Lethal Confessions (2 page)

Beckett glanced her way, catching her undoubtedly startled expression and the brief hitch in her step. Then he dropped his eyes to the gun and badge on her belt. He veered toward her, his mouth lifting in a dazzling smile that froze her in her tracks.

Merde.

Amy didn’t want to stop. She had no desire to speak to Luke Beckett, however famous or handsome he might be.

But Beckett clearly had her in his sights. He strolled up to her, assuming, no doubt, that a lowly police detective, especially one of the female variety, would welcome a brief brush with greatness.

“Ma’am, I just thought I’d say hello,” he said in a seductive southern drawl. “I talk to a lot of police officers here at the hospital, but we haven’t met before. I’m Luke Beckett.” He stuck out his hand, a mitt big enough to engulf both of hers. He clearly thought she’d recognized him, and he was right.

Reluctantly, her hand came forward and disappeared into his oversized paw. “Detective Amy Robitaille.” She inwardly cursed the catch in her voice.

He must have heard it, too, because his smile kicked up a notch. He tilted his head, looking curious, and a lock of black hair feathered across his forehead.

Calice, this guy is good
. Maybe he practiced in front of a mirror.

“Roh-bi-tie..” He drew the syllables out in a lazy cadence, one she felt down the backs of her legs. “With that name and that accent, I’d guess you’re from Montreal. Did you recognize me from up there?” His dark eyes seemed to laugh at her. “I sure did love that town.”

“And Montreal loved you right back,” Amy said, starting to inch around him. “Yes, I grew up there.”

Beckett shifted a little. Not enough to block her path, but enough to make it clear he wanted to continue the conversation.

She repressed a groan. Beckett reminded her of Gabe Labrash, though admittedly her ex-boyfriend wasn’t as poster handsome as the man standing in front of her. Gabe had taught her the dangers of getting involved with a pro athlete, but that wasn’t a good enough reason to be flat-out rude to a stranger.

His eyes flicked down over her chest to the ID card on her belt. “Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, right?”

“You have sharp eyes,” she said.

“I recognized the colors and the logo right away.” He cleared his throat. “Est-ce que tu viens à l’hôpital souvent?”

Amy gave a reluctant smile at his decent stab at French. His use of the familiar “tu” was a little forward, but she decided not to use the stiff “vous” in response. “C’est beau, ton débit. Tu parles français pas mal,” she said, and then switched back to English. “I’m impressed. Your accent isn’t half bad.”

He shook his head. “I used to speak a fair bit of French, but now I’m rusty as hell. I left Montreal nine years ago, and I haven’t kept it up.”

Amy nodded, knowing how easy it was to lose your French in southern Florida. Sure, there were thousands of Quebec expatriates and snowbirds there, and you could buy
La Presse
in some Fort Lauderdale convenience stores. But English was too dominant to allow most people to preserve their native language and pass it down. She’d managed, but only through iron will and fanatical determination to spend every vacation in Quebec since her family had forced her to leave. But her younger sister, Marie-Louise, had already lost some of her fluency, and M.L.’s little boy would probably be barely functional in French.

“It’s hard to maintain a language in a foreign environment,” she said, beginning to enjoy the conversation.

Beckett shifted closer. It was an easy, fluid movement, but one which brought her native sense of caution flooding back.

“Are you visiting someone here, Detective?” he asked. “Or working a case?”

Amy cast a pointed look toward the hospital exit. “I dropped in to see a ten year-old girl. A bystander caught in the middle of a double homicide shootout last week. She was transferred down here for follow-up surgery. I was just checking to see how she was doing.”

The tough lines of his face softened a bit. “Poor kid. What’s her name? I’ll drop by.”

Amy hesitated, caught off guard by his offer. “Tanesha Malone. That…that would be nice of you.”

He flashed another devastating grin. “No problem. I’ll make sure I catch her.”

“I guess you’re doing one of those celebrity visits,” Amy said, thinking back to all the times she’d seen athletes, actors, and politicians make whirlwind tours of children’s hospitals.

Beckett’s smile faded. “Not really.” He suddenly sounded cool.

Shut your big mouth, Amy.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to give offense.”

