Murder Girl (Lilah Love 2)

Once Lilah is home and has the cameras set up, she dials Kane to ask for video proof of his alibi since Samantha didn’t corroborate his story. But it’s also an excuse to ask for footage from his office to see if she can discover who left the note. Of course, Kane calls her on her falsities but still confirms he’ll get all the information over to her the next day.

Lilah, in the meantime, has been invited to a family dinner at her father’s house that night. When she arrives, she notices a fancy car that doesn’t belong to either her father or brother but learns soon enough that it belongs to Ted Pocher, the billionaire CEO of the world’s fifth-largest privately held conglomerate. Pocher tried to partner with Kane in their oil businesses, but Kane refused, causing bad blood between the two. Pocher is the driving force behind Lilah’s father’s political agenda.

Lilah is greeted by her father, and as she’s led to the dining room she’s accosted by her brother, Eddie, and Alexandra at the table, who seem to have become regulars in her father’s house in her absence. They fight. Lilah’s pissed about their presence, Alexandra baiting her for information at the diner earlier, and Eddie in general. Eddie, likewise, is pissed about Lilah’s potential jurisdictional claim, and Andrew insists he will “deal with Lilah,” which of course does not sit well with her. Lilah challenges their supposed proof of Woods’s guilt, and Alexandra says he called her and confessed in a voice mail while rambling like a crazy person. Once Lilah secures a promise that she will receive a copy of the “confession,” she leaves her father’s house. There is no doubt in her mind that the locals, her family especially, want this case closed immediately so as not to mar her father’s bid to become the next governor of New York.

Lilah hits up Tic Tac for more information on Woods, of which he doesn’t have much other than a few flimsy connections between Woods’s clientele and the places of the murders. Lilah then updates her boss, Murphy, on the situation. They discuss how to go about claiming jurisdiction and if they have enough evidence to do so. But they need to find Woods first.

Lilah concludes that she needs any information she doesn’t already have from Kane and has him meet her at “their spot” at the Cove. It was the spot where they first met, and where they would always meet thereafter. While there, she questions him about the cartel, and he insists that he did not follow in his father’s footsteps and take control. Kane divulges that he doesn’t know anything else about the murder, that he’s looking into it as well, and that there is a singular for-hire killer who kills the same way that the assassin has been killing. After Kane refuses to tell her more about the assassin because she might drive him underground, she gives him forty-eight hours to get her the name of the assassin or something else she can go off.

Of course, Kane reviewed the tapes he promised her and noticed someone slipping a note on Lilah’s car. Kane tells her that the person had their face covered, so there was no way to ID the person. When he questions her on it, Lilah avoids answering and leaves him with his deadline to deliver information.

At home, Lilah calls Lucas to discuss the security cameras they’ve put in place, and he informs her he needs a date on Saturday night to a charity event her father and Pocher are hosting. She agrees so she can get an inside look at some people who are ending up potential key players in the case. Junior leaves another note for Lilah on her chair:

D is for Deception.

While waiting for a few key points to manifest, Lilah decides to approach the New York murder by speaking with the detective who handled the case. Said detective, Marcus Rick, is out on leave, and now Nelson Moser has the case. Moser is an ex-colleague of Lilah’s who she shares a bitter past with. She also tries to get in touch with her ex-partner, Greg Harrison, but he’s out as well, leaving Lilah no choice but to track him down and see what he knows.

Arriving at the train station, Lilah is bombarded by the media, and Kane shows up as a saving grace and ends up choppering her into the city for her errands. It’s here where Kane and Lilah divulge more details of what went down that night. Lilah was drugged, and whatever she did would have caused her to lose her badge if Kane hadn’t helped hide the body. Though the true events are still a little hazy, as are the long-lasting impacts of it.

