Her Last Whisper (16 page)

While they worked on the case, Charlie carefully monitored Michael. He was restless, up and down, walking the aisles, looking out the windows, even disappearing into the cockpit a couple of times. He leaned over her laptop occasionally to check out what she was doing, and once, when the pictures of the missing women were lined up side by side on her screen, even added a helpful comment: “Hot chicks. The other white meat.”

At the look Charlie gave him he added hastily, “I was
joking
. Jesus.”

A moment later he said, “The ones you can see enough of to tell, they all got something else in common, babe.”

He then made a completely male gesture that left her in no doubt of his meaning: the missing women whose pictures were more than just head shots were all noticeably full-chested, which was how she put it when she repeated Michael’s observation to Tony and Buzz, and then by consensus added that fact to the things the alleged victims had in common.

“Which makes me think that these killings, if they are indeed
killings and are the work of a serial killer, are sexually motivated,” Tony said, looking at Charlie. “What do you think?”

“Lust killers tend to have very specific criteria in mind when choosing a victim.” Charlie looked back at the pictures on the screen thoughtfully. “These women appear to be similar in coloring, age, and certain physical attributes. But his primary motivation may not be sexual, which it is if he is a lust killer. He could be a thrill killer, which describes someone who simply enjoys the experience of killing: it gives him a high. Or he could be a power-seeker killer, who is motivated by the pleasure it gives him to have total power over his victims. There are other types of serial killers, too, but those three seem the most likely from what we know of this case so far.”

“What’s the difference?” Buzz asked impatiently.

“Motivation,” Charlie replied. “Which affects how he selects his victims. A lust killer, for example, might fixate on women with full chests. A thrill killer picks his victims by opportunity and is much less likely to fixate on a particular trait: with him it’s more random, more about having the opportunity to grab someone. He’ll have favored hunting grounds, and I would expect to discover that his victims were taken from a specific handful of locations. A power-seeker killer might target women who’ve offended him for punishment.”

“So how does this help us find him?” Buzz drummed his fingers on the table in frustration. His tension was obvious, and if Charlie had been a more demonstrative person she would have reached out and patted his knee. As it was, she simply did her best to answer his question.

“It helps us find him because it helps us identify places he might look for his next victim,” she said. “If he’s a lust killer, we look for him around locations where he can easily assess women’s bodies, like a swimming pool, for example. If he’s a thrill killer, he’ll tend to go back to sites where he’s had success before, so if we can determine where the victims were taken and stake those places out, sooner or later he’ll come back to them and we’ll have a far better chance of catching him. If he’s a power-seeker killer, then we look at any arguments the victims had in the weeks before they went missing.
All these labels that we put on these predators are simply tools that help us narrow down the search. The theory is, if we successfully apply enough labels, if we narrow down the search enough, we’ll catch him.”

“If you eliminate the impossible …” Michael muttered. He was leaning over her shoulder again, and Charlie shot him a sharp-eyed look. She recognized the quote as being from Sherlock Holmes, and finished it in her own mind:
whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth
. She didn’t know why it always surprised her to be reminded of how well read he was: as he’d told her, there hadn’t been a lot to do in prison.

“Which is what we’re going to do,” Tony said to Buzz. “Catch him. Unless we get there and find out it’s all a big misunderstanding, of course.”

Buzz took a deep breath and said, “I hope to God it is.”

“According to victim facilitation study criteria, Giselle would be at low risk for coming into contact with a serial killer,” Charlie offered. Tony and Buzz stared at her. She frowned at them. “The theory posits that certain types of people are more likely to come into contact with serial killers and, thus, are more at risk from them. Hitchhikers, transients, and sex workers, for example, are statistically at high risk.”

“Good to know,” Tony said, while Michael leaned over to murmur in Charlie’s ear, “Did I ever tell you how much hearing you talk shrink turns me on?”

