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He snatched the phone off the floor and answered. “Trip Jones, KCPD. Who is this?”
“Trip? It’s Audrey.” He could hear the siren on Alex’s truck in the background, heard him on the radio to the other members of their team. “We’re a minute away. Did you find Charlotte?”
Trip immediately regretted snapping into the phone. No wonder Charlotte was afraid of him. “I found her. She’s …” Unpredictable. Frightened out of her mind. Unexpectedly charming. “… she’s safe.”
He glanced over to see a woman whose jaw was clenched so tight it trembled. That wasn’t right. No one should have to cope with that kind of fear churning inside her.
Trip looked her straight in the eye to reassure her. “It’s your friend Audrey.”
Although Charlotte nodded her understanding, she didn’t say anything until the dog dropped Trip’s hat and stretched up on its hind legs, resting a paw against her thigh. Looking down into the dog’s tilted face, Charlotte’s fingers immediately moved to scratch behind a tattered, scarred-up ear. “Good boy. Mama’s fine. Good boy.”
What was it about this woman that kept getting under his skin? Guilt that he hadn’t gotten the job done he’d been asked to do tonight? Frustration that he couldn’t make her feel any better, but the dog who’d stolen his hat could?
Or was it something about those haunted gray eyes that triggered all the protective instincts he possessed?
As if she was even interested in being protected by him.
“You can’t get here soon enough,” Trip admitted, turning back to the phone. “I don’t know what to say to her.”
“I warned you that she’s a little eccentric.”
“Yeah, well she’s scared enough of me that I don’t know if I’m being much help.”
The strident sound of a siren, made faint by the building’s thick walls, pierced Trip’s thoughts. The rhythm of the pulsing sound was different from the siren he could hear over the phone. Or was he hearing both sounds over the connection to Audrey’s phone? Wait. He could make out three, five, at least six different siren signals approaching—a lot more than the other members of SWAT Team One could account for.
Audrey was hearing them, too. “Did you call an ambulance? Oh, my God. It’s like a parade. Alex?”
Trip tensed, then forced his muscles to relax as he jogged toward the door and pulled it open. “Audrey, put your boyfriend on the phone,” he commanded. “Taylor. What’s going on? What are you seeing?”
Trip stepped out beneath the awning and spotted the swirls of red and blue lights bouncing off the wall of the building across the alley. Rain pelted his face and streamed down beneath his collar. So much for a low-key response to an eccentric friend’s call for help.
He recognized Alex’s truck turning into the end of the drive and parking at an angle to block the other vehicles. “Looks like we’ve got more backup than we asked for.”
Trip hung up as soon as Alex hopped out of his truck. With his gun drawn, he hurried to the museum’s back door, slowing just long enough to catch Audrey by the arm and hurry her on past the limo with the dead driver inside.
“Talk to me, Taylor.”
Alex Taylor, wearing the same KCPD SWAT flak vest over jeans and a sweater, shook his head, pushing his auburn-haired fiancée beneath the relative dryness of the awning. “I don’t know, big guy. I called Sergeant Delgado and Captain Cutler and that new gal on the team, Murdock. I didn’t call the army for backup. Word must have gotten out that it was Jackson Mayweather’s daughter who was in trouble. That means the press will be here any minute, too.”
“How is she?” Audrey asked, her face wreathed with concern.
Trip felt the heat at his back a split second before he heard the soft husky voice whisper behind him. “What’s wrong?”
“Charlotte!”
Trip’s impulse to shield the woman taking shelter behind him was thwarted when Audrey scooted past him and caught Charlotte up in a tight hug. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry about Richard. Are you okay?”
Charlotte’s denial was a quick shake of her head. “It’s happening again. It’s like before.”
“Before what?” But Trip’s question went unanswered. Again. Vehicles screeched to a halt out on the street’s wet pavement. Car doors opened and closed. There were shouts and a few choice curses.
“What’s going on?” Charlotte tipped her chin and blinked against the rain, throwing the question to Trip as if the approaching chaos was all his fault. “Why are all these people here?”
“I’m guessing it’s the response to your 9-1-1 call.”
“I didn’t call anyone but Audrey.” Charlotte was hunched over, holding tight to the dog’s collar. “I don’t want to see anyone. I want to go home.” She hid behind Trip as the first uniformed patrol officers dashed around the corner into the alley lot. “I don’t like people.”
