Killing Secrets (3 page)

The warning cut off Patrick’s outburst as effectively as it had when they were both seventeen and bent on kicking the crap out of each other. Jack always won hands down despite the fact they’d stood eye-to-eye, even then at six-foot-two. In truth, the only person who’d ever cowed Jack was mom. Even their tough and burly street cop father toed the line rather than disappoint her.

It was one of the reasons she’d made such a great foster parent. Patrick might have been the only natural-born child of Ross and Evelyn Thorne, but he’d grown up with five brothers thanks to a slim bird of a woman who’d wielded an enormous influence on them all, an influence that hasn’t abated in the years since her “boys” had grown into manhood. Patrick certainly hadn’t wandered far from her homemade casseroles and old-fashioned homilies, not for long.

He glanced out the open office window at the six-bedroom Victorian next door where he’d lived until he’d enlisted in the army at eighteen. Days before he was scheduled to sign his Rangers re-enlistment papers, a parachuting accident forced him into permanent retirement. Giving in to his parents’ repeated offers to float him his first loan to get Thorne Enterprises off the ground, he’d bought the neighboring house and converted most of the lower floor of the Victorian into office space for his construction business.

“Dad would understand my desire to catch this man,” he said bitterly. “I refuse to stand by and do nothing.”

“You are doing something. You’re patiently filing reports and allowing the department to catch your vandal,” Jack replied, more a warning than a reassurance.

“I’ve only filed three police reports, but I’m sure I can lay half a dozen more attacks at this bugger’s door.” He ran his hand through his hair to corral his frustration. “What about fingerprints on the hammer? Have you identified anything in the clothes left behind?” Somehow, the single untouched wall with women’s clothing stapled all over it like some kind of macabre trophy wall was more disturbing than the vicious holes his saboteur left everywhere else.

“It’s one of your own hammers kept in a tool box with a broken lock. Anyone could have handled it. I’ll be surprised if they find a viable print, although the clothes might reveal something.” Jack heaved a long suffering sigh. “We’ve barely had time to catalogue the evidence since you called us this morning. We’re not exactly sitting on our thumbs, no matter what you think.”

“What I
think
is it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep my problems under wraps.”

“You couldn’t tell after reading that sweet, full-page feature the
Denver Post
ran on you yesterday.” Jack picked up the newspaper section sitting on the corner of Patrick’s desk and read the headline aloud. “‘No Thorns in Thorne Enterprise’s Rosy Future’. According to this you’re,” he scanned the article, “‘a new contractor barely in his thirties with a Midas touch who’s made it to the major leagues with the multi-million dollar, upscale Villas at Three Oaks Ranch’.” Jack grinned. “You must have really schmoozed that reporter, bro.”

“The headline would have read something radically different,” Patrick replied sourly, “if she’d dug a little deeper and uncovered the truth.”

Angered again at the thought of what he stood to lose, he reached across the desk, snatched the newspaper out of Jack’s hand, and threw it into a wire basket for his office manager, Jane Brown, to file. “You know what I’ve been dealing with these last few months,” he said. “Vandals tag building sites. Supplies go missing. Equipment breaks down.

“But this is different, Jack. You saw those walls at Southgate. This isn’t kids on a lark, pissing out territorial boundaries.”

“I agree. But as my captain pointed out, I’m a little close to the situation and I’m not on the case.”

Patrick barked a harsh laugh. “What does this guy have to do before the department takes this seriously? Leave a dead body?”

“It might take just that,” Jack retorted. “We’re up to our armpits in what’s rolled downhill from the mayor’s office after the kidnapping of that councilman’s daughter last week.”

If it weren’t for the radios blasting all day on his sites Patrick wouldn’t keep up with local events. Yet he’d heard about the coed who’d disappeared while he was in Cheyenne. “She’s been gone, what, four days? Do you have any leads?”

“We don’t even have a ransom note. After a coworker dropped her off at her apartment complex, it’s like the girl disappeared into thin air.”