Four hours later, after they’d gone over everything they knew for what felt like the dozenth time and had come to the conclusion that they were no closer to any answers than they had been when the plane took off, they took a break to eat. Because they were in flight, Charlie hadn’t been able to communicate with Tam since she’d texted her that they would be staying at the Conquistador. She could only trust that everything was on track at Tam’s end for a rendezvous in the hotel lobby shortly after the plane was scheduled to touch down. Given the half hour or so that she calculated it would take them to deplane and reach the hotel, that still gave them a two-hour-plus window—plenty of time, she told herself stoutly, which didn’t stop her at all from worrying. Over the course of the
flight, Michael’s other arm had inexorably turned that terrible burnt gray, and Charlie had little doubt that the discoloration had spread even farther.

After they’d eaten—she was so anxious that she wasn’t able to swallow more than a mouthful of food—and reviewed the files one more time to see if there was anything they’d missed—there wasn’t—she dragged Michael off to the lavatory with her. Like any airplane restroom, this one was tiny and designed for function rather than luxury. When she’d made use of it on her own earlier she’d had just about enough room to freshen up. As large as Michael was, with him in it, too, she found herself practically perched on the narrow stainless steel ledge beside the sink so as not to have a body part protruding into him as he lifted up his shirt at her command.

It was all she could do not to make a dismayed sound as she observed that the charred black area around the wound looked larger and angrier, and the gray discoloration now covered his chest from the base of his throat to his washboard abs. It undoubtedly had spread elsewhere, too, although her view was blocked by the waistband of his jeans.

“I always wanted to be a member of the mile-high club,” he said with a suggestive quirk of his lips while she anxiously examined his torso, having declined his offer to shuck his jeans if she felt the need to check out the rest of him. “How about we try it?”

“Get real,” Charlie answered, doing her best to maintain a façade of normalcy while fighting off a fresh attack of cold panic. Besides spreading, the discoloration was darkening. “You’re not up for it.”

The suggestive quirk deepened. “Oh, I’m up for it.”

She settled that with a glance down at his admittedly impressively bulging crotch accompanied by two ego-depressing words: “Ectoplasm, Casper.”

“You could pull up your shirt for me.”

“No.”

“You’re no fun.” Those black eyes gleamed at her. God, what she wouldn’t give to see them restored to their normal sky blue! So far, the gray hadn’t reached his face. He was a little ashen, a little haggard, but still the same way-too-handsome Michael.

At the idea that soon he might not be, she shivered inwardly.

Hadn’t he said that the things had no faces?

He said, “I’d ask if you’ve ever done it in an airplane bathroom, but I’ve got a pretty good idea of the answer: no.”

“Turn around,” Charlie instructed without replying. He was right, of course, not that she saw any reason to admit it. He grimaced but obeyed. Her throat was already tight from looking at his discolored chest. The sight of the broad, flat planes of his shoulder blades and the long, smooth muscles of his back turned the same terrifying gray made her stomach drop clear to her toes.

Although she tried her best not to, tried her best to keep from letting him know just how frightened for him she was, she must have made some small sound because he let his shirt fall, turned around, and looked at her.

“You just chewed off all your lipstick. You need to quit biting your lip,” he said, and she realized that she was, indeed, biting her lower lip with distress and had almost certainly, as he had said, chewed off the lipstick she had freshly applied when she had washed her face and hands and brushed her hair earlier. She instantly stopped worrying her lip.

“It’s a bad habit,” she replied, because she didn’t want him to think she was worried out of her mind about him, which she was.

“You do it when you’re stressed.” He was crowding her, moving in toward her so that she scooted away until her back was pressed tight up against the mirror and he loomed over her. “And this is stressing you out so much because you’re crazy in love with me. Come on, Doc, admit it.”

Was
she? Even considering the possibility was dangerous. She refused: whatever happened, she had the rest of her life to think about.

“You’re delusional,” she said, trying to squirm farther away from him and not succeeding, because there was no more room.

“
You
are beautiful.” His hands rested against the mirror on either side of her, and she had to tilt her face up to look at him. The strong jaw, the beautifully cut mouth, the chiseled features, were achingly dear to her now. Her heart was beating way too fast, and
her blood was heating, and at the same time she was dying inside from fear for him. “If I was myself again, I’d be getting you naked about now. And then I’d pick you up and wrap your legs around my waist and we’d be joining that mile-high club. And you’d like it. You’d come.”

