Her Last Chance (11 page)

She shook her head, blonde hair
brushing her slender shoulders. Too slender to carry the weight of this
monster.

“Your flight is in less than an
hour.” Her voice was subdued. Sad. “If we’re ever going to stop this man I need
to go through everything I can possibly think of with Agent Walker.”

Marsh bit down on what he was going
to say. She could do all that tomorrow after she’d spent the night with him in
Savannah—and that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with keeping
her alive.

But what if this bastard killed
another woman in the meantime?

Marsh filled his lungs with a deep
breath and tried to relax. He caught Vince’s dark stare in the mirror, read the
unspoken pledge in his eyes. He nodded.

Working his shoulders to loosen the
stiff muscles, he checked the time and knew he had to pull out all the stops if
he was going to get to the airport on time. “Promise me one thing,” he spoke to
Josephine.

The fragile look disappeared.
Instead, suspicious eyes turned on him, reminding him she didn’t normally do
promises.

“What?”

“After you’re done with Walker, go
home with Vince and don’t leave his side for anything. And I mean
anything
.”

“Anything?” Josephine smirked with
her trademark pissy attitude that Marsh finally figured out was a front to
cover fear. “Showering will be fun, but I’m game if you are, big boy.”

He met Vince’s eyes in the mirror
and recognized the determined glint in his wide smile.

“Sure thang, Missy, you think you
can handle me, that is.” Vince put on a Southern twang that made Josephine
scowl and then laugh.

She did have a sense of humor. She
just tried to bury it.

Then they were there, Vince getting
out and opening Josephine’s door, scanning the area even though Special Agent
Sam Walker stood there glowering through the windshield. Marsh grabbed
Josephine’s hand before she got out.

“Be careful.” He wanted to say
something else, something meaningful but he didn’t know what. Instead he stared
dumbly into wary blue eyes. “Please?”

She nodded, got out and slammed the
door behind her. Marsh winced, grateful for solid German engineering.

Sam Walker stuck his head through
the open window. “I need you inside too.”

Judging from the guy’s appearance,
he’d had another rough night. Marsh glanced at the clock on the dash. “I
can’t.” BAU saw more burnout than all the other fields, but if anybody could
help catch this killer, it was those guys. “I have a job to do in Savannah.
I’ll be back late tonight or tomorrow morning. You can schedule an appointment
then.”

Ignoring Walker’s glare and shout,
Marsh rolled up the window.
Jesus. What was wrong with the guy?
Was he
back to being a suspect? Walker stepped back, turned to Josephine and smiled
briefly at something she said.

Marsh pulled out and maneuvered the
car through heavy traffic. Gritting his teeth, he ignored the anger, the ache
and the desperation that crawled along every nerve fiber. He had a job to do.
Vincent was more than capable of keeping her safe. The trouble was—he finally
admitted to himself—he didn’t want anybody else getting too close to her and
that bugged the hell out of him too.

His cell phone rang, a welcome
distraction. Turning on the hands-free, he wove in and out of lanes, heading
for the Manhattan Bridge. Did a full body cringe when a female voice announced
the director was on the line.

Shit
.

“Marsh, what the hell are you
doing?”

“Brett, good to hear from you—”

“This isn’t a social call.” Brett
Lovine sounded harassed and pissed. Not a good combination for an FBI Director,
though probably not an uncommon one.

“Then what can I do for you,
sir
?”
The names they’d called each other as kids echoed through that short title.
Enough to have Brett blowing deeply into the receiver.

“I am just off the phone after
talking to Montgomery Able. You know him?”

“Ahhh—”

“Senator Brook Duvall’s lawyer,
Special
Agent in Charge
Hayes.” Brett’s tone edged toward a sarcastic snarl.

Ahhh
. “Director, I have
solid evidence connecting Pru Duvall to a stolen painting. I have to
investigate the lead.” Checking his mirror, he changed lanes, roared onto the
expressway and put his foot down. “Just because Brook is odds on favorite to
win the party’s nomination is not a reason to back away from this. In fact, I’m
doing him a favor by investigating the matter thoroughly.”

