Die for Me: A Novel of the Valentine Killer (10 page)

“How many damn times does she have to tell you?” Dane snarled as he opened the door and shoved Marcus outside. “Her name is
Katherine.
Learn it, asshole.” Then he slammed the door in the agent’s face.

Katherine exhaled slowly. “Thank you.”

Dane turned to face her. Mac hadn’t moved. Maybe the guy was too shocked to move.

“I’m not real interested in what Agent Wayne has to say about Valentine,” Dane said. “I want to know what
you
think. You’re the one who knows him best.”

If only
. “I’m the one who never really knew him at all.” Her nails—she always kept them short and unpainted—tapped on the tabletop. “But I’ll tell you as much as I can.” And, maybe this time, things would be different. Maybe Dane or Mac would pick up on some detail that she and the other cops had overlooked.

Maybe this time they would actually catch the bastard.

Marcus Wayne entered the small observation room. The police captain turned toward him, a glower on his face. “Smooth, Agent, real freaking smooth.” The captain’s jaw locked. “I want your ass out of my precinct.”

“The purpose of my going in there wasn’t to break Katherine Cole.”
I know you hate being called Kat.
His gaze darted to the two-way mirror looking into the interrogation room.
Sorry about that, Katherine.

“Then what was your purpose? To piss off Ms. Cole?”

“No, it was to bring out more of the detective’s protective instincts.” And those instincts had sure come out. “If Katherine is going to be of any help to us on this case, then she will have to
trust Detective Black. Katherine isn’t a woman who trusts easily.” He was rather surprised that she could trust at all, given what had happened to her.

“Always playing your little mind games.” The mutter came from behind him. The marshal. Marcus knew the guy was far from being a fan.

Marcus glanced over at him. “She’ll talk more freely now. She’ll tell Dane as much as possible because she sees me as the bad guy and him as her white knight.” He didn’t mind playing the bad cop. With his slight build and fresh face, it wasn’t a role he got to play often. Pity.

“Maybe she’ll just talk,” Ross said, voice snapping, “because she wants to catch Valentine. She wants him off the streets just as badly as we do.”

Marcus locked his jaw but didn’t respond. Ross didn’t get it. Katherine Cole was the safest woman in the world. Valentine could have sliced her and killed her a thousand times over. He hadn’t.

She was special to the killer.

The trick—the real trick—was finding out
why
she was special. If she’d just trust the detective enough to let down her guard, then Marcus might finally be able to get inside Katherine’s head and figure out how she’d managed to reach the heart of a sociopathic killer. A man who, for all psychological intents, should have no heart at all.

“I learned a lot about Valentine. After he vanished. I started putting all the puzzle pieces together so I could see the real man he was.”

Dane sat across from Katherine. She was pale and perfect, seemingly an ice princess, but he knew the ice was just on the surface. And the ice was cracking.

He could also see the pain in her eyes. Hear it in her voice. The jerk from the bureau had pushed her too much. Stirred memories that had ripped into her.

I should have ripped into him
.

When women were hurt in any way, his protective instincts became difficult to control.

“I’ve studied serial killers.” Katherine’s confession was hushed.

Dane glanced at Mac and saw that his partner had lifted his brows.

“When you realize you’ve been sleeping with one, you’ll do anything to make sure you never get fooled again.”

He had to unclench his fingers from the edge of the table.
Sleeping with one.
A surge of jealousy caught him by surprise.

“In some ways, I think he was like Bundy,” she said. “So charming on the surface. So smooth. He always seemed to know just what to say or do in order to put people at ease.”

That must have been how he’d lured in his prey. Back in Boston, he’d killed four women in all. Four women they knew about. Three before he met Katelynn Crenshaw, one after.

Her breath whispered out. “He told me once that I was his chance to be better.” She looked down at her hands. “Valentine was a gifted artist. He could paint anything, sculpt anything. He could create so much beauty with his hands, but he seemed to be drawn to death.” Her gaze rose once more. “That’s why the marks with his knife were so precise. Not because he was a surgeon, which is what the cops in Boston first thought when they discovered the bodies, but because he was an artist.”

The dead women might have been his art. His twisted art.

“Valentine was always punctual, never late for a date or a meeting, always well dressed, and he had perfect manners.” Katherine lifted a shoulder in a weak shrug. “Some folks would say he was obsessive-compulsive, but maybe that’s why he did such a good job of cleaning up the crime scenes.”

“Except for the last one.” Mac finally spoke as he stirred from his position near the wall.

