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“It’s something,” Seth remarked, though his tone didn’t indicate much hope that this bit of information would actually bear fruit. “I want the M.E. on this now,” he instructed. “Don’t want to wait for the full report. Have someone send over the photographs as soon as they’re printed. And get me the estimate on time of death.”
“That’s going to be hard,” the tech replied. “The water temperature is fifty-two degrees, hard to get exacts on floaters.”
“I’ll take approximates for now,” Seth fairly barked, frustration evident in his tone. He turned to Chandler. “Why don’t you take the doctor back to her car. I’ve got my guys coming out here for a full search of the banks and divers on their way to see if the rest of our Jane Doe might be somewhere upstream.”
“Three different rivers and two lakes feed into this creek, bro. That’s going to be like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.”
Seth shrugged. “True, so after you drop off Dr. Jameson, give Savannah a call and let her know I probably won’t be home for a while.”
“Will do,” Chandler agreed, placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder to give a comforting squeeze. “God. Do you think—”
“This was the work of your morning caller?”
Seth met his gaze. “My gut tells me yes. Guy calls in, says he offed his mother? If it wasn’t, this would stretch coincidence.” Seth shot a sympathetic glance across the clearing. “I think that also means you owe the good doctor an apology.”
“One of the first things on my list,” Chandler agreed easily. Molly looked rather pathetic, and his protective instincts came rushing to the fore. It surprised him that he should feel such a strong desire to walk over and pull her into his arms. She was, after all, an acquaintance. For now, his brain suggested. So he lusted for her and he didn’t like seeing her so upset. That didn’t make him a creep. Actually, he thought, his posture straightening, it made him one hell of a nice guy. Hopefully she would notice. He gave Seth’s shoulder a final squeeze. “Keep me in the loop on this one, okay?”
“You were the first point of contact for him. You’re already in the loop.” He jerked his chin across the field to Molly. “So’s she.”
“My thought exactly,” Chandler said grimly. “Keep me posted?”
“Will do.” Seth was back in sheriff mode as he strode to talk to his people. Chandler went the other way. Walking through the long grass, he was mindful of each step, knowing the police would be combing every inch of the area for evidence over the next several hours. So what was the deal? he wondered. What kind of sicko could hack a woman up like that, and, most disturbing, was it John? Was this the mother he had claimed to have killed? If so, something told him this was the beginning rather than the end.
He found Molly sitting in the grass. Her slender shoulders lifted and fell as she sucked in deep, calming breaths. She seemed to have regained most of her composure, even though her skin was still a pasty shade of gray.
He reached his hand out to pull her up. She wobbled unsteadily. He shot out his other hand to support her elbow, and at the same time she put a shaky hand on his chest to brace herself. “Ready to go?” he asked.
“About half an hour ago would’ve been fine. Thanks, I’m okay now.” She took a small step back, and reluctantly he let go, allowing her to brush the grass and debris from the back of her skirt in what he recognized as a “hands off” sign. Interesting.
He pointed to his car. “How about I run you home?”
“Oh, I—”
He started walking toward the row of vehicles parked off to the side. “I’ve got a bottle of water in the car. You still look a little green.” And, God only knew, he felt a little green himself.
She gave him a small smile. “Sorry about that.”
“No need to apologize. I’ve seen battle-tested soldiers and seasoned detectives have the same reaction. It’s basic human nature to be nauseated seeing something like that.”
“I should have been able to handle it. I thought I’d graduated from being a total wuss.”
Chandler smiled sympathetically. He gave her points for maintaining her sense of humor. “I had no idea there was a graduation process for wussiness.”
She rolled her pretty, green eyes. “Silly, I know.” Her soft mouth curved. “But medical schools insist on future doctors having some sort of qualifications before they practice. I made it. But unfortunately not before earning the nickname ‘Meltdown Molly’ after my first anatomy class. Saw the body on the slab and dropped like the proverbial stone.”
He laughed. “Since you’ve got an M.D. after your name, I assume you overcame that tendency.”
