Rising Heat (103 page)

He was a chameleon… one who disguised himself as the situation demanded. And he had gotten away with it for years.

“Do you know how easy it is to track someone, to stalk someone like I did you when I have access to numerous resources, including security cameras?”

He was looking down at me now. The look in his eyes—

“I have access to camera feeds all over town. So easy to watch you.”

“You
bastard!”

Cutter turned toward Hawk, his jaw working. “Shut the fuck up, Hawk. This is all your fault.”

What?

“What are you talking about?” Hawk snapped.

“Do you know what it’s like to live in someone’s shadow?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Cutter?” Hawk demanded.

“Never being good enough? Do you know what it’s like to be compared to
you? You,
a freshman and me a senior? Do you have any
idea?”

I glanced between Hawk and Cutter, confused. Hawk looked stunned as he stared at his friend — former friend.

“In spite of your carousing in high school and after? In spite of that bad crowd you got in with, the drinking? Even though you did some jail time? Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

“What are you talking about, Cutter? Who was comparing us?”

“My parents!” Cutter shouted. Spittle shot from his mouth as he glared down at Hawk. “Do you know what that’s like? To not ever be good enough, not even for your own parents?” He shook his head. “Even when you were in jail, it was poor Hawk this, poor Hawk that.”

Hawk shook his head. “Your parents never compared us—”

I tried to track this new development. That was what this was about?

“Think back, Hawk. All the times they sat together at sporting events… all the times they compared your accolades against mine?”

“You’re off your fucking rocker, Cutter. I never heard anything like that from your parents, or mine. It’s not true and you know it. We played on the same teams—”

“And you were always the most popular, weren’t you?” Cutter interrupted, his voice figuratively dripping with disdain. “The hot freshman who cut a swath through high school the moment you stepped on campus. Your instant reputation for being ‘the man’.”

Hawk shook his head. “This is beyond stupid, Cutter—”

“You don’t know how much I’ve always loathed you—”

Hawk stared up at him in dismay.

“You lived on the wild side, while I had to struggle—”

“What are you—?”

“Do you know how many times I heard my mother talking to yours on the phone while you were in jail? After you told your mother that you were sorry, that you would turn your life around, strive to make your family proud?”

Cutter was infuriated, pacing around the table, his expression twisted, his cheeks flushed with anger, his eyes darting to Hawk with hatred.

“And you know what my mother said to that? She said that she wished I would try as hard as you did. That she was sure that if
you
put your mind to it, you would be successful at anything you did.”

“Cutter—”

“That she hoped that I would make her proud, like you were making your mother proud!”

Hawk shook his head, staring up at Cutter as if he were seeing him for the first time.

“You made me sick. You were a screw-up and you knew it. And yet, despite that, my parents compared me to you?”

Hawk shifted in his chair, winced, and then glanced down at me before turning back to Cutter. What was that look? Was he trying to tell me something?

“Even if that was true, Cutter, you made good. You joined the police—”

“Ever wonder
why
I joined the police department?”

“I thought it was to protect and serve,” Hawk said calmly.

I realized he was trying to calm Cutter down.

“No, it wasn’t,” Cutter said. “It was to get my parents off my back. To pay just a bit of attention to me. To make them proud of me. Even after you went to jail, everybody talked about you. Rooted for you. Hoped that when you got out you would turn your life around.”

A sound of disbelief from Hawk. “You’re talking crazy, Cutter. You had everything going for you. I threw it away, got tempted, let that wild side you’re talking about lead me to make stupid choices.”

Cutter didn’t respond to that. He was focused on
his
truth, crazy as it was, crazy as it sounded to me at least. And that’s what made him even more dangerous. I realized that someone so focused on a single thought was hard to distract. Such focus would make him unpredictable. He kept repeating himself.

“Do you know what it’s like never to be good enough, even for your parents? It didn’t matter that I was the senior, you the freshman. My parents never made the distinction.” He snorted. “No matter what you did, no matter how bad you were, you never seemed troubled by it. You never got punished—”

“You don’t call jail time being punished?”

