Kissing the Killer: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Barone Crime Family) (27 page)

“Easton,” I said softly, “is this about earlier, that article?”

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing important.”

He was already halfway out the door. “Wait a second!” I said, following him. “How did you get here?”

He looked back at me. “Cab.”

“And how are you getting home? I doubt there are any running this late.”

“Walk, probably.”

“You idiot” I said, shaking my head. “Just stay here.”

“Stay with you, sis?” he asked, grinning for the first time. “Seems like we shouldn’t mix business with pleasure.”

“Is this business?”

“Something like that.”

“Stay in the room next door. It’s empty.”

“I’d rather stay in your bed. You can wrap those legs around my face, let me taste your pussy.”

“Go to sleep, Easton.”

“Your loss.” He turned and left. I heard the room next door open and then close.

I shut my own door, locking it. I climbed back into bed, my head reeling.

What was that? He had acted so strange back at his office, but this was even stranger still. What was he looking for?

It had to do with the article I read. Something about that murder rang a bell for him, and he was probably worried.

But why worry about me?

I pulled the covers up over my head, mortified and worried. I was terrified that he had heard me whispering his name as I’d touched myself, and I worried that I was somehow in danger. He seemed to think there was a possibility.

I fell asleep thinking about him, alternating between worry and lust.

In the morning, I woke up slowly. I got up and stretched and then padded softly down the hall. His room’s door was already standing open, the bed an empty mess.

I
looked
through the binoculars at a normal-looking suburban home. There was nothing remarkable about the place, except maybe that it was being watched by a private detective and his stepsister.

He was supposed to be in there, and supposed to be cheating, but I hadn’t seen a single peep from him or from his supposed mistress for hours. The client had told us that he brought her home when she was away for business conferences, but she had never been able to prove it.

So far, she seemed paranoid. I made a little note in my log and glanced over at Laney. She looked like she was sleeping, but I knew better. She’d been strange all day, and I couldn’t really blame her, not since the night before.

How could I explain to her what that was all about? Partially fueled by alcohol, but mostly fueled by my own paranoia, I took a cab over to my mother’s place just to check up on my stepsister. She had no clue why, of course, and could never guess. I wasn’t even sure if my mother knew, though she probably did.

The article had tipped me past the point of no return. For the last few months I’d had my suspicions, had my hunches, but there was no proof, only a string of seemingly disconnected dead bodies popping up across the country, slowly honing in on me.

The girl with her fingers removed was a message, a clear sign.

It was a message to me from the past. From a violent, deadly past. From a man I’d thought was gone for good.

“What’s that?” Laney said, pulling me back into the present.

I followed her gaze and saw it. There was a woman walking up the sidewalk, wearing a bathrobe and slippers.

“A neighbor?” Laney asked.

I began snapping pictures. “That’d make sense.”

“She looks like a normal person.”

“Of course she does.” I snapped away as the woman walked up the driveway, glancing around nervously. “These people aren’t monsters.”

“But they’re cheaters.”

“Yeah, they’re cheaters. They’re not good people. They’re just not monsters.”

“I don’t see the difference.”

I was quiet for a second. “I know monsters. And believe me, these people are probably shitty and selfish and confused, but they’re not bad.”

We watched as the woman in the robe knocked on the door. After a second, our mark answered and quickly ushered the woman inside. I snapped a few pictures, getting a nice one of his face looking around outside.

“Now what?” Laney asked. “We bust in, catch them?”

I laughed. “Yeah, right. And go to jail right after that.”

“So we’re just waiting here?”

“Pretty much. We’ll get pictures and report back on what we saw.”

“Sounds pretty lame. We should catch them in the act.”

“I almost never catch them in the act.”

“Why not?”

I thought for a second. “You just don’t need to. Most people don’t need proof. They just need someone to confirm their suspicions. These pictures will probably be enough.”

“What if they’re not having sex in there?”

“They are.”

“Maybe they’re just playing board games. Maybe he’s just lonely.”

“And maybe I piss sugar.”

Laney laughed. “You know, some people actually do piss sugar.”

“Okay, and my shit smells like roses.”

She made a face. “Don’t be gross.”

