The Heart of A Killer

Eleven

Anna stared up at Dante in dumbfounded shock.

“What the hell are you talking about?” She pulled away.

“Let me start at the beginning. I told you I joined the army when I left. But I need to explain why I left.”

She folded her arms. “That would be a good place to start.”

“Twelve years ago when I walked out on you, it was because I figured I needed to get out of town fast. I wanted to separate us, Anna.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid of the fallout from the murder, of anything tying you to me. I figured distance would help.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Now, maybe. Back then it made a whole lot of sense to me. Anyway, during my time away, let’s say I learned how to handle myself. And I can watch over you.”

“That’s what you mean when you said you killed a lot of people. You were black ops.”

He didn’t answer, but his eyes gave him away.

She backed away, irritation grating on every nerve ending. More lies. More cover-ups. More about him she didn’t know. What else was there? “I don’t need you to watch over me. I’m a trained detective. What’s it going to take for you to realize I can take care of myself?”

“A little backup couldn’t hurt. Not with some insane killer out there. Look at what happened to George, one of the smartest men I ever knew. He would have never let himself get blindsided like that. And Jeff wasn’t exactly a moron. He knew to watch his back. We came from the streets. It was tough out there. Instincts like that are never lost. We had just told him last night to watch out for himself and now he’s dead. So whoever’s doing the killing was smart enough to get the drop on him. They could do the same to you, so no matter how tough and capable you think you are, you can still be hurt.”

Anna flinched. Dante knew he’d insulted her, but he needed her to see reason. This wasn’t a game, and it wasn’t a back-and-forth about which of them was better prepared to take care of themselves. It was life and death and they had to start watching out for each other.

“I’m moving into your place.”

She looked horrified. “What? No.”

“Until this guy is caught, I’m not taking any chances with your life.”

“And I said no.”

“You want to make sure I stay safe, don’t you?”

“You would if you got the hell out of town.”

“You need me.”

She sighed. “Because you’re some supersecret agent?”

“Not exactly, but that could work to our advantage, and it’s the reason I didn’t just spill to everyone about who I was. It’s not something people are supposed to know.”

“How can you help?”

“I can get information you can’t. I have carte blanche in this country. Hell, anywhere, for that matter.”

“Again, how?”

He hooked his thumbs in his jeans and gave her a smug smile. “Basically, I don’t exist.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’re above the law?”

“Pretty much, yeah. So let me help, Anna. You need all you can get on this, and I’m damn good at taking care of myself.”

“You might be good at what you do, Dante, but just like you said to me, it still doesn’t mean you can’t be killed. Sticking around here thinking you’re immortal cock of the block is the surest way to end up dead.”

“I’m better than most at watching my own back. And people who do what I do know how easy it is to slip up and end up dead, so believe me, I know how to be careful. I haven’t stayed alive this long by being stupid.”

She wanted to believe him. But she wanted him to stay alive, too. And maybe she could use his help down the road, because bureaucratic red tape was the worst, especially once you got into the nitty-gritty of working a case. Brick walls were frustrating. If she hit one and Dante could help her bust through it, then he could be useful.

“Fine. You can stay in town.”

He smirked. “I was staying anyway.”

“Smart-ass. But you aren’t bunking at my house.”

“I’ll just sleep in your driveway if you don’t let me in.”

“I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”

“Won’t stick.”

She wanted to kick him. “Goddammit.”

“Quit arguing with me. I’ll pack a bag and then we can head over to Jeff’s house.”

“You can’t just investigate this case with me. You’re a civilian.”

“I know. I need FBI credentials.”

Her eyes widened. “What? You can do that?”

“Yeah. I can pull some strings and make it happen.”

“Just like that.”

“Not exactly. I’ve been working on it for a couple days now, figuring I might need them. It’ll take some maneuvering and a few phone calls, but yeah, I can get FBI ID.”

Who the hell was he that he could grab fake credentials? “You’ll never get that bullshit past my captain. He’ll want to verify you with the actual FBI.”

“And he’ll be able to-with the actual FBI. I work for people who’ll clear it.”

“Jesus, Dante. Really?”

“Really. Give me a few minutes to make a phone call and see if I can push things along. Then I’ll pack a few things.”

Anna was rarely impressed, but she was impressed. If he could pull off what he said he could.

After he packed, they went outside.

