Killer Moves (5 page)

When Davis left the shop, he headed back in the same direction he’d come. He’d learned, among other things from Justine Yamez, that Kara hadn’t gone in to the shop in two days. Maybe after seeing Ryan the day before and hearing about Rachel, she would have kept right on running.

God no.

He waited another fifteen minutes before considering a possible plan. The girl promised to keep her mouth shut, but how much weight did he place in that promise? After all, she considered Kara her friend as well as her boss.

Ryan said Kara insisted she no longer possessed the gift but Davis didn’t believe that for a minute.

Kara had hated it from day one. But she’d told him on countless occasions it wasn’t something that ever went away. She’d certainly tried enough in the past to block out the images.

So, if he went there now, would she see him coming and run? The gift was a strange thing, usually limited to violent crimes. The only exception had been the Angel case. She’d never been able to see him, only the evil surrounding him.

Davis decided he didn’t want to take any chances. He’d wait until dark at least. Hopefully give himself some advantage.

He pulled into a Mini Mart parking spot and grabbed a Red Bull drink. Davis had stopped smoking after the first Angel case. But with the long grueling hours he’d put in recently trying to solve the new cases, and the unspeakable evil surrounding the death of people he’d known personally, he needed some vice. The caffeine in the drink seemed to do the trick and beat the hell out of smoking again.

Davis stood outside the Mini Mart loitering, while those passing by easily pegged him for an outsider. The suit and sunglasses made them suspicious. He hadn’t taken the time to change. His mind had been on what lay ahead.

The caffeine, added to the stress of the day, churned inside his empty stomach. He needed food to counteract their effects. Davis ignored the fast-food joints, choosing a somewhat nicer restaurant instead where he hoped to find a quiet table to think about what to say to her.

But too many other thoughts pressed down on him.

God, he wished he could understand how he’d become so enmeshed in this thing. Why had the killer—because he couldn’t accept that the Angel might still be out there somewhere waiting to make a fool out of all of them all over again—chosen to make Davis as well as Kara part of his gruesome game this time?

Chapter Three

Ava had been grumpy and sullen since Kara picked her up at the bus stop hours earlier. She complained about the homework Miss Clopay assigned and took no interest in their usual evening routine of reading. When Ava’s bedtime finally rolled around, Kara’s nerves were raw from trying to remain patient with her daughter.

“Okay, little girl, off to bed you go.” When faced with going to her room, Ava’s sullenness turned to tears. She clung to her mother’s waist and sobbed.

“Mommie, I can’t sleep in there! There are too many noises!” Kara’s pulse skipped a beat at her daughter’s confession.

She picked Ava up in her arms, “Honey, what are you talking about? What noises?” The only sound in the house came from the low murmur of the TV in the living room.

Please, God, not the voices of the dead…

“The coyotes are howling outside again,” was Ava’s tearful response. At least Kara could breathe again.

“Then we’ll turn the radio on in your room to help you sleep and Buster can stay with you this one time, okay? Come on, baby, you need to get some rest.”

Kara untangled Ava’s clinging arms and kissed her gently. With all of Ava’s emotional turmoil, sleep was not long in coming. Kara barely finished one page of the book they’d been reading before her daughter drifted off.

With Ava finally out, Kara closed the door, confident of Buster’s abilities, and returned to the living room to the comforting sound of the TV.

Sleep for her would not be possible. Since she’d learned about the dead, the dreams of the Death Angel had become more real and more frightening than ever. They took on the feeling of a reality waiting for fulfillment.

Inside her top dresser drawer, way in the back, she found the silk scarf. Kara kept it to remember, not that she needed much help.

The second her fingers touched the silk, she sensed the nightmarish terror associated with it as clearly as if it were woven into the material. Even though she’d never seen the Angel’s face, the stark evil in him reached out to her. He was someone who enjoyed his work, took pride in it even. Someone cunning and off the charts in intelligence.

Kara took the scarf and stuffed it into the box with the photos. Tomorrow she would burn them all. And then she would make plans to leave El Paso behind, because the sanctuary she so longed for no longer felt safe.

Sitting in the dark, in her favorite chair, somehow she must have drifted off for a moment. She was awakened to the sound of someone knocking at the door.

With the nightmare memories of the Angel still close, her first thought was for her daughter. She ran to Ava’s room to check on her, and then Kara slipped into her room and quickly unlocked the gun safe hidden in her closet. Her fingers shook as she loaded the Glock and released the safety.

She peeked through the living room window and saw a dark silhouette standing on her front porch. She couldn’t make out the figure.

Kara tucked the weapon behind her back and slowly opened the door. She slammed it again as she faced the past she’d never be free of, and it had nothing to do with the Angel.

Before the door closed, Davis wedged his foot in, keeping her from closing it.

“What the hell are you doing here, Davis? Get out, I don’t want you here,” she managed to whisper, keeping her voice as low as possible in spite of the emotion it carried. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

He shoved the door open and came inside, facing her for the first time in six years.

“Dammit, Kara, I think you know why I’m here. I came because we need to talk about our daughter. Why the hell didn’t you tell me I had a child?”

She’d expected those words since she left DC, and yet hearing them aloud, it was as if her worst nightmare had been confirmed.

She couldn’t hide from the past any longer. She carefully backed away when he got too close.

“I don’t want you here. You made your feelings perfectly clear when you decided
The Job
was more important to you than I was. Nothing you have to say to me now matters, and I chose not to tell you about Ava because as far as I’m concerned she’s none of your business. I don’t want her part of the work you do.”

Anger flashed in his eyes as he stepped closer and she turned away.