“I’m just saying, trust me. I know people. I’ve been doing this for long enough to tell you they’re fucking.”

We lapsed into silence, and I hoped she was beginning to understand what it was like to be a real private detective. Most of the job was about waiting, patience, and intelligence. More often than not, we didn’t bust into someone’s house and take pictures. Instead, we sat around and waited and watched, learning as much as we could, and then we let the client decide on their own what the truth was.

I couldn’t count how many clients had blamed me for their spouse’s cheating, at least at first. Even when they had their suspicions, they couldn’t fathom that it was true. But people are always people, inherently flawed and broken. Eventually they saw the truth.

“So are we going to talk about last night?” Laney said finally.

I glanced at her. “No, we’re not.”

“You were looking for something.”

“I was drunk.”

“You weren’t drunk,” she said. “Not that drunk at least.”

I leaned closer to her. “You’re right. Sober enough to remember how fucking cute you look with bedhead.”

She blushed. “Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not. I’m always thinking about how best to slip my fingers inside your panties and to make you come.”

She looked away, and I couldn’t read her expression. “Come on. Something about that article set you off. We both know it.”

I turned away from her, not wanting to get into it. “It’s a long story.”

“We have nothing else to do.”

“Sorry, sis. Not today.”

“So are you going to show up at my room every night from now on? Check under my bed for monsters?”

“The only monster in your life is me,” I said, smirking at her. “Don’t you worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

“So do you want me to show up at your room every night?”

“No,” she said quickly. A little too quickly.

“Are you sure? I could sleep next door, sneak into your room after our parents go to bed, tongue that little pussy until you moan.”

“You can’t stand being in the same house as your mother,” she said lamely.

“Maybe not, but I’d make you come so loud I’d have to put a pillow over your mouth. That might be worth it.”

“You’re changing the subject again,” she mumbled.

“So what if I am? This is a much more interesting subject.”

“I don’t know what happened to you in the FBI, but you can tell me.”

I looked out the window, out toward the normal suburban home. Lester’s knife as it flashed out, stabbing Martin in the neck. His horrified expression, Lester’s laugh. My gun firing, again and again, almost as if I couldn’t control myself.

“I don’t need a shrink,” I said. “But you could help me in other ways.”

“How?”

I grinned at her. “Let me taste that pussy in the backseat.”

She sighed and shook her head. “You never give it up.”

“I will as soon as you do.”

She didn’t say anything else, and I went back to watching the house. But even though my attention was strictly on the job, I still kept glancing at her out of the corner of my eye.

Laney was almost a mystery to me. Maybe I could guess what sort of person she was, but that didn’t mean I knew her at all. I could guess where she was from and what she did, but that didn’t tell me everything about her.

For example, it didn’t tell me why she hung around after I had barged into her room the night before to check for serial killers.

It also didn’t explain why I couldn’t get her out of my head. Ever since the incident had made me leave the FBI, I’d found that my appetite for women had declined significantly. Before that, I’d been with plenty of all shapes and sizes. But Laney was the first to pull me back into reality, to make me want to tear her clothes off.

I couldn’t get the image of her short skirts from my head. I wanted to touch her panties, to feel her soaked spot, to make her shiver and moan under my touch. I knew she’d never been with a man like me before. I could tell every time she stared at my body and my tattoos.

But she was my stepsister, which was the fucked up part. Plus, she was my employee, although my mother was footing her salary.

And every second she spent around me put her in more danger. So why hadn’t I sent her away yet?

Because I was still hoping it wasn’t true.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed. I’d gotten good at spacing out, at watching motionless as time slipped by and I fell into a quiet meditation.

And then I caught sight of the pink robe again, but this time it wasn’t from the front door.

“Upper window,” I said.

“Huh?” Laney asked, looking up from her phone.

“Look.”

I handed her the camera and she looked through the viewfinder. It took her a second, and then she began to snap pictures.

“Holy shit,” she said.

I laughed as she took pictures. Even without the camera’s zoom, I could clearly see the woman and the man standing in front of the window and gently kissing. It was almost a tender moment, and probably one shared often. I was willing to bet it turned them on to risk getting caught, though the idea that someone was actually watching never really seemed possible.