“I’ll meet you at Jeff’s condo. I have to go somewhere.”

She arched a brow. “Supersecret black ops stuff?”

“Something like that.”

She shrugged, figuring he could do what he wanted. She had a murder investigation. “I’ll see you there. Or not.”

He walked over to her car and pulled her against him. “You can pretend you don’t care, Anna, but I know you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have tried to boot my ass out of town.”

She lifted her gaze to him, half angry and half scared to death. “I don’t want anyone else to die before I get this case figured out. You don’t mean any more or any less to me than the other guys.”

His lips curled in a smile that told her he knew she was lying. “Bullshit.” He pulled her against him and kissed her soundly. The emotion of the night got the best of her and she grabbed a handful of his shirt, held on and kissed him back, terrified she’d never see him again.

When she pushed away, his eyes had gone as dark as the storm churning within her.

“Do you always take without asking?”

He swept his thumb over her bottom lip. “No.” He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers again. “No,” he whispered against her mouth. “Want me to apologize?”

She shuddered against him, then pushed him away, not sure if she was more irritated at him or at herself.

“I’ll see you at Jeff’s. Be careful.”

She nodded, and climbed into her car, her lips still tingling from his kiss.

Oh, sure. Become an FBI agent.

Great idea, Dante. It was a good thing he’d already set things in motion a couple days ago, because he needed it to happen now and it wasn’t like he could pull this whole FBI thing out of his ass in an instant.

And speaking of his ass, his superiors were going to have his over this. The one thing he’d never done was abuse the power they gave him.

Until now, anyway. He was on vacation, and now he wanted FBI credentials. Sure, he could do almost anything, but he had some tap dancing to do to explain this.

First thing was to meet with a local contact, and since security was paramount he couldn’t do it with Anna around.

A half hour after he left Anna, he arrived at a house in South County.

Nice neighborhood. Well established, with thick, full trees and well-maintained lawns.

And one expensive, big fucking house. Colonial-style, two-story, with those columns and big windows and a lawn that looked as if whoever lived here hired people to take care of it.

Dante went to the address he’d been provided and through the gate toward the side door to the garage. The garage door was open, so he walked in.

“Good thing my wife is in Tahiti with the kids,” the guy said who greeted him.

He was in his fifties, slightly graying hair short in a military kind of cut.

“Sorry to bother you. This is kind of urgent.”

The guy had a glass half filled with amber liquid and a couple ice cubes. “Whatever. Come on into my office.”

Dante followed him through the garage and into the house.

He led Dante into a downstairs study, motioned for him to take a seat on the other side of his cherrywood desk.

“Someone will be here shortly with your paperwork.”

“Thanks.”

Dante looked around the room while his host worked on the computer. Military medals were framed on one wall, law certificates on another, political awards and the like.

He’d been out of the country for a while, but not too long to finally recognize who his contact was-he was influential and a big player.

This was going to cost Dante next time he got an assignment, which would probably end up being in some shithole he might have been able to turn down otherwise.

The man finished typing in his computer. “Background complete, without question.”

“Thank you.”

Someone entered the office and handed an envelope to the man, then left.

He removed the contents, reviewed them, then handed them over to Dante.

“These should be sufficient for your needs.”

They were. “Thanks. Sorry to bother you.”

“The request came from high enough up that I figured it was important for national security.”

Oh, Christ. “It is. Thank you. I’ll get out of your way now.”

The man nodded, led him back out the way he came.

“Stay safe, Dante.”

“I will.”

Dante got the hell out of there as fast as he could, grimacing at the cost of what he’d just done.

He tucked the badge into his pocket and backed out of the man’s driveway.

Fuck it. He never called in favors or abused power like some of the other guys did.

This one was necessary, and worth it.

Now maybe he could do some good.

He entered the address to Jeff’s house into the GPS unit in his car. Anna was waiting outside when he got there.

“Roman here yet?”

“He just called. He’ll be here in five. And I assume you’re now an FBI agent?”

He moved beside her. “I’m trusting you with some pretty sensitive information, Anna. Don’t blow my cover when I could help you with this case.”

She shrugged. “Why would I when it’ll be so much fun watching you play secret agent?”

“Not a secret agent.”

“Whatever.”

“You can’t tell anyone about me, not even the other guys. Not even Roman. As far as anyone knows, I really am an FBI agent. I was on vacation and when the murders started happening I decided to get involved.”

