04 A Killing Touch (18 page)

“The EMTs have been here and gone. They pronounced her?”

Liam’s question came more from trying to figure out how trained medics could miss a heartbeat than from doubting Aidan’s push for investigation. Kieralyn, because of her belief in Lana, had reminded them all of the importance of ignoring logic for the sake of gut instinct.

“Yes.”

Ava settled onto her knees at Maria’s side and lifted an arm into her lap. As gently as she’d brush a tear off the cheek of a baby she swept her fingers over Maria’s arm. An angry red stripe slid into and out of view beneath Ava’s palm. It hadn’t been there when Aidan first opened the blinds, and while the skin could still sunburn after death it didn’t tend to be so severe and in only a few minutes. He held his silence to allow Ava peace.

Ava stopped stroking Maria and instead wrapped her fingers around Maria’s wrist. Eyes closed, breathing slow, Ava focused fully on the victim.

Sitting uselessly on the side to see if an empath could intuit anything from a lifeless body was a change in approach that made Aidan a little uncomfortable. Stranger was the fear riding him about what Ava could discover.

Nothing.

“Liam. Call the EMTs back.” Ava spoke with a softness Aidan barely heard. A softness that bordered on weakness.

“Do we need to call Dr. H for you?” Aidan pulled Ava away from Maria while Liam pulled his phone from his pocket. There was something about the connection between Ava and her fiancé. No one seemed to understand how being with him quickly leveled her after a weakened moment, yet it made them incredibly powerful.

“Just the EMTs.” Ava looked up at Aidan with a tired but otherwise strong plea. “I’m fine. Besides, H still struggles with who we are. The more we leave him out of these things the better.”

“He thinks we exploit you.”

“I’ve told him differently. Breck and Kieralyn have too. He’s working to believe it.”

“But we haven’t earned that much trust.” Aidan didn’t know all of Dr. H’s story, but he knew enough to understand the trust issue. And after seeing how much he’d helped Ava, when her infiltration into his life could be seen as a betrayal, he respected the man. Trust would come.

“Ambulance will be here in five.” Liam slipped his phone back into his pocket.

Tyler came through the front door. “ME’s office is here.”

“Dr. Grayson recalls his office manager behaving strangely.” Lana stepped in from the kitchen and noticed Ava knelt with Aidan supporting her at Maria’s side and Liam holding his phone. She took another step then stopped. “What’s going on?”

Aidan looked between Lana and Maria and Ava and back to Lana.

Puzzle pieces he’d gathered during his visit to Dr. Grayson’s office, the time with Lana, her knowledge of the case, Maria’s past, her actions, Dr. Grayson’s reaction to Maria and his suspicions. He looked again between Tyler and Liam.

“We need a plan,” Tyler stated simply.

Lana glanced toward the kitchen where she’d left Dr. Grayson then stepped farther into the living room. “A plan for what?”

“Assuming you’re right about Dr. Grayson,” Aidan began, “your attacker may believe you’re dead. Though I doubt it. They certainly believe Maria is.”

Lana’s gaze flew to Maria’s still unmoving form. “She isn’t?”

“For the moment, but it’ll be up to the professionals to keep it that way.”

Lana swayed. Aidan stepped forward, rushing faster when her knees buckled. He didn’t get to her before her knees slapped the floor. Aidan’s heart shook with the force of ten bass beats for the second time in as many days. Tyler was there first, but took a hurried and silent step back when Aidan sank to the floor before Lana and took her face in his hands.

She was pale. Her eyes were glassy and largely dilated. Her body quaked beneath his touch as an answering quake, eager to swallow him whole, began in his core.

“Lana?”

“I’m okay.” Her hands rested on his knees—a bid for balance rather than a gesture of closeness. In the eye of the case, in what could only be a momentary pause, the touch slipped in and tied a knot around his heart. “What kind of plan do we need?”

“One that flips things to our favor while allowing the killer to believe we’re no closer to answers. One that gets Maria to the hospital and requires someone to die.”

