Love Kills Page 3

  “Fuck no. Damn it, Kane. Stay away. I have a job to do here.”

  “Umbrella Man hit one block from our fucking apartment,” he says. “And Ghost was there?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No but about this, Lilah, and if you need this in your own language: fuck no, Lilah. Nothing about that says you stay there without me. I’m coming for you. Don’t make me walk to your fucking crime scene and drag you out of there. Ghost is a killer of killers.”

  “Is there any part of you that gets that I made it years without you, Kane? Or is your ego so damn big that it’s going to make your head explode one day and then I’ll have to get two caskets to bury you.”

  “You were never without me, beautiful, and you know it.”

  “Right. My stalker who did a whole lot of shit to piss me off. Don’t do more now. Stay away. Ghost and I stood across from each other pointing guns at each other. I told you. He didn’t come here for me.”

  “He showed himself to you. He damn sure came for you.”

  “He could have killed me. Hell, I could have killed him, and holy fuck, I wish I would have, but I wanted to know who hired him. Who hired him, Kane?”

  “I’ll let you know after I talk to Ghost,” he says, and I can hear the rain pounding his windows.

  “You think he’s just going to tell you?”

  “I know he will,” he counters. “Ghost doesn’t warn his victims. He has another agenda.”

  “I’m not a fucking idiot, Kane. You not only said and I quote ‘He came for me’ but you just diverted your car for a reason.”

  “I’m a man of abundant caution. You know that, Lilah.”

  “You’re fucking an FBI agent, Kane. I wouldn’t call that abundant caution.”

  “I do more than fuck an FBI agent, beautiful. And who better to protect me?”

  “Careful or I’ll think you have an agenda,” I say.

  “Many where you’re concerned, my love, and you know it.”

  “Are you trying to get me to shoot you instead of Ghost?” I don’t wait for a reply. “We both know—” I stop midsentence, my gaze rocketing to a glint of steel off the rooftop catching in the artificial lighting of the emergency crews, a stab of warning in my belly.

  There it is again.

  Another glint.

  Fuck.

  He’s still here, and I’m not even sure if I mean Umbrella Man, Ghost, or both. All I know is one of them needs to die today.

  “Lilah?”

  At Kane’s prod, I force a reply. “I have to go, but do not come here, or I swear to god I’ll shoot you myself, someplace painful but not deadly. In the hand. Hands bleed a lot.”

  He says something in Spanish that sounds really fucking dirty. The man just made that about sex. Jesus. I hang up, and I’m already shoving my phone in my pocket. I step out from under the overhang, into the pounding rain, and rather than reach for my gun, an obvious move someone like Ghost would spy, I keep my hands free and ready to act. I dart across to the pavement, bypassing the crime scene. Hurrying to the side of a fire truck, I round the building and pull my weapon. Freshly armed, I enter the alleyway that runs on the opposite side of the building that sported the rooftop flash of steel. And I’m not alone. I feel it. I feel him. I flatten myself against the wall and watch the rain hit the pavement, darkness swallowing the droplets until the moment they make contact. I don’t move. I barely breathe.

  I just watch and wait.

  Seconds tick by that turn into minutes in which the cold weight of my jeans hangs heavily on my legs. The control freak in me that my father has called “ridiculous” often in my life, too fucking often, wants to force the next move. I want to own this crime scene and the person who created it, but I rein in my energy, forcing patience. Something that, oddly, most people don’t seem to believe I possess. They’re wrong. If I didn’t possess patience, I really would be a killer.

  There’s a shift in the air, a charge interrupted, as thunder erupts with such sudden force that the wall vibrates behind me, while the rain seems to pour from the sky. It’s the distraction whoever is in this alleyway with me uses and uses well. The asshole piece of shit I’m hunting slams to the ground on two solid feet right in front of me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Whoever is in front of me might as well be invisible.

