Love Me Dead (Lilah Love 3)

“You’re that worried?”

I’ve never been one to sugarcoat things, and when I try, it usually goes badly. I don’t even try now. “I’ll book the room.”

She makes a face, and I’m pretty sure she might cry. Crying requires coddling, and I don’t do well with coddling, mostly because it often forces you to lie. I’m not going to lie to Beth. “I’ll text you the reservation,” I say and walk away.

And since I can’t assign law enforcement when she’s with law enforcement, I then text Kane: Have “Jay” follow Beth.

He replies with: Done. Can you talk?

I reply with: In person.

He doesn’t push. He understands what I’m telling him. There are things to say, but they can’t be spoken on an open phone line.

Next, I text Tic Tac: FBI agent Jess Monroe. I need to know everything about him. If we miss something, someone might die.

He replies with: You really do know how to ruin a guy’s life, Lilah Love.

Maybe I do, but if I save Beth’s, I can live with that.

***

Victim number two is identified, Shelly Willit, twenty-eight, and a literary editor. Age and hair color match that of Mia Moore, career might have a creative connection but a loose one; an advertising executive and an editor. It could be some connection to a book they both promoted. I bank that idea for later use. For now, it’s Otherworld, crime scene mode. I do a walk through of Shelly’s apartment that is only a few blocks from Mia’s, directing the team in their efforts, but for me, on the surface, only one thing standing out. It’s so clean she has to be OCD. Beyond all else, that could be the connecting dots. Two women, both OCD. She also likes books, she has lots of books, which makes sense, she’s an editor but each is perfectly lined up. Each is completely dust free.

It’s ten in the morning when I drag my drenched and dried mess of an ass into my apartment building. I could have been home at eight, but somehow, I fell asleep at a desk in the morgue, and some guy thought I was dead and started screaming. Despite taking a shower at the morgue—yes, they have a shower—and then dressing in a T-shirt and a pair of police pants, I’m pretty sure his reaction confirms that my version of looking like shit right now has reached epic proportions. I’m awake now, though, and ready to shower properly, drink coffee, eat something with ten thousand grams of sugar, and get to work.

Once I’m at my door on the fifteenth floor, I unlock it to find a tall, dark drink of trouble and hot man standing in the doorway. Kane is here, in my apartment, despite the fact that I haven’t given him a key or security clearance to enter.

CHAPTER TEN

His strong square jaw is set hard, his favored Italian suit traded for a pair of black jeans and a T-shirt, his dark hair slicked back. He stands here in my apartment with me in the hallway, acting like he owns more than the moment, like he owns me. Kane is that arrogant. In fact, he personifies that damn word, so much so that those rich brown eyes of his burn me with their intensity, a dare in their depths. A dare to tell the lie I always want to tell when it comes to this man. He’s daring me to say that I don’t want him. He’s daring me to say that I don’t want him here. We both know that I do, of course, want him and want him here. Wanting Kane, wanting him in my life, has never been the problem. All the parts of us that are the same in that dark dirty way, that feed more of the same in each other, those things are the problem.

He says I pull him toward the right.

I say he pulls me toward the wrong.

He says we land in the middle.

I’m afraid the middle is still a dangerous place.

I don’t like to feel fear.

Anger comes at me hard and fast and from a deep simmering place. I pull my gun and stalk toward him. He backs up, moving deeper into the apartment with me following. “Holy fuck, Lilah. Are we really doing this again?”

I kick my door shut. I even take the time to lock my door because I don’t want to get killed by Umbrella Man while killing Kane. “I didn’t invite you in. I told you not to have Jay stalk me.”

“Lilah,” he warns softly. “You pulling a gun on me is getting old.”

“What are you going to do about it? Kill me? I’m the one with the fucking gun.”

He moves, and he’s fast, athletic, a black belt who taught me to be a black belt. He catches my hand, closing his over mine and the weapon, but we both know I let him. He doesn’t even try to take it from me. He steps closer into the barrel and presses it against his chest. “Shoot me this time or stop pointing a gun at me. Now or never, beautiful.”

“You think I won’t do it?”

“I know you and what you will and won’t do. I know you like no one else knows you and that pisses you off. You’re a killer, Lilah, of course you’ll do it, but to be clear, it’s the only way you’ll get rid of me.”

The root of my anger explodes into reality, burning through me, and I don’t even try to hold it back. “Seems like you were pretty easy to get rid of all those years that I was in LA.”

“You know why I didn’t come after you.”

“Because you were too busy fucking that blonde bimbo in the Hamptons?”

“Holy fuck, Lilah. I’m a man. I had sex. I was fucking here. You were all but living with Rich.”

“Rich was a co-worker I happened to fuck in LA.”

“Who came here and went after me? Because he was just a fuck buddy? Bullshit. He wanted to marry you.”

“And I should have married him. He was good for me.”

“And I’m not?”

“We’re not good for each other.”

Now anger flares in his eyes. “Then fucking shoot me, Lilah. Deal with it once and for all. The Society would cheer my loss.”

My cold heart isn’t so cold with those words. The idea of this man gone hurts. It hurts bad. “Don’t say that. I don’t fucking want you dead, Kane. Let go of the gun.”

“Are you going to stop pointing it at me?”

“Probably.”

“Lilah—”

“I have anger issues with you, Kane. I hate you.”

He stares at me a few beats and then releases my hand. He doesn’t back away. I don’t back away.

I stare down at the gun and then look at him. “It was easier when I didn’t hate you.”

He takes the gun and slides it into my holster. His hand settles on my hip, scorching in every possible way, in the certainty that I can’t let him go, in the certainty that we will burn alive and do it together. He steps into me. “I stayed away to keep them away.” He tangles his fingers in my hair and stares down at me. “Because I knew that if we were together, they’d see trouble. They’d come at you, and you weren’t mentally ready for that. I did everything I did, including what I did when you were attacked, to protect you. Because I fucking love you, Lilah.”

“And yet, every time I think about you staying away, that doesn’t compute.”

“There’s no in between for us. It’s all or nothing. That’s who we are together. The minute I came for you, there would be no walking away without you. And you weren’t ready for what that meant. You knew then, what we both know now. The only way for me to protect you is for me to kill them all.”

I don’t jolt with shock. This is Kane. This is the Kane I know. “Is that what you plan to do? Kill them all?”

“This is one of those moments when we both pretend that I didn’t say what I just said. When we both pretend it doesn’t mean what it means. But I don’t lie to you. I have never lied to you. So I’m going to ask you now, with that in mind, do you really want me to answer that?”

“Yes. Answer, Kane. Is that your plan? To kill them all?”