Blind: Killer Instincts (2 page)

“Yeah.”

Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

“TBK destroyed my daddy.” She shrugged, trying to swallow down the hurt and years of anger. She’d worked through it, but there was no changing the pain TBK had caused her—and he was dead. “I thought if I got to know his parents, I might understand him better.”

A year before she was born, Grandma and Grandpa Ration were murdered in a gruesome style in front of her daddy. He was seventeen, forced to watch their death, and the only survivor of the TBK attacks on the unsuspecting Oklahoma City residents. The serial killer earned his name due to what he did to the bodies. Torture. Blind. Kill. Over and over again.

Some people theorized that TBK knew he was about to be caught and wanted a living legacy, others thought his MO was evolving. Whatever the truth was, TBK was a sick fuck who’d branded her family with the spirit of evil. It was a mark Emma could feel on her soul.

Jacob reached across and brushed his fingers over her knuckles. She jerked her head up, unaware she’d dropped her gaze to the table. He squeezed her hand for a second, as if he understood. She mustered a little smile, uncomfortable with the sudden depth of emotion.

“Did it help?” He kept his hand over hers, her skin tingling where they touched.

“Not really. I mean, I get why he’s messed up, but that’s about it.”

“I get it.” He paused before continuing more slowly. “My father saw some things when I was a baby that changed him, too. Mom never talked about it until he passed away a few years ago, but it was clear in the way she talked about how things used to be that what he saw changed him. The version of him I grew up with was—haunted.”

She nodded. Haunted was how she felt most of the time. How many times had she used that exact word to describe how her father looked? “Yeah, exactly.”

A little of the tension eased out of her. Most people didn’t understand, and not that she thought Jacob did, but at least he made her feel like not so much of a freak. Hot and sensitive, he was too good to be real.

One corner of his mouth curled up in a bit more of a smile, and he let her hand go. She missed the warmth immediately, but she was a big girl. That said, the way he was looking at her said one thing:
Interested.

She didn’t normally get involved with the people who came to talk TBK, but weren’t rules made for breaking? Besides, Jacob was from the other side of the tracks. She’d never see him again.

“Why don’t we go ahead and order something to eat?” Jacob grabbed one of the menus and flipped it open. “What’s good here?”

“Everything.” She was short of breath, and her skin still tingled. This was crazy. She could not seriously be entertaining the idea of a one-night stand with him. She needed the distraction of food to help ground her.

“That doesn’t help me narrow it down.”

“Depends on how hungry you are and how much meat you think you can handle.” She pressed her lips together as soon as the words left her mouth.

Jacob glanced up at her, one brow quirked. “I don’t know. How much meat can you handle?”

“Enough.” She grinned, fanning her face and flipping to the last page of the menu. Was it hot in here, or was it just her?

“Is that you?”

“Uh...”

He leaned over and peered at the picture spread across the bottom of the page.

Oh. That.

Emma and the rest of her motocross team were lined up across the bottom of the last page, decked out in their riding gear, numbers plastered across their chests. Some of them wore medals, a few hoisted trophies, and there she was, right in the middle. The only girl in bright pink.

“What’s this?” He stole her menu and held the picture up.

Why did she pick this restaurant? She could have picked any place, and she’d gone where she was most comfortable. Where she knew she wouldn’t run into Derrick.

“You race bikes or something?” he asked.

“Or something.” Inwardly she cringed. Not many guys thought a chick racing dirt bikes was sexy. It was dangerous and dirty.

“You’ve got three medals and two trophies. You must be good.” He handed the menu back, his gaze a little warmer than before. If she’d thought he looked interested before, there was no denying it now.

“I’m very good at what I do. Know what you want?” She stared at the menu and wrestled internally with her libido. Sleeping with a client was bad for business.

“Yeah, I think so.” He flipped his menu closed.

She felt his gaze on her and heat rolled over her body. By the end of the night, if she didn’t spontaneously combust, she’d have to take a real cold shower.

