“Adelaide.”

Her eyes flicked open. She reached out for him.

“Make them stop, Royce.”

“What, Adelaide? What do you want me to stop?”

She didn’t answer as he stroked the nape of her neck, feeling her go pliant in his arms. Streams of heat entered his body and burned in his veins. There it was again, that inexplicable hypnotic edge of desire present every time he touched her.

“You’ve got to tell me if you want my help.”

“It’s here.” She motioned to the drawings on the floor with a slight tilt of her head. “They wake me up from a dead sleep and I’m compelled to come down here and draw these…these…”

“Pictures?”

“Yes.”

His mouth went dry and he released her to pick up the nearest one, trying to conceal the creeping layer of revulsion the sadistic image churned in his gut.

“I don’t know where they’re coming from.” She turned misty green eyes on him and he couldn’t resist.

He reached out for her and pulled her against him, feeling the silkiness of her skin under his fingers. Smelling the sweet spicy scent of her hair. He closed his eyes for an instant to absorb the sensations, but the only thing he saw was the image of a disturbing murder.

Keeping Watch
Jan Hambright

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

To the Protectors out there

who stand in the gap every day. Thank you.

To my husband,

who patiently puts up with Jan-on-deadline. I love you.

To my wonderful editor, Allison,

who liked this idea enough to buy it.

Thank you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jan Hambright penned her first novel at seventeen, but claims it was pure rubbish. However, it did open the door on her love for storytelling. Born in Idaho, she resides there with her husband, three of their five children, a three-legged watchdog and a spoiled horse named Texas, who always has time to listen to her next story idea while they gallop along.

A self-described adrenaline junkie, Jan spent ten years as a volunteer EMT in rural Idaho, and jumped out of an airplane at ten thousand feet attached to a man with a parachute, just to celebrate turning forty. Now she hopes to make your adrenaline level rise along with that of her danger-seeking characters. She would like to hear from her readers and hopes you enjoy the story world she has created for you. Jan can be reached at P.O. Box 2537, McCall, Idaho 83638.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Royce Beckett —He’s the New Orleans detective assigned to protect the police department’s beautiful sketch artist, Adelaide Charboneau, after an attempted abduction.

Adelaide Charboneau —She uses her unique abilities to expose evil by sketching composites of criminals for the NOPD. Can she and Royce find answers in time to save her from the fate in her own drawing?

Detective Hicks —He’s the lead investigator in the case, and one of the good guys. Isn’t he?

Chief Danbury —He comes off as a hard-nosed cop, but at heart he’s a true believer in Adelaide’s abilities, because she produces results.

Officer Brooks —He’s bucking for a promotion, but is he willing to do almost anything to get it?

Professor Charles Bessette —He helped Adelaide understand her gift.

Miss Marie —She’s the owner of Spells-4-U, Voodoo and More, but will Adelaide and Royce heed her warning?

Vincent Getty —He’s bad all over.

Kimberly Beckett —She was abducted as a child. Now she’s a grown woman with the mind of a five-year-old. Could the images locked inside her head help her brother, Royce, find the truth?

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

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

A brilliant flash of lightning jolted Adelaide Charboneau awake from a dead sleep.

She rolled over and stared up at the ceiling, praying this wasn’t the beginning of another bout of insomnia, leading to a late-night drawing session in her art studio downstairs.

Thunder rumbled close by and vibrated the house, but her attention focused on the mini-blind as it clanked against the open window frame.

A storm was coming. She could smell it on the air slicing through the two-inch crack at the bottom of the sill. A storm and something more. Something she couldn’t quite grasp.

Chills skimmed her bare skin and prickled the hairs at her nape.

She pulled back the covers, climbed out of bed and walked to the window, determined to shut out the uneasy sensation clawing through her, right along with the torrent of rain she knew was coming.

It was hurricane season on the Gulf Coast. An edgy time for the residents of New Orleans who instinctively turned their attention to the southern horizon, and their TVs to the weather channel.

She brushed aside the billowing sheers, pulled up the blind and locked it in place.

The sky lit up again, casting a white-hot glow like a net directly overhead.

Her focus riveted on movement in a cluster of azaleas near the gazebo.

The flash fizzled, but the image was burned on her brain. There was a man standing in her backyard.

Shaken, she closed the window, locked it and stepped back, trying to pick him out in the gloom as her eyes adjusted. Follow-up thunder rumbled, its vibration churning up fear in her mind. What was he doing here?

The answer came crashing into her consciousness with an explosion of shattering glass from somewhere in the massive house.

The back door? He was breaking in.

She stumbled forward, rushed the bedroom door, shoved it closed and locked it.

Adrenaline pulsed in her veins, putting her senses in a state of hyperalert. Was he already inside? Making his way through her kitchen and up the stairs? Had he seen her standing in the window?

The air was still, save the beginning tap of rain on the roof overhead.

Footsteps? She heard footsteps on the stair treads.

Determination pushed her to action. She wheeled around, looking for anything she could use to defend herself. Her gaze locked on a heavy candlestick perched on the corner of the dresser. She snatched it, sending the pillar candle crashing to the floor with a thud.

Grabbing her cell phone from the nightstand, she hurried to the closet, opened the door and crept inside, careful to pull it closed without a sound.

Shoving through the clothing, she pressed into the corner, turned her back to the wall and went to her knees.

Her hand shook as she opened her cell phone and dialed 911.

“Enhanced 911, what is your emergency?”

“A man just broke into my house through the back door.” Her voice sounded muffled in the confines of the closet, but too loud in her own ears. “I think he’s inside my house.”

“Are you Adelaide Charboneau, 1532 St. Charles Street?”

“Yes.”

“Stay on the line with me, Adelaide. I’ll dispatch an officer to your location.”

Squeezing the candlestick in her hand, she strained to hear his footsteps over the hammering rain.

“Please hurry,” she whispered, feeling the walls of the closet protecting and smothering her at the same time.

She closed her eyes, trying to keep her fear in check. Help was on the way. Someone would come.

The familiar groan of the floorboards outside her bedroom door intruded into the white noise around her.

Her eyes flicked open in the dark. Her mouth went dry.

It wouldn’t take him long to find her, pry her from her hiding place and—

The last graphic thought in her head evaporated with the sound of splintering wood. The bedroom door slammed against the wall.

He was coming for her.

DETECTIVE ROYCE BECKETT turned the windshield wipers on high and squinted to see the road in front of him through the frantic flap of the blades.

It was a torrential downpour, the sort he liked to watch from a well-worn chair, holding a bottle of imported beer. But not tonight, not in the middle of the personnel shortage plaguing the NOPD like a bad case of the flu.

The light at the corner of Canal and St. Charles Street turned red. He braked to a stop at the same time the portable police radio attached to his belt broke squelch.

He listened for the verbal traffic to follow, not that it mattered; he was off duty for the night, headed home to get some z’s.

“All units in the vicinity of St. Charles Street, please respond to a break-in in progress. 1532 St. Charles, the Adelaide Charboneau residence. She reports point of entry is the back door of the residence. The intruder is inside. I repeat, the intruder is inside. Use extreme caution.”

Royce mouthed the name. Adelaide Charboneau. He’d heard it somewhere, but he couldn’t place it.

Yanking the radio off his belt, he pressed the call button. “Detective unit thirty-four. I’m three blocks from that location. I’ll respond. Send a backup unit.”

“Copy unit thirty-four. Units forty-eight and thirty-two will be en route.”

“Unit thirty-four clear.”

