Dying for Love (14 page)

He grabbed his flashlight and approached the car slowly in case the shooter hadn’t been alone. Maddison directed his team to begin photographing the scene.

“Collect bullets and shotgun shells,” Lieutenant Maddison said. “We’ll need to compare them to the bullets from Miss Nettleton’s gun.”

The driver’s door stood ajar, and John leaned in, frowning at the sight of the bullet hole in the woman’s head. She’d been shot between the eyes. Clean. To the point. Immediate death.

Then the shooter had gone after Amelia . . .

His gut instinct suggested the murder was a professional hit, not the work of a raging, out-of-control ex-spouse or stalker.

Which meant he could have been targeting Amelia.

The dirt stuck to Zack’s skin. Cold ate at his bones and toes where he had been stuffed below the ground. Water dripped from above, through the dirt. Cold. Icy. Making a puddle where he sat.

“This will make you strong. You must pass the test.”

Pass it or die. The man hadn’t said it, but Zack understood.

The banshees were screaming again. Singing their song of death. Laughing at the little boys who refused to give in.

The shrill sound was so loud, Zack thought his eardrums would explode.

Great loud shrieks that sounded as if the banshee was in pain.

Or was that her tearing out the heart of another lost one?

There were so many. The little boys wandered the endless halls in his mind. Crept in the side doors in the dark.

Turned into monsters before his eyes.

Just like the one who lived in his head.

“Help me,” he whispered to the boy. “Please, help me.”

But the boy was so far away he didn’t know if it would do any good.

Chapter Fourteen

S
no
w turned to sleet, slashing at John as he searched the woman’s car and purse and found an ID. He brought it to Lieutenant Maddison. “The woman’s name is Deanna Jayne. She was thirty-eight.”

Maddison used his tablet and plugged her name into the databases. “She was a single mother of a fifteen-year-old girl. Her husband’s in prison for spousal abuse.”

“The reason she joined the network,” John concluded.

“She has a sister,” Maddison said. “Hopefully she’ll take the daughter and raise her.”

Amelia sighed, and tugged her hood over her head. Already snowflakes dotted her hair, and she was shivering from the cold. “Now her fifteen-year-old daughter is motherless. All because she tried to help me.”

“Stop,” John said softly. “The woman knew the dangers. She chose to join this group and chose to help you.”

A CSI approached with the woman’s cell phone. “I’ll take this to the lab and see what we get off of it.”

“This information has to remain confidential,” John said. “We don’t want to endanger the women and children the group is trying to protect.”

“I understand,” Maddison said. “We’ll analyze her phone records, incoming and outgoing, and I’ll speak with Sister Grace to verify who’s in the program before we step on any toes.”

A CSI held up an evidence bag. “Looks like the shooter used a forty-five-caliber gun.”

The type of weapon a professional might use, not a street gun.

“Any other forensics?” John asked.

“We’re still looking,” the CSI said. “So far the only prints on the car are the woman’s.”

Damn. He doubted they’d get much from the burned vehicle either.

“We found three shotgun slugs,” another CSI said.

Maddison turned to Amelia. “I’ll need that shotgun for comparison.”

“I’ll get it.” John headed back to his SUV to drive Amelia to her car so he could retrieve the shotgun. His phone buzzed, and he frowned. It was almost one a.m.

Father Hallard’s number appeared.

He quickly connected the call. “Father Hallard.”

“Have you heard from Sister Grace?”

“No. Why?”

“Because she’s gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Father Hallard said. “She left a note saying not to look for her, that it was safer if we let her go.”

“She’s on the run,” John said. Which meant she might know more than she’d told them.

And she was afraid talking to them would get her killed.

Sleet hammered the trees and ground, stinging her cheeks. Amelia couldn’t erase the image of the dead woman from her mind. The blood on her forehead . . .

Her poor daughter . . .

John looked troubled as he ended the call. “Sister Grace left town.”

A sliver of fear trickled through Amelia. This other woman had been murdered, and now Sister Grace was gone . . . “Is she okay?”

“Father Hallard said she left a note saying not to look for her, that it was safer that way.”

Amelia’s heart pounded. “She’s scared. She knew it was dangerous helping me.”

“But she did it because she obviously believed you deserved to find your baby.”

Still, emotions thickened Amelia’s throat. Needing something to do with her hands, she fiddled with the buttons on her coat. “Then she thinks something bad happened to him.”

John cut her a sideways look. “Maybe. Maybe not.” They dodged falling twigs and hail as they rushed to his SUV. John drove to her car and retrieved her shotgun, then gave it to the CSI. Another team had shown up along with a tow truck to check out the burning vehicle and the driver before processing and clearing the wreckage.

“That gun belonged to my grandfather,” Amelia said. She had very few things of his left. Most had burned in the house fire.

“I’ll get it back for you after CSI finishes,” John said.

John caught her hand, heat charging through her. “I’m going to follow you home and make sure you’re safe.”

Amelia swallowed hard. She wanted to argue that she was fine on her own, but she still hadn’t told him about the intruder taunting her with her alters.

