Karma Patrol (30 page)

She was surprised by his serious tone, and gestured for him to go ahead.

“It’s about Luke,” he began as she took a seat on the couch next to him. “Normally I wouldn’t get involved in his love life, but—” He hesitated, then shook his head. “I’ve known Luke for more than a few years. In all of that time, he’s never been serious about a woman. I can’t even remember a time when he’s gone on a second date with one. And now, in the space of two days, his entire life suddenly revolves around you. Taking a morning off to follow you in order to see if you were part of some insane grassy knoll conspiracy? Fine. That’s classic Luke. But taking all of yesterday off to wander around the city flirting with you? In the ER, I asked him why he never came back in to work, and do you know what he said?”

Jade shook her head.

“He said he had something more important to do. With you.”

“Did you ever think that maybe he really likes me?” she asked, trying not to be offended by his line of questioning.

“For all I know, he’s head over heels in love with you, and that’s great. Seriously, the guy needs some emotional connections in his life. You seem like a nice girl, and Shannon has nothing but good things to say about you, so if he does fall in love with someone I’d be fine with it being you. You just have to understand where I’m coming from. I have seen that guy sick and injured and miserable, and on one notable occasion severely concussed, but he’s never missed a day of work. The past two days have been a huge anomaly for him.”

“And that worries you,” she concluded, relieved now that she knew where he was going with this. “If it helps, I can promise I have no intentions of being a bad influence on him. I was actually working yesterday afternoon. He volunteered to come with me and I said yes.” Jade smiled ruefully. “I won’t say I didn’t enjoy his company, but I know he should have been working too. I’ll do my best not to distract him during business hours in the future.”

“So there is a future?” Aaron asked, sounding hopeful. “Like I said, Jade, I’ve never seen him this interested in a woman. I think there might actually be hope for a real relationship here, and I want him to have that, but not if you’re just using him.”

“I’m not,” she replied, shaking her head. “Actually, I’m planning to drag him into a long-term relationship kicking and screaming if I have to.”

Aaron laughed aloud. “Thank God someone finally came along who’s willing to do it.”

“Can I get you anything?” she offered, realizing suddenly that Aaron had been sitting there for quite a while without anything to drink. “Coffee?”

“Nah, I need to get back to the precinct. One more thing, though.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out several photos. “Do you recognize any of these people?”

Jade flipped through them, hesitating on the picture of an elderly lady. “I think she works in a jewelry store near here,” she said, and Aaron nodded.

“You don’t know either of the guys?” he pressed.

Jade took another look at the other pictures, but neither man looked familiar to her. “Sorry,” she told him, offering him back the pictures, but he shook his head.

“Keep them,” he told her. “Show them to Luke when he wakes up and see if anything rings a bell. He’s got an incredible memory for faces.”

“Do you think one of them is the killer?” she asked, and Aaron shrugged.

“They were all at the crime scenes.”

“That doesn’t automatically make one of them the shooter,” she pointed out. “I was at all three of the crime scenes on our side of the city.”

“Yeah, and we think a big part of that is because he’s shooting at you,” Aaron reminded her. “It could just be a coincidence that these people were at the shootings, but cops don’t tend to believe in coincidences.”

“Neither do I.”

Aaron left shortly after that, headed back to the precinct to work on figuring out the sniper’s identity. “Quietly,” he’d added with a roll of his eyes. “So the Feds don’t find out and throw a temper tantrum because I’m trying to solve their case.”

Jade had similar feelings about Destiny Division barring her from investigating the shooter, particularly since it looked like she was the one being targeted, but Celia had been clear that she wasn’t permitted to get involved, so she’d merely wished Aaron luck and promised to look out for his partner.

Luke was still asleep, so she was going to have to entertain herself for a while. She tried to read some Shakespeare, but she was too distracted to enjoy it. At one point she turned on the TV, hoping to catch a rerun of something good, but she couldn’t find anything except bad daytime television shows and news channels doing their best to incite fear and panic about the sniper case. The media had finally connected the shootings as being the work of the same person, and the reporters all seemed to take a grotesque sort of enjoyment in having something to scare the public with. After a few minutes of listening to the news anchor tell his viewers that they would be taking their lives into their hands if they left their apartments, she turned it off, disgusted, and retreated to one of the mindless games on her phone.

She spent the better part of an hour playing a block-stacking game and ignoring the icon at the top of the screen that insisted she had three voicemails and a dozen missed calls. They were all from Celia, and she couldn’t stomach the idea of having to explain to her boss that she was sitting in an apartment in the middle of her own territory, twiddling her thumbs while any chance she had of being promoted slipped through her fingers. She was also doing her best to ignore the urge to check her Karma Division app. It would only depress her to see how her catchment area was faring without her, but the alternative was going out on the street and risking getting more people killed if the sniper really was targeting her, so her best option was to do nothing and hope the Powers That Be were in a generous mood when they reviewed her file.

A groan from the bed alerted her that Luke was finally awake, and she set her phone down and came over to sit next to him as he rubbed at his eyes.