Royce flipped on the lights, stomped on the gas pedal and shot around the corner onto St. Charles.

Home invasions were dangerous. Unpredictable. They could ignite faster than gas and a match.

He glanced at the house numbers every time the wipers cleared the windshield, but he didn’t have to look very hard to see a man dragging a woman across the front lawn at 1532 St. Charles Street.

Adelaide Charboneau.

Jerking the steering wheel hard to the right, he slammed on the brakes and flooded the duo in the car’s headlights. He unholstered his Glock 9mm, flung open the door and climbed out, using it for cover, as he leveled his weapon on the man holding a scantily dressed woman around the waist. Her feet dangled just above the ground, and she continually rammed her heels into the shin of his right leg.

“Police! Let her go!” he yelled, noting the man’s description, and the ball cap obscuring his features. He didn’t appear to have a weapon, but it was the one he couldn’t see that was the most deadly.

Royce stepped out from behind the door, taking a couple of aggressive steps forward. “Let her go!”

The man staggered to a stop and turned to face him.

Royce held his breath. The moment of truth. The instant fight-or-flight decisions were cast and irreversible.

The suspect shifted his stance, lowered Adelaide onto the grass in front of him and locked her in a choke hold.

Caution worked through his veins. She was on the verge of becoming a casualty if he didn’t do something.

Royce took another step forward. “Don’t be stupid. Let her go.” He closed the distance. Close enough to see the blindfold that covered her eyes and the duct tape wrapped around her wrists.

He went cold all over. This was an abduction? It had to stop here, but if he fired his weapon, he ran the risk of hitting her.

Tension cranked every muscle in his body into overdrive as he prepared to charge in for the takedown.

The suspect shuffled backward, dragging Adelaide with him to the edge of the yard and a thick cluster of azalea bushes.

He shoved her hard in Royce’s direction and bolted for cover, leaving Royce without a clear shot.

The woman lurched forward, twisted her ankle and crumpled to the ground on her knees. Reaching up, she pulled the blindfold down and stared at him as he rushed toward her.

Royce kept his weapon trained in the direction the subject had taken, listening to the sound of heavy footfalls trailing the suspect’s getaway through the bushes and into the alley.

He was soaked to the bone now. Rivulets of rainwater seeping under his shirt collar and rolling down his back. Sliding to a stop in the wet grass beside her, he glanced up to make sure the subject wasn’t mounting a counter attack.

A squad car ground to a stop at the curb and cut its siren. Two officers jumped from the car and drew their weapons.

Royce pointed in the direction the thug had taken, and knelt next to Adelaide Charboneau.

“Are you okay?” he asked, swallowing hard as his gaze traveled the length of the flimsy pink nightgown she wore. It was soaked and sealed to her skin, clinging to her breasts, and leaving little of her body that wasn’t accessible to his view.

Uncomfortable with the instant blaze of heat in his blood, he stood up and slogged out of his jacket. Bending down, he draped it over her shoulders. “Sorry it’s wet.”

She raised her face to his. “It’s cover. Thank you.”

A trickle of blood trailed from a small cut on her lip.

Concern jolted him, and he knelt back down on the grass next to her. “Your lip is bleeding. Did he hurt you?”

Adelaide ran her tongue over the tiny, insignificant cut on her lip. She’d probably gotten it when she tried to bite him. “It’s minor, but I did twist my ankle when he pushed me, and I’m fairly shaken up.”

“You put up a heck of a fight.”

She nodded, realizing how cold she was even though the rain was tepid and the air warm. A shudder racked her body, followed by another, as she made an unsuccessful attempt to brush the wet hair off her face with the back of her bound hands.

“Can you get this tape off me?” She turned the plea on him, but she already knew the answer.

Reaching out, he stroked the hair back with his fingertips. “It’s evidence. You’ll have to wear it until the CSI team can collect it, but I can get you out of the rain.”

Grateful, she touched his forearm with her hands. A wave of relief flooded her body. Help had come. It had come in the form of a man who for some overwhelming reason made her feel safe for the first time in weeks.

“I’m Detective Royce Beckett.”

“Adelaide Charboneau,” she whispered as he gently brought her up onto her bare feet, as if she were made of something fragile. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him.

Heat ignited in her body, chasing away the chill. She swallowed hard, knowing if it weren’t for Detective Royce Beckett, she’d be trying to kick her way out of a car trunk right now.

She pushed the haunting image into the back of her mind, knowing it would resurface, but not tonight. Tonight she was safe and she had every intention of relishing it.

Royce spotted a cluster of chairs on the veranda next to the open front door and aimed for them, but the moment he stepped forward, Adelaide let out a yelp of pain and sagged against him.

Without hesitation he scooped her up in his arms and carried her across the expanse of grass, up the steps and onto the porch. He carefully set her down on a wicker settee and stepped back.

In the glare and shadows of the headlights, he could see the intense shade of purple forming along the narrow shaft of her bare ankle. “You need to have that looked at. It could be broken.”

For the first time tonight he finally got a solid look at her face. It was a fresh face, a beautiful face, he decided as she stared up at him with eyes the color of smooth jade.

The drone of another squad car hummed from up the block, and it pulled in just as the other officers appeared from around the side of the house using their flashlights to comb the darkness.

“Anything?” he asked, dragging his gaze away from Adelaide.

“Nothing. We saw a car pull away from the curb a block over, but we weren’t close enough to get a description.”

“Do an inside sweep in case the unsub had a partner. I’ll call in CSI.”

The two officers climbed the steps, drew their weapons and disappeared inside the front door.

Royce pulled the radio from his belt and called in the team, hoping the thug had left evidence he could use to nail him.

Two more uniforms sloshed up the walkway and stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Miss Charboneau?”

Royce turned just as one of the officers took the stairs a couple at a time and knelt next to the settee.

A jolt of protectiveness jumbled his thoughts, and he had to fight the urge to step closer to her, to pull his jacket tighter around her shoulders, to cover the smooth expanse of her bare leg stretched out on the settee.

“Officer Brooks. It’s a horrible night to be out.” She gave a tired smile.

Brooks’s face was stern as he stared at the tape locking her wrists together, then back up at her face. “What happened?”

“A man broke into my house and tried to take me.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“No, I never saw his face.”

“You mean you didn’t recognize him?”

“I mean I never saw his face. He blindfolded me in the closet.”

“Dammit.” Officer Brooks came to his feet and turned to face Royce. “She’s the best sketch artist the department has ever hired. If she’d seen the bastard, she could draw him, and I’d catch him.”

It hit him then, like a Mack truck on the 10 freeway. Adelaide Charboneau, NOPD sketch artist. In fact he’d just used a composite she’d drawn to catch a serial rapist. “I got a look at him.”

Adelaide glanced up a him. “If you saw him, I can create a composite.”

Royce pulled the image in his brain, then realized how obscured the details were by the man’s ball cap. “We’ll give it a try, but between his hat, bad lighting and the rain, I’m not sure it’ll make a difference.”

A look of acceptance passed across her features, and she nodded in agreement. A gesture that seemed to him to be out of place in the exchange.

Glancing up, he watched a long white van pull up to join the string of cop cars bedazzled with flashing lights.

The whole neighborhood was awake now. People rubber-necked from their porches, dressed in their jammies. Fortunately the rain was letting up one bucket at a time, and dawn was just over the eastern horizon.

“It’s clear, Detective.” One of the uniformed officers stepped through the doorway, while the other one flipped on the porch light from inside the foyer.