Besides, his gravelly low voice sent a shimmer of longing and awareness through her. She wanted to reach out and hold his hand, to hang on to him and ask him to stay the night with her.

But he was a professional working a case, not a man interested in her personally.

And she had too much baggage to expect any man to love her.

John followed Amelia back to the guesthouse on the farm listening to the news as he drove. The sleet storm was predicted to last through the next day.

“Roads are hazardous. Please stay home if you don’t have to travel.”

Right. He’d tuck in and make cocoa with Amelia and they’d stay in bed all day.

His chest clenched. Where had that thought come from?

The images that flashed in his head were so erotic and tender that his body hardened.

Dammit. Staying in bed and making love to Amelia was not an option.

The SUV churned through the layers of snow and ice on the drive, but he made it to the end and parked. The charred remains of the old farmhouse reminded him that danger had surrounded Amelia all her life.

He would make sure the danger ended.

She parked in front of the cottage, and he scanned the perimeter, searching for an intruder or someone who might be waiting to ambush her.

Hopefully CSI would pinpoint evidence on the shooter and find his motive.

Amelia rubbed her gloved hands together and ran up the path to her front door. She paused on the doorstep, her gaze searching the property.

His instincts climbed a notch, and he slogged through the sludge and met her on the stoop. The keys jangled in her shaking hands, and he took them from her. Her hands were shaking so badly he was tempted to cradle them between his own and rub them until they warmed.

But he couldn’t touch her. If he did, he might forget his resolve to remain professional.

“Let me search inside,” he said softly.

She nodded and let him open the door.

When he stepped inside and she flipped on a light, he immediately noticed the paintings against the wall. Dark, sinister canvases filled with blacks and reds, traumatic memories of what she’d endured at the sanitarium.

Some depicted Amelia and her twin as children who were close, yet in some instances so far apart that a canyon literally yawned between them.

One twin in the darkness, one twin in the light.

He quickly searched the interior for an intruder. The living area and kitchen were clear.

The homemade quilt on the bed made his chest tighten, and suddenly he saw the two of them tangled in the sheets together making love.

Heat speared him as the images continued.
He kissed Amelia, stripped her naked, and pounded himself inside her until they were both lost in each other
.

When he looked up at her, her eyes were luminous with emotions. Fear. Hunger. Desire.

Amelia was the most vulnerable-looking woman he’d ever met. Yet the strongest and most beautiful as well.

She had a depth to her eyes and spirit born from pain and loneliness and the will to survive.

A loneliness that called out to him from the far reaches of his own lost soul.

He could take lessons from her when it came to strength and courage. She had faced her demons, had undergone therapy to deal with them so she could be whole.

While he’d taken the coward’s way out. Sure he was trying to redeem himself with good acts. But he hadn’t faced his past, had been running from it, running from himself, too afraid of what he might find.

She lifted a hand and pressed it to his jaw, and his knees nearly caved. God, he wanted her.

Overcome with raw need, he pulled her into his arms and fused his mouth with hers. Hunger shot through him, making his body burn with desire as she parted her lips in invitation and threaded her fingers through his hair.

She tasted sweet and passionate and so lonely that she stirred his passion and filled the empty holes in his own troubled soul. She moaned and pulled him closer, rubbing her foot along his calf.

His body went rock hard, his cock pulsing with an ache to be inside her.

He groaned, hunger surging through him as she ran her hands down his back and over his ass.

Their tongues danced together, firing the raw desire raging through him, and he backed her toward the bed.

But just as he laid her down and her hair fanned across the pillow, another image interceded.

He was dressed in a military uniform, pacing beside a cell.

Children were crying somewhere, screaming that they needed help.

He had to get to them, save them. Then he looked down and he was holding a gun, guarding the place where they were being held.

The storm raged outside, but Amelia blocked it out as John’s kiss swept her into a mindless world of pleasure. She raked her hands down his back, willing him closer, desperate to have him undress and to feel his naked skin against hers.

Her nipples beaded to stiff peaks, aching for his mouth, and titillating sensations skated through her as he probed her lips apart with his tongue. She yearned to run her tongue along his torso and down his abdomen to the sexual promises below his belt.

His hands, his touch, his mouth, his body—it all felt so familiar. So right.

Had they been together before? If so, why didn’t she remember it? Why hadn’t he mentioned it?

He growled low in his throat, then suddenly pushed away from her, his eyes flaring with emotions she didn’t recognize. Their erratic breathing reverberated in the air between them, his eyes stormy with passion.

Yet his jaw was clamped shut, his mouth set in a grim line.

“That was a mistake.”

Hurt speared her. “Why? Because you think I’m not stable?”

“I didn’t say that.”

She reached for him again, her body throbbing for release. “Then why is it wrong? You can’t deny the heat between us.”

“No, but it’s just the moment. You could have been killed tonight,” he said gruffly. “Adrenaline makes people reach out for comfort from whoever’s closest.”

Anger mounted on top of the hurt. “So you think I’d just jump in bed with anyone?”