BITCH (A Romantic Suspense Novel) (13 page)

Twenty-Six

If there was ever any reason to believe that they might have stopped once she was dead, Erin was losing her faith in it now. She sucked in a deep breath and forced herself to straighten up. It wasn't time for her to panic, not after everything. There was no time for panicking now.

She could still feel the sting in her face from where Roy had slapped her when they got into his car and started driving to the scene. She focused on that pain. It would lead her back into the real world, to the world where she was supposed to have something going for her.

By the time they got there, she'd figured out what was supposed to come next. It was all there in front of her. Easy. She would manage, no problem. She took a deep breath and let it out slow and easy. She was steady now. Clear and easy.

She forced herself to look forward as they pulled up into the tangle that had already formed of local uniforms, medical personnel, and F.B.I. suits. She stepped out of the car and met Roy by the hood.

"You okay? You don't have to do this if you don't want to."

"You can't keep me away forever."

"That's what I like to hear. Come on."

She followed him past a uniform, past a suit who gave her a weird look. She ignored it.

Erin had thought, in spite of herself, that she had something to do with the murders. That her sister hadn't been an accident, hadn't just been a random body in a pile of bodies. That she had snagged Craig so easily had sold her on the idea that there was something specific to the profile.

Instead, the woman on the ground couldn't look less like her and Becca. Large breasts, red hair, her face stuck twisted in pained anguish. She'd look like that forever, now. Nothing to be done about it but to stop the guy from leaving another woman looking like this.

Still, she was wearing nice clothing. The sort of clothes someone might wear on a date. Nothing like the club clothes that women wore to go pick up a guy, she looked like she was on a date. It fit the guesses they'd been making.

Craig had time to do it, and she wouldn't have known if there was someone else on the dating sites. A feeling in her gut told her that he hadn't done this. The more time that passed, the less that any of it felt like him. Seven stab wounds, each one delivered with enough force to bruise in the final moments of the woman's life.

He was capable of violence, but she wondered if he would muster up that kind of anger for anything. Especially for a woman. Every impression she had gotten of him had been that he never lost his cool.

A voice called out. "We got a witness over here."

Roy and Erin looked up at the same instant. She followed him to the edge of the ring, where a young Hispanic woman was standing, eyes wide. She was fidgeting with her fingers, twisting where a ring should have been but wasn't.

"Schafer, this is Juanita Alvares, she says she lives across the street. Says she saw something."

"Thanks, Jackson. I'll take it from here."

Erin watched and listened, not ready to try to see how far she could push her authority just yet.

"I'm Special Agent Roy Schafer, this is my partner, Detective Erin Russo. What did you see, miss?"

The woman looked spooked from the suggestion of a body under the cover, but couldn't tear her eyes away from it.

"I live across the street, and—is that a body?"

"What did you see?"

"Well, I hear someone driving by. Real slow. I look outside. People come by, you need to look. Make sure they're not trying to rob you, right?"

"And you saw… what?"

"The woman, she was there. Waiting. Very pretty."

"Have you seen her before?"

"Before? No. Not before."

"What else?"

"A truck. Blue and white. Drives up, and he talks to the woman, and then she gets in."

"Is that all?"

"They turn into the alley, and I stop watching. I'm not interested in—that kind of thing."

"No, I wouldn't imagine that you are. Is that all?"

"Yes, that's all."

"Thank you very much," Roy said, writing for another moment in his notebook. "Is there some way we can reach you if we have any more questions?"

"I already told you everything, though."

"Just in case, miss, if we have any questions. It can be good to be able to get in touch with witnesses."

"I don't have a phone."

"But you live right there?"

"Yes."

"Can you give me the address?"

The woman's face twisted up. "Uhhh… what street is this?"

Roy gave her a tired look. The idea occurred to Erin a moment before he asked her what was going on here. She might have told the story accurate or not, but she sure enough didn't live in that house. Might not live anywhere near here.

Juanita had seen him come by, and she'd seen him turn in, because it was the most normal thing in the world for her. Erin took a breath and tried to steady herself. She wasn't here to bust a woman for working, crime or not. She was here to catch a killer.

"What were you really doing, Miss Rodrigues?"

Erin put a hand on Roy's arm, reached up to whisper. "She was working, Roy, don't push it."

The woman squirmed a minute. Roy frowned, then folded up the notebook and slipped it back into his pocket. "Thank you for your time, Miss Rodrigues. We'll be in touch."

She kept staring at the body, though she couldn't see a whole lot of anything. Erin felt weird about her. As if the young street-walker represented something that Erin didn't want to think about.

They turned back. A truck, huh? She hadn't seen Craig driving one, but that didn't mean he didn't have one. She hadn't seen a truck like that before, frankly. She was aware that they existed, no problem.

But whether she had the whole story or not, she knew she'd met at least some of the killers. Why she'd never seen that truck, in spite of knowing their spots—she must not have known them. The answer was unavoidable.

Craig was planning on getting her in with all of them. Getting her interested enough to press them, and then their stories would all collapse around them. She'd be able to bring the boys in, and she'd be a big damn hero.

That was his plan. She would come out smelling like roses, no matter how she came into the information, and he would be able to get back to… whatever they did.

She didn't know what Craig was involved in that he thought it was worth handing her a bunch of killers. Worth handing her his brothers. But she knew the sort of things that motorcycle gangs got themselves up to.

Erin took a breath and tried to still her thoughts. She had to force herself to calm down and think rationally. The next step. She had to find whoever was doing this. There was more than one, she knew that. But if she could just stop the guy doing it this once—would that be who killed her sister?

What did it mean?

She looked down at her hands.

Nothing to think about now. Nothing to worry about. She had to work, and that didn't mean imagining scenarios that might come in the future. This was police work, and that meant looking at the evidence. She followed Roy back over to the body.

