Ground hamburger and raw egg covered Kayla Austen’s hands when the beep on her computer announced an incoming Skype request.
“Thane,” she shouted. “Can you get that?”
“Get what?” He rounded the corner into the kitchen with Sloane in his arms and Adam toddling behind like a shadow.
“Someone’s calling on Skype.”
“Can’t we ignore it?”
“No, we can’t,” she said, giving him a narrowed eye. “Put Sloane down. How is she ever supposed to learn how to walk when you keep her glued to your hip?”
He chuckled and put his daughter in the play pen. Adam threw his arms in the air, wanting his turn cuddled in Dad’s safe embrace. Thane didn’t pause and swept his boy up, making Adam giggle. “Okay, let’s find out who wants to say hi. Eh, buddy?”
Sitting down in front of the desk, he accepted the Skype request. “LaPierre, hey man. How’s it…” Thane stopped speaking, which had Kayla turning a look over her shoulder. “Where are you?” Thane finished.
Kayla quickly grabbed the dishrag, rubbing her hands clean, and headed for the desk.
“Greg?” She inhaled slowly and gripped Thane’s shoulder. “Why are you wearing overalls with a number on it?”
Greg lifted his head and stared into the monitor. He blinked his beautiful green eyes and threaded a hand through his jet black hair. “Because I’m being held for murder.”
“What?” She and Thane exploded at the same time.
“Diana is dead.”
“What?” They both said again.
“Listen, we broke up a while back. It’s just a matter of the cops investigating the details.”
“What details?” Kayla spouted. “Greg, why would they suspect it’s you?”
Greg looked over his shoulder and leaned a little closer. “Because she was murdered with my Ka-Bar knife, and because I’m the ex-jilted lover.”
“Are you jilted?” Thane asked, a critical note slathering each word.
Kayla pinched his shoulder. “You didn’t tell us you broke up.”
“She left me, actually. Some doctor at the hospital fell in love with her and swept her off her feet. We’d kind of grown apart anyway.”
“How are you implicated in this? I mean…” Kayla stuttered. “Start from the beginning, Greg.”
The noise of other men speaking in the background sounded like a dull drone through their speakers. “I came back from deployment just before Halloween. Diana told me it was over.” Greg shrugged. “She deserves better.”
“Bullshit,” Kayla growled. “Carry on.”
Greg gave her a wink and that’s what made Thane stir. He hadn’t budged when she’d pinched him.
“Unca Greg?” Adam squealed and then scrambled onto all fours on the desk and shoved his face into the monitor.
“Hey, little man.” Greg gave him a handsome grin, creating the creases on his unshaven jaw that few women could resist.
Kayla pulled her son back, nestled him in her lap and gave him his favorite bear.
“What happened to Diana?” Thane asked.
“She’s the seventh victim of a serial killer. I didn’t know about it until the cops dragged me in. I’ve been away for months on deployment. Before I left, they suspected someone was creeping around the streets of Victoria, slaughtering women here in Ripper fashion. The irony isn’t missed by anyone. Victoria is a replica of jolly old England, as you know. The community is scared shitless. The cops found my knife by Diana’s body. Because of my brother Daniel, because of our past and my being in the military, they think I’ve lost my grip on humanity.”
“So the other murders,” Thane began, “they didn’t occur while you were gone?”
Greg shook his head. “Last one was seven months ago, just a couple days before I left. Cops thought maybe this guy had moved on from Victoria. Any of this sound familiar?”
Thane scrubbed his face. “Is Daniel still in prison?”
“Yeah, the same one I’ll be sent to.”
“Oh, shit,” Thane said.
Greg’s broad shoulders shrugged. “We’ve made our peace.” He cleared his throat. “Way it looks now, he’ll be released in two months. I might end up staying a while longer—as in forever. Seven convictions with twenty-five years for each.”
“Besides the knife, how’re they linking you to the other murders?” Kayla asked.
“Nothing to link. No weapon was found at the other murders, but they say the autopsy shows the same knife did the killing for two of them: Diana, and a woman found in a corn maze in North Saanich.”
“You didn’t do it,” Kayla said fiercely.
“I know that, Angel Face, but I can’t disprove it until they find something that leads in another direction.” He paused and shook his head. “Right now, they have nothing else, and I don’t have an alibi for Saturday night or the murder in the corn maze.”
“Where were you?” she asked.
“Last night. Downtown. That’s the problem, Diana was found in Market Square around three in morning. I was at the Irish Times pub putting a few back, which is close enough. The cops haven’t found anyone to say they saw me there until after two-thirty, when I left.”
