Take the Key and Lock Her Up (16 page)

Nancy should be home now on college break. Devlin hoped she and her brother could
work through their differences during the break and become close once again.

He flipped another page. His smile faded when he saw the picture of Shannon Fisher,
her long dark-brown hair curling around her shoulders as she smiled up at him. She
didn’t deserve what had happened to her. She’d been a good person. Information she’d
gathered on her missions had positioned others to neutralize threats and save countless
lives. It was a tragedy that her family would never know that she’d been a true hero
instead of the simple tour guide they believed her to be.

Impatience had him quickly flipping past several more familiar faces until he found
the one he was searching for: Kelly Parker. Another enforcer, one who sometimes conducted
regular missions but worked mostly on secret assignments known only to her and Cyprian.
Kelly was Cyprian’s right hand in many ways, his confidante and sounding board on
important decisions, like whether to recruit Devlin to join EXIT.

After he’d joined the team, in addition to Gage helping him with the transition, Kelly
had been right there to answer his questions and guide him through training. They’d
become good friends. She was almost fanatical in her love of sailing and had tried,
without success, to get him to love it too. He’d gone boating with her and others
they worked with—like Ace, Gage, even Shannon a couple of times. But the only part
he’d enjoyed was when Kelly tried to teach all of them how to tie fancy nautical knots,
like the
X
-shaped, double-overhand knot she was so fond of. That was definitely a skill that
could come in handy in his line of work. Unfortunately, it was also a skill he’d never
mastered. And using handcuffs was so much faster.

But it wasn’t Kelly’s inability to sway him to enjoy boating that had caused a rift
between them. They’d made the mistake of taking their relationship to the next level.
They became lovers. While Devlin was all for being adventurous in the bedroom, Kelly’s
appetite for rough play left him cold. More importantly, it violated one of his own
personal rules of behavior that he lived by in addition to EXIT’s rules: never hurt
a woman. Even though Kelly was the one who wanted him to hurt her, he wasn’t about
to break that rule. After he explained that to her, they had no choice but to go back
to being just friends.

Not long after that, he’d recommended the termination of another enforcer—Ace.
That
was what had finally ended his friendship with Kelly. Devlin believed Ace was too
brutal, that he took pleasure from killing, that he was a ticking time bomb dangerous
to EXIT’s mission. Ace was a loose cannon, unpredictable, loyal to no one but himself.
He could be your friend one minute and slice your throat the next. But when Cyprian
debated the decision with Kelly, his confidante, she’d argued against termination.
Devlin had countered the argument with the fact that Ace and Kelly were friends, so
she might not be impartial. But Cyprian took Kelly’s side, as he often did. And since
that day, Kelly had been cold and distant with Devlin. Rumors were that Kelly and
Ace were more enemies than friends now, that Ace had been too brutal even for her
tastes. But Devlin didn’t know if the rumors were true.

He studied her picture—her dark, expressive eyes, her long, blonde hair, the distinctive
strawberry birthmark on her right cheek. He’d hoped he was wrong, that his memories
had played a cruel trick on him, but he could no longer deny what was right in front
of him. He hadn’t seen Kelly in months, maybe longer, until earlier this evening at
his father’s house.

When O’Malley asked him if he recognized the missing woman in the police sketch.

Chapter Ten

“W
HY DIDN’T YOU
tell me about what happened yesterday?” A bleary-eyed Gage Thomas stood in Devlin’s
kitchen doorway, his shoulder-length, dark hair unkempt, his clothes wrinkled, as
if he’d slept in them.

“How did you find out?” Devlin didn’t bother to pretend that he didn’t know what his
friend was talking about.

Gage snorted. “Right. You don’t think Cyprian has eyes and ears in the police station?”
Although he was several inches shorter than Devlin, he had a compact, muscular build
and used his bulk to shove past him into the house.

Devlin shut the door, waiting to see what his friend would do. When he’d seen him
on the security cameras a few minutes ago, he hadn’t known what to expect. He’d hoped
Gage was stopping by for something unrelated to the events of yesterday and last night.
Obviously that hope had been foolish.

