Where Evil Waits (23 page)

K
ARA WOKE ALONE IN
the big bed, the faintest strains of sunrise lightening the room. Skylights. Luke’s story came rushing back to her… five months in a Colombian prison, digging a bullet out of his own leg in order to survive, enduring conditions she could only imagine. And all this during a time when, according to the research her office had dug up, he was a different man named Luke Varón, pushing old ladies off curbs and stealing candy from children.

Or something like that. She drew a deep breath, his scent lingering on the pillows and her insides pleasantly sore from their lovemaking, and she wondered how she had ever believed him capable of evil. Then she remembered that not only did he have an entire Federal bureaucracy creating supportive evidence of his evil, but he was
good.
Damn convincing as a henchman. Just ask Ronald Gibson.

That thought brought her back. After they’d left Gibson in the lake last night, the FBI had taken him in. She knew it was as much to keep him safe from her stalker as anything, but she had no doubt that he’d been grilled about the man named Alexander. A man who had some
master plan for Kara and no qualms about taking lives in order to enact it.

She threw off the covers, physically spent but her mind gearing up again.
Alexander. Alex. Al. Alec. Lex.
Could the killer be using a derivative of the name instead? She had to think. She had to find him.

She got out of bed, her nudity bringing a prickle of heat to her cheeks, and realized the only clothing she had was the green dress in a heap on the floor. Even the lovely brooch was outside, apparently recording wildlife, and the thought that Knutson would know precisely what she and Special Agent Luke Mann had done overnight brought a full-bodied blush to her skin. She tried the dresser and found lingerie and nightwear—all silk and lace—and wanted to die of shame thinking about Knutson ordering such things. It had been bad enough believing Varón’s network of thugs had supplied her with clothing, but even worse knowing it was the FBI.

Your tax dollars at work
.

She dragged on a pair of the lacy panties, then went to the closet, came across men’s clothing first, and took the first shirt she saw. She slipped into it—a long-sleeved burgundy Oxford—buttoned it up to the second-to-top button, and folded the sleeves to her wrists. Looked in the mirror. Luke was tall; his shirt was longer than the dress she’d worn yesterday, even at the scooped-up sides. She judged it sufficient, went to the bathroom and indulged in a moment of luscious recall when she looked at the shower, then brushed her hair and teeth and studied her image in the mirror. Without makeup, she looked more like herself, but for the wispy dark hair and the exhaustion in her eyes. Even so, it was a shock to see herself looking like this. The old Kara Chandler was gone; the news would by now be confirming her death.

She closed her eyes.
Oh, Sally, I’m sorry. And Seth. When this is over, I’ll bring Aidan back to you.

Hope nudged her. For the first time since she’d realized what was happening, she had the sense that she might not be in hiding forever. She had help. She had the FBI.

She headed down the stairs, her resolve to help
Agent Mann
with the case at full throttle. The aroma of coffee touched her nostrils and she walked into the great room. Luke sat at the table in the dining area with the phone to his ear. He looked up when she came in, said “Jesus,” and set down the phone.

He stood, his gaze running down her body from head to toe. She felt it like the touch of his hand and a second later, it
was
the touch of his hand, as he came to her and pulled her against his body. He kissed her slowly, possessively, thoroughly, leaving no nerve or emotion untouched. There was none of the awkwardness of waking up with one another and wondering whether the night should have happened. There was only the sense that it
had
happened and, indeed, it would be happening again.

Kara melted.

Luke ended the kiss and leaned back to look at her, plucked the collar of his own shirt at her throat. “Let me guess: Maddie stuffed the drawers full of lace and satin.”

“Apparently,” she said, wondering why he would know that.

“She’s always taken issue with my marital status.” He dropped his gaze and his eyes lingered on the buttons of his shirt—from just beneath her throat to the apex of her thighs. Kara felt as if he’d unbuttoned each one in his mind. “But if you think you’re any safer in that, you’d better think again.”

Kara’s skin prickled. It felt… glorious.

“I was just coming down to ask for your iPad,” she said. “Somewhere, there has to be an Alexander. I don’t recall anyone by that name. But it’s common enough that there must be several.”

