Love Kills (Lilah Love 4)

“You underestimate me if you think I won’t,” I counter.

“I don’t underestimate you, Lilah Love. I understand you.”

Sirens sound in the near distance, approaching quickly. “Who hired you to kill me?” I ask, going where his interest leads me.

“No one.”

“Who hired you—”

“You’re asking the wrong question.”

The wrong question.

What the fuck is the right question? Because I know that he’s not Umbrella Man, and yet—he’s here, and so is Umbrella Man, and that can’t be a coincidence. “You’re setting me up.”

“I just saved your life.”

“All right then. How much to kill the man in the makeup?”

“That’s your question?”

“No,” I snap. “It’s someone else’s, but answer anyway. How much to kill—”

“For you, it’s free. I just need a name.”

“Are you serious right now? If I had a name, I’d kill him my damn self. What good are you?”

“I do always wonder why a killer hires a killer.”

“And here I thought you didn’t play games,” I counter.

“I don’t play games, Lilah Love, and you know it.”

That’s exactly what he’s doing, playing games. It doesn’t sit right in my gut. In fact, it makes me wonder if the victims could be hits he’s organized to look like victims of a killer that isn’t. It makes me wonder if I’m one of the targets. Nothing else explains why this man is here or the content of this conversation.

I shift the light from his face to just his eyes. “You don’t want to cross—”

“Kane?” he challenges.

“Me, asshole,” I say. “You don’t want to cross me because I don’t give a fuck where you land or how bloody the view. He does.”

“You think Kane Mendez cares how bloody he gets? Interesting.”

The sirens rip through the air, and vehicles screech behind us. Ghost backs away into the darkness. He’s betting that I won’t stop him. I could shoot him. I could arrest him. I decide to let him go.

For now.

But he hasn’t seen the last of me.

And I haven’t seen the last of him.

CHAPTER TWO

Rain splatters on my shoulders, while just behind me, the voices and footsteps of emergency crews echo in the dark night, made darker by cloud cover. I ignore it all, aware of the killer I just let back away from me, my flashlight and senses homed in on the alleyway, right along with my weapon. Movement to my right catches my attention, and I watch as Ghost scales a fire escape, far too quietly, invisible to anyone who doesn’t know he’s there. He’s showing me how Umbrella Man got here and left.

I swipe the light away from him before someone else sees him. He came here for a reason, and his reason is my reason for letting him go. Whatever that proves to be, whoever is behind his presence here tonight at the same time as Umbrella Man, I need to know. And it won’t be dealt with by way of the men and women in blue. I do one last scan of the alleyway with my flashlight and weapon just to make sure Ghost is gone, though I feel no danger. Not now. Not to me, at least. Ghost didn’t want me dead, or I’d be dead. Umbrella Man didn’t want me dead, or I’d be dead. Cold comfort, perhaps, but really, I’m not one of those girly girls who needs comfort at all. It’s all about facts to me. Cold hard facts. If Ghost comes for me to kill me, I’ll embrace the killer inside me. And I’ll show him a woman isn’t an animal to be put out of her misery. He’ll be the one who dies.

I give that bitch of a hellhole alleyway my back to find the EMT crew now kneeling next to Jay and a rush of law enforcement. “Two dead!” I shout out, flashing my badge. “Agent in Charge. This is my crime scene. Secure the area now and draw a wide perimeter.”

The officer nods and takes off running. Another three uniforms stop in front of me, none of them familiar faces. “Who’s in charge?”

Not a one of them steps up, or even offers to play that roll, and I just start spouting orders. “Time is not on our side. Victim number one is one of ours. I know her data. I need to know who victim number two, center stage, is now. This guy kills his victim’s families. We aren’t going to find identification on her. Get me a team to fingerprint her and get me her name and address now.” I point to an officer. “You. Do it now.” He nods, and turns away.

I focus on the rest of the crew. “I need tents up now. I need forensics teams in here now, before the rain washes away everything worth seeing. I need lights. I need photos. I need evidence bagged. I need it now. Who’s making the calls?”

“I got it,” one officer says, holding up a hand and already hitting the button on his shoulder, that controls a microphone. Finally someone fucking does something other than get rained on.

“Get me the officer in charge,” I say, “and get moving now!” With that, I dismiss them all to kneel next to Jay, who grabs my arm. “You’re a crazy bitch,” he chokes out. “They might as well not even save me. Kane’s going to kill me.”