In the city, Lilah touches base with Tic Tac, and Kane lets her know what really happened with Marcus Rick—he was at a corner store when a robbery took place and tried to help, only to end up with a bullet in his gut and on leave. Thus Nelson took over the case, and word is he’s about as dirty as a snake. Lilah calls Greg after hearing this and tells him not to look into the New York case for fear he might get caught in the crosshairs.

When Lilah meets up with Greg, he’s a drunken mess on forced leave from the department due to an Internal Affairs probe. Given that Moser is his partner now, since his old one died a few weeks ago, and he’s being set up for taking bribes, there is a lot that doesn’t match up right now. But Moser is giving him extra work in private security, which he doesn’t like but he has to do to pay bills. Lilah promises to help Greg and leaves, now on the hunt for more answers about the tattoo.

Eventually cornered in an alleyway by an old man, Lilah learns that: “It’s a blood tattoo. It bleeds because you bleed.”

With that quote ingrained in her memory, Lilah heads home. On the trip back, she’s accosted by the flashbacks of her attack in more vivid details and Kane’s presence. The truth finally comes to light. Lilah was raped two years ago on the beach, and the minute Kane showed up to save her, she grabbed a knife and murdered her attacker, shoving the knife into him again and again and again. Kane buried the body, both of them having committed the perfect crime after a heinous one had been exacted on Lilah. Back to the present: Kane is pushing her to talk about the past and present. Their passion explodes into a one-off sexual encounter, after which Lilah brushes him off and sends him on his way.

The next morning, Lilah catches up with Tic Tac, who found a connection between Moser and the Romano family—the rival cartel to the Mendez cartel. The niece of one of the big Romano players has catered three of the last six events that Blink Security worked. Blink Security happens to be the company that Moser works for in his off-duty hours, and the one that he got Greg work with as well.

With that in mind, Lilah tracks down Moser, asking him for the case file on the New York murder. After Lilah catches Murphy up on the case, he mentions an army sniper who had the signature of the assassin. They called him Ghost. This is who Kane had to be talking about, so Lilah brings it up again, even threatening to go as far as approaching Romano about it.

Afterward, Lilah searches the words the old man in the alley said to her and comes up with a quote from a movie, Take Me to Church, that starred none other than Jensen Michaels—the movie star Alexandra hooked up with the night of Lilah’s attack. Lilah’s wheels start to churn. Did Alexandra help set her up to be attacked?

As more pieces start falling into place, Lilah gets yet another note, and with each one they become less and less effective in scaring her. This one reads:

B is for Body.

B is for Buried.

And I know where.

Do you?

She throws this note in her back seat.

As Lilah is leaving the bagel shop after having had quite the conversation with Andrew, Alexandra, and Eddie, she comes out to a flat tire and another note reading:

W is for Warning.

I don’t like to be taunted.

Just then, Greg shows up. He’s been called into town to work security for the charity event Lilah is attending that evening that her father and Pocher are hosting.

As Lilah is going through all her case files, she finds a familiar face staring back at her on the TV as she’s watching Take Me to Church: Laney Suthers, a high-end call girl/actress who had a world-class client list that both the NYPD and Lilah were trying to get her to give up. They were close to turning her when they found she had committed suicide, though Lilah never believed that was the cause of death.

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Lilah is now on the hunt to see if there is a connection between any of the film executives or funding companies. Tic Tac finds a Chinese production company that could be a lead, since Laney did two other movies under an alias with their backing, but nothing concrete turns up before Lilah has to attend the charity event.

Leaving the event, Lilah sees Greg getting quite close with none other than the previously mentioned niece of one of the big Romano cartel members. And as if that weren’t enough, when Kane catches up with her, insisting on escorting her out, none other than Rich shows up. Lilah, afraid of how Kane will react, turns Rich away and tells him to go home.