“And you came out smelling like a rose, didn’t you?” Cutter snarled. “Put your nose to the grindstone, got your P.I. license, and then turned your back on your past as if none of that ever mattered.”

I could see that Hawk was trying to keep his cool. His chest rose and fell, the vein in his neck throbbed with emotion, but when he spoke, his voice was calm.

“Did you want me to wallow in the past? Is that it? To feel sorry for myself? I knew I made mistakes, but what did that have to do with you and your life and the decisions you made?”

“It had a lot to do with the decisions I made,” Cutter said. “No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, I knew my parents were disappointed in me—”

“Your parents were always proud of you, Cutter,” Hawk interrupted. “Just before they died in the car accident, you were promoted. I saw their faces at the ceremony—”

Cutter smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. I’m not sure if I was more afraid of him now than I had been before he revealed himself.

“And about that time you got your P.I. license, didn’t you?” Cutter demanded. A vein in his forehead throbbed. “And you know what they were talking about the night they died? How impressed they were with you, the way you had overcome your past, decided on a career, and opened your own business. Sure, you were just starting out, but once again, it was all about you—”

“You know that’s not true.”

Cutter wasn’t listening anymore. He looked through me, through Hawk and beyond, into the past, seeing something that I couldn’t. And then he said something that sent a horrified chill through my body.

“I knew I would never satisfy them, never make them happy. But I took care of that.” He grinned. “Just before they died, I made them pay attention to me.”

Silence.

“What are you saying, Cutter?” Hawk asked quietly, calmly.

Cutter shrugged. “Let’s just say that the accident wasn’t exactly an accident.”

My eyes widened as I stared at Cutter. What was he saying? That he was responsible for his parents’ death? I didn’t know his history or Hawk’s history with him, but even the thought of it was unthinkable. Patricide?

Finally, Hawk spoke. “When did it start, Cutter?”

Cutter shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter, but since you’re asking, I’ll tell you. It was in your freshman year. One of the girls at school, a sophomore I think she was, caught my attention. Of course, she only had eyes for you, but I tricked her.” He grinned. “I told her that you were at a party, that I would take her. Told her it wasn’t far from the school campus. We took a shortcut through the woods…”

My stomach churned. I had a feeling I knew where this story was going.

“Along the way, I told her that she owed me. Of course, she didn’t want to pay up.”

“Who?” Hawk asked. “Who was the girl?”

Cutter raised his arms. “Seriously? I don’t remember her name.” He shook his head and continued pacing around the table. “I tried to feel her up a little, you know? I groped her tits a bit, tried to pull her pants down so that we could have a bit of fun, but she didn’t want to have anything to do with me.” He glared at Hawk. “Told me I was disgusting. Tried to get away. She totally pissed me off. I knew she wouldn’t have acted like that if
you
were trying to grope her, that she probably would’ve welcomed it. Anyway, I got mad. Showed her that nobody treated me like that.”

I wanted to retch.

“Anyway, when I was done with her, she was crying, threatening to report me to the police. To my parents. I couldn’t let that happen, so… it didn’t.”

He looked at me and grinned, then shrugged and looked back at Hawk.

“I stuffed her inside an old log, covered it with a bunch of brush and leaves. For all I know, she’s still out there.”

“You sick bastard,” Hawk said.

He was sick. He had to be. How could someone harbor such secret bitterness for so many years? How could he pretend to be Hawk’s friend when all along he despised everything about him?

“You killed Beth Danay and Angela Stockton? Why? How many others?”

“You think you’re so smart, Hawk. You’ve always thought yourself so superior to everyone else. But you’re not, are you? Look at you, all trussed up like a pig ready for slaughter. You had no idea, not in all these years. Do you feel like a fool now?” He paused and shook his head. “They weren’t the first.”

“Why?”

“Why Beth and Angela?” He shrugged. “Because I could. Because you always took what I wanted.”

Hawk stared at him, his expression filled with disgust.

“You always took what I wanted. Whenever you saw my interest piqued in a girl, you had to swoop in, didn’t you? Had to get first dibs, always leaving me the sloppy seconds.”