He actually looked kind of pissed. “That’s okay. I just don’t like to be stereotyped.”

She started to back away, hating that her self-assurance seemed to be taking a perplexing nose dive.
Thank you, Luke Beckett
. “I understand. Well, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Before you go,” he interrupted. “I recognized your ID because a good friend of mine heads up the Violent Crimes Division at the Sheriff’s Office. Kellen Cramer. You must know him.”

Amy knew Kellen Cramer, all right. Her boss, captain and commander of the division that included her Homicide Unit. Talk about a small world. And not in a good way.

She dredged up a smile. “Of course. I’ll mention to him that I ran into you, Mr. Beckett.” She kept backing away. “Have a good day.”

Beckett raised his eyebrows, his gaze latching onto her with a sharp return of interest. Sexual interest, by the look of it. But she didn’t stick around long enough to give him a chance to reply. Every cop instinct she possessed shrieked that Luke Beckett was capable of weaving a web and capturing a victim in the time it took to drink a cup of coffee.

Amy simply refused to play fly to Luke Beckett’s spider. Not after Gabe Labrash. She wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

Thursday, July 29

2:30 a.m.

The thought of getting raped by her kidnapper made Carrie Noble gag under the restraint. But she’d have to steel herself to it, if it came to that. No woman got away from a psycho unless she held on long enough to be found and rescued. Whatever it took to stay breathing, she’d do it.

When he shook her awake—hours ago, it seemed—her eyes had opened to a blinding light that pounded down on her from straight above. When she tried to turn her head away, she realized she was lashed to a bed, naked and spread-eagled. Her neck hurt from a hard leather collar that chafed her. Her limbs were tied to the four bedposts with rough straps of the same black leather.

That was when she’d started to scream. It hadn’t been a conscious decision. The full-throated howls gushed from deep within her, driven to the surface by terror and rage and disbelief. Disbelief that a nightmare like this could happen to her.

God, she was only twenty-two! She hadn’t had a chance to do anything yet. All her dreams were going to vanish, never to come true. Not a single one.

She’d screamed for as long as she could. Mostly she screamed in stark terror, but she kept enough wits about her to know that noise attracted attention, and there was always a chance that someone might hear. The bastard had grimaced as he watched her yell for a minute or so. But then he left, mercifully flicking off the cruel overhead light before he slammed the door behind him. A while later, when she stopped long enough to hear something besides her own shrieks, she could make out the whirr of a vacuum cleaner in another room.

What the fuck?
He was cleaning? Who the hell was this sick asshole?

Albert Poole. That’s what his team ID card had read. When he rang her doorbell last night, wearing a Hammerheads tee shirt and baseball cap, she wasn’t going to answer. Not after midnight. Even though he looked a little familiar—through the distortion of the eyehole—she ignored him. But, instead of leaving, he’d held up his card and shouted that Matt had been in a bad accident. Carrie’s heart had started to pound like it was going to jump right out of her chest, and she’d thrown open the door without another thought.

Dumb
.
Dumb. Dumb.

Poole said her husband had been in a car wreck in Viera about an hour earlier, and had been taken to the hospital up there in critical condition. She’d believed him. Hell, under those circumstances, what woman wouldn’t have opened the door to a man who looked like he was with her husband’s team? Especially when the guy looked so young, and was so obviously worried about Matt.

As she closed the door behind him, Carrie had asked for the name of the hospital. Those were the last words spoken. The guy was strong, and he threw her easily to the floor. She tried to scrabble up, but he slammed her down and stuck something sharp into the back of her neck.

She had no clue how long she’d been unconscious. Even now, she couldn’t really tell the passage of time. The room had no windows and the only sound—besides that fucking vacuuming—came from the whirring blades of an ancient ceiling fan that barely moved the stifling air in the small room.

Carrie yanked against the leather straps, feeling panicky and on the verge of suffocation. Sweat pooled on the skin of her stomach and in the cleavage between her breasts. A horrible stench, made worse by the heat, assaulted her nostrils—the sickening odor of mold, she guessed, combined with her own BO, musky and rank from the heat.

Worst of all was the smell and the wet beneath her thighs. She’d peed herself after coming groggily awake in this chamber of horrors.

The vacuuming stopped.

