PRIMAL INSTINCT (8 page)

* * *

C
ONNER
TOOK
A
step back when he heard the words
Simon Says
come out of Adrienne’s mouth. Dammit, he
knew
they shouldn’t have left her here alone, unsupervised. He didn’t know how she’d done it, but somehow she had gotten pertinent information about the case. Information she shouldn’t have known. Maybe she had chatted it out of some agents, or maybe she had gotten access to a file she shouldn’t have been privy to.

Either way she now had information she shouldn’t have.

Conner completely released Adrienne’s arm. She immediately turned and went into the interrogation room. Seth began to follow her in. Conner didn’t move.

“You coming?”

“In a minute. I need to get something from my desk. Don’t start without me.”

Conner could feel the anger building up inside him. He had to admit it was not all leveled at Adrienne. The crime scene they had just returned from had been an utter farce. When the call had come in that another woman’s body had been found, he and Seth had hoped this was the break they were looking for. Finally a crime scene before they had gotten a package from Simon Says. But upon arrival at the location, it hadn’t taken them long to figure out that this had not been Simon at all, but some sort of copycat. Too many differences, too much disorganization for it to be Simon.

Another waste of their time.

And then, as soon as they had returned, Conner finds Adrienne wandering all over the office, looking for a trash can? Seemed highly unlikely. And then she conveniently notifies them she has something to tell about the Simon Says case. A name she never could’ve known unless someone or something at this office had clued her in.

Conner walked over to his desk and grabbed a pen and ledger of paper. He and Seth would listen to what Adrienne had to say, but then they would send her back to her ranch. He didn’t care what the chief said anymore. Conner was tired of being jerked around by dead ends.

Conner headed back to the interrogation room. He had wanted to believe Adrienne and her “abilities,” especially after this morning. But he was tired of wasting time.

The smell hit him as he walked into the interrogation room. “Holy cow, what is that?”

Adrienne rolled her eyes at him. “I told you the trash smelled bad. That was why I was taking it out. You’ll get used to it in a second.”

Conner realized Seth was gone. “Where’s Seth?”

“He went to get a can of air freshener.”

“Thank God. What was in the trash?”

“I got sick to my stomach while you were gone.”

Conner felt bad and let go of a little of his anger. “Oh, I’m sorry you got sick. Are you feeling better?”

“Yes. Surprisingly I feel pretty great.”

Conner looked down at the photographs scattered all over the table. “Did you have a temper tantrum?” He gestured at them with his hand.

“No.” Adrienne glared at him. “But I didn’t want to touch them again, just in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case I had the same reaction as I did the last time I looked at them.”

Seth walked in and began spraying the room with freshener until it was difficult to breathe. But at least it smelled better.

Conner and Seth picked up the photos and sat across the table from Adrienne. He watched as Adrienne sat up straight in her chair and folded her hands lightly in her lap. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Conner realized he was watching a ritual. She had done this before. Perhaps many times.

“Part of him thinks of this as a game,” Adrienne began in a serious tone and then opened her eyes. “And he thinks you—the FBI—are stupid.”

Conner and Seth looked at each other. They knew what Adrienne was saying was true. It was obvious from the mocking tone of the notes Simon had sent with the locks of hair.

Conner grimaced. If Adrienne knew this, it meant she had somehow accessed the files. That was more information than he wanted available to her.

“Go on,” Seth encouraged.

“He’s alternating between gleeful and whiny—like a young child. He likes to be in control, to terrify the women and prove he has power over them. He takes absolute delight in sending you the locks of hair.”

Conner stayed still, but Seth sat back and whistled through his teeth. He obviously believed this was coming from Adrienne’s “visions” rather than her accessing information while they were gone.

“No offense,” Conner interrupted, “but you’re not telling us anything that is not already in a file here. A file that perhaps got shown to you while we were gone.”

That seemed better than accusing her of breaking into a desk.

“Agent Perigo.”

Uh-oh, they were back to last names.

“Why would I do that? There’s no point to it.”

“I don’t know, Ms. Jeffries. You tell me.”

Conner felt Seth nudge him under the table. “Ignore him, Adrienne. Continue, please,” Seth entreated.

