Plain Jane (2 page)

“Step away!” Macaine grabbed his handset. “I need backup in the alley behind Crestview and Van Wheller.”

The man not only ignored him but continued beating on the brunette. And the more Mickey’s eyes adjusted to the dark, the more blood he saw. So much.
Too
much.

“Step back, or I will be forced to shoot.” And Macaine meant it.

But not only did the man stay on the ground, he leaned over the woman’s face. Was he kissing her bloody lips?

Sick bastard.

Mickey popped the safety off. This guy only got one more warning. “Last chance.” Macaine cocked his gun. Was this really going to be his first shooting? Was it really going to be tonight? The man went back to beating on the woman.

Yep, he guessed it really was.

The cop’s finger tightened on the trigger.

“No!” A woman’s voice shouted from behind.

Mickey’s eyes darted over his shoulder. A brunette ran full tilt toward him. Even before he saw the gun in her hands, held out to her side in perfect academy position, Macaine knew that she was a cop. She ran like a cop. Sounded like a cop.

“Don’t shoot!” The gold badge clipped to the petite woman’s belt sparkled as she put a hand on Macaine’s out-stretched gun arm and urged it down as the fucked-up guy still beat on the woman.

“He’s FBI.”

CHAPTER 2

Detective Nicole Usher forcibly pushed the uniform’s arm down. She could not let him shoot Kent. At least not before she got the chance.

“He’s one of us,” Nicole reassured the cop, although he did not look close to believing her. She did not have time to convince him. Not with a woman down and the profiler performing CPR in a urine-soaked alley.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” a new voice came from behind. “But don’t shoot.”

By the baritone timber and obvious disdain, Nicole knew the newest arrival was Ruben Torres, her partner, and least favorite fan of Kent Harbinger.

The beat cop’s arm wavered, but Ruben’s wide frame convinced him to finally lower the gun.

Despite her hope that Joann was still alive, the closer Nicole came to the grisly scene, the more obvious it became that the brunette was well past saving. Blood pooled around the woman’s head and ran down her side. The slick lake did not end until it washed up against the brick wall. Deep red saturated Joann’s clothes. Kent’s shirt was smeared with it.

The most telling sign that Joann was beyond any of their help was her blank, glazed stare. Unblinking. Pupils fixed and dilated. Nicole had seen it too many times before.

Seventeen times in the last two years. Five times in the last four months. Now twice in three weeks. The killer was accelerating his behavior, becoming reckless and all the more dangerous for it.

“She’s gone, Kent.”

Sirens wailed in the distance, like nails on a chalkboard. It was the sound of their defeat yet again.

For a moment Kent stopped his compressions, then leaned over and continued giving Joann mouth-to-mouth. Could he not see he was too late? Could not he see that no amount of CPR would bring Joann back?

To anyone else Nicole might have offered a compassionate word, a reassuring pat on the arm, but Harbinger was not just anyone. He was an FBI profiler known for his ability to immerse himself so completely into the perversion of a serial killer’s mind that he could select and stalk a victim before the madman could.

Yet a price had to be paid for such a talent. Each time the profiler went this deep into a case, he lost a part of himself. How could he remember the concept of love when his job demanded that he pick a woman and hunt her down like prey?

This focused on a task and so detached from reality, Nicole couldn’t trust that Kent knew friend from foe right now.

She firmed her tone. “It’s over.”

Harbinger rose up from the brunette’s mouth and put his hands back on Joann’s sternum as his own breaths came in great heaves. Nicole feared he would start compressions again. Finally his head tilted forward in defeat. His eyes squeezed shut. His pain palpable.

“She’s gone.”

Nicole chanced a tentative hand on his shoulder.

Two years ago the gesture might have meant more. Now she just needed to get Kent away before he contaminated the crime scene any further. This was the freshest kill to date. If they were going to gain any new insight, they needed to vacate
now
and turn the body over to forensics.

They owed it to Joann.

Ignoring her, Harbinger pulled the brunette’s blouse up.

“Kent!”

The profiler appeared far beyond listening to anyone, let alone her, as he ripped the buttons from Joann’s shirt. The wailing sirens merged as if singing a lament. Crying out to stop the sacrilege that was about to occur.