Brett snorted, but Marsh plowed on.
“We have reason to believe Admiral Chambers’ stolen painting is actually a
missing Vermeer that could be worth as much as fifty million dollars at auction
and will cause an explosion in the art world when it’s revealed. Any hint of
impropriety will sink Duvall like a stone.”

The line went quiet.

Brett was obviously weighing the
good publicity the FBI might garner if they recovered that painting, versus the
bad karma associated with pissing off a potential future president.

“We both know Chambers is such a
crazy old goat he might have given the thing away and changed his mind the next
day,” Bret said slowly.

Marsh acknowledged the truth of
that statement. “But he has photographic evidence the painting was in his
collection and he reported it stolen to the FBI.”

His boss seemed to be listening. “I
don’t want a word of this leaked to the media. Not one word. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Marsh smiled.
Nothing
like getting your own way with one of the most powerful people in the western
world.

“And what the hell are you doing
involved in this serial killer fiasco in New York City?”

“The case involves a close personal
friend of mine—”

“Yeah, I saw the photos.” Back to
being his friend, Brett scoffed. “Just your type. Do us both a favor, screw her
and get the hell out of that sit—”

“Or what? You’ll fire me?” Fury
forged his tone.

“Maybe I will.”

“Do it.” Marsh cut the connection.

Heat poured from his body as a wave
of adrenaline fed the rage that simmered like lava inside his brain. Suddenly
his wool jacket was suffocating. He lowered the window and let the cold breeze
whip around the interior of the car and flay his senses.

Brett had never questioned his
professionalism before. He counted to ten as he contemplated turning the car
around and heading back to Manhattan.

Controlling a coarse exhalation he
took his foot off the accelerator and considered what had gone down. The all
familiar stench of politics and power, poking meddling fingers into law and
order, stirred up the murky water. It stank.

But Brett hadn’t fired him.

Yet
.

Until he did, Marsh was going to
track down the thief of Admiral Chambers’ painting and hope like hell the
evidence was compelling enough to stand up in a court of law—no matter who’d
stolen the damn thing. And Josephine?

 Brett’s words had struck a raw nerve.
Picturing her clear defiant gaze made him pause at his over-the-top reaction to
the Director of the FBI. Her distaste for authority was rubbing off. She’d had
a bad effect on him from the moment he’d first met her—spitting nails at
everything he represented. But he wasn’t quitting on her. Ever. He just didn’t
quite know how to get her to trust him.

He pressed his foot to the metal
and sped toward duty and the job.

Josephine was safe.

That was all that really mattered.

***

Nelson bent over
the photographs on his desk. It had taken fifty bucks and some genius detective
work to discover the ID of the latest chick to get sliced and diced by the
Blade Hunter. Lynn Richards—the woman he’d snapped two nights ago attending an
art gallery opening with SAC Marshall Hayes. Nelson couldn’t believe his luck.

The babble in the office was
cacophonous. The atmosphere in the city starting to buzz with fear and paranoia
and all of a sudden Nelson’s mundane dealings with death, drugs and despair
were getting the sort of attention normally reserved for movie stars and pop
icons.

“Landry!” His pre-menstrual bitch
of an editor stood at the door to her office and yelled across the floor.

He looked up uneasily, unable to
measure her mood by anything except the glint in her eye. “Yes, boss?”

“Got anything new on the latest
Blade Hunter vic?”

“Yup. Everything from her parents
being at a VIP dinner at the time of the murder, to her dating a fed.” He waved
Saturday’s
NY News
at her and pointed out Lynn Richards’ picture. Sweat dripped
down the side of his face because this story could put him back in the game.

“That’s the vic? You’re sure?”
Stalking over to his desk she examined him with a distrustful expression. Her
natural look.

“Yup.”

There was a pause that spread
across the whole office, everyone holding their breath.

“Get me copy in fifteen minutes and
I’ll hold the front page.”

He grinned. “No problem, boss.”
Excitement hummed through him even as he started typing his piece.

“What about the other girl?” She
pinned the other woman on the front of
The NY News
with a crimson nail.

Nelson shrugged. He hadn’t got
anywhere with that yet. “I don’t know who she is. I’m working on it.”

“The fed?”

Gonna wish he’d never fucked with
this particular reporter. “Not available for comment.”