“Yeah. So did I,” she said on a deep sigh. “Until a little while ago.” Her eyes flickered toward the activity on the shore, then back to him. “That poor, poor woman. Only someone consumed with hatred could’ve done something that vicious.”
“There are a lot of sick bastards out there,” he agreed grimly. “I believe you nailed it this morning. Caller John wasn’t a hoax.”
She stopped in midstride to clutch his arm, surprising him by the strength of her grip. And his own reaction to having her slender fingers clasped around his bicep. Heat shot up his arm. Talk about bad timing.
“Is that—I mean is she John’s mother?”
“Since Jasper isn’t the murder capital of the world, it only makes sense that whoever called in this morning was telling the truth.”
“Sick bastard is right,” she agreed under her breath, surprising him again.
Her hand fell away and they continued up to where his car waited. “Isn’t that a little harsh for a shrink? Aren’t you supposed to understand depraved behaviors?”
“Understand—sure. I also understand that anyone who can decapitate a woman’s head, as well as her hands and feet, deserves whatever severe remedy is available from the courts. Hopefully something that involves a lethal injection after he’s spent all those years of appeals locked in his cell watching an endless loop of videos of his victim.”
HE WISHED HE’D MADE A VIDEO so he could watch himself killing her over and over again. But he wasn’t that stupid. Hell, he didn’t even have a video camera. He’d have to make do with the sharp, full-color mental images of the Big Event.
“This is so cool!”
He looked at his friend and easily accepted the praise. Now if you could just see the movie in my head—that would really impress you. “All I have left to do is connect these two wires.”
He liked having an audience as he worked. Even if the audience was only two of his peers. Well, he didn’t think they were his peers. While they were the same age and had grown up together, the other men were followers, and he was a leader. Soon everyone would know that. Soon everyone would see that he really was destined for greatness.
“Will this, like, totally blow up the whole street, or what?”
He finished capping the twisted wires and fit them inside the remote-control device. “It’ll get the job done.”
“So then we call the TV station and the papers and—”
His pointed stare silenced his friend. “We don’t do anything. I make the decisions.”
“We’re in this, too,” the youngest member of the group whined.
Man, he hated whining. It reminded him of her. And thinking about her always made his heart race and his palms sweat with helpless rage. Ha! he thought triumphantly. Not so helpless now, am I Mama? He gave the other man a cold look. “Do you want to end up like my mother?”
The younger man gulped and shook his shaved head.
“This operation has one leader and that’s me.” Jesus. Power was euphoric. His heart raced, but this time from excitement. It was all coming together. Just like he’d said it would. Like a ball rolling downhill, his confidence gained momentum. He was empowered by his own smarts and skill. “I chose you all,” he looked from one to the other. The boss man. In charge. Master of his own fate. Hell, yeah!
“Handpicked each one of you,” he said as if it were God’s hand that had chosen them. And why not? He was the next best thing. “This mission is critical. If my orders aren’t followed to the letter, or if either of you gets out of line, you’ll be replaced.” He paused for effect. Nice, real nice. They were about wetting their pants. “Is that clear?”
He gloated inside as they nodded, eyes wide, showing fear and demonstrating the respect he so richly deserved. His mentor was right. He was a natural-born leader. This was his destiny. It was so close now, he could almost taste it.
“We’ll store the bomb in the shed out by the old Greeley Mine,” he told them.
“Why not just plant it now?”
Again his authority was being challenged and again he felt a sudden and intense rush of rage. Pain, sharp and intense stabbed behind his eyes, and blood rushed to his skin like fiery sheet lightning. He grabbed his questioner, balled up his fist and punched him. The other man staggered backward from the blow, crashing into a table and scattering components onto the floor.
“Don’t.” He got a grip on the fallen man’s shirt and hauled him to his feet.
“Ever.” He punched him again, this time blood spurted from his friend’s nose.
“Question.” He pulled back and gut punched him. His pal doubled over.
“Me.” He jerked up his knee and made contact with the other man’s chin.
Bleeding and unconscious, the guy crumpled to the floor, then lay motionless.