He spun around to keep her in sight. “You don’t like people?”
“I don’t like strangers. I can’t handle people I don’t know, especially all at once.”
“They’re here to help.”
“Like you did?”
Ouch. The big gray eyes nailed him with the accusation.
Give it up, Jonesy. You’re not going to win this gal over tonight.
“I’m sorry.” Apology colored her voice, and she reached out as if she was going to touch him. But she quickly snatched her hand back to her chest. “I shouldn’t have said that. All the rumors you’ve heard about the crazy woman at Mayweather Mansion are true.”
“I don’t listen to rumors—”
“It’s not your fault.” The woman was going into panic mode again. “Audrey? What am I going to do?”
“C’mon.” Audrey wrapped her arm around Charlotte’s shoulders and turned her toward the door. “Let’s get you back inside. Alex, keep them away if you can.”
“I’ll do my best, sweetheart. I’m gonna need you, big guy.”
After stowing his Glock back in its holster, Alex squeegeed the rain from his sleek black hair and put up a hand to hold back the officers hurrying toward them. “I’m Alex Taylor, SWAT Team One. The scene is secure, guys.”
One of the uniforms kept coming. “Is that your truck? You’re gonna have to move it. I’ve got two ambulances on the scene, with orders to get them in here.”
Trip stepped forward, making a bigger blockade. “You need a coroner’s wagon, not an ambulance.” He nodded toward the BMW. “The vic is an elderly gentleman. Richard …?”
“Eames,” Alex supplied the missing info. “Gunshot wound to the head.”
The officer glanced inside the car, clearly questioning Trip’s authority. “I’ll have to check with my superior.”
“Do that.”
That took care of the first two officers, but the second wave was pulling up at the end of the alley, grouping up to assess and discuss the scene. The response to one frightened woman’s call for help was bordering on overkill.
“Just how rich are the Mayweathers?” Trip asked.
“Jackson Mayweather is worth more than you and I both will make in a lifetime—and then some. Once word gets out that his daughter has been harmed again …”
“Again?”
Alex grinned ruefully. “You read all those books and yet you don’t know front-page news? Charlotte was kidnapped when she was seventeen. Tortured. Ransomed for millions of dollars. Testifying at her kidnappers’ trial was the last time she made an official public appearance. According to Audrey, a situation like this could send Charlotte back into seclusion for … forever, I guess.”
Kidnapped? Tortured? Trip felt the blood draining from his head at the memory of him wrestling the terrified woman to the ground. “You didn’t think I needed to know that before you sent me over here? I could have done some real harm.”
Alex’s dark eyes narrowed, surveying Trip from head to toe and back up to his bare arm and the makeshift bandage there. “Maybe we need that bus, after all. What happened?”
“Don’t ask.”
More people arrived on the scene, this time ranking detectives wearing suits and ties. A pair of EMTs, carrying their boxes of gear, followed close behind. The crew of a news van was already unloading equipment and setting up shots.
Alex’s deep breath matched Trip’s own. Any chance of secluding Charlotte from the cops and the media was quickly spiraling out of control. “If Charlotte didn’t call 9-1-1, who did?”
Trip looked at the phone still clutched in his hand. He remembered Charlotte’s instant terror at the idea of the killer calling her again.
“I think I know.” Trip lifted his gaze, sweeping the rooftops and bricked-up windows before he advanced to meet the red-haired detective striding toward them. The bastard was still here. The man who’d killed the driver and forced Charlotte to arm herself with an ancient sword was someplace close by—maybe even a part of the frenzy—watching, feeding off her terror. “Get the team on the radio. We need to set up a perimeter.”
Chapter Three
He was walking away.
The biggest man in the room, in the whole parking lot, was walking away.
Charlotte pulled away from the hand tugging at her wrist, pushed away the stethoscope sliding beneath her blouse and scooted forward on the gurney to peer through the lingering drizzle of rain to watch Trip Jones rise from the bumper of the second ambulance where he’d been sitting. He smoothed his big palm over the pristine white bandage where he’d been given sutures and a shot. He said something to the paramedic working on him and then turned to follow his commanding officer—a salt-and-pepper-haired man who’d introduced himself as Captain Cutler earlier—over to a meeting of bowed heads and nods with the rest of his SWAT team. Captain Cutler. Trip. Her friend Alex. Another dark-haired man wearing a perpetual scowl. A blonde woman with a ponytail.
