Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
For some reason, she didn’t expect all the computers. Or rather, she didn’t expect quite so many of them. Five screens. Hard drive boxes blinked near them.
A massive, black desk waited in the middle of the room. There were maps on the left wall. One with a red circle in the middle, and when she leaned in closer to get a better look at that circle…
“The winery,” Royal told her. “After narrowing down locations, it seemed like a prime spot for the killer to use. Based on his other kills, I knew that he liked isolated spots. He preferred areas that weren’t currently inhabited. Not like he wanted his work interrupted.”
His work. She flinched.
“After Fiona Law’s body was discovered on the outskirts of Savannah, I knew he was hunting here. He’d been in Atlanta before that. I’ve linked two victims who were found there to him. Though, you already saw them, didn’t you? In the files at Punishment.”
She spun away from the map. Her gaze fell on the desk. Familiar files were perched on top of the gleaming, black surface.
The wine she’d gulped had her feeling a little dizzy. Or maybe that was just the memory of those bloody pictures. “How did you know…” Her voice was low, so she cleared her throat and tried again, “How did you know a serial killer was hunting?”
“At first, I didn’t. Just thought some sick bastard who got off on hurting women had left a body in an old botanical garden on the outskirts of Atlanta. The garden—hell, once upon a time, it was something to see. But the owner died, the place withered, and everyone seemed to forget about it.”
Everyone but the killer.
“An…acquaintance of mine knew the woman who was found there. Marcella White. He wasn’t exactly thrilled that she’d been tossed away like garbage. He thought Marcella deserved a hell of a lot better.”
Her gaze lifted to collide with his when she heard the rage in his voice.
“So he reached out to me. He didn’t have a lot of cash. He couldn’t hire a PI to help him, and the cops seemed to have hit a dead end on the investigation.”
“Did this friend know about your, ah, hobby?” And how in the world had Royal ever started this hobby? How—and when? How long had he been hunting the predators who hid in the night?
“No, he didn’t know about my hobby. He just knew that I was a dangerous sonofabitch who’d never liked it when someone hurt a lady.” His lips twisted. “Tyrone—Ty—and I knew each other from back in the day. Hadn’t seen him since we’d left New Orleans, so for him to reach out to me, I knew it was important to him.” He opened one of the files. Rifled through the photos. “He loved her, and it gutted him that some bastard took her away. Ty was always good to me, so I told him that I’d make sure the SOB got what he deserved.”
Punishment.
“Another woman from Atlanta turned up dead four months later. Like Marcella, she was living in Atlanta, but the authorities didn’t connect the cases right away because this victim…” He pulled out a photo. Turned it toward Violet. “Bailey Brown. She was found in an orchard about forty-five minutes from Atlanta.”
Violet forced herself to look at the photo.
“Then he came here. I was hunting him, and the bastard just came straight to my town. What are the odds of that?”
She had no idea.
“He took Fiona Law.” Another horrifying photo was slid toward her. “He took her approximately four months after Bailey was discovered dead. Fiona was later found in an abandoned corn field.”
Her gaze had locked on the photo. All the women… so much like me.
“He’d been waiting four months between victims. I thought there was time. But he took you sooner than the four-month period he usually followed.” He grabbed the photos and shoved them back into the file. He moved from behind the desk and toward the maps. “I plotted out places where I thought he would go. Abandoned sites that might work. Like I said before, he liked isolated spots. Abandoned property or property that had been for sale so long it might as well be abandoned. I figured out a couple of possible locations, and I set up cameras so I’d be alerted to movement out there.”
She backed up a step in surprise. “You had cameras at the winery?” She didn’t remember seeing cameras, but so much of that terrible night was a blur.
He turned toward her. “The feed went to my phone. I saw the sedan pull up. That boring as hell, unobtrusive sedan—at night, in a dead winery. I knew it had to be him. Who the hell else would it be—at that time, at that place?”
Damn. “You’re really quite good at hunting, aren’t you?”
A dangerous smile curved his lips. The smile a tiger probably sent his prey right before those teeth ripped into the prey’s neck. “Not my first ballgame, sweetheart.”
No, she supposed it wasn’t. Violet swallowed.
“I hauled ass out there as fast as I could. I wanted to catch him, but instead, I found you.”
And the killer had gotten away. But I got to keep living. Because of Royal.
“This is the part where you can walk away.” His smile had vanished. “You can turn around. You can realize that you don’t want to really be tracking down a killer with me. That it’s more than you anticipated.”
The drumming of her heartbeat filled Violet’s ears. It was more than she’d anticipated. No doubt about it.