“This has to be enough proof,” Laney said.

“More than enough.”

“I’m almost disappointed.”

“Why? This is more than I normally get.”

“No, I mean in her.” She paused and lowered the camera. “She looked so normal.”

I gently took the camera from her. “She’s still normal, Laney.” I snapped a few pictures until they disappeared. “Come on. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything. I turned the key, the engine roaring to life, and we headed back toward the office.

I locked myself in the bathroom to develop the film while Laney busied herself with whatever she did on her laptop. I wasn’t too worried about it as I went through the usual routine.

Developing film was soothing. I liked that I knew exactly what chemicals to use in exactly what proportion and order, and I knew when it was finished. The final product was because of my own two hands.

Plus, it was an excuse to look at the file again. Once the film was hung up to dry, I reached around behind the toilet bowl and pulled the folder from its taped pouch. I sat down on the seat and opened the file.

Lester Seed. Forty-three, single, blond hair, brown eyes. Five-foot-nine and two hundred pounds. He spoke with a slight lisp, but everyone described him as friendly. Some neighbors even went so far as to say that he was the nicest man they had ever met.

He volunteered at children’s organizations, which was a detail that always made me shiver. He worked as an insurance adjuster for a large company and had never had a single complaint from a superior.

All in all, Lester seemed normal.

Except he wasn’t.

It took us over a year to track him down. I couldn’t say why, but there was something about the case that drew me to it almost immediately. It had sat in our unsolved drawer for years, and for whatever reason I had pulled it out and begun to work it from the start.

I hit the same old roadblocks as everyone else. Each victim had her fingers removed, and there were signs of sexual assault, but there was never any DNA. There were no eye witnesses, and very often we couldn’t properly I.D. the girls. They were always girls, too, young girls, but never under the age of eighteen. Lester was a killer and a sick fuck, but he didn’t hurt children.

At least, we found that out later.

It sucked me in, body, mind, and soul. My partner, Martin Rodriguez, didn’t think anything of it at the time. He used to joke that I was trying to solve the unsolvable, and that I shouldn’t waste my precious hours on useless cases.

But each night I came back to the file. We were calling him the Fingers Killer back then for a lack of a better name.

He had over twelve victims that we knew about. We suspected he could have upwards of twenty, especially since the bodies ranged so far through time. He’d been active for over fifteen years, and we worried it could go even further back.

I worked that case harder than I’d ever worked anything in my life. I was obsessed, falling deeper and deeper into the pit as I learned more and more about the town. He was based in Wilder Town, Mississippi, a tiny place just like Mishawaka. Maybe that was what drew me to it from the start.

Maybe I was trying to avenge the ghosts of the dead girls because I felt like I knew every single one of them.

I got my first break after a month. I noticed a pattern to the bodies based on geography, and when we traced the pattern to some of its logical conclusions, we found more bodies.

And more bodies meant more evidence. Suddenly, the Fingerless Killer case was blown wide open. We had another six victims, one of which went back twenty years.

That girl from twenty years ago, she was Lester’s biggest mistake. I figured she was his first, though I never knew about it.

Lester Seed still haunted my dreams. Lester was one of the smartest, most dangerous men I had ever come across, even as an FBI agent who dealt exclusively with smart and dangerous men.

And I was terrified that he was back. He was supposed to be dead, shot in the chest by my gun. He was supposed to be buried somewhere deep, deep down.

But the girl without the fingers and the other bodies that kept cropping up said otherwise.

I shook my head, trying to dispel the ghosts.

Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was just a copycat. But I had a feeling, a sinking stone in my gut, that made me think something horrible was going on. Something that was just outside my reach.

“You almost done?” I heard Laney call.

I looked up, surprised. I must have been in the bathroom for a while.

“Yeah,” I called back, hastily pushing the file back into its hiding spot. “Just finished.”

I glanced down at my feet. I wasn’t done with Lester. He wasn’t letting me go.

I opened the door and quickly shut it behind me.

“You’re going to turn into a vampire if you stay in there any longer,” Laney said, smiling.

I grinned back. “If only you knew.”