel Cardenas looked at you, even for just a moment, he really looked at you. And he must have known the effect he had when he did, or he wouldn’t have removed those damned sunglasses just then.
She didn’t want to deal with his pity. She didn’t want to show him her drab house and the refrigerator that lacked all the things you offered a guest. She didn’t want him to have to keep up that unfailing politeness while he witnessed how sad and pathetic her life had become.
But someone was out there. Taking pictures of the dead.
And so she had to know what his last sentence had meant. “What things?”
“I can’t tell you how many times a victim I’ve interviewed has said, ‘I was going to mention this guy as a possible suspect, but he’s harmless,’ and the guy turned out to be not so harmless.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. He’d been doing that a lot, so she looked over her shoulder, too, but all she saw were a couple of innocuous cars cruising along behind them.
She waited for his second point, but instead he just asked, “See that handle up there?”
She blinked at the odd non sequitur. “What?”
“The grab handle.” He motioned slightly with his chin toward the interior handle near the roof. She’d always thought those were put there to hold dry cleaning.
“Yes.”
“Hang on to it.”
As soon as her fingers curled around it, Daniel calmly put the gear shift in Neutral. Then, he cranked the steering wheel to the left, yanking up hard on the emergency brake. With an ear-splitting squeal of its tires, the Charger spun in a tight half circle, fast and hard. Her right side slammed into the passenger door. “What are you—”
But Daniel wasn’t in the mood for questions. His mouth set in a grim line, he let down the brake handle and punched the accelerator, probably leaving most of his tire treads on the asphalt as the car shot forward. The force of it slammed Addy back in her seat. They zoomed past the cars that had been behind them. So fast, Addy couldn’t get even a glimpse of the drivers. As soon as they hit an intersection, Daniel took another hairpin turn to the right. He followed that with a tire-squealing left through a traffic light that had just changed from yellow to red.
After one more careening left turn, Daniel finally slowed down to an acceptable speed, leaving Addy reeling in her seat, dizzy and more than a little car sick.
“Do you always drive like this?” she asked, tentatively loosening her death grip on the grab handle. “Because if you do, I’m so going to throw up on you.”
The half smile actually turned into a full-fledged grin, a flash of straight, white teeth that contrasted against his brown skin.
“You’re laughing at me.” She fussed with the hoodie sweatshirt she’d tied around her waist to make her black, flared-leg spandex pants a little more modest as streetwear.
“I don’t laugh at crime victims.” His expression turned serious once more. He had a nice smile, and despite her confusion over what had just happened and the fear that had been lingering on the edge of her conscience all day, she kind of wished it had stayed a little longer.
“What just happened there? Because I think it was more than a boys-and-their-toys moment.”
Signaling a turn for the first time since she’d gotten into the car with him, he pulled the Charger onto Mermaid Point Drive. He parked the car in front of her little clapboard house.
“You know that guy who walked out of your store with you? Left in a taxi?”
“Stan?” But Cardenas hadn’t even pulled up until several minutes after Stan had left.
“He had the cab circle back and then got out on a side street,” he said. “He was watching you when I picked you up, and then he got into a blue Ford Taurus.”
Oh, no. “But why would he get in a cab if—”
“I lost him on that side street back there, or he probably would have followed us all the way to your house.” Those green-and-gold eyes were back on her, radiating an intensity that made her want to squirm in her seat. “Still think he’s harmless?”
Chapter Three
Though even under torture Daniel Cardenas wouldn’t have shown it, coming face-to-face with Adriana Torres for the first time in four years felt something like the time a bank robber had hit him with a stun gun.
He’d come to Cannery Row looking for her, so the fact that she’d gotten into the car wasn’t the shock of the century. It was her face, or more accurately, her expression, the way she walked, the way she moved, as if she was constantly trying to fold into herself. He’d known her for nearly a decade, and although they’d been no more than casual acquaintances, he’d never seen her look so…subdued.
Then again, he shouldn’t have been surprised. He knew what she’d been through. Violence changed you, especially when it happened to someone you loved.
Beautiful girl. I wish we could have saved him.
He got out of the car and walked around it to open her door. She ignored his outstretched hand.
“Liz said you have a wireless Internet connection,” he told her as she unfolded her tall, slender frame from the car. He reached into the backseat, pulling out his laptop case. “If you don’t mind my connecting to it, I’ll tell you everything you should know.”
When Liz had called him aside as they’d gotten back to the station after processing last night’s crime scene to ask him a favor, he’d said yes before she’d even had time to explain what she wanted. Because that’s what you did when a fellow cop needed you. That’s what you did when your partner needed you.
And when she’d told him that Elijah Carter, if he were indeed still alive, might decide to target the late Detective Brentwood’s fiancée, he’d shuffled his caseload for the next month to make Adriana a priority. He’d even offered to cancel his diving trip to the Caymans, which was supposed to start tomorrow. You never turned your back on a fallen cop’s family. But Liz had insisted he go.
