Evidence of Marriage (13 page)

Her stomach dropped to her toes. “Did you find Louis?”

“Yes.”

“Let me talk to him. He'll tell me where she is.” She walked to the door, expecting Reed to lead her to the jail or interrogation room or wherever they had Louis.

Reed didn't move. “I can't do that.”

She'd forgotten. He wasn't on the case anymore. A pang registered in her chest. All his work had finally paid off, and he had no say about how
things went down. “Who can authorize me to talk to him? The lieutenant?”

“Diana.”

Why didn't he move? Why wasn't he as urgent about this as she was?

“He's dead.”

“Dead?” The word lodged in her throat. So bleak. So final.

“Louis Ingersoll is dead. I shot him.”

“Dead.” She'd cared about Louis once. He'd been her friend, or at least she'd thought so. But she didn't feel a thing for him now. “Did you find the baby's mother?”

He shook his head.

The obstruction in her throat expanded, making it hard to breathe. She could see the poor woman in her mind's eye. Tied in an isolated place. Alone. Probably in pain. And desperately wondering if she would ever see her baby again.

She knew what she had to do. “I need to see Kane. It's time I get down on my knees.”

Reed remained rooted to his spot. He shook his head. “I called the prison. He refuses to talk if police are monitoring.”

“He'll talk to me.”

“Diana, did you hear what I said? He won't allow us to monitor. If you walk into that interview room, you'll have to go in totally alone.”

The muscles of her inner thighs dissolved, melting like butter. She willed her knees to hold her upright. “Then that's what I'll do.”

“No, you won't.”

She shook her head. She didn't hear him right. She couldn't have.

“Kane isn't going to tell you where that woman is, and you know it.”

He was probably right. She didn't have to try very hard to remember the amusement on Kane's face when she'd nearly begged him to tell her Nadine's location. She doubted a baby would make any difference. Not to a man incapable of sympathy. Not to Dryden Kane. “It doesn't matter. I can't not try.”

He blew a breath through tight lips. “I'm not going to let you go in there alone. Not after what I saw.”

“What you saw?”

The planes of his face hardened. He turned away. The muscles in his back tensed, rigid under his suit coat.

“Reed, tell me.” She gripped the edge of the desk, her body shaking so hard she didn't know if she was going to be sick or fall down. “It's about me, isn't it? Something Louis planned to do to me?”

She couldn't suppress the shudder that seized her. Had Louis planned to do to her what he'd done to those other women? What Professor
Bertram had tried to do to her? Or was it something else? Something she couldn't even imagine?

Something she didn't want to.

She forced herself to breathe, to think. The important thing was finding the woman Louis had kidnapped. They had no way of knowing if she was still alive. But if they didn't find her, they could be sure she wouldn't be alive for long. “It doesn't matter what you saw. Louis is dead. He can't hurt me now.”

“Kane can.”

She tried to swallow. Her mouth tasted like sand. “I'm willing to take the risk.”

Reed's dark gaze drilled into her. “I'm not.”

She stepped around the edge of the desk, close enough to touch Reed. But though every cell in her body screamed for her to reach out for him, to get lost in his arms, to let his warmth and kisses and love take all of this away, she couldn't do it.

“Let us handle this, Diana. All the agencies are working on this. We'll find her.”

A pit opened up in Diana's stomach, dark and empty and aching. Nothing had changed. Reed was still taking care of her. Still sheltering her. Still trying to fix her life.

And worst of all, deep down, she wanted to let him.

She thought back to last night, to how close she
felt to Reed after he confessed to needing her, how powerful she felt when they were making love. She longed to crawl into those memories, to feel those things again, to live them.

If only they were real.

She stepped past Reed and paused in front of the door. There was only one reality now. For that poor mother. For her baby. And only Diana could do anything to change it.

Reed stepped between her and the door. Reaching out a hand, he ran his fingers up and down her arm, as if trying to warm her. “Stay in here. I'll make this as short as I can, and then we can talk. I'll let you know everything I find out. All right?”