“Uh-huh. And why the mystery beforehand? Why wouldn’t you have just told them what you did for a living when you first got here?”

“I’ll figure out some explanation for that. Hell, I’ll lie.”

“You are lying.”

“I know.”

She rolled her eyes. “However you want to play this, but you know what they say about lies.”

“My life is a lie, Anna. I don’t sweat it much.”

And her life was all about the truth. He could see the mistrust on her face. They’d just taken two steps backward, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. This was his life, what he did.

They lived in two different worlds.

Roman showed up along with two uniformed police officers. Dante took a step back to observe how this went down, mainly because he didn’t want to get in the way, but also because he liked watching Anna work.

Flashlights in hand, Anna, Roman and the uniforms surveyed the perimeter of the house looking for signs of forced entry and for footprints.

“There’s a window here over the kitchen,” she said. “It’s closed, but not locked.”

“That could be an entry point,” Roman said.

Anna nodded. “We’ll have to dust it for prints and check for footprints.” She shined the light on the ground. “Lots of bushes here under the window. I don’t see any broken branches, but since this window is over the back porch he could have climbed onto the porch railing and lifted the window that way without rustling the bushes or leaving prints on the ground.”

They headed around the front once they determined there were no other points of entry. Once inside, Anna was methodical. She was a born leader, giving the uniforms-and Roman-directions on how to proceed. She didn’t rush in, was in no hurry to scour Jeff’s house for clues or to see if his place was in shambles. She took each room step by step in order to preserve any evidence they might find, and she kept control over everyone under her.

She operated a lot like he did, with a cool head under pressure. It would be easy to want to know right away what had happened in Jeff’s house, to need to know now if the killer had taken Jeff from there, if there had been a struggle.

The living room was clean, and so was the kitchen.

“Nothing in the sink or on the counters looks disturbed. Sink is clean. Wow, the counters are clean, too. This place is immaculate.”

“Man, Jeff was a neat freak. I didn’t know that about him,” Dante said.

“Don’t you remember how he’d put a napkin in his lap whenever you all would come to the shop for ice cream? You’d make fun of him.”

Dante squinted as he tried to remember, then his lips lifted. “You’re right. And he’d clean the counter after we all ate. How could I forget that?”

Anna smiled at the memory, then ached at the loss.

“So if our suspect got in through this window it doesn’t show,” Anna said. “You’d think there would have been some cast-off dirt from his shoes.”

“He could have cleaned up,” Roman said.

She nodded.

It was a one-story house, so they moved into the first bedroom.

Nothing there.

“I have blood here,” Anna said, motioning with her flashlight in the hallway.

“Possible drag marks with more blood,” Roman noted.

They followed the trail toward the door to the master bedroom. The door to the bedroom was open and Anna flipped on the light.

“Here,” she said.

Dante peered over her shoulder. The room was a mess and it was obvious there’d been a struggle. The bed had shifted, marks on the hardwood floor showing where it had been pushed away from its normal spot. The bedside-table lamp was broken and there was blood on the floor next to the bed.

Anna moved into the bathroom and switched on the light, careful of every step she took to avoid any contamination. The uniforms waited outside the bedroom. Roman did, too, on the phone requesting the ETA on the crime scene unit.

Dante stayed in step with her, matching her every movement so they wouldn’t contaminate the area.

“Looks like it started in here.”

Dante nodded. “Mirror is broken. There’s blood on the mirror and on the broken glass on the floor. Looks like the suspect was hiding in the shower. When Jeff walked in, the suspect came up behind him and shoved his head in the mirror.”

Anna grimaced. “Probably. Enough to disorient him but not knock him out.”

She followed the drops of blood back into the bedroom. “It continued in here. Jeff stumbled out of the bathroom-or maybe the suspect dragged him in here. There was a struggle and Jeff turned to face his attacker, who jumped him and they landed against the foot of the bed. That would explain the marks on the floor from the bed being pushed.”

“Jeff wasn’t a small guy, so his attacker had to have some power to bring him down.” Dante bent down and pointed to a spot at the foot of the bed. “More blood here.”

“Probably from his head injury. My guess is whoever did this was bigger than Jeff. He’d have to be to subdue him and carry him out of here.”

