Love Kills (Lilah Love 4)

He could get her to undress by phone or video, which could be traced, but how would he poison her? I look around for a glass or food, but there’s nothing. He’s too perfectly clean for a dirty glass to sit out. I’m betting if I go to the kitchen, there isn’t a glass there either, but she’s posed. He was here. If he convinced her to poison herself, she would have thrashed around in pain like the victim in the alleyway I tried to save. She would not be laid out like she was modeling. Coming here was living dangerously. He knows someone saw him. They had to have seen him. That means I can find that someone. He’s daring me to find someone who saw him. He’s daring me to find him.

And so, I will.

Where are her clothes?

I walk to the closet and open the door to find a silver dress on the floor. I pull out my camera and take a few photos and then my gaze lifts to the poster on the wall. It’s the band U2 with the song title “With or Without You” on it, the words to the song written out in the shape of a guitar. It’s as if the room goes wide and shrinks again, a memory from my past surfacing. There are voices in the apartment, the CSI team arriving. My gaze lands on a verse: You give it all but I want more.

Suddenly, I’m flashing back to the Hamptons, to the night I was raped. I was at a bar with my then best friend, Alexandra. She’d insisted we drink the champagne she’d ordered. I remember that champagne because it was my birthday and it’s all I drank that night. She was off flirting with a man, and Kane had just texted. He was flying home early. I was eager to meet him. I paid the bill, but I was suddenly quite dizzy. I stepped outside to the parking lot.

The cold night air of the parking lot helps me breathe, but something’s not right. I don’t feel right. I walk toward my car, but I sway again, a wave of confusion taking hold. I reach the driver’s side of my BMW, or what I think is my BMW. Whatever the case, I catch myself on the hard steel. I’m losing reality. I’m fading, and some part of my mind knows that I’ve been drugged and that I need to get in the car and lock the doors. And help. I need to call for help.

I shove my hand into my pocket, digging for my keys, and my fingers touch the cold steel, but I can’t seem to grip it. I lower my head to the side of the car, drawing in a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. It doesn’t help. There are sounds behind me. Voices. Laughter. “Alexandra?” I whisper, certain I hear her, but she doesn’t reply. “Alexandra?” Still no reply. More voices sound and I think I hear my brother Andrew now, but no. No. It’s another voice. It’s familiar. “Kane?”

I sway and someone catches me, someone big and strong. Unfamiliar. “Bitch is hot,” the man says. “A good fuck.”

“Stop,” I say. “Stop. Let me—”

“Her fucking phone is ringing again”

My phone is ringing? Why can’t I hear my phone ringing?

“It’s Kane,” another man says. Or no. Is it a woman?

I lose the moment. Everything is black. And then I’m in a car.

My eyes pop open as I remember something I’d forgotten until now. While everything was black, it wasn’t completely black. There was a song in my head. My eyes go to the poster. That fucking song.

The sound of voices reaches my ears, the CSI team entering the apartment, and I shove down my emotions. I hate emotions. I hate that they want to settle in my chest and make me act like a fool. Inhaling a sharp as fuck breath, I reject them hard about five times before I win. Then, and only then, do I walk back into the bedroom and I stare down at Katy. She was drugged.

I was drugged.

We have a lot more in common than a Hollywood connection.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The CSI team comes in hard and fast, dispersing into the apartment, their presence forcing me to fight the adrenaline surging through me that tells me to go to the ring leader of the Society, Pocher himself, and kill him. Instead, I make my way to the front of the apartment, put on a jumpsuit, and stay right here on the scene, doing my job. I take photos. I look for anything that leads me to the person pretending to be a serial killer. It’s not the first time I’ve thought that to be the case, but I’d dismissed that idea too easily. Because that’s what this is. Someone pretending to be a killer to lead me on a chase, to ultimately kill me.

I believe this for the next hour until I don’t anymore. I’m standing in Karen’s completely clean kitchen, in a NYPD jumpsuit, staring at the sparkling sink, when I’ve finally calmed down enough to think straight. The fact that I have to calm down to think straight says that I’m not winning this matchup.

My cellphone rings, and I grab it to find Director Murphy calling. “Agent Love,” he greets when I answer. “Why does everyone want you to go away?”

“Because I’m a pain in the ass,” I say.

