There had been copycats over the years, and the second I thought it, the idea took hold because, really, the man I knew was not some kind of vigilante. And honestly, if he were going to make an overture of love toward me, he would have probably kidnapped me, gutted me, and filled my cadaver with flowers. That was more his speed—the statement, not this. I had no idea what was going on, but the longer I stood there, the more alien the scene became.
I had visited nineteen scenes where Hartley had killed a woman, and each was reverently arranged in a way that if you didn’t touch them, you would have sworn they were alive until you saw the other side of their body or their face or really looked at what they were holding—one woman had a suitcase filled with her own organs—or sitting on. Another woman was lounging on a chaise, arranged so that’s what you saw, ease and grace, the drape of her body over the expensive piece of furniture, but when you walked around to the other side, her torso was hollowed out and filled with various toys, stuffed animals, and dolls. It turned out her company employed child labor in China, and the toys represented the playtime, the childhood, stolen from the kids. Horrifying, yes, but not the act of a man killing for any other reason than making a statement. The bodies in front of me were not that.
“Who are they?” Becker asked Kelson.
“The middle one there, missing his heart, that’s Emile Stigler. We had Interpol looking for him because he was supposed to be in Brazil.”
I turned to Kelson. “Do you think he was actually there?”
He nodded. “I do. I don’t know if Hartley killed him there and transported the body, or if he brought him back to the US and killed him here—we have no way of knowing.”
“No,” Adair chimed in, joining us. “We can’t guess when the killing was done or how without an autopsy. What we can say for certain is that the top three men on the FBI’s Most Wanted are now here, dead, apparently as a gift.”
“It’s more than that,” Kelson said, studying me, scrutinizing me. “May I be frank?”
“Go ahead,” I granted, crossing my arms, waiting, realizing that normally my skin would be crawling with just the feel of being so close to something Hartley had done. But I wasn’t getting that. It was horrifying, yes, but the longer I stood there, the less I felt like this was his doing.
“It’s like he’s courting you.”
I heard Ian catch his breath, so I turned, gave a subtle shake of my head that had him squinting with confusion, and then returned my attention back to Kelson.
“Courting me? That’s ridiculous,” I said, shooting that down with a quick shake of my head. “Where are you getting that?”
“From Kelson. He’s one of our top profilers. We brought him in because no one knows Hartley better,” Adair explained, gesturing at him.
That would have made sense if I weren’t there, if I didn’t know better. And while there was no surge of pride like I had knowing no one knew Ian better than me… still, I was absolutely confident Kelson was out of his depth with Hartley. “Since when?” I prodded.
“I’m sorry?” Adair asked, clearly annoyed. It was in his tone and his scowl.
“Since when does your guy know Craig Hartley so well?” I asked flatly. “I’ve never heard of him, and I’ve certainly never met him before today.” The fact of the matter was, when they needed to talk to Hartley, to have him answer questions—they asked me to ask him. It had been like that since he first tried to kill me and I saved him from being shot by my partner at the time. Cochran Norris had wanted to put a bullet in the serial killer; I wanted him rotting in jail. I won the argument and nearly died in the process, and now, these many years later, I would have loved to not be his favorite law enforcement officer, but that ship had long sailed. So what Adair was saying was total crap. I was the authority on Prince Charming and always would be.
“Kelson is the—”
“No one knows Hartley like me,” I advised him solemnly, and my words sounded hollow and pained because it hurt to say, even though it was the truth. “So I ask again, where are you getting this whole courting crap?”
“It’s not crap,” Kelson almost snarled, and I saw it then, the anger. It was there in the glint in his eyes, the flush on his cheeks, the flared nostrils, and the thin line of his lips pressing together so tight the muscles in his jaw corded. More words clearly wanted to come out, and he was mustering all his strength to stay silent. I had too many years of talking to people not to see the signs. Ian’s hand on my shoulder was not a surprise.