Dante stood. “Unless he used some kind of drug.”

Anna shifted her gaze from her notepad to Dante. “He could have started the beating here, knocked him unconscious.”

Dante shook his head. “I don’t think so. Jeff might have been a smooth talker, but he was a tough son of a bitch, always had been. When we were kids and got into fights, he’d never give up and he was as tough as they came. We had to pull him off the other guy more than once.”

“That hadn’t changed,” Roman said, coming into the room. “He could still hold his own.”

Dante nodded. “Which means the killer would have to beat him pretty hard to knock him out. And then there’s no guarantee your suspect would be able to keep him that way until he got him in the alley to finish the job. I don’t think he’d want to risk Jeff waking up on the way to the alley. My money’s on drugging him.”

She surveyed the bedroom. “You may have something. There’s not enough blood here for the kind of a beating he sustained.”

“Which means he finished him off in the alley.”

“Right. Tox report will let us know if he was drugged and with what.”

She walked outside the bedroom, followed the drag mark trail. “It just stops abruptly.”

“He carried him,” Dante said. “That’s why the drag marks end here in the hall.”

She nodded. “Which means maybe our killer left some evidence on Jeff’s body.”

“We can hope. It also means our killer isn’t a small man, because Jeff was sturdy.”

They had something to go on now, a lead of some kind, which was more than they had before. Even a small step was progress. Dante wanted this guy bad. Two people he thought of as family were dead. It needed to end here.

Crime scene technicians arrived and Anna and Dante moved out of the way to let them process the scene.

“If we’re lucky,” she said to Dante and Roman as they stood outside, “some of that blood will be the suspect’s.”

“We’re never that lucky,” Roman said.

“You’re right, but I can wish for it.”

Anna went to talk to the crime scene techs, leaving Dante outside with Roman.

“You seem pretty interested in the case for a civilian,” Roman said to him. “I mean, I know you and Jeff were brothers, just like we all were, but, man, you being here just muddies up the crime scene.”

“I’m not a civilian, Roman,” Dante said, pulling out his FBI badge.

Roman’s eyes widened. “No shit?”

“No shit. Sorry I didn’t tell you before. I needed to keep it on the down low because of potential undercover situations.”

Roman nodded. “Understood. So you’re on this case now?”

He gave Roman a straightforward look. “How could I not be? First George, and now Jeff? I worked a little magic and asked to be assigned to the case.”

“Huh. How’d you do that?”

“I have contacts in the state offices who requested FBI involvement.”

“Good to have friends in high places, I guess. You in the FBI. Christ, Dante. I never would have figured you for a government job.”

That was an understatement. “Me neither.”

“I’m glad you found something legit. I was worried about you, wondering what you’d really been doing all this time.”

Dante laid a hand on Roman’s shoulder. “Now you can stop worrying. I’m doing just fine, and you have an extra hand to help work this case.”

“What does Anna think about you being in the FBI, and getting involved in the investigation?”

Dante shrugged. “About what you’d expect she’d think about it.”

Roman laughed. “That’s what I figured. She likes to work alone, thinks she can do it all herself. She’s like a superhero, single-handedly saving the world one bad guy at a time. But on this one? She needs someone to watch over her. She needs us all to watch over her. I don’t like this.”

“I don’t, either.”

Hours later, Roman headed out along with the CSU team. Everything was wrapped up, yellow tape and a sign across Jeff’s house marking it as a crime scene. Anna stayed behind to take a few more photographs, then packed up her kit in the trunk.

“Where to now?” he asked Anna.

She blew out a breath. “Home, I guess. I’ll file a report when we head into the office tomorrow. Or later today. I’m beat and need a few hours’ sleep.”

They headed back to Anna’s house. Dante frowned when Anna pulled into her driveway.

“You should leave your porch light on. Especially since you come home in the dark so often.”

“Yes, Dad,” she said as she unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door.

“I’m not kidding,” Dante said, moving in front of her as he stepped onto the porch. “You leave yourself vulnerable. Especially now. Remember what happened last time.”

“I see really well in the dark and I’d know if something was out of place,” she said.

“Still, it pays to be careful.” Dante checked the front door.

Nothing this time.

“No flowers or love notes?”

“None that I can see.”

She seemed disappointed, searched the porch. “Huh. That’s interesting.”