“There are a dozen muddy footprints coming in across the kitchen floor, and broken glass at the point of entry. We’ll take a look around the perimeter and turn it over to forensics.”

“Thanks.” Royce turned his attention back to Adelaide, noticing a shiver quake her body. He needed to get her inside and dried off.

Officer Brooks’s radio broke squelch and Royce was relieved when his unit was called out by dispatch on an MVA.

“Take care, Miss Charboneau.”

“I will.” Adelaide raised her bound hands in an awkward wave and watched the two cops hurry for their car, nearly colliding with a woman carrying a case almost as big as she was.

She rushed up the steps, put the case down and shook off the rain before wiping a hand across her face and looking up at Detective Beckett.

“I’ll be glad when hurricane season is over.”

“How are you, Gina?” Royce stepped forward.

“Soggy.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. “But I suspect you knew that, Beckett. Looks like everyone gets wet tonight. Let’s just hope it doesn’t flush all the evidence down the storm drain.” She gloved up and looked at him. “It’s your crime scene, what’ve ya got?”

“A break-in using the back door of the home. The unidentified subject crossed through the kitchen. Officer Jones indicated there are muddy tracks leading from the point of entry. The subject then attacked the occupant of the home, Miss Charboneau, and dragged her outside via the front door, then onto the lawn, where I confronted him.”

Gina glanced over at Adelaide. “Glad you’re okay, miss.”

“Thank you.”

“First order of business is removing the tape he used to bind her hands.”

“Let’s get her inside, then.” Gina picked up her forensic kit and stepped inside the house.

“Can you stand?” Royce asked, glancing down at her swollen ankle.

“Maybe.” She rocked forward and slid her legs off the settee, then put her bare feet on the floor.

Royce moved in next to her and helped her up. She put pressure on it, and recoiled when searing pain shot up her leg. She lifted her foot, only to have Royce catch her before she went down.

“No way. There’s no way I can put full weight on it.”

In one fluid motion he scooped her up into his arms again.

Embarrassment flooded her body and morphed on her cheeks in hot patches she could feel. The close contact jumbled her nerves and tensed her muscles, sending her body into another fit of shivering. She’d always wanted to be carried over the threshold, but this wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind.

“Try to relax,” he whispered over the top of her head. “I’ll get you warmed up in a minute.”

That was as futile as asking the rain to stop in an instant. She sucked in a deep breath, willing the shaking to cease, but everything about the night conspired against her. She turned her face into his chest and closed her eyes.

Royce stepped in the front door, worried about the woman in his arms. Was she in shock? He couldn’t blame her if she was. She’d been through a lot tonight.

He spotted Gina to the right of the foyer, motioning him to the sofa in front of a massive fireplace. Turning her back to them, she flipped the switch on the wall next to the mantel and flames ignited in the hearth, sending a wave of heat out into the room.

Royce carefully put Adelaide down on the sofa and stepped back. “She’s freezing. Can you tack it up?”

“Yeah.” Gina was already pulling the digital camera out of her kit.

“The blindfold, too. She was wearing it when I stopped the unsub outside.” Royce stared at the soaked piece of cloth draped around her throat. “It looks like a kitchen towel.”

“He must have improvised and grabbed it on his way through the kitchen.” Gina raised her camera. “This won’t take long, miss.”

“Towels?” he asked.

“The linen closet in the upstairs hallway.”

Gina squeezed off a shot of Adelaide’s bound hands, and repositioned from another angle.

Royce stepped out of the parlor and glanced up the expansive staircase to the second floor. Moving forward, he turned on the light switch, firing up a massive chandelier suspended from the open foyer ceiling. The place smacked of money and elegance. Neither one a bad thing. Big bucks. Was it possible the subject had planned to kidnap Adelaide Charboneau and hold her for ransom?

Worry sliced through him, drawing him up the stairs to the second-floor landing where the intensity of her struggle against her captor was apparent.

A vase lay smashed on the hardwood floor, swept from a low mahogany table. A large painting was cocked at an awkward angle above it. All the doors in the hallway were closed save one. Royce slowed his steps, careful to survey the damage for clues.

He clamped his teeth together when he reached the open door at the end of the corridor. The splintered wood at the kick plate indicated it had been kicked open. Anger jolted him, and he sympathized with the terror she must have experienced, hearing the intruder, knowing he was in her room.

Seeds of an old memory sprouted in his mind, but he quickly stunted them. The past was just that, the past.

Reaching around the jamb, he flipped on the light and stepped into the room. The closet door was open. A trail of clothing and broken hangers lay on the floor in front of it. She must have hidden inside, but the assailant found her.

Royce examined the layout of the bedroom, his gaze pausing on the massive bed against the south wall, at the bunching of covers thrown back. What had gotten her out of bed and into the closet? Taking one last look, he left the room and found the linen cupboard.

He pulled a couple of towels out and went back down to the parlor, where Gina was putting the coil of duct tape into a paper bag.

“What woke you up tonight?” he asked, coming around the sofa to hand her a towel.

“Wait,” Gina said, just as Adelaide shook the towel open. “I’ve got to have the blindfold, too.”

“Sorry.” Adelaide waited as she cut the towel off and put it into a bag.

“The lightning. A flash woke me up, and I’d left the window open a crack. The blind was hitting against the frame and I got up to close it. That’s when I saw him standing in my backyard.”

“And you called 911?”

“No. Not until I heard him break a window in the back door of the kitchen.”

“You hid in the closet?”

Fear hissed through Adelaide’s body as the memory reconstituted in her mind. “Yes. That’s when I dialed 911 from my cell.”

“What happened next?”

She clutched the towel, pulling it up around her neck, trying to combat the surge of anxiety sliding along her spine.

“He kicked in my bedroom door and came into the closet after me.”

“Did you get a look at his face?”

“No. I never saw him. He grabbed me, covered my eyes, taped my hands and—”

Reaching up, she milked a section of her hair to confirm a weird suspicion. “He clipped off a piece of my hair.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know, Detective. Maybe it’s some sort of trophy to appease a fetish.” Her voice threatened to give out, but she cleared her throat. “He was so strong, I couldn’t get away.”

Royce moved in next to her and sat down. “You fought hard. It wasn’t your fault.”

His words calmed the what-if game raging inside her head. What if she’d have called the police last week after she suspected someone had been in her house. What if she’d have put in a security system. “Miss Charboneau…Adelaide?”

She glanced over at the detective, suddenly aware he’d spoken her name more than once.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that…I think someone may have been in my house last week. I wish I could be one hundred percent certain, but I’m not.”

Royce sat forward, letting his instincts take over. “How so?”

“I ran to Delesandro’s Bakery to pick up my mother’s birthday cake before two when they close, but halfway there I realized I’d forgotten my cell phone in my studio, and I was waiting on an important call. When I ran back into the house to grab it, there was an unfamiliar scent inside, and some of the work in my studio wasn’t where I remember leaving it. It was like someone had shuffled through everything.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I always put my sketches away in a portfolio, but I found them scattered on the table. I suppose I could have forgotten, but I’m pretty consistent.”

A tingle of caution crept along Royce’s spine. Had the unsub cased her home for its layout before tonight? Judging by his violent entry, he knew exactly where to find her.

He watched her towel her hair, letting his gaze slide over her slender body no longer covered by his jacket. Hard to imagine she’d ever have been able to overpower her attacker. Maybe it was better that she hadn’t. He might have really injured her. But he deemed her a fighter, judging by the mess upstairs, and her physical injuries. Still, the need to protect her welled inside him, festering and flooding into his brain like a drug.