  There’s a fucking black hole of darkness swallowing me alive, but instinct is one of those rare friends that I actually tolerate. It kicks in, and my weapon is instantly aimed in front of me, but at what, or who, I don’t have a fucking clue. A second later, an open umbrella all but pokes my eye out. I don’t even think about shooting wild and not because I’m one of those little bitches who freezes under pressure. I’m not. Evident in the way I stabbed a man a few dozen times after being raped. I’m okay with killing someone if they need to die, but I prefer to see them when I pull the trigger or shove the knife in their chest. Then I know they’re the right person. I know they deserve what they get.

  I shove aside the umbrella, ready to find that confirmation, but my attacker is already running away, which makes him the little bitch. I lift my weapon and step into position to shoot, but something deep in my belly says no, don’t shoot. But I want to shoot, I want to shoot, but something feels wrong, really fucking wrong.

  “Damn it,” I murmur, lowering my weapon, launching myself after the runner, barreling through the storm, watching the umbrella-wielding fool clear the alleyway.

  I’m there right behind him, a streetlight giving way to a full view of his hooded frame when he runs straight into a WWE-sized man in a NYPD rain jacket. The officer catches the runner’s upper arms and holds him in place. “What are you doing, kid?” he demands.

  Kid.

  Thank god I didn’t shoot. And thank fuck, the rain faucet is abruptly dialed back to a sprinkle.

  “I just wanted to see what was happening!” the kid screams. “I just wanted to see what was happening. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” The kid starts rambling in Spanish.

  “Agent Love,” I announce, stepping beside the officer, his hard features turning harder as his gaze lands on me.

  “I know who you are,” he bites out.

  “Good,” I say, reading between the lines. He’s heard trash about me, and he believed it, and he apparently operates off of secondhand information, which tells me what I need to know about him, none of it good. I eye the “kid” who can’t be more than a pre-teen. “Name?” I say, bypassing a lame effort at Spanish, because cursing in Kane’s first language, and at Kane in his first language, is where my true skills lie.

  “Diego,” the kid says. “I’m Diego, and I’m sorry. I just wanted to know what was going on. I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I ran.”

  “Where do you live, Diego?”

  He recites an address a few blocks away. “My mom told me to come see what was going on.”

  I doubt that, but I don’t care how he got to that alleyway. I care about getting him out of here. “And if we take you home right now, will your mom be there?”

  “Yes,” he says, “Yes. I swear. She wanted me to see what was going on. She didn’t know I’d come down here to where the police cars are. She’s a good mom. Please don’t think she’s bad. She’s not bad. She didn’t know I’d do this!”

  In other words, he’s where he shouldn’t be and he’s afraid of getting in trouble. I might feel bad for the kid, but I could have shot his little ass. The Umbrella Man could have shot him. I lift my weapon to show it to him. “I could have shot you,” I say. “Somebody else would have.”

  He starts to cry. Typically, I prefer making grown men rather than kids cry, but in this case, it’s good. The kid needs to cry. He needs to shit his pre-teenage pants. Me and this badge have seen shit, bad shit. Nasty shit. The premise of scared straight needs to be put to work right here, right now, while he’s just a good kid who did a stupid thing.

  He’s also not the person I felt in that alleyway. Someone else was there.

 
I cut the officer a look. “Take him home and confirm his story. And make sure he doesn’t have a record.”

  At this point, two additional officers have joined us, and the officer holding the kid hands him off to another and says, “Do as she said.” He then faces me, pulling off his hood to allow me to see his sharp features, shaved head, straight nose, and the splay of lines by his eyes that ages him to at least forty.

  “Sergeant Morris,” he says. “I’m the ranking officer.”

  Ranking officer with an attitude. A common illness that I usually blow off, but I’m not blowing him off. In this moment, I decide that I don’t like him, and not just a little but in a deep, instant, profound way. I also don’t like that he’s here, by this alleyway, when it’s technically not part of the crime scene. “Clearly, ranking officer makes you above taking the kid home.” I pull down my hood, as well, and eye the scratch on his face, down his cheek. “What is it that you have to say to me, Sergeant? Because you obviously have something to say or you wouldn’t be squaring off with me.”

