Beg for Mercy (15 page)

“Shit!” Cole’s curse was muffled, like Megan was surfacing from the ocean. She blinked slowly and tried to sit up.

“Did I pass out?” Humiliation surged through her, providing the energy to sit up.

“This was a mistake.” Cole was kneeling beside her,
his arm wrapped around her shoulders as he helped steady her. Megan scrambled to her knees but wobbled when she tried to stand.

Cole swore again. “Hold on. Let me help you.”

He tightened his arm around her shoulder and helped her to stand.

She told herself she leaned into him only because she was still dizzy.

“Let’s get you to the couch,” he said, and started to steer her in that direction.

“No!” she said, a little too forcefully. She was having enough trouble keeping her mind from wandering to what had happened—nearly happened—on that couch. “Here’s fine.” She heaved herself back into the kitchen chair, took a deep breath, and grabbed the folder on the slasher’s second victim. She flipped open to the first photo. Any memories of how it felt to be under Cole on that couch retreated on a wave of dread.

Cole tried to slide the open folder away. “This was a bad idea. You’re obviously not up to it—”

“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Just low blood sugar.”

Cole’s look said he didn’t believe her for a minute. “So eat something.”

She swallowed back bile at the mere thought of food, but no way was she going to cave, not when she finally had the information she needed. She rose from the table and carefully made her way to the cabinet on only slightly shaky legs. She peered around for something her stomach might be able to handle and settled on a few Ritz crackers. She sat back down at the table and stuffed a cracker into her mouth, staring pointedly at Cole all the while. Then she ruined the effect by coughing as the cracker
immediately turned to sawdust in her mouth. She washed it down with a mouthful of water as Cole stared at her, one thick eyebrow cocked.

“Just don’t throw up, okay?” he said when she finally composed herself. “I don’t do well with vomit.”

“Really? You can look at bloody crime scenes all day, but you can’t handle vomit?”

He shrugged. “We all have our weak spots.”

Megan picked up a picture of the second victim and looked down at it. “At least she had a name,” Megan said. Molly Dennis.

“Lot of good that’s done us. According to our files, the real Molly Dennis died in 1985, a year after she was born. As far as we know, she was handed Molly’s identity six months before she was murdered, and we know nothing about her up until that point. No one seems to know who she was, who she knew. Like all of them. They might as well all be Jane Does, even the ones who do have names.”

As he spoke, Cole’s expression grew grimmer, the grooves on either side of his mouth deepening, his features hardening. She had to fight the urge to go to him, to comfort him somehow.

He always seemed so strong, so in control. But she, more than most, knew the deep currents that ran beneath the surface, the emotions Cole had to keep in check just to get throust donhe day. But every once in a while, even he cracked. It was impossible to keep the mask firmly in place in the face of such brutality.

Megan didn’t say anything. Instead she tried to take a pointer from Cole and look at the files analytically, detach herself from victims and look at them instead like pieces to a puzzle.

One she desperately needed to solve.

“And she was a prostitute?” she asked, reading a scribbled note in the file.

Cole nodded. “Hard to tell when none of them were in the system for previous arrests and no one came forward to give us any information. But that’s the theory Tasso’s going with.”

Megan pulled a face. Condescending bastard. “He wouldn’t like you telling me any of this.”

Cole huffed out a humorless laugh. “He’d probably try to have my badge over it.”

Megan’s eyes met his across the table. He wasn’t kidding. The scale of the risk he was taking sank in. Sure, the chances he’d get caught were slim as long as she kept her mouth shut. But there was little reason for him to count on that, based on her past behavior. For Cole, being a cop wasn’t just his job. It was his life. It was who he was.

That he would risk all of that to help her was… humbling. And a whole lot of other things that were too complicated for her to dwell on right now. “Thanks for showing me these, Cole. It means a lot.”

He looked up from Sean’s file, his faint smile etched with regret. “You might not feel that way once you realize you won’t find what you’re looking for.”

Don’t be so sure.

But after two straight hours poring over the files, comparing them side by side with Sean’s, Megan acknowledged with a sick feeling that Cole might be right. He’d managed to shoot down every plausible link. “The Jane Doe in the house in Renton—the first officer on the scene reported the television was left on. All of the victims were killed in front of one.”

Cole shook his head. “And now we know from the latest victim that the killer likes to watch and probably record his own kills. That doesn’t tie it back to Sean.”

Megan gritted her teeth against the headache forming behind her eyes. She slipped the elastic from the end of her braid and unraveled her hair, trying to relieve the tension. “There has to be something here, something we’re not seeing.”

Cole lifted his hands in exasperation. “There’s nothing. As much as I wish there was something in these reports that would point to Evangeline Gordon’s murder being the early work of the Slasher, I can’t.” He picked up Sean’s file, flipping through the pages in quick, jerky motions. “To start, the victim doesn’t fit the profile. Evangeline Gordon was no saint, but she was far from a prostitute. Second, the wounds.” He paused, his eyes narrowing as he focused on something in the ME’s report.

“What?” Megan demanded, a shot of adrenaline sking her blood pressure.

Cole didn’t answer as he grabbed the latest victim’s file, flipping through the pages until he found what he was looking for.

“What do you see?” She grabbed for Sean’s file as Cole grabbed the third victim’s folder for a side-by-side comparison. His lips moved but she couldn’t make out the words.

She launched out of her chair to his side of the table and peered over his shoulder. He was studying the section of the ME’s report that described the knife wounds on the victims’ throats. In addition to the killing blow that cut the victims’ carotid and jugular, there were short, shallow slices inflicted before death. This information hadn’t been released to the public. Reading it now, Megan realized it
was a calling card, part of the killer’s ritual, his sick need to play with his victims.

