Beautiful Maids All in a Row (30 page)

The alarm still screeched as I entered the bright kitchen.
Gun.
Had to get my gun. I sprinted into the hallway and then the living room. The front door was broken down, with splinters of wood everywhere. My purse lay on the sofa where I'd left it. Just as I grabbed it, something heavy smashed into my back. A body. I fell stomach first onto the hardwood floor, getting winded as I hit the ground. The contents of my purse scattered onto the floor next to me. Fingers jerked my arm up, spinning me onto my back. A bleeding, enraged-to-the-point-of-madness Shepherd straddled me. He wrapped his hands around my throat, squeezing like a boa constrictor. “You. Fucking. Bitch!”

I tried hitting him with my fists but could muster little more than a tap. It was like throwing pebbles at a tank. I reached to the right for the gun, but it had skidded too far out of my reach. Time passed, only seconds, but they felt like hours. Shepherd's eyes began to tear up from the force of his grip, his whole body shaking with tension. A maniacal laugh escaped his throat. Spots began to cloud my eyes and all sound faded away.

I was dying.

Suddenly, Shepherd's body jerked forward like he'd been thrashed by a piece of plywood. His fingers left my throat and I gasped and coughed for breath, gulping it in large quantities. A shocked Shepherd fell to my left, giving me a chance to roll to the right, grabbing the gun on the way. Sound returned. I heard Shepherd groaning and screaming in agony. He looked toward the front door, eyes filled with disbelief. After a few more gasps for air, I propped myself up and managed to find my feet. I turned toward the door slowly and almost fell back down at the sight.

Luke stood six feet away, his hair a wild mess, body trembling, breathing raggedly, with his smoking gun trained on Shepherd. Luke glanced over at me and we both turned back to Shepherd, who was struggling for breath himself. A pool of blood rested under him, staining his white shirt.

I took an uneasy step toward him, then another, the gun dangling in my hand. He looked away from Luke to the gun, and his anger rose with each of my steps toward him. Meriwether had that same defiant look on his face before I blew him away. A small smile crept across Shepherd's face as I reached his prostrate body.

“Go ahead…kill me.”

A slide show of horrible images clicked through my mind. Diana with her blond hair saturated with blood. Audrey Burke's naked body lying on the riverbed. Chuck and Gabriel's eyes both so lost and hurt. Then Luke as the bullets hit his chest. With my shaking arms, I raised the gun.

“Iris…” Luke said behind me. “Please. Don't.”

I didn't take my eyes off Shepherd. “You're a killer, Iris,” he whispered. “Do it.” That grin of his grew. “DO IT!”

“Fuck you.” With one quick move, I brought the gun down on his forehead, knocking him into unconsciousness. “You're not even close to worth it.” I did kick him just for good measure. He was out. I won.

I spun around and dashed straight into Luke's solid arms. I threw mine around his neck, holding tight. He squeezed me back so hard I could barely breathe. I didn't care. He could have crushed me until I burst as long as he didn't let me go. Safe. I was finally safe. I sobbed hysterically into his neck as he kissed the top of my head. I breathed in his smell, stroked his hair. I wanted to touch his face to make sure this was real.

“Oh, thank God,” he whispered through the kisses. “Thank you, God.”

I lifted my head up from his shoulder. “I thought you were dead,” I managed to whisper, though my throat felt like it had been cut by glass.

He wiped the tears off my right cheek with his finger. “Can't get rid of me that easily,” he said with a smile. He released me and opened his shirt, revealing a blue Kevlar vest with three gold slugs still in it. “I'd never enter your house without one.”

I touched the vest, and he winced. “Are you okay?”

“Just a few broken ribs. I'll live.”

“Oh.” I threw my arms around him again, getting another wince. I quickly let go. “Sorry. Sorry.” I made a mental note to thank the people at Kevlar.

“You and me both.” He grimaced. “I think I need to sit down,” he admitted. I grabbed his right arm, throwing it over my shoulders. He put his gun back in the holster. We walked past the broken door onto the porch, opening the screen door so we could sit on the steps. With a groan on both our parts, I managed to get him down, taking a seat right next to him. We stared at one another for a few seconds as the alarm screeched. I tried to smile, but when I did pain shot through my cheek.

Luke reached over and lifted my chin. “Did he break anything?”

I shook my head. “Could have been a lot worse. You got here just in time.”

