Love Kills (Lilah Love 4)

Fernando enters and comes toward me down a hallway. “Anything?”

I motion toward my brother’s office, and Kit rejoins us. “They’re all dead.” He eyes the office and us. “I’ll go.” Weapon in hand, he moves forward and steps into the room. I can’t even breathe as I watch him enter. Fernando pants out a breath feeling the same.

Seconds tick by before Kit steps out of the office, a grim look on his face. “Your brother isn’t here, Lilah.” I have a moment of relief before he looks at Fernando. “Yours is.”

Fernando balls a fist on his forehead and murmurs in Spanish before charging forward. He starts forward. I don’t stop him. It’s a crime scene. It needs to be secured, but I just don’t have it in me to deny him this moment of grief. And this ends tonight anyway. I follow Kit, and I enter the office to find Fernando leaning over his brother on the floor. My gaze lifts and lands on the desk. There’s another badge wallet there. Holy hell. I cross to the desk, grabbing a pair of gloves and a bag before I flip it open. It’s Andrew’s badge. It’s an invitation to go to Andrew’s house.

CHAPTER FORTY

I dial the neighboring station. “Sheriff Jack here, how can I help you?”

I know Jack. He’s a good guy. “Jack, it’s Lilah Love. FBI Agent Lilah Love.”

“Well hell, Lilah L—”

“Listen to me. I pursued a killer here. I’m at my brother’s office. He’s gone, and his people are dead.”

“Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”

“Deep breath and listen. I don’t have time to chase down the rest of his officers. I need you to come here, secure this crime scene and get them all here safely. The perp is a serial killer. Do not, I repeat, do not try to help me catch him. I need to handle this. One mistake and people die. Do you understand?”

“Andrew?”

My chest burns. “I don’t know. He was kidnapped to get to me. Come now and do not blow this.” I hang up and motion to Kit and hold up the badge. “It’s an invitation I’m accepting. You coming?”

“Hell yeah, I’m coming.”

Fernando stands up, his shirt stained in blood. “I’m coming.”

“You’re too emotional.”

His jaw clenches. “I don’t get too emotional. Ever. I do, however, get even.”

The look in his eyes is familiar. It’s me. I get it. Kane understood it when he connected us. This man’s brother died trying to save my brother. He deserves his revenge. “Then let’s go,” I say, leading the way down the hallway and we step into the lobby.

I push open the door, and a downpour greets me. I have a flash of me on the beach in the rain, stabbing my attacker. Déjà vu. I have a sense of coming full circle. The three of us pile back into the SUV, and Fernando drives us to my brother’s house, or rather, a little cottage a few miles from my place just off the beach. He used his inheritance to buy it, and he loves that damn cottage. Fernando parks a block down and kills the engine and lights. “He knows we’re coming. We’re walking into a trap.”

“Yep,” I say, pulling up my hood and getting out of the vehicle, drawing my weapon as I do. Rain pummels me, but I push through it. Kit and Fernando frame me.

“I’m going straight in the front door,” I say. “He won’t expect me to come at him directly. That means you two come at him when he’s off center. The property is gated. We’ll go over the gates. Both of you go over the top.” Neither argue with me.

We reach the gate, and they each split away from me and disappear in different directions. I climb over and land in mud, but I could give two shits. He knows I’m coming, but I want those few seconds he would expect to have with the security gate beeping. Once I’m there, I pull my weapon and peak in the window. There is no movement. That is until I see Fernando enter through an open patio door.

“Damn it,” I murmur, reaching for the door. It’s not locked. I enter, and suddenly it’s me, Fernando, and Kit standing in near silence, but for a tick of my mother’s favorite grandfather clock. I motion one left and one right again, and a knot forms in my belly. No sound. No confrontation. He might already be dead.

I head up the stairs toward the only room there—Andrew’s bedroom, holding my breath as I enter. He’s not here, but there is something on the bed. I ignore it, for now, walking to the closet and the bathroom to find them both clear.

I return to the bed to find a picture of my mother lying there. My cottage used to be my mother’s. I grab it and run down the stairs, shouting, “They’re at my place!” already headed to the front door. The bastard is playing with me, telling me all the law enforcement in the world and Kane’s men can’t stop him. Telling me he has all the time in the world, but my brother does not.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

I hold the picture of my mother in my hand, and I wonder if this asshole killed her, if that’s part of his message. Fernando parks a block from my cottage as he had at my brother’s. I fold the photo and stick it in my pocket before I reach for the door. Fernando catches my arm. “What’s the plan?” he asks.