Surrounded by a busy anthill of uniformed officers, detectives, CSIs, reporters, EMTs and family members moving around the museum, alley lot and blocked-off street, her eyes were drawn to the controlled stillness of Trip’s SWAT team. Yes, they occasionally glanced around, or turned an ear to their shoulders when a message came over the radios clipped to their flak vests. But they were focused on their own discussion, gesturing occasionally, nodding agreement to one suggestion or another.
Charlotte couldn’t explain her fascination with Trip Jones. Although she’d heard Audrey and Alex talk of him, she hadn’t met him before tonight. It had been years since she’d met any man who wasn’t family or didn’t come to the house.
There was something to fear about all that size and strength and specialized training. For one irrational second inside that warehouse, she’d thought he meant to snap Max in two with one hand. Heck, he could have snapped her in two if he’d wanted, and she wasn’t any skinny twig of a woman. She hadn’t been pressed against that much man and muscle since, well … ever. He’d had every right to get physical with her, but he hadn’t hurt her. Although built like a mountain, he was perhaps more like a volcano—a quiet, intimidating presence on the landscape, friendly enough unless all that inherent power in him erupted. Then she could imagine he’d be a far scarier opponent than the man who’d wrestled her to the ground tonight.
Fascinating indeed. She hadn’t dated or acknowledged a hormone since the kidnapping. Yet here she was processing an almost intellectual curiosity about a man. One she would most likely never see again.
And who most certainly wouldn’t want anything further to do with a screwy piece of work like her.
Charlotte could feel herself disconnecting from the confusion going on inside her head and closing in around her. It was a long-ingrained coping skill—but not the healthiest way of dealing with stress, so she turned away from Trip Jones and struggled to stay engaged with the three men sitting on each side of the gurney and standing with a notepad at the ambulance’s open rear door.
Still she longed for her father and Audrey to leave the press interviews they were conducting, to keep the reporters away from her, and take her home.
“Miss Mayweather, I asked if the attacker left you any kind of message.” She didn’t think it was any accident that the red-haired detective in the suit, tie and raincoat had waved his pen into her line of vision to force her attention back to him. “You were friends with Valeska Gallagher and Gretchen Cosgrove, weren’t you?”
He wanted to know about two murdered friends?
Stay in the moment, Charlotte. Engage.
But she couldn’t do it alone. She clicked her tongue. “Max. Up here.”
Her companion leaped from the damp pavement into the back of the ambulance and crawled up onto the low bed where she sat.
“I went to school with Val and Gretchen.” And Audrey Kline and a host of other overachievers at the Sterling Academy. She knew what the detective was asking. “The Rich Girl Killer doesn’t murder sweet old men. And no, I haven’t received any threatening letters. Richard’s killer called me on my phone.” She nodded at the plastic evidence bag with her cell sealed inside that Detective Montgomery held. “I think he was trying to find out where I was. He wanted to scare me into revealing myself. He must have read about my kidnapping. He knew …”
She dipped her face down to Max’s and welcomed the comforting lick on her jaw.
“Miss Mayweather,” one of the EMTs protested the muddy paw prints on the crisp white sheet, “that’s hardly sanitary.”
The other poked the stethoscope at her again. “If you work with us, this will only take a few minutes longer. Since you refuse to go to the hospital, your father asked us to give you a thorough once-over.”
He pulled at Max’s collar. She pulled back. “I have a doctor who comes to the house when I need one. I’m fine.”
“Miss Mayweather?” The EMT shooed Max outside when she turned her attention back to the detective.
“I’ve answered enough, Detective Montgomery. I need to go home.”
With a nod, he acknowledged the blatant hint to leave her alone, even though his faintly accented voice never wavered from its cool, calm and collected tone. “How can you be certain it was Mr. Eames’s killer who called you?”
“I know.”
“Would you care to elaborate on how you know that?”
Charlotte smoothed a damp kink of hair off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “Would I care …?”
Her ear.
Oh, God.