Heat fanned over her skin, followed by cold. She drew herself up. He had to go. He had to do his job. The job he was born to do.

And she had something to do also. She just prayed she had the courage to see it through. “Go ahead.”

“And you'll be here when I'm done?”

She hated lying to him. Hated the old feelings yawning inside. Hated the despair carving out her hopes and dreams and leaving nothing but an empty carcass. She drew in a deep breath and pushed the words through her lips. “Yes. I'll be here.”

Diana stood just inside the security screening area of the prison and checked her watch for what had to be the fiftieth time. It was late, long past visitation hours. At this time, there was probably only a skeleton staff. Still, she'd never had to wait this long to get in to see Kane. But then this time she hadn't had the police or the university paving the way.

This time she was on her own.

She glanced through the metal detector and toward the door. She half expected Reed to burst through at any moment, hell-bent on saving her. But he didn't come. The mess surrounding Louis's death and the scramble to find the governor's daughter-in-law must be keeping him busy. Too busy to notice yet that she was gone.

Her throat ached. But she couldn't go back. Being with Reed undermined everything she was trying to make of herself, everything she strived to
be. She couldn't fool herself into believing things would ever be different between them. As long as Reed was around, she would need him. She would fall right back into depending on him to shelter her from the world. And never again could she afford to be that weak.

A clang reached her from down the hall, a sally port sliding closed.

She blocked all nerves, all doubt from her mind. Standing straight, she pushed her heels together and faced the door that led into the prison.

The door buzzed and swung open. Corrections Officer Seides's broad shoulders filled the doorway. “Ms. Gale? Sorry it took me so long. We had a few problems tonight.”

“Problems?” She braced herself, waiting for him to say that Reed had called, that he'd told them she wasn't allowed inside.

He waved a beefy hand. “Nothing big. A few inmates feeling their oats is all.”

She let out a breath, trying not to show her relief. “As long as everything turned out okay.”

“Yeah, we got 'em secured. You said this was urgent?”

She nodded. She'd called on the drive to the prison to try to get emergency clearance for her visit. Usually her visits had to be set up well in advance, but she hoped prison officials would let
her go through based on her previous involvement with the police investigation.

And she hoped they wouldn't have to clear it with Reed. “It's very urgent. I explained the situation when I called.”

“Well, let's get you back there.” He held the door open and ushered her inside with a wave of a beefy arm.

They marched down the halls and negotiated the sally ports until they reached the tiny room just outside the interview room. Officer Seides switched on the camera and left to fetch Kane.

Diana stared at the screen showing the empty chairs and small table where she would once again face Dryden Kane.

Her father.

She had to stand up to him this time, had to convince him to tell her where Louis had taken his victims. But for the life of her, she had no idea how she would do it.

Time ticked by. Twice as long as before. Finally the door from the cell blocks into the interview room opened, and Seides led Kane inside. He secured Kane to the chair that was riveted to the floor and let Diana into the room.

As she lowered herself into a facing chair, a smile snaked over Kane's thin lips. “I'm so glad we could have this time alone. Just father and
daughter. No police to come between us. Our private visit. As it should have been all along.” His eyes glinted like cold steel.

A shiver trickled down her spine. She averted her gaze, taking in the baggy prison jumpsuit, his clean, trimmed nails and the red nylon binders securing his hands to the chair.

“You're wondering about these?” He lifted his hands against the restraints. “They seem a little cut-rate, don't they? Makes you wonder where your tax money is going.”

“Where are your handcuffs?”

“It seems there was a disturbance. I suspect my deluxe steel handcuffs are being used to fasten a couple of particularly nasty individuals while the guards get everyone under control.” He pulled up against the binders a second time. “Some of these inmates are true animals.”

He watched her, as if eager to see the irony of his words sink in.

She kept her expression carefully neutral. “The Copycat Killer kidnapped another woman. A woman with a two-month-old baby this time.”

His smile faded. “I'm not here to talk police business, Diana. I want to talk about family. How did you like meeting your brother?”

Cordell Turner.

