Murder Notes (Lilah Love 1)

He grabs me and kisses my forehead. “Got it. You don’t like her.” He releases me. “Stay around and you can harass her and me.”

“And endure dinners here, with her, Alexandra, and Eddie? Not a chance in hell. I’m going home.”

“This is home,” he says, reaching for my door. “Remember that.”

> I back up and let him open it for me. “I’m pretty sure Dad will be glad for me to go back to LA and call it home.”

“Nonsense,” he says. “I’ll e-mail.”

“You’d better.” I climb into the car.

“You always need the last word,” he says, shutting me inside.

I roll down the window, shouting after him as he heads back to the house. “Yes, I do!”

He laughs, a low, friendly, wonderful laugh that makes me miss my brother, but not enough to stay. I roll the window back up and sit there for several beats. Why am I so damn against Woods as a suspect? He doesn’t fit. I dial Tic Tac. “You don’t give a person time to work, you know that, right?” he answers. “I guess I should be glad you’re not here and standing over me. What do you want to know?”

“Woods,” is all I say.

“I can confirm his clientele reaches beyond Manhattan and the Hamptons to LA.”

“Which connects him to all the victims. Loosely, but it’s a connection.”

“Loosely is right. There’s no record of him building in LA or even visiting.”

“We could probably connect dozens of contractors to those three places,” I say. “Is there any connection between Woods and the New York City victim directly?”

“No,” he says. “Nothing. No business dealings. No mutual friends. Not even a shared pharmacy. That’s how deep I went on this.”

“Did you cross-check phone records?”

“I checked pharmacies but not phone records? Am I an amateur? Of course I checked phone records. I haven’t gotten to the LA victims as of yet, but as far as New York goes, I have. Woods had no phone calls, e-mails, or texting exchanges that I’ve located. Of course, there could have been unregistered numbers or e-mails with remote-location access that I can’t see. I’d need any actual devices you find to be sure. As of now, I’ve pinged the phone we’re aware he owns. It’s dead or turned off. I’m watching it and his e-mail.”

I have a bad feeling this guy is going to show up dead. “I need to know if our LA victims are tied to him. Get help. Get me answers.” I hang up and sit there a moment before I make a call I dread. I dial Murphy.

“Agent,” he answers. “I thought you needed space?”

“I need you to know that there’s been a confession tied to the local murder,” I announce.

“So it was a coincidence that it happened when you landed,” he says. “That makes more sense. Had it been connected to the others, it would have been eerily timed.”

“It is connected.”

“Are you telling me we have an arrest for all these open cases?”

“No,” I say. “There’s a manhunt for the man who confessed.”

“He confessed, but he didn’t turn himself in,” Murphy goes on to assume. “And you don’t think he did it. Is that right?”

“No,” I confirm. “I do not.”

“Are you thinking a setup? Blackmail?”

“It feels like a cover-up of some sort.”

“This is a difficult question, Lilah. Are we talking cover-up by local officials?”

“It feels bigger than that.”

“Well then, screw the confession. Spare me the investigative details you’ll report later. Do we have grounds to claim jurisdiction?”

“We could, but what if I’m right? What if this is a series of assassinations? Assassins are hired. I not only want to catch the assassin, I want to know who hired this one, and that means letting them believe this cover-up is working.”

“You really believe this is an assassin?”

“Yes.”

“All right then. I’ll give you the benefit of your exceptional track record. What are you suggesting?”

“Ideally, we get to this suspect before he ends up dead and blamed for all the murders. Or even the local ones to push us out of New York. We get him. We talk to him. We convince him to work with us with the promise of protection.”

“We can lend the locals immediate resources.”

“I’d rather those resources be funneled through me and quietly. That way the locals believe I’m bowing out of this case but hanging around for personal reasons I’ll create.”

“The locals are your people, Lilah.”

It’s a statement, but it’s clear that he means it to be a question. “Not all of them.”

“A reasonable answer,” he says. “I’ll assign you a point person.”

“I want Jeff Landers. He’s already helping me.”

“He’s not my typical choice for point man, but consider it done. That said, let’s be clear: I’m not shutting down our local investigation on this end. I cannot have us back off a series of murder investigations and have your end amount to some sort of localized scandal, but Jeff will make sure there is no crossover.”

“Understood.”

“And I need to ask a question and have you answer it quickly and honestly. People are dead. More could die. Are you too close to this to do your job properly, Agent Love?”