“He didn’t have a chance to clean up. I came home early.” Her voice dropped. Dane saw the delicate movement of her throat as she swallowed. “And don’t you know, I’ve asked myself a thousand times, what would have happened if I’d worked later? Would I be married to him?” Her fingers were trembling as she shoved back her hair. “Would he still be killing women who could have been me?”

Yes
.

“Serial killers don’t just stop. I learned that.” She waved toward the interrogation mirror. “Agent Wayne, watching in there, he will tell you that. They can have dormant periods, but they never totally stop. They never stop unless they are
made
to stop.”

Amy Evans was tied to the table. Duct tape covered her mouth. Her eyes were opening.

Her gaze quickly filled with terror. Helplessness. Tears.

The tears fell quickly. Behind the tape, Amy was moaning. Trying to talk. Trying to beg. Trying to plead for mercy.

But there would be no mercy for her.

The tip of the knife slid over her skin. The blade didn’t cut her. Not yet, anyway. There was a pattern to the kills.

A method behind the madness.

The method had to be followed.

Amy had been stripped, and now the knife lifted to the middle of her chest. Carefully, still not breaking the skin, the knife eased over her flesh, creating the sloping pattern of a heart.

Amy thrashed. Struggled to get free. She was fighting more than expected.

“Don’t make me rush.”

The terror deepened in Amy’s eyes.

The tip of the blade moved toward her left arm. Sliced into Amy’s skin. Blood ran down her flesh.

There is a method…

Though not all murders are about madness.

“I know why the killer chose Savannah Slater.”

Dane had left his chair and walked around the table to Katherine’s side. At her quiet words, he tensed, then asked, “Why her?”

Her gaze slanted toward him, then Mac. “I didn’t tell you at first because you both already suspected me.”

Mac’s right eyebrow climbed. Dane knew what the guy was thinking:
I still might.
That move was one of the guy’s tells. After working
together for almost ten years, the two had pretty much worked out the whole silent communication aspect of interrogations.

Katherine rolled her shoulders. “Savannah called me a few weeks ago.”

Sonofabitch.

“She was working on a piece about the Valentine Killer. I don’t know how she found me—I was supposed to be safe with my new identity—but she did. She wanted to interview me. Do some write-up about ‘the other side of the killer.’” Her voice hardened. “I told her I wasn’t interested in talking with her or any reporter. And I said she shouldn’t ever call me again.”

“
Did
she call you again?” Mac asked her.

Katherine gave a slow nod. “Yes.”

Shit. “When?” Dane demanded.

Her gaze held his. “The day before you found her body.”

Again, all he could think was…
sonofabitch.

“I didn’t answer her call. I recognized her number on my caller ID, but I didn’t answer.” Her shoulders straightened. “Do you think he had her then? Was he already killing her? If I’d answered, would I have been able to—”

The peal of a ringing cell phone cut through her words. She jumped. Mac swore.

And Dane got a real damn bad feeling in his gut.

Katherine fumbled and reached into the small purse near her feet. “I don’t recognize the number. Sorry.” She started to shove the phone back into her purse.

Dane took the phone from her and answered it. “This is Detective Dane Black.”

Silence. The bad feeling twisted in his gut.

Then he heard a hiss of breath. A woman’s scream.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Who the hell is this?”

Katherine froze.

“Kat—” A woman screamed. “
Make him stop!
”

Then the line went dead.

Mac hurried to his side. “Dane?”

But Dane was already moving. “We have to trace that call!” He hit the call-back button, but the line just rang, over and over again.

He burst out of the interrogation room. Harley and the FBI agent were rushing toward him.

“Who was on the phone?” the captain demanded.

His fingers were squeezing the phone too tightly. “I think it was Valentine’s latest victim. A woman was screaming.” His jaw locked as he revealed, “She asked Katherine to make him stop.”

Ross followed behind the other men. “Savannah Slater was just found yesterday,” he said. “There’s no way—”

“Valentine waited months between kills,” Wayne cut in. “He wouldn’t attack like this, not so soon…unless something set him off.”

“We’ve got to get a trace,” Dane said. “Get the techs up here, get a track on the other phone’s signal.”
The woman was screaming…that means she’s still alive.

But she wouldn’t be for long, unless they hauled ass much faster than this.

The phone was placed gently on the cement. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? And you did so well.”

Amy wasn’t talking anymore. Tears had dried on her cheeks. Slices lined her arms. Eleven on the left. Ten on the right.