He pushed back a strand of my bloody hair plastered to my forehead. “Not quite.”

“How did you know he was coming after me?”

“I had him under unofficial surveillance. I had people following him.”

“Why? I thought—”

“After you left, I got to thinking about all the other cases we worked together, and I tried to remember a
single
time you were wrong.” He scoffed. “I couldn't. I trusted you then, and despite everything, my gut told me to trust you now. So I called my father. He gave me the names of some retired agents to tail him. They followed him to bondage clubs, to hotels he went to with escorts, and…I knew you were right. So when I got your message today, they entered his apartment. He must have snuck out the back.” Luke shook his head. “I caught the first flight here. I was going crazy. I couldn't reach you or the police. Reggie, he…I wanted to kill him when he wouldn't send anyone over. I just…I…” He touched the gash on my forehead and looked toward the driveway. “I'm sorry. I should have trusted you sooner.”

“You were willing to give your life for mine,” I said softly.

He turned back and smiled, tracing my eyebrow with his thumb as his tender eyes stared into mine. “Of course. Only person I'd do it for.”

“Ditto.” The butterflies returned with a vengeance. “He was wrong, you know.”

“About what?”

I cupped his hand against my face, nuzzling it. As he always had, he read my mind. His thumb moved down to my lips, caressing them and making my whole body tingle. He began to lean in, and I closed my eyes.

Fuck!

A loud siren and crackling gravel ruined the moment. We jumped apart like jackrabbits. I felt like a teenager who had been caught by her father making out with her boyfriend. Luke must have felt the same, since his face was as red as mine probably was. A sheriff's patrol car barreled up the drive, sirens blaring and lights flashing. Sheriff Wade and Deputy French jumped out of the car, guns at the ready. “Dear Lord in heaven,” Wade said as he looked at us. “You Agent Hudson? The one who called? What in the hell happened to the two of you?”

I helped Luke stand. “You need to radio for an ambulance right away,” Luke instructed. “We have a white male, age forty-six unconscious with a GSW to the back. He needs immediate assistance.”

French jumped back into the car and grabbed the radio. Wade holstered his gun and walked up to us. “Looks like you both could use one too.”

“We'll live,” I assured him.

Sheriff Wade walked into my house, but Luke and I waited at the entrance to the living room. I had no desire to go anywhere near that man ever again. Wade bent down next to Shepherd, feeling his neck for a pulse. He pulled his hand away and stared at Shepherd's face. “Is that really who I think it is?”

“Dr. Jeremy Shepherd, in the flesh,” Luke said.

“Damn,” Wade said, shaking his head in disbelief. He turned back to us. “I guess you were right.”

“She's always—”

Suddenly, Shepherd's eyes flew open as his hand shot up out of nowhere, grabbing Wade's gun out of the holster. The world moved in slow motion. The shocked sheriff fell onto his butt, scrambling away from the maniac with a gun. Shepherd lifted into the sitting position, his lips stretched so thin his bloody teeth showed. The gun in his hand pointed straight at me. No hesitation this time.

Six gunshots filled the room, only three originating from me. Shepherd's body jerked with each burst of blood on his chest. His disbelieving eyes never left us, not even as he fell to the ground. He didn't get back up. Ever. Luke and I lowered our guns in unison.

Some people just didn't deserve a second chance.

For Emily Kimelman, a true friend

This was the first book I ever wrote. One day I was bored in college and thought, “Huh, I wonder if I could write a book?” So instead of taking notes I just took out a new sheet of paper and began writing. I was nineteen. I'd always been fascinated with serial killers and profiling in particular, I think mostly because I'm a control freak and want to predict how people will behave and plan accordingly, so I'd researched the FBI and especially Behavioral Analysis for years. Iris just came from that research. I've since written a dozen other books, but this one started it all.

So first and foremost I have to thank Dana Isaacson and Junessa Viloria at Penguin Random House for taking a chance on this one and for the suggestions given to make it better. I'd long given up on ever seeing my firstborn published, but here she is.

I also have to thank the millions of libraries and bookstores where I worked on it, especially the Prince William County, Albemarle County, Orange County, and Fayette County library systems.

As always, thanks to my betas Susan Dowis, Ginny Dowis, Jill Kardell, and Theresa Friedrich for their suggestions and criticisms. Being my first book, it was pretty rough and went through many incarnations. They were there for them all.