Patrick saw Jack’s jaw tighten, a sign of the increasing stress he’d been under in recent months. “You think she’s a victim of the Angel Killer, don’t you?” The local news media had dubbed the serial killer with the name because of the angel tattoo he’d burned into each of the girls he brutally killed. He remembered Jack’s fury, as one of the detectives on the task force, over the leak of that critical piece of information.

“Unless her body shows up we can’t be certain, but yeah, we think she may be the fourth.” Jack grunted. “This guy has one hell of a cooling off period after each one. He’s like a phantom. He disappears, only to pop back up several months later. His third victim was just last month. So if this girl does show up dead, his timetable’s seriously escalating.”

Jack paused and reached for his coffee cup. After drinking half of it in one swallow, he returned to their original conversation. “The point is, your vandalism isn’t high up on our ‘To Do’ list.”

Finding the missing girl was critical. It didn’t, however, resolve Patrick’s problem. “I’ll stop wasting your time filing reports,” he said.

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “I
will
arrest you if I hear you’re pursuing this on your own,” he warned. “This is a criminal investigation. The last thing we need is a hotheaded civilian charging in and mucking things up.”

“I won’t—”

Holding up his hand, Jack cut him off. “I’ll find whoever’s doing this if I have to investigate myself. Just give me time.”

“Time is one commodity we may not have.” He railed at the uneasiness that had begun to gnaw on him. “The attacks have gotten worse the past few weeks. Something tells me they’re leading up to something.”

“Let’s hope you’re wrong.”

Patrick knew he’d pushed Jack as hard as he dared, but he couldn’t let it go. “We’re heading into the height of our construction season. I’m juggling several luxury homes and remodel jobs, not to mention the Southgate and Mortenson condo sites. The dirt work starts on the first three villas next week.

“What am I supposed to do? Shut down my entire operation? I have more than fifty employees with families to feed.” He waved a hand at the schedule posted on the wall above the wainscoting next to his desk. “I’m going to be screwed if I start losing subcontractors because they can’t rearrange their schedules to accommodate these delays.”

“Hire night security,” Jack suggested, “at least until we find this guy.”

“Already done.” Acid churned in his gut at the thought of how much his saboteur was costing him. “Find him, Jack. Fast. There’s a reason my business office is still here in my home. I’m stretched to the limit. None of my crews will have jobs if this goes on much longer.”

Jack leaned forward in his chair. “Patrick, I get that you’re frustrated. The best we can do is increase patrols around your sites for a while to see if that will help. There will be an extra patrol here, too.”

“That’s not necessary. Just protect the sites and my crews.”

Jack didn’t say anything. Reaching for his coffee cup, he emptied it before he set it back on the desk with a slight grimace, like the coffee had suddenly turned bitter. “I had an unofficial chat with the police shrink and showed him the pictures the forensics team took at the condo,” he said. “He agrees with you. Whoever your vandal is, he’s channeling some serious rage. The doc also believes this may be personal. He thinks buttoning down this guy’s playground might make him take a more direct route to you.”

“You think I’m under a personal threat?”

“For all intents and purposes, you are Thorne Enterprises. If you attack one, you attack the other. I’d feel better if you keep that in mind the next time you walk out the door.”

The chill of mortality that crawled under Patrick’s skin was ugly and familiar—one of the few things he remembered about those moments after wind shear caught his parachute and threw him into a tangle of trees, ending his Ranger career. “It’s a good thing I have you to watch my back then, huh, big brother?” he said.

“Damn straight, runt.” Jack was only four months older than Patrick but his descent into the familiar adolescent name-calling underscored his concern. “So don’t go off half cocked like the Lone Ranger. Mom and Dad will be really ticked if you get yourself killed.”

Patrick’s Lone Ranger days ended when he buried his wife and child. “It’s just as well Mom and Dad are gone until your wedding next month. We won’t have to worry about them.”

“Maybe not. But we have no idea how far this perp will reach into your life, so I need you to keep an eye on Mom’s and Dad’s houseguests while I work on the problem. Rachel James has had her own brand of trouble, and I promised Mom I’d check on her and her little girl periodically.”