  “I wasn’t aware that I was.”

  “Because you’re standing here, staring me down, to do what? Ask me out for coffee later?”

  “Kane Mendez wouldn’t like that, right?”

  “Ah, there it is. The bullshit I’ve been waiting on. Does it shoot just from your mouth or from your ass, too?”

  “I’m the guy who keeps things real.”

  “Real, is it? Well then, let me join the ‘keeping it real’ party. If Kane Mendez is all you got, you’ll have to think harder on ways to rattle me. Like perhaps eating the last donut when I’m at the precinct. Why are you back here by this alley instead of securing the scene?”

  “I saw you run in this direction and thought you might need backup.”

  It’s not unbelievable, if someone else said it. From him, it’s bullshit and ten kinds of bullshit in fact. “Secure the alley,” I say. “Do we know who the victim is?”

  “Detective Williams.”

  “The other victim,” I say.

  “Not yet. We printed her.”

  “I need an update on those prints, now.”

  “Of course,” he says, smirking. “And a broader search of the area?”

  The smirk gets to me.

  I like to smack smirks off faces. That I let him keep his, really does speak to my restraint, which is better than most believe. If I smack you, it’s not emotional. You deserve it.

  “Home our resources, here, on the crime scene,” I say. “I don’t want any more mass hysteria than we already have with the mayor’s recent press conference. Keep the scene tight.” On that note, there are two dead bodies waiting on me, and they are certain to be better company than this man. I turn away and start walking.

  “You don’t want to sweep wide for a suspect?” he calls after me and then murmurs, “Why can’t the FBI just let us do our fucking jobs? One of our own is in that alleyway.”

  I whirl around and face him. “One of your own? Williams called me into that fucking alleyway into a booby trap. So if that’s who you’re calling your own, asshole, you now know why I’m in charge. So, do as I say, or get the hell out of here.”

  His jaw clenches. “Williams wouldn’t do that.”

  “And yet,” I say, “she did, so if you want to go wide with this search, cause hysteria and talk to the press, she’ll be the villain. The police will be the villains when one of your own is killing innocent people. If you want that, we can put you on camera to deliver the news.”

  “I don’t believe Williams would do that.”

  I step closer to him. “How do you know? Were you fucking her?”

  “No. I was not.”

  “Did you ever fuck her?”

  “No, fuck, no.”

  But he cuts his eyes. “How personal is this to you?”

  “She was one of us.”

  “That again? Then I’m a lying little bitch, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying, Williams wouldn’t do what you say she did.”

  “Then I am a lying little bitch.”

  “I’m saying—”

  “Don’t repeat yourself. I’m not stupid enough to need to hear that again while you appear to be stupid enough to keep repeating yourself. Leave. You’re too involved to play an investigative role.”

  He cuts his stare, his jaw tightening to the point that it might snap before he eyes me. “I want to stay. I want to help.”

  “Who hurt you?”

  He frowns. “What? I mean, we dated but—”

  “But you didn’t fuck,” I challenge. “When was the last time that you ‘didn’t fuck’?”

  “We didn’t fuck.”

  “And you didn’t avoid my question. You’re cut. Who cut you?”

  “A served warrant gone wrong.”

  It’s a quick answer, too quick, and his eyes shift slightly. He’s lying when he has to know I can confirm his story. Which has to mean he’s stupid, and if he’s stupid, he’s not Umbrella Man, but Williams wasn’t him either, even though she tried to lure me into the alleyway. To the game. I think of the family members of the victims who Umbrella Man has used and abused. In every case, he promised someone close to the victims that if they did certain things, they could save the person they love. But if Morris was being tormented, if he was being promised that he could save Williams, he knows she’s dead now.

  “Agent Love.”

  I look up to find an officer standing to my left, his rain hood pulled low. “There’s a man at the west perimeter insisting he see you,” he announces.

  Kane.

  It’s going to be Kane, and I’m going to kill him before Ghost has the chance.