“He keeps a separate lock of hair for himself. A trophy.”

That was new. Of course, conveniently, there was no way to know if it was accurate.

“He places all the women at the locations where they are found, but he doesn’t kill them there.”

They knew this too—no blood had ever been found at any of the crime scenes.

“He kills them all at the same place—some sort of cellar or large empty room. It has a basement that’s almost hidden. It’s unusual. But there are no windows, and it has a ceiling with high dark rafters.”

Conner now sat up straighter in his chair and saw Seth do the same out of the corner of his eye. This was something that they had never heard. It could potentially break open the case.

If they were willing to believe her.

“Can you remember anything else about the place?” Seth asked Adrienne.

She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I can only see this room. For some reason I can’t see when he comes in or out of it, which would give us more to go on.”

“Can you usually see stuff like that?” Conner asked.

Adrienne rubbed her forehead. “Usually. I’m sorry.”

“What else can you tell us?”

Adrienne reached out to gather the five files of the dead women, where Conner and Seth had returned all the pictures. The files were blank on the front except for each woman’s first name. Adrienne took the files and laid them out on the table.

“I know this was the order they were killed in,” Adrienne told them without looking up from the files. Then she took a pen and proceeded to write the last name of the women on each of their files. “I know their names, also.”

This was too much for Conner. Whatever she was doing, he was done playing her game. He stood up and grabbed the files from the table.

“You know what? I think that’s just about enough.” Conner was livid. “I don’t know exactly what you’re playing at here, but I don’t have time for it. You obviously didn’t stay in this room while we were gone today. I don’t know which agent helped you or if you just broke into a desk. But I am done with this.”

Adrienne stood with her hands leaning on the table, obviously upset. “Can I remind you, Agent Perigo, that
you
came to
me
and asked for my help? Oh, scratch that, I mean
blackmailed
me into helping. What possible reason could I have for making this stuff up?”

Conner mirrored Adrienne’s stance on the table. “I have no idea, and I don’t care anymore. Maybe you just want attention. Maybe you need to feel important. But the only way you could possibly know these things is if you got your hands on the case file or talked to someone else who did.”

Adrienne slammed her small fist down on the table. “Unless—although I’m sure this is an unbearable thought for you to consider—I’m telling the truth!”

“Do you know that this room is equipped with video and audio recording equipment, Ms. Jeffries? It automatically starts digitally recording whenever someone is in here.”

“So?” She continued to glare at him from across the table.

“So? It will certainly show any time you left this room or anyone who came to see you while we were gone. And anything that was said.”

Conner wasn’t sure exactly what he expected Adrienne to do with this information. Change her story maybe. Start crying. Try to make up some excuse for the information she had.

He definitely didn’t expect how she actually responded.

“Well, I guess I know how you’ll be spending your next three hours, Special Agent Jackass. But I’m leaving.”

She reached down to get her purse—he saw her wince when her burned arm scraped the chair—then stormed out of the room, slamming the door.

Conner stared at the closed door for a long time. Beside him, he heard Seth begin to chuckle. Conner muttered something unrepeatable under his breath and headed out the door to look at the recorded footage of Adrienne. But he suddenly didn’t feel as sure as he had just a few minutes before.

Chapter Eight

The great thing about San Francisco was all the parks, Adrienne thought as she walked around in one of them. You couldn’t walk half a block without running into some little grassy area or square. And the weather hovered around sixty degrees all year long in San Fran. Gorgeous.

The bad thing about San Francisco? All the jerky FBI agents who made her want to tear her hair out. Either that or jump across the table and kiss him until neither of them could breathe.

Adrienne smiled. At least if she kissed Conner, she wouldn’t have to listen to any of the asinine statements that seemed to pour endlessly from his mouth.

Adrienne sat down on a bench. The buzzing was back. She wasn’t sure exactly when it had started up again, but it was there. And a headache was coming on—pressure surrounding the back of her skull. Annoying but bearable.

This was the headache she was used to having when she was around people. The constant distant buzzing. Nothing bad; nothing to see or hear. Just light static. She had found over the years that most people were not evil. They may be tired or cranky or just plain mean. But most did not walk around with sinister intentions, so Adrienne never had any clear idea of their thoughts. Just low static.

