Murder Notes (Lilah Love 1)

“Go. Get me answers this time,” he says before showing me his back.

Grinding my teeth, I face forward and walk, pushing through the layer of personnel to find Joe, the redheaded forensic guy—which is actually what everyone calls him—leaning over the victim, his thick-rimmed glasses inching down his nose. “Hiya, Agent Love.”

“Hi, Joe,” I say, but it’s not him that has my attention at present. It’s the dead, naked male body in the sand, water washing over his bare feet, and the chill racing down my spine, and not because I’m squeamish. Because this is exactly how we found another victim only two nights ago, and we never found the victim’s clothes. I don’t expect to now either. The absence of clothes on the body, or anywhere to be found, is assumed by most on the scene to be an effort to hide evidence. But not by me. My gut said there was more to it two days ago, and it most definitely does now as well.

I step closer and Joe moves to the dead man’s head. “Bullet between the eyes,” he says, glancing up at me and indicating the clean hole in the center of the brows. “Look familiar?”

“All too familiar,” I say, removing plastic gloves from my bag as I squat in the sand and inspect the remains.

“Clean entry,” Joe adds. “Perfect precision, no mess, no fuss.”

“Were the clothes taken off before or after the murder?”

“Before.”

I don’t ask his reasoning. He’ll detail it in his report.

“And the case two days ago?”

“Also before, and pending blood-splatter analysis and confirmation, of course, this case is a virtual clone to that one.”

“Only that was a woman,” I say, looking for any signs of struggle he might have missed, while I struggle myself with my hair that I should have tied back in this damn wind.

“But that doesn’t rule out a serial killer, right?” he asks, sounding a bit too excited about the prospect.

“Serial killers and assassins are different breeds,” I say. “And we’re at two victims, which does not equate to a serial killer, at least by definition.”

“Assassin? You think this is an assassin?”

“Yes,” I reply simply.

“What kind of assassin takes off the victim’s clothes?”

“This one,” I say absently, my gaze catching on the tattoo on the man’s arm, the arm not shoved half under his body and into the sand, a foreboding knot forming in my stomach. “Can I see that ink?”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “I wanted to look at that, too. It looks interesting.” He moves to the side of the man, shifting the arm, and the ease of movement says I’m right: the guy is practically still warm. “I’m thinking of getting a tattoo myself,” he says.

“Time of death?” I ask, focusing on the case.

“He’s fresh,” he says. “I’m estimating three a.m., maybe three thirty.” He changes the subject. “I’m thinking Superman. Do chicks dig Superman?”

“What?” I say, looking at him.

“I was thinking I’d get a Superman tattoo.”

“If you’re trying to embrace your resident geek status, it works.”

“Who says I’m the resident geek?”

“Everyone except you, apparently. Embrace it. It works for you.”

He glowers. “Seriously, Agent Love. Could you just—”

“The tattoo, Joe,” I say, feeling that knot in my stomach growing.

“Right. Tattoo. His. Not mine.”

He flips the arm just enough that I get the full view of the tattoo, and I hear nothing else he says. I see the Virgin Mary with blood dripping out of her mouth, and suddenly I am back on another beach. My lashes lower and I’m living the exact moment I was grabbed from behind. I had twisted around and thrown an ineffective defensive move. The ineffective part, and the punishment I’d received for being that weak, is the reason that I now train just as hard in my physical combat skills as I do on constantly honing my profiling abilities. I’d gone down hard on the sandy ground with a heavy male body on top of me, big, muscular arms caging me. One of his beefy forearms had been etched with a tattoo, moving and flexing with his flesh while he assaulted me. A tattoo of the Virgin Mary, bleeding from her mouth. Praying to her or anyone else did nothing to save me.

“Special Agent Love.”

At the sound of my name, I snap back to the present to find Detective Oliver standing behind Joe, glowering at me, not the dead body. “Are you sleeping or getting me my answers?”

I inhale and stand up, turning to find Assistant Director Murphy a good twenty yards away. Yanking my gloves off, I start walking in that direction, only to have Detective Oliver catch up with me. “Hold on there, sweetie.”

Anger officially ignited, I whirl on him. “Sweetie? Well, look here, honey. Unless you want me to shove that sock you have in your pants in your mouth, back off, Detective Oliver. I get it. This is your turf and I’m just some twenty-eight-year-old kid, while you’re the seasoned vet. But I’ve been in and around law enforcement since I was in diapers, and I’m damn good at my job.”

He arches a brow. “Are you done?”

“No,” I say, “but you are. We’re trying to catch the same damn monster, so back the fuck off.”

He stares at me long and hard, to the point that I move to leave. He gently shackles my arm and turns me around. “Don’t touch me,” I snap.

He holds up his hands. “Understood.” His eyes narrow. “You want to talk about what set you off back there?”

“Aside from you,” I lie, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He slides his hands to his hips under his jacket. “I challenge you every damn time you come onto my crime scene—”

“Challenge? Is that what you call it?”

“Every time you come onto my crime scene,” he repeats, “and you never let me rattle you. What got you back there? Because it wasn’t me.”

“That’s an assassination,” I say, moving away from the topic of me. “And this is an opinion and a working theory, not a fact, but I say he takes their clothes off at the directive of a client.”

“None of that answers my question. What set you off?”

The sound of footsteps has us both looking up to find my boss approaching, and there is something about his full-on gray hair, which is as perfectly groomed as his tan suit is fitted, along with his carriage, that radiates authority and control. His control, not that of Detective Oliver.

“Special Agent Love, Detective Oliver,” he greets, stopping in profile to us and glancing between our warring expressions. “Do we have a problem?”

“You and I should talk, Director Murphy,” Detective Oliver states.

“After I talk to my agent, who graciously got out of bed yet again to aid one of your cases.”

“The case you took over,” Detective Oliver reminds him.

“Oh, I did, didn’t I?” my boss replies and then says more firmly, “I did. I need to talk to my agent. Alone.”

Detective Oliver scowls and leaves while Director Murphy looks at me. “What was all that about?”

“Typical turf war when we take over. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I’ll handle it,” he promises and then, thankfully, moves on. “New York has a case that has enough similarities to these two here that we may be looking at a serial killer who’s crossed state lines. That makes this our baby.”

“This isn’t a serial killer,” I say, repeating what I told Detective Oliver. “It’s an assassination.”

“Or a serial killer obsessed with assassination-style murders. Profile the victims, then talk to me.”

I hesitate but can’t let this go. “You said New York?”

“That’s right. Your home state, which, aside from your profiling skills, makes you the right match for this case.”