He jerked open the stained silk to reveal a huge gash deep into Joann’s pale abdomen. Blue and red lights flashed as the patrol cars descended on their position, casting bright splashes of color on the otherwise dreary alley.

It felt all too surreal.

The unnatural position of Joann’s legs. The huge, bloody gash across her belly. The look of obsessed determination in the profiler’s eyes. Nicole dug her fingers into Harbinger’s arm.

“Damn it!” Nicole tried to pull the profiler from the brunette before he not only contaminated the autopsy but desecrated the body as well. Had Harbinger lost all sense of himself? Of basic human decency?

“The ME will tell us if he took his trophy!”

Seeming oblivious to the fact that she had his arm, Kent prepared to force his bare hand into Joann’s bloody wound. Short of shooting the profiler, Nicole was helpless to stop him.

Her partner, however, had no trouble grabbing Kent by the collar and hauling the profiler to his feet.

“Oh no you don’t, you sick fuck,” Ruben growled.

CHAPTER 3

Ruben’s hands shook with rage as he slammed Kent against the rough brick wall. Enough was enough.

He might only have an associate’s degree from a community college versus Kent’s
cum laude
graduation from Yale, but that did not mean the profiler was always right.

Or even sane.

“I’ve put up with your ‘I’m so brilliant that no one can even
try
to understand me’ crap.”

He searched the profiler’s face for some reaction, but found only boredom. Kent acted as if he did not have the academy’s champion boxer at his throat. Shit, he acted as if he did not have
anyone’s
hands at his throat.

Fine. If Ruben could not physically intimidate the prick, he was not beneath pushing some hot buttons.

“And your ‘let’s pretend coming back doesn’t hurt Nicole’ routine is getting stale…”

Ruben stopped short. His voice had cracked at her name, and he was not about to let Kent have the satisfaction of seeing him out of control.

It had been four long years since Ruben was forced into the background as Harbinger swept into town, hijacking his first major case. Adding insult to injury, and seemingly without effort, Kent lured Nicole away as well. First a promising career, then a promising relationship had been sabotaged by the profiler.

That was the past, Ruben reminded himself. Harbinger had been out of commission, out of their lives, for so long. In two years he thought that he’d grown enough as a detective and as Nicole’s lover to not be rattled by the profiler.

Obviously he had been sadly mistaken. Kent, however, didn’t need to hear any of that betrayed in Ruben’s voice. Voice measured and even, he continued, “I won’t allow you to violate that woman again.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, she’s not a woman anymore,” the profiler stated flatly. “She’s a corpse.”

Without thinking of the consequences, Ruben bounced the back of Kent’s skull off the wall. “Because of
you
!”

How could this creep have been recruited out of
high school
by the FBI? Reminding himself that the only upper hand he had over Harbinger was some form of emotional control, Ruben kept his anger in check.

Instead of physically lashing out, he indicated the dozen or so cops who descended upon the scene. “We had twenty cops on alert. An alert that you insisted upon. But you could not bother to call in because—”

“Because as good a profiler as Kent is…” Nicole elbowed her way between them, “he’s no psychic.”

Kent shrugged as if Nicole had stated the profiler did not play the piano very well. Seemingly uncaring that just a few feet away the EMTs pronounced Joann dead. A woman who Kent failed to protect.

“Damn it!” Ruben shoved the profiler hard against the wall, but Nicole put a hand over his closed knuckles.

CHAPTER 4

“Ruben, come on,” Nicole coaxed. “We’ve got a canvas to roll out and—”

“This asshole does it for the rush,” her partner growled.

“And that outburst was helpful, exactly how?”

Nicole knew her tone was harsh, but here was not the place to be having a testosterone-fueled standoff.

Dozens of cops, EMTs, CSIs, and firefighters crowded the alley. All trying to pretend this little altercation wasn’t happening. Their showdown needed to end
now
or it was going to be on the nightly news.

She squeezed her partner’s hand, but Ruben refused to break his stare. The profiler had really gotten to him this time.

“Rube, please,” Nicole said, her tone more conciliatory.