Last, but not least, thank you to my agent Sandy Lu of The L. Perkins Literary Agency for her hard work correcting and selling the book.

Beautiful Maids All in a Row

Justice

Galilee Rising

Fall of Heroes

Nemesis

Mind Over Monsters

To Catch a Vampire

Death Takes a Holiday

High Moon

What's a Witch to Do?

Werewolf Sings the Blues

Witch Upon a Star

Verity Hart vs. the Vampyres

J
ENNIFER
H
ARLOW
spent her restless childhood fighting with her three brothers and scaring the heck out of herself with horror movies and books. She grew up to earn a degree in psychology at the University of Virginia, which she put to use as a radio DJ, crisis hotline volunteer, bookseller, lab assistant, wedding coordinator, and government investigator. Currently she calls Atlanta home, but that restless itch is ever present. In her free time she continues to scare the bejeebers out of herself by watching scary movies and opening her credit card bills.

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by Jennifer Harlow

Coming soon from Alibi

I am going to throw up.

The doughnuts I ate in the green room five minutes ago were churning like a washing machine in my stomach, and were making their way up to my throat, wishing to return from where they originally came from. I knew it was a bad idea to eat four of them, but what could I do? They were sitting there calling to me like the sirens in
The Odyssey.
I couldn't resist them anymore than Odysseus could. It wasn't like there was anything else to do in that room. I'd read all the magazines and was left entirely alone with no distractions except a full buffet of my favorite foods: eclairs, doughnuts, and candy bars. My willpower was only so strong.

I blamed it all on Miranda Snow, my agent. If she hadn't been so good at her job and hadn't sent in a request for my favorite foods to be available, I wouldn't have been willing the doughnuts to stay down in my stomach where they belonged. If they were there, of course I was going to eat them. I ate when I was nervous, she knew that. I should have begun requesting a fruit basket when I realized I'd gained almost ten pounds in less than a month. But no matter how many talk shows or interviews I did, I'd get nervous just before going on and pigged out. I should have been over the pre-show jitters after three weeks of doing practically nothing else but no. I'd been on everything from BNN,
The Piers Anthony Show,
Today,
but it never got any easier. But the show that day,
the
show, was the one I'd been dreading/eagerly awaiting since Miranda first told me they'd contacted her. This was
Shelly Monroe,
the biggest of the bigs.

Shelly Monroe, who'd interviewed royalty, presidents, dictators. She was the grandmother of the modern talk show. She started them all forty years before and had been a constant friend in millions of homes for decades, including mine. I'd watched her since I was seven years old when I had chickenpox. Her guests fascinated me. One day she had on a sex worker and the next a movie star, anyone with a story to tell. It was the hour she did on Ted Bundy that got me interested in the profiling of serial killers, which ultimately led me to the FBI. And if I hadn't been with the FBI, I never would have crossed paths with Jeremy Shepherd, which landed me on
The Shelly Monroe Show
. I'd come full circle.

My stomach gurgled again, that time loud enough for the PAs on the other side of room to hear. My babysitter, a twentysomething PA with a hood down over her eyebrow had pretty much ignored me, but after the rumble she glanced over, that hooded eye cocked. I smiled unevenly.

“You nervous?” she asked.

“A little,” I admitted.

“Shit, after everything you went through, this should be nothing,” she said.

“One would think,” I said under my breath.

Chatter from her headset made the girl turn away from me. “Yeah, gotcha,” she said into her microphone. She turned back to me. “It's almost time. Come on.”

Oh, fuck,
I thought.
Here we go
.

I swallowed down the doughnuts and sighed. She was right. I'd gone to-to-toe with some of the evilest people imaginable but it was a stupid talk show that was finally going to give me a heart attack. The PA led me behind a curtain backstage, which hid me from the audience and vice versa. I wanted to peek out from behind the curtain to see them all, especially after they began applauding, but I refrained. It was on the list of no-nos reiterated to me by the assistant producer. The clapping went up a notch—okay, it was bordering on frenzy—a second later. Shelly had strolled onstage, wearing her signature Anne Klein pant suit. I couldn't help myself. I peeked out and saw two middle-aged housewives dressed in floral skirts on their feet, hooting and hollering like they were at a football game. Everyone loved Shelly.