Charlotte’s heart stopped for a split second then raced into overdrive. “Where’s my earring?” She tugged at the exposed lobe, scarred and rebuilt from a graft of skin taken from her scalp. Hiding the disfiguring reminder with her hand, she whirled from one EMT to the next. “Did you take my earring? It’s a white-enamel daisy. Did you take it?”
She recognized that knowing look exchanged between the two men. “Ma’am, we don’t have your earring.”
Right. She’d probably lost the keepsake from her mother in the struggle with Officer Jones. She swung her legs off the bed, but strong hands caught her and pulled her back onto the gurney.
“Max? I need Max.” The EMT gently took her shoulder and slipped the chilled stethoscope against her skin. Charlotte twisted away.
“We can back-trace the number off your phone.”
“To Richard’s.” She swung her gaze back to Spencer Montgomery. “But you didn’t find his cell, did you? I’m telling you the killer took it.” She brushed her curls back over her ear to hide the scar. “I want to look for my earring.”
“You think the killer took your earring? The Rich Girl Killer takes souvenirs. Did you see him?”
“No. I just …” The panic was taking hold again. She had no keepsake to hide behind, no companion to focus on and keep her thoughts clear.
“Miss Mayweather?” The EMT who’d checked her pupils and pulse dabbed something cold and wet against her arm. When she saw the syringe on the bench beside him, she knocked the alcohol wipe away.
“I don’t want any drugs.” She put her fingers to her teeth and whistled loudly enough for all three men to pull back for a moment. “Come here, boy.”
But the respite was brief.
“Ma’am, clearly you’re upset by tonight’s events. I need to give you something to calm you. Your heart’s racing. We’re worried about shock.” Max had jumped back inside the ambulance, but the EMT was blocking him from climbing onto the gurney with her. Oh, great. The whistle had caught her dad’s attention, too. He was watching her from his press interview, clearly concerned. “Just let me go home. Please.”
“We need to remove the dog.”
“One more question,” Detective Montgomery prodded. “Can you be certain it wasn’t your chauffeur calling for help? Perhaps a dying utterance?”
“No!”
“Move it, Fido.”
“Max—”
“I need you to lie down.”
“Could you identify the voice?”
“No. Please don’t.” Her mind was spinning, her heart racing. She wanted Max.
“Lie down.”
“… hear a gunshot?”
What happened to one more question?
“Give her the sedative.”
“I don’t want …”
“… identify the killer?”
“Max?”
“The dog stays.” The deep-pitched voice silenced the madness, and everything inside Charlotte went suddenly, blessedly still.
The only thing Charlotte could hear was the rain dribbling on the asphalt. The only thing she could see were the broad shoulders of Trip Jones filling the opening at the back of the ambulance.
He looked down at the detective beside him. “This interview is over.”
Charlotte’s attention danced down to the bandage on his arm, up to the tanned angles of his exposed biceps and triceps. She read the white SWAT emblazoned across his vest, took quick note of the gun and badge on his belt. But in a matter of seconds, before the protests of the three men around her started in, her gaze went back to Trip’s grizzled jaw and the green-gold eyes looking down at her with a glimmer of something like intimate knowledge and understanding shining there.
“You’re a crazy woman, all right. And I’m not sure I fully understand why. But …” He picked up Max in his arms and set him squarely in her lap. “The dog stays with her.”
“Officer, we can’t—”
“He’s a service animal. With him here you don’t need any sedatives. The dog stays.”
“We have a job to do.”
“You’re out of line, Jones.”
“With all due respect, Detective, she’s been through enough.” Trip’s eyes cooled and his expression hardened as he looked at Detective Montgomery and the two EMTs, ensuring their cooperation. Charlotte hugged her arms around Max’s chest and lowered her chin to the top of his warm, damp head as Trip pulled something from the back of his belt and turned to shout to his friends. “Taylor, let me borrow your cuffs. Sarge? Murdock? Yours, too.”
Charlotte watched in fascination as his big hands deftly linked the handcuffs into a long chain. He hooked the last one to Max’s collar and placed the jerry-rigged leash into her hand.
“There. Now you can control him and he won’t be in anybody’s way.” As confidently as if they were long-lost friends, he reached out and mussed up Max’s fur. “He won’t bite.” When he pulled away, he winked at Charlotte, startling her, drawing her focus back to his teasing eyes. “As long as you’re nice to the lady.”