Chapter Eleven

“I only just met Maria, but she seemed…” Lana choked, swiped at a tear tracking down her cheek and locked her watery gaze with the reporter’s rating-friendly sympathy. It was the only thing about Rose Stevens anyone could almost believe, and only when the camera was rolling. “I wish I had known her better.”

“Do you know what happened, Ms.…” Rose angled her head so her four-hundred-dollars-a-day spa hairstyle fell artfully to the side in a ginger wave. Her skin appeared untouched by hardship, which was absolutely believable. The bright green eyes shining into the camera wouldn’t for a moment be dimmed by anything happening to those around her, unless it had a negative impact on her reporting career.

Lana inhaled, dramatic and choppy. “It looked like a really bad reaction to one of her plants.”

The EMTs and ME techs came out of the house with two stretchers. One with a body bag. One with Breck, Aidan and the rest of their team huddled around so close the patient couldn’t be seen.

Rose’s gaze latched on to Aidan as the group headed toward the ambulance. Lana sobbed loud and suddenly to pull the attention back to her. It worked on the cameraman and Rose.

“Who else was in there, Ms.…?”

“A friend of Maria’s. He tried to help her I think.”

“I’ve heard she was close to Dr. Grayson. Is he the friend in there? What happened to him?” Glee glazed Rose’s tone as she and her cameraman stepped greedily closer to Lana. “Was it a lover’s spat gone wrong? Was he abusive? Was she poisoning him?”

Chunks of curdled disgust rolled in Lana’s gut. Rose Stevens had been at every scene dealing with this case, but more disturbing was her glee at each turn. She was the kind of reporter Aidan judged all journalists by.

Interested only in ratings and how quickly she could get herself to the anchor’s desk for the six o’clock news, Rose went for the glam and gore of a story instead of accuracy or heart. She’d probably run over a dog and her puppies and then report on it if she thought it would get her airtime.

“Did you catch a name?” Rose asked.

She’d even gone so far as to hold off starting the interview with Lana so she could freshen her makeup and lip gloss. As if the spotlight belonged on her when people were being killed.

“Did you hear where they’re taking him?”

Lana allowed the questions to pile up. Allowed the anonymity of a non-existent byline photo to give her the edge. Of course she knew the answers. She’d have gotten them even if she hadn’t been on the inside, but not by feeding on a grieving person’s heartbreak.

“Ma’am.” Aidan closed the distance between the now closed ambulance doors and her. Pinched anger tensed his face and snapped in his voice as he grasped her arm just above the elbow. “We told you to go home.”

“I’m sorry.” Lana managed to sound apologetic and submissive. Even knowing the purpose of her role in the plan, the perception of weakness irritated her. “She wanted to ask me a couple questions.” With fear-filled eyes she rubbed her arm and looked up at Aidan. “I didn’t mention the similarities to…”

“It was quite harmless, Agent Burgess.” The intimate roll of Aidan’s name slipping through Rose’s lips had the journalist inside Lana perking her ears. That Rose missed what she’d started to say because her focus was so Aidan-centric told a more enlightening story.

“Harmless enough you’re willing to violate a restraining order.”

“You have it on you?”

“Always.” Aidan had looked fierce when he’d busted in to arrest The Killing Cupid. He’d acted aggressive when Lana had been attacked in her home. Now, faced with the reporter Lana would bet was the one who screwed him over, he embodied pure violence.

It radiated off him and had Lana vacillating between stepping closer to calm him or moving back to give him room. A scared and submissive witness in her shoes would most likely want to hear all she could. While staying out of the way. Lana certainly wasn’t going to miss the chance to see Aidan confronted with an ex he clearly hated.

She stayed.

“Rose.” His deliberate calm skated over Lana, left ice crystals in her veins. Rose seemed unaffected. “You’ve been warned by Agent Lawson. Now I’m telling you.” He paused a single beat before continuing. “Get away from this scene.”

Oblivious to Aidan’s power, and his unspoken intent, Rose chuckled. She’d been arrogant enough to allow her cameraman to keep recording and stupid enough to laugh in Aidan’s face.

Now Lana was torn between stepping away and jumping the angry agent pulsing at her side.

