When the Storm Breaks (12 page)

A
idan locked the door as the last of the evidence technicians left Olivia’s apartment. “Okay,” he said to Sean. “Talk.”

“About what?”

“Whatever is making you look so sour. The women are safe, nobody followed them, so what’s chewing on you?”

“The fact that I was right about our killer fixating on Claire.”

Aidan didn’t buy it. “What else?”

Sean sat on Olivia’s couch and scrubbed at his face with both hands. “I’ve screwed things up.”

“How?”

“Claire. I drove her over here and we talked. Argued. Then I got kind of distracted.”

“Distracted?”

“I stuck my tongue in her mouth.”

Aidan managed not to laugh out loud. “So? Did she bite it off?”

“You’re laughing, and I’ve fucked up the case.”

“Sean,” Aidan began.

“I never should have done it, never should have let my dick take over in a professional situation. She’s a
witness
.
One who is now in need of police protection.” Sean stood up and started pacing. “Did you see how upset she was at finding that box? If I’d stayed, if I hadn’t run out of here like my ass was on fire after kissing her, I might have been able to spare her some of that.”

“Anyone with half a brain,” Aidan said patiently, ignoring everything but the main point, “could look at the two of you and see a hell of a lot more than a kiss in your future.”

Sean glared at Aidan. “No way I’m that obvious.”

Aidan just shook his head. “Hopeless.”

“Shit. Maybe I should just take out a full page ad in the
Washington Post
about how I come on to witnesses.”

“You don’t.”

“I did.”

“Did she mind?”

Sean stopped pacing and almost smiled.

This time Aidan laughed. “Lighten up, cousin, and thank the gods for a break in the case.”

“What break—the techs were muttering about not finding anything worth their trip out here.”

“We know who the guy’s intended victim is. We have her under twenty-four/seven guard. She knows what he looks like—or probably will if she sees him again. So let her go looking.”

“No.” Sean’s voice was hard. “Too dangerous.”

“Have you asked her?”

“No.”

“Then how can—”

“No! Weren’t you listening? I can’t think like a cop when I’m near her and if I’m not thinking like a cop I could get her killed! This whack job is playing with her, with all of us. That’s a change in his pattern. We need to
get a real psychologist in on this ASAP, instead of tinkering with a profile ourselves.”

Aidan rubbed a hand over his stubbly jaw. “You’re right about that part. I’ll secure the apartment and follow up with the management company. You jack up the shrink and check out the security arrangements at Afton’s house.”

“Security is your specialty,” Sean shot back as he headed toward the door. It slammed behind him as he left.

Aidan sighed. It had been worth a try.

Washington, D.C.

Sunday

“I
still don’t think this is a good idea.” Olivia’s voice echoed in the deserted lobby of the office building. Claire ignored her friend, showed her passport as ID to the security guard, and continued to the elevator.

“Shouldn’t we wait for the police?” Olivia asked.

“I left a message on Sean’s voice mail. If he wants to join us here, he’s welcome to.” She didn’t mention the fact that she’d deliberately called his office number and left the message there, instead of on his cell phone.

Olivia’s silence was almost accusatory as they rode up to Camelot’s floor in the elevator.

“Besides, all I am doing is reactivating my dating service membership after a brief lapse. This has nothing to do with the investigation,” Claire said.

“Bullshit. If you’re going to come up with excuses to stick your nose into police business, at least make them good ones.”

Olivia marched out of the elevator and went to the door of Camelot Dating Services, Inc.

Claire followed and knocked on the door. “Afton? You in there?”

“Hang on.”

The door opened, and Afton appeared. She looked stylish and carefree, dressed in a pretty summer outfit on a hot Sunday afternoon. But as soon as she locked the door behind her friends, she started in on Claire.

“Are you sure you should be doing this?” Afton demanded. “What about the police?”

“I’m not really doing this for the investigation,” Claire said, speaking fast. “I’m just going through the catalogue looking for men who have common interests. A date possibility. That’s what I paid for, right? If I
happen
to come across a picture that reminds me of the killer in any way, I will of course involve the police right away. But at this moment, I’m here looking for love.”

Afton stared at her in disbelief.

Claire didn’t try again. Everything she said sounded lame even to her. She sat down at Afton’s desk and looked at her. “You’re the expert at this. What’s next?”

Afton looked at Olivia as if expecting her to reason with Claire.

Olivia shrugged. “When she gets an idea like this, forget reason.” She turned and glared at Claire. “But you will be very, very careful, do you hear?”

“I promise, Mom.”

“I’m still not comfortable with this,” Afton said in a worried voice.