  “I’ll be right there,” I say, and when I turn back to Morris, he’s gone. I look toward the dark alley, my gut pulling me there again, but Kane is here. He couldn’t just stay away. What part of Ghost is here trying to kill him does this asshole not understand? I turn away from the alley and look for the officer who announced my visitor, but he’s gone. I start walking toward the west barrier he indicated, vowing not to hurt Kane until we’re alone, without witnesses.

  I cut through the gaggle of law enforcement, answering questions I didn’t intend to answer, finally breaking away to a clear path when my phone rings and I grab it, glance at my brother’s number and hit decline. Rain begins to pelt my shoulders again, and I yank up my hood, walking toward Officer Brad Henry, who I know from the past. “Brad,” I greet, stepping in front of him.

  “Lilah fucking Love. I heard you were the Queen Bitch of the Night.”

  “And I heard you still parked a donut shop in your belly,” I say, motioning to his ever-present belly and back up at him. “I see that rumor was true.”

  “Twins,” he says, rubbing his donut shop.

  I move on before I don’t move on because the man is supposed to be able to run, fight, and protect innocent lives. He can’t even protect himself. “Where’s my visitor?”

  He frowns. “Visitor?”

  “I was told that I have a visitor here to see me.”

  “No. Not that I know of.” He shouts out to another officer behind him and to the left, next to a patrol car, “Travis! Any visitor for Agent Love?”

  “Nope. No-go on the visitor,” Travis calls back.

  No visitor.

  A bad feeling hits me, and I turn away from Brad, pulling my phone from my pocket and dialing Kane. “Lilah.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the flower shop where I told you to meet me. Where are you?”

  “You weren’t here?”

  “No. Should I be?”

  “No,” I say, turning toward the alley where the two bodies lie in wait, where Ghost showed himself. “Stay away.”

  “Lilah—”

  I hang up and do so with realization. Ghost didn’t show himself here, at an Umbrella Man crime scene for no reason. Umbrella Man taunts and kills those close to his victims, but Kane isn’t easy to get to. And even if you get
to Kane, you won’t manipulate him. To get to Kane, you need an expert. An expert like Ghost.

  Ghost was telling me that Umbrella Man hired him to kill Kane.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  There’s only one way to win the game.

  Play the game.

  Some might say winning comes from not playing at all, but in this case, if I don’t play, someone else will, and that someone won’t do it by choice. They’ll also become a victim who will die. I don’t plan on going anywhere but to the crime scene to talk to those bodies. And then to the killer’s front door, to kick his ass right before killing him. Not a very FBI like thing to say, but fuck it. And fuck it some more.

  My phone starts ringing again, and I ignore it. I know it’s Kane calling me back. I need to talk to him, considering he left to go battle a cartel controversy, I shouldn’t even condone. I am a fucking FBI agent, and Lord help me a part of me really needs to see him right now, but I can’t afford that distraction. I can’t afford to fear my safety the way he made me fear my safety in that alleyway earlier tonight. I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what to do with him sometimes.

  I start walking, ready to step into my Otherworld zone as I do, my place where there is nothing but the crime scene. And it’s time, time to read the crime scene. Time to see what’s here to see; what Umbrella Man wants me to see. What he thinks I won’t see. What he thinks I’m too stupid to see.

  “Lilah fucking Love.”

  At Kane’s deep, accented, angry voice, I freeze. He’s behind me. At the barrier where he just told me he wasn’t. And not only is he asking to get a bullet in his head from Ghost, but this breaks our long-standing rule; he doesn’t come to my crime scenes or my job. Anger is instant, as is every emotion I feel with this man. I rotate and bring him into view, standing at a wooden barrier a few feet from Brad, and fuck me, he’s so damn Kane Mendez. His jacket is gone, his sleeves rolled to his elbows—tall, Latin, and arrogant as fuck. It’s like he’s daring Umbrella Man and Ghost to come for him. It’s like the man thinks he’s not fucking human. I want to punch him right now. In fact, he needs to be punched more than anyone I’ve met tonight, and that’s saying a lot.