“You can be assured that I will protect you.” His head inclined toward her. “I will make sure that you have guards. You need those guards, Violet. You see, I happen to believe that he stalked you before he took you.”
Goose bumps rose onto her arms. “Why do you believe that?” Please do share with the class.
“Because that’s what he did with the other victims. You can’t just snatch someone without watching the person first. Ty picked Marcella up from work every single night…except on Tuesdays. Because on Tuesdays, Ty worked as a volunteer at the local fire station. Guess which night Marcella was taken?”
“Tuesday.” Not a guess.
Royal nodded. “He knew her routine. He knew when to take her. Knew when she’d be vulnerable. Same thing with Bailey. He took her when her roommate went out of town on a cruise with her fiancé. When Bailey was alone for five days.”
Violet wet her lips. “What about Fiona?”
“Got her in the morning when she was doing her daily jog. There was one stretch where she cut through a park. She went in the park—a street sweeper saw her. But she never came out. He knew exactly when to take her.”
Her goose bumps got worse. “And you think he knew exactly when to take me.”
“As you got closer and closer to the show date, your rehearsals got longer, didn’t they?”
A nod.
“On the night of your abduction, you were the last to leave the theater.”
“I-I needed to be perfect.” Micah had been particularly vicious that day. So she’d stayed, and she’d worked until her body had been near collapse. Is that why I couldn’t run from him fast enough? Why I couldn’t fight harder? Because I was already so weak? She could remember her knees trembling…
“You are fucking perfect.” A snarl.
She jerked.
He rolled back his shoulders. “Sorry.”
“Royal?”
He cleared his throat. Sawed a hand over the carefully trimmed beard on his jaw. “As I was saying, this is the part where you can change your mind. Where you don’t actually have to go into the night and hunt with me as I stop a sadistic killer. No need for you to get your hands all bloody. I can do the dirty work for you.”
Her chin notched up. “You think I’ll be too scared, don’t you?”
“Are you scared?”
“Yes.”
He waited.
“But I want to do this.” More than that, she needed to do it.
“He’s still watching you. You get that, don’t you? The first night you left your brother’s house, the first night he thought you were unprotected, he followed you home. He threw the big landscape rock through your window because he was pissed as hell. He thought you’d be alone. Only I was in his way.” He advanced toward her. “FYI, I intend to keep being in the bastard’s way.”
She bumped into the desk.
His hands reached out and curled around the desk behind her. “I’ll need you to be bait, Violet. You really going to be okay with that? With me dangling you in front of him like some sweet treat that he can’t resist?”
Her chest ached, but she said, “If it stops him, if we stop him, I can be okay with just about anything.” What she couldn’t be okay with? The monster just remaining free. With living the rest of her life in fear because she was afraid he’d come for her again.
Royal’s gaze searched hers. What did he see when he looked into her eyes? Fear? Probably. When she looked into his eyes, she saw…
Darkness. Strength. Desire.
The hazel swirled. Brown. Gold. Green.
His right hand rose and curled under her chin. “I bet you’ve never hurt anyone in your whole freaking life, have you, Violet?”
“I’ve tried not to.”
“If it came down to a choice—your life or the prick who took you, what would you do?”
She didn’t look away from his eyes. “I’d hurt him.”
One eyebrow arched.
“I would kill him if it meant I escaped and he didn’t,” she whispered.
“Such bloodthirsty words,” he murmured. “Careful, Violet, or I will think?—”
“And if he turned on you…if something happened and you stopped being the hunter and became the prey, I would hurt him before I ever let him do anything to you.”
His eyelids flickered. Then he let go of her chin and reached for her hand. His head tilted as he looked down at her hand. Automatically, she glanced down, too. His hand was so much bigger than her own. Stronger. Rougher.
“You’re so fragile. Far too breakable.”
“I am stronger than I look.” She was. She trained for at least eight hours most days. Sure, she wasn’t exactly the weight-lifting champion of the world. A dancer’s strength was different. But different held its own power. “I’m not going to break.”
“It would be a shame if you did.” His fingers stroked along the inside of her palm. “I would be quite angry if something or someone caused you to break.”
A shiver darted over her.
“Because I’ve discovered that I quite like you.” He let her go. Retreated behind the desk.
She exhaled on the breath that she’d been holding. I quite like you. She didn’t confess that she quite liked him, too. Liked. Ha. What a lie. Her feelings were far more twisted and complex than a mere like. Her hand—the hand that could still feel his touch—gestured vaguely. “Wh-what’s the deal with all the computers? Is this the part where you tell me that you’re a closet hacker?”