He followed her up the small pathway flanked by flowers and a couple of shrubs that were so overgrown an army of burglars could hide in them. She unlocked the door, which had both a door lock and a dead bolt—good. And then they were inside.
He remembered when he’d been there last time. Adriana was an amateur artist, and the whole place had been decorated with vibrant oil paintings, photographs and objects encrusted in stained-glass mosaic tiles. Now it felt as if someone had come along and sucked most of the color out of the room—all of her pieces were gone, save one coffee table with a mosaic top made of broken china. The majority of the room’s surfaces were now bare—those that weren’t held candles or photographs of Adriana with James Brentwood. Her home had become as dark and drab as the black clothes she wore.
Though he’d known her for a long time, he hadn’t known her well. But funny thing—he still missed the color.
Adriana gestured for him to sit on the pale-green couch, as she pulled a fluffy gray throw off its cushions and hurriedly folded it. Gathering up a couple of mugs that sat on the coffee table, she hustled them into the kitchen, then hustled back and sat down in the chair across from him. She leaned forward to swat at some dust he couldn’t see on the coffee table, then finally relaxed.
“Sorry about the mess,” she said. “I didn’t realize I was going to have company. I mean, other than Liz who is used to my chaos.”
“’S’okay,” he replied. “We just need someplace quiet to talk.” Leaning toward her, he rested his elbows on his knees. “Liz wanted me to advise you on the best ways to protect yourself, and how the MPD can help.”
Her only answer was to grab a dark throw pillow and hug it to her chest.
He pulled his laptop out of its case and set it on the table, firing it up on battery power. “Like you said earlier, I’m the one who handles most of the stalking cases we get, which isn’t quite the situation we have going on here, but it translates. I was also on the task force handling Elijah Carter’s case—”
“I remember,” she said, a faraway look in her eyes. “You came here. The day James—”
“Yeah.” He cut her off before she could say died and go into what else lay unspoken between them, including the fact that he’d been the one to tell her that her fiancé had been killed. It was his face she imagined when she thought about the worst day of her life. His arms that had wrapped around her for comfort when they should have been James Brentwood’s.
It never got easier, telling people they’d lost someone. They knew as soon as they saw a cop coming to their door that the news would be the worst kind. Some of them dropped to the ground in hysterics, wailing before you could say a word. Some of them cried silently, tears streaming down their faces until you’d finished your piece, and then they couldn’t slam the door on you soon enough. Some argued with you, somehow convinced that they could undo the truth by making you take back your words. And some bolted, figuring if they could outrun you, they could outrun the news you’d brought.
Adriana’s reaction haunted him more than any other, maybe because it had been connected to the premature death of his own friend and colleague. Or maybe because he’d seen her through the years at department gatherings, and he’d known what she’d been like when she’d been happy.
Her pretty face had crumpled before she’d collapsed into a chair, and then she’d just reached her arms out, as if James would come any second to hold her. Of course, he hadn’t. And Daniel had been a damn poor substitute, under the circumstances.
He remembered the way her tears had soaked through the fabric of his jacket, and the frustrated helplessness he’d felt. More than any other house call, except the ones that were about children, he wished then that he could have made the news of her boyfriend’s death untrue.
He remembered the curve of her neck, and the way her hair smelled like spices. He remembered not wanting to let her go and then mentally kicking his own ass for even going there.
He remembered wanting to keep her safe. He still wanted to keep her safe.
“I never thanked you…then. You stayed with me for so long.” Picking up yet another picture of herself and James from the coffee table, she traced her finger around the wooden frame. “That must have been so awful for you.”
He looked away, jabbing at the space bar as if it would make his computer boot up faster. “You did say thank you. I was just doing my job.”
“You did more than your job, Detective.”
Adriana put the photograph down and shifted her focus to him.
She should have looked scared, but instead she just seemed tired. And not at all like the vibrant free spirit he’d seen on James’s arm during their shared years on the force.
Every time he’d noticed her at a department function or when she’d drop by the station to see James, she’d wrapped herself in blazing, bright colors and wild patterns. All the better to advertise the stuff she sold at the Trashy Diva, her used-clothing store, James had once explained. But she’d sold the store, he’d heard, and at Brentwood’s funeral she’d worn black.
Four years later, she was still wearing black—black sweatshirt tied around the waist of her black exercise pants, the whole outfit finished off with a black tank that hugged her flat stomach and a waist he could have spanned with his hands. The only color in her clothing choices was the bit of silver embroidery on her black flip-flops.
And the short hair that had shown off her Hepburn-like neck had grown out past her shoulders, still pretty, but he could tell it hadn’t been cut in a long time. She’d stopped highlighting it with red streaks, too, so it had gone back to its natural dark brown color. A few delicate lines had formed around her eyes, but otherwise she still looked the same. Still herself but…muted.
He fought the urge to scrub a hand down his face. Part of the job was the facade of looking cool and completely in control at all times, down to avoiding nervous twitches. He had to make a victim trust him, make her believe that his sole focus was her well-being. Because that trust could mean the difference between life and death, if things went south.