After what felt like ten minutes, the applause died down and both front and backstage were as quiet as a church during Mardi Gras.

Then she began to speak.

“Thank you, thank you for that wonderful greeting,” Shelly said in her Texas twang. “I hope y'all are as excited as I am to meet today's guest. She is something special, without a doubt. Most of us have never encountered the darker side of life. Murder, violence, evil are just things we watch on television. And thank the good Lord for that, no?”

There was a collective chuckle through the audience.

“But our guest today has come face to face with pure evil more than once. In fact, she
sought
these things out, often to her own detriment. As an agent in the FBI's elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, Dr. Ballard managed to find Sheriff Stephen Merriweather, also known as the Rosetta Ripper, who later escaped and attacked her and her husband, unfortunately killing him. Yet even after this personal tragedy, Dr. Ballard returned to the FBI to help them track the man known as the Woodsman, who was responsible for the deaths of five women along the Eastern seaboard, who was later identified as bestselling author Dr. Jeremy Shepherd, a former guest of this very show. Once again, Dr. Ballard put her very life on the line to bring Dr. Shepherd to justice. So please help me welcome an incredibly brave woman to the show, Dr. Iris Ballard.”

My cue. I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the curtain onto the stage. The audience applause was as loud as it was for Shelly. It was humbling. I waved to my adoring fans as I walked toward the standing host. She was smaller in person. Shorter than me by a few inches, with her frosted blonde hair falling into a pageboy cut framing her pointed face. When I reached the famous cream-colored couch I'd seen almost every week for twenty-six years, I was almost giddy. I didn't know if it was the wild cheering, the lights, or the fact that Shelly Fucking Monroe was hugging me like an old friend, I giggled like a little girl.

Somehow when she let me go I stopped my near hysteria. She took her seat in the matching armchair and I on the couch, smoothing my blue and white plaid skirt out. My agent, Miranda the cruel, insisted I wore a skirt on every interview. Something to do with playing up my femininity and toning down my image as a killer with two notches on my belt. I ceded to her expertise. She had just gotten a publisher to agree to pay me more than a million dollars for my autobiography. For that kind of money I'd have done interviews as Ronald McDonald if she told me to.

“Thank you for being on the show,” Shelly said, as she always did.

The customary response was: “Thank you for having me.”

“So, let me just start by asking how you're doing,” she said as if we were old friends. “It's only been three weeks since Jeremy Shepherd held you captive in your own home and you were forced to…defend yourself. I can't imagine something that horrific, let alone having to live through it.”

“Well, I almost didn't,” I pointed out. This got a laugh. Who didn't love gallows humor? “But, I'm okay. I'm fine. It was hell to live through, without question, but I've gotten so much support not only from my friends and family but from everyone. I can't thank everyone whose sent emails or messages with their support.”

Keeping busy almost 24/7 with interviews, meetings, and flying across America helped too. For three weeks there hadn't been a day I'd had more than a moment to myself.

“As I mentioned before,” Shelly continued, “I
met
Jeremy Shepherd. He sat on that very couch, and let me tell you, just from my impression of him during our interviews, from our dinners together…I would have let him babysit my grandbabies,” she said, voice going up an octave. “He seemed so…nice. Together. It's still hard for me to think of him as a rapist and serial murderer.”

“He had everyone fooled,” I assured her. “Most serial killers appear nice, charming even. That's how they get close to their victims. Shepherd was especially skilled at this. A handsome, rich, famous sociopath? It was almost too easy for him to blend in. But like all serial killers, he had several masks he wore. The pleasant, intelligent psychiatrist was one, the philanthropist another, but his real face he hid from everyone but those six women.”

“And you.”

“Yes, and me.”

Shelly sat back in her seat, and I knew it was coming. The hard balls. I was ready. “In other interviews, you were quite candid about your own personal demons: depression, alcoholism, pills, which all stemmed from a prior attack in which your husband was murdered in your own home. I have to ask because some of Dr. Shepherd's supporters often bring it up: Do you still struggle with those?”

“You never stop struggling with them, Shelly,” I admitted, “but strangely, what happened with Shepherd forced me to finally take control of them. I haven't touched a pill harder than aspirin or had a single alcoholic beverage since I was released from the hospital. Shepherd attacking me was a wake-up call. You never know how much you want to live until you're about to die, I guess.”

“So something positive came from all your experiences?”

