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I'll Be Watching You
Tracy Montoya
It might have been four years since Detective Daniel Cardenas had last seen Addy Torres, but she'd never been far from his thoughts…or his fantasies.Then, as a vicious stalker's latest target, the stunning recluse needed the relentless protection only Daniel could provide. But the more Addy turned to his strong arms seeking safety, the more he wanted to ease her pain and give her the release they'd both craved for far too long.As he watched and waited for a killer to make his next move, Daniel fought every urge and kept his hands to himself. Until one fateful night changed everything…
“I’m with you till the end, Adriana. However long it takes until we catch him.”
But there could be another end to this story—she knew that better than anyone.
“I’ll keep you safe. I swear.”
“What about the cop who tried to protect me the last time?”
His mouth quirked upward in the crooked half smile she was starting to recognize. “Nothing’s going to make me leave your side.”
Oh, my.
“Okay.” She barely realized she’d agreed to his protection until the word shot out of her mouth, against her better judgment. He didn’t deserve to be involved in this. He didn’t deserve to die because of her.
As if he could read her thoughts, something softened in his deep hazel eyes. He reached up to trace her jawline with his hand, making the barest contact with her skin. It stole her breath all the same….
I’ll Be Watching You
Tracy Montoya
To Kim Fisk. You earned this one with all of those blitz
critiques I made you do! I’m blessed to have you for a friend.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tracy Montoya is a magazine editor for a crunchy nonprofit in Washington, D.C., though at present she’s telecommuting from her house in Seoul, Korea. She lives with a psychotic cat, a lovable yet daft I has a apso and a husband who’s turned their home into the Island of Lost/Broken/Strange-Looking Antiques. A member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Society of Environmental Journalists, Tracy has written about everything from Booker Prize–winning poet Martín Espada to socially responsible mutual funds to soap opera summits. Her articles have appeared in a variety of publications, such as Hope, Utne Reader, Satya, YES!, Natural Home and New York Naturally. Prior to launching her journalism career, she taught in an under-resourced school in Louisiana through the AmeriCorps Teach for America program.
Tracy holds a master’s degree in English literature from Boston College and a BA in the same from St. Mary’s University. When she’s not writing, she likes to scuba dive, forget to go to kickboxing class, wallow in bed with a good book, or get out her guitar with a group of friends and pretend she’s Suzanne Vega.
She loves to hear from readers—e-mail TracyMontoya@aol.com or visit www.tracymontoya.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Adriana Torres —Four years ago, Adriana’s fiancé was killed in the line of duty while hunting serial killer Elijah Carter. Now someone is leaving her mysterious threats, and dredging up all of her long-buried painful memories.
Daniel Cardenas —The Monterey police detective is determined to keep Adriana safe from the stalker whose threats seem to be escalating—even while she’s determined to shut him out.
Elijah Carter —A vicious serial killer whose struggle with police and FBI resulted in his falling into the dangerous waters lining Monterey Bay. His body was never found.
Stan Peterson —Adriana’s yoga student seems to have an unhealthy interest in his teacher.
James Brentwood —The Monterey police detective—and Adriana’s fiancé—was shot and killed by Elijah Carter.
Liz Borkowski —Daniel’s no-nonsense partner and Adriana’s friend, Detective Borkowski well remembers Elijah Carter, because she almost died under his knife.
A.J. Lockwood —The veteran detective knows Elijah Carter’s killing methods well—and he’s convinced Carter survived and is back to kill again.
Sean Cantrell —Could Adriana’s teenage neighbor be behind the threats left at her door?
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Prologue
Stifling a yawn with his fist, Detective Daniel Cardenas wondered not for the first time what the hell he was doing up at oh-dark-hundred in the morning, several hours before his shift was supposed to start. His dashboard clock read 3:07 a.m. as he maneuvered his unmarked Crown Victoria slowly through the gauntlet of blue-and-whites lining East Alvarado Street, their flashing lights creating an eerie, pulsing red halo around the small neighborhood. It was normally considered one of Monterey, California’s, “safer” areas.
