CHAPTER FIVE
I hold the note in my gloved hand, the world spinning around me, nothing but black-and-white space, fading in and out. No room. No thoughts. No sounds. Seconds tick by, or maybe it’s minutes. Too long until my first coherent thought. I’m spinning out of control for too damn long. I don’t do out of control. Not anymore. Never anymore. I blink and mentally shove myself back to reality, aware of my heart thundering in my chest, of blood rushing in my ears. And damn it to hell, my knees are weak and my hand trembles where it holds the note.
I read it again, focused on two words: I know. And the blood, or rather what looks like some sort of paint on second glance, splattered on the sliding glass door tells me exactly what that means, what this person is referencing. Someone other than Kane and me was here that night. Someone who saw everything, or enough to be dangerous, and that knowledge shakes me to the core. I inhale slowly, drawing in a thick breath and pushing air in and out of the tight cavity I believe is still my chest. Damn it. I think I might be hyperventilating for the first time in my life. Now. Here. Not in puddles of blood or examining a dead body, but rather with the panic of being caught.
Rejecting the weakness that I don’t have time to own, I try another breath and repeat the same torture. Damn it, I am hyperventilating, and I do not give myself permission to do this. I straighten my spine and suck in air fast and hard, ignoring the pain. I remind myself that I’m no rookie at catching guilty assholes, and this isn’t the first time one of them has come after me. It is, however, the first time I was also a guilty asshole, but that’s beside the point. Actually, it really is the point, but that isn’t the point. Holy fuck, I need to calm the heck down. I’m back to sounding like Texas again.
“Otherworld, Lilah. Work the crime scene, Lilah. Deal with the personal side of this later, Lilah.” My teeth set hard. I’m freaking talking to myself. I really hate people who talk to themselves, almost as much as I hate people who do stupid things. I also hate people who do bad things, and I have now qualified for all three categories. Especially the bad-things part, or I wouldn’t be living my own idiocy right now, nor would my family be at risk of doing the same. However, thinking about said idiocy, while perhaps more necessary than I’d like, can’t happen right now. Actions have to happen right now. Decisions have to be made, and despite my desire to do so, I’m not going to be able to walk on eggshells until morning.
Crossing the room, I walk into the kitchen where I locate my field bag on the gray stone counter, unzip it, and remove a Baggie. Without giving the note another look, I stick it inside and seal it away. A murder note. A name that fits for reasons I didn’t plan to allow anyone to know aside from Kane, and yet, someone does know. And that someone knows me while I do not know them, and that is dangerously unacceptable. But I’ll find out who is behind this, and once I do . . . well, I don’t know what the hell I’ll do, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes.
Resolved to find this asshole, I slip my field bag over my shoulder, my eyes landing on my keys. The fact that I don’t remember setting them on the counter speaks to my state of mind when I walked in the door. If I don’t find a way to really, truly disconnect myself from my personal feelings, my problems are going to have problems. And when your problems start to have problems, you’re either the good guy that just got killed or the bad guy who just got caught. I don’t like either option.
I start to turn away but stop, my gaze back on those keys, and for reasons I can’t explain, I’m uncomfortable leaving them sitting where they are. I snatch them up, and I’m on the move this time, exiting the kitchen and walking through the living area, but I tune out the room. Most especially the décor that reminds me of my mother, rejecting the emotions she stirs in me. I can’t be Laura Love’s daughter right now.
Continuing forward, I cut right and walk down a hallway that, should I travel to the end, would lead to the master bedroom, but I stop midway at the heavy, dungeon-style arched wooden door that leads to the attic office, inserting a key from my chain into the lock. I hesitate a moment, the need for that key a logical explanation for why I didn’t want to leave the keys behind, but my gut is not satisfied with this answer. I stand there, unmoving, listening to the sounds around me with expectancy. Which is insanity, because I’m alone. I made sure that I’m alone. But then, my insanity isn’t out of the question, any more than the only sound touching my ears, that of the grandfather clock in the master bedroom, a family heirloom passed down for generations on my mother’s side.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick-fucking-tock.