“Why?” Claire asked blandly. “All the men in your catalogue have been checked out, right?”

“We could have missed something. We must have.”

“The police sure don’t think so, or they’d have me staked out in front of the photos. As they put it, I could
have seen the killer’s photo in a lot of places.”

“But—” Afton began.

“Let’s all be realistic here,” Claire cut in. “What are the chances that I’d stumble across a serial killer and actually know him from a club where I’m a member? Those are really pitiful odds.”

“Yes, but what are the chances of stumbling across a serial killer at all, let alone one who is in the act of committing a murder?” Olivia asked. “Besides, the school is close. It’s not inconceivable that the guy would have become familiar with the area after visiting Camelot a few times, then maybe decided to stalk his next victim here.”

Claire ignored the icy feeling she got in her stomach whenever she considered the killer and the crime scene. She wondered how long it would take for the terror to fade. Or if it would fade.

“I appreciate your concern,” she said to Afton and Olivia. “But right now, I need your support. I need to
do
something, and this is the only thing I can think of that might help.”

“Of course you have our support,” Afton said, sitting at her computer. “I just don’t think it’s safe for you to be going out with anyone right now. At least not until the police have done their own background checks on the candidates.”

“That’s good,” Olivia said quickly. “Attacking a problem head-on like you normally do might not work this time.”

Claire considered the idea. It might be a workable compromise, something she could discuss with Sean later. “I’ll talk to Sean about it.”

Afton held up a hand suddenly to quiet the other
women as she heard the muted ding of the elevator. There shouldn’t be anyone with access to the building on a Sunday afternoon, at least not on this floor. Claire and Olivia had gotten in because Afton had cleared it with security first. But none of her employees had that authority, or after-hours badge access. The only one who did was her mother—and she was home with her grandchildren.

All three women paused at the sound of footsteps in the hall.

“Security?” Olivia asked. Afton shook her head.

Adrenaline kicked into Claire’s blood. “Did you lock the outside door?” she asked very softly.

Afton nodded, then listened with a sense of disbelief to the distinct sound of Camelot’s front door opening. Eyes wide, she jumped up and shut the door to her office as quietly as she could, turning the flimsy lock set into the doorknob. Then she backed up toward the other women as she heard the squeak of shoes on the smooth wooden floor of the hall.

Claire had unconsciously grabbed a letter opener off the desk, and she watched with wide eyes as Olivia picked up a pair of scissors lying on Afton’s desk. Afton looked around for something that she could use as a weapon.

The doorknob turned. Once. Twice.

The tiny lock held.

After a brief pause and a scraping noise, the knob turned again. The door opened.

Claire’s heart was pounding so loudly that she was sure everyone could hear it. She flashed on the night of the murder, the only other time in her life she’d felt this type of adrenaline rush and terror.

Sean walked in. He smiled grimly when he saw their
tense faces and the makeshift weapons they carried.

“They’re here,” he said.

“Thank God,” Aidan said, crowding in. One look told him that everything was all right, except that his cousin was going to kick some well-shaped butt. A smart man, Aidan took a seat at the back of the office and waited for the fireworks.

“At least the three of you had enough sense to be afraid,” Sean said.

“How did you get in?” Afton said. “The door was locked.”

He held up the credit card he’d used to pop the flimsy locks. Olivia was closer, so he disarmed her first.

“
Jesus!
You scared the hell out of us,” Claire said, waving the letter opener.

Sean plucked it out of her clenched fingers and examined its shiny length with interest. “You could do some damage with this, but you’d have to get pretty close.”

“Oh, yeah? Why don’t you let me try on you?” Claire smiled at Sean, showing more teeth than humor. Her pulse was still pounding, and she could feel the nauseating emptiness adrenaline had left in her stomach.

“Some other time, when you aren’t mad enough to stick it in me.” As he spoke, he slipped the letter opener into the back pocket of his jeans, well out of her reach. “Now, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here alone on a Sunday afternoon when you know very well that you’re being stalked by a serial killer?”

His voice was calm, patient, reasonable. It made Claire nervous as hell because she sensed he wasn’t any of those things. She cleared her throat. “I, ah, guess you got my message.”

“What message?”

“The one I left on your voice mail at the office,” Claire said.

Sean shook his head.

“Then how did you know where we were?” she asked.

“Why did you call my work number instead of my cell phone?”

“I asked you first,” she shot back.

Sean reminded himself that he was a professional. Calm, patient, and reasonable. “We have an unmarked police car parked outside Afton’s house at all times, watching over you and Olivia. When you both left today, they followed you here, then called me. On my cell phone,” he added pointedly.

