The Heart of A Killer

Nine

Anna was frustrated. She updated her reports and got into her car, not wanting to spend the better part of her shift stuck in the precinct.

She drove past the alley, though she wasn’t sure what she expected to find there. Nothing, which was exactly what she saw. It was empty.

She pulled over and got something to eat, then grabbed her phone, impulse punching Dante’s number.

“Anna?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s up?”

“Did I wake you?” She cringed, realizing not everyone kept night hours like she did.

“No. I’m up.”

Now what? Idiot. Why did he still twist her up inside and make her feel like a tongue-tied sixteen-year-old? “I…I want to talk to you. You busy? You’re probably going to bed soon aren’t you?”

She heard the soft chuckle. “No. I’m up. Come over.”

“Okay.” She hung up, feeling stupid and hot and sweaty. Damn him for getting to her that way.

She drove over and knocked on the door of the condo.

He answered, looking delectable in a pair of jeans and a well-worn gray T-shirt that snugged tight against his body. His hair looked mussed, like he’d run his fingers through it several times.

“Are you sure you weren’t sleeping?”

“I’m sure I wasn’t sleeping. Come in.”

He closed the door after she walked in. The television was on, though turned down low. He had a laptop open on the dining room table.

“Working?”

“Not really,” he said, pushing it closed as he headed to the kitchen. “Online games. It’s an addiction.”

She laughed. “I guess it’s good to have something to do to pass the time.”

“You want something to drink?”

“Water, if you have it.”

He pulled out a bottle of water for her and a soda for himself.

She felt ridiculously out of sorts standing in the middle of his living room, though this really wasn’t his place, so she didn’t understand her discomfort.

“Decent place.”

“Gabe scored it for me, and yeah, it beats the hell out of a hotel.”

She took a seat on the sofa, unable to take her eyes off him as he slid next to her. What was it about him that, even after twelve years and total abandonment, he could still capture her interest in a way that made her palms sweat and her heart beat faster?

It had to be the shadowy element. She’d been drawn to him when he was the bad boy, the kid with the rocky, brutal past. And now he’d swooped back into her life as mysterious as ever, possibly even mixed up in a murder investigation. She should be steering clear of him and focusing on him as a suspect. Instead, she was breathing in his musky male scent and wishing she had the guts to put down her water and climb onto his lap and do what she’d fantasized about doing for the past twelve years.

She breathed in and out, her focus on the sun-bleached hairs on his arm and the broad muscle of his biceps. She hadn’t even realized she was staring until her gaze reached his face and he was smiling down at her.

“Lost in thought?”

She leaned back and took a long swallow of water. “Yeah.”

“About the case.”

“Of course.”

From the smirk on his face, she could tell he knew damn well what she’d been thinking about. Bastard.

“You going to tell me why you came over?”

She’d love to. If she actually knew what had compelled her to drive over here. “I’m stuck.”

“On?”

“This case. But Roman’s the one I should brainstorm with.”

“He around tonight?”

“I’m sure he is. I could call him.”

“But you didn’t. You called me. So talk to me.”

He made it sound so simple when everything was actually convoluted. Like being here in the first place.

“Anna, it’s me. You can talk to me.”

She shifted to face him. “You want me to erase twelve years of ‘I don’t know where the hell you’ve been or who you are’ as if they don’t mean anything, Dante. I can’t do that, especially when you won’t tell me anything.”

“I was in the army.”

Her brows shot up. “The army?”

“Yeah. When I left here I joined the army. I needed to get away, start over, start a different life, but I was unskilled, so I knew I needed training. The army gave me that.”

“How long were you in the army?”

“Still am.”

“You… Really?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re on leave?”

His lips curled. “You could say that.”

She frowned. If he was military, his fingerprints would have showed up in the database. “Are you Special Forces or something?”

He leaned back. “Why do you ask?”

“I ran your prints. You don’t show up.”

“You ran… When?”

“I used a glass you drank water out of and ran fingerprints on you.”

His brows rose. “Why?”