Her mind raced, driven by the frantic need to stay alive. Why had Poole picked her? He wore Hammerheads team gear, but she’d met all the guys who worked for the team, and she didn’t know him. He was vaguely familiar, but if he’d been with the team she’d have recognized him. She was sure of that.

Why
had
he kidnapped her? Was it for ransom, or was he some sick pervert intent on raping and killing her? Her heart pounded uncontrollably at the thought of what he might do.

The worst of it was that no one would even know she was missing. Matt might try to call her in the morning, but even that was a long shot. They’d had a terrible fight when he called yesterday afternoon. She had yelled awful things, bitter words that might be the last he’d ever hear from her lips. Grief and remorse choked her, making it hard to breathe.

Heavy footsteps approached. She started to struggle again, yanking uselessly again on the straps. It made no sense, but she couldn’t stop herself. Her body thrashed around on its own, refusing to lie inert in the face of danger and evil.

Poole left the door open as he entered the room and flicked on the powerful overhead bulbs. “Through with the screaming?”

Carrie jerked her head to the side, her eyes assaulted by the sudden burst of light above her.

He carried a small, metal case in his left hand. In the crook of his arm, he squeezed a big bottle of Dasani water. His bicep bulged. The guy was pretty buff.

He set the case and the water down.

“You stink,” he said. “It’s a good thing I put that plastic underneath the sheet.”

He was a pretty normal looking guy, but his blank expression terrified her. “Wha…what do you want?” she croaked.

He stood beside the bed, level with her chest, and stared down at her breasts for what seemed like a full minute. “I want you to pull yourself together long enough for us to have a conversation,
Mrs.
Noble
.”

She inhaled deeply, as if the extra air could give her courage, and steeled herself. “I... I’ll try.”

“Good.” Poole smiled down at her, but the thin smile didn’t reach his eyes. Those eyes, a muddy gray-green, shifted constantly over her body.

Bile rose in her throat, but she had to encourage him. She had to kill time. “If you want me, go ahead,” she said, fighting the quaver in her voice. “I won’t fight you.” As if she could, anyway.

He frowned, as if disgusted. But then he smoothed his right hand across her stomach. She couldn’t help clenching her muscles in response.

He gave her a derisory snort and cupped a breast. This time she forced a half-smile and got a quirk of his lip in return. He rubbed his palm over her nipple, played with it for a moment, then pinched it hard.

She yelped, more from fear than pain.

That made him grin. “Your body is sure beautiful. I can see why Matt wanted you.”

She gritted her teeth but kept smiling.

He pulled his hand away. “But I don’t fuck whores.”

Oh, God.
He’d been watching her. A flash of anger made its way through her fear. “Whore? Why would you call me that? I don’t understand.”

Poole snorted, his brief grin disappearing. “Lying bitch. You’ve been fucking that asshole. Don’t try to deny it.” He pinched the other nipple, and this time it really hurt. She grimaced, but managed to stifle a cry.

“You get off by cheating on Matt, don’t you?”

No!
The sex meant nothing to her. She was just frustrated and lonely. “That’s not true! I love Matt.” She swallowed hard, her throat dry as desert sand. “What’s it got to do with you, anyway?”

The words weren’t out of her mouth before her frantic brain made the connection. “Oh, Jesus, did Matt put you up to this?” she screeched.

Poole’s hard palm smashed into her cheek. Her neck cracked and her face slammed down into the bed despite the tight collar. Searing pain lanced through her head as it snapped back from the slap. The hard leather bit again into the delicate skin of her neck.

“Of course he didn’t, you stupid cow. I’m sure he loves you, though I sure as hell don’t understand why, since you’re a total whore and a nagging bitch. And don’t ever say again that you love Matt. If you did, you’d have been a good wife to him.”

Every instinct told Carrie to curl up into a ball and whimper. But she could barely move. The crazy son of a bitch was right about one thing, though. Matt would never hurt her. He was soft. Too soft. That was the whole trouble. She’d thought she married a guy with more than just talent. Matt was supposed to be a guy who’d work hard and do whatever it took to make it big. It turned out that he had a ton of raw talent, all right, but zero fire in his belly. No way was he going to become the star she’d thought he would be.