She slid her key in the lock and opened the door, flipped on the lights and walked in, releasing the strap over her holster to lay her hand on the butt of her gun as she scouted the room. Dante searched the bedrooms, gun in hand while Anna took the kitchen. They had the house entirely searched, including the closets and crawl space in a matter of minutes.

Dante slid his gun into his pants when they met in the living room. “Clear,” he said.

“Here, too,” Anna said. “I’m also not stupid. I know there’s a killer targeting all of us. I won’t take any chances.”

He came up to her and brushed his knuckles over the soft skin of her cheek. “You look worn-out. You need a glass of wine, a hot shower and a good meal, not necessarily in that order.”

“I need to lie facedown on my bed and pass out.”

“You won’t sleep well. I’ll bet all those gears in your head are still spinning.”

She hated that he presumed to know her thoughts, her feelings. How could he when he’d been gone so long? She’d changed, dammit. “Maybe.”

“Go take a shower. I’ll be right back. Lock the door behind me.”

“Then how will you get in?”

He leveled a devastatingly sexy smile on her that made her feel anything but tired. “Give me your keys.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get food.”

Her stomach growled, betraying the statement she was about to utter about not being hungry. “Fine.”

“Go shower.” He grabbed her keys and she locked the door behind him, headed into the bathroom and turned on the hot, steamy water. Only then did she let the reality of the night intrude on the walls she’d so carefully constructed around her world.

Jeff was dead. Same as George. Both killed in the same manner as Tony Maclin all those years ago. Both of them carved with a heart just like hers.

Now she had two bodies in the same location. And that night twelve years ago still remained a secret. She couldn’t use it as background because she’d never reported it. If she reported it now, it would ruin Dante’s, Gabe’s, Roman’s and even Jeff’s lives, not to mention her father’s.

Shit.

She stepped under the water and let it pour over her head, wishing she could just disappear, forget all this was happening. She wanted it to go away, didn’t want to deal with it.

And Jeff was dead. Dammit, Jeff was dead.

The full force of that reality finally slammed into her.

The sob tore from her throat and she couldn’t do anything to hold it back. She shoved the heels of her hands against her eyes to try to stop it, but she couldn’t. Instead, she slid down the shower wall and sat on her heels, crying buckets for Jeff, releasing the pain she’d been holding back since she’d discovered the bloody, beaten body in the alley was her friend.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

When she’d let out all she had in her, she was drained, exhausted. She opened her eyes and climbed to a standing position, her legs shaking. She laid her hands against the wall and just breathed for a minute, then grabbed the shower gel and poured some in her hands, soaped her body and rinsed.

Dante would be back soon. She needed to finish up and the water was getting cold. She rinsed her hair and wrung it out, then turned the shower off.

That’s when she glanced down at her scar and saw blood.

Her heart began to hammer against her ribs.

You’re imagining it. It’s not there.

She knew that. She looked down again, certain it would be gone, a figment of her overtired, overstressed imagination. But a thin river of blood traced around the scar, started to run down her breast, then her belly and legs.

No. It’s wasn’t there. She rubbed at it, but blood kept coming.

Her breathing quickened and the familiar clawing sensation choked off her throat.

No. Oh, God, no. Not now.

She pushed open the shower door and fought to focus.

The towel. She had to find the towel. And breathe. Breathe, Anna, breathe.

She did. Faster and faster. She was bleeding, she had to get help, now.

Someone help me, please. He’s going to hurt me.

She stumbled out of the shower, tripping over the bottom edge and falling to the tile floor.

And that’s when she saw it, all over the floor. More blood, rivers of it, all around her, pouring from the cut on her chest. She pressed the towel there.

“Stop bleeding. Son of a bitch, stop bleeding.”

And through it all, her throat closed as if someone had put his hands around her neck and had begun to squeeze. She fought for every breath, sucking in air as if each inhale was the last one. Panting, she tried to get up, but she was nauseous, dizzy, soaked with sweat. And the tile was cool. She was so hot. “Help…me.”

She couldn’t breathe. She was bleeding. He was going to kill her.

The blood continued to surround her. She was going to drown in it.

Dante put the takeout on the kitchen counter, surprised Anna wasn’t out of the shower yet.

Then again, she deserved a long, hot shower after tonight. She looked a wreck and he knew damn well how much Jeff’s death affected her, despite her attempts at maintaining a cool, professional resolve.