Her finely plucked brows arched. “I
have my own sources. I’ll see what I can find out.”

Chapter
Nine

______________

“D
o you ever sleep, Agent
Walker?” Josephine eyed the deep lines gridlocking the fed’s face.

Sam Walker stretched his mouth grimly,
shook his head, blue eyes lacking any real spark. “Not anymore.” He called
Nicholl to say they were on their way back inside.

Vince hovered as her shadow and
suddenly she was grateful. They started walking toward the concrete-and-glass
building, flags snapping behind them with sharp cracks in the brisk wind.
Walker touched her elbow with his hand and all Josie could really think about
was the big gap at her side where Marsh should be.

And that freaked her out.

“There was another murder?” Vince’s
deep voice rumbled like a bulldozer.

Walker glanced over his shoulder at
the ex-SEAL. Nodded, but didn’t give any details. Cold stole over her flesh.
Maybe if she’d remembered sooner, or admitted following her mother all those
years ago, none of these women would be dead.

They passed through security, where
Vince surrendered his weapon, before entering the building’s atrium. The doors
of an elevator opened and a group of people poured out. One woman sobbed
openly, her pale blonde hair raining down in an untidy mess. Josie sidled away,
unable to bear witness to such raw hurt.

The woman saw her and stood rooted
to the spot, oblivious to the people crowding behind her. “You.” Her face froze
in a grimace of anguish that morphed into rage. “You know who did this. You
know who killed my baby!” She launched herself, and for all her street-smarts,
Josie stood there, immobilized by the hatred in the older woman’s eyes.

Bracing herself for the rake of
nails down her face, she was stunned to be pulled backwards and placed firmly
behind Vince’s broad back, unable to see a thing.

Bodyguard
.

She’d forgotten about him.

The weakness in her knees surprised
her. She leaned back against the wall as the poor woman was hustled away, the
ensuing silence loud and echoing as people stood and stared.

Vince herded her into the elevator.
Agent Walker got in beside them, rubbing his forehead. Maybe it
was
her
fault. The killer’s malignant spirit was an essential part of the flames that
had forged her.

“Sorry about that.” Walker sounded
pissed.

She opened her mouth, but nothing
came out.

Getting off the elevator, Walker
said, “Wait here for a moment.” Then he left them hovering in the corridor like
unwanted guests at a party.

She and Vince watched him approach
Special Agent Nicholl at the coffee maker, then pull him by a narrow lapel
through an open doorway and out of sight.

“Looks like trouble.” Vince bobbed
his eyebrows toward the doorway.

“What d’you mean?” Josie frowned at
him—not getting it. Until suddenly the fog cleared. Nicholl had orchestrated
that little scene downstairs.

But why?

To knock her off balance? That
seemed the most likely reason, but why? What the hell could she tell them that
she wasn’t already moving heaven and earth to remember?

Walker came back into the corridor
with the look of a man who’d planted a punch on someone who deserved it.

“He really thinks I have something
to do with this, doesn’t he? That I’m conspiring in some way?” Josie said. It
was amazing that Nicholl could have such a low opinion of her.

Sam Walker said nothing as he led
them to an interview room much like she’d been in before. He held the door for
Josie, but put his hand in front of Vince to stop him entering.

“I’ll have to ask you to stay
outside.”

Vince gave him a
no way
stare.

“If we’d done this at my apartment,
Vince would have been there.” Josie pointed out. “Unless you want to take a
break, Vince? Meet me back here later?”

“I told Marshall Hayes I wouldn’t
let you out of my sight, ma’am.” Vince stated in a monotone. “Bathroom breaks
excluded, provided I clear the room first.”

She crossed her arms and gave him a
look. “Seriously?”

He cocked a brow. “Seriously.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,”
Walker muttered under his breath. “Hayes leaves you a bodyguard but can’t be
bothered to answer some basic questions—”

“What do you have against him?” She
was baffled. The two feds were so alike—both dedicated, tenacious and so
law-abiding they made her sick. She’d have thought they’d have been
law-enforcement buddies.

“Nothing,” Walker answered quickly,
then nodded Vince into the room. “Don’t interfere, okay?”