Had Mom asked
all
of his brothers—excluding Ben living in California—to look in on the willowy blond house-sitting their mother’s flourishing greenhouse next door? For some reason, the thought of four single men traipsing up the flower-laden front path to the divorcee’s door like a herd of rutting bull elk pissed him off.

Not that he had any interest in racing his brothers up that path toward sure destruction. “I have enough problems,” he grumbled. “The last thing I want is to take on another of Mom’s special projects. I don’t rescue her broken wings anymore.”

Jack looked askance at the term their brother, Cole, had given to the troubled women their mother sometimes counseled. “How do you know what Rachel’s like? She’s been here more than three days, and you haven’t bothered to meet her.”

“I’ve been kind of busy since I left your bachelor party on Thursday,” he said in his defense. “I had to meet with the architects and bankers for the Villa project, remember? With the economy the way it is, they wanted my personal assurances the project is moving forward and on budget.” If he didn’t keep to the schedule they’d hammered out, Thorne Enterprises was finished. Everything was riding on this project. “Maybe you don’t remember. You were pretty drunk when I left your place.”

“I was not drunk. Much.” Jack shrugged. “Anyway, you could have made an effort this morning.”

“Holiday or not, I work. If I hadn’t inspected the sites this morning, I wouldn’t have discovered the condo destruction until tomorrow.” He stared at his brother. “Why are you pushing this woman on me?”

“I’m not push—” Jack paused. Then his eyebrows rose. “For God’s sake, Patrick, I just thought you should meet her before you start making assumptions about her. No one’s asking you to marry this one!”

Air lodged in Patrick’s lungs under the onslaught of harsh emotions that welled up with the breach of the forbidden subject. Pain. Torment. Anger. They cut through him with all the speed of a buzz saw.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” Jack stopped in mid-apology. “No. I’m not sorry! I don’t care what everyone says. I’m tired of pussyfooting around Karly’s memory and what she did. It wasn’t your fault. She’s dead. You’re not. It’s been almost two years, Patrick.
Two
. When are you going to stop punishing yourself?”

“This has nothing to do with Karly.” Except his hands, clenched on the arms of his office chair, called him a liar.

“Tell that to someone who didn’t spend four days putting you back together last year.” Jack studied him a moment too long. “Should I arrange a short vacation soon? The anniversary of her death is coming up again in, what, a few weeks?”

Three weeks, five days, and six hours, give or take a few numb minutes. But who was counting?

“Save your heroic impulses for your fiancée, Jack.” Patrick forced his hands to relax against the arms of the chair. Jack had dragged him from the black hole he’d crawled into last year without a word about it after it was done. He’d earned the right to probe the one topic Patrick refused to discuss with the rest of his family. That didn’t mean he intended to talk about it now. “I won’t be drowning my sorrows this year,” he said with studied calm.

This year, he was avoiding the family homestead in the mountains where Karly was buried. With the rigid construction schedule he’d laid out, he had no time to battle his personal demons. He’d come to terms with the circumstances of Karly’s death, and his part in it, set that part of his life in concrete where it would remain undisturbed. “I plan to be chin deep in Spanish tile and mural painters for the rest of the summer.”

“Well, I’ll be! Sam was right. Joe was positive—”

His eyes narrowed at the mention of two of his other foster brothers. “Sounds like I missed a family meeting while I was in Cheyenne. Was I the only topic under consideration or did you take turns psychoanalyzing each other?”

“Just you.” A familiar, crooked grin spread over Jack’s face. “Our time was limited, and we do try to do a thorough job.”

“And your conclusions?”

Jack opened his mouth, but Patrick stopped him. “No, don’t bother. Let me guess.”

He considered his family members. “Cole’s prepared to take me on one of his bachelor excursions so he can drown me in wine, women and song. Sam thinks I should do what he does, bury all the emotional baggage under a clinical façade and hours of work. Joe, the only one of you with psychiatric training, believes I should wallow in my misery until I come out the other side of the pit whole and happy. And you, Mom and Dad agree I should get married again and lose the rest of my sanity in the arms of another woman.”