“Would you show me what you do?” His voice was lower, inviting her to do wicked things, at least in her mind.

She fanned herself with the menu again and forced herself to meet his gaze. Just because he’d caught her by surprise tonight didn’t mean he was going to get the best of her. “Oh, I don’t know if you could handle that.”

“I’m pretty capable.” The way he tipped his head forward, the slow, lingering gazes— they were having more than a little impact on her body. Her nipples chafed against her bra, and her panties were becoming damp. Exactly how capable was he?

Emma waved the waitress down and they ordered. She ignored the pointed glances toward her male companion. She knew too many people who frequented this place. In hindsight, it might not have been the best place to meet, but she’d wanted to avoid her ex and knew he wouldn’t come here for anything.

“So—”

“I—” She chuckled and gestured for him to speak. “You first.”

He cleared his throat. “I hope I’m not being pushy here, but I understand that you have some letters TBK sent to your family before their—death?”

Cock-blocked again by a dead serial killer. She hated that bastard. It was probably for the best anyway.

“Don’t be silly. That’s why you contacted me in the first place. And you can call it a murder. I’m not sensitive about it.” She shrugged and pulled a scrapbook out of a portable plastic filing box she’d brought with her. “TBK stands for, as you probably know, torture, blind, and kill. He gave himself that name, and we know that because he signed it on all his communications. TBK was known for sending letters to the police, newspaper, and even his victims. He liked people to be scared. Sort of a mind-fuck. Anyway, while a lot of the letters were sent to the police with details about his future victims, a couple of times he even told them how he was going to pose a body, and he did send some to his victims before the murders. My grandparents actually got several from him. The problem was that he messed up their address, so the letters bounced up and down the street before one of the neighbors walked them down to the house and left them in the mail slot after their death. They were actually boxed up when the house was cleaned out, and I didn’t find them until a few years ago, which is why they were never in the official evidence at the trial.”

“Really?” He held his hand out.

“I have to warn you, these are graphic.” She held the book to her chest and watched his face carefully. She kept the letters separate from the books about her grandparents. Not everyone wanted to be exposed to them. TBK had a flare for the gruesome and there was no doubt he’d positioned the bodies to have the most impact.

His features tensed a little and he nodded. She handed the book over and let him flip it open. For several moments he stared at the first one, his brows drawing down and his lips squeezing together.

“Are these consistent with his other letters?” Jacob continued to pore over the first page, which was the least offensive of the collection.

“Yes. I had them compared to the documents in evidence downtown.”

“And the cops didn’t want these?”

She shrugged. “Why? TBK was dead. They didn’t need them. The notarized certificate of authenticity is on the last page if you don’t believe me.”

Jacob flipped to the next page. “TBK.”

“Yeah, he signed them all by hand, while the rest of the letter was a hodgepodge of words cut from magazines and stuff. I think he thought they could figure out who he was by his handwriting.”

“But he still risked signing them?”

She shrugged. “Ego maybe? It doesn’t make any sense to me, but neither does killing a bunch of people.”

He quietly perused the last pages, only glancing at the notarized certificate before handing the book back to her after a few moments. “You have some other letters?”

He was persistent. He didn’t even glance at her boobs now, and that was a shame. All business, no play.

“I do.” She filed the scrapbook back in her box and retrieved a second thick book full of plastic sleeves and pages. She handed it over with a shrug. “I have letters from three-fourths of the murders.”

“Really? How did you get to keep these?” He seemed horrified, but she couldn’t wrap her head around why. What was it he was looking for? She tried her best to stay out of her clients’ business. Maybe she should have asked Jacob a few more questions about why he was so interested in TBK.

“TBK was meticulous about how he picked his victims, but he wasn’t so great about making sure the letters got to people who would open them. A lot of the families got the letters and hid them. Some of the letters were lost in the mail like my grandparents’. I really came into them by accident. Like the first family, they sort of threw them at me. They were ready to get rid of them, but didn’t want to trash them.”

“The cops didn’t want these?”