“Would you like me to call an ambulance? You should have your ankle looked at.”

“I’m going to ice it and call my mother. She’ll take me in.”

He nodded, noting the pink in her cheeks matched the color of her drying nightgown. He tamped down a flare of heat the observation fired in his blood and stood up just as one of the uniformed officers stepped into the foyer.

“Detective Beckett. There’s something you need to see.”

“Where?”

“Under the window on the back left side of the house.”

“What room is that?” he asked Adelaide.

“It’s my art studio and office.” Her brows pulled together. “That’s where I found my sketches out of place last week.”

Royce moved for the front door, taking the flashlight the uniform handed him as he moved past. He stepped out onto the veranda, noting that the rain had stopped, and dawn was beginning to overtake the darkness.

He turned on the flashlight and took the steps quickly. Hanging a right, he walked around the right front corner of the house, spotting an officer with his light trained just below the windowsill.

“You got something?”

“Yeah. It’s suspect, anyway. Sort of weird.”

Royce stepped in next to the officer and aimed the flashlight beam on the same spot.

“What does it mean?” Officer Jones asked.

“I don’t know.”

The letters were scratched…no, carved into the siding of the house. It wasn’t weathered. It looked fresh.

BEHOLD…and the beginning of another letter. “Is that part of an E maybe?”

“Could be.” Royce slid the flashlight’s beam down the siding and onto the soft earth, where a partial shoe print was pressed into the mud.

“Get Gina on this, see if we can match it to the tracks in the kitchen.”

“Do you think they were made by the same person?”

Royce pondered the officer’s question, but he didn’t have an answer.

“We’ll have to wait for a comparison.” But there was one thing he knew for certain.

Adelaide Charboneau was in real danger.

Chapter Two

Royce paced in front of the chief’s office door.

It had been two days since Adelaide Charboneau’s attack, two days too many as far as he was concerned. Hell, he’d have put half the department shoulder to shoulder around her house if he could have.

“Beckett. Stop it, and get in here.”

Relief would have been his response had Chief Danbury’s voice not held its note of irritation for more than two beats.

He avoided the chair directly in front of the desk and chose to stand. “You heard about Miss Charboneau’s attempted kidnapping?”

“Is that what it is now?”

“Her attacker blindfolded her and restrained her with duct tape. He was dragging her across the lawn when I got to the scene. We have to assume he planned to take her if I hadn’t intervened. For what purpose, we don’t know.”

Danbury grunted, motioned to the chair and rocked back in his own.

A sit-down was a good indication he’d at least hear him out, up until the word “stake-out” came up, anyway.

“I’ve read the report, Beckett, and you know where we stand on manpower. I’m up to my armpits in shortfalls. The mayor is having a hissy fit because the knucklehead who snatched his mother’s purse hasn’t been apprehended yet. Three cruisers in the motor pool have been vandalized in the last week, and this department is stretched as thin as my momma’s gray hair.”

“She’s one of our own, Chief.” If his statement registered with Danbury, it was in the way his eyes narrowed for an instant and his shoulders sagged. “Spill it.”

Royce sat forward, feeling tension crank the muscles between his shoulder blades. “I know this guy is coming back for her. I don’t know when, I don’t know why, I don’t know how, I just know he is.”

“Cut the drama, Beckett. How much time?”

“Three days, more if necessary.”

Chief Danbury let out a puff of air and eyeballed him with skepticism from across the desk. “The report says the word behold was carved in the wood under a window. Any idea what it means?”

“No.”

“Did you ask Miss Charboneau?”

“I didn’t get the chance—”

“Then you better get cracking. You’ve got three days.”

Had he heard correctly? Three days to prove a theory that had churned up from somewhere in his gut?

“Thanks, Chief.” He stood up and hustled for the door.

“Don’t thank me yet. If anything comes in, I’m pulling you off this.”

He nodded and didn’t turn around. He couldn’t risk giving Danbury a chance to renege. It was going to be tough enough to hope another case didn’t come in and push hers down on the priority list.

Hanging a left at the end of the hall, Royce headed for Gina’s office, almost running into her as she stepped through the doorway.

“Hey, Ice Man, you better pull your head out of the clouds before you get hurt.”

Royce stopped short and glanced up, irritated with himself for not paying attention. “The Charboneau case.”

“Hmm. I don’t suppose you’d be this mushy-brained if she were, let’s just say, less than attractive.”

He gave her a serious stare. “Yes, she’s beautiful, but I’m only interested in doing my job, and catching the creep who kicked her door down and tried to abduct her.” He pulled in a breath, watching a slow smile bow Gina’s lips.

“Just checking to see if you’ve caught the bug, too, because in case you haven’t noticed, the single men in this department have lost touch with any measure of decorum they may have possessed. It’s Miss Charboneau this, and Adelaide that—”

“You’re jealous?” Royce followed her into her lab and leaned against the counter.

“No. But my date-night calendar for this weekend is empty. Care to disprove my observation? I’ll pencil you in.”

“Busy.”

“I was counting on you to be immune.”

He wasn’t immune, but he opened his mouth to quantify a denial.

Gina held up her hand, and the rebuttal stuck in his throat.

“Yes. I have some results on the Charboneau scene.”

He clamped his teeth together and smiled.

“Men,” she grumbled as she snagged a file from her desk and returned to the counter. “I’ll have you know she has turned every one of them down for a date in the past six months. I have no idea why they keep banging their heads against that wall.”

A measure of admiration circulated in his brain as he watched her open the file and spread out its contents.

“There were no prints on the duct tape, but I did find some fibers, possibly from a pair of gloves, which would explain why we didn’t find any foreign prints on the tape, or anywhere in the house.”

She slid the photo of Adelaide’s bound hands in his direction, exposing the one underneath. It showed the towel used to blindfold her, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the close-up of her lips that had made it into the top of the frame.

Full and supple, slightly parted. Sexy as hell.

The desire to connect them with his own, and part them even farther with his tongue, streaked through his mind before he could pull it back.

“The footprints from the kitchen floor, and the one from under the studio window, do they match?” he asked, more than ready to refocus his thoughts on the crime scene, rather than the crime’s beautiful victim.

Gina flipped the tantalizing photo over with a decisive slap. “No. We’re looking at two different sets of footprints. Two different subjects.”

“There’s no way to tell if they were made on the same night?” Concern laced through him.

“Not unless you’re some sort of human surveillance camera. It’s just the toe of a shoe, and the only reason I was able to cast it at all is because the overhang protected it from the downpour. Otherwise, it would have dissolved.”

Royce straightened and crossed his arms over his chest. “So we’ve got nothing from forensics except the revelation that there are two subjects out there who are focused on Miss Charboneau. One a brutal assailant willing to kick her door down and take her, and the other a Peeping Tom?”

“I’m sorry, Beckett. I wish I had more to give you.”

He tried to calm the frustration that frayed his nerves, and ground worry into his head, but every case was only as good as the evidence left behind by the perpetrator, and the memory of the victim, if they survived the ordeal.

Thank God Adelaide Charboneau had.

“You gave it your best shot. Thanks.” He flashed her a smile and left the lab.

The clock was ticking. One of the subjects would be back, and when he showed up again, Royce planned to be there.

ROYCE RAISED A CUP OF HOT coffee to his lips and pulled in a sip, watching Adelaide from over the brim as she worked her way along the front veranda watering her flower beds.

If she knew he was keeping watch over her, she didn’t respond any differently than she had for the last couple of evenings.