Like the others, she still had everything. Purse still had a wallet inside, still full of money. She had near fifty dollars in bills, and two credit cards. A nice bracelet that might have cost her four hundred dollars and might have pawned for a hundred if the guy selling it was persuasive.

Two questions bubbled to the surface.

First, why was this woman here before the guy who killed her? And second, was that how they'd done it with Becca? If it was—how?

Twenty-Seven

Erin woke to her phone buzzing. She turned over from the warmth of being beside Roy and grabbed it. She didn't recognize the number yet. Hadn't put it into her contacts. But she knew it was Craig, instinctively, and when she opened the message he had sent she knew that she was right.

Where you at? You're not at the apartment.

She debated how much of a lie she should be telling. It all depended, after all, on what he already knew and what she could get away with. If she could get away with saying that she was out of town at her mother's, that would be great, but that wasn't going to happen. After all, her mother was dead.

On the other hand, the more that she bit off more than she could chew, the more he'd be on to her. If she was hiding one thing, what else was she hiding? She took a plunge and went with a half-truth.

Someone broke into my apartment while I was sleeping. Freaked me out. I'm staying at a hotel until I can get a locksmith to get in there and make sure that it's all rock-solid.

The response came seconds later.

That's a damn shame. You want to catch something to eat?

Roy had woken beside her with all the shifting around she was doing, and had promptly looked at the clock and slid out of bed and started to pull on the clothes he'd worn there.

"You have time to get back to your room and change clothes?"

"I have plenty of time, sure."

"Good. I would hate to think you'd be uncomfortable on my account."

"No trouble. Who's that?"

"It's him."

"What's he saying?"

She typed in a response as she spoke. "Wants to meet."

Sure, but I need to catch a shower first.

"And you?"

"Of course I'm going, Roy. It's a risk, sure, but that doesn't mean I can afford to stop doing any of this. At least now I know that he's playing me. I can start to think about what I'm doing strategically, too. I can start to figure out what the right decisions are, not based on assuming that he's your run-of-the-mill scumbag, but assuming that he's making moves. Smart ones, at that."

"Well, he's at least not making dumb calls, that's to be sure."

"Compared to little old me?"

"Compared to you, he's a genius." Roy gave her an expression of sarcastic disgust. Erin responded with mock hurt. "You're doing fine. Keep in touch, okay? I don't want you to get hurt out there, but I'm not going to stop you. Just make sure that you don't do anything drastic. We can't protect you if you go John McClane on the guy."

Her phone buzzed. "Of course. I'm not an idiot, you know."

"I know. But it bears repeating either way. Just don't get hurt, and don't go too far. That's all I'm asking from you."

He gave her an address.
I'll be there in 30 minutes. See you.

She texted back her agreement.

"I'll do my best."

"That's all anyone can ask."

Roy opened the door and blew a kiss back at her. She felt the weight of the words neither of them had said. She had to shower and get dressed, now, or she was going to end up going to breakfast smelling like sex.

She stepped under the water and let the water run off her back. She enjoyed the heat, but she hadn't taken long, luxurious showers since she was a girl. The capacity had been bred out of her by a life of taking quick showers. She let herself enjoy the heat by giving herself six minutes instead of four. She stepped out after five.

She was past the seduction with Craig. Three times in four days would have been a good effort for anyone. But more than that, she didn't have to worry about him dropping her like a hot potato. As far as he was concerned, she was on the hook. She was the prey, and he the hunter. He'd be as surprised as anyone when things turned out not to be that way.

She decided on a sweater and jeans. She remembered dimly that these clothes, specifically, were actually the first normal thing that Roy had seen her in. The thought made her smile. What a strange pattern she was working with.

One of the men making a mess of her emotions had seen her at her worst and decided, it seemed, that she was worth spending a little time with. The other, she'd forced herself on, only to discover that he was looking for her the whole time. She was being played by him, instead, or so he would have his fellow gang members believe.

Where one had only seen her blossom when she got back home, the other would be seeing her shrivel just a bit. What sort of effect would that have? She was interested in finding out, even if she wasn't remotely sure yet.

She was out the door fifteen minutes after Craig's last text and at the address with three minutes to spare. It wasn't a restaurant, which was surprising. It was a laundromat. There was a Mexican place across the street, though, that she'd driven past a few times. Would they even be open this early in the morning? Or was this part of the play?

She waited a while to find out. Five minutes passed with nothing to discuss. A few people went in, but nothing that stuck out.

Almost half an hour to the minute after he sent the text, a truck pulled up. The guy in the front seat had a Twins cap pulled low on his face. She could see that he had sharp features and a long nose, but not much beyond that with the tint in the windows.

It was a Chevy, light blue with a white stripe all around the sides. Could have been any car, for certain. But the guy got out, and she got a better look at him, right in time for her phone to buzz.

I gave you the wrong address, my bad.

She knew that wasn't the case. She'd been put there to see what she'd just seen. She wasn't going to take the bait, not completely. But she took a slow pass behind the back of the truck, long enough to write down the license plate.

So where am I supposed to go?

He sent another address, a few miles away. She pulled out into the street and started going. She had a text off to Roy with the license plate number before she arrived. She wasn't going to pursue it, but that didn't mean that nobody was going to.

He was certainly the guy that they'd heard described in the killing, and that meant he had to come in. If Craig had his way, no doubt the guy would be dead by morning. The fact that he could call the man's location thirty minutes out meant that he knew something that they didn't. Possibly even that the man, now in the laundromat., didn't know.

Someone was pulling his strings, telling him where to be and when, and that meant that though it had certainly been his hand on the knife, someone else was responsible for the murders of those girls. All those women and, though it was embarrassing to admit—she should have been objective, cared about all of them equally—most important of all, her sister.