“Yes. You are. I understand you have a serial killer who likes you more than most of the police force.”

“Are you worried about me, Director Murphy?”

“I do believe I’ll bet on you over this Umbrella Man, as I hear you’re calling him. Is there anything I need to know?”

Is there anything he needs to know? With Murphy, everything is coded. My job is ultimately about taking down the Society, which is why him supporting my involvement in this case makes me wonder if he knows there’s a connection. Or not. I need to rein in my thoughts before I spew toxic waste that sounds like a crazy person said it.

“I see dead people,” I say. “That’s what you need to know right now.”

“All right then,” he replies. “You can tell me what you just decided not to tell me tomorrow. As for the dead bodies, make sure you’re not one of them, so you can. Communicate, Agent Love. I feel I’ll be reminding you of this the rest of our natural lives.” He hangs up.

I shove my phone in my bag at my hip. Why didn’t I tell him this could be about the Society? Because I think immediately if the Society were setting me up, why would they leave a clue for me to find that out? They wouldn’t. That’s the answer. They wouldn’t. Bottom line, that night is still fucking with me. I let it find a way into my crime scene.

As for the song, maybe it’s a coincidence, and I need to look for a different meaning. Maybe I didn’t really hear it that night. I was drugged.

Like Katy.

Fuck.

I press my gloved hands to the sink again and lower my chin to my chest.

What am I missing?

“He’s winning.”

At Roger’s voice, I cringe. I don’t want to deal with him or his accurate statement right now. But I’ll be damn if he and Umbrella Man get the best of me in one night. I push off the island and turn to face him. “Three dead women, one night. Yes. I’d say he’s winning.”

He gives me a heavy-lidded stare, it’s a trademark “I’m judging you” stare. There’s a reason I don’t have a cat, or him, in my life right about now. Being judged ranks right up there with riding the subway next to a weird person who hasn’t bathed in a year, who’s picking bugs out of their hair and offering them to you for—who knows the fuck why they offer them to you.

I don’t like to be judged. I need out of this kitchen.

“Let me help,” he says. “We were good when we bounced ideas off each other.”

He means when I craved his approval; a need I discovered once I left New York that actually shrunk my vision. I saw his way, never outside that box. Outside the box was where I needed to be and where I plan to stay. “I’d certainly like your analysis of the crime scenes tonight,” I say because I won’t turn down any resource that might lead me to Umbrella Man. I’ll just use those resources my way. “We can talk tomorrow.”

I walk past him, out of the kitchen, about to be out of his personal space that I want him to keep when he says, “If we team up, I do believe I can keep them from pulling you off the case.”

There it is. His play at intimidation. I should have expected it. I turn and look at him. And I smile. That’s all. I just smile. Not a happy smile. Not an amused smile. It’s more an acid burn smile. I let it sit there, li

ngering between us, and then I walk away.

I exit to the living room as Melanie walks in with Houston. Considering I know why Houston is here—to wet himself over the mayor while being a pain in my ass—I focus on Melanie. “Why are you here and not down in the rain, dealing with the bodies that could be affected by the elements?”

She puffs up, all indignant and proper, with her NYPD jumpsuit that’s ten sizes too big with not a gun on her person. “I’m done with what has to be done. I wanted them moved out of those elements.”

“Good,” I say. “You can get to the lab and find out what poison he’s using to kill them.” It’s with that statement that I realize my flawed reasoning a few minutes ago. I was drugged. These women were poisoned. That’s not the same thing. It’s a fact that has me mentally stepping back and rethinking where my mind has gone.

“Beth has the samples,” she says. “We expect news on the toxin in the next forty-eight hours.”

“Well, now you can get her another sample.” I motion to the bedroom. “The victim was poisoned.”

She purses her lips. “I’ll go take a look.” She walks away while I ponder the “toxin” that killed Umbrella Man’s victims. I was drugged. They were poisoned. Two different things I turned into the same.

Houston steps in front of me, a linebacker in my path. “The elevator is fully functional,” he says. “The crime scene is in basic procedural mode in the alleyway. I’m about to issue a basic statement about a suicide attempt, and one officer down in the efforts to save the victims.”

Understanding is right there, in the air, where I could catch it and rub it in his face, but I stick with a simple, “Glad you and Director Murphy came to terms with my role here.”