“Duh. Because you wouldn’t tell me a goddamn thing about yourself or where you’d been for the past twelve years. I don’t like mysteries, so I wanted some answers.”

His smile was infuriating. “Get any?”

“No. You don’t show up on any databases. No license, nothing. Why is that? I can’t imagine you’d be any good to Special Forces not knowing how to drive a car.”

“I do special projects undercover. They don’t want me showing up on any databases. Let’s just leave it at that for now.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but Dante placed two fingers at her lips. “Please, Anna.”

She was supposed to believe him, take his word.

They’d been everything to each other at one time.

But right now, he could be a killer.

People changed. She knew it, saw it.

But how much did they change? All those years ago she knew exactly who he was and what he was capable of.

He’d saved her life that night. But he’d also taken a life.

She’d never been so confused about anything-or anyone-before.

“So tell me why you’re here.”

She should leave, keep her distance, listen to that inner voice that kept telling her to be wary of Dante.

Instead, she decided to see where this led.

“Autopsy showed nothing out of the ordinary other than George had been beaten and cut with a nondescript sharp knife, probably some random switchblade. No stray hairs or fibers, no fingerprints from the scene. The bag of drugs was clean, but it had George’s fingerprints on it. The scene and the body itself were almost too clean. It was as if whoever had done this had been meticulous about prepping the scene or making sure he’d leave nothing behind.”

“A lot of crafty killers watch television and read books these days. Many are well versed in crime scene technology.”

“True, but people think they know what to watch out for, and they still leave something at the scene we can pick up on. This guy left nothing. Not even a shoe print.”

Dante leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “Which means what, exactly?”

“I don’t know, other than he knows what to do to not leave any evidence behind.”

“Maybe he’s done this before.”

“I did a search on similar crimes and found nothing.”

“Which doesn’t mean your suspect hasn’t killed before. He just hasn’t killed in this way, right?”

She leaned back. “True. But how could we not know this guy was in the alley that night twelve years ago? Wouldn’t we have seen him?”

“Lots of hiding places in that alley, Anna. You were in shock, and the guys and I were focused on two things-you and Maclin. There could have been an elephant in the alley and we wouldn’t have noticed.”

“You’re probably right. Shit.” She took a drink and set the bottle down on the table in front of her. “But why kill George?”

“I told you. It’s a message. He’s here and he knows what happened. Now he wants us to know. And he wants to hurt us-us being me and the other guys. George was our father-the closest thing to a father we had. Killing him hurt us.”

Anna nodded, acknowledging the pain they must all be going through. The funeral had been brutal for all of them. She’d stayed in the back and watched them as they’d surrounded Ellen, watched their faces as the coffin was lowered into the ground. She’d felt the gut-wrenching sorrow emanating from all of them, especially from Ellen as she’d let tears fall from her cheeks and stood stoically at the grave site. It had been a horrible experience.

She shook off the memory and lifted her gaze to Dante. “But why wait twelve years to send his message? Why didn’t he do it earlier?”

He shifted, drawing his knee onto the sofa. “I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe he was waiting for me to come back so we’d all be here.”

And maybe Dante was the one who had set it all in motion. Maybe he was the killer.

She hated thinking it, but there it was.

No. He wouldn’t do that to George. He’d loved him. She remembered him telling her that George was his father. He’d admired and respected him and he and the other guys had finally found a home-a family-with the Clemonses.

So she pondered his suggestion, the fact that all of them who had been in the alley that night were now back in town. “That’s the only thing that does make sense. If he wants to show off-to show us that he knows-he had to do it in front of all of us and you weren’t here. For a while Gabe wasn’t here, either. It wasn’t the right time.”

“Yes.”

“Which means it’s someone local, someone who’s been tracking our movements all these years. How would he even know who we are?”

“You know as well as I do, if you want to find out who people are, you can figure it out. You worked in the shop right there. Easy to backtrack from there.”

This was all so surreal. “You’re right. So now he’s done it. What’s going to be his next move?”

Dante dragged his hands through his hair. “Hell if I know. Maybe it’s a cat-and-mouse game and he wants you to find him.”

“Ugh. This is as bad as television.”