He nodded and dropped his hands. He took his coffee cup and headed to the kitchen, topped his off and filled a mug for her. Set both down back at the table and slid the iPad to her, then settled back into a chair in front of his laptop. “Check defendants first,” he said. “Then hostile witnesses, family members, and friends of anyone you prosecuted. Also look at any defense attorneys you might have pissed off. I’m checking the websites for the APD and the DA’s office. Maybe it’s someone you worked with.”

Kara sat down. She didn’t need to be told those things; she knew how to conduct investigations. But he was a cop now, handling her case.

God, that felt good.

“Have you considered men you’ve dated?”

“Dated?” She pulled a face. “I’ve only been widowed a year and I married when I was eighteen.”

“Eighteen?”

“Andrew and I knew each other as teenagers. I got pregnant.”

He frowned and Kara shrugged.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he said, angling toward her. “You don’t get to hear about my family and my enemies and my time in prison, and then brush off your own story. Spill it, lady.”

“What is there to spill? You’ve never heard of teenage pregnancy before?”

“Sure. But I’m surprised your father let you marry so young.”

“
Let
me?” Kara laughed, a sound so bitter that a split second later, she was sorry she hadn’t been more guarded.
Two brothers, one sister, two loving parents. A white picket fence.
Lukas Mann wouldn’t understand. He’d had the Norman Rockwell upbringing of small-town America.

His hand touched her chin and he turned her to look at him. “Kara,” he said quietly. “Let me in.”

She blinked. It was such a sweet, heartfelt plea that she couldn’t bear to refuse him. Moreover, she realized, she didn’t want to.

“My father wasn’t… warm. I mean, I was never abused or anything like that. But I was adopted, something that I’m sure was all my mother’s idea. My birth mother was a teenager and Mom got hooked up with her by the agency during the pregnancy, paid for all the medical bills and attended my birth—the whole deal. Dad wouldn’t have ever said anything to me directly, but my being a girl was a big disappointment. He wanted a son, someone to take over Montgomery Manor.”

“A woman can’t do that?”

“This woman didn’t
want
to. Montgomery Manor was a huge, sprawling ranch. Bigger than Southfork and a lot wealthier. It was cold, and all about show. My dad worked day and night to belong to that class of person. After Mom died, he didn’t know what to do with me. So he built me things and bought me things.”

“Like a personal stable and your own horses.”

“And an Avanti and jewelry and even a wishing well. Then he put me and all my things on display. It was his way of making sure everyone would look at us and say, ‘How lucky little Kara was to become a
Montgomery
.’ ” She scoffed. “He had no idea I used to toss stones into the
well and wish we were poor. I guess I thought there would be a place for me then.”

Luke’s gaze dropped to her lips, lingering, then dragged up to her eyes again.

“When I wound up pregnant, he was mortified. He sent me to a ‘facility’ until he convinced Andrew’s family that marriage was the right answer.” She scoffed. “I always wondered how much that cost him—convincing the Chandlers. I figure they got special breeding privileges for years to come.”

“Kara.” He was angry. It took her by surprise.

“He did his best. It’s just the way it was.”

Luke narrowed his gaze on her. “Is that how you feel about Andrew? He did his best?”

“Andrew wasn’t unkind. We were kids and we messed up. In another world, we wouldn’t have ended up together. But since we did, and since we had Aidan, it seemed like staying together was the right thing to do.”

Luke cursed and his disapproval of how the men in her life had treated her touched her in a place she hadn’t known existed. She’d worked so hard—as a daughter, a wife, a mother, an attorney. Always trying to prove her worth, always wishing her father hadn’t felt stuck with her, wishing Andrew hadn’t, either.

Luke turned to face her, his gaze dark and piercing. “I would expect more from my wife,” he said, and a shiver raced over her skin. She swallowed. Yes, a man like him would expect passion, not cordiality. Love, not tolerance.

Heat.

“I’m just sayin’,” he added, and turned back to his laptop.

Okay. Well. Kara forced her gaze back to the iPad, trying not to appear as if the floor had just tilted. It was almost as if he was talking about the future.

But if so, he was back to business now. As if he hadn’t just set her world a-quiver.

“There’s a behavioral expert from Quantico who’s coming to talk to you this morning,” he said. “And now that you aren’t suspicious of my ‘resources’ anymore, there are some things you need to know.”

T
HE REST OF THE
world seeped back in and Kara’s stomach flopped. Something was wrong.