“Feeling any better?” she asked.

“Honestly? Yeah,” he admitted, pushing himself to a sitting position as he glanced around the apartment. “Aaron’s gone?”

“He went back to the precinct and Shannon went back to work,” Jade confirmed. “It’s just you and me.”

He levered himself up off of the bed with another groan, rolling his uninjured shoulder as he twisted in place to stretch his back.

“Stiff?” she asked, sympathetic, and he nodded with a grimace.

“Slept wrong,” he explained shortly. “I was trying not to sleep on my bad arm.”

“Here,” Jade said, slipping behind him to rest her hands on either side of his neck and massage his sore muscles.

That drew another groan from him, and he leaned into her touch even as his muscles tensed beneath her fingers.

“That’s incredible,” he sighed. “Christ, Jade.”

“Free neck rubs,” she murmured into his ear. “One of the many benefits of having a soulmate.”

“If I wasn’t sold before, I am now,” he replied, the knots in his sore muscles starting to relax under her gentle ministrations. “Um. Did Aaron say if he was working on the sniper case?”

“I give you a back rub and you want to talk about your partner?” Jade teased, and Luke snorted.

“You give me a back rub and I need
to talk about my partner in order to distract myself from the fact that the bed is six inches away,” he informed her. “I committed to taking this relationship slow, remember?”

“I remember,” she replied, letting her hands fall away from his shoulders and stepping back as he turned around. “Aaron said he was going to work on the sniper case, but quietly, so the FBI wouldn’t find out.”

“They get pissed off when they think we’re stepping on their dainty federal toes.”

“He left these,” she added, going over to the coffee table to retrieve the pictures Aaron had shown her. “He said all three of these people were at the crime scenes, and he wanted to know if any of them looked familiar to you.”

“Let me see,” he replied, taking the pictures when she handed them to him. He flipped past the old lady and the guy with the buzz cut, but stopped dead at the third picture. “I’ve seen this guy before.”

“You have?” she asked, feeling her stomach twist. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know who he is, but I recognize him.” His mouth was set in a grim line as he stared at the picture. “He was at the restaurant last night, sitting at the bar. The guy who was checking you out, remember?”

“He’s the killer,” she breathed, and he nodded.

“I think he probably is,” he agreed. “And I think we were right about you being the target. It would explain what he was doing at the restaurant. He followed us there, and after he left, he went back to your place and waited for us on the rooftop across the street.”

Luke handed her the photos and she took them with numb fingers, turning the top one over to see the name and address written on the back. The man in the picture lived just a couple of blocks away from her.

“I don’t know him,” she said slowly. “I can’t believe I don’t know him.”

“No?”

“No. I mean, no one’s ever tried to kill me before. I guess I thought that if someone hated me that much, I would at least know who he was.”

“Most killers know their victims, but that doesn’t have to go both ways,” he replied. “He could be someone you interact with but don’t ever notice. A guy in a coffee shop, a waiter, a cab driver. The back of the picture says he lives in the neighborhood. Does he look familiar at all? Maybe you did a karmic intervention for him at some point and he became fixated on you.”

She shrugged helplessly. “I do dozens of interventions a day. I can’t even remember all of the people I interacted with this week, let alone in the past few years.”

“It’ll be all right,” he promised her, hearing the anxiety rising in her voice. “We know who he is now. We’ll stop him before he hurts anyone else.”

He went over to the closet, pulling out a dress shirt and a pair of slacks.

“I hope that outfit doesn’t mean you think you’re leaving.”

“I need to go down to the precinct. Don’t give me that look,” he added as he turned his attention to trying to get his injured arm into the sleeve of his shirt. Despite Jade’s disapproval, she was at his side immediately, holding the shirt up for him as he slipped his arm in. “Thanks.”

“Are you forgetting the conversation we had last night?” she demanded as she buttoned the shirt for him. “Because I’m pretty sure there was something in there about ‘protective custody’ and ‘house arrest.’”

“For you,” he clarified. “You’re forgetting who the target is. That would be you.”

“I’m not the one he shot,” she pointed out, but it was a weak argument and they both knew it.

“No, but you’re the one he was watching at dinner,” Luke told her. “If he’d wanted me dead, he would have killed me. He’s killed everyone else he’s shot. The most likely reason for me to have survived—”

“Is that he wasn’t actually aiming for you,” she finished for him with a sigh. “Which means you were probably standing between me and the bullet meant for me. I know.”

“You don’t have to like it. You just have to play along until we manage to catch the guy.” He reached up to cup her cheek in his hand, drawing a reluctant smile from her. “Look at it from my perspective. This incredible, smart, gorgeous woman drops into my life with no warning, tells me we’re supposed to be together forever, makes me feel things I’ve never felt for anyone else, and then suddenly someone is trying to kill her. If you were me, wouldn’t you do whatever you could in order to keep her safe?”

In answer, she stood up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips.

“Do what you have to do,” she told him, resigned. “Just don’t forget to look at it from my perspective too. I’ve waited my whole life for you to come along. If you get killed now, I’m never going to forgive you.”