“I am not,” I say firmly. “In fact, I’m uniquely positioned to recognize a problem someone else would not see.”

“And what happens if you find out that someone you love is involved?”

“I’ll do my job,” I vow.

He is silent. One beat. Two. Three. Until finally he says, “Make sure you do. Communicate. Update me tomorrow.” He ends the call and his question replays in my mind, taunting in a way not even Eddie achieved tonight: What happens if you find out someone you love is involved?

What indeed?

My mind turns to the easiest betrayal to swallow. Eddie and his hunger for power and a path to the higher ranks of the local elite. Alexandra’s stupidity, considering she and her money actually married the man. Of course, Pocher’s long-rumored corruption, in both the private and public sectors, has never been proven, but after looking into his eyes, I know at least some of the stories are true. Now that he’s involved with my father, I don’t like what that says about my father, but political misconduct doesn’t equate to murder. I hope.

And then there’s my brother. I’d been angry with Andrew inside the house, but the minute we were out here alone, our conversation was easy, and it had felt just like old times. We’d felt like us again. His answers had been perfect. And yet, I go back to the existence of Samantha in his life. No matter what he says, she doesn’t fit him. But then he thinks Kane doesn’t fit me. Kane does fit me, all too well, and too often, which is exactly the problem. Kane doesn’t scare me. I scare me when I’m with Kane. He connects with the parts of me I don’t want to exist. He accepts them and makes it easier for me to accept them. He makes me embrace the real me that only he knows. That’s why I can’t be around him. But that brings me back to Andrew. If he doesn’t know me, then maybe I don’t know him. I don’t like that idea. I don’t like the chatter in my head that says the bad has only just begun.

I need to find answers. I need to find Woods. He has the answers. And so does someone else. Kane might claim he’s not his father’s successor, but I’ve seen things. I know things. This is Kane’s territory. He owns this town, as his father had before him. And I’d once asked him how his father was as dirty as he was, and yet East Hampton Village, his home, remained so peaceful. He’d told me his father’s cardinal rules: Don’t work where you play. Don’t kill where you rest your head.

In my determination to stay removed from Kane, I haven’t let myself tap into how well I know him. Kane isn’t behind this murder. That means Woods really did randomly choose to kill a woman that just happened to be Kane’s employee on the very night that I arrived. Or someone wants Kane, and myself, to believe that, to keep one or both of us out of their business. If I’m right on the latter, Woods will be framed for all the murders. And my family is either involved or being used to set this up.

Holy fuck. Holy hell. Holy fuck.

I need to talk to Kane and convince him to tell me what he knows, and I need to do it now. And that means convincing him our secret

s equate to his immunity. I don’t second-guess myself. I dial Kane. And, of course, this time he doesn’t pick up on the first ring. It takes three brutal rings that feel like three hundred before he answers with, “Agent Love.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“I’m listening.”

“Not on the phone.”

“Where?”

“The Cove,” I say, a spot we both know well, and not because it represents pleasure.

He’s silent for a beat, then two. “When?”

“Now.”

“I’ll be there,” he says, and with his confirmation, I hang up.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

If you want to get answers from a man like Kane Mendez, a smart girl takes him somewhere she knows she won’t end up naked and silly-stupid. Somewhere that still tells him we’re connected. He’s protected. For me, that place is the Cove.

On the surface, a good twenty minutes from town, the Cove seems to be a hidden treasure few on Long Island know about and one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. The water is bluer than blue, and the waves break to salty-white perfection, like angel wings floating in the sea. And in the early morning, no less than a dozen seagulls dance above those angel wings, fishing for their breakfast. It’s a peaceful seclusion, an escape I’ve often welcomed. It seems to be romantic, even. A perfect place for lovers. It’s a big-ass façade, and perhaps that’s why I love it so much. It’s not what it seems any more than I am what I seem to be.

Beneath the surface, though, and after dark like now, the Cove is a different place. Even on a night like tonight when the stars are bright and the full moon brighter, the mile-long dirt road leading to the water is shrouded in shadows. The steep drops on either side are riddled with rocks and who knows what kind of animals. When the stars and moon are hiding, it’s hauntingly desolate, and as pitch black as you might imagine hell to be if it weren’t for the fire. Those are the nights I once craved here. The ones that made me face my fears. The ones that assured me that no one sane would dare come here. So if I’d run into anyone, they were probably someone I’d count on shooting. Coming here alone had become a kind of a rush.