Grimacing, I turn the lock and open the door, flipping on the light and starting the climb up the wooden steps that wind left and then right, until I reach the attic my parents long ago converted to an office. Once at the top, the steepled ceilings tower above me, while the matching wood-paneled walls and floors age the space and shrink it. I quickly cross the room my mother called “quaint” and father called simply “his.” That is, until my mother had died and it had become “mine.”
I stop in front of the heavy oak desk that is the centerpiece of the room, where it sits in front of an arched window, and drop my bag on the wooden top. I’m about to place the Baggie with the note inside it there as well but find myself hesitating, thinking better of leaving it exposed.
“Exposed?” I mock out loud, apparently hanging on to this whole “talking to myself” routine for at least a little longer. “Is a ghost going to grab it and your keys, Lilah, or what? Because no one else is here.” And yet, I recognize my gut feelings when I get them, and I long ago stopped trying to find logic in their delivery. They come. They demand. I listen. The few times I didn’t were disasters I’d prefer not to claim as my own. I don’t need another disaster right now.
I walk around the desk, where I open the top drawer and deposit the Baggie inside with limited relief, considering the illogical urgency of that action. Whatever the case, it’s done, but I am not. I hurry toward the closet to the left of the stairs, opening the door and entering the pitch-dark room. Stepping forward, I reach for the string hanging from the ceiling and tug. Almost instantly light blasts my eyes like a super-damn-nova, blinding me. An unfriendly reminder that I’d installed a megabright bulb from the garage that apparently still shines brightly after two years. A choice I’d made because me and shopping go together about as well as the animal crackers and instant mac n’ cheese that was all I had left in my pantry when I left LA.
Blinking away spots, I bring the space into view, the slanted ceiling above me and my father’s old uniforms from his days as chief of police hanging on one side while a single bag holding one of the gowns I’d worn to one of my mother’s award shows hangs on the other. Memories I walk past, both literally and mentally, to reach the wooden chest that covers the entire back wall.
Going to a knee in front of it, I grab the silver lock attached to it, rotating it until the combination is complete and it pops open. Removing it, I lift the lid and focus on what I like to think of as my candy store: a good half dozen handguns, a supply of bullets, and several knives that my father never intended to leave behind with the house but they’re mine now and I love them. This really is my kind of candy, and it’s damn near orgasmic right about now, but it’s not why I’m here.
Snatching up the black case in the corner holding a fingerprint kit, I stand and head for the door, focused on winning the war this unknown stranger has just waged against me. That mission has me back down the stairs and entering the living area in all of a minute, and I don’t stop until I’ve returned to the sliding glass door leading to the beachfront. Pausing there, I reach for the security panel on the wall to disarm the system, hesitating only a moment, in which I tell myself going outside is crazy. Despite my eagerness to keep my secret a secret, I should wait until morning to work my crime scene, but I quickly rule that option out. This isn’t a suitcase in the car that can wait. It’s about a threat to expose my secrets, and if there is a clue to find out who’s behind it, I have to figure it out. I have to just go for this, balls to the wall like the man my father always wanted me to be. Make him proud and all that shit. Of course, if he knew what it was I was covering up, I’m pretty sure he’d be feeling a whole lot of things that have nothing to do with pride.
I disarm the system and flip on the exterior light that I hadn’t bothered with earlier. Lifting the curtain, I scan the illuminated area that spans far and wide, thanks to well-placed spotlights, finding no immediate threat. Going out there is dangerous. I know this, but the bottom line here is that there are two types of people: the ones that hide in a closet, and the ones that go find the problem. Of course, both die in every horror movie I’ve ever seen, but I’m FBI. I don’t wait for help. I am the help. Besides. If this asshole wanted me dead, someone would have already tried to make me dead by now.