“The families never turned them over. It seems like some of them pushed stuff under the rug to try to move on.”

“That’s hindering the investigation.” His frown deepened.

“Maybe to you, but for them it was survival. These people were grieving and trying to put tragedy behind them. They did it however they could. It might not have been the right way, but it’s what they did.”

He wasn’t like the others. Usually the people who sought her out spent forever poring over the words and the pictures. He seemed to be after something specific. He clearly wasn’t going to outright ask her what he wanted to know, and for some reason she couldn’t stop wondering why. She had enough issues without adding another, but she could never keep her nose in her own business. She wasn’t about to judge them. She didn’t need any more cracks in her glass house.

Jacob tried to focus on the food. The barbecue was some of the best he’d had in ages, and he was pretty picky when it came to calling food good. But any time he’d begin to mull the flavors over, Emma would dip her finger in the sauce and lick it off, and he’d be back to staring at that mischievous smile, those dark, soulful eyes.

Emma Ration was not the woman he’d expected.

He’d read her file, knew enough of her life story that he’d expected to find some washed-up, hard-used woman working an angle. But she was different. Unlike her father, unlike Jacob, TBK hadn’t left a mark on her he could see, and he knew the darkness of humanity. He saw it every day, working the streets of Oklahoma City. But despite his gut feeling about her, he still couldn’t trust her. Could he? Did he dare lay it all out on the table and pick her brain for real? No, he didn’t. People like her didn’t trust cops. So he’d torture himself a little more by watching her eat a sandwich like it was the best erotic film he’d ever seen.

She was attractive in her realness. He couldn’t think of another word to describe it. Emma was authentic to who she was, and maybe that person was a little redneck, a little rough around the edges, but she didn’t seem like she was about to apologize for it.

He’d have liked to be interviewing her father, but the Ration family survivor was next to impossible to find, as was his wife, Emma’s mother. There was also a baby momma and a younger son who was in the Navy before getting thrown in the federal prison. In a family of questionable people, Emma stuck out. There were two things in her file, a DUI and an altercation where no one had pressed charges. It sounded like some guy had tried to intimidate her, and she’d shown him how bad her bite could be.

Emma was the kind of woman he needed to stay far away from. And yet, he’d kept digging.

Thanks to social media, it was pretty easy to track down her current activities. She was a huge motocross racer, or whatever they were called. She had a website dedicated to metal sculptures she made out of reclaimed trash. And she had a job at a garage that appeared to specialize in recreational vehicles.

To top it all off, she was easy on the eyes. Her tank top stretched across ample breasts. It was a show of will he didn’t just stare at them all night. Her left arm had a tattoo from shoulder to elbow of a dirt bike chick soaring through the air, done in pretty fine detail, against a backdrop of what he would call a race course. There were a few other tattoos, but he hadn’t paid attention to them. Her smile kept snagging his attention. There hadn’t been much to smile about these last few years, even less now. He was almost jealous of her easy ability to simply be happy. What was that like?

Emma glanced up and caught him staring at her again. One side of her mouth kicked up. He wanted to lick those lips.

“Do you have any other questions for me?” she asked between bites.

He was pretty much done with what he needed. He could pay now, get up, and leave, which was the safer option. But it had been so long since he’d sat and eaten a meal with another person. A hell of a lot longer since that person was female and beautiful.

“How’d you get started racing bikes?”

“Mm, that’s personal.” She waggled her finger at him.

He wanted to peel back the layers, find out who she really was. What her secret for not allowing TBK to get to her was. Maybe he could learn a thing or two from her.

“You didn’t mind so much earlier. You don’t share personal information until the second date?” Wait, what? His mouth was getting away from him. But he did want to see her again, even if it was the worst idea he’d ever had. As soon as she knew he was a cop, she’d run from him. Of that he was certain.

She sputtered, caught off guard.

“I mean, I figure since I’m buying you dinner and it’s just the two of us—this is kind of a date.” That was stretching the truth, but would it be so bad to see her again? He wasn’t breaking any rules.