At dusk, she watered, her lights went out at ten and came on at six a.m.

Transfixed, he watched her drop the hose and deadhead a patch of bright pink petunias.

Tucking his finger in the crux of his tie, he pulled the knot down and fingered the top button of his shirt.

Why did observing her always make his temp rise, and his muscles tense?

She bent over, snagged the running garden hose, straightened and flipped back a mass of wavy brunette hair that fell well past her shoulders. Once again she aimed the stream of water and continued to move along the edge of the flower bed.

Royce’s mouth went Saharan. Who knew a simple chore could incite the kind of heat he felt assault his body and sink into his bones. At this rate he was no less crass than the boys back at the station, who’d give their pension to be working this case.

Taking a hostile gulp of coffee, he burned the hell out of his tongue. Sputtering, he put the cup in the holder and leaned his head back against the headrest, breaking his line of sight on her while he tried to get his head screwed on straight.

Night couldn’t come fast enough, he decided, but it did, and three hours later he watched the lights go out one by one all through the big house.

He glanced at his watch. Ten p.m. on the dot. No wonder the guys couldn’t get a date with her—she was a creature of habit, and probably didn’t like to break her routine. For anyone.

Relaxing back, he stared up at the headliner in the car and squeezed his eyes shut tight, then opened them again, blinking away the grit.

The pop of the door handle on the passenger side snapped his head around, just as the dome light came on inside the car. He went for the weapon at his side, and his pistol was halfway out of its holster before he recognized the woman who’d climbed into the car and shut the door.

He dialed back a surge of adrenaline from his veins, reached up and turned off the dome light switch, hoping the unsub wasn’t watching from somewhere in the dark. If so, he’d just been made. “Miss Charboneau.”

She smiled. An innocent grin he could just make out in the shadows. “Sorry I spooked you, Detective.”

So much for a macho response—he didn’t have one—but if it had been anyone else but her, they’d be picking their teeth up off the floorboard right now.

“When did you discover I was here?”

“This afternoon, at the station. I went in for a sketch session and overheard the chief ratting you out.”

“Yeah, voices carry over there in the marble halls.” The air between them was charged, and he glanced over at her in the filtered light coming in from a streetlamp a hundred feet to the south. “I should have told you, but I didn’t want you to alter your routine.”

“I know.” She thrust a brown paper bag toward him. “So I made you a chicken salad sandwich.”

Royce caught a glimmer of pride in her green eyes. As he reached for the bag, their fingertips brushed. “My favorite.”

She stared at him for a moment, licked her lips and pulled her hand back. “It’s the least I could do, considering you’re out here watching over me, keeping me safe.”

Royce opened the bag, bent on satisfying his hunger, but realized it wasn’t for food. He rolled the top of the sack down and set it on the console. “I’m doing my job, Miss Charboneau.”

“Call me Adelaide, please.”

“Okay. Adelaide. This is a nice break from the action, but you’re safer inside your house. I’ve got a feeling he may be watching right now, and you’re here, where he could discover me before I can catch him.”

“You’re right…of course you’re right.” She glanced away for an instant and stared into the darkness before refocusing on him. “If you need anything, the key to my door is under the mat on the front porch. Help yourself.”

“That’s not safe.” Worry rocketed through him. “It could be discovered, and he won’t break a window to get in next time. You might not have time to dial 911 before he gets to you.”

“Don’t worry.” She reached out and put her hand on his arm for an instant. “I move the key discreetly every couple of days.”

A measure of relief coated his nerves, but his worry remained. “How’s your ankle?”

“Much better. I’m getting around on it, and it’s almost back to normal.”

“There’s something I forgot to ask you the other night.”

She turned her full attention on him.

He pulled in a breath, awed by how beautiful she looked in the shadowy darkness. Shocked by the level of arousal taking his body one degree at a time. Why was he drawn to her with such an unreasonable reaction? A reaction he wasn’t able to control? “The word behold was carved in the siding under your studio window.”

Her features changed, her eyes narrowed, her lips pulled into a frown, before the look of concern evaporated.

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“No…nothing.”

She reached for the door handle. “I’ll leave you to it, Detective Beckett. Sorry I disturbed you.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she was already out of the car and vanishing into the deep shadows. Pulling in a breath, he stared at the route she’d taken and watched her cross the street. Real or imagined, he knew he’d upset her. But her reaction to his question was suspect. So why would she hold out on him? Why would she prefer a lie over a truth that could save her life and help him catch her attacker?

The unanswered question pestered him well into the night and right up until the moment a light flickered on in a downstairs window.

Royce straightened in his seat and glanced at his watch. Almost 3:00 a.m. Close to the time her home had been invaded almost a week ago.

Caution tightened the pit of his stomach as he stared at the blade of light slicing through the darkness from the window of her studio.

What could she possibly be doing in there at this time of night?

Movement at the edge of the light sawed through his attention. His heart rate picked up and thrummed in his ears. He could just make out the silhouette of a man, pressed against the side of the house.

The unsub? Had he been there the whole time?

Tension twisted his muscles into knots. Stealth was his only option. He needed to catch the creep. Now…tonight, before he tried to hurt her again.

Reaching down, he snagged his radio and called for backup. He picked up the mini-mag flashlight from the seat next to him, shoved it into his pocket and clipped the portable radio on his belt.

Keeping his focus locked on the subject, he opened the car door and climbed out. He didn’t shut it, but instead left it open a crack. If the subject heard a car door latch, he’d take off like a shot.

He took a low profile, crossed the street and sagged into the shadows next to the sidewalk.

Pausing at the head of the alley, he took cover next to a fence. Royce eased his head out and stared into the darkness. At the other end, a block away, he spotted a car parked at an odd angle under a streetlamp. Did it belong to the Peeping Tom?

Agitation rocked his body and coated his nerves. He pulled back, took the radio from his belt and relayed the location of the vehicle to the uniforms in a low whisper. If it did belong to the suspect, they’d have him before he had a chance to run, or they’d have a plate number to track him with.

Somewhere in the thick night air, he heard an engine turn over. He listened, but couldn’t dial in its location as the hum mingled with the tune of the city streets.

The hair on the back of his neck bristled. Warning bells sounded in his head, but it was too late, he’d already stepped out into the open mouth of the alleyway.

The roar of the speeding car’s motor sliced into his awareness just as he caught a glimpse of its dark, sleek body fifty feet from where he stood and closing in like a rocket.

Royce lunged for the other side of the alley, the forward momentum driving him onto the asphalt inches from the kamikaze car.

It passed close by, so close it ruffled his hair.

Royce rolled over, pulled his gun and took aim just as the driver of the car tapped his brakes, released and barreled into the distance and out of range.

He’d like to believe that was random, but it didn’t stick. Frustrated, he lowered his weapon and came to his feet. He’d gotten the first two numbers on the licence plate, 32, and he recognized the taillight configuration of a Mustang.

He radioed the car’s direction of escape and the partial plate number before turning his focus on the lit window as he came around the end of the fence and stepped into the yard, staying in the cover of the bushes.

Surprise rippled his nerves and rooted him in place. The subject still stood in the same spot peering into Adelaide’s studio window, his forehead resting on the bottom right-hand pane.

How was that even possible? How did he not hear the commotion from the alley seconds ago and get spooked? He’d heard of fixation, that locked-on tunnel vision in which nothing exists outside the focus, but he’d never seen it in action, not until tonight.

Damn scary. He raised his weapon and edged out of the trees. “Police. Turn around and show me your hands.”

The startled subject raised his hands and took a couple of calculated steps back.