Flipping the latch on the door, I slide it open and step outside, where I stop, scan the area, and stand for several beats, listening and looking for any indication of someone else. Here the wind whistles around me, lifting my hair, the only friend and enemy that my gut says is near. And my gut is a friend that never fails me. Confuses me and irritates me at times, yes. But fails me? No. It leaves that to everyone else. Still, I’m on edge, ready to find answers and erase this problem. I don’t like problems. I don’t like assholes. I survey the sliding glass door where the fake blood is concentrated, hoping like heck whatever it is comes off easily. Squatting down beside it, I open the fingerprint kit, and damn it to hell, my cell phone rings, and I all but jump out of my own skin. Gut feeling or not, I’m clearly on edge, all right.
Grimacing, I dig the damn thing out of my pants and glance down at the number to find Rich calling. I hesitate, debating the merits of having someone on the line while I’m out here and exposed, but this someone is Rich, and I can’t fight with him and be alert. I hit Decline but decide that keeping my phone handy is smart. In fact, I tap in nine-one-one but don’t dial the number. I’m now on ready, and one push of a button and I’d have help on the way. Standing up, I stick the edge of my cell back in my pocket and focus on the glass, where I get to work. But after some quick effort, I find there are no prints to be discovered. Moving to the door handle, of course, the story is different, and I lift prints that are most likely mine, but I have to take the sample to be certain. I turn and scan the beachfront again. A gust of wind, the chilly air touched by the ocean lifting my hair, brings the taste of salt, the flavor of ocean I’d once known as perfection, which touches my tongue. But it’s not perfection anymore.
For the first time ever, it’s bitter and wrong in every possible way, like me coming back here, but then so is someone knowing about that night and saying or doing nothing until now. Reality hits me fast and hard, powerful enough to earn a curve of my lips. This person wants me to fear them, but that’s because they’re afraid of me. Translation: I’m not the only one with a secret to hide. I’d like to be pleased about this realization, but the truth is that I know how desperate a secret you don’t want revealed can make a person. I know you might do things you wouldn’t otherwise do to keep it buried. To bury it in the first place. I swallow hard with the memory of what I did, and without giving my back to the beach or anyone watching, I slide open the door.
Entering the house again, I shut myself inside, lock up, reset the alarm, and flip off the exterior light to ensure the splatter on the window is cloaked in darkness as long as possible. I’ll deal with it in the morning. It’s then, still facing the glass door, that I look up, then left and right, processing the floor-to-ceiling windows, all of which remain shaded with thin but effective electronic blinds. Effective at creating privacy, I know, but tonight, I feel exposed in every possible way. No. I’ve felt exposed—naked, even—for years now, and I’m not sure there will be another day in my life when I do not.
Inhaling on that certainty, I rotate, and for a moment, my gaze focuses on the overstuffed, plush furnishings in the center of the spacious room and the vaulted ceiling above. The couch and chairs squaring off the space are dark gray, but that wasn’t always the case. They were a cream color my mother had chosen, and my mind’s eye takes me back to two years ago, to that couch, to an image of me covered in blood, and seeing the old one with those red handprints on the surface. To the moment Kane walked in the door, blood soaking his white-collared shirt, his jacket gone. I start to tremble inside, when I’d trembled all over then, and I shove aside that memory, viciously, fiercely, my feet moving across the room.
“Damn it, Lilah,” I growl. “Don’t let this get into your head.” Patting my cheek, I shake it off, clearing my mind, even as I start walking, or rather charging is more like it. Crossing the room again until I am back in the office and then the closet. I stick the fingerprint kit back inside the chest and shut it, flipping the latch back into place. Hands on my hips, I consider my options: Do I call Kane or not? Do I warn him he could be in danger? I laugh without humor, the cackling sound lifting in the air, brittle and unfamiliar. Kane in danger? Am I crazy? Well, yes. My craziness is really not in question, but it appears it’s exceptionally present in this moment. Kane is not in danger. Kane is danger. He doesn’t need me to hold his hand, but I damn sure need time to think this all through before I get that man and his penetrating stares anywhere near me again. What I need is to do my job, find my note writer, find my murderer, and get the hell out of the entire state of New York.