Claire flushed. She was embarrassed that she’d been caught taking the coward’s way out and leaving a message on his work phone.

“What are you up to?” he said. “And don’t tell me it’s nothing. It ain’t gonna fly,” he drawled in a fair imitation of her accent.

Unable to lie while making direct eye contact, she didn’t even bother to try. Instead, she began drawing aimless designs on Afton’s desk. “It’s pretty simple, Detective. I paid for a bunch of dates and I’m going to go through the catalogue until I get them.”

Aidan laughed out loud.

She glared at him.

“So we’re back to the catalogue,” Sean said.

“That’s why I came here in the first place, remember?”

“You actually think I’d let you go out with anyone from Camelot’s catalogue?”

It was the calm patience and reason in his voice that pushed her over the edge. She looked him right in the eye and drawled, “I actually think that you don’t have any say
in the matter,
cher
. I’m single, over the age of consent, and pay my taxes on time. Last time I checked the local laws, I don’t need police permission to date.”

“You’re going to stand there and tell me this has nothing to do with the investigation?” Sean asked.

Claire shrugged. “No. But I defy you to prove otherwise.”

Despite the anger in his gut, Sean kept his voice level. Every time he lost his temper with Claire, she got around him. Besides, there was a possibility—admittedly not much of one—that if he kept a lid on his temper, he wouldn’t end up kissing her until he didn’t have a single brain cell left above his belt.

“Are you such a control freak that you can’t trust the police to do work you’re not competent to?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with trust,” Claire said.

Sean stared at her. She didn’t look away. She was telling him the truth, no matter how ridiculous it sounded to him.

“Sean, let me feel like I’m more than a victim,” she said. “I have an idea, something to get to the information locked away in my memories. I want to help—I need to. Can you understand that?”

“Why don’t you tell us your idea?” Aidan asked from the back of the room.

Claire gave him a grateful look before meeting Sean’s icy eyes again. “It seems pretty clear to me that the killer has, for whatever reason, decided to communicate with me. So I thought I’d go through the dating catalogue and make contact with all the candidates I react to, even if I don’t know why.”

“Assuming you’re right,” Sean said evenly, “there are
hundreds of pictures in the catalogue. How can you pick the right one?”

“I just know if I see the killer’s face again I’ll recognize it in some way, even if only subconsciously. Once I pick out the prospects, I can set up a date or something. Then he’ll have to come out of hiding.”

“Fuck me,” Sean said. “I knew you were up to something crazy.”

Claire gave up on convincing him. She turned to Aidan. “You know he won’t be able to resist if I contact him directly. Then you can catch him before he hurts anyone else.”

Aidan met Claire’s pleading gaze and mentally weighed Sean’s sanity against the importance of getting a predator off the streets. As a cop, his choice was obvious. But as Sean’s family, he braced for the fight he knew his words would trigger.

“She’s right,” he said to Sean. “It’s the best chance we have to draw the killer out into the open before he cuts up another woman.”

“Claire’s a civilian,” Sean shot back. “We can’t use her as bait. Besides, what’s to keep the guy from guessing he’s being set up as soon as he sees that his next date is one Marie Claire Lambert?”

“Yeah, he might guess,” Aidan said. “But he’s a risk-taker. An adrenaline freak. He’d get off thinking he could outsmart us.”

“I don’t believe this. She hit her head recently. What’s your excuse—congenital stupidity?”

Claire opened her mouth, but Aidan was quicker.

“It’s okay,” he said to her, but it was Sean he looked at. “He’s just pissed off because he knows I’m right, and he’s
too good a cop to ignore it any longer. He knows we don’t have any choice. Not if we want to keep this bastard from killing again.”

In silence Sean measured his options against his waning hold on self-control. “Yeah, well, it’s an interesting idea. I’ll kick it around with Aidan, sleep on it, and let you know.”

Claire knew Sean was going to reject her idea, pat her on the head, and push her aside. She didn’t like this calm, emotionless, screamingly reasonable Sean. She much preferred it when his mouth got tight, his cheek began to twitch, and he went nose to nose with her.

And then kissed her.

“There’s a plainclothes officer waiting in the lobby downstairs,” Sean said. “He’ll take you back to Afton’s place.”

Claire opened her mouth to speak again.

“I said I’d think about it,” he said softly.

She looked into his cool blue eyes for a long time, her heart sinking at the lack of expression. He wasn’t really there, not emotionally. He was shut down and nailed tight, and there was nothing she could do to reach him.

Claire picked up her purse and walked out of the office without a backwards glance.