Usually being outside helped a bit—fewer people than were cooped up in buildings—but now it seemed worse than when she had been in the FBI field office.

Maybe being annoyed at Conner Perigo had helped her forget about her headache. But when she thought about it, she realized, no, she hadn’t really had any sort of headache—or any pain at all—since she had taken the trash out of the interrogation room. That was so unusual.

But the pain was making its way back now, that was for sure. Adrienne reached into her purse and got out aspirin from the bottle she always kept with her. This would help keep the headache in check, to a degree.

Adrienne sat in the sun for a little while then decided to take a walk down to the Embarcadero—San Francisco’s waterfront area. It had a beautiful view—the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz—but Adrienne barely noticed it.

Why was she so angry at Conner Perigo? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had to prove herself before. Nobody believed what she could do at first. She had always accepted that as reasonable. What sane person would believe her without proof?

And her gift had been so sketchy over the past couple of days. Why should she expect Conner to just believe what she could do out of hand? And more than that, Adrienne had
never
cared who had believed her in the past. Why was she starting to now?

There was something about Conner Perigo that was different. Adrienne didn’t know really what it was, but she knew she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him from the first moment she had seen him in the barn two days ago. And the kiss at the hotel last night. She had thought they had turned some sort of corner then.

But evidently Agent Perigo didn’t actually have to trust or believe her in order to act on his attraction to her. The kiss obviously hadn’t implied he had feelings for her, because feelings were based on trust, and Perigo most definitely didn’t trust her.

Of course Adrienne could also admit to herself that whatever she felt for Conner didn’t come wrapped up in a nice little bow, either. She seemed to spend most of the time she was around him fighting the urge to slap the smug look off his face. But she definitely had to admit that he affected her. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do about that.

Adrienne knew he would watch the footage from the interrogation room and know she was telling the truth. Where things would go from there—professionally and personally—she had no idea. She wasn’t sure what she wanted.

It wasn’t long before Adrienne realized coming down to the Embarcadero hadn’t been a good idea. It was much more crowded. The buzzing was becoming louder and her headache worse. Adrienne bought a pretzel from a vendor—to replace the lunch she had lost before, and hopefully to ward off some nausea now—and decided to begin walking back toward the FBI building.

She stopped at another park and nibbled on her pretzel for a few moments before giving up. Her headache was definitely worse, and she doubted she’d be able to keep any food down long. Adrienne put her hand up to her forehead to try to shade her eyes and give her head some relief from the pain the sunlight was causing, even though it wasn’t a particularly bright day out.

This was what she remembered from her years with the FBI. The constant bombardment. Even when she was out of the office with no one asking her to look at some crime scene photo or touch some artifact, she still had never been able to get any quiet in her head. When she was eighteen and nineteen, she had thought she could just push through the pain and the noise and keep going.

She had been wrong.

It hadn’t seemed so bad earlier today, but now Adrienne just felt like hell. She would go back to the office, tell Conner and Seth that she was heading to the hotel. Maybe she’d even drive back to Lodi tonight. At least there she knew she’d have some peace. But she definitely needed to get away and give her body a chance to rest and heal. She couldn’t keep this up for long.

That she knew from experience.

Plus, if her gifts were only going to work every once in a while, then she really wasn’t going to be much help to the FBI at all. So she might as well go.

From where she sat on the park bench, she heard the car pull up to the curb—tires slightly squealing—and saw it at the same time. She watched as Conner Perigo got out of the car and strode with determination straight toward her bench.

Adrienne looked down at her watch. She’d been gone about forty-five minutes. That was quicker than she had thought. She’d figured it would take him longer to go through the footage.

“How did you find me?” Adrienne picked at her pretzel some more as he sat down beside her without saying anything.

Conner cleared his throat in an embarrassed fashion. “I had them track your phone’s GPS.”

“Special Agent Perigo, I’m shocked. Isn’t that a misuse of taxpayers’ money?”

“Probably. I thought you were already gone, maybe headed back to Lodi. If I had known you were only a few blocks away, I wouldn’t have driven.”

