I exit the service room, and the front door that has been opened shuts. I follow him, and as soon as I step outside, I find Kane, dressed in a perfectly fitted black suit, standing beside his Roadster with Pocher in front of him. Kane opens his back seat, and a man about ten years younger than Pocher gets out and throws his arms around Pocher. A black sedan pulls up, and Pocher and the man I assume to be his brother get in the back seat. Kane’s gaze lifts and finds mine, and I quickly weave between cars to join him.
“It’s over?” I ask.
“No,” Kane assures me. “It’s just begun.”
I don’t ask what he means. I know. We’re now at war with the Society. Maybe we always were, but now I know. My eyes are wide open.
Raindrops begin to pummel us. Kane clicks his locks and we quickly take shelter in his car. “Cemetery or inside?” he asks as it slows.
“Cemetery.”
He nods and places us in gear. We arrive a short time later and before everyone else, and as the storm becomes a near monsoon, the canopy above Eddie’s plot blows away. His goodbye is as brutal as his murder. “I have to go back out of town,” Kane announces.
“Cartel business or otherwise?” I ask, thinking how much I hate his announcement. How much I want him to say the right thing, the thing that he can’t say. He’s Kane Mendez. I know what that means.
“Lilah,” he says, his voice a soft prod, willing me to look at him.
“I know. Don’t ask. Plausible deniability, right? You do the dirty work so I don’t have to, right?”
“Yes,” he says. “I do. What I just made happen with Pocher did not come without a price. You have to understand that.”
I face him. “I don’t want to be the reason you do bad things. I’ll do my own bad things. I’ll save myself.”
“I pulled a man off you after you were raped, Lilah. Don’t expect me to even think about limits when it comes to making those responsible pay. There are none. And if that pisses you off, be pissed off. I can live with that.”
“And if I can’t?”
“I’m still doing it.” He faces forward and starts the engine.
I’m furious with him, so fucking furious, and I don’t even know why. But then the stupid tarp to Eddie’s grave blows in front of the car, almost as if Eddie is telling us something. And I flash back to the Gamer saying, Kane is dead, as Eddie’s body bled out a foot away. “You don’t get to be your father and be with me, not because of me. Especially not because of me.”
He sits there a minute. He doesn’t look at me, but suddenly the tarp blows out of our path and we drive away. I glance down and find the photo of Kane and me, which had been in my bloodied clothes, in his cup holder. I pick it up and turn it over, looking at the marks on the back. The number of cases I’ve solved to avenge a murder I let Kane cover up.
He buried one body for me. He’d do it again. He goes to that dark, dirty place too easily. I can’t let him go there again. And I can’t let myself go there with him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
By the time Kane and I stop by my house and I change into jeans and a T-shirt, pack a few small things, and we chopper our way to New York City, it’s nearly nine at night. Kane has a private jet waiting on him, and he is forced by his “business” to see me off in an Uber rather than seeing me to my apartment. He kisses me, of course. I let him kiss me. Okay. I don’t let him. I enjoy the damn kiss. I like the fucking kiss. I’m crazy in love with a man who may be the drug that kills me, which is exactly why his trip and my new apartment are well timed.
I arrive to the Central Park high-rise at ten and discover a package from Murphy waiting on me. Since I haven’t given him my new address, I consider assigning him the title of my new stalker, but I decide he’s not quite worthy of that title just yet. I grab the package from the security post, and my keys, before I head to the fifteenth floor. Entering my new apartment, I flip on the lights. The windows are floor-to-ceiling and wrap the living room that is to the left, while the kitchen is to the right. The furniture I’d picked online is cream colored, as is the rug, while the floor is a medium shade of shiny brown hardwood. I walk to the couch and sit down, opening the envelope, and I find three case files. There is also a file on the Gamer with a handwritten note that reads: PROFILE FOR THE PROFILER—MURPHY. I open the file and discover a man who was a Yale law school graduate like Kane, with a five-year difference, never married, hunter for sport, no living family. Not much else. For now, I move on and look through the case files, but I gravitate toward a series of call-girl murders that were never solved that remind me of Laney Suthers. I know who killed Laney, don’t I?
“There are no coincidences,” I murmur, which means Murphy gave me this case for a reason, and he quite possibly—most definitely, actually—is a part of a bigger picture I don’t yet understand. I flip through the crime scene photos—four, total—gruesome stabbing murders that don’t match Laney’s faked suicide at all. But that doesn’t mean the killer wasn’t the Gamer, perhaps hired by Pocher?
Intrigued by this idea, I walk to the kitchen to make coffee and dig into my work, but I realize I have no food. I grab my briefcase and pull up a grocery store I know nearby on my phone, but it’s too late to order and have a delivery arranged. “Pizza it is,” I murmur, and this is no hardship. I love me some New-York-fucking-pizza-pie.
