Chapter Twenty-Four
Teagan finished brushing her teeth just as the morning sun began to peek through the windows.
After giving her braid one last adjustment, she left the master bedroom to find Bryson.
Much to her frustration, even though he’d ensconced her in the master suite since she’d come here, he was sleeping in a guest room.
She understood it was because sleeping together was too tempting.
Neither of them would want to sleep. Which would just set his recovery back.
But she was getting so frustrated wanting him to get better, and just plain wanting him.
Everything about him appealed to her. And the more she got to know him, the worse her obsession became.
Whether he was in butt-hugging jeans and a T-shirt or one of those sexy tailored suits that showed off his broad shoulders, she wanted to peel off his clothes and explore every inch.
As if his sexy exterior wasn’t enough of a turn on, Hot Guy was also intelligent, with a kind soul and the heart of a steadfast, loyal, intensely protective warrior.
It was becoming nearly impossible not to weep with longing and desire every time he entered a room.
She could definitely fall in love with him.
She was more than halfway there already.
But she had no clue whether he felt the same.
Oh, he liked her, a lot. And he wanted her.
There was no denying the hungry look in his eyes that he tried so hard to hide.
Clearly he suffered from the same affliction that she did.
If they ever really got together, they’d probably spontaneously combust. But did he care about her?
Really care, as in I could love you forever kind of care? She just didn’t know.
Shaking her head at her fruitless thoughts, she headed to his room just down the hall.
He wasn’t there. The bed didn’t even look as if it had been slept in.
Growing concerned, she checked the main rooms in this part of the house.
She even looked out the back door at the dock, where he could be found most evenings.
But he wasn’t there. She was just passing the little alcove to the left of the TV when she realized it was empty.
Each night he stored his wheelchair there and used the cane the next day until the pain forced him to use the chair once again.
But the wheelchair wasn’t there. Why? Had he suffered a setback to his recovery?
Increasingly anxious, she headed down the back hall and looked in every door that she passed until she reached the end, his office.
Light shining under the door had her letting out a relieved breath.
He must have come here last night for some reason, then ended up sleeping in the attached bedroom rather than head all the way to the front of the house.
She knocked on the door. No answer. She knocked again. When he still didn’t answer, her overactive imagination conjured up all kinds of awful scenarios, like him lying on the floor in a pool of blood, his wounds ripped open. Just the thought of him in pain, needing her, had her opening the door.
He wasn’t on the floor dying.
And he wasn’t sleeping in the guest room.
He was in his wheelchair at the round table, oblivious to her entry as he spoke to someone on his cell phone. All nine of the giant monitors were filled with documents. But that wasn’t what had her gasping in surprise.
It was the pictures.
He glanced over his shoulder, then punched a button on the control panel, clearing the screens.
“Mason, I’ll call you back in a few minutes.
Send me that list of dates as soon as you have it, all right?
Yeah, thanks. Bye.” He set the phone on the table.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize you were there or I wouldn’t have had those pictures up. ”
She fought against the nausea the graphic, violent images had awakened in her as she joined him at the table. So many women. So much...carnage.
“I heard you talking to Mason. Does he have you working on a new case already and you stayed up all night studying crime scene photos?”
He hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with her questions. “I’m not working a new case, not exactly. I’m...reexamining an old one.”
“Why would you do that?”
Again, he paused.
She glanced at the blank screens, her mind’s eye trying to reconstruct what she’d seen seconds earlier. But she’d been too broadsided by the unexpected tableau to recall many details, even with her photographic memory. “How old is this case you’re looking into?”
He looked at his wrist as if to check the time. But he hadn’t replaced the fancy computer watch yet that Larsen had taken from him. “Is it morning already? I can whip us up something to eat.” He backed his chair away from the table. “How about omelets? I can’t remember the last time I—”
She leaned past him and punched the same key that he had earlier. The pictures popped back onto the screens.
He swore and cleared them again, but not before she saw a bloody X carved on one of the women’s bellies.
“The Kentucky Ripper,” she accused. “You’re looking at the Kentucky Ripper cases.
Why? The FBI is covering that angle. You said so at Camelot yesterday.
And don’t try to change the subject by acting like you suddenly love to cook.
We both know better. You forget we played twenty questions times ten in the limo on the way home from the airport.
I know a lot of things about you now that I didn’t before.
Like that you hate to cook. So spill. Why have you been here all night looking at murders that happened years ago instead of celebrating that the man who tried to kill both of us is sitting in a Jacksonville jail cell? ”
He sighed heavily. “I didn’t want to wait for a report from the FBI. I needed some answers now, to quiet some doubts I had, and make sure we’d covered every angle.”
“What doubts? What angles?”
“Little details that don’t add up. With Finney possibly innocent, the FBI is focusing on Larsen as the real Ripper. And it makes sense, given the signature and other details about the crime scenes, plus things we’re starting to learn about Larsen.”
She pulled out the chair beside him and sat down. “If it all makes sense, then what’s bothering you?”
He hesitated.
“I’m not dropping this. You might as well tell me now or we’ll be here all day,” she warned.
He grimaced. “All right. What’s bothering me is the puzzle pieces that don’t fit.
It’s like with the original Ripper investigation.
There are things that never matched Finney.
But there was enough so-called evidence that some other evidence was basically ignored.
And once he was in prison, the murders stopped.
Everyone was content to let it drop, to ignore the inconsistencies. ”
“Not you,” she reminded him. “You kept looking at the case long after it was over. You stored all those copies of the case files. That’s what you were going through just now, isn’t it?
I’m guessing that means you hired that temp you talked about when I first arrived, to key everything into the system. ”
“I had Brielle work with someone while I was in the hospital,” he admitted.
“I’d always wanted everything digitized to make examination of the evidence easier.
With you having been abducted again, I wanted to have the previous case information handy when I got a chance to review it.
The obvious conclusion at the time was that Larsen was likely the Ripper, even before Bishop spoke to Finney.
I expected when I eventually got home and went through this stuff, that conclusion would be cemented in my mind. ”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No. Far from it.”
She shivered and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “The man who attacked me, who attacked us, is behind bars. It shouldn’t matter whether he’s the Ripper or not. So why do you look so serious? And why am I starting to feel concerned?”
He took her hands in his. “Whatever I’ve found, or think I’ve found, there’s no reason for you to worry. You’re safe here, with me. There are four fellow Seekers twenty minutes away if we need them, which we don’t. And I’ve got a pistol in the nightstand in my bedroom.”
“Then why have you been up all night looking at the case file?”
A flicker of unease crossed his face before his expression cleared. “I like being thorough. And, as I said, I don’t like puzzle pieces that don’t fit.”
“Show me those pieces.”
“Teagan—”
“We’re in this together. And we’ll still be in this together when Larsen is brought to trial and we’re both called to testify. Don’t shut me out now. Show me.”
His reluctance was obvious, but he wheeled back in front of the computer tablet.
“I can clear the pictures. There’s no reason for you to look at those.
I was using them to double-check details in reports.
” His fingers flew across the keyboard as he closed files and moved things around on the tablet in front of him without sharing them to the big screens.
Then he punched one of the keys, and the various Ripper case files appeared on the large monitors.
True to his word, there weren’t any pictures.
He continued to move things around, mostly closing out various documents until he was left with only one screen of data. It was essentially a huge list with different headings with bullets of information beneath each one.
She read some of the headings out loud. “Race, sex, age, marital status, victimology, criminal psychopathy, location, signature...” She shot him a look of surprise. “A profile. You’re working up a profile.”