He went to the bathroom door and listened. No shower running, so he knocked.

“Anna? I’m back with food.”

And that’s when he heard the shuffling and a faint whisper.

“Help me.”

He turned the knob. Door wasn’t locked. He pushed it open. She was lying on the floor naked, curled up in a ball, the towel clenched in a death grip around her, her breath sawing in and out.

She was drenched and shaking.

He bent over her and touched her skin. It was cold. “Anna.”

She flinched when he touched her. Fuck, she was so pale.

She lifted trembling hands to his. “Blood.”

Aw, shit. He’d seen enough post-traumatic stress disorder in the field to know a panic attack, and she was in the throes of a big one. “Honey, there’s no blood on you.”

He picked her up, despite her attempts to fight him off. He put the lid of the toilet down and sat her on it, then shoved her head between her knees. “Breathe, Anna. Slow and easy.”

She ignored him at first, her arms flailing as her instinct to fight was strong. But he kept her head shoved down between her knees and kept his voice calm. “You know what to do. Breathe slow. You’re hyperventilating.”

In the meantime he grabbed a washcloth and ran it under cold water in the sink, didn’t bother to wring it out, just slapped it on the back of her neck. After a few minutes she stopped shaking. A few minutes more and her breathing began to slow down. He swept the washcloth down her back, then over her face.

Finally, she seemed calm enough, so he let go of her neck. She raised her head a fraction, but braced her hands on her knees.

“Better?”

She was shivering. “Cold now.”

He grabbed her robe from the hook on the back of the door and laid it over her. She slid her arms through it and wrapped it around herself.

“Need a drink of water.”

“Okay.” He found disposable cups by the sink, so he filled one and handed it to her. No way was he leaving her alone.

“Sip,” he instructed.

“I know.”

Her voice was clipped. Angry. She was embarrassed. He understood that, but she’d have to deal with it.

She took several sips, breathed a little, then a few more sips until the cup was empty.

She shoved her hair away from her face and blew out a hard breath. She still looked pale, but not as bad as she had when he’d walked in.

“Think you can stand now?”

“Yeah.” She reached for the sink, but instead he helped pull her up, then slid his arm around her waist.

“I want to get dressed, comb my hair. I’m okay.”

He could let her go now. “Holler if you need me. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

He shut the door, then leaned against the wall, listening to the sounds she made. Normal sounds.

Only then did he exhale and calm his own breathing.

Jesus. She’d scared the shit out of him.

Yeah, she’d hidden it well, but the trauma Anna suffered twelve years ago had stayed with her.

And the guilt churned within him.

He pushed off the wall and headed into the kitchen, warmed the Chinese food in the microwave and spread it out on plates. Anna finally surfaced. She’d put on shorts and a tank top and had combed her wet hair. Her face had lost that deathly pallor and she seemed steady enough now.

She hadn’t been the only one shaking in there.

“Take a seat.”

“Making yourself at home in my kitchen?” she asked as she slid into one of the chairs at the table.

“As a matter of fact, I am.” He put a plate and a soda from the fridge in front of her.

“How long have you had panic attacks?”

She lifted her gaze to his, a hot bite of anger in her eyes.

He held her gaze. He wasn’t going to let this go, and she knew it.

“Twelve years.”

That didn’t surprise him. “You take medication?”

She shook her head and pushed her plate to the side. “No. No drugs. Therapist tried to shove those on me. I tried them but they made me fuzzy. I hated not being clearheaded.”

“So how do you deal with the attacks?”

She laughed and took a long swallow of soda, then dabbed at her lips with the napkin. “Obviously, not well.”

“They often come with hallucinations?”

She inhaled slowly, then dragged it out. “Rarely. At first, yeah, but hardly at all anymore. Tonight was a bad one. Sorry.”

They ate for a while in silence. He was hungry, so he devoured most of his, while she picked at hers and slid the food around with her fork. But at least she ate some.

“You don’t have to apologize to me, Anna. You went through hell twelve years ago. Everyone deals with trauma in different ways.”

“Obviously I haven’t dealt with it.”

“This case dredged it all up again, didn’t it?”

She stared down at her plate, nudged the rice with her fork and nodded. She didn’t want to admit to anything. Dante knew that to her this was admitting weakness. He knew what that felt like.

“Your panic attacks have increased?”