For a moment, her eyes locked on to his. The teasing faded and something warmer, regretful almost, filled the air between them. Unused to her body’s curious response to a man who was practically a stranger to her, she hugged her arms tighter around the dog. But she couldn’t look away.
Caught up in those eyes, in the kindness he’d unexpectedly shown her, in the confident strength of his presence, she breathed deeply, freely—once, twice. Maybe he was more serene mountain than volatile volcano, after all.
He nodded, breaking the spell. “Charlotte.”
And then Trip Jones walked away. Again.
Taking Charlotte’s gratitude, and something less familiar and curiously unsettling, with him.
THE MAN SITTING IN THE dark vehicle adjusted the focus on his zoom lens and snapped one more photo, congratulating himself on capturing the image of a bloodied, harried woman, curled into a ball and hugging her dog in the back of an ambulance.
Pleased with his work, he powered down the camera and zipped it neatly into its carrying bag beside the cell phone he’d already crushed beneath his shoe. He tucked the bag into its spot on the floor behind his seat. Then he pulled his computerized notebook into his lap and clicked out of his file of old newspaper files and photos, which had provided all the information he needed to recreate the most vivid, frightening moments in Charlotte Mayweather’s life. With two more clicks he was online. He smiled. Yes. People were already chatting and blogging about Charlotte Mayweather coming out of hiding and being involved in another unfortunate incident.
His anonymous post of tonight’s events had generated the response he wanted. Just as his helpful phone call had created the crowd of chaos he was enjoying tonight.
Success flowed through his veins as he closed the computer and packed it in its pocket as well. Risking someone spotting the distant glow of his cigarette, he inhaled one last, long drag before pulling it from his lips and putting it out in the ashtray. He crushed the butt down—once, twice, three times before laying it neatly atop the ashes and shutting the tray.
He picked up the gaudy daisy earring from the dashboard and cradled it in his open palm, smiling at the perfect order of things tonight.
A good smoke.
Tidy surroundings.
An unexpected souvenir plucked from the floor of the Mayweather Museum’s warehouse.
Yes. She’d just realized it was gone. His old friend was so terrified by his actions that he could see her practically crawling out of her skin as cops and medics and family alike tried to keep her on the gurney in that ambulance. Getting to the reclusive Charlotte Mayweather had been a cakewalk for a man like him.
She’d always thought she had all the answers—that she was smarter, better than him—that her father’s money gave her the right to dismiss his talents. She’d made that mistake once—couldn’t be bothered with what he had to offer, refused to listen to reason. But he’d proved her wrong tonight. Not only was he intelligent enough to get to Charlotte, he was clever enough to get inside her head.
He breathed in deeply, savoring the lingering smoke in the air, enjoying the satisfaction of a job well done.
Nailing the old man had been simple. All he had to do was walk up and knock on the car window. The chauffeur had actually smiled, perhaps recognizing him, then rolled down the window as if he wanted to offer help. He reached over and stroked the gun and silencer on the seat beside him. The old man had helped, had served the necessary purpose. It wasn’t the first man’s death he’d agreed to in order to make his vengeful plan come to fruition.
He was halfway through his list of wealthy women who’d slighted him over the years. Women he’d once trusted. Women who had used, betrayed and laughed at him. There’d be one more name checked off that list if Audrey Kline’s zealous boyfriend hadn’t gone into 24/7 bodyguard mode last November. Or maybe it had been his own mistake, thinking he could trust a gang of thugs to follow the rules of his plan.
He bristled where he sat, the sweet aroma of his rare cigarette souring into a foul memory in his nose and lungs. He didn’t make mistakes.
His fingers curved around the earring and squeezed, its sharp edges cutting into his skin.
Normally, he preferred to put his hands on his victims, to feel them writhing with fear, to hear them begging for mercy. He opened his hand and forced himself to breathe deeply, recalling Charlotte’s screams of terror when he’d beat on the door. The erratic rhythm of his pulse evened out as he replayed her helpless gasp over the phone in his head. He turned from his hidden vantage point and watched her manic movements and pale expression as she dodged reporters and battled with cops and medical personnel amidst the glare of headlights and spotlights and television cameras. Seeing her weakness paraded on display in front of her family and the press strengthened his resolve, calmed him.