Heading across the living area, I’m irritated to find my mind conjuring an image of him leaning against his car tonight: tall, dark, and damnably good-looking, a glint of heat simmering in his eyes. Why the hell couldn’t that man have just gotten fat and unattractive? Translation: easier to dismiss. Sure, I know that makes me a vain, horrible bitch, but if I suddenly didn’t find him attractive, I’d be an unaffected vain, horrible bitch. And unaffected by Kane would be a welcome calm in the middle of one hell of a storm, I think, entering the kitchen and making my way to the garage door again, where logic forces me to a dead stop. I can’t get to my suitcase without taking off the security system. Damn it.
I hit the button on the panel by the door, and a deep male voice immediately asks, “Can I help you, Ms. Love?”
“Can you disable the garage door and leave the rest of the system armed?”
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid if you want to open the door without setting the alarm off, you’ll need to disarm fully.”
“Right. Of course not. Thank you.”
“Is there a problem?” the man asks.
“No problem I can’t solve,” I say. “Thank you.”
He replies, but it’s just muffled words to me right now. I’ve tuned him out, repeating my own words to him in my mind: no problem I can’t solve. Except one, I amend. The one I left for Kane to solve. And that reality turns my thoughts to the alphabet row across the top of that letter left for me tonight. A is for Apple, it had said. And F, I decide, is for the fool I was for leaving myself exposed, a golden rule in law enforcement I’d learned in the police academy and later with the FBI. And yet, I’d done just that. I’d left myself so damn exposed I might as well be as naked as I was on that beach.
Memories assail me and I squeeze my eyes shut, mentally blocking out the images that want to be seen, but they persist, screaming in my mind like magpies. The impact is a punch in the gut that rivals the fat man in a clown suit who’d tackled me on Santa Monica Boulevard during my first week in LA. I’d tripped and cuffed that bastard, arresting him and then spending the night watching Stephen King’s It over a large cheese pizza. Because I’m Lilah-fucking-Love, and I’d owned the damn clown. My lips tighten. That’s the way I need to own my memories, and whoever wrote that note is trying to own me right now. I can’t let that happen. I have to think. I have to figure out what the hell just happened.
I shove off the door and walk to the counter, grabbing my briefcase and charging toward the office, my mind working as I do. Either Kane and I weren’t the only ones here that night, or he broke our vow of silence and told someone about it, someone who is now betraying us both, which I don’t believe. Not because I’m assessing his loyalty to me as rock solid, but he’s not stupid enough to give someone ammunition to use against him. I return to option A: we weren’t alone that night. And whoever was there kept silent until now. The night I came home. Why? What’s the motivation to taunt me now and not anytime in the past two years?
Reaching the office, I charge up the steps, and the minute I’m at the top, I cross to the desk, sit down, and pull my case file from my bag before tossing it onto the desk. Inhaling, I flatten my hands on the desk on either side of the file, but I’m not quite ready to open it again. Twisting my chair to the left, I face a wall decorated with nothing but three white boards on the left and a massive floor-to-ceiling bulletin board on the right. These were not my father’s. They were—are—mine, and as I stare at them, a piece of my mind sees all the many cases I once analyzed here. In fact, by the time I worked from this office, I’d already been labeled the “Murder Girl,” a joke made by a drunk coworker at someone’s retirement party that had stuck. The truth is that almost every single one of the cases I solved in this house started with a dead body. And I solved many of those cases because I wouldn’t give up. I locked myself in this room that I’ve come to know as Purgatory until I found a clue to follow. I reach for my badge, slip the picture out that I’ve hidden there, and stare down at a photo of me with Kane Mendez. I flip it over and stare at the pen marks that count down the perps I profiled, who my efforts helped convict: thirty-one. Thirty-one times that I’ve proven that the sins of my past, which include Kane Mendez, don’t define me.
I stick the photo back inside my badge and then stand up, walking to one of the whiteboards, grabbing a marker from the silver ledge beneath it, and stepping onto the wooden stool in front of it. Ripping off the cap, I start writing the names of the murders I’ve helped bring to trial. I stop ten names in and stare at them, picturing their victims, noting how bloody my life has become. And why is that? I write my answer in huge letters: BECAUSE I AM MURDER GIRL.