Gage glanced around the eat-in kitchen, as if he were automatically marking the exits
even though he knew them all. He’d been here dozens of times over the years. During
football season he practically lived in the family room, beer in one hand, peanuts
or popcorn in the other, planted in one of the leather recliners in front of the big-screen
TV.

He sat in one of the chairs at the table in the middle of the room and dropped a thick
manila envelope next to Devlin’s half-eaten breakfast of eggs and bacon. “Take a look.”

Devlin resumed his seat across from Gage and shoved his plate out of the way. He opened
the envelope and emptied out the contents: dozens of photographs. He was glad he hadn’t
eaten much yet because what he
had
eaten had coiled into a cold hard knot in his stomach.

Startling color images painted a heinous scene. Amid the chaos of torn clothing, wildly
tousled hair, and matted branches and grass beneath the broken body was blood,
lots
of blood. But in spite of the blood and the bruises, the dead woman’s face was still
recognizable.

Shannon.

He focused on keeping his expression carefully blank while his heart ached for what
she’d obviously suffered. This wasn’t a quick execution. It was sadistic torture,
performed by someone who enjoyed causing excruciating pain, and drawing it out as
long as possible—for
days
, if the color of the bruises was an indicator.

The pictures, as awful as they were, did serve one useful purpose—they gave Devlin
new information about the murder. They proved that even though Shannon’s remains had
been discovered in a basement, she’d been killed somewhere else, somewhere outside.
If he could recognize a landmark in the pictures, figure out where she’d been killed,
maybe he could go there and search for clues about her attacker.

Of course right now the more urgent question was, why did Gage have these pictures?

On any other day, if Gage had shown up this early at Devlin’s house, he’d have been
helping himself to the contents of the refrigerator or trying to steal some bacon
from his plate. Instead, he was anxious, intent, watching Devlin’s every move.

The same way an enforcer might watch his mark, the person he was tasked with executing.

Every muscle in Devlin’s body tensed. His instincts urged him to strike before it
was too late. But this was Gage, his friend, one of the few people who knew about
Arianna and the horrible toll her death had taken on Devlin.

Gage had been his mentor, his confidant, his brother in everything but blood since
the day EXIT had recruited Devlin. Killing him
had
to be a last resort. And even then, Devlin wasn’t sure he could. So instead of striking
fast and hard, he hesitated, waited, and hoped he wasn’t making a fatal mistake. Even
though he and Gage were good friends—best friends—their loyalty to EXIT and its mission
had always come first. But their loyalty had never been tested like this before.

“What is this?” Devlin waved at the pictures. “They obviously aren’t police photos.
When the police found Shannon, she was just a skeleton. Where did you get these?”

“Cyprian. He said the killer sent them to him, to gloat.” His voice sounded raw, ragged,
as he sorted through the pictures and pulled some from the middle of the stack. He
thumped them with his fist. “Did you think Cyprian wouldn’t find out that you and
Shannon were lovers?”

A cold feeling of dread flashed through Devlin as he stared at these newest pictures.
What were the odds that someone would have taken surveillance photos of him and Shannon
the
only
time they’d ever been intimate? The pictures were explicit, leaving no question about
what he and Shannon were doing. And they had to have been taken with high-tech equipment,
capable of filming through the tiny pinholes in the blinds over his bedroom window.
Because he’d definitely had the blinds shut. That wasn’t a detail he would have forgotten,
even if he hadn’t expected anyone to be watching from outside.

Those photos were from last summer, almost a year ago, which meant whoever had taken
them had been planning this for a long time. Any doubts he might have harbored before
evaporated now.

Someone was trying to frame him.

But who? Who hated him enough to sacrifice Shannon and those other women as part of
his plan? What had he done to make such a powerful enemy?

Gage selected several more photographs and dropped them on top of the pile.

Devlin sucked in a breath, this time unable to hide his surprise. The top picture
had been taken in France, over a year and a half ago. Even if the Eiffel Tower in
the background hadn’t given the location away, he’d have remembered. It was the only
time he’d ever partnered on a mission with the other enforcer in the photograph.

Kelly Parker.