“Yes.” No humor. Just a statement.
Violet blinked.
His mouth quirked into a half-smile. For a moment, real amusement seemed to dance in his eyes. “What? Didn’t think some seedy club owner could know tech?”
“You’re not seedy.” She crept toward the desk.
“Sure, I am. Seedy. Dangerous. Manipulative. So many interesting adjectives apply to me.” A roll of his shoulders. “I told you before that, in a different life, I ran with a gang in New Orleans.”
Violet nodded.
“It was with them that I first realized I had a talent with tech. Don’t get me wrong, I was always an asshole gamer.” That mocking half-smile lingered on his lips. “But I went to a whole other level when I got access to equipment I needed.” Slowly, the smile faded. “Teachers used to tell me I had so much potential. They wanted me to enter competitions, they put me in all the AP classes. But they didn’t know what life was like when I left their school. They didn’t get that a different life controlled me. Beau—hell, he wanted me to cut out, too. He wanted me to go to college. He fought like hell for our freedom. He’d bought into the stories the teachers told. I remember that when I turned eighteen, he did this bullshit talk with me about how I was special. That I could do different things.” His gaze darted to the monitors. “I don’t think this is what he—or all those teachers—meant when they talked about me living up to my potential.”
Violet found herself taking another creeping step toward him. “Did you go to college?”
“For a while. I didn’t fit in there. Didn’t care about the football games and the frat parties. And I could already do one hell of a lot more with a computer than the professors could teach me.” A shrug. “So I went back to living life my way.”
Her gaze darted around the room. “Based on the house and the club and the expensive cars you seem to favor, living life your way has worked out for you.” Her stare returned to him. “How do you use the computers to help you hunt?”
“I tear into the lives of anyone I suspect when I’m looking for my prey.” A roll of one shoulder. “Because I’m an asshole, I routinely tear into the lives of the people who enter my world.” His gaze had come to lock on her. “Take you, for instance, Violet Murphy. I know everything about you now.”
She laughed.
He didn’t. But he did begin checking off items, as if going through a mental list. “Bra size. Shoe size. Bank account. Credit history. I know when you went on your last date. I know your favorite food.”
“That’s…” Violet stopped.
“Scary?”
“Well, yes, it is,” she admitted honestly. “You could have just asked me those things. I mean, ah, not my bra size. But…” She trailed away. “Why would you want to know all of that?”
“Because I’m trying to figure out why he took you. You look like his prey, yes, but I think there is more to it than just a surface attraction. I was trying to figure out that more.”
By learning everything about me. She swallowed. “There is nothing special about me.”
“Oh, I think there is. It’s not every woman who decides she wants to hunt killers. Most victims of crimes let the police do that job. They don’t want to get their hands dirty.” He opened the top desk drawer. Pulled something out. Curled his hand around it and skirted around the desk as he walked back toward her.
She didn’t retreat. She’d been heading toward him. Why retreat now?
“I keep expecting you to run.” A little furrow appeared between his brows, as if he couldn’t quite understand her. “I tell you my secrets. I scare you. But you still stay.”
Yes, she did. “I’m not going anywhere.” Her head tilted back so she could stare up at him.
“You should be pissed at me for tearing into your life.”
Maybe. “I would have freely told you anything you wanted to know. No tearing necessary.”
His jaw hardened. Then his hand lifted. There was a faint snick. And she realized the item he’d taken from the desk drawer had been a knife.
The blade had slid out. Gleaming. Sharp. Deadly.
And he was pointing the knife right at her.
“Scared?” A rasp.
“You aren’t going to hurt me.”
“I hurt a lot of people.” Grim. “But, no, never you. I’d cut off my own fucking hand first.” Then he reached for her hand. Royal curled her fingers around the knife’s handle. “I saw the mace and the taser in your bag. But I want you keeping this on you at all times.”
She started to nod.
“No, sweetheart, I mean it. All times. It’s small enough that you can even have it on you when you’re on the stage. I need to know that you have a weapon with you at every moment.”
The weight of the knife was light in her grip. She hit the small button on the side, and the blade vanished. He was right. The weapon was small enough that she could keep it with her. It would be easy enough to hide.
She pushed the button again. The blade sprang out.
“You’ve never used a knife on anyone, have you?” he asked.
Definitely not. But something about his voice…She peered up at him. “You have.”
Royal shrugged.
He has. Violet pulled in a deep breath. “I’ll willingly tell you every secret that I have. In return, I want to hear yours.” Not like she could hack her way into his life. Not exactly her skill set.