“You said back in the car that Stan had doubled back and was watching me,” she said when he asked her about Stan. “How did you know?” She shifted in her seat, her hands on the armrests as if she’d spring up and dart out the door the first chance she got.
“I cruised by your studio before you got there and saw him pacing in front of the door. Ran him in on a petty theft charge a few years back.” Reaching back into the laptop briefcase at his feet, he pulled out a file and opened it up, taking a sheet of paper out. “He got off on a plea bargain—turned out he’d been rolling with a crowd connected to a drug lord the vice squad had been watching for a while. We got him to squeal in exchange for a fine and no jail time.”
Her eyes were a light brown, the color of polished chunks of amber or really good scotch, and they widened to the point where the irises were rimmed with white. “Stan has a police record?”
“Not a long one. Just that and—” he flipped through the papers in the file “—a restraining order from an ex-girlfriend in Gilroy. Seems old Stanley Robert Peterson had a hard time saying goodbye. Has he expressed any romantic interest in you?”
“Yes. Just today, he…asked me out. He didn’t get upset or violent when I turned him down. He just looked a little sad.” She shook her head, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. “He seems harmless.”
“His ex-girlfriend doesn’t think so. The Gilroy detective I talked to says he threw a chair at her during an argument they had.”
“Stan? Seriously?” She pulled her legs up onto the seat and wrapped her arms around them. “Well, maybe he was upset because his mom was dying.”
“Who told you that?” Daniel asked.
“Stan did.” She did not like where this was going.
Daniel leaned forward, his face sober. “His mom lives in Salinas. She works in housekeeping at at local hotel.”
Unbelievable. He’d lied to her.
“So you saw him and went back out to watch him?”
“Pretty much.”
She remained silent, which he was starting to realize meant she was waiting for more information. “I followed his taxi,” he continued. “He had the cab circle around and then got out about a block away from you. He ducked into a recessed doorway and watched you, until I picked you up. At that point, he got into a blue Taurus and followed us until I lost him.”
“But why?”
“You’re a beautiful woman,” he said matter-of-factly. “Looks like he’s formed an attachment.”
She abruptly broke eye contact at the compliment, becoming preoccupied with twisting a slim sapphire-and-gold ring on her right hand.
He hadn’t been flirting, but judging from her reaction to what had just come shooting out of his mouth, she would have shut him down big-time if he had been. “Liz said you’d gotten a note?”
She nodded, looking relieved that he’d changed the subject, and left the room. He heard a crinkling sound, and then she returned carrying a small paper bag, which she silently handed to him. He extracted the folded piece of paper inside, then looked in at the knife that had accompanied it.
Serrated edge, about twelve inches long, made for hunting. There were several just like it still in Evidence downtown.
He really didn’t like where this was going.
“You get one of these knives before?”
“No,” she answered. “I’ve gotten knives, but they tend to be the cheap butcher kind.”
Interesting. He rolled the bag shut and set it carefully on the table. Then he unfolded the note.
Liz had told him what that piece of paper contained, but nothing prepared him for the emotional sucker punch to the gut it delivered in reality.
James Brentwood, waxy looking and still. Just as he’d been in his last moments on earth, before the M.E. had shown up to collect “the body.” Before a team of Monterey PD had carried him to his grave and put one of their own in the ground. His mentor. His friend. Adriana’s almost husband.
It could have been Daniel. Maybe it should have been.
He stole a glance at Adriana, who hugged a pillow to her chest and was overly absorbed in picking at the fabric, her long legs tucked underneath her as she folded into herself once more. He didn’t have anyone who would have grieved for him the way she still did for James.
Damn Elijah Carter to hell.
She looked up suddenly and met his gaze head-on. “You’re quiet.” There was something almost accusatory in the way she said it.
“This must have been terrifying for you.” He folded the note again and put it back into the paper bag.
“It was but…” Her dark eyebrows drew together, and a slim line appeared in between them. “He worked with you, Detective. You saw him, talked with him every day—probably more than I did, he was such a workaholic.” She released her stranglehold on the pillow, her hands making empty gestures in the air. “And I just…You just… sit here, looking at that awful picture, and…”
“Adriana,” he said softly. “Would it really do you any good if I started cursing or throwing things?”
She froze and just stared at him.
“Because I could. No problem.” A corner of his mouth quirked upward in a wry smile that he knew held no trace of mirth. “I’m not exactly getting paid to sit in your living room and emote, though.”
A lone tear slipped down her cheek, and before he realized what he was doing, he’d reached out and brushed it away with one finger.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
His hand lingered against her skin, and suddenly it was as if they were the only two people in the world, and all he could look at was her.
“Don’t be,” he replied. “I’m sorry he didn’t come home to you that night.”
She jerked back, and the moment between them was gone. Who knew if it had really existed, or if it was just his overworked imagination and the fact that he’d been too damn tired to go on a date since the city government had slashed the police department budget last spring.
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