Caution ran along Royce’s nerves. Only seconds existed between surrender and pursuit, with nothing in between but bullets and mayhem.

Was the Peeping Tom armed and dangerous? He couldn’t be sure. “NOPD. Turn around.”

The man bolted.

Royce rushed toward him, closing the distance in quick strides, but the suspect dove for the ground at the corner of the house, crawled around it and disappeared out of sight.

He reached the side of the house and flattened against it. Gun raised, he slid along the wall, stopping only briefly to glance in the studio window at what the subject had seen moments ago through the two-inch crack at the bottom of the window shade.

Adelaide was lying on the floor of her studio among a smattering of sketches. He looked for blood, and saw none.

Somewhere in the dark, he heard bushes rustle, followed by running footsteps. Royce pushed away from the house and charged for the backyard. There he found an opening in the foliage and stepped out into the alley. A block over he heard a motor start up and the engine rev.

He bolted to the corner in time to see a flash of the car’s taillights, and then it was gone. Pulling the portable radio off his belt, he alerted the squad car to the vehicle’s exact direction of travel. With any luck they’d get the plate number and a description of the car.

Royce hurried for the house. Had Adelaide somehow been injured while he sat outside in his car? If so, the subject would have had to be able to walk through walls.

Key…key…under the front mat.

Hurrying up the steps of the front porch, he flipped up the mat and picked up the key. He shoved it into the lock and opened the door.

Was she okay? Had he somehow blown his mission to keep her safe? The string of unanswered questions all ran together in his brain as he rushed down the hall and into the studio.

He dropped to the floor next to her and reached out, touching her warm body.

“Adelaide. Adelaide.” He listened to her suck in a startled breath and realized he’d just awakened her.

Her eyes flicked open and she pulled back for an instant. Tears flooded the brim of her lower lashes. She reached out for him.

He pulled her against him, feeling her body tremble.

“Make them stop, Royce. Make them stop.” A sob shook her, and he settled into a rocking motion, trying to comfort her.

“What, Adelaide? What do you want me to stop?”

She didn’t answer as he stroked the nape of her neck, feeling her go pliant in his arms. Streams of heat entered his body and burned in his veins. There it was again, that inexplicable hypnotic edge of desire present every time he touched her.

“Tell me. You’ve got to tell me if you want my help.”

“It’s here…it’s all around me.”

Now she was talking in riddles, riddles he couldn’t understand. Crazy talk, and as much as it pained him, he let her go and sat back, not breaking contact where he held her bare shoulders between his hands. Was she still half-asleep?

“Make sense, Adelaide. You’ve got to make sense.”

She swallowed hard and met his gaze. The veil of drowsiness lifted, and she visibly straightened, shoulders back, chin up.

“It’s here.” She motioned to the drawings on the floor with a slight tilt of her head. “They wake me up from a dead sleep and I’m compelled to come down here and draw these…these…”

“Pictures?”

“Yes.” She looked away and shook her head. “But they’re becoming more detailed, more intense. Tonight I was able to give her a face.”

For the first time, Royce looked down at the drawings spread out around them.

His mouth went dry and he released her to pick up the nearest one, trying to conceal the creeping layer of revulsion that the sadistic image churned in his gut.

“They’re horrific, and I can’t get them out of my head.”

Glancing up at her, he watched a tear zigzag down her cheek and tried to imagine how the woman in front of him could draw a murder scene that included a posed female body.

“Please, you have to understand. I don’t know where they’re coming from, they just come.” She turned misty green eyes on him and he couldn’t resist.

He reached out for her and pulled her against him, feeling the silkiness of her skin under his fingers. Smelling the sweet, spicy scent of her hair. He closed his eyes for an instant to absorb the sensations, but the only thing he saw was the image of a disturbing murder.

What was going on?

He didn’t know, but he needed to find out, that was, if he could reconcile the ugly drawings around them with the beautiful woman in his arms.

Chapter Three

Adelaide fidgeted in the padded chair and wrapped her hands around the cup of coffee sitting in front of her on the table. This was her sanctuary inside the police station, a place where she helped innocent victims visualize, describe and mentally relive their nightmare to bring their tormenter back to life and onto an APB sheet.

She took a swallow of her coffee. It was lukewarm. She worked to get it down and leaned back. Detective Royce Beckett would walk into her realm any moment now, and she’d be forced to explain the drawings he’d gathered up off her studio floor last night.

But she didn’t have an explanation…at least not one that would make sense to a clear-and-present-danger sort of man like him.

Just the memory of him holding her made her cheeks warm. He made her feel safe, made her want to try to survive what was coming.

A couple of quick knocks, and the door opened. He stepped into the room, sucking the oxygen out of the space, and her lungs, too.

She looked up, catching the full force of his intense, dark-eyed perusal, but she couldn’t keep her focus from drifting to the sketches he held in his right hand between his thumb and index finger.

“Detective.” A wash of nervous energy rolled over her.

He smiled for an instant. “Adelaide. Nice place you have here.” He eyed the room, nodding his head in approval before he returned his attention to her.

“I understand how important it is for you to make victims feel safe. Protected. I’m sure it helps them give you the information you need to sketch their assailants.”

She settled back in her chair, feeling the first whisper of fear skitter over her nerve endings. “I like to think so.”

He pulled out a chair across from her and lowered himself into it, setting the sketches on the table next to him. That was when she noticed a Polaroid picture on the top of the pile. He picked it up and put it down in front of her.

“I need you to take a look at a snapshot of the man we believe was looking in your window last night. We got his name from a plate check on a car parked a block over from your place. Do you recognize him?”

She reached for the photo, unable to still the quaking of her hand as she picked up the picture and stared at the shot of the man’s face.

“Yes. I’ve worked with him before. This is Clay Franklin. I did a sketch of his mugger a little over three weeks ago, but they haven’t caught him yet.”

She glanced up to see Royce studying her with an intensity that made her skin prickle.

He broke eye contact, pulled a notepad and pen from his shirt pocket and jotted down some information before he looked back up at her.

“I know the mugger’s sketch went out on an APB, and WGNO-TV ran it. Five people have been mugged in the same area, but Clay was the first victim who got a good look at the man’s face.” She licked her lips and tried to relax, but she knew he was dissecting her, her information, and most assuredly the sketches lying next to him.

“Did he say anything to you? Did he put the moves on you? Give you any indication that he was interested in you?”

“Enough to become a Peeping Tom and spy on me you mean?”

An amused grin tugged at his mouth. “Yes. Enough to watch you on more than one occasion?”

“No.” She ran the drawing session over in her mind, sorting for important details she may have missed. “Not at first. But he did take to staring at me profusely once I revealed the sketch of his attacker to him. It made me uncomfortable.”

“That’s an affliction the bulk of the department’s males seem to have in common with Mr. Franklin.”

Embarrassment bloomed on her cheeks. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

His eyes narrowed for an instant, and she wondered about his thoughts. It was true, she’d been approached time and again by the officers of the NOPD, but Detective Royce Beckett was the first one who sparked any interest inside her.

“I’ll pull the file and we’ll bring him in for questioning. See if his shoe imprint matches the one we found under your studio window the night you were dragged from your home. It doesn’t match the ones we photographed on your kitchen floor that night, so it’s safe to confirm he wasn’t the man who broke in and tried to abduct you. It only quantifies the fact that there are two of them.”

Fear bubbled up again, and she worked to push it back from the edge of her thoughts. She couldn’t function if she let it escape; it would only send her into a cycle of terror she couldn’t defuse.