The picture showed the two of them locked in a heated kiss. The kiss was part of their
cover, for the benefit of the man they were pursuing, to make him think they were
an amorous couple strolling along the path behind him instead of his executioners.
The ploy had worked. They’d gotten their mark. But apparently they weren’t the only
ones there that day. And whoever had snapped this photograph was now using it in their
campaign to destroy him.

Devlin picked up another one of the photos, taken at a marina, showing him and Kelly
getting ready to go sailing. How long ago had that one been taken? He held it up as
if to study it, when his real goal was to distract Gage while he slid his left hand
under the table to the shotgun mounted underneath. He tossed the picture on the table
and studied his friend.

Or was Gage his executioner?

“What else do you have?” Devlin asked.

“What else? Isn’t this enough? One ex-lover slaughtered. Another missing?”

“How did you know Kelly was missing?”

“How did
you
? Do you think Cyprian doesn’t keep tabs on our personal relationships? He knows everything
about us. He probably knows the flight number of the plane Nancy flew on to come home
from school a few days ago. You know the drill. You know there’s no true privacy at
EXIT. How could you be so careless?”

Devlin stilled. “You think I killed Shannon? That I abducted Kelly?”

“Did you?”

His hand tightened around the gun beneath the table. “Do you really think I’d be stupid
enough to take pictures of one of my kills and send them to Cyprian? What about the
other pictures? Someone has obviously been conducting surveillance on me for a long
time.”

“Are you kidding? Tell me you don’t conduct surveillance on the rest of us to make
sure we haven’t gone rogue. Isn’t that part of your job?” When Devlin didn’t say anything,
Gage shook his head. “Just because you’re the one who’s supposed to keep an eye on
the rest of us doesn’t mean Cyprian doesn’t keep an eye on you too. What do you think
all those special projects are that Kelly works on for Cyprian? She’s one of his spies.
Or at least she was. I’m sure there are other spies too.”

Devlin blinked in surprise. “How would you know that about Kelly?”

Gage was the one who didn’t answer this time. His mouth tightened and he looked away.

Devlin swore. He’d never have guessed Kelly was Gage’s type. But now he understood
why Cyprian would send Gage to take Devlin out. Cyprian would assume since the two
of them were friends that Gage could surprise him. And since Cyprian had to know that
Gage cared about Kelly, he wouldn’t be worried that the friendship with Devlin would
stop Gage from carrying out his duty.

Devlin blew out a frustrated breath. “Where’s the evidence against me? These pictures
prove nothing.”

His friend’s bloodshot eyes zeroed in on him like laser-guided missiles. “Cyprian
doesn’t care about fingerprints or fibers or blood spatter analysis. Two enforcers
with personal connections to you have been abducted or murdered. The police found
you in a basement with Shannon’s body.”

“No, they didn’t. I found a police officer in the basement with Shannon’s body. Big
difference.”

“You think so? Cyprian doesn’t. He thinks it’s more likely you heard the cop had discovered
your little underground horror chamber, so you went there to kill the cop and make
sure no one discovered your playground. But O’Malley had called for backup already,
so you had to come up with the story that you were trying to help her.”

Devlin laughed without humor. “This is ridiculous. None of the other enforcers are
going to buy into the fantasy that I suddenly turned rogue and started locking women
up and torturing them for kicks.”

Gage leaned toward him, the skin taut across his cheekbones. “You’re right. You’ve
got a rock-solid reputation as
the Enforcer
. No one would believe you’d ever turn bad. They’d deny it to their dying breath.
Except for one thing.” He dug another picture out from the bottom of the stack and
set it on top. “When you strangled Shannon, you used that fancy garrote you designed
yourself—the one with the wooden handles that twist the wire and snap off so the victims
can’t remove the wire no matter how hard they claw at their own flesh.”

Devlin stared down at the gruesome scene, the wire cruelly cutting into the tender
flesh of Shannon’s neck. Beside her lay the pieces of wood that were the genius of
his design. They allowed him to twist in one swift movement, leaving Devlin’s hands
free for other things. But the garrote wasn’t a tool he was fond of using. It caused
a slow, painful death. He used it only as a last resort, when he needed to defend
himself, or to save the life of an innocent.