“Have they asked all the women who were there?” Thane cleared his throat. “What? Women notice Greg, and they wouldn’t stop looking until he leaves.”
Thane shifted in his seat, then said, “What about receipts. You paid your bar tab?”
“With cash, and I didn’t take the receipt.”
“There has to be something,” Kayla said, her innards going very cold. “A parking voucher.”
“I walked.”
“God, Greg.”
Thane gripped her wrist. “Kayla,” he said tightly. “Calm down.”
Greg shrugged. “I’m stuck in here until they find someone who comes forward. Otherwise, all they’ve got is my weapon and Diana in the morgue, along with six other women.”
Worry cinched the corners of Greg’s lips tight. He rarely showed fear, but she could see it in the tautness of his brow. “It’s going to be fine.”
“I doubt that,” he said, inhaling a deep breath.
“It is, because Thane’s coming.”
Her husband’s head whipped around. “I am?”
“He is?” Greg echoed.
“Yes, you are. You’re going to Victoria to help sort out this mess.”
Thane’s gaze sharpened with predatory excitement. Kayla knew her husband missed the chase. Missed the action of being on the teams since becoming an Admiral.
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?” Thane said.
She understood her husband’s hesitation. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to help, but because of who he’d be helping. “The cops will be looking for a scapegoat. Greg can’t spend another seven months in prison waiting for this psycho to lose his shit and kill another woman. You have to prove he didn’t do this, now.”
Greg intervened. “Listen, I have to go. I just thought I’d let you know what’s happening. Admiral, I don’t expect your help.”
Thane didn’t respond. Silent for a change.
Adam dropped his bear and Kayla picked it up from the floor and handed it back to him. “Greg, we’ll get you out of there. I know you’re innocent. Call again as soon as you can, okay?”
“Love you, Kayla.”
“Love you, too. Bye.”
Thane exhaled a deep breath and sat back in his chair. When she put Adam down, he ran to his little sister and started babbling happily to her.
Kayla kneeled on the floor, swiveled Thane’s chair and gazed up at him. “Please.”
His head jerked, but he wouldn’t look at her. “What if he’s guilty? What if he’s just like Daniel?”
“He’s not. And Daniel is not a cold-blooded killer.”
“The Canadian police are not going to let me waltz in there and start probing into their civilian investigation, Kayla.”
“I know that.” She gripped both his hands. “But you can be Greg’s alliance on the outside. Find what the police haven’t. Find something to prove his innocence. I know you can do this.”
“I have responsibilities here in Hawaii. I can’t just drop them.”
She stood up. “Fine, then I’ll go.”
“No,” he shouted, then scrubbed his jaw, eyeing her. “Not a fucking chance. You’ve had your fair share of serial killers after your ass. One is enough.”
She burned a look directly into his angry glare. “Watch your language, Admiral. And if you’re not going, I will.”
“Aw, Kayla,” he said, avoiding her scowl.
“This is Greg we’re talking about.”
Thane’s polar blues finally fixed on her. “Yeah, the guy who’ll never let you go because he’ll always love you. The man I have to accept in our lives as Uncle Greg to our children, but the truth is he’d rather see me lying in a grave so he can have a second chance.”
Kayla held onto her patience. If she lost it, they’d end up in a big fight and that’s not what she wanted. “I married you, not him.”
Thane leaned over and cupped her face in his hands. “The only reason I’ll do this is because if I don’t, I know you will. You’d abandon everything to help him, wouldn’t you?” His brow creased. “You’d leave all of us to save him.”
She gripped his fingers. “Yes, because he abandoned his life to help me.” Greg was her husband’s sore point, even though she proved to Thane every day that she loved him. She nestled her cheek in his large palm. “Thane Austen, you are the only man of my dreams.”
A small quirk of a smile edged his lips and a low, bear-like chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Why don’t you grab the kids and visit Marg, Nina and Lumin in San Diego while I’m gone.”
“We’ve been talking about getting together for months. I think I will.”
His clenched fist meant he didn’t want to do this, but he would. “I’ll have to organize a few things first, but I’ll leave by Friday.”
“Friday!”
“Lord, woman, I’m the Admiral of the West Coast chain. Ya think I can just up and disappear for a week?”
“Two weeks, and leave by Wednesday.”
He rolled his eyes. “Thursday.”
“Okay.” She grinned and kissed him. Thane’s muscular arms wrapped around her and lifted her to straddle his legs.
“Daddeee?” Adam yanked on his pant leg.
Within a nanosecond, Sloane called out. “Daddeee.” She’d turned one-year-old in July. She was a walking, talking chatterbox. Although not making much sense, she tossed words out left, right, and center.
