Deadly Heat
Page 33
And when he opened his eyes, he could see the man edging slowly around the right side of her house.
Fuck.
Kenton took out his weapon and eased under the tape. The old adage was true—some perps just had to return to their crime scenes. Some got off on seeing the pain they’d stirred, while others came back because they were afraid they’d left evidence behind.
He wondered which reason had brought Detective Peter Malone back to the scene.
Watching his step and easing carefully past the broken glass, Kenton crept up on his prey.
Malone was bent low, and his gaze locked on the bottom of the house.
Kenton aimed his gun dead center at the detective’s back. “Put your hands up, Malone. Nice and slow.”
Malone stiffened. “What the—Lake?” He started to turn around.
“Hands up! I’d hate to put a bullet in you because you didn’t listen.” Lie. Right then, putting a bullet into the guy was a big temptation.
Malone’s hands came up. He still faced the house.
“Keep ’em there.” Kenton went in fast and took the guy’s weapon. “Now turn around.”
Malone turned slowly. “What the hell is going on here, Special Agent?”
Kenton stared back at the guy. “You tell me.” He wouldn’t let the fury break through, not yet.
“I’m searching the crime scene! What the hell does it look like I’m—”
“Why haven’t you been answering your cell phone today, Malone?”
He blinked. “I don’t—” He glanced down at his waist and the phone secured to his belt. “The battery must be dead.”
Right. “Must be.”
Malone’s face flushed. “Stop pointing that damn gun at me!”
No. “Your men have been searching for you all morning.”
“For me?” His brows shot up. “Why?”
“Because you’re a person of interest in a homicide investigation.”
“Bullshit.” Malone dropped his hands.
Kenton shook his head. “You don’t want to do that.”
Those hands flew right back up. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here but—”
“Bob Kyle is dead.”
“What?”
“Kyle is dead, and your name has appeared in our investigation as a link between the victims.”
Malone didn’t speak, but his jaw fell a few inches.
“Why are you really here?” Kenton didn’t let his gaze stray to Lora’s house. “Did you come back for a souvenir?” Serials and their souvenirs—they always liked to collect keepsakes.
“Hell, no.” Rage burned in Malone’s words.
But Kenton’s hadn’t expected an instant confession. “I’m going to need you to come down to the station and answer some questions.” Actually, he’d need a lot more than that.
“You’re taking me in? You seriously think I’m a suspect here? This is bull—”
“Bullshit. Right. I got it the first time.” Kenton kept his gun up. “But bullshit or not, you’re coming in and you will answer the SSD’s questions.”
A muscle flexed along Malone’s jaw.
“And by the way, is that your truck parked down on the corner?”
Malone gave a grudging nod.
Kenton smiled, and he knew it wasn’t a pretty sight. “Thought so.”
“Yo, guys—I think you’d better come in here!” Max’s voice cut through the rattle of conversation in the conference room.
Lora glanced at Garrison. His bushy brows were pulled low, but he was already shoving back his chair and leading the way out of the room.
Everyone scrambled behind him. They hurried down the hall and crowded into the lounge, settling right in front of the big-screen TV.
Max hit the remote, and the volume screamed out.
“FBI agents are mum, but sources say this man is the latest victim of the arsonist who has made our city his playground.” Elle Shaw’s face filled the screen.
“What the hell?” Garrison demanded.
“Another one?” Lora whispered. “But we—we didn’t get the call.”
“The guy was lit. Not the scene, the guy.” Max shook his head. “We couldn’t have done a damn thing for him.”
“They said that?” Lora shoved her finger at the TV. The cameraman had panned back to show the mouth of an alley and lines of yellow tape.
“Nah… I heard the report on the scanner.” Max spent most of his time listening to the police scanner. His eyes narrowed on her. “The FBI was supposed to protect this guy, but he wound up torched.”
Garrison glanced over at her. “They’re supposed to be protecting you.”
They were protecting her. The two cops on her current watch duty were right there at the station, less than ten feet away. She rubbed her arms and stared at the screen. Torched. There weren’t many worse ways of going. That poor man. Oh, Jesus.
“We look after our own here,” Max said, his voice loud and clear, probably for the benefit of the nearby cops. “We’re sure as hell not letting anything happen to Lora.”
They protected their own. Their motto.
You always brought your man out of a fire. The team worked together. Survived together.
But when you died, you were buried alone.
Kenton tossed Malone into the first open interrogation room he found and put two uniforms on guard in front of the door.
“Where did you find him?” Sam asked, shifting a bit as she craned to see their suspect.