She lifted her gaze to his. “Since the night we found George.”

“You still seeing a therapist?”

“Not for years.”

“Maybe you should consider seeing one.”

“What for? It’s always going to be with me, Dante. It’s never going away.”

He wasn’t going to let her get off that easily. “Then maybe you should consider stepping away from this case and letting some other detective handle it.”

She laughed. “Are you serious? No one knows as much about this case as I do.”

“Then let some other detective and Roman handle it. Roman knows as much about it as you do.”

A fast and sharp no was her reply.

“Why not?”

She shrugged and fiddled with the soda can. “Because he wants me involved.”

“Who wants you involved?”

She didn’t meet his gaze this time. “The killer.”

“Yeah? And you know this how?”

“He didn’t leave Roman a gift at his front door, did he?”

“Maybe that’s exactly why you should give this case up.”

“Bullshit. I’m a cop and I’ve got cop instincts. I’m not handing off this case just because I freak out and hyperventilate every now and then. I’ve had these attacks for years. They come and go. I can handle them.”

He laughed. “Yeah, you were handling it like a champ in there a few minutes ago.”

If looks could kill, the glare she pinned him with would have dropped him dead on her kitchen floor. She stood, anger darkening her cheeks.

“Fuck you, Dante. Get out of my house.”

He only smiled at her. “I’m not leaving. Especially not now.”

Her hands clenched into fists. He liked her with a little fight in her. It gave her strength and it made him feel better. It hurt him seeing her crumpled and weak on the floor.

“You think I can’t throw you out of my house?”

“I’d like to see you try. I’m staying put. You need someone to watch over you.”

She laughed at that. “I haven’t needed anyone to watch over me since you left me twelve years ago. I can take care of myself.”

He shrugged and stood, heading into the living room. “So you keep telling me, but from where I’m standing you’re doing a piss-poor job of it. The boogeyman could come in here and scare you right into a panic attack. You’d drop like a candy ass.”

When she launched herself at him, he was ready for her, just as he was always prepared for an attack. Only this was Anna, and he’d never serve a lethal blow to someone he cared about.

What he hadn’t been prepared for was her fury and the way she leaped on top of the chair and the kitchen table, flying over it to land on him.

He might be holding back. She wasn’t. She’d shoved her knee into him. He grabbed her arms and tossed her over his head, sending her flying onto the carpet.

Like a cat, she landed on her feet and without hesitating even a second came at him again. And even though he was more than twice her size, she wasn’t deterred. Whoever had taught her these maneuvers had done a damn good job. She knew her moves.

But he was better. He could have put her in a hold she couldn’t get out of, could immobilize her. Hell, he knew how to kill in just one move. But that wasn’t the idea here. He wanted to see what she had. And what she had was good. Good kicks, great maneuvers, she countered whatever he came up with, and she wasn’t afraid to go after him.

Plus, it helped that she was pissed at him. Healthy anger made for a stronger opponent. All that peace-loving martial-arts stuff was a load of crap.

Go for the jugular. Go for the kill. That’s what Anna was doing. She was mad enough to kill him right now, and if he’d been a weaker man he’d be under her and she’d be ready to deliver a death blow.

Not that she would, but she’d be capable of it with a lesser opponent.

She leveled a kick that could have broken his nose if he hadn’t feinted back.

Yeah, his girl was ready to inflict some pain.

Good for her. He took her leg and lifted it, tossing her onto her back. Then he leaped on top of her.

Time to end the game. He pinned her underneath him and splayed his arms and legs over her, waiting to see if this position would trigger another panic attack.

She was breathing in and out heavily now, but all he saw in her eyes was spitting-mad fury.

“You’re good,” he said.

She fought for breath, her breasts rising and falling with the effort. “So are you. Otherwise you’d be dead by now.”

He laughed. “I don’t think it was your intent to kill me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. If I wanted you dead, you would be.”

“You don’t have it in you to kill someone you care about, Anna.”

She arched a brow. “And you do?”

“You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

“You know what? You’re right. I don’t have any idea what you’re capable of because I don’t know who the hell you are anymore. Now get off me.”

He jumped up and held out his hand for her. Instead, she rolled over on her belly and rose on her knees. He shrugged, but when she turned around there was a Glock in her hands, and she was pointing it at him.

“Now who wins, Dante?”