“Ready for a beer now?”

“I’m on duty.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

She smiled. “No, thanks. I’m so tense I probably wouldn’t stop at one, and it would be my luck I’d get called in by my captain, he’d smell alcohol on my breath and then there’d be hell to pay.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t be the first detective to drink on the job.”

“No, I wouldn’t. But that’s not who I am.”

He leaned back and studied her. “Still a good girl, aren’t you?”

She stood, her irritation spiking hot. “You don’t know anything about me, Dante.”

Dante loved seeing the flash of heat in Anna’s cheeks. Even if he’d pissed her off, which he seemed to be able to do easily.

“I guess I don’t. You never used to spark up as quick as you do now.”

“You never used to irritate me as much as you do now.”

He laughed. “Then sit down and tell me about yourself.” He patted the sofa. “Sit.”

Her jaw clenched. “I’m not a dog.”

“Please.”

She slid onto the sofa and grabbed the bottle of water, eyeing him warily. She had reason not to trust him. The circumstances of their first meeting after he’d gotten back hadn’t been ideal. And she’d gone on a fishing expedition to find out more about him. Hadn’t found anything, either.

She still didn’t know it all.

“Tell me what happened after that night,” he said.

“You mean after you left?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry I left you.”

He wanted to say it over and over until she believed him, until she forgave him.

She shrugged. “No big deal. I handled it.”

He could continue to apologize for that, but what would be the point? What was done was done and he couldn’t change the past.

“Yeah, you did handle it. Look at you now.”

Ignoring him, she said, “After that night I went on living just like normal. I went back to school and tried to pretend nothing had happened.”

“That must have been hard.”

“It was. The guys-Roman and Jeff-stuck by me, but I was so freaked out about someone connecting us to the murder in the alley that I distanced myself from them.”

“But no one knew you were there.”

“I was working that night, remember? The police questioned me. I told them I had closed up and hadn’t heard anything out back.”

Guilt hammered at him. It had been a mistake leaving. He could have waited awhile, could have argued harder with her father about leaving right away.

Yet he couldn’t go back and change the past. His guilt would always be there, so he’d just have to live with it.

She had paused, so he nodded. “Go on.”

“Anyway, after that I motored through classes, had no social life and went on to college where I majored in criminal justice. Then I became a cop.”

“So you could take down bad guys like Tony Maclin.”

“Something like that.”

“Only I don’t think it was that simple, was it?” He swept a stray hair away from her face. She stilled, her eyes so expressive, so wary. He wondered how badly that night had scarred her. “Did you get counseling after the attack?”

“Yes. I had no one to talk to and my dad felt inept about it, so he found someone for me to talk to. With those records being confidential I was protected and so were the rest of you. Plus I didn’t elaborate much to the therapist, just said I had been jumped.”

He hated that she couldn’t even be honest in therapy. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t attack me in the alley that night.”

“But if I hadn’t left, and if we had called the police, you wouldn’t have had to bottle this up inside all these years. And now we have this…”

“I can deal with it, Dante.”

“Can you?”

She laughed. “I’m stronger than you think, a lot stronger than I was that night. Being a cop requires you to toughen up. I’ve been shot at, kicked, slapped, punched and swiped at with a knife. Being a cop isn’t easy.”

“No, I don’t imagine it is. But it still doesn’t mean you should have had to endure the aftermath of that night alone.”

“I wasn’t alone. You all saved my life.”

Then he ran. So did Gabe. And left Anna alone to pick up the pieces and hide their crime. Yeah, he was some savior.

“You don’t always have to be tough.” He leaned in and palmed the nape of her neck, massaging the tension he felt.

Her eyes widened, but it wasn’t fear he saw there. “Yes, I do.”

He decided to push his luck and drew her toward him. “It’s okay to lean on someone else.”

She reached out, touching his chest. She wasn’t shoving him away, just resting her fingers there.

He should leave her alone. If he was a good guy, he’d do that.

He wasn’t a good guy.

“I don’t lean on anyone, Dante.”

He gave her a devastating smile, then bent his lips to hers. “Try.”