“Lora’s house.” His hands were clenched. Kenton took a breath and forced himself to relax. “His truck’s there, too. I want it hauled in and searched.” If there were trace amounts of accelerants in that truck, the crime techs would find them. “Get us a warrant and make sure every step is legal.”
“I’m on it.” Sam turned away and hurried down the hall.
He yanked out his phone and punched in Monica’s number. One ring. Two. Three.
Come on…
“Agent Davenport.” But that was not Davenport’s voice. Not unless she’d had one serious testosterone shot in the last few minutes.
Hell. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, but I need her.”
Silence.
“Where?”
“The station. As soon as she can get here. We’ve got Malone in Interrogation. Sam and I will be heading in, but—”
But Luke would understand.
If they wanted the suspect to break, fast, they needed Monica. No one could get into a killer’s mind like Monica.
“We’ll be there.”
He didn’t argue. This wasn’t Luke’s case, but if the guy wanted to play tag-along and watch over his lover, that was his choice. A choice Kenton respected.
Luke hung up the phone. Monica rolled toward him, a sheet around her br**sts. “I told you I was going to answer it.”
He shook his head. She’d drifted to sleep, just for a moment, and then the call had woken her. “You heard everything?” Being so close, it would have been hard not to.
“Yes.”
He caught her chin and kissed her, thrusting deep with his tongue as he tasted her. They hadn’t been given nearly enough time.
His mouth lifted. “I want you to move in with me.”
Her breath caught. “Wh-what?”
I want you to move in with me. No, what he really wanted was marriage. Forever. But Monica was skittish. She’d run from him before, and he knew better than to rush her too much now.
Besides, he had a plan. The woman wasn’t the only one who knew how to profile. He’d lure her into the right spot, get her where he wanted her, and have her, forever.
“When we get back to D.C., I want you to move in with me.” No, he hadn’t told Hyde yet, and if the big boss man got pissy and had him transferred, so be it. He wanted Monica with him, in his bed and in his arms as damn often as he could get her.
“Luke…”
“Think about it.” He knew she would. The woman thought about and analyzed everything. Sometimes he didn’t even believe she really rested when she slept. Her mind was always working, maybe because if she was busy plotting and probing, then she didn’t have to look at her past.
He could understand that.
Just as he understood her.
Her head moved in a slow nod.
Luke didn’t even try to control his grin. Her hand came up and smoothed over the light scar on his cheek. Monica’s mark. His heart had been marked by her for years.
“Good, baby, but now I’m afraid we’re gonna have to haul ass.” And he did love her ass. Sweet and heart-shaped. So fine.
He kissed her shoulder and rolled away.
“Are you sure about this?” The worry in her voice stopped him and squeezed his heart.
He forced a smile. “When it comes to us, baby, I have no doubts.”
“I’ve had enough of this shit!” Peter Malone jumped to his feet as soon as Kenton and Sam entered the interrogation room. “My captain should have thrown your asses out the minute you came up with this crap—”
Kenton crossed his arms over his chest and studied the guy. Flushed face. Tousled hair. Eyes that were slits of blue fire. “If you’d told us about your relationship with the victims, maybe we wouldn’t have needed to do things this way.”
Sam headed for the corner. She didn’t usually work interrogations. Sam was more of a behind-the-scenes woman. She spent her time working with her computers, breaking into protected systems, and tracing criminals across the United States with a few keystrokes.
But Kenton wanted her there. Ramirez wouldn’t work for this one. If Malone had to face off against Kenton and Ramirez, the guy would have been too defensive. But Sam, with her soft eyes and nervous hands, well, Malone would think she was the good one.
Yeah, the good agent/bad agent game was played every day. Not just TV bullshit.
Only in this case, Sam wasn’t the good one. She was the one looking for some hard-and-fast vengeance of her own—like Lora. And if Malone was guilty, Kenton had a feeling that the guy would be seeing just how bad Sam could get.
Because unlike Monica, Sam’s control was weak, and he suspected her rage was very, very strong.
“What? Relationship?” Malone shook his head. “I didn’t have a relationship with any of them.”
Kenton tossed the files down on the table. “Really?” He flipped open Tom Hatchen’s folder. “Why didn’t you say you arrested him for domestic abuse?”
Malone’s eyes widened a bit. “Is that what this shit is about? Yeah, I arrested him, and he walked, so it didn’t make a difference. The wife changed her story, for the fifth straight time. A broken nose, broken ribs, black and blue all over, and the woman says she fell down the steps.” His hands slammed down on the table. “Do you know how many times she’s fallen in the last two years?”