Vince settled his weight on one of
the orange plastic chairs that had been born in the seventies. It creaked
ominously, but Vince ignored it, braced his feet and crossed his thick arms.

Putting her knapsack—complete with
Marion’s ashes—carefully on the floor beside the chair, Josie sat, realizing
from the way Agent Walker refused to hold her gaze that something terrible had
happened.

“Mind if I record this?” Walker
asked.

Josie didn’t give a rat’s ass.

He flicked a switch and began by
reciting the time, date and their names for the record.

“Where were you last night,
Josephine?” Walker looked down at the table in front of him, staring at the
files as if they were the most interesting things he’d ever set eyes on.

“What?” She squinted at him.
Hadn’t
he been there at her apartment until Marsh had kicked him and Vince out?
She didn’t even know what time it had been, she’d been too wrapped up in
memories. “You know where I was.” Her fingers gripped the corner of the table,
her nails scratching at the thin veneer.

“Can you say it for the tape,
please?” Walker looked innocent enough. Tired and weary. Maybe this was
routine.

“I was in my apartment.”

“Did you leave your apartment at
anytime last evening or before seven a.m. this morning?”

She straightened her back, the
edges of her vertebrae cutting into the unforgiving plastic. “No.”

“Were you alone in the apartment?”

“No.” She frowned, her fingers
tapping a rapid tattoo on the table and wondered what that said in the police
handbook on body language.

Walker looked up, and she felt the
temperature drop forty degrees. “Who was with you?”

She stopped tapping. “
Special Agent
in Charge
Marshall Hayes was there with me. You know all this.”

“Marshall Hayes was in your
apartment
all
last night? You’re certain?”

Damn
, what the hell was
going on?

“Absolutely,” she said loudly for
the benefit of the tape.

“You’re positive Marshall Hayes
never left your sight?” Walker’s eyes bored into hers. After her and Marsh’s
heated exchange last night, she’d locked the door and never come out. Marsh had
knocked on the door at eleven and told her he was sleeping on the couch. She
hadn’t seen him ’til dawn. She stared straight at Sam Walker’s tired eyes and
lied. “Marsh spent the whole night right next to me.”

Walker’s lips pinched together.
Vince shifted, clearly ill at ease.

Playing the slut suited her better
than playing the victim and she’d found over the years, people would rather
believe the worst anyway. “Why?” Josephine asked.

Sighing deeply, Sam Walker pulled
out a headshot of a young woman. The eyes were dull. Mouth flaccid. She’d been
young once. And beautiful. “Do you know her?”

Josephine picked up the photograph
of the woman. Tears blurred her eyes. The bastard had done it again. Her finger
hovered over the girl’s face. They could have been sisters. The woman in the
lobby could have been her own mother…

“I’ve never seen her before.” She
bit her lip. “Who is she?”

Agent Walker slid the cover of the
yesterday’s
NY News
in front of her nose.

A glossy photo of her and Marsh
leaving for this building two nights ago was emblazoned front and center.

“I was on the cover of
The
NY
News
? I still don’t get—” But then her eyes slid to the picture beside it,
and she picked up the photograph of the dead woman and placed it next to the
picture of Marsh attending a gallery opening earlier that same evening.

“Oh, no.” Her eyes swung from
Walker to Vince. “Does he know?”

Vince lumbered to his feet. Leaning
heavily on the table, he stared down at the picture. “I doubt it—he wouldn’t
have gone off like that if he did.”

They both turned their gazes on
Walker, but Josie got the question in first. “You really think he’s capable of
this?” Marsh was the most decent human being she’d ever met. He was so decent
it was nauseating. “Marsh would never do this to anyone.” He was going to be
devastated—blame himself for putting the girl in a killer’s bull’s eye. “And
why would
I
be within a thousand yards of him if he were the guy who
attacked me—”

“You said you didn’t see his face.”

Walker’s reply was stony—like she’d
blown his most viable suspect. Well, the FBI must be grasping at straws to want
to nail one of their best.

“You don’t need to see someone’s
face to recognize them—it’s in the voice, the shape and breadth of someone’s
shoulders.” She opened her palms wide. “It’s in the feel of someone’s hands,
the scent of their skin.” Holding Agent Walker’s gaze, she willed him to
believe her. “The guy who attacked me wasn’t Marshall Hayes.”

