Got Thrills? A Boxed Set (A McCray Collection) (47 page)

“Thank you so much, Darling,” Kent said as he leaned over and kissed her hand. “You have been most helpful.”

“I can give you two a rain check if you want.”

“That would be delightful,” Kent answered playfully as Nicole elbowed him in the side.

“Actually, I need to speak with someone about reversing the charges on my card,” Nicole stated as Kent escorted her from the room.

He then winked at Darling. “Later,” he said.

* * *

Nicole elbowed Kent again as he closed the door.

“What?” he responded. “Even transvestite, bondage dominatrixes need love.”

She just ignored him. It was usually better that way. “The question is… did we get twelve hundred dollars worth of intel out of that interview?”

Kent waved his hand, dismissing her concern. Per usual. There was no one at the booth, but she was pretty sure the “Boutique” would credit her back rather than have a vice raid. Her captain definitely was not going to approve this expense.

As they moved toward the exit, her phone vibrated in her pocket. A lot. She pulled it out to find about ten texts from Jimmi. Rather than read them, she just dialed the number and put it on speaker.

“Detective Usher?” Jimmi’s voice was high and rushed. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”

“Obviously,” Nicole answered, still slightly shaken from the club. “What is it?”

“I found…” Jimmi said as keystrokes came over the line. “I am texting you a screen capture of some documents.”

Within moments, her phone vibrated again. She loaded the picture. It was a copy of the threats made against Lyla.

“And?” Nicole asked.

“They were made from a fellow student’s computer. A Jennifer Stark,” Jimmi stated. “Only Jennifer was in London on vacation at the time.”

Nicole looked up to find Kent looking off into the darkened room. Only the soft glow of the cell phone’s light illuminated them. He was piecing together the puzzle. Nicole could see where this might be leading. Yet, she could not catch up with the profiler.

“But anyone could have used that computer. Even Harold, for that matter,” Jimmi answered even though it wasn’t him she was necessarily talking to.

Jimmi raced on. “Except I can tell that the sender actually spell-checked the item. Here is the original document before it was corrected.”

Nicole looked down to see that many of the words, especially with vowels, were misspelled. More specifically, they had the vowels out of order.

“Dyslexia,” Kent breathed softly.

Lyla was dyslexic.

But it couldn’t be. Why would she send herself threatening notes?

“Hold on, hold on,” Jimmi said excitedly. “I am downloading the security footage. The lab has motion-activated cameras for theft control.”

There was an agonized silence as Jimmi scanned the footage. “Holy crap! It was definitely Lyla at the computer.”

Nicole tried to wrap her mind around it, but still struggled.

“It gets worse.” Jimmi continued. “She tried to erase them, but there are multiple searches for paranoid schizophrenia and how the courts handle juvenile offenders.”

Nicole shook her head. There was no way. But Kent looked up.

“Call the Suttons,” Kent ordered. “Let them know that we are heading over right now.”

The profiler didn’t wait for Jimmi to even acknowledge the order as he cut off the call and strode to the door.

“Kent, wait,” Nicole urged as she caught up with him. “There must be another reason why she sent those notes.”

“The evidence would suggest otherwise.”

As they exited the sex club, Nicole grabbed his sleeve. “Child murderers are the least likely, and a girl? Serial killing? It is unheard of.”

“Until there is the first.”

“But she was only eight when it began,” Nicole argued. “You said yourself the crime was too sophisticated for even Harold. How could an eight-year-old do it?”

Furious, Kent jerked from her grip. “I’ve been wrong before.”

Nicole knew the guilt he felt. As much as the profiler liked to buy his own press that he was perfect, he was far from it. They had both seen the devastation when his intuition had led him wrong. The last time that happened, he’d ended up chained in a basement, and she… well, she had nearly died.

They were in the car and on the road in an instant as her phone rang again. Nicole hit speaker. “I’ve tried all the Suttons’ numbers,” Jimmi said, nearly out of breath. “There’s no answer.”

“Keep trying,” Nicole said as she hung up.

Kent put his hand out. “Let me.”

Nicole handed the phone over and watched Kent type in two words. “I know.”

Why would he send those two words? Especially to Ruben’s, her partner’s, phone?

Then it hit her.

“You traded Ruben’s phone for the iPod.”