Luke clicked an icon and a picture came up. “Have you ever seen this person before?”

Kara scooted her chair beside him to look. It was a man, about thirty, with dark curly hair and a trim, athletic build. The picture had been taken on a beach, the wind catching his hair.

“No,” she said. “Who is it?”

“His name is Tony Fietti.” He winced.
“Was.”

“Was?”

“He disappeared one day while jogging, about six months ago. He just never came home. Chattanooga.”

Kara didn’t understand. “Luke…” she said, and was almost afraid to ask, “who is he?”

“Gina’s husband.”

It took a second, then it hit her.

“Oh, God,” she said. The coffee came to her throat, bitter and vile. She’d forgotten about the engraving on the pen. Aidan had laughed about it. Thought it was hysterical that his mom’s freaky secret admirer had sent her a
gift with some other woman’s name on it.
All my love, Gina.

She closed her eyes. “I was right, wasn’t I?” She forced herself to look at him. “They’re all dead. Every one of those gifts belongs to someone he killed.”

“I think so.” He pulled out his cell phone and brought up a picture of a woman. “This is Evelyn Camp.”

Kara looked, running the name through her mind. It was familiar but she didn’t know—

“Wait. That’s the woman you asked Lacy about.”

“I was actually asking you,” Luke said, “feeling you out for a reaction. I was afraid if I came right out and asked, I might come across as a cop. I just needed to know if you knew her. And you don’t.”

Kara shook her head. “No, I don’t. But who is she?”

“The woman who owns the pearl necklace. She’s been missing for nine months.”

“Oh, God.” She felt as if the world had gone hazy.

“Kara.” Luke was in her face. “Stay with me, honey. Go back to the pen. Can you remember exactly when you got it?”

The pen, the pen. She racked her brain. “It was near Christmas. I remember it being on the front porch with a package from UPS. Only, this one wasn’t wrapped in brown paper. It was… it was just like all the others, with the card attached.”

“Anthony Fietti disappeared on December seventeenth.”

“Chattanooga, you said?”

He nodded. “We think the killer is working within a drivable radius of Atlanta—of you. We’re looking for people in that radius who’ve gone missing in the past year. If we can get a list of victims, we might be able to figure out a pattern, or what the killer is trying to do.”

Kara felt as if the weight of the world had settled on her shoulders. “I shouldn’t have run. I should have gone back to the police again after Louie.”

“You did go to the police—you came to me. No one can blame you for taking dire measures to get your son out of sight, Kara. And for the record, no one will hold you liable for a faked death scheme you hatched in conjunction with the FBI. When this is over, you’ll have your life back. I promise.”

She looked at him, wanting with all her heart to believe him. He was so sincere and so determined that she might have come around to it, too, except that his cell phone chimed and he answered it. He listened, while his features turned hard as steel. “Okay,” he said, and disconnected.

He looked at Kara. “That was Knutson. There’s been another murder.”

Knutson pounded on the door and Luke opened it. Mike Hogan was with him. He did a double-take.

“Ah, shit,” he said when he saw Luke.

“Nice to see you, too,” Luke said, offering his hand. “Here’s to hoping your manners have improved since the last time.”

Hogan cursed again and Knutson stepped in past him. “Okay. So we all know you two remember each other. Quantico. Big rivalry. Get over it.”

Luke stepped back to make way for both of them. Mike Hogan did a three-sixty turn with his hands on his hips, taking in the luxury of Montiel’s place. “I should have figured you for this kind of work,” he said to Luke. “While the rest of us are out busting our balls.”

Kara came down the stairs, sparing Luke a reply. She’d changed out of his shirt when Knutson called and said he
was on the way, but looked no less striking in jeans and a tailored white blouse, with flat, strappy sandals. Luke saw Hogan straighten, taking in every detail.

“It’s a tough job,” Luke said arrogantly, “but someone’s gotta do it.”

“Kara, good to see you,” Knutson said, greeting her.

“
Agent
Knutson,” Kara said, and Knutson actually blushed.

“That would be me.”

She crossed to Hogan. “And you must be the specialist from the BAU,” she said, offering her hand.