Vince straightened and moved back
to his orange seat. “You know she’s right, Walker. You just don’t wanna let go
of your nice juicy bone.”

Walker pulled his lips up in a
bitter smile and shrugged as if conceding the point.

“Fine,” he shuffled the papers, “I
ran your mother’s Social Security and driver’s license numbers through the
system—neither has been used since she disappeared the night of your attack.”

The breath whooshed out of her body
like she’d been slammed against a wall. “So she’s dead.” She stared down at the
table, noticed graffiti marked the well-worn surface.

“Not necessarily…”

Josie jerked up her head. “What do
you mean?”

“She could have moved abroad. Or be
living under an assumed identity.”

Josie frowned. “The guy she was
with was a missionary from Africa—”

“Africa?” Vince straightened up,
suddenly attentive.

“Didn’t I say so yesterday?” Josie
frowned.

Walker shot Vince a glare that told
him to be quiet, then bent to check his notes. “You just said some guy from St.
Mary’s Church.”

“He’d only been in the country a
couple of weeks.”

“Where in Africa?” Vince demanded.

Walker glared at him again and
looked like he was about to curse, but he glanced at the tape as if remembering
it was on.

“I don’t know.” Josie shook her
head, thoughts moving so fast they were spinning. Vince stood, all
six-foot-seven of uncompromising muscle and stalked over to the recorder and
turned it off.

“What are you doing?” Walker spluttered
and then stopped as Vince shrugged out of his jacket and started unbuttoning
his shirt, the holster where his Desert Eagle pistol usually sat empty,
dangling beneath his left arm.

“Putting a different perspective on
things.” Vince spread his shirt wide open, revealing a magnificent ebony chest
and marks that made Josie’s heart knock against her ribs.

Six long deep scars ran over each
side of his torso emphasizing his ribs. A tiny row of dots punctuated the top
of each scar.

“A few years ago, I traced my
family history back to a small village in Mozambique.” Satisfied he’d made his
point, Vince pulled his shirt front back together and started redoing the
buttons. “I went to visit and they tried to pressure me into a scarification
ceremony—told me I wouldn’t be a
real
man unless my body matured in the
way of my ancestors.

“I told them there was no way I was
letting them near me with their old rusty knives.” He laughed, a boom of sound
and shrugged his massive shoulders. “But I got sterile instruments from a
nearby clinic and let them cut me—not because I wasn’t already a real man, you
understand, but because I thought it looked cool.” He cocked a brow and tucked
his shirt into his pants. “Lucky for me, I was already circumcised.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Josie
tried to wipe the shock off her face, but failed. “So
that
,” she placed
her hand on her ribcage, beneath her breast, “is common in Africa?”

“Not as much as it used to be, but
yeah.” He nodded his head. “Tattoos don’t work well on black skin.”

“Did it hurt?” Walker couldn’t hide
his distaste and she caught the look on his face. His eyes dropped to her
chest. An involuntary male response? Or was he thinking about her scars? She
looked away.

“Like crazy, but women love it.” He
winked and his diamond stud flashed.

Josie snorted, “Probably says more
about the women you date than your sex appeal.”

“My point is…” Vince suddenly
turned serious, “the cutting could be a link to Africa. I didn’t mention it
before because I didn’t want anyone jumping on the race bandwagon. But even if
this dude is white, he could have a connection to Africa,” Vince concluded.

Walker pulled on his lip with his
thumb and forefinger. “If I recall some of my basic anthropology courses,
scarification is also big in other indigenous populations in Australia and
South America.”

All the moisture in her mouth dried
up. “He uses those women like they’re a canvas to work on.” She shuddered.

Walker turned the tape back on.
“Josephine. Let’s go over everything you remember about the man you believed
ran off with your mother.”

***

The headache raging
in Marsh’s skull had nothing to do with the naphthalene that radiated from Pru
Duvall’s business manager’s office and everything to do with the staggering
humidity of a brewing storm. Although, come to think of it, his head hadn’t
stopped hurting since he’d found out Josephine was the target of a serial
killer.