Real fury burned in Malone’s voice. Because he was a cop who was tired of seeing a victim hurt? Or more? “Guess she doesn’t have to worry about falling anymore,” Kenton said.
Hit. He saw that on Malone’s face.
Kenton flipped through another folder. “And when we had Larry Powell right here in front of us, in this very room, you never mentioned that the two of you had… well, brushed paths before.”
“ ’Cause we didn’t—”
“Seven years ago, you were working the Narcotics division.”
“So?”
“You busted him then.” Kenton raised his brows. “How much did it piss you off when he was on the streets again just a few months later?”
The hands on the table balled into fists. “I don’t even remember that! Man, do you know how many drugheads I arrested back then? There’s no way to keep track of them all, not after all this time!”
Maybe. And if it had just been one link, Kenton probably would have let it pass, but—
“How do you explain Charlie Skofield?” Sam asked quietly.
“Who? Skofield?” Malone shook his head. “No, no way! You’ve got this wrong—”
“Do I?” Kenton let the doubt roll in his voice.
Malone’s fists pounded onto the table top. “I’m a cop! Not a damn criminal!”
Kenton crossed his arms and waited.
“Does Lora know what you’re doing? What you’re thinking?”
It’s not him. Her voice drifted through his mind. So sure. So very certain. But she didn’t understand. Sometimes it was really hard to see evil. Especially when it hid behind a friend’s smile and stared you right in the face.
Malone’s right hand lifted, and his index finger pointed toward the two-way mirror. “My captain’s in there, watching, isn’t he?” He heaved out a hard breath. “He’s pissed because I kept working this case. I didn’t get his permission so he’s letting you have a go at me. But I’m not a criminal, dammit! I didn’t set those fires!”
Kenton lifted a brow. “I never said you did.”
Sam eased closer.
Understanding lit Malone’s gaze. “This is about Lora, isn’t it? Man, look, that was one time. One time. Okay? The lady made it clear she didn’t want a repeat performance, so you don’t need to f**k up my career just because you’re a jealous prick!”
Kenton just stared back at him.
Malone ran a shaking hand over his forehead. “That’s it, right? You called me in because—”
“Detective Malone,” Sam’s voice. Gentle and husky. “You were at the scene of Skofield’s car accident. The accident in which Rhonda Myers, a mother of two, was killed last spring.”
Fuck.
Kenton took out his weapon and eased under the tape. The old adage was true—some perps just had to return to their crime scenes. Some got off on seeing the pain they’d stirred, while others came back because they were afraid they’d left evidence behind.
He wondered which reason had brought Detective Peter Malone back to the scene.
Watching his step and easing carefully past the broken glass, Kenton crept up on his prey.
Malone was bent low, and his gaze locked on the bottom of the house.
Kenton aimed his gun dead center at the detective’s back. “Put your hands up, Malone. Nice and slow.”
Malone stiffened. “What the—Lake?” He started to turn around.
“Hands up! I’d hate to put a bullet in you because you didn’t listen.” Lie. Right then, putting a bullet into the guy was a big temptation.
Malone’s hands came up. He still faced the house.
“Keep ’em there.” Kenton went in fast and took the guy’s weapon. “Now turn around.”
Malone turned slowly. “What the hell is going on here, Special Agent?”
Kenton stared back at the guy. “You tell me.” He wouldn’t let the fury break through, not yet.
“I’m searching the crime scene! What the hell does it look like I’m—”
“Why haven’t you been answering your cell phone today, Malone?”
He blinked. “I don’t—” He glanced down at his waist and the phone secured to his belt. “The battery must be dead.”
Right. “Must be.”
Malone’s face flushed. “Stop pointing that damn gun at me!”
No. “Your men have been searching for you all morning.”
“For me?” His brows shot up. “Why?”
“Because you’re a person of interest in a homicide investigation.”
“Bullshit.” Malone dropped his hands.
Kenton shook his head. “You don’t want to do that.”
Those hands flew right back up. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here but—”
“Bob Kyle is dead.”
“What?”
“Kyle is dead, and your name has appeared in our investigation as a link between the victims.”
Malone didn’t speak, but his jaw fell a few inches.
“Why are you really here?” Kenton didn’t let his gaze stray to Lora’s house. “Did you come back for a souvenir?” Serials and their souvenirs—they always liked to collect keepsakes.
“Hell, no.” Rage burned in Malone’s words.
But Kenton’s hadn’t expected an instant confession. “I’m going to need you to come down to the station and answer some questions.” Actually, he’d need a lot more than that.