She caught her breath. He hadn’t even touched her—he couldn’t even touch her—and yet her body burned and her back arched so that her breasts were lifting toward him invitingly and her lips were parting for the kiss he couldn’t give her. She was so turned on that if he’d been alive, if there’d been any way, she would have been letting him take off her clothes and do her right there in that cramped bathroom, with Tony and Buzz just outside the door.

“Baby, you’ve got
fuck me
written all over your face right now,” he said in a low, husky murmur that made her go all melty inside and turned the air around them to steam. “Do you have any idea how hot you’re making me from just looking at you?”

Her lips parted and her breathing quickened and she felt like her bones could dissolve at any second. So, yes, she did, because she was hopelessly, helplessly, burning in the same fire.

At least she had enough good sense left not to answer that.

He was still crowding her, still leaning toward her, still had his hands planted on either side of her. Her eyes locked on the sensuous curve of his mouth and her hands tightened around the smooth coolness of the metal ledge and she instinctively did just what she would have done if he were alive: she parted her legs to let him settle in between them and lifted her mouth toward his.

The voice over the loudspeaker made her jump. “Special Agent Bartoli, we’ll be touching down at Henderson Executive Airport in just a few minutes. Everybody needs to return to their seats and buckle up at this time.”

Michael had raised his head when the announcement boomed. He looked down at her for a second with those terrifying, totally unreadable black eyes, then dropped his mouth to her lips, a brief, brushing kiss that felt like the feathery touch of electrified wings. Even as her lips fluttered under that charged contact, he lifted his head and stepped back.

“If this doesn’t work, if I end up going
poof
like the voodoo priestess said, I want you to know that I don’t regret a damned thing. Except leaving you.”

Her heart turned over. “Michael—”

There was a knock on the door. “Charlie, is everything okay in there? We’re getting ready to land.”

Tony.

“Yes,” Charlie called back around the lump that had formed in her throat. “I’m coming.”

Michael grinned wickedly. “That information really something you want to share with Dudley?”

As Charlie got it, then gave him a
ha-ha
look, Michael stepped back enough to allow her access to the door.

Once again words crowded her lips. There was so much she wanted to say to him. But then the loudspeaker came to life once more: “Please return to your seats immediately and buckle your seatbelts. We’re starting our descent into the greater Clark County area at this time.”

“Go,” Michael said, and she went, exiting the bathroom, walking past Tony almost blindly, heading back to her seat, fastening her seatbelt without any real awareness of doing any of those things.

She felt raw inside.

It wasn’t until they landed, until they’d driven the few miles to the Conquistador and turned the rental car over to the valet and the luggage to the bellhop and were walking past the famous dancing fountains into the brightly lit lobby, and she dodged a laughing trio of drunks and Michael got in front of her, that she noticed that he was having trouble with locomotion. He twisted to one side as he moved, awkwardly hunching his shoulders as if, she thought with a thrill of horror, his body was starting to curl in on itself.

She remembered how he had described the evil spirits as awful twisty things, and her insides froze.

Then he looked around at her, and her stomach slid up into her throat.

The gray was now creeping over his face, and his features—his perfectly carved, drop-dead handsome features—seemed to have
flattened and blurred. Even his hair was streaked with that same lifeless gray.

She sucked in air. It was the merest whisper of sound, but Michael heard, and he lifted eyebrows that had turned the color of tarnished silver at her questioningly. Not wanting him to read her terror for him in her face, she jerked her eyes from his and turned away to scan the hotel’s huge, glittering lobby for Tam.

“Lena’s still not answering my damned calls. She’s not answering Tony’s now, either,” Buzz said. Clutching her phone in her hand, Charlie was desperately looking for Tam, having just texted her to let her know that they’d arrived. She had almost bumped into Buzz when he stopped abruptly as they were crossing the lobby, and at the moment had little attention to spare for him. “She’s staying in the same room she shared with Giselle. I’ve got the room number. I’m going to go on up and see if she’s there.”