He replies with: You doubted that it was?
My answer is: Someone told me hesitation is good. I tried it. It doesn’t work for me.
He replies with: What are you saying, Lilah?
He thinks I mean we’re a problem for me. I answer with: I need to be more like you.
For the moment, he agrees, which isn’t his standard: The badge keeps us in the middle routine. It’s an endorsement for “shoot first, ask questions later.” Not that I need any shove in that direction, but my brother does. I dial him now. “I was about to call you. What the hell is going on over there? Houston says this serial killer is obsessed with you.”
“We need to talk, but not on the phone, just make sure dad has extra security.”
“Dad? He’s locked down since the pig at his event.”
“Just make sure locked down is really locked down. And be careful.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He doesn’t get to hide in a dark corner and pretend he doesn’t know what’s going on anymore, but I can’t talk about the Society on the phone. “This killer I’m dealing with taunts and kills family members.”
“I know how to use a gun, Lilah. And the pig at the event made it pretty clear dad needed extra security. It’s handled.”
I open my mouth to tell him about the poster, but damn it, he’s close to our dad. Dad is part of the Society. He might blab to dad and that’s not a risk I can take. Not on the phone when I can’t look into his eyes. “He likes poison, Andrew. Be careful. I need to go.”
“What about that talk you just said we needed to have?”
“We’re having it. Soon. Just not now.”
“Lilah—”
I hang up, and I consider texting Kane again to make sure he has men protecting my family. But he does. I know he does. I trust him to look out for my best interests. I trust him more than my brother right now and that really sucks.
My phone buzzes with Houston again. I decline and head for the door when it opens, and Nick enters, his sleeves rolled up to show off his ink. Nick, the flirt and player, who’d been at the first crime scene and suggested I take an umbrella with me. “Lilah fucking Love.”
“Nick,” I say, and when my phone rings, this time, I don’t bother to check caller ID. I know who it is, and I answer with, “I’m in the building. I’ve been trying to get to you.”
“Where in the building?” Houston demands.
I hang up, and Nick walks to the coffee pot. “Heard you had a bad night last night,” he says.
I start for the door but pause. “Were you on the scene?”
“I was off duty,” he says. “Back on just in time to meet the press out front this morning. How many dead now?”
“Too many.”
“Any leads?”
He and his hot boy attitude and curiosity feel off. In fact, he’s bugging the fuck out of me. I turn to face him. “You were off duty last night. Maybe it was you.”
He barks out laughter. “Tell that to Vivian. She’s a hot blonde who works—”
“Get me her contact information.”
He sets his cup down. “Are you serious?”
“As a lion hunting a deer,” I say. “And you’d be the deer. Get me her contact information.” I walk out the door, leaving him behind, with the sense that I’m in the warzone, right here, right now, in the police station.
Like maybe Umbrella Man is right here under my nose.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It takes me less than three minutes to get up the stairs and onto the floor where Houston waits and all but tackles me when I arrive. “My office,” he orders.
Men.
Are.
Pissing me off today.
I follow him, proving that, every now and then, I can be obedient like that, though I doubt Kane would agree—but I do so now mostly because the little vein in Houston’s eye isn’t so little anymore. It might burst, and I do have medical training. A little. Not a lot. I can call an ambulance. He enters his office first, and I walk inside. He shuts the door.
“Other than trying to get me fired, what are we discussing?”
He scowls. “I was protecting you.”
I laugh. “Such a pretty, nice boy you are.”
Now he scowls. “The press got a hold of the truth. The words ‘serial killer’ are about to be all over the headlines.”
“Okay,” I say.
That vein throbs. “Okay?” he demands. “That’s all you have to say, Agent Love? Because I was expecting more than ‘O-fucking-K.’”
“First off, Chief, it’s good to see you expanding your vocabulary. Secondly, he killed a pig and had it served at my father’s political function. He wants attention. He probably told the press himself. Did we get anything on the pig farm by the way?”
“Yes. We got nothing. There were a shit ton of pigs. No one is going to notice or care about a few pigs that were swiped.”
“You don’t just swipe a couple of pigs. You fight them, wrestle them, and load them.”
“And you know this from all your pig wrestling experience?”
“If you count a few men I’ve known, yes. And speaking of men, there was a pig in a dead man’s bed. Did someone walk him up there like a dog? Have we walked that neighborhood and looked for someone who saw the pig get walked like a dog?”
“Pigs actually do get walked like dogs, Lilah.”
“Not giant hairy pigs like that one, Mr. Someone Pissed in My Cheerios Today.”
“You, Lilah. You did.”
“And I take that as a no. No one went door to door asking about the pig. You didn’t want to risk the bad press a dead pig in a bed gets you?”
“You’re thinking about your case. I’m thinking about an entire city.”
“Someone saw this.”
“He wiped out the cameras surrounding your father’s event,” he snaps. “You think he can’t handle some pig farmers or an apartment building?”
He’s right. He could. He’s right, and I no longer wonder how he has the resources to do such things either. He has the Society behind him. And the Society is close to my father. An idea hits me, and I pull out my phone and text Tic Tac: I need a list of political contributors to my father’s campaign.
Houston’s cellphone buzzes with a text that he glances at and then me. “Sergeant Morris is here. He wants to talk to you.”
“I’m sure he does. Put him in an interrogation room. And I need to meet with the team.”
“They’re all upset over Williams. They can’t handle your shit today.”
“Oh Jesus, Houston. Aside from Williams making a shamble of the first crime scene, she set me up. She called me into that alleyway and into a booby trap. And yeah, I get it, I had more a shot at survival than her sorority sister—that we all should have fucking known about—but that’s another topic. She didn’t represent the badge, and I’m still not convinced there’s not more to it than that.”
“And you think you do?”
“Ah,” I say. “I see. That’s our problem, is it? You don’t think I represent the badge.”
He scrubs his jaw. “I didn’t say that.”
“You damn sure said enough. What’s the problem, Houston? I get the job done differently than you, so I don’t deserve my badge?”
“I’m not going down this rabbit hole with you, Agent Love. Not now. We have bigger things to deal with.”
“Bigger than your balls, Chief, that’s for damn sure. I’m going to leave before I try to find them and yank them out. Which could be embarrassing for us both since they’re so fucking small.” I reach for the door.
“Don’t trash Williams,” he warns. “I came here to clean up the department. I can’t have a serial killer and a bad cop in the press at the same time. I’m sitting in on the meeting.”
“Meetings,” I correct. “I’m formally interviewing them as co-workers of Williams. And, are you sure you have time? Shouldn’t you be changing the mayor’s diaper?”