Hogan gave her a glimpse of his shield on the inside of his jacket, then shook her hand and held it a beat too long. “Mike Hogan,” he said. Luke drew a deep breath through his nose. Mike Hogan was the definition of what women liked—tall, muscular, dark, with a square jaw and piercing eyes. Intense. The same could have been said for Luke except that Hogan was heroic and brilliant and carried his reputation as a champion for the innocent like a halo. An agent out to make the world a better place, dissecting the sickest minds and keeping society safe, the kind of cop they make TV shows about. When Mike Hogan bedded a woman, he did it as a champion of justice. Not as a drug lord or hit man.

Just now, though, Hogan had the rumpled look of a man who’d been on a runaway train for about a week. He wore a suit barely shaken from a garment bag and a tie he might have bought at Sears. He hadn’t shaved for several days and his eyes dragged dark circles beneath them. If there hadn’t been such an unpleasant history between them, Luke might have spared a thought to wonder how such a charmed life had left Hogan so beat up.

But there was, so he didn’t. And there had been another murder.

Luke turned to Knutson. “Who’d the fucker kill now?”

Hogan moved to the granite peninsula that separated the dining area from the kitchen, pulled out his briefcase, and opened a manila folder. Knutson went into the kitchen and opened a cooler they’d brought with them—cantaloupe, berries, muffins. Clearly, he thought they’d be here a while. He poured two coffees and handed one to Hogan, who ignored it in favor of spreading out photos.

“Her name is Megan Kessler,” he said.

He pulled out a picture of a woman—young, dark-haired, a little chunky. In the photo, which had been cropped from a group picture around a table in a restaurant or bar, she smiled and held up a beer. The other shots showed an alley behind the club where she’d worked. Their locations and dates were printed in the bottom right corners. Location: 3182 Ackley Street, Canton, GA. The date: Sun 6/23. This morning.

“She disappeared the night before last, after working her shift as a waitress at The Carousel, a bar in Cherokee County.”

“Someone reported her missing?” Luke asked.

“Not really,” Hogan said. “She lived alone and wasn’t too social. Went to college and work, and belonged to one gaming group online. That’s about it. So no one noticed she was gone until she didn’t show up for work last night. One of her fellow waitresses came to the Atlanta field office to report it at three this morning.”

Luke frowned. “Why didn’t she call the police?”

“Because those weren’t her instructions,” Hogan said.

“Instructions?” Kara asked.

Hogan handed a picture to her. Luke came and looked.

“What is this?” It was a picture of something in a box, but he couldn’t tell what. But then Kara’s breath caught.
She picked up the photo of Megan and put both pictures side by side.

“It’s a barrette,” she said. “Look. Megan is wearing the same one here.”

Hogan nodded. “At closing time last night, the waitress at the club found that box at the cash register. The barrette was inside and there was a card.” He slipped out another photo: a horse card.

Kara paled.

“Want to know what the card said inside?” Hogan asked.

“ ‘TRUTH,’ ” Luke said.

“No.” He handed them the next picture, which was a shot of the inside lettering. “It said, ‘Better call the FBI.’ ”

Luke’s brain stalled, then it all came clear. “He couldn’t get to Kara, so he found a way to get to me.”

“You?” Kara looked stricken but it morphed to confusion. “How did he know to go to the FBI?” Her cheeks blanched. “It’s just like Louie. He’s still following me. He kno—”

“No, Kara,” Luke said, trying to forestall the panic that threatened. “He made me for a Fed after the fire. He hung around and watched the scene until the FBI arrived. One of our agents chased him and identified himself.”

Her brow furrowed and she worked through it. “That’s why you didn’t keep me from going back at Lake Allatoona last night. Your cover was already blown, so you didn’t care.”

He shrugged. “The timing was okay. There was no harm at that point in letting you in on it.” He paused and looked at her. “Not to mention that lying to you was killing me.”

“Moving on?” Hogan said. “Along with the barrette and the card came a photograph. It was printed on regular
paper from a computer, folded up and stuffed inside the envelope.”

Luke cursed. Of course there would be a picture. “Let me guess: It’s a picture of Megan Kessler with ligatures around her neck and the garrote on her lap.”

Hogan winced. “Sort of.”

Sort of? Luke frowned and Hogan produced the photo. But he didn’t set this one on the counter. He handed it to Luke instead.

Luke took it, his nerves prickling. He looked at the photo and his heart slammed into his rib cage.

Jesus, no.