Power. He had it. He was invincible now. He gave the other man a hard look. “Any more questions?”
“Not me, dude.”
As it should be. “Good.” Though his knuckles hurt from the contact with the man’s jaw, that little bit of physical exertion had allowed him to release some of the fury surging through his system. Not as much as killing him would’ve done, but killing the weasel dog wasn’t in the cards. He smiled inwardly. At least not today. He still had a use for his good old buddy.
His heartbeat resumed its normal cadence as his blood pressure went down. “There’s still some covert work to be done.” He wiped the spatter of his victim’s blood from his hand to his jeans and stepped over the man’s extended legs. “I’ll be giving each of you a specific assignment. Are you ready for your instructions?”
MOLLY ARRIVED BACK at her modest apartment feeling utterly exhausted. On the plus side, her stomach had quieted. On the minus side, she was struggling to push the horrific image of the mutilated torso from her mind.
She parked and walked the short distance to her front door, inserted her key and breathed in the calming scent of familiarity. Since she lived alone, the scents from her abundance of potpourri and candles were the closest substitute she had to hearing “Welcome home, honey, how was your day?”
As was her habit, she dropped her purse and keys on the foyer table and automatically pressed the button on her telephone’s answering machine. The first four messages were to her home number. Three hang-ups and one from her mentor Gavin Templesman.
“Molly, honey, I heard about the show and I’m just calling to see how you’re dealing with it. Call me when you get in.”
She’d call Gavin back later. When she no longer had a burning desire to damn him to hell for having her fill in on the show. Intellectually she knew that Gavin wasn’t responsible for getting her dragged into the murder of that poor woman, emotionally she felt like sharing some of the bad karma.
Two beeps sounded, followed by a mechanical voice announcing, “Switching to remote message retrieval. Inbox for Dr. Jameson accessed.”
She stripped off her jacket as she listened to the lone message. Her ten-o’clock appointment for the next morning was canceling. Again.
“Lester,” she said as the message ended, “that’s three appointments in a row, pal. I’m sensing you’re not serious about working on your issues.”
She jotted a note to remind herself to send Lester Boyle a letter explaining that his therapy was court ordered, and she was going to have to inform the court of his violation of that order.
“Nothing like telling a guy with a serious anger-management problem that you’re ratting him out,” she mumbled as she walked back through her bedroom to her bath and turned on the faucet. Could this day suck any more? she wondered as she prepared for her favorite indulgence.
As the Roman tub filled with hot, steamy water, she added a handful of lavender salts to the bath. Next, she lit the lavender-scented candles around the back ledge and went into her bedroom to retrieve the latest L. S. Connor novel, Hide and Seek. She placed the book on the tiled first step up to the tub. Next, she went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of wine, returned to the bath to place it next to the book and then stripped off the rest of her clothes.
In no time she left her world behind, engrossed in the latest adventures of Connor’s fictional hero, Caleb “Lucky” Wyatt. Wyatt was equal parts James Bond and Indiana Jones and Molly’s personal guilty pleasure. The author’s style was wonderful and the larger-than-life tales of Wyatt—head of ACE, the Anti-Crime Enforcement Agency—were both entertaining and romantic.
Yes, she was fully aware of the fact that she was living vicariously through a fictional hero—the kind that didn’t exist in the real world. Yes, she knew that when Wyatt seduced a woman in the book it wasn’t her. And that was a shame, because Wyatt was her ultimate fantasy man. He was intelligent, sexy, handsome, resourceful, cool under pressure, quick on his feet. He was—
A lot like Chandler Landry.
Molly almost dropped her coveted novel into the tub when that disturbing and unwelcomed parallel popped into her head.
Thinking carnal thoughts about a fake guy in a book was okay. It was safe. Equating Chandler to Wyatt was just wrong. Actually, merely thinking about Chandler in those terms was the total opposite of safe.
Aside from being a virtual stranger, he was everything she avoided in a man. There was the whole thing about his looks. It had been her experience that if the Good Lord gave a man physical perfection, he countered the generosity by subtracting important elements from other areas. Gorgeous men were usually arrogant. Usually self-possessed. Usually as shallow as a mud puddle after a long drought.
