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Authors: Maya Banks,Karin Tabke,Sylvia Day

Men Out of Uniform: Three Novellas of Erotic Surrender (9 page)

BOOK: Men Out of Uniform: Three Novellas of Erotic Surrender
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When the phone at his desk rang, Rick picked it up and barked a greeting. For a moment there was silence before the eerie, familiar electronic synthesizer crackle sounded.
He went tense and turned violently, motioning frantically for Truitt and anyone else he could get to notice.
“Good afternoon, Detective Broughman. I have to tell you, I’m disappointed. This latest one just wasn’t a challenge. Hardly worthy of my skills. Clearly I’ll have to do better next time. I’d give you coordinates but she won’t be hard for you to find.”
Rick’s stomach revolted and before he could respond, the phone went dead. He sank into his chair, still gripping the receiver just as the chief and several other police officers ran up.
“It was him. Christ, there’s another. He said this one wasn’t a challenge.”
Curses rang out. The chief pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “Damn it,” he said. “Nothing else?”
“Just that he would have to do better next time. Said she wasn’t worthy of his skills. He didn’t give a location this time. Said she wouldn’t be hard to find.”
“He’s escalating,” Truitt said. “It’s just been two weeks since the last. Half the time between the last two victims.”
“Sounds like he’ll be out hunting again soon,” Bull said with a scowl. “We have to nail this son of a bitch.”
“Call it out,” the chief said. “We need to start looking. Do it as quietly as possible. We don’t want to alert the media before we even have a body. People will run all over those woods and mess up our crime scene.”
The officers slowly dispersed. Rick ran a hand through his hair. His head ached like a son of a bitch. This sucked. The timing sucked. As much as he wanted nothing to do with the investigation involving Jessie, a part of him refused to believe she could be responsible. Last he’d heard it was just a matter of formalities and that the case would be turned over to the DA soon. And even though he wasn’t supposed to go near this case—or Jessie—he had no intention of just leaving it alone. He needed to know himself just what Jessie’s role in this was. Only now, every minute of his time would have to be spent on the recovery of the newest victim.
With a weary sigh, he picked up the phone to call in his group of volunteers. The very last thing he wanted was the body of another young woman to haunt his dreams. But she at least deserved to be found and buried with dignity, not left to rot with no marker to celebrate her life.
 
Jessie and Kirsten sat cross-legged on Kirsten’s couch, a pint of Blue Bell ice cream in their hands. Jessie’s poison was Cookies ’n Cream. Really. There wasn’t a better ice cream. Anywhere. Kirsten liked the more froufrou stuff and so she’d gotten some weird mix of flavors and nuts. Jessie shuddered at the mere thought of all that stuff in her ice cream.
Kirsten flipped through the channels, a practice that made Jessie crazy, but she didn’t say anything and instead focused on her ice cream. Every delicious calorie. Hey, when your life sucked, eat ice cream.
“Holy shit, Jessie, that’s you!”
Jessie’s head jerked up, her eyes narrowed in confusion. “Wha?”
She quickly focused on the screen as Kirsten turned up the television. She froze when she saw a snapshot of herself plastered across the news. The anchor was babbling on about the murder of a local pub owner but the only thing Jessie heard was her name and that she was a person of interest in the case. The story then went on to give information about Jessie, including that she had been a waitress at the pub until she’d been let go under suspicion of theft.
“What the fuck?” Kirsten bit out. “I don’t believe this. Holy shit. They can’t do this! You haven’t been arrested. They can’t just smear your reputation like that.”
“Though no charges have been filed, the police are expected to make an arrest soon.”
Jessie’s stomach dropped and her mouth went dry. She sat staring at the TV long after Kirsten turned it off and hurled the remote across the room.
“That does it! I’m calling my dad. This is outrageous. They can’t do this to you. A ‘source inside the police department’? What the ever-loving hell? We need to find out who sold you out and sue their asses,” Kirsten snarled. “They can’t go around leaking crap to the media when you haven’t been charged with a crime. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? They’ve already started your trial, goddamn it.”
Jessie couldn’t speak. Her throat was too closed off. This was a nightmare. Yeah, she’d been freaked out by being brought into the police station for questioning, and yeah, it had pissed her off that they’d come right out and said they thought she killed Merriam. But not even then had she really thought that it would come to this. Maybe she was in denial, but innocent people didn’t really get convicted did they? Only in the movies or mystery novels. God, she felt like a naïve moron.
“What am I going to do?” she whispered to Kirsten.
Kirsten sat down next to Jessie and gripped her shoulders. “What we’re going to do is hire a lawyer. A damn good one. Daddy will know someone. I’m going to call him right now. And listen to me, Jessie. If they come for you, don’t you say a word. Not a single word. You just look through them and refuse to speak until your lawyer is there to advise you. Okay? Do you understand? Not even a peep. They’ll try to get you to confess. Hell, they’ll try to get you to say all sorts of things that they can twist around on you in court. So if you don’t say anything, they can’t do that.”
Jessie nodded dumbly. Then she hugged Kirsten to her and hung on for dear life. “I’m scared. These things aren’t supposed to happen in real life.”
Kirsten squeezed her and then pulled away. “Tomorrow, I want you to go to your apartment and get all your stuff. You’re moving in with me until this is all over with.”
“But I can’t do that. I don’t even have a job,” Jessie protested.
“Exactly. You can’t pay rent if you don’t have a job and if you don’t stay with me, you’ll be out on the streets. That is so
not
going to happen. You can take me to work then take my car to get your stuff and pick me up after my shift.”
“I love you,” Jessie said fiercely.
Kirsten smiled. “I love you too. We’re going to kick some cop ass. Now let me go call Daddy. He’s going to be pissed. We’ll get you through this, Jess. I promise.”
Chapter 8
 