“I love my children, but sometimes having kids gets in the way of our love life.” He picked Adam up, cradling him against his chest.
“It can’t be that bad. We’ve got these two beautiful babies, don’t we?” She lifted Thane’s chin so he’d look at her. “I want Greg to have this happiness one day. I want him to have someone to love and children of his own. He deserves it. He deserves to have a new chapter in his life, just like I did.”
“I know, sweetheart,” he said, while Adam played with his dad’s ear. Their son wouldn’t stop grabbing them since he’d figured out his father had a ticklish spot. “I’ll do what I can, Kayla, but I can’t promise this will turn out the way you want.”
“There’s something the police are missing. You’ll find it.”
“Daddeeeee?” Sloane screeched at the top of her lungs.
“Woo,” Thane said, his brows popping. “She’s not demanding at all. Wonder where she gets that from?”
Kayla plucked Sloane into her arms and gave her a big hug. “Like father, like daughter.” Then laughed at her husband.
* * * *
Mattie slid her identification through the hole in the glass to a guard manning the front desk at the corrections facility while another guard checked her purse.
“You’ve got ten minutes,” the guard said, giving her a stern look and dumping her purse back on the counter.
Clipping the visitor’s pass to her lapel, she said, “Only need eight.”
A clank sounded to her left and the door opened.
“This way.” Another guard with dark blond hair and severe looking eyes held the door for her.
She followed him down a long corridor which opened into a room with several small tables. A few couples had their heads together. One woman tried to keep hold of her two children while they fussed. At the back of the visitor’s room she saw a lone man sitting at a table. With a steady gaze, he watched her approach. He didn’t sit slumped in a crooked pose with a bad boy look on his face like she expected.
Her step faltered. Her legs weighted with recognition. Doubt churned in her belly.
Oh…my…God. Move. Move your damn legs. Greg LaPierre was a large man, and he sat up straight watching everything around him with calm awareness. How could this be? At least now she knew the name of the man she’d seen at the Irish Times pub. His gaze never wavered as she finally reached his table.
Constable Yates had given her the details of the latest murder and a short bio on Lieutenant Commander LaPierre. Begrudgingly, he added that the Special Forces operator hadn’t confessed to killing anyone. She stopped and gripped the empty chair across from the handsome officer.
“Ten minutes,” the guard said again.
She didn’t take her eyes off LaPierre. “Thank you. Heard you the first time.”
In her peripheral vision, she saw the guard give her a nasty look and saunter off.
She pulled a card from her leather jacket pocket and offered it to him. “Lieutenant Commander LaPierre, I’m Mattie Bidault, New Victoria Times Colonist newspaper.”
“Bonjour, mademoiselle.” He paused. “It’s good to see you again, but not under these circumstances.”
She ignored the fact that he recognized her. The voice matched the commanding man in front of her, but what made her shiver was his French accent. Sensual, his enunciations lit her blood on fire. He was nothing like the hardnosed, heartless killer she’d designed in her mind. Nor did he appear to be a man forged by war who’d broken down and couldn’t stop killing. Lieutenant Commander LaPierre had a nobility about him that didn’t compute with who the Ripper should be.
“I’m not French Canadian.”
“Someone in your family is,” he said, his eyes fixed on her.
“Grandfather. May I sit down?”
“This is a bilingual country.”
Was he taunting her? “Doesn’t mean everyone needs to speak French. I failed it in school. May I sit down?”
He gave a slight nod.
The screech of the chair legs on the linoleum interrupted the low murmurs in the room and her thumping heart. She placed her purse on the table between them.
“Turn off the recorder on your phone,” he ordered.
She blinked and eased her hand into the front pocket, plucking the phone out. “It’s not on. See?” She palmed it in her hand.
“I don’t like the media. They always get it wrong.”
“Then why did you agree to see me?” He hadn’t moved a muscle, and he had many. Large ones.
“Because I didn’t murder Diana or anyone else my country hasn’t sanctioned. If you want a story, you’re going to have to find the truth.”
“Lieutenant Commander LaPierre, I agree that, sometimes, reporting now a days doesn’t always get it right, as you say—”
“Don’t placate me. What do you want to know?”
He was a warrior alright. The no-nonsense type. Being an officer, he would be accustomed to giving orders.
She flipped open the little notepad she carried with her. “You’re a member of the Canadian Navy, Special Operations and the Joint Task Force.”
He nodded.
“Your brother is in prison as well for breaking his parole by going to the United States.”
“Oui.”
Oui, meaning ‘yes’ in French, she understood. “But you were the one to tell the authorities he’d violated his parole. Why?” Constable Yates had provided a few details. This one had surprised her.