Not tonight, obviously.
When his partner had called him down here, she hadn’t bothered to give him any details. But something in her normally no-nonsense voice had sent his cop sense into overdrive, and he knew it was shut-up-and-go time. So he shut up, hung up and went. All without his usual morning jolt of caffeine.
God, he would have sawed off his right arm for some coffee.
Pulling his car alongside the curb, about a block away from the small shotgun-style bungalow at the center of all the activity, Daniel got out and made his way back toward 447 East Alvarado. Radio chatter had indicated a homicide had taken place, and from the fact that every cop in the metro area and then some seemed to be parked on this one street, it wasn’t going to be a pretty one.
He walked under a streetlight, and the sudden brightness of its tungsten lamp shining down upon him made his head throb. Ahead, some neighborhood residents huddled together in a tight, worried-looking group, occasionally craning their necks or shuffling from side to side to see what was going on. Unfortunately for them, an ambulance with two very jittery-looking EMTs leaning against it blocked their view. As if sensing his approach, one of the women onlookers turned around and broke away from the group when she saw him.
“Excuse me,” the woman said, tightly clutching the lapels of her ratty red bathrobe together with one hand. “Are you with the police? Because I didn’t know the girls who lived there well, but…”
“Ma’am, at this point, I don’t know any more than you do,” he said politely. “But—”
“It’s our right to know,” she said, falling into step beside him. “Our taxes pay your salary, young man. I won’t—”
Without breaking his stride, Daniel slanted a cool look at her.
“Oh, well, I—” Patting her hair, she scurried back among her friends, the rest of her statement hanging unfinished in the air. He wasn’t allowed to dole out any information to people who weren’t next of kin this early in the game. And he definitely wasn’t spilling his guts to the neighborhood gossip at any point. They were pretty much the only ones who tried to play the we-pay-your-taxes card.
Then again, if she’d come at him with a double-shot espresso, he might have been persuaded to make something up on the spot.
As he approached the yellow tape that cordoned off the scene, a street cop strode across the front yard to meet him, backlit by one of the homicide squad’s portable spotlights. Daniel flashed his badge, then ducked under the tape without waiting for the guy’s blessing. As expected, the uniform gave him a curt nod and backed off.
“Cardenas!” A. J. Lockwood, a seasoned detective who’d been with the MPD since the beginning of time, bounded down the home’s front steps and crossed the yard to Daniel. Judging from his expression, whatever was inside was going to be bad. Generally, the grislier the scene, the blacker Lockwood’s dark sense of humor became. But tonight the man’s ever-present sardonic grin was nowhere in sight.
Not a kid. Please don’t let it have been a kid.
“Janie Sanchez, graduate student at the Language Institute,” Lockwood said in greeting, not even bothering with normal pleasantries like “hello” or “you look like hell.”
“She’s our homicide?” Daniel asked.
“Oh, yeah.” Lockwood’s square jaw clenched and worked, but instead of launching into a description of the scene, he merely narrowed his flinty gaze at Daniel. “So what do you look so chipper for? I’ve been up for an hour now, and I still feel like hell. Borkowski says she got ahold of you, like, two minutes ago, and you look as if you were lying in bed in that suit, waiting for someone to call.”
Truth was he felt about as chipper as a pile of roadkill. An uncaffeinated pile of roadkill.
Then again, he’d long ago realized that what was going on inside his head didn’t often show up on his face, whether he realized it or not.
“Who’s that over there in the bushes?” Daniel asked, jerking his head toward the cop bent over the shrubbery a few feet away, making the most god-awful noises.
“Rookie. He’s been yakking all over the place since he got here.”
Great, one of those cases. “That bad?”
Lockwood gave a small grunt that would have been a short laugh under normal circumstances. “Worse. I felt like yakking. Don’t tell anyone.” He glanced back at the house’s open doorway, which was blocked by a short, stocky uniform who looked like a human fireplug, standing guard. Someone had drawn the curtains inside.