I don’t bite off his hand. He’s had enough pain today. “I’m not making an arrest today. We kill the fucker. We kill him.”

“All right,” he says and releases me, reaching for his door while Kit curses. My cellphone vibrates in my jacket pocket, but I let it ring. It’s Kane. He’ll tell me to wait. I’m not fucking waiting. I exit to what is now a light drizzle, and I start walking with my new army at my side. Once we’re at my property, I don’t even think about sneaking up to the door. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t get his message.

With both men by my side, I walk right up to the front door, but when we get there, Kit cuts around the side of the house. Fernando and I share a look, and I open the door. It waves open, and I can see straight through to the open patio door. He’s on the beach with my brother. The same damn beach where I was raped, where I killed my attacker. He’s telling me he knows it all. He’s telling me he planned it all. My mother’s murder, which is why we’re at my mother’s house. My attack at my mother’s getaway home. Rage burns inside me, but it’s a comfortable rage that fits like a glove. It’s not wild. It’s not erratic. It simply sits in the deepest part of my chest and waits to be unleashed.

I start walking while Fernando cuts left to search the rest of the house because he doesn’t get it. They aren’t in here. They’re on the beach. I cross the living room and exit the house to the patio. Rain drizzles around me, but I leave my hood down. I step outside the overhang, and in a few steps, I can see my brother there on the beach, on his knees, a gun in his hand. He’s alive and that’s the gift that keeps on giving. A man stands behind him, holding a gun to his head.

I want to run to Andrew. I want to save him. But I walk slow, steady, calculated until I can finally make out the man: it’s Sergeant Morris.

There is no satisfaction in me about being right about his identity. There is just my readiness to kill him. “Stay back, Lilah!” Andrew calls out. “Stay back!”

I don’t stay back. I keep moving, aware of the lights on the water near the dock half a mile away, certain that is how he got to the island, certain that is how he plans to leave, though I’m not sure how he thinks he’ll ever make it the boat. Just that he has a plan. He thinks he’s leaving. He’s not. “That’s close enough!” he shouts when I’m two feet away from the spot where I killed that bastard who raped me. Where I’m going to kill him as well.

I halt and say, “Throw your weapon down.”

The rainfall quickens, and I am momentarily back in that night, that man on top of me, his sticky, sweet breath sickening, the drugs drowning me.

I tried to fight. I couldn’t move. This time. I can move. This time, I’m not drugged.

“Throw down your weapon!” he shouts.

I don’t throw my weapon down, but I do lower it to my side. “What is this, Morris? What are you doing?”

“Ending this. That’s what they want. An ending. You’re as much trouble as your mother was.”

“He killed her,” Andrew says. “He killed mom. And he killed all those people to make it look like we’re victims of a serial killer.”

He killed mom.

The confirmation is brutal. She was murdered. “He is a serial killer,” I say. “Pocher hired him to kill for them.”

“And granted me an army,” he gloats. “Because you just wouldn’t stay out of his business. Because you just couldn’t appreciate his plan to make your father President one day. I told him I could end you and Kane, and your brother here as a bonus. And here we are. Because I’m sick and fucking tired of hearing Roger talk about how good you are. This is how good you are. I was right under your nose, and you didn’t know it. And now, you’re about to watch your brother die before you die.”

Kane is dead.

No.

Kane is not dead.

But Pocher must think he is. Ghost must have told Pocher he killed him. And Pocher told Morris.

My mind races with plans A, B, and C but discards them all.

Morris laughs, a cackling sound. “They tried to kill you right here on this beach, now, didn’t they? And all that fool they hired got was a fuck out of you before you killed him. He wasn’t me.”

“Lilah?” Andrew says. “What is he talking about?”

I ignore Andrew, I buy time, I keep going back to plan A and telling myself it’s a mistake. “What did Detective Williams have to do with this?”

“Pocher’s side bitch. She’d do anything for him and his money. Fuck me. Kill her sorority sister.”

“Why Redman? Why’d you pick him?”