I dial up a local spot I love and order my old favorite, and since I still owe Nicolas at the DMV one as well, I arrange a delivery for him tomorrow. Once the pizza is all set, my need for chocolate, soda, and coffee has me hurrying to the door. I’m on the sidewalk in a flash and cutting through back streets that lead me to a corner store. I’m a block from my destination, about to turn a corner, when a man steps from a side alleyway into my path. Close. So close that under a glowing moon and streetlights I can trace every line of his hard, familiar features.
“Ghost,” I say, standing my ground. “What are you doing here?”
“Why aren’t you pulling your gun?”
He knows I’m unarmed. That’s why he chose here and now. “Do I need to pull my gun?”
“I’m not here to kill you,” he says. “Or you’d be dead.”
“I don’t die easily,” I say, sizing him up again, everything about him controlled, calculated. Military trained.
“Careful now,” he warns. “I love a challenge.”
“You love a payday.”
His lips quirk. “That’s true, but I do enjoy a little sport as well.”
“Why are you here?” I repeat.
“I owed you a thank-you.”
“For what?”
“You not only got rid of the Gamer for me, you killed him yourself.”
He shouldn’t know this. I don’t ask him how he does. He steps to me, right in front of me, and he stares down at me. “Bang,” he says. “I owe you one. But just one.”
I’m fairly certain he’s just told me he’ll kill someone for me for free, before he turns away and heads back down the alleyway. “I’m still coming for you; you know that, right?” I call after him.
He stops and turns to look at me. “You intrigue me, Lilah Love. Not one time did you pull the Kane Mendez card. Not one time did you use him as a shield.”
“Kane is not my protector. I am. And I’m damn good at it. You could ask the Gamer, but as you said. I killed him.”
His lips quirk again and he says, “And as I said. You intrigue me, Lilah Love. We’ll see each other again.” He grabs the fire-escape ladder on the wall and is up it in a flash, and I watch him disappear onto the top of the building. I let out a breath I’ve apparently been holding so long I might have to consider a career shift to Olympic swimmer, except I hate swimming.
I start walking, but I do so slowly, certain he is watching. I grab my supplies at the store and throw a few extra chocolate bars into the mix. I eat one on the way back to my apartment. A Mr. Goodbar, which has me telling dirty jokes in my head. A couple dozen of those dirty and also very bad jokes later, I reach my
door at the same time as my pizza. I tip the guy with a twenty and hold up the candy bar in my hand. “Give this to her. Then she can’t say you didn’t give her a really good Goodbar tonight.” I deliver the words with remarkable earnestness.
He responds with a look that is incredulous bordering on indignant. Maybe that’s because the joke sounded better in my head, as most usually do. Or maybe it’s because he’s about sixty and is no longer a Goodbar kind of man. Either way, he lets me keep my Goodbar, which I intend to enjoy this very night.
I shut and lock my door and walk to my kitchen, where I set down the pizza box and stick my sodas and ground coffee in the fridge. The coffee doesn’t belong in the fridge, but I realize now that I don’t actually have a coffeepot, so I don’t think it matters where it is. I walk to the island. It’s stainless steel, which I’m pretty much digging. I do good Internet shopping. I open my box and grab a slice of pie and take a bite. That’s when I freeze. There’s a note. A Junior note.
I toss down my slice and read it without touching it:
M is for Miss me? I missed you.
D is for Disappointed. He’s not for you. This city is not for you.
S is for sorry. You are going to be so so so so so so so sorry.
W is for warning. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Junior was not the Gamer. I grab a slice of pizza and finish it. My cell phone rings and it’s Murphy. “I got the case files,” I say. “The call girls—”
“Later, Love. The locals requested our help.”
“Really? Already? Is it some sort of power trip?”
“No. Unfortunately, they have three dead women and what they believe to be a serial killer. They’re desperate to solve the case before it goes public. They want you to profile.”
“They have one of the best profilers in the freaking world,” I say, thinking of my old mentor for the first time since I took this new role in the task force. My mentor is here. Why did I not think about this before now?
“Yes,” Murphy confirmed. “Roger Griffin. And he’s the one who asked for your input. Go, now. I’ll text you the address. And Agent Love, remember the lesson you’ve learned. Communicate.” He hangs up and leaves me with a personal problem to solve.
My mentor, the man who sees monsters and killers where other people see ballerinas, school teachers, and Lilah Love, is about to look me in the eyes. And I have already misstepped by coming here, by giving him the chance to see the monster I fear is inside me. But it’s too late now. I can’t run and I can’t hide.