“It’s…” Lockwood blew out a long, slow puff of air. “Damn, Cardenas, I think he’s back.”
With that one sentence, the fatigue Daniel felt abruptly vanished. There was only one “he” in their shared history on the force—maybe even in the history of the entire city—that could make a rookie lose his breakfast and put the fear of God into a veteran like Lockwood.
Impossible.
Pushing past Lockwood without so much as a goodbye, he propelled himself through the small mass of his colleagues milling around outside, past the cluster of EMTs standing around with nothing to do. Taking the three front steps in two strides, he entered the house, all but ignoring the crime-scene techs taking flash photographs in the front sitting room as he followed the noise to the living room in the middle.
The few detectives in the room parted like the Red Sea when he entered, revealing his grim-faced partner standing over a body. Detective Liz Borkowski looked up as he approached, her normally pale, Irish-and-Polish complexion gone as white as bone.
“Five-point ligature marks on the ankles, wrists and neck,” one of the crime-scene techs murmured from a few feet away, obligingly describing the horror in the room to another tech who held a video camera.
Janie Sanchez’s body lay sprawled out on a blood-soaked rug in front of the living room’s brick fireplace. She’d been deliberately posed in a demeaning, spread-eagle fashion, her head tilted to the side, giving her the look of a broken marionette. Her glassy, unseeing eyes stared at something beyond the ceiling.
He’d seen this all before. He could have described the scene to the crime lab’s video camera with his eyes closed.
Because he still dreamed about the others. They all did.
“…fishing line still wrapped around the victim’s ankles and wrists…” The tech’s monotone was the only sound in the room besides everyone else’s breathing. “…defensive wounds on her hands…”
The vulnerable, taut skin on Janie’s bare stomach had been carved through repeatedly with a knife that had left her abdomen raw and mutilated.
Somebody’s sister. Somebody’s daughter.
“…multiple lacerations on her body, concentrated mostly on her abdominal area, where they appear to be in a gridlike pattern…”
Detach. He had to forget about who she’d been, and focus on who had killed her.
But how did you tell someone their daughter, their sister, their friend and neighbor had been killed by a ghost?
A ghost that hadn’t walked for four years.
Where’ve you been, Elijah Carter?
The newspapers had come up with a more colorful name for the man who’d stalked and killed eleven women, who’d crossed the country from Louisiana and California, escalating until the last few had died not mercifully or quickly, but a long, slow, torturous death he wouldn’t have wished on the worst of criminals. They called him The Surgeon. Because he liked to carve up women in his special, singular, painstaking way.
Daniel refused to call him that. Whatever he was, he was still just a man.
A man who’d apparently risen from the dead.
He crouched down beside Janie and found himself staring at one of her hands. Her slim fingers curled slightly upward, tipped with bubblegum-pink, carefully tended nails that were now caked with blood. Her wrists were red and swollen from where he’d tied them.
He looked at her face. She’d been a pretty girl.
Somebody’s sister. Somebody’s daughter.
“Who found the body?” he asked Liz, as she knelt down beside him.
“Roommate,” she said, her voice slightly hoarse. “She’s outside.”
“…multiple lacerations to the abdomen, cuts most likely made with a serrated-edge blade,” the tech droned on.
Serrated edge. Because Elijah Carter liked to rip, not slice.
“What do you think, Liz?” he asked quietly, and every person in the room strained to hear his partner’s answer. Along with Lockwood, the two of them had been on the special FBI-Monterey PD task force four years ago that had cornered Elijah Carter on the rock-strewn shores of the Pacific Ocean. They’d been down this damn road before.
Something small and vulnerable flickered across his partner’s face. She was probably thinking of her own daughters, one just a couple of years younger than Janie Sanchez.
“Copycat.” She lifted her head to look him square in the eye. “Unofficially speaking.” She pointed with a latex-gloved hand to the victim’s torn-up stomach. “Carter used to carve a very precise grid into his victims. Three lines down, four across.”
She would know.