Once again he glanced at me. I swallowed.

“Even her. You can’t keep your dick in your pants, can you? You have to spoil everything.”

“I never slept with either one of them,” Hawk said softly.

“Don’t bother denying it. I saw the way they looked at you. They wanted
you,
not me.”

“I didn’t—”

“And then there was Sarah, isn’t that right?”

I glanced between Hawk and Cutter, trying to track.

“Pretty, sweet, blonde Sarah. You remember her, don’t you, Hawk? The one with the corn silk hair?”

I remembered the photograph I’d seen in Hawk’s wallet. The blonde. The photo looked old. Had that been Sarah? What had she been to Hawk?

“She disappeared the year after you got out of jail, didn’t she, Hawk? Your first missing person after you got your coveted P.I. license. I had some fun with her.”

Hawk spoke, his voice tinged with anger. “You kidnapped her? You killed her?”

“Oh, you bet I did,” Cutter replied. “I kept her for nearly a month, right here in this cellar, wondering how long it would take you to find her, to save her, but you didn’t, did you? You never did find her. You never did save her.”

I glanced up at Hawk, saw the expression of pain that crossed his features. Did he keep that photo as a reminder of his failure? To keep her memory alive? Is that why he’d bent over backward to help me, no questions, no pay?

“
That’s
what this was all about?” I exclaimed in disbelief. “Girls from high school? Jealousy?”

Hawk tried to calm me. “Tracy, don’t—”

I couldn’t stop. “Killing women just to get back at Hawk? For what? Are you insane?”

His gaze shot from Hawk to me. Then he smiled. “Oh, it’s much more than that.”

I couldn’t believe it. All this because he was jealous of Hawk? It didn’t make sense. But since when did the rationale and decisions of a psychopath have to make sense?

“Why now, Cutter?”

Cutter grinned at Hawk. “Oh, I’ve been trying to get your attention for years. To get you to notice that the truth of the missing girls, the murders, was right under your nose. You just never noticed, did you? Too busy playing detective, too busy fucking your clients.”

He looked pointedly at me while he said that. I knew he wanted to make me doubt Hawk, to make me distrust him. He knew that I already knew about Westin’s wife. He wanted me to wonder if there were others. And of course I did, but at the moment, who gave a shit?

The conversation changed course.

“You arranged for me to get jumped in the bar, didn’t you?”

I glanced up at Hawk in surprise, then back to Cutter. He was still grinning. The pieces were falling into place. Both of us had been manipulated, puppets on a string, with Cutter the puppet master. He turned to me.

“I wondered how long it would take you to run,” he said. “I thought you would a lot sooner than you did. But it didn’t matter. I was prepared.”

The smug smile on his face turned my stomach.

“I had your photo sent to every car rental agency, airport, train station and police station from here to Michigan, north to the Canadian border, back to your beloved Boston, and even further.”

No wonder he’d been able to track me, to find me in Albany. But why the game? Why not just—?

“When I found out your grandmother left that house to you, I got in before you even arrived in town. Placed the cameras.”

He stood in front of me, his head tilted at an angle as if studying me.

“Why, you might ask? Again, why not? I enjoyed watching you. I enjoyed watching you sleep, take a shower… with you none the wiser.” He laughed. “Making yourself come. I knew of you before you even arrived in Seneca. Knew what you did for a living. Knew that you were coming, a naïve little city girl coming out to the country to enjoy the tranquility. Bringing your snobby Bostonian ways into my county.”

He returned to the table, sat down on it, swinging his legs again. He pulled his gaze from me and turned to Hawk. “She was a perfect little pawn, wasn’t she, Hawk? So frightened the first time she came to the police station. So easy to push in your direction.”

My confusion was obvious. Cutter laughed.

“But why me?” I finally gasped.

“Why not?” Cutter replied, leaning back on the table, bracing his body with his hands. “You came to town, isolated yourself. A perfect target, don’t you think? So easy. Fresh meat. At first I didn’t think you would give me much of a challenge, but then you surprised me.”

I couldn’t say a word. Couldn’t form a cohesive thought.