Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 52447 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52447 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Chapter Five
The door to the hotel opens and then shuts, and I’m still contemplating whether or not Andrew is fighting his inner serial killer when the door opens again. I expect Andrew to reappear and present me a chance to ask him point blank. What I get is Jack Cox in dark-rimmed glasses, a tuxedo, and his wavy hair slicked back. Apparently, I’m seeing serial killers everywhere, because Jack, the forensic tech, the wannabe detective, who is more obviously a serial killer than Andrew, is now present and accounted for. He’s also most certainly not invited to my father’s event. This little pip-squeak shows up wherever I am and it’s starting to get old.
I step forward, already in a confrontational charge, when Kane captures my arm and turns me around to face him. “We’re sitting ducks in this alleyway, Lilah.”
“He won’t be bold or stupid enough to come back.”
“First your father, now you. Third time’s a charm.”
“Agent Love!” Jack calls out, across the alleyway. “There’s been another murder.” He starts walking toward us.
Kane’s jaw clenches and he releases me because that’s the thing about Kane—he respects my job even when it’s inconvenient, which is most of the time. And thus far, all things Jack Cox are inconvenient, which is the least of what I suspect Kane feels about him right now. Because at this point, Jack Cox, who is at worst a serial killer and at least, just plain weird, is now standing right beside us.
For a man who’s afraid of Kane, he’s sure not acting afraid of Kane.
I rotate to face Jack. “How are you even here?”
“I showed my badge at the door,” he explains.
“Which should not have been enough at this type of an event. And why are you wearing a tux?”
“I thought I’d have more of a chance to get in like this and you weren’t answering your phone. Rollins tried to call you, and he said your father’s event was probably too important for you to respond. I knew that wasn’t true. You’d never pick your father over a crime scene. No real detective puts anything above the job.”
“You’re not exactly winning me over, Jack Cox,” Kane interjects. “Try again. How did you get into the party?”
“I told you—”
“How did you get into the party?” Kane repeats, making it more than a little obvious he doesn’t believe Jack’s explanation thus far.
“I, well—” Jack fidgets, and twists his fingers together, “I might have told them I was with Agent Love, and you needed to know about this case.”
Kane glances down at me and while he’s not a man of many words, his looks can fill the pages of a book. And my mind. His message now is clear, at least to me. My father obviously needs a better security team. Considering he’d be dead if not for Kane, and Jack is standing here right now, Kane isn’t wrong.
“I had to do it,” Jack adds quickly, as if reading all kinds of scary things in the silent exchange between me and Kane. We are kind of scary. Well, at least, Kane is. I’m perfectly lovely and approachable… unless you’re stupid. And I’m not sure I’d call Jack stupid either. More like clever and conniving, as proven by his ongoing rambling.
“This doesn’t fit the timeline the killer established,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that. Each time gets closer by a certain proportion of days but if the formula remained, there should have been five days between killings. There haven’t been five days. I didn’t tell him that, and Rollins would never go to the forensics tech he barely tolerates and share this information. So either he figured it out on his own, and he’s a better investigator than I give him credit for, or he’s the killer, and this is all part of his game.
“Serial killers escalate as their obsession grows in intensity. A little like yours with me, Jack.”
“I’m not obsessed with you,” he bristles defensively. “I’m obsessed with catching this killer. And I’m equipped to help. What you call similar in me to the killer is simply an interest in horror that makes me uniquely able to help. Much like your profiling skills.”
“How do we even know this is the same killer?”
“The crime scene is a mess,” he adds. “Or that’s what I heard. And I was told they’ll need to start cleaning up quickly. That can’t happen without you seeing it if we don’t hurry and that would be a loss, Agent Love. You need to see the raw crime scene. We both know how important that is.”
Messy.
Translation: bloody.
Fabulous. Just what I need to finish this night. But I also haven’t missed the way he claimed to know the crime scene condition when he’s supposedly not been there yet. Nor how he avoided the question of how he knows there’s a connection between this murder and the others. “Who told you the crime scene was messy?”