“You’re taking me in? You seriously think I’m a suspect here? This is bull—”
“Bullshit. Right. I got it the first time.” Kenton kept his gun up. “But bullshit or not, you’re coming in and you will answer the SSD’s questions.”
A muscle flexed along Malone’s jaw.
“And by the way, is that your truck parked down on the corner?”
Malone gave a grudging nod.
Kenton smiled, and he knew it wasn’t a pretty sight. “Thought so.”
“Yo, guys—I think you’d better come in here!” Max’s voice cut through the rattle of conversation in the conference room.
Lora glanced at Garrison. His bushy brows were pulled low, but he was already shoving back his chair and leading the way out of the room.
Everyone scrambled behind him. They hurried down the hall and crowded into the lounge, settling right in front of the big-screen TV.
Max hit the remote, and the volume screamed out.
“FBI agents are mum, but sources say this man is the latest victim of the arsonist who has made our city his playground.” Elle Shaw’s face filled the screen.
“What the hell?” Garrison demanded.
“Another one?” Lora whispered. “But we—we didn’t get the call.”
“The guy was lit. Not the scene, the guy.” Max shook his head. “We couldn’t have done a damn thing for him.”
“They said that?” Lora shoved her finger at the TV. The cameraman had panned back to show the mouth of an alley and lines of yellow tape.
“Nah… I heard the report on the scanner.” Max spent most of his time listening to the police scanner. His eyes narrowed on her. “The FBI was supposed to protect this guy, but he wound up torched.”
Garrison glanced over at her. “They’re supposed to be protecting you.”
They were protecting her. The two cops on her current watch duty were right there at the station, less than ten feet away. She rubbed her arms and stared at the screen. Torched. There weren’t many worse ways of going. That poor man. Oh, Jesus.
“We look after our own here,” Max said, his voice loud and clear, probably for the benefit of the nearby cops. “We’re sure as hell not letting anything happen to Lora.”
They protected their own. Their motto.
You always brought your man out of a fire. The team worked together. Survived together.
But when you died, you were buried alone.
Kenton tossed Malone into the first open interrogation room he found and put two uniforms on guard in front of the door.
“Where did you find him?” Sam asked, shifting a bit as she craned to see their suspect.
“Lora’s house.” His hands were clenched. Kenton took a breath and forced himself to relax. “His truck’s there, too. I want it hauled in and searched.” If there were trace amounts of accelerants in that truck, the crime techs would find them. “Get us a warrant and make sure every step is legal.”
“I’m on it.” Sam turned away and hurried down the hall.
He yanked out his phone and punched in Monica’s number. One ring. Two. Three.
Come on…
“Agent Davenport.” But that was not Davenport’s voice. Not unless she’d had one serious testosterone shot in the last few minutes.
Hell. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, but I need her.”
Silence.
“Where?”
“The station. As soon as she can get here. We’ve got Malone in Interrogation. Sam and I will be heading in, but—”
But Luke would understand.
If they wanted the suspect to break, fast, they needed Monica. No one could get into a killer’s mind like Monica.
“We’ll be there.”
He didn’t argue. This wasn’t Luke’s case, but if the guy wanted to play tag-along and watch over his lover, that was his choice. A choice Kenton respected.
Luke hung up the phone. Monica rolled toward him, a sheet around her br**sts. “I told you I was going to answer it.”
He shook his head. She’d drifted to sleep, just for a moment, and then the call had woken her. “You heard everything?” Being so close, it would have been hard not to.
“Yes.”
He caught her chin and kissed her, thrusting deep with his tongue as he tasted her. They hadn’t been given nearly enough time.
His mouth lifted. “I want you to move in with me.”
Her breath caught. “Wh-what?”
I want you to move in with me. No, what he really wanted was marriage. Forever. But Monica was skittish. She’d run from him before, and he knew better than to rush her too much now.
Besides, he had a plan. The woman wasn’t the only one who knew how to profile. He’d lure her into the right spot, get her where he wanted her, and have her, forever.
“When we get back to D.C., I want you to move in with me.” No, he hadn’t told Hyde yet, and if the big boss man got pissy and had him transferred, so be it. He wanted Monica with him, in his bed and in his arms as damn often as he could get her.
“Luke…”
“Think about it.” He knew she would. The woman thought about and analyzed everything. Sometimes he didn’t even believe she really rested when she slept. Her mind was always working, maybe because if she was busy plotting and probing, then she didn’t have to look at her past.
He could understand that.
Just as he understood her.
Her head moved in a slow nod.