Kent shrugged. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

But anger welled up in Nicole. “You just tipped off a suspect with another officer’s phone. Kent, this could come back to burn Ruben.” Typical Kent. He thought only of himself. “And why tell Lyla? Why?”

“The cage needed to be rattled.”

Nicole gripped the steering wheel. “Maybe you’ve rattled it too much.”

Siren wailing, it took them less than three minutes to cross the bridge and make it to the Suttons’ neighborhood. Another minute, and she pulled the car to a screeching halt outside their door. They were out of the car and bounding up the steps two at a time until they noticed the door was ajar.

The quadruple-locked security door with titanium bars was
ajar
.

With one hand she dialed Jimmi and with the other pulled her weapon.

“Jimmi, we are going to need backup.” As they stepped over the threshold, they found blood. Lots of blood. “And an ambulance.”

She hung up before hearing his answer.

“Help!” a woman’s voice cried from the living room.

Kent rushed forward heedless of the danger as she checked her corners. They found Mr. Sutton on the floor. It looked like he’d taken multiple stab wounds to the chest and neck. Mrs. Sutton was sobbing so hard that it was hard to understand her.

“I tried to stop her!” she cried.

Nicole sank to her knees. In the woman’s hysteria, she wasn’t holding off the gushing wound to the jugular. “Let me.”

But the woman’s hands slick with blood stayed hovering over the wound. “I was just trying to protect her.”

Well, her husband was about to die if that bleeding didn’t get stanched. “Move!” Nicole urged, and elbowed the woman out of the way. As she put pressure across the neck, she could feel Mr. Sutton’s pulse push back against her fingers. Almost as if the heart were trying to drain the body. She couldn’t let it.

“Where did Lyla go?” Kent asked.

“Downstairs,” the woman choked out, wiping her hair out of her face, but only smearing it with more of her husband’s blood. “This house used to be a speakeasy. I think that is how she was getting in and out.”

Kent charged down the hallway.

“No!” Nicole yelled. “Wait for backup.” Or a damned ambulance, but it was no use. The profiler was off, and nothing could stop him.

“Mrs. Sutton,” Nicole said trying to get the woman’s attention. She seemed transfixed by the retreating profiler. “Carla!”

Startled, the woman jumped, her whole body shaking.

“Carla, I need you to put pressure on that chest wound. Can you do that?”

Instead of helping, though, the woman shook her head. “I’ve got to find Lyla.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Nicole pleaded, but Mrs. Sutton took off down the hallway that Kent had disappeared down.

Grabbing a blanket off the couch, Nicole used it to put pressure on the chest wound while she gripped his neck wound. Alone and soaked in blood, Nicole cursed Kent’s name. Why was she always the one left to stanch the bleeding?

* * *

Kent breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. The tight, narrow, humid tunnels were a bit too much like a basement complex he frequented not too long ago. His tiny flashlight was not helping much. And the fact that he didn’t bother to grab Nicole’s gun.

Minor details. He’d caught killers with less. Not many of course, but he had caught them.

Sweeping his light, he noticed a glint down one of the passages. He backtracked and shone the light. In the thick shadows stood Lyla, a large knife in her hand, streaked with blood.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she said, sounding in shock.

He didn’t blame her. He was a bit surprised by it as well. Perhaps Nicole was right. Maybe he had rattled the cage too hard. He’d known something was wrong earlier. He should have ditched getting actual proof and simply acted on it earlier. All of this could have been avoided.

“It’s okay, Lyla,” Kent said as he inched forward. He did not want to antagonize the girl in any way. After all, she was the one with the weapon. “You can drop the knife.”

“I didn’t want to,” she said. “I didn’t want to.”

“I know, Lyla. I know.” He took another step toward her. The girl’s bright pink dress was smeared with her father’s blood. Even if she survived this night, it would haunt her forever.

Mrs. Sutton burst in from another tunnel, brandishing a butcher knife. “Lyla!”

The girl raised the knife again. “Stay back.”

“Oh my little girl…” Mrs. Sutton sobbed.

Crap. This was not how he planned it. Not that anything in the last hour had gone how he planned it. But this definitely was not on the schedule.

“Ma’am, I need you to go back upstairs,” Kent encouraged. “Let me get Lyla into custody.”