“No, you don’t want to hear them.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “You must be tired. Adrenaline crash will hit soon. You can take your pick of the two guest rooms. My bedroom is the first room when you get off the stairs. I’ll?—”
“Have you ever killed someone, Royal?”
His hand froze. His eyes glittered.
And she took that as a yes. Her hold tightened on the knife.
“You don’t want to play this game with me,” he growled.
“I wasn’t playing a game.”
“Twenty questions.”
No, she hadn’t been?—
“You’ll find out things you don’t like. Wouldn’t it be better for you to just go on thinking I’m the guy who saved you? I like it when you think of me that way. Better for you not to see all my dark places.”
The weapon felt cool in her grip. “We all have dark places inside ourselves. Some of us just do a better job of hiding them than others.” But maybe there had been enough secrets revealed for one day. And maybe it was the wine she’d greedily gulped or the whole near-death experience, but her knees didn’t seem quite steady. Her body kept wanting to tremble, and perhaps she should walk away.
While she could.
Besides, it wasn’t like he was desperately grabbing for her and saying that he just couldn’t live without her for another moment.
Are we going to talk about what happened in the dressing room? She still couldn’t quite believe she’d done that. With him. But need had pierced through her. Her emotions and longings had raged out of control. And…
And we didn’t finish what we started.
But he was making no move to turn things physical. So she walked away. Her steps were silent as she headed for the door.
“I’m not going to be able to let go.”
So low and rumbling that she almost didn’t understand his words.
“I’m trying to stay away. Trying to warn you that I am not what you need.”
Oh, was that what he was doing? What a waste of energy. “I can be the judge of what I need.” She threw a glance over her shoulder. “And of what I want.”
His lips parted.
“You don’t have to protect me from myself,” she added.
“I’m not. I’m just trying to protect you from me.” Stark. “Until you, I never would have said I was possessive. Not fucking territorial in the least. But when I look at you, I want to own you, Violet. The fact that you haven’t been with another man makes me feel damn near savage. I want to take you and claim you and never, ever let go.” An inhale. “I did the right thing when we first met. You thought I was a hero.”
“Uh, you were.” Just as he’d been her hero on the stage.
“Heroes don’t want to do the things I want to do with you.”
All of the moisture dried from her mouth. “What do you want to do?” A husky question.
He took a step toward her. Seemed to catch himself. Royal’s powerful hands fisted at his sides. “Run while you can, sweetheart.”
But what if I don’t want to run? “If I run, will you chase me?”
The gold took over his eyes. Burned. “I’m not someone you play with, Violet. I’ve warned you about that.”
“Does it look like I’m playing?” She sucked in a breath. Slowly let it out. “Did it look like I was playing when I was on my knees in front of you when we were in my dressing room?”
He bounded forward. Lunged . Royal reached out for her, only to fist his hands once more right before he could touch her. Then his fisted hands shoved back down to his sides. “You’re scared, and you want me because you think I’m the thing that saved you from the dark. Sweetheart, I am the dark.”
Her heart slammed into her chest.
“Get upstairs. Go to the guest room. Put space between us,” he ordered starkly. “Or I will fuck you so completely that you will never be free of me.”
She felt the pain first. Simone’s head throbbed in a heaving, stomach-churning rhythm, and her eyes cracked open. But she could only see darkness.
Something wet slid down her cheek, and she raised her hands to wipe it away, only to realize that her hands were bound together—locked at the wrists.
And her feet were bound.
A grinding filled her ears, and she… rolled a bit. Understanding and horror flooded through her when her bound hands slammed into something hard and metal above her. Grinding… like tires rolling on a rough road.
Darkness.
Trapped.
Oh, God.
She was in a trunk. In the trunk of a car, just like Violet had been. Her hands flew up, and she touched her mouth—no, the tape over her lips. Her bound hands caught a loose edge of the tape that covered her mouth, and she ripped it away. Simone screamed at the pain because it felt like her skin and part of her upper lip ripped away, too.
Muffled sobs broke from her.
I saw Violet get tossed into the trunk of that sedan. I didn’t try to stop him. I was scared. Terrified, at first. Stunned into immobility. But then…
Then he’d driven away.
I grabbed my phone. I intended to call the cops. Even thought about following the sedan.
But she hadn’t.
Because…
I also thought about what would happen if that sedan kept going and Violet never came back.
And now…
Now her bound hands slammed upward and into the metal edge of the trunk. Now she was the one trapped. And she was the one begging, “ Help me! Somebody, please, help me!”