Luke didn’t even try to control his grin. Her hand came up and smoothed over the light scar on his cheek. Monica’s mark. His heart had been marked by her for years.
“Good, baby, but now I’m afraid we’re gonna have to haul ass.” And he did love her ass. Sweet and heart-shaped. So fine.
He kissed her shoulder and rolled away.
“Are you sure about this?” The worry in her voice stopped him and squeezed his heart.
He forced a smile. “When it comes to us, baby, I have no doubts.”
“I’ve had enough of this shit!” Peter Malone jumped to his feet as soon as Kenton and Sam entered the interrogation room. “My captain should have thrown your asses out the minute you came up with this crap—”
Kenton crossed his arms over his chest and studied the guy. Flushed face. Tousled hair. Eyes that were slits of blue fire. “If you’d told us about your relationship with the victims, maybe we wouldn’t have needed to do things this way.”
Sam headed for the corner. She didn’t usually work interrogations. Sam was more of a behind-the-scenes woman. She spent her time working with her computers, breaking into protected systems, and tracing criminals across the United States with a few keystrokes.
But Kenton wanted her there. Ramirez wouldn’t work for this one. If Malone had to face off against Kenton and Ramirez, the guy would have been too defensive. But Sam, with her soft eyes and nervous hands, well, Malone would think she was the good one.
Yeah, the good agent/bad agent game was played every day. Not just TV bullshit.
Only in this case, Sam wasn’t the good one. She was the one looking for some hard-and-fast vengeance of her own—like Lora. And if Malone was guilty, Kenton had a feeling that the guy would be seeing just how bad Sam could get.
Because unlike Monica, Sam’s control was weak, and he suspected her rage was very, very strong.
“What? Relationship?” Malone shook his head. “I didn’t have a relationship with any of them.”
Kenton tossed the files down on the table. “Really?” He flipped open Tom Hatchen’s folder. “Why didn’t you say you arrested him for domestic abuse?”
Malone’s eyes widened a bit. “Is that what this shit is about? Yeah, I arrested him, and he walked, so it didn’t make a difference. The wife changed her story, for the fifth straight time. A broken nose, broken ribs, black and blue all over, and the woman says she fell down the steps.” His hands slammed down on the table. “Do you know how many times she’s fallen in the last two years?”
Real fury burned in Malone’s voice. Because he was a cop who was tired of seeing a victim hurt? Or more? “Guess she doesn’t have to worry about falling anymore,” Kenton said.
Hit. He saw that on Malone’s face.
Kenton flipped through another folder. “And when we had Larry Powell right here in front of us, in this very room, you never mentioned that the two of you had… well, brushed paths before.”
“ ’Cause we didn’t—”
“Seven years ago, you were working the Narcotics division.”
“So?”
“You busted him then.” Kenton raised his brows. “How much did it piss you off when he was on the streets again just a few months later?”
The hands on the table balled into fists. “I don’t even remember that! Man, do you know how many drugheads I arrested back then? There’s no way to keep track of them all, not after all this time!”
Maybe. And if it had just been one link, Kenton probably would have let it pass, but—
“How do you explain Charlie Skofield?” Sam asked quietly.
“Who? Skofield?” Malone shook his head. “No, no way! You’ve got this wrong—”
“Do I?” Kenton let the doubt roll in his voice.
Malone’s fists pounded onto the table top. “I’m a cop! Not a damn criminal!”
Kenton crossed his arms and waited.
“Does Lora know what you’re doing? What you’re thinking?”
It’s not him. Her voice drifted through his mind. So sure. So very certain. But she didn’t understand. Sometimes it was really hard to see evil. Especially when it hid behind a friend’s smile and stared you right in the face.
Malone’s right hand lifted, and his index finger pointed toward the two-way mirror. “My captain’s in there, watching, isn’t he?” He heaved out a hard breath. “He’s pissed because I kept working this case. I didn’t get his permission so he’s letting you have a go at me. But I’m not a criminal, dammit! I didn’t set those fires!”
Kenton lifted a brow. “I never said you did.”
Sam eased closer.
Understanding lit Malone’s gaze. “This is about Lora, isn’t it? Man, look, that was one time. One time. Okay? The lady made it clear she didn’t want a repeat performance, so you don’t need to f**k up my career just because you’re a jealous prick!”
Kenton just stared back at him.
Malone ran a shaking hand over his forehead. “That’s it, right? You called me in because—”
“Detective Malone,” Sam’s voice. Gentle and husky. “You were at the scene of Skofield’s car accident. The accident in which Rhonda Myers, a mother of two, was killed last spring.”
