I’m standing on the beach, the wind blowing in my hair, salt on my lips. And then there is a man grabbing me. I can’t see his face. I can’t see his face. I start to fight, shoving and kicking. I need my gun. Where is my gun? I can’t get my body to work. I can’t get him off me. My shirt rips and sand is at my back. His body is on top of me.
“I’ll kill you!” I shout. “I’ll kill you!”
His mouth presses to my ear. “You’ll be too dead to kill anyone,” he promises, his voice low, gravelly, accented. “But not until I’m done with you, which won’t be soon.”
“No! No!”
“No!” I shout, and still stuck in that memory, in that same heavily drugged sensation that I’d felt when trapped under that monster, I find the will to throw off the blanket. Fighting for control of my body, I lift my arms and start waving my hands in the air, forcing sensation to return. Once I succeed, I start moving my legs, and that’s when my hand comes down on the heavy steel of Cujo, my trusty shotgun, resting next to me. Its presence infers that at some point I made an active decision to go to bed and have it by my side. And still I’m blank.
I press my fingers to my temples, and I force myself to focus. What is the last thing I remember? What? Nothing. I rotate and let my feet settle on the ground. Still nothing. I stand up slowly, testing my footing, and aside from the haze, I seem to be fine. I confirm this assumption with a few steps that gradually become me pacing. Okay. Office. I was in my office trying to find a way to clear Woods, the fall guy for the assassinations, which everyone else calls murders. Woods proceeded to confess on video and set himself on fire. Pizza arrived with a note from my stalker, Junior, attached.
I stop walking, memories now coming at me hard and fast: My decision to charge over to Kane’s house and confront him about his secrets and the murders. Me cuffing him the instant he opened his door, and him telling me that I needed to see what was in the garage. The old man tied to the chair. The argument with Kane. I squeeze my eyes shut. “Holy hell,” I murmur, remembering my pricked hand, my lashes lifting with a grit of my teeth. “That bastard drugged me.”
My gaze jerks to my body, and I confirm that I’m still clothed, but my feet are bare, like I wouldn’t notice that I was naked while pacing. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t, because Kane fucking drugged me. And he drugged me knowing I was drugged that night on the beach.
“Bastard.”
I glance down at my clothes again and flash back to being at Kane’s door. The jacket I’d been wearing when I walked into Kane’s house is also missing. My holster and weapon were still on my person, but now they are not. I scan the room and find them on the chair he’d grabbed the blanket from. The methodical way he handled this drives home the fact that Kane brought me here and he’d considered undressing me. And it was Kane, and not one of his men, because he’s too damn possessive to allow anyone else to touch me, let alone enter my house. But the fact that he left me in my clothes, when that man’s inclination is always to undress me, tells me that he knew damn well that he’d be absent at least one of his family jewels if he’d gotten me naked without my permission. He still might be when I’m done with him. And how did he know my security code? And why am I even asking that stupid question? Men like Kane can get anything they want.
Glancing at my nightstand, I find my phone plugged in and charging. “Such a gentleman,” I murmur sarcastically.
I sit down on the bed again and grab my cell. Just thinking about Kane tucking me into bed like his precious property, while he sauntered his arrogant ass off to work—aka torturing and perhaps killing—agitates the hell out of me. Glancing at my display screen, I grimace at the late hour. Damn it. Aside from the other random, screwed-up pieces of my morning that thus far has not been bright and sunny, I don’t have time to be sleeping until nine-oh-fuck o’clock.
In other cheery news, I’ve missed three calls from my boss and two from my brother, the police chief, who thinks he’s my boss. And, of course, I have no calls from Kane, who probably thinks I’m still snoozing it off in hopes that I’ll lose my job that obviously conflicts with his gangster lifestyle. I also have about ten calls and twenty text messages from my tech guy, Tic Tac:
Where are you?
Where are you?
Answer your damn phone.
Murphy asked for all the case data on Woods. I had to give it to him. I held back what I could.
Where the hell are you? You know, you want me to answer my phone whenever you call, but you don’t answer yours. You better be dead or bleeding.
And on that note, I start to dial my boss but pause. I’m not dead or bleeding, but am I mentally equipped for this call? I test my mental faculties. “My name is Lilah-fucking-Love,” I say out loud. “And Kane Mendez is not gangster enough for what he has coming his way.”
Yep. I’m good.
I punch the Call Back button for my boss. “Agent Love,” he bites out, answering on the first ring. “We have a communication problem.”
Says every man I’ve ever known, I think, but what I say is, “I had a complication.”
“I’m your complication.”
Also said by a good majority of the men in my life, but before I can come up with a more acceptable reply, he adds, “I have dead bodies, Agent Love. We also have a confession from a dead man, who set himself on fire on film after said confession, and the New York authorities are trying to close the cases. If they’re connected to our two murders, that means I close our cases and you come home.”
“Yes, but—”
“Unless you are dead,” he continues, “which you are not, or bleeding profusely, or injured to the point of being incapable of communication, which you clearly are not, then use your damn phone the way you use your foul mouth. Liberally.”
In other words, he expects an acceptable explanation for my silence, and sleeping late won’t cut it. “Someone knocked me out,” I admit. “Obviously I’ve rattled some cages.”
“Who? When? Why? And most importantly, are you okay?”
“I’m just peachy,” I say, and seizing every bit of honesty I can muster, I add, “but whoever did this won’t be soon, I promise you. As to when it happened: sometime around ten last night. As to where: at my house, as I exited the patio door. I assume whoever it was searched my place.”
“Any idea who it was or what they were after?”
“No idea who it was and I assume they wanted my investigation data.”
“Do you have cameras?”
“No,” I lie, even though I hate lies, but then I’m bad when I’m around Kane. That’s just how it is. “But ironically,” I add, “I called my service to have them installed before this
even happened. They’re backlogged.”
“You need cameras now,” he says, stating the obvious.
I move on. “It wasn’t Woods.”
“That’s not what he said.”
“Eleven percent of all confessions are fake.”
“He killed himself, Agent Love,” he bites out, sounding quite snippy at this point.
“Did he? Or was he killed? We need to analyze the footage of that suicide. And even if Woods killed himself, he did it under duress to save someone else. Woods is not our killer.”
“That’s an opinion. Make your case with facts.”
“There is no evidence to convict Woods. That’s a fact.”
“And yet the locals are convinced it’s him.”
“Based on circumstantial evidence and pressure from the rich, famous, and powerful.”
“Do I need to remind you that you’re talking about your family?” he quips back.
“If you thought that would be a factor, I wouldn’t be here.”
“What circumstantial evidence?” he says, hitting me hard and fast.
“He had an affair with a famous actress, and her husband found out. He pointed a gun at the husband’s head and then ran.”
“Our victims died by bullets to their heads.”
“Our victims died with bullets between the eyes, execution style,” I say, “with the precision of a professional and no evidence left behind.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Last year. Before the murders ever took place. Furthermore, that incident was fodder for the gossips in this town, of which there are many. Our killer is not a person who puts themselves in the spotlight, nor are they prone to outbursts. He, or she, wouldn’t start killing people with a gun to the head after putting on a show like Woods did.”
“Come on, Agent Love. Your mother was a famous actress. You’ve lived amongst the rich and famous. We both know that you understand double lives and good actors. Everyone isn’t what they seem.”
By the time he’s finished those statements, I’m standing, and I don’t remember standing, but something about his tone and the context is hitting me all kinds of wrong. Like he knows more about me than my proficiency with the word fuck and my history with Kane Mendez.