The gun he spotted stopped him dead in his tracks. “You’re carrying a weapon?” In the beginning weeks of working at the Bureau, Kara had detested weapons. She still remembered how Davis had to force her into learning how to use one when they were working the Angel case. She’d taken to it easily enough. Almost as easily as she’d given
him
her heart.

Kara pushed those memories aside. She couldn’t think about loving Davis now. Not when the flesh-and-blood version of him was standing close enough to feel each heartbeat, reminding her of all the times past when he’d held her close after making love. She needed to remain strong. Anger was the only way.

“Why did you come here, Davis?” she hissed. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone? I don’t want you here.”

“You don’t want me here?” Davis asked incredulously. He stepped into the light of the TV and looked at her with all the anger and resentment she’d dreaded for so long. “When were you planning on telling me I had a daughter, Kara?”

For a moment, she couldn’t get words to come out of her mouth. Her stormy gaze slipped over him in disbelief.

“Never. I never planned to tell you about Ava.”

He still looked the same. How was that possible? Handsome. Strong. Familiar. Incredibly sexy. But then, she’d seen him each night in her dreams. She knew every inch of him by heart, and every inch of Davis Martin still possessed the power to take her breath away and make her long for him to the point of giving up everything to be with him.

But not her daughter.

She watched Davis struggle with her answer. She wouldn’t blame him if he hated her for not sharing their child. She almost hoped he did. It would make seeing him again easier.

“Dammit, Kara, didn’t you think I had the right to know I’d fathered a child from our—”

“From our what? Our affair? Why?” She stood defiantly before him, refusing to give in to the need to back away when he moved closer. The expected hate wasn’t there.

But there was no mistaking Davis’s anger.

“It meant more than that and you know it. I loved you! You were the one who walked away from us, Kara, not me.”

“You told me you couldn’t be with me. What did you expect me to do? Hang around and wait for Ed to give us his permission to see each other again while becoming the laughingstock of DC? He couldn’t have been more thrilled when I left DC, because it took away any hint of affair from the public’s eye. I loved you, and needed you, and all you did was put your precious Bureau ahead of everything, including me.”

“I thought you didn’t give a damn what the Bureau thought about you?” he said, his mouth twisting wryly.

“I didn’t. But I cared about us. I cared about me. I left because of me, not your precious Bureau.”

“I did what I thought was best for everyone involved, Kara. Including you.”

Kara fought to control the raw pain once more. He was lying. For Davis, the only thing that mattered was the Bureau. “Don’t lie.”

“It’s true,” he repeated more softly. His husky whisper still filled her with longing. “I thought about calling you a thousand times. But then I kept remembering the look in your eyes that day. I didn’t want to hurt you anymore.”

“Very touching. But you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you. If that was true, why are you here now? Let me guess… Rachel’s case?”

“You think I came because of the case? Dammit, Kara, I came for my daughter.”

They faced each other in a silent battle of wills, like so many times in the past, both completely unaware of the little girl who’d joined them until Ava spoke.

“Mommie, she’s scared!” Ava’s frightened words brought Kara’s attention to her daughter in an instant. Tears streamed down her flushed cheeks. Ava’s eyes were glazed but not from sleep. Kara recognized that familiar look too well.

Dear God—no!

“Baby, it’s okay. You’re just having a bad dream.” Silently she pleaded for Davis not to say anything.

“No, Mommie, she’s scared for real. She’s scared for real!” Ava began to cry earnestly out of fear. Kara knelt in front of her daughter, taking her by her arms. She could feel her daughter’s shivering running through her tiny body.

“Who’s scared, Ava?”

“Justine,” she said through hiccupping sobs. “She’s afraid of the man.”

Kara’s breath lodged against her throat. From close behind, she registered Davis’s shocked reaction.

“Oh God. She has the gift?” There was no denying the dread in that question.

Kara threw him a warning look, but her thoughts were all for her assistant Justine.

“What about Justine, baby? What is she afraid of?”

“I told you, Mommie. The man. He’s coming to hurt her. She’s afraid of him.” Ava’s tiny voice broke into another round of sobbing. She clung to Kara, who picked her up in her arms, heading for the phone while praying this truly would turn out to be just a bad dream on Ava’s part.

“Baby, it’s okay, Justine is fine. I’m going to call her right now so you can see.”

It took Justine more than a dozen rings to pick up. “Hello?”

Kara could tell from her voice she’d been sleeping.

“Are you okay?”

“Kara—is that you? What are you talking about? Of course, I’m okay. Do you know what time it is?”

“Justine, I know and I’m sorry, but are you sure everything’s okay there?” Kara asked while trying to keep from alarming Ava as well as Justine.

“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be? Is this about that man who stopped by the shop today? Jeez, Kara, couldn’t it wait until morning? I was sound asleep until you called.”

“Good. I’m sorry—no, what man?” Kara glanced at Davis and saw the truth. “Never mind that now. Justine, don’t go back to sleep just yet, okay. I’ll call you right back.” Kara didn’t wait for Justine to argue before hanging up the phone.

She soothed her daughter’s hair from her eyes. “See, baby, Justine’s fine. Now you need to go back to bed.”

Ava’s eyelids had begun to grow heavy until she spotted Davis.

“Mommie, who’s that man?”

Kara’s gaze collided with Davis’s. Before he could say anything, she stopped him.

“Baby, let’s get you back into bed. We’ll talk about this in the morning, okay? Now close your eyes.” Kara lowered her daughter back into her bed and pulled the covers up over her.

“Sleep tight, baby. I’ll leave the hall light on and the door open. It was only a bad dream, Ava. Okay?”

“Okay, Mommie.”

When she turned to leave Ava’s room, Davis stood in the doorway, blocking her exit. Emotions long-since buried resurfaced between them in an instant before he quietly stepped aside and followed her back to the living room. When she reached for the phone again, he stopped her.