“Actually a lot of good came from it, and not just for me. The families of the victims called me right after the news broke, and thanked me for bringing their daughters justice. They gained some sense of closure. Everything I went through was worth just that.”

“And I'm sure the money pouring in isn't a terrible thing either. I heard before coming out you just signed a seven figure deal for a book
and
an Oscar-winning actress wants to produce a movie about you.”

My cheeks turned red from the blushing. “I'm not going to lie, those aspects do not suck.” The audience chuckled again.

Shelly turned to the camera with the red light on. “When we come back, Dr. Ballard will take us through her harrowing encounter with the Woodsman, Jeremy Shepherd. Stay tuned.”

Cue applause.

Sitting by the window overlooking Central Park in my complimentary Egyptian-cotton robe, dipping my filet mignon into the best Béarnaise sauce on the east coast, I was happy. Yes, me, Iris Ballard, the eternal pessimist was happy. Didn't think it was possible myself. Two months earlier I was finding new ways to slowly kill myself, popping pills like Mentos and drinking half a bottle of vodka a day, and there I was, sitting in a five-star hotel having just signed a million-dollar book deal, eating a fifty-dollar steak and loving every second of it. It was like I was a different person. No more crazy Iris Ballard. She died in my basement, killed by a madman with a grudge, which was funny because that was actually how she was born two years earlier. Crazy Iris emerged the moment her husband was shot in the head in front of her. The old Iris Ballard died right along with her husband and somebody new took over her life. But that woman died as well, so who sat in that hotel room with a smile on her face? A national hero who movie stars gush over at lunches, who Shelly Freaking Monroe hugged. A vast improvement, no?

The press descended on Grafton, North Carolina, my adopted town before I'd even checked out of the hospital. Every major network, newspaper, and blogger swarmed my house, the college I worked at, even my students' dorms. I could understand why. I was the infamous, disgraced former FBI profiler who'd caught the Woodsman. Add to that the serial killer was a famous self-help guru? Nobody believed he was, even the FBI, until he broke into my home and tried to kill me. It was kind of hard for people not to believe he had homicidal tendencies after that. So I killed him. Dead. Callous, I know, but he deserved it. Not just for raping, torturing, and strangling five innocent women but he also knocked me out, chained me up in my basement, and proceeded to torture me as well. I had to get over a dozen stitches.

He would have killed me too if not for my best friend and ex-partner Luke. Special Agent Luke Hudson, who once again rode in and saved my sorry ass, getting shot in the process, something I hadn't heard the end of. When we talked on the phone, which was about every other day, and I said something catty, he just countered with, “Well, you wouldn't even have options if I hadn't come when I did. I got shot for you, so I'm right. The end.”

Okay, he didn't really say that, but I knew he was thinking it.

I dipped the last of my steak into the sauce and swallowed it down. Melted just like butter on a hot griddle. I had to say the best part of being a media sensation in demand by every network, publisher, Hollywood producer, and newspaper had to be the expendable income. Along with the movie and book deal, BNN had offered me a position as an on-call expert when crime stories cropped up. If I could work out of their Charlotte, NC, affiliate I had every intention of taking the job. I had no intention of returning to teaching at Grafton College. I had no illusions about my teaching skills. I'd never liked it and with the money raking in, and if I was smart about investing, I could live for years off of what I had. My house would be paid off, with a new roof to boot, and I could probably even take a cruise. Growing up dirt poor, I'd learned you couldn't always get what you needed, let alone what you wanted. I was lucky to get a new pair of shoes once a year. I was looking forward to not worrying about money every other week. And all I had to do was almost die a horrible, painful death to get there.

As I pushed the room service cart into the hallway, my new iPhone rang. I groaned and shut the door. Only four people had the new number and Miranda was the only one to use it. I was sure she was calling to tell me all the things I did wrong today. I told too many jokes, I shouldn't have shaken the publisher's hand so hard, on and on and on she would go. When I actually accepted the call, I was already tense and ready to fight.

“Hello, Miranda,” I said.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” a familiar male voice said, “but it's not Miranda.”

A wide smile crossed my face at the sound of his voice, as I'm told it always did. To quote Marilyn Monroe, “I got goosepimply all over” whenever I heard his voice. It wasn't a sexual thing—or at least that's what I told myself—it was more about excitement. It'd been almost three days since our last call, and I had so much to tell him.