E
ven after seeing countless dead bodies in his years on the force, Truitt still had to turn away from the sight of the young woman sprawled on the ground, half covered in leaves, dirt and mud caking her body, mixing with blood from numerous cuts. The killer had been right. The victim hadn’t been hard to find at all because the arrogant asshole had left her for the police to find in the area they always staged in when they searched the woods.
The utter callousness, the fact that the killing was sport for some son of a bitch who got a thrill from hunting down a defenseless woman, filled him with rage.
The girl’s final moments had been filled with pain, terror, and the helpless realization that she was going to die. This time the shot wasn’t from a distance. No, judging by the marks on her knees and the position of the entry wound, the bastard had caught up to his captive, made her kneel, and then shot her execution style.
Or maybe he’d never turned her out for the hunt. Maybe he was changing his game up. But then he’d complained in his phone call to Rick that the woman hadn’t been a challenge. Maybe she’d refused to run. Maybe she’d realized the futility. Or maybe she’d simply given up.
The crime lab had marked off a wide perimeter, and beyond it, other police officers searched meticulously for something, anything, the killer could have left behind. Sooner or later he had to fuck up.
But the bastard even picked up his shell casings, and the bitch of it was, he either had the lightest feet known to man or he covered his tracks extremely well, because they could find absolutely no disturbance in the soil or the forest floor. Only blood and footprints and disturbance from the victim.
She was a pretty girl. Looked like a college student. A good twenty years younger than the last victim. Her blue eyes were glassy and fixed in death, her hair smeared with blood. Truitt shook his head and heaved out a frustrated sigh. Sometimes his job sucked.
Soon she was packed in a body bag and carried to where the coroner’s van waited. The scene was wrapped up, and as dusk settled over the woods, Rick and Truitt dragged themselves along with the other volunteers toward their vehicles.
They were dirty, tired, and disheartened.
Truitt’s mood only got blacker when he saw the news vans parked around their vehicles. The chief was already fielding questions and it looked well on its way to becoming a circus.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Rick muttered. “Pick up a six pack or five and get wasted.”
Truitt didn’t argue.
As they climbed into Rick’s truck, Truitt’s cell phone rang. When he glanced down he recognized the number and his gut tightened.
“It’s Bull,” he muttered to Rick. Hell, he had probably arrested Jessie. Just what they needed to cap an already stellar day.
“Cavanaugh,” Truitt barked into the phone.
“Truitt, it’s Bull. Look man, I think you should come by the station. I know you’ve had a long day but I think you’ll be interested in knowing this.”
Truitt sighed. “All right. We’ll be there ASAP.”
He shoved the phone back into his pocket.
“He wants us to come to the station.”
Rick ’s lips thinned. “Great. Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any worse.”
They rode back into town in silence, passing through the smaller communities, many of which had been homes to the women victimized by the Big Thicket Killer.
When they finally pulled up outside the station, it was well past dark. Truitt was starving and he had a date with a case of beer.
They got out of Rick ’s truck and Truitt stared up the steps to the entrance.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Come on. Let’s get it over with,” Rick said sharply. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
They walked through the door and Rick waved when the dispatcher cheerfully greeted them.
“Hey guys, Bull’s in his office. He’s been waiting for you.”
“Bull seems a bit eager to shove Jessie down our throats,” Truitt said in a terse voice.
Rick’s lips tightened but he didn’t say anything as they walked down the long hallway to Bull’s office on the end. Bull was behind his desk up to his nose in paperwork. When he heard Rick and Truitt he looked up and then put down his pen.
“Have you made an arrest?” Rick bit out.
“Yeah, I have.”
Truitt’s lips curled up into a snarl. “Okay, so why did we need to be here? You couldn’t have said this over the phone?”
Bull leveled a stare at him. “Jessie didn’t do it. She was telling the truth.”
Rick went still. Truitt’s heart started to pound harder.
“Okay, wait,” Rick began. “You made an arrest. Just yesterday she was all but convicted in your eyes. What changed?”
“Have a seat. You’ll need to see this.”
Bull swung around and aimed a remote at the television monitor a few feet away as Rick and Truitt lowered themselves into chairs.
As they watched the news story that all but painted Jessie as a convicted killer, Truitt’s fingers curled into tight fists.
“What the hell was that?” Rick demanded. “Where the fuck did they get their information? Who’s the goddamn leak?”
“I don’t know,” Bull said. “Chief ’s pissed. Hell, we’re all pissed. Nobody here likes to see the goddamn news blabbing shit before we’re ready.”
“Son of a bitch,” Truitt swore. “So she didn’t do it and now that doesn’t matter because everyone will
think
she did.”
Bull held up his hand. “We’re doing damage control. We have a confession. The chief is going to handle the press conference himself to say that an arrest has been made, charges will be filed, and that Miss Callahan was instrumental in the department’s discovery of the true killer.”
BOOK: Men Out of Uniform: Three Novellas of Erotic Surrender
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