Of course nothing can be that simple, but as promised Lilah takes a break from the intensity of the investigation and meets with Andrew at their mother’s grave in the cemetery. And as they’re discussing the likelihood of their mother having had an affair with their father’s stepbrother—Lucas’s father—who was also aboard the plane, though no one knows why, Andrew gets a call that there’s been a decapitation murder in Manhattan. Decapitation. The calling card marker of a Mendez murder. Someone is trying to pin this on Kane. When Lilah gets to the gruesome scene with Andrew, there’s a little-known message waiting for her. Something no one else would see as a message. The movie Take Me to Church is sticking out of the DVD player.

Lilah is convinced Kane has nothing to do with this. Back at her house, she orders a pizza only to have another message taped inside, this one reading M is for Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. on one side and K is for Kane. Kane. Kane. Kane. Kane. on the other side. Lilah rushes off to see Kane. She needs answers and now.

But when she arrives at Kane’s house and he ushers her into the garage, imagine her surprise when she finds the old man who gave her the clue bound and gagged there . . . And even more surprised when Kane informs her that this old man is the patriarch of the Romano cartel . . .

And that is where we left off. And that’s exactly where we’ll pick back up again . . .

CHAPTER ONE

It’s Sunday night, and like many people, that means catching up on dirty laundry. Unlike most people, however, my list rarely includes jeans, shirts, and socks, though some might say it probably should. And it would if my list wasn’t consumed by blood, bodies, and random crime scene nastiness. Tonight, that list includes Kane Mendez, my ex-lover, who swears he’s clean when we both know he’s dirty—as in the-head-of-the-Mendez-cartel dirty. A complicated piece of the puzzle that is my life. Kane runs a powerful legit business as well, I’m an FBI profiler, and at one point he and I have killed and hidden a body together, or rather in some combination of “together.” I did the killing. He did the hiding.

Even more complicated is the fact that despite that secret, I’m presently standing in his garage pointing a gun at him, while the patriarch of the Romano family, who doesn’t exactly get invited to the Mendez family outings, is tied to a chair and gagged several feet away. Of course, he’s not the man we in law enforcement believe to be the patriarch, but Kane would know. And now I know, which is a weapon Kane has handed me, and not by accident. Kane does nothing by accident.

I give this newly discovered patriarch a quick once-over, confirming that he’s the same sunbaked old man in jeans and a T-shirt, gray hair braided down his back, I remember cornering me at the tattoo shop in the city. He’d given me a lead I’d like to know more about, which means I need him alive, thus it’s one of the reasons I confirm he’s not dead, which isn’t hard, since he’s presently fast-blinking at me. That’s enough for me to know he’s not feeling really warm and fuzzy right now, and also enough for me to dismiss him, at least for the moment, and for the obvious reason: he’s tied up and Kane is not.

I eye Kane, who is now two feet away and between me and the door, my gaze dropping to the silver cuff dangling from his wrist where I’d latched it the minute he opened the door. I part my lips to command him to cuff his second wrist, but in my mind, I play out exactly how that scene might be enacted:

I’d give him the same once-over I’d given the old man, as I do now, taking in his casual wear that’s replaced his business suit: his black jeans and snug black T-shirt that reads MENDEZ ENTERPRISES, which we both know translates to Mendez cartel, and that would piss me off. I’d lift my gaze, look right into those dark-brown eyes, and issue my command. “Finish cuffing yourself.”

He’d say, “I’m not going to do that.”

I’d then say, “I won’t kill you, Kane, but I will make you bleed, and at least two of the three of us will enjoy it. Cuff your wrist.”

“No,” he’d say, offering me nothing more as an explanation because that’s Kane. A man of few words because he means every damn one he speaks. But then he’d ask, “Would you like to have a private conversation in the kitchen?”

And I’d consider shooting him, but then I’d remember what my mother, of all people, had once told me when she was speaking of Hollywood: “When you are swimming with sharks,” she’d said, “and one of them wants you alive, you feed that shark and defang the others.” And so I would say, “Yes, Kane. I would like to have a private conversation in the kitchen.” And if it went down like that, Old Man Romano would know the dynamics of our push-and-pull, right-and-wrong connection that I won’t call a relationship, which he would most certainly exploit. And I can’t let that happen, especially since, as Kane’s enemy, he should have long ago been considered in my attack.