Her partner’s eyes met hers. She understood his frustration. Kent could get under your skin like bamboo shoots. However, they needed to hash out Harbinger’s difficult personality traits another time.

“This isn’t helping.”

Ruben shoved Kent against the wall in the same motion that released the profiler. Even so, her partner did not back away, not even a step. The two men were no longer in contact, but locked in combat nonetheless.

Her partner stood several inches taller than Kent and had seventy pounds on the leaner profiler. Ruben was the type of guy who not only had a gym membership but who actually used it. Whereas Kent relied upon his genetic heritage to keep fit.

Despite her partner’s clear physical advantage, Kent seemed completely ignorant of Ruben’s towering presence. And there was nothing that annoyed her partner more than being discounted. Nicole made sure to position herself between them as Kent leaned his head back against the wall. As if the profiler might take a nap.

Nicole hesitated as the air stilled. Activity buzzed all around, yet an eerie calm blanketed the area. The CSI camera flashes added strobe. Faster and faster. They too must have sensed the change in the air. A storm approached. A storm that would wash away vital evidence.

Reminded of the real issue, Nicole set her jaw. The boys were just going to have to suck it up.

“Now if you two are done—”

Then Kent did the unthinkable. He yawned.

Nicole wedged herself deeper between them before Ruben’s shock transformed into anger. While she was trying to think of something, anything, to defuse Ruben’s increasingly short temper, her cell phone rang.

Nicole flipped open the phone. “Usher.”

“Status?” Her boss asked.

“I’m sorry,
Captain
.” Nicole stressed the last word to keep Ruben in check. “Joann Forme, the woman Kent had under surveillance, is dead.”

Nicole heard a loud sigh on the other end. Followed by a long pause. Her captain believed in counting to ten before responding to bad news.

“Are you going to explain that despite a trained FBI officer providing round-the-clock surveillance and twenty officers on call within a mile of this woman, somehow the killer was still able to get to her?”

“I promise you, sir. We
will
explain tonight’s events.”

“Within the hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

She snapped the phone closed, harder than she intended. “We’re due back by two, so let’s direct our hostilities toward the killer, all right?”

Ruben glanced at Kent, who still stared up at the brooding clouds. Finally her partner gave a stiff nod and strode over to the beat cop who discovered the grisly scene.

Nicole waited long enough to make sure that the cop held Ruben’s attention before she turned back to Kent, but the profiler had vanished.

Immediately she looked at Joann. Luckily he had not gone back to the body. She searched the growing crowd of blue uniforms, but no sign of him.

Besides being the special agent who had apprehended the highest number of serial killers in the last decade, Harbinger’s other specialty was disappearing when things did not go his way.

Desperate, Nicole looked down the alley in the opposite direction and found Kent’s retreating form.

Nicole trotted to catch up. “Where in the hell do you think you’re going?”

Kent ignored her. She grabbed his arm. Why did he always make her run after him? Why did he always make her feel like a little girl trying to get an absent daddy’s attention?

“Damn it, you are not going to leave me to answer to Glick alone.” Kent tried to walk away. This time Nicole jerked him so hard that he had to face her. She was done chasing.

“Not
again
.”

CHAPTER 5

Kent stared blankly at Nicole even though he knew exactly the shared past she meant. Not only did he know the reference but took her accusation like a kick to the ‘nads.

Anger flared. At the killer, at himself, even at Nicole for dragging him back into a case like this.

Joann’s sticky blood dripped from his hands. The metallic taste lingered on his lips. A woman he had grown to know more intimately than most husbands know their wives had been killed on his watch. How could Nicole expect him to stand here and have a normal conversation? If he opened his emotions even a crack, the dam would break. He would break.

A profiler was not allowed that luxury. As long as the Plain Jane killer was still on the loose, Kent had to contain his anger, his pain. He had to bottle it and use it as fuel to drive him deeper into the killer’s mind.

Closer to the killer’s truth.

Standing here attending to Nicole’s feelings of abandonment was not going to help him catch Plain Jane.

Nicole must have sensed the emotional wall he had erected. Her words were meant to be stern, however, her tone already sounded defeated. “You’ve got to come back to the station with me.”