He doesn’t want them to bleed too much till the end.

She didn’t need to reread Sean’s file. She knew the damn thing by heart, knew that similar wounds were found on Evangeline Gordon’s neck. At the time, the investigators had attributed it to hesitation, a few false starts as her brother supposedly worked up the courage to kill.

“It’s the same,” she breathed. “The same wound pattern around the throat.” She unconsciously lifted her hand to her own neck.

Cole shook his head. “It’s just a coincidence.”

“You need to reopen the investigation—”

“I can’t do that, not based on this.”

“Are you so fucking afraid to admit you were wrong that you’re willing to let my brother die?”

Cole whirled around. “I took a big risk to help you—”

“Help me? How is refusing to use information that could help reopen Sean’s case helping me?”

His shoulders were rock hard, almost vibrating with frustration. “Megan, you’re overlooking a key piece of information in all of this.” He pulled out the ME’s report for the Slasher’s latest victim. “The Slasher is right-handed.” He emphasized his point with a thump of his finger on the report.

Sean was left-handed. She shook her head, refusing to give up so easily. “Some people are ambidextrous,” she said. “Maybe the killer knew Sean is left-handed and wanted to frame him.”

Cole stared at her, his face a mask of disbelief. “Really?
Really?
You think they’re going to let me drop everything and reopen Sean’s case based on that?”

“It’s worth a shot,” Megan snapped, feeling helpless as the trickle of hope was washed away by harsh reality.

“Stop it. Stop torturing yourself.”

“If I want to torture myself, that’s my business.”

“You’ve thrown your whole fucking life away over this, and I can’t stand it.”

“No. You can’t live with the guilt knowing you made it happen.”

He shot her a look so full of rage she took a step back, but it was gone in a flash and replaced by a cool, calculating gaze as he reached out and locked his hand around her arm. He pulled her in front of him, her back to his front. His grip wasn’t painful, but it was tight.

“What are you doing?” Her heart pounded against her rib cage as he propelled her into the front room. She swallowed back her alarm, knowing in her heart he would never hurt her. And yet…

“I’m going to show you why you’re wrong,” he said, his voice calm. “So you can understand what really happened once and for all.” He guided her to the floor, positioning her so she knelt in front of him.

The pressure on her back pushed her forward until she caught herself with her hands, on all fours in front of him. “The Slasher kills his victims like this,” he said. His hand took hold of the hair at the nape of her neck and exerted enough pressure to make her lift her head. His other hand came in front of her neck. He pretended to hold a knife and mimicked a sawing motion. “He makes half a dozen or so smaller cuts before”—he jerked his hand violently to the right—“he slices their throats.” Abruptly he released her.

Megan fell forward, barely catching herself before her face hit the hardwood floor.

“With his right hand.”

Before she could process that, he flipped her onto her back, positioning himself with one knee on either side of her torso. “In contrast, when Evangeline died, your brother—”

Megan tried to howl a protest but it came out more like a sob.

“Stabbed her in the chest.” His hand arced down in a stabbing motion. “Hard enough to pierce through her breastbone.”

Megan tried to buck him off, but he was too strong, too heavy. She knew all of this, had even watched a digitally animated re-creation during the trial. But she couldn’t fight the surge of panic exploding in her chest. “Don’t,” she whimpered, hating how defeated she already sounded.

“Then he put the knife to her throat. By now, blood was gushing out of her chest, getting all over her, all over him,” he continued, still so calm, so matter-of-fact, oblivious that she was breaking down in front of him.

“Stop it!” she yelled, louder now. She swung her fists and tried to sit up, but he caught her wrists, easily subduing her with one hand and pinning her wrists above her head.

“Not until you understand what happened that night in Sean’s house,” he said, his dark eyes full of determination. “It’s like he saw all the blood and realized what he’d done. He hesitates, cutting her but not deep enough to kill, like he’s not sure he can go through with it. But he knows she’s too far gone—he has to finish her off. So he takes the knife and slices her throat. With his
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Megan closed her eyes against Cole’s words but found no relief. Instead her mind was flooded with images of
knives dripping with blood, slashed skin. Her blood went cold, her heart racing as she got a minuscule taste of what those poor girls must have felt in the seconds before they were killed. The terror. The helplessness. The knowledge of their impending deaths and that no one was coming to save them.

The idea that Sean could inflict such horror…

Megan burst into tears.

A
w, shit.
Megan’s sobs hit Cole like a bucket of ice water, dousing his cold determination and replacing it with the bitter bite of shame.

What the fuck was he thinking? He swung his knee over so she was no longer pinned, but she didn’t get up. She just rolled to her side, sobbing so hard her entire body shook. Guilt burned like acid in his gut as he lifted her off the floor and wrapped his arms around her.

Instead of shoving him away and punching him in the face like he deserved, she let him pull her up onto the couch, her legs across his. He tucked her head against his neck and buried his face in her hair. “I’m sorry, baby. I shouldn’t have done that.”

She responded with another shudder and a sob, and Cole blundered forward, compelled to explain himself even though there was no excuse for what he’d done. “I just need you to understand, to accept what happened,” he said. But that was bullshit. His motivation hadn’t been at all altruistic or even that calculated. He’d let his frustration get the best of him, and he’d gone after her in the coldest, bluntest way he could think of in an effort to force her to see the truth.

And if she does that, maybe you can let yourself off the hook for ruining her life the day you arrested Sean.

Cole shoved the thought aside. He was a cop. He’d done his job. If anyone had ruined Megan’s life, it was Sean.