And so my gaze collides with Kane’s, and the arch of his brow dares to challenge me to be stupid enough to act on the fantasy scene in my head, while the glint in his eyes says he knows exactly what I’ve been thinking. He does. He knows me too well. He understands me in a way no criminal should understand a law enforcement officer. And I usually like it, which really fucking pisses me off, but this moment isn’t about my anger issues with Kane. It’s about what my gut says Romano should be allowed to see and hear, which is not division between Kane and me.

And thus, I act out another scene.

I holster my weapon and remove the key to the cuff, dangling it in the air. “You were right,” I say. “Sadly, now isn’t the time for these types of games.” I walk to him and lift his hand, removing the cuff before returning them both to my pocket with the key.

Kane smartly doesn’t push his luck and touch me but instead says exactly what he said in my fantasy scene. “Would you like to have a private conversation in the kitchen?”

So I say what I said in my fantasy scene. “Yes, Kane. I would like to have a private conversation in the kitchen.” I sound sticky-sweet and sarcastic, but I figure that isn’t really a misstep. Ask around and you’ll know. I’m not exactly the agreeable type, even if I like you. Okay. Accept you. I don’t really like people. Any of them. Which is perhaps the answer to why I’m so comfortable with dead bodies.

I don’t wait for him to motion me forward; I’m already walking toward the kitchen, which is another one of those push-and-pull things between Kane and me that I make obvious. I’m not in his control, but I dare to give him my back, actions that tell Romano the story I want him to believe: I trust Kane. I’m intimate with Kane, but he doesn’t own me. Lies. I don’t like lies, but they can sometimes keep you alive and catch the bigger liars, the perps. That I have fucked one of the two perps at my back right now too many times to count and enjoyed every moment . . . well, at least I know what makes him tick: me. I do. I’m his weakness, but he’s not mine. I’m my own weakness. I let a man who is not only off-limits but should be my target get to me, and that’s a problem I need to fix.

We enter the kitchen, dark wood beneath my feet with lighter shades, even a hint of blue, streaked here and there, but it’s still dark. Everything about Kane is dark, which is exactly one of about ten reasons I am certain I could list to put space between myself and him, now and always. But my intent to place myself at the end of the heavy wooden island, my gun on the surface of the navy-blue marble countertop, ready to aim, falls as lame as my denial that I understand Kane,

because I am like Kane in too many ways for comfort. The door shuts almost the moment I’ve passed through it, and Kane is on my heels.

I whirl around to face him. “Consider this official business. I have two dead bodies sitting with their heads in their laps, Kane. Romano’s people, and now you have him in your garage.”

“Exactly why he’s in my garage, Agent Love,” he says, as if that should absolutely make it all right. “He followed you. That was a threat, and I wasn’t going to give him time to act on those murders and go after you.”

My eyes go wide. “Did you kill his men, behead his men, because he followed me?”

“No,” he says without so much as a blink. “But I should have. Our women are off-limits. Always.”

“I’m not your woman, Kane. Not for two years. And I thought you didn’t chop off heads like your father?”

“Beautiful, I can still smell you on my skin. Taste you on my lips if I try hard enough.”

“I fucked you, Kane. You owed me that after showing up on the beach where it happened. But it was just a fuck and an escape. If that makes me yours, then I’d say Samantha, my brother’s woman who you fucked, is yours and his, too.” His eyes glint with anger, and I seize it, pushing him for an admission of guilt, repeating, “And I thought you didn’t chop off heads like your father?”

“I didn’t kill Romano’s people or order them killed,” he bites out, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if Romano did it himself.”

“Why would he do it himself?” I ask, aware that he’s avoided the entire topic of chopping off heads.