A mix of emotion whirled through her. The
memory of how much he resembled Kane. The anger that seemed to coil inside him, ready to spring. The overwhelming desire to connect with her brother, and the resulting disappointment.

“You liked meeting him that much, huh?”

She took a deep breath, wiping the frown from her face. It was no use trying to hide her feelings from Kane. He could read her as easily as a traffic sign. “Why didn't you tell me about him right away? Why the hints and games?”

“Games can be fun. Recreational.”

Games with people's emotions. Games with people's lives. “I know Cordell isn't the Copycat Killer.”

He crooked a brow. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because Louis Ingersoll is.”

He didn't react. Not with the twitch of a brow. Not with the quirk of his lips. “Who is Louis Ingersoll?”

She thought of Reed's theory that the two killers had communicated by passing notes hidden in the fresh produce Louis delivered to the prison kitchen. Did Kane really not know Louis's name? It was possible. Or was he merely playing more of his games? “Louis was my next-door neighbor. I thought he was my friend.”

“Was?”

“He's dead.”

Kane licked his lower lip. “How did he die?”

She didn't know the details. She hadn't thought to ask. All she knew was who had shot him. “He was shot. That's all I know.”

“You're not in the loop? I find that hard to believe.”

“I'm not. The police don't know I'm here. They didn't want me to come.”

“You mean McCaskey didn't want you to come, don't you?”

She tilted her head.

Kane's thin lips pulled back in a grin. “You're too good for him, you know.”

She shook her head. “I'm not going to talk about Reed with you.”

“No, you came to talk about this woman. The one with a baby. The one, I'm guessing, the police can't find because they shot this Louis Ingersoll.”

“Where is she? Where would he have taken her?”

“Why do you insist on doing the police's job?”

“I'm not doing their job.”

“Then why are you bothering me with these questions? We have more important things to talk about.”

“More important than a woman dying?”

“A lot of women die.”

They certainly had at his hands. “This one has
a baby. A baby who's going to grow up without a mother.”

He looked at her with dead eyes. “And that's supposed to make my heart bleed?”

Trent Burnell had been right. Kane didn't care. He wasn't capable. “Please. For me. Will you do it for me?”

“For you?”

“Please.”

“You're not on your knees. I told you the next time we met, I wanted you on your knees.”

She forced her legs to function, to push her up from her chair, to circle the table, to kneel down on the floor in front of him. She bit her lower lip to hide its tremble. The hard concrete seemed to suck the warmth from her body. “Tell me where she is.”

“Why? Why should I do this for you? You've been more loyal to the police than you have been to me.”

“I'm not with the police now.”

“A start. But it proves nothing.”

“What do you want from me?”

“That's easy. I want my little girl.”

“I
am
your little girl.”

“No, you're not. You've changed.”

“I can change back. I can be whatever you want.” Desperation echoed in her voice, making her cringe.

“Can you?” His eyes glinted. “Prove it.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to call me Daddy.”

The word stuck in her throat. She forced it out. “Daddy.”

“That sounded more like a curse.” He yanked his arm upward, straining against the nylon. “Say it the right way.”

Fear crept up her throat, tasting metallic, like rusty tin. She thought of Trent's warnings, of Reed's concerns. They were right. She couldn't win. She could never be that little girl again to Kane. He could manipulate and humiliate and bring her to her knees, but she'd never make him feel the way she had as a small girl. She'd never again look to her daddy with the tender, dependent, unblemished trust of a child.

She closed her eyes, blocking Kane's face from her mind. Maybe she couldn't let Reed protect her anymore. But that didn't mean she had to open herself to Kane. That didn't mean she couldn't protect herself. “I can't give you what you want. More than that, I won't. But if you really want to win back a little of the respect I had for you once, you can tell me where that woman is.”

“Respect? Oh, I'll have your respect.” His voice hissed, barely above a whisper.

A chill seized her, colder than anything she'd ever known. She opened her eyes.

Kane's cruel face loomed inches from her own. He stood, free of his bindings, the light reflecting off a blade in one fist. “You
will
call me Daddy. And you'll say it with love.”