“I think you’ve forgotten the press has rights.”

“Only until they break the law.” He tilted his head slightly higher, a subtle and silent move that had Kieralyn moving forward with her cuffs pulled. She stepped behind Rose while Aidan continued speaking.

“Rose Stevens, you’re under arrest for violating the statutes of a restraining order.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Rose struggled against Kieralyn’s hold as the conviction of Aidan’s intent penetrated. Her practiced façade never faltered. “This won’t stick.”

“Maybe your station will bail you out in time for the broadcast,” Kieralyn said with a smile as she escorted Rose away.

The cameraman shut off his camera and walked away without a word.

“I think my interview just got bumped down a little.”

“As if a news station is going to promote the idiocy of their crew. She gets ratings. She’ll be aired.”

Lana fell into step with Aidan as they headed back to his car. “Guess I can look forward to seeing myself sans makeup and in full tear-stricken glory on the news then.”

“A journalistic dream realized.”

The snide sidekick landed with an air-robbing accuracy to her ribs. Her hand halted, hovered over the handle. Across the car he glanced casually her way, unaware of his degrading view of her.

Rather than the confrontational defense she so frequently took when Aidan undervalued her, Lana surprised herself with a calmer approach. This was the second time in an hour she surprised herself.

It didn’t happen often. Almost never, to be precise. Yet the moment she heard Aidan’s plan, recognized the possibilities it held, she broke her personal rule of staying in the background. She was more successful as a reporter when people didn’t view her as a limelight seeker, when they believed she cared more about the story than building her name.

Still, she’d ignored her primary rule in hopes of helping Aidan catch a killer. She’d planted her feet in the spotlight to draw the villainous attention her way. Now, she was pulling her verbal punches in the face of Aidan’s lack of trust.

Once she settled into the passenger seat and buckled up she started to speak, but stopped herself. Three more times on the way back to her place she began to speak. Three more times she stopped herself, allowed Aidan to sink deeper into his angry thoughts. With each passing moment of silence his jaw tightened, his forehead tensed and his carotid trembled.

Back at her apartment, she opened a few windows for some fresh air and got to work preparing dinner. Aidan pulled out his computer and phone and set to work. Between dinner preparation tasks, she booted up her own laptop and worked. They still didn’t speak. There was nothing to talk about. There wouldn’t be until he saw the need to apologize, and she wasn’t holding a breath for that to happen.

The idea behind Aidan’s earlier plan was that the killer, now suspected to be Dr. Grayson’s office manager, had either been hanging in the crowd of Maria’s neighbors or would be watching the news. If she was at Maria’s, she could have followed Aidan and Lana home. If she wasn’t, but saw the news and wanted to finish where she’d failed, she’d likely come after Lana again. So like before, Lana was the bait with Aidan acting as her primary backup.

She wanted to believe on some level that his willingness to include her meant he held a little respect for her as a journalist, as a woman. Some part of him had to believe in her promise to protect certain details, to be sure any evidence she helped them gather could be used in court. Unless she was just being optimistic.

Personal optimism shrank the longer Aidan held his silence. Professional optimism was a different matter. Her story was beginning to take shape.

Between typing up her thoughts and observations, she’d been swapping emails with sources and instant messaging with Dr. Grayson about his office manager. He’d given her his contact information at Maria’s claiming he wanted to help in any way possible. He thought his office manager had been behaving strangely. He’d caught her doctoring a few patient files. Though, he had less of a clue why she’d kill people than he had faith in her ability to get away with one murder let alone three. Unless she had a partner.

Lana checked the breaded chicken in the oven and turned back to her laptop as a promo for the news came on. Aidan paused in his work to see what they said.

A still shot of Lana near the end of the interview popped into the screen’s top corner. They’d spotlighted the moment when Aidan grabbed her arm and she looked up at him. On screen, as she’d hoped, her submission didn’t come across as fake. Also on screen, and hopefully only visible to her, was something she hadn’t seen before. Beneath the fear and grief, hidden in the tiny bite of her lower lip and the way she angled her body toward his, was love.