“Did he leave any evidence at the scene?”

“None that we could find.”

Regret welled inside her. If only she’d have seen the man’s face. She’d love nothing better than to let her pencil and sketch pad reveal him and land him in jail.

“And then there’s this.” He reached for the sketch on top and flipped it over. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

Adelaide stared at the disturbing drawing. Her throat constricted. Looking up, she met his gaze. Lying about the drawing wasn’t going to work. Detective Beckett possessed more determination and persistence than she’d ever be able to challenge.

“It’s a depiction of my death.”

Royce rocked forward in his chair. Leaning across the table, so close she could smell the slightest hint of his sultry aftershave. His handsome features were set in dead-serious resolve, and she let his intensity coil around her, drawing her into the emotion.

“You can’t mean that,” he whispered. “She’s wearing your face, but I’ll be damned if I believe that’s you.”

Brushing the stunning sketch with her gaze for an instant, she again raised her eyes to his. “Then be damned, Detective, because that’s how I’m going to die.”

She dropped her stare back to the haunting image, disturbed by the tone of certainty in her own voice. Certainty, yes, but acceptance? It was the first and best-developed image of the sketches she’d been compelled to draw for weeks now. It depicted her lying faceup in the trunk of a car. Her hands bound in front of her with duct tape. Her hair fanned out around her face. Eyes wide open, lips parted in a silent scream. A deep ugly gash slashed across her throat.

“I believe you saved me from this the other night.” She focused on him. He clamped his teeth together, sending a visible ripple of tension along his jawline.

“This will be my fate, Detective, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

“You can’t believe I’d ever let that happen to you, Adelaide.”

Hope surged inside her for an instant, but dispersed quickly, dragging her back into a reality she couldn’t paddle her way out of.

“I’ve made peace with it. These things happen. God knows in my line of work, I’ve drawn the deplorable things one human being can do to another.”

She reached for her sketches, but he beat her to them and covered her hand with his.

“Effective immediately, I’m posting a uniformed officer outside your home. This nut job is still out there, and you’re not safe until we catch him.”

“I’d like my sketches back. They’re not part of this investigation.” She pulled in a breath, watching Royce’s mouth soften, followed by the rest of his features.

“I’m sorry, but I plan to hang on to them for now.” He removed his hand from over the top of hers and picked up her drawings, then stood up.

“I want you to go home and feel safe. We’re going to catch these people.”

“Thank you, Detective. I’m sure you will.” Someday. She couldn’t embrace his assertion because she knew what she knew, and that truly frightened her.

Royce turned for the door and reached for the knob, just as a knock thumped against the wood.

He pulled it open, feeling like an oppressive weight rested on his shoulders and crushed him into the carpet. He’d consider her outlandish claim, but it was too far out there, like shelving two centuries of knowledge only to again believe the sun revolved around the earth, and the moon stood still.

Zoned out, he glanced at Chief Danbury’s face. He took a step back. Something big must be going on to drag him out of his office and upstairs.

Friction snapped in the air between them and heightened his interest.

The chief raised his hand and acknowledged Adelaide. “Miss Charboneau.” He motioned Royce out into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind him.

“What’s up?” Royce asked.

“I need you to roll on a homicide call that just came in. Detective Hicks and Detective Lawton are already on their way to the scene. A deceased female has been found out in Bucktown on the edge of City Park.” He turned and headed for the elevator. Royce fell in next to him.

“It looks like a ritualistic killing. The body was posed. We may have some sort of a serial killer on our hands.”

Royce absorbed the chief’s information, but it was the word ritualistic that played bad inside his head and raised his caution level. That was his take on the disturbing drawings he carried in his hand right now.

Adelaide Charboneau’s sketches were of ritualistic-style murders and posed female victims. Four, to be exact, excluding the one she claimed would be her own. But only one of the four victims in the sketches had a face. A haunting face he couldn’t get out of his mind.

He tried to relax as they stepped into the elevator, tried to dumb down the persistent feeling of dread growing inside him like kudzu, but the insidious vine had already taken hold, and it couldn’t be uprooted.

WATER AS FAR AS THE EYE COULD see blurred Royce’s vision as he exited Veteran’s Memorial Boulevard, headed due north straight for Bucktown and Lake Pontchartrain. A beautiful view…an ugly place to die.

Deleting his last thought, he sobered, recalling the sketch of Adelaide he’d shuffled into the others and locked in his desk drawer at the station. None of it made sense, at least not within the parameters he used to define the world. How did someone even go about sketching their own murder, much less somebody else’s?

Ahead he saw the flashing lights on police units lined up in succession until he could almost believe they disappeared into the flat gray water. On the opposite side of the street he spotted a WGNO-TV van with its occupants in the process of gearing up.

He eased his car in on the tail of the parade, cinched his tie and stepped out of the air-conditioned car straight into a wall of heat.

Good thing cool-on-the-outside Ice Man Beckett was his motto, but he left his jacket on the front seat and headed into the fray, passing five patrol units before he saw Gina Gantz climbing out of the back of the CSI van.

“You came to the circus,” she said when she saw him, but she wasn’t smiling, and he could always count on her for that.

His nerves pulled tight. “Have you already been to the scene?”

“Yes.” She swallowed.

“How bad?”

“The chief has two more technicians rolling in to help me collect evidence.”

“Brutal?” he asked.

“Creepy is more like it. No blood, no gore. Just a beautiful young woman, murdered and posed for some sick reason.”

Royce took a deep breath and settled in next to her as she walked toward a perimeter of yellow crime-scene tape.

He flashed his badge to the uniformed officer guarding the scene, lifted the crime tape and followed Gina underneath it. Glancing down toward the water, he spotted Detectives Hicks and Lawton standing with several other officers.

His skin was pretty thick. Armored in fact, but it came with the job. It had to.

Hicks glanced up, spotting him as he stepped closer.

“Detective Beckett.”

Nodding to the detective who outranked him by a couple of months, he got his first look at the victim.

“Her name’s Missy Stewart,” Hicks said, glancing down at his notepad. “She’s twenty, a student at Tulane, reported missing the day before yesterday by her roommate.”

Royce pushed back a rush of anger over the senseless killing and put his detective face on. Cold, hard, analytical thinking solved cases, not emotionally clouded judgment.

He stepped closer, studying the details. “You found her wallet open and displayed next to her body?” It was something missing in Adelaide’s sketch.

“Yeah. It wasn’t moved or touched by the jogger who found her this morning. We believe it was placed there by the killer.” Hicks motioned with a tilt of his head. “You saw her right hand?”

“Yeah.” But he didn’t need to take a second look. He knew the positioning of the body. Laid out, fully clothed. Long hair fanned out around her face, eyes wide open and fixed on the sky. Legs together. Left arm straight at her side, right arm stretched out, level with her shoulder. Right thumb locked across three fingers, and her index digit pointing in a southerly direction.

“The chief’s right. This looks ritualistic in nature. Any idea what her cause of death is, and what the devil this grainy substance is around the body?” Another detail missing in Adelaide’s depiction of the crime scene, but she was still four for six.

Gina looked up from her task, reached into her pocket and pulled out a GPS locator for the exact placement reading.

“Judging by the fixed open position of her eyes, my best guess is some sort of drug.” She put the GPS button down at the tip of Missy Stuart’s finger. “The substance around the body is where this gets creepy. The granules are sodium chloride.”

“Common table salt.”

“Yes.” Gina took the reading. “This has voodoo written all over it, Beckett. Dark magic. I don’t believe in any of it, but some folks do and salt plays a role in some of their rituals.”