But the woman ignored him. “Lyla, honey, I can’t protect you anymore.”

“I know, Momma,” Lyla sobbed. “I am so sorry.”

“Don’t be, baby.”

“Get her to lower the weapon,” Kent whispered, but again Mrs. Sutton acted as if he hadn’t spoken.

“We talked about this. Someday it was going to have to end, remember?” the woman asked her daughter. Lyla nodded vigorously, wiping tears from her cheek. “The only thing is, Lyla, if the profiler is left alive, they will put me in jail for protecting you, Lyla.”

Kent’s head jerked around.
Bitch
.

“But if they find you both dead,” Carla continued, “then I can have this baby I am carrying and do better by her than I did you.”

“Really?” Kent commented. “Your kid is accused of being a serial killer and you somehow make it all about you?”

Neither seemed to notice his outburst as Lyla turned toward him with the knife.

“That’s right, baby. Just one last one, and then it will be over.”

As the blood-soaked girl took a step toward him, his flashlight shook. Probably because his hand shook. Could he pull this off?

“Lyla, do you remember what you asked me in your room? Why I didn’t want to know why you tried to kill yourself?”

The girl’s feet stalled. “Yes.”

“You weren’t asking me. You were asking yourself. Do you remember why you wanted to kill yourself?”

Confusion passed over Lyla’s face.

“You don’t remember, do you? You don’t remember taking your mom’s Valium or even getting into the tub, do you?”

“But I did.”

“No, someone gave you Valium. Someone slit your wrists.”

Mrs. Sutton’s eyes blazed with fury.

Oh yeah, bitch, two could play at this game.

“Mom?” Lyla asked.

“Honey, he is just trying to confuse you. You know how tricky these police can be. He doesn’t understand how sick you are.”

Lyla still didn’t move forward. “Did you do that, Mom? Did you try to kill me?”

Mrs. Sutton wrung her hands, tears streaming down her face. “Only because you wanted it to stop. You begged me to. Remember, when you are in a psychotic break, you can’t remember what happens.”

“It’s got to end,” Lyla sobbed.

“Yes, baby. Yes, it does.”

Kent held his ground as the girl turned to him. “You sent that message from the school. You tried to warn us.”

Lyla lifted the knife higher, its tip pointed at Kent. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“You don’t remember any of it, though, do you?” Kent asked. “None if it. Not your first kill. Not your last.”

Tears welled in the girl’s eyes. “It’s my fault. It’s me.” She took a step closer. “Tara was making fun of my boots. She said they looked like a possum had farted on them.”

“But that’s the last thing you remember, Lyla, isn’t it?” Kent probed. “You both walked home by different routes.”

“I remember seeing red. And wanting her dead. I wanted her dead,” Lyla sobbed.

“Of course you did,” Kent stated. “That was way rude.”

“Yes.” Lyla sniffed, menacing the knife toward him. “Yes, it was.”

* * *

Nicole heard sirens approach. Finally.

She could feel Mr. Sutton’s pulse weaken under her fingers. The cut had gone deep, slicing his jugular. Whatever had created these wounds had been large and sharp. And Kent was down there unarmed.

For being so damned smart he was an idiot at times.

The EMTs rushed into the house, trying to jockey her out of the way.

Nicole held on, though. Mr. Sutton couldn’t lose another drop of blood.

“No, there’s a gusher under my hand,” she said.

This time the EMT more cautiously took over the pressure as she backed away.

That was one hell of a wound on his neck.

And wasn’t Mr. Sutton like six feet tall?

Oh, crap.

As the EMTs called after her, she took off at a run down the hallway. Kent had no idea the trouble he was in.

* * *

Lyla took another step toward Kent. He swallowed hard. This was the moment of truth. Although sometimes the truth doesn’t always set you free. Sometimes… well, sometimes it got you killed.

His eyes flickered from the bloody tip of the knife that Lyla was holding to the rather large butcher knife the mother hefted with both hands. These were not the odds he was hoping for.

“You don’t have to do this,” Kent said to Lyla. “You have a choice.”

“No, I don’t,” she said as tears coated her eyelashes, making them glisten in the low light.

“You know what I am going to have to do?” Kent asked.

Lyla just nodded, biting her lip as she stepped forward and…

Handed him the knife.