Spotlights blast into the alleyway, and I note the pale line over his lip, a stark contrast to his dark skin. “He told me not to kill you,” I tell him. “He’s not done with you.”

“Wasn’t done with me,” he says, letting go of my arm, his eyes shutting. “Wasn’t,” he whispers. “He is now.”

I should be bothered by how afraid this man is of Kane. I’m a fucking FBI agent for God’s sake, but it’s not an emotional blow. It’s not a shock. It’s just Kane. I know the man is refined and handsome, well-spoken and polite, but he’s also brutal. Because I’m brutal. I understand you, Ghost had said to me. He doesn’t fucking understand me. And I am bothered by Kane scaring the fuck out of Jay. I lean in and whisper in his ear, “You took that bullet for me. No one gets to fucking kill you. I won’t let them.”

When I pull back and look at him, there’s a twitch to his lips, his attempt at a smile that is never fully realized. I eye the EMT who answers my unspoken question by saying, “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

Translation: the vultures are already circling above, and the grim reaper is ready to reach through the ground and yank him to hell because that’s what people who run with me and Kane do—they go to hell. Only, I plan to scratch the devil’s eyes out on the way down. Jay won’t do that, or he wouldn’t have saved me, so I just have to do it for him.

Therefore, I pin the EMT in a stare and reject his bullshit secret answer hard and fast. “Save him,” I order. “You fucking save him or someone will have to save you from me. Understand?”

His eyes go wide, and he nods quickly, a response that says he’s clearly aware that I mean what I’m saying. Which is smart on his part because I really want to kill someone right now. I should have killed Ghost. Why the fuck didn’t I kill Ghost? I could have found the instigator in all of this with him dead in the ground. I push to my feet, determined to go hunt his ass down again. An officer rushes toward me and offers me a NYPD raincoat that is big enough that I pull it over my thinner version of the same type of coat, yanking the hood over my soaked hair.

“What’s the ETA on the medical examiner?” I ask, shoving my arms into the jacket and pulling up my hood.

Before the officer can answer, I hear, “What the hell is going on?”

That demand, delivered in a snarly voice, has me turning to find Houston barreling toward me like a linebacker.

He shouldn’t be here is the only thought I manage before he again demands, “What the hell is going on?”

His out-of-character stabbing question hits ten nerves, and anyone who knows me, knows I don’t have ten nerves to spare. “I just called this in. Unless you’re my new stalker, and—and this is a big and—also the invisible man—who last I heard is being played by Johnny Depp, if he gets his shit with his ex cleaned up, of course—you can’t know about this crime scene yet. It’s not possible. And yes, that’s a fucking accusation. Do with it what you want, but explain yourself and now.”

&nbs

p; “I don’t even know what the hell that means, Lilah,” he snaps, and I swear his body is all but twitching with his effort to contain his agitation. And the thing is that Houston is a chill and Netflix kind of guy all the damn time. He doesn’t get agitated. He doesn’t twitch. Unless that’s how he’s dancing, and I don’t think he’s dancing at a crime scene, though I’ve seen a lot of weird shit when people are stressed since taking this job. “This is my city,” he adds. “You get that, right?”

“And my case. My jurisdiction.”

His lips tighten. “My city, Lilah. My job. My responsibility. And as to your question: I was nearby. And funny thing about having you and a serial killer around at the same time is that the mayor continues to breathe down my fucking throat. It keeps me on edge.”

“How the fuck are you here, Houston?” I repeat.

“I have an alert set for anything Lilah Love, which I’d tell you was to be supportive and that shit aside, I’m protecting my ass, too. You make everyone, including the mayor, act like a little bitch ass whiner. What the hell is going on?”

“You know what’s going on,” I say, not happy with his answer. “He struck again.”

“If you mean Umbrella Man,” he replies, “since when does Umbrella Man shoot random men on the street?”

“He didn’t randomly shoot a man on the street,” I snap, though he’s hit another nerve. Who the hell did shoot Jay? Because Ghost doesn’t shoot to maim. He shoots to kill. “Jay was with me,” I say. “And he got between me and Umbrella Man.”

He steps closer. “You saw him? He showed himself to you?”

“No,” I say flatly. “I was going into the alley to save the two women he had captive. Jay tried to stop me. That earned him a bullet. The bottom line right now is that he’s alive, but we have not one, but two dead women.”