She reached down and picked up the marker. “Are you okay, Beckett? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Ghost? No. A sketch? Yes. Voodoo was a wrinkle he hadn’t anticipated, but he planned to confront Adelaide Charboneau and have her try to explain why the dead woman at his feet matched one of her sketches. He wouldn’t take any mumbo-jumbo dark magic reasoning for this.

He’d charge her with murder, or at least accessory, arrest her and haul her off to jail.

“HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS, FOLKS. There’s another tropical storm brewing in the Atlantic. This one has affectionately been named Kandace, and she’s packing winds of seventy-five miles per hour. She could reach hurricane status by week’s end—”

Adelaide pushed the off button on the TV remote and tossed it onto the coffee table. Two storms were her limit. One packed wind and rain, the other packed a badge and a gun, and enough sex appeal to brew his own weather system.

Why he hadn’t blown down her door yet, she didn’t know, but she was sure he’d roar in much sooner than Kandace.

The department was abuzz with details about the girl they’d found murdered in Bucktown. Normally it would have been internalized, but the fact that she’d been posed and circled with salt seemed to give everyone permission to speculate on the dark magic details.

She owed her own certainty to some of the telltale details. The victim’s pointing finger on her right hand, the fan of hair spread out around her head, eyes wide open. All details she’d been compelled to sketch over and over again.

Buzzed with the jitters, she got up off the sofa and went into the kitchen to make a cup of herbal tea.

Detective Royce Beckett was an intelligent man, a good cop. He’d no doubt done a comparison between the victims in her sketch and the body found this morning.

Adelaide turned on the burner under the kettle, pulled her favorite smiley face mug out of the cupboard and opened the tea canister on the counter, selecting chamomile.

She wasn’t an investigator, but she had enough sense to know things weren’t going to get better. Not for her…and certainly not for the women in the sketches.

The front doorbell chimed.

Dropping the tea bag into the mug, she braced herself for the grilling ahead. She’d probably do the same thing if she were in his official capacity.

A knot of tension sat heavy in her stomach by the time she reached the front door and glimpsed the shadow of his imposing silhouette outlined through the filmy glass flanking either side of the door.

Hesitation stringed through her, and she went up onto her tiptoes to stare through the peephole, confirming what she already knew. Detective Royce Beckett was here, holding a rolled-up sketch in one hand, and he wasn’t happy.

Pulling in a cleansing breath, she stepped back and opened the door.

“Detective.” She smiled, even though he didn’t.

“We need to talk.”

In the background the shrill whistle of the kettle at full boil saved her from the intensity of the moment. “Tea?” she asked over her shoulder as she hurried down the long hallway to the kitchen, hearing the front door close behind him.

“No, thanks. This isn’t a social call.”

Worry jumbled her nerves as she turned off the stove, lifted the kettle and bathed the tea bag in scalding water. The comparison between the steaming cup and what was coming was just too unsettling, and she set the kettle down on the back burner.

Chair legs raked against the kitchen floor, and she turned around, prepared for the only line of questioning he’d be able to follow.

“I heard about the murdered woman they found out in Bucktown. I’m sorry for the tragedy her family is suffering—”

“Cut the niceties, Adelaide. I’ve got this.” He unrolled the sketch, grabbed a couple of apples out of the dish on the bar where he sat and positioned them on the sketch so it wouldn’t roll back up.

Next, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a photo.

She didn’t have to ask what it was, she already knew, and for an instant she wanted to curl up along with the sketch, if she could only get the apples off it.

“It’s a perfect match, Adelaide.” He stared at her across the bar. Her throat tightened. There was sorrow in his dark eyes. Sorrow, remorse…and pain? She wanted to reach out for him. To feel his arms come around her shoulders, to feel his proximity soothe her fear.

“I don’t want to arrest you as an accessory, but if you leave me no choice, I’ll do it. I need an explanation, and I need it now.”

Her gaze locked with his, her knees wobbling as she leaned against the counter for support. “I lied to you when I said I didn’t know what the word behold meant.”

“The one we found carved into the wood under you studio window, presumably by Clay Franklin?”

“Yes.” She hesitated, considering the ramification of the revelation. It was a secret she protected, didn’t share and certainly hadn’t told Clay Franklin about, but Royce needed to know the truth about her.

She pushed back and moved around the counter toward him, feeling the need to be closer. The need to convince him of her innocence. “But he didn’t complete the word. It’s Beholder.” She stopped next to him. “I’m what was once known by the now-extinct Materia voodoo sect as a Beholder. I see pictures of assailants coming directly from the mind’s eye of the victims I help, and I sketch them.”

If her revelation sparked any sort of understanding in Royce, it didn’t register on his face. His features were masked, unreadable…hostile?

“Hold on just a minute. You expect me to believe, what? That you see images coming from inside a victim’s head, and you can draw them?”

“Yes.”

“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever sign on to mumbo jumbo that outrageous. It doesn’t hold an ounce of tangibility, and if it did, then why are these drawings being seen from a killer’s point of view?” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’m going to act like this bizarre conversation never transpired. I’d like you to do the same.”

Disappointment piqued her nerve endings and slammed into her brain with a force that shook her resolve. What had she expected? That her secret talent would be revered? That Royce would accept her revelation and welcome it?

“Please.” She reached out for him, laying her hand on his forearm.

Heat arced into her palm and zipped up her arm. Transfixed by the sensation, she stared up at him.

His eyes narrowed for an instant, confirming her belief that he’d felt it, too, she was sure of it, but he nonchalantly pulled back with conviction he didn’t feel.

“Someone circled Missy Stuart with a ring of salt. The claim is it has voodoo connotations. If I find out you’re involved…”

Fire burned inside Royce as he stared into her luminous green eyes. What the hell was happening to him? He wanted to kiss her, wanted to feel her body tangled up with his, for no other reason than an insatiable desire to touch her.

“There’s enough circumstantial evidence to haul you in, but you’d make bail before morning.”

Her chin came up, her eyes trained on him, and he found a quality of determination in their green depths.

“I’ll come willingly, but it isn’t going to change anything. More of them are going to die, Royce. More of the horrific depictions in my drawings are going to happen. It’s not if. It’s when.”

Frustrated, he turned around and headed for the front door, stopping only at the sound of her bare feet tromping along the hardwood right behind him.

“Don’t forget your evidence.” Her tone was mildly condescending.

He paused and turned toward her, painfully aware of how vulnerable she looked standing in front of him. Her long dark hair tousled around her face. Her eyes bright and wide with anger. Hell, he couldn’t blame her for feeling indignant. He would, too, under these circumstances. No one liked to be accused of a crime, much less convicted without a trial.

Backtracking, he pulled a business card out of his pocket and laid it on the table in the entryway. “Officer Tansy is posted in a squad car out front. He’s one of the officers being assigned to protect you from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.”

He reached out and took the offending paper from her hand. “Feel free to call me on my personal cell if you need anything.”

Turning, he reached for the knob, opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, pulling it closed behind him. But the soft click of the latch did little to separate him from her. He could still feel her ire as he headed down the sidewalk, motioned to Tansy, crossed the street and climbed into his car.

Adelaide Charboneau was safe for now. But he still hadn’t located Clay Franklin for questioning. Using that detail alone, he’d been able to secure her nighttime protection, but there were still twenty-four hours in a day.

A measure of foreboding circulated in his veins like slow-acting poison. He shook it off, fired the engine and drove away.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.