Then there was the money thing. Chandler—all the Landrys—were loaded. Old-family-money rich. The town of Jasper was founded by and named for Jasper Landry, Chandler’s however-many-greats grandfather. Rich guys were different. Different rules, different standards. Not that she was impoverished, but Molly knew he was way out of her league.
Then there was the celebrity thing. Chandler was a version of local royalty. His life was public and Molly—perhaps above all else—valued her privacy. It was safer to guard her past than to have to answer painful and intrusive questions.
She read the papers. She knew that any woman associated with Chandler normally got a mention of some sort. “Not mention,” she muttered as she put her book down and took a sip of wine. “A label,” she continued, sarcastically recalling what she’d read. “Former model blah-blah, or disgraced debutante blah-blah. Pass, thanks.”
She heard the phone ring in the bedroom but opted to let the machine pick up. She returned to her book and hated the fact that as she read her mind’s eye pictured Chandler in the role of her beloved Wyatt.
IT WAS WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT when Chandler arrived at his family’s ranch house. While he would always consider the place home, the huge clapboard house was currently occupied by his brothers Shane and Sam. But that was about to change. Sam and Callie were in the process of building their own place on the east edge of the property. Chandler guessed the decision to move out was two-fold. First and foremost, Sam and Callie had two kids and smart money said more would follow. Second, sharing living space with Shane probably cut into their private time. Assuming married people with two kids actually had private time.
Shane greeted him by opening the door wearing a deep scowl.
“Good evening,” Chandler commented, unable to keep the brotherly taunt out of his tone.
“Not when you’re stuck with the Housekeeper from Hell under your roof.”
“I heard that!” came a familiar voice from just inside.
Soon Taylor Reese was just behind Shane, her small frame barely visible behind Shane’s huge bulk.
“You drank the last of the milk, so you should be the one making the middle-of-the-night run to the store.”
It was obvious that Taylor wasn’t the least bit intimidated by Shane’s size. In fact, Chandler was certain that if need be, Taylor would climb up on a box in order to slug his youngest brother if the mood hit. And judging by the dagger glances they exchanged, he wondered if some hitting might not be in the very near future.
“Shopping is part of your job description,” Shane countered.
Taylor planted her hands on her slender hips. “I did shop. I just didn’t know you’d be inconsiderate enough to drink the milk meant for the children who live under this roof. Notice I said children,” Taylor continued. “Since you’re the only baby that lives here.” Taylor turned and walked away.
“I want you fired,” Shane yelled at her retreating back as he stomped down the porch steps.
“Well,” Taylor called over her shoulder, “I want you rendered mute, but as my grandma always says, wantin’ ain’t gettin’.”
“Seth’s in the kitchen,” Shane said to Chandler as he passed. “Normally I’d say go on in and help yourself to some coffee, but you’d better run that past Taylor the Tyrant first.”
Chandler was still chuckling as he entered and went to meet Seth. Taylor was nowhere to be seen, so he guessed she had retired to her room for the night.
Seth was seated at the kitchen table, poring over photos Chandler recognized as the crime-scene shots. After grabbing a beer from the fridge, he sat in his chair. No matter how old they got or how long they’d been away, each of the Landrys seemed to automatically fall into the chair assigned them as children.
“Thanks for coming,” Seth said, looking up. “I figured it was closer to have you meet me out here than to drive to my office.”
“No sweat,” Chandler returned easily, twisting the top from the bottle and taking a long swallow. “What’s up?”
“This,” he said, sliding an eight-by-twelve color photograph across the table. It was an enlargement of the mark they’d noticed on the body earlier. “Mean anything?”
Chandler studied the photograph. “A circle with the number thirteen in it. Looks like a burn.”
Seth nodded. “The M.E. says it was branded into the skin post mortem.”
“Well,” Chandler let out a breath as his mind whirled. “It could be from a ranch in the area. Easy enough to check.”