“That has nothing to do with Diana’s death.”
She shunted her jacket from her shoulders, and she didn’t miss the way his gaze swerved down her sweater. “It does. It tells me something doesn’t add up about who you are. If you were willing to turn your brother in, why would you break the law yourself and murder innocent women?”
“You tell me,” he said and leaned forward, resting his sizeable arms on the table.
His green eyes—a brilliant green, not a mottled or mossy color, but brilliant—gazed at her from swarthy, moral-shattering, striking features. If he was a serial killer, it would be easy for him to seduce a woman into a private place to kill her. Most women would follow this man like the Pied Piper of any girl’s dream.
“All right. I’m here because of the knife. It’s the only piece of evidence that leads the police to believe you murdered Diana, and of course, the hiatus of seven months while you were deployed. How do you explain your weapon getting into someone else’s hands?”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Did you know it was missing?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“A month ago. Thought I’d lost it on a mission. Wasn’t a big deal.”
She knit her hands together. “It’s a big deal now, isn’t it?”
“Appears so.”
Mattie exhaled and sat back in her chair.
“Did you enjoy the drink?” he asked in a sensual voice that made her quiver from head to toe.
His masculine aura radiated power, self-control and worst of all, mind-numbing sensuality. The kind that grips a woman’s attention so completely she’d walk into a light pole strolling down the sidewalk. “Yes, thank you.”
Lieutenant Commander LaPierre didn’t seem overly concerned or agitated at all over this. Was he sure of his innocence or did he not care? The latter struck her with more questions. Why wouldn’t he care? He would be charged seven times over and tossed into the penal system for the rest of his life, named one of Canada’s most prolific imprisoned killers.
“Don’t you care about your life?” she asked, verbalizing her thoughts.
Instead of answering the question, he tilted his head at her. The same sexy, inquiring tilt he’d given her the other night. “Are you scared of me? Maybe wondering if I’d come to your table the other night, whether or not you’d be the seventh victim instead?”
His question sobered her thoughts, but when she chose to be brave and look in his eyes, she saw a glint of amusement. “Maybe. You left the bar sometime after two-thirty. Diana was found at three. The coroner says she was killed between two and three a.m.”
“Which gives me a thirty minute window of guilt or innocence. I left at two thirty. Am I guilty in your eyes?”
He’d been staring into hers without fail since she’d sat down. He should know she had her doubts. “That’s what I’m going to try and find out. Do you have any family other than your brother?”
“Our parents are still alive.”
“Why do the police think your childhood plays a part in this?”
Finally, Greg broke his stare and lowered his gaze to the table. “Our father was an alcoholic for many years.”
She nodded and glanced around the visitor’s room. The guards were starting to clear out the inmates. “Spousal and child abuse?”
He nodded.
“And your brother?”
“He had some problems. Mostly because of PTSD.”
“Mostly?”
“His issues have no bearing on this.”
“But they have a bearing on you. He went to the Unites States and broke his parole. Was it to see someone?”
“Yes. His wife. Now his ex-wife.”
“Did he abuse her, too? Did she run away?”
“Listen,” Greg said, standing up. “If you want to earn some stars for your career as a journalist, find out who murdered those women. If you do, I’ll be released.”
She stood and faced him. Broad shoulders and his height made her feel small, which didn’t happen often. “Lieutenant Commander LaPierre, I intend on doing that. I’ve been reporting on this case since it began. You are the only suspect they have detained. I know you told the police that Diana had left you for someone else, but you don’t seem all that broken up about it or her death.”
He pushed the chair up to the table. “I liked Diana.”
“Liked but not loved?” she said before thinking. Truly, she wondered what being loved by a man like LaPierre would be like. Men like him only existed on Facebook memes of ultra-hot guys. Not that she wasted much time on fantasies, but she spent a lot of time researching and came across them once in a while.
His rigid jaw flexed again. “I was very fond of her, but I could see she was happier with the man she left me for. I have to accept that. Just like I have to accept death. I’ve seen a lot of it during my career. Too much.” His brow tightened and he looked at his hands. “Too damn much blood. I don’t need to see more when I come home from a mission.”
“I have more questions.”
“Time’s up,” he said.
“Will you talk to me again?”
“The police haven’t found anyone to corroborate my departure time from the bar.”
“What if the coroner is off by thirty minutes?”
“What if he is?” He nodded and gave her a quick glance before he walked to the door and knocked on it.
As the mysterious Lieutenant Commander disappeared from her view, one thought swirled in her head and it had nothing to do with her pulse-pounding attraction to his primal sexuality.
He’s innocent.