“So you found me.” Adrienne put another small piece of pretzel in her mouth. “I would’ve thought it would take longer to go through all that footage of me in the interrogation room. They must have a fast forward switch, huh?”

Conner shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “Look, Adrienne...”

Adrienne took that as a yes. He trailed off, obviously waiting for Adrienne to say something, but she wasn’t about to make this easy for him. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry, okay? I was wrong.”

“You saw the footage?”

“Yes, some of it.”

Adrienne cocked an eyebrow at him. Only some?

“Okay, most of it. Enough to know you were obviously telling the truth. You didn’t leave and nobody came in.”

“Where’s Seth?”

Conner looked away sheepishly. “He stayed to watch the rest of the footage, just in case.”

Adrienne shook her head. “You have real trust issues, you know that?”

“Occupational hazard, I guess.”

They sat in silence for a moment before Conner spoke again. “I lost my temper, and I was wrong. When we left today, we rushed to that crime scene thinking it was a big break in the case only to find out it wasn’t Simon at all. A copycat. When I got back I was in a bad mood already. Then when I saw you in the hallway, I just lost it.”

Adrienne peeked over at him, turning toward him slightly. She wasn’t ready to let him off the hook yet, but she could at least understand how the copycat killer would’ve put him on edge.

Conner slid a little closer to Adrienne. When she didn’t move away, he put his arm along the back of the bench, touching her shoulders.

“That still doesn’t excuse how I behaved. What I said. I
am
a jackass. I’m sorry.”

“You know, it’s okay to be incredulous. Usually I’m not offended by skepticism.” Adrienne broke off another piece of her pretzel and began to eat it, realizing she was now starving.

“I want you to know, it’s not you personally I’m critical of.” Conner hesitated as he seemed to try to find the right words. “It’s just that I have no script for what you can do. No way to categorize it and hardly know how to process it.”

Adrienne nodded as she chewed. Not being able to categorize her gift was something she understood.

“This is hard for me,” Conner continued. “But after what happened to you this morning and this afternoon, I can’t doubt you anymore. But I don’t know how to explain what you can do or how you can do it.”

“Sometimes there doesn’t have to be an explanation. It just is what it is,” Adrienne said softly.

Conner turned toward Adrienne on the bench. “Your abilities fly in the face of normal reason. It goes against everything I’ve learned in all my years of law enforcement,” he said in a tone gentler than she would’ve thought him capable of when discussing this topic.

“I’m sure that’s not as true as you think,” Adrienne assured him. “Haven’t you ever followed a hunch and found it to be valid? My abilities aren’t so different than that. Just more well developed.”

“Yeah, but yours are a little more hocus-pocus.”

Adrienne smiled, unoffended. “It’s not like my mother slept with Thor or that gypsies cursed my family or something. I just have a talent.”

Conner snorted. “I heard what you said today. Things you saw and know? It’s quite a bit more than a talent.”

“My brain just works differently than most people. Like how some kids taught themselves how to play the violin when they were five years old and had never heard the instrument before. I’m kind of a prodigy, but I’m not a freak.”

Freak
was a sensitive word for her. It was why she had always hated the nickname Bloodhound. Too close to freak.

Conner reached over and ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “Not a freak. Never. Your brain is different and can do special things.”

“I’m a terrible speller,” Adrienne said softly.

“You can’t spell?”

Conner was still stroking her cheek. Adrienne smiled. “No, not at all. I have to think about the difference between
there, they’re
and
their
for five minutes before I figure out which is correct.”

“Okay, maybe a little bit of a freak.” Conner smiled and closed the distance between them, cupping the back of her head with his hand.

His lips were firm but gentle, and Adrienne was immediately swept up in the kiss. She felt Conner’s other hand come up to frame her face as she leaned closer to him, her hands tracing his arms from his elbows up to his shoulders.

Adrienne gave herself over to the kiss, drowning in it. It was like yesterday’s kiss—overwhelming. All she could feel was Conner. There was no buzzing, no static in her head, only Conner.

Adrienne’s eyes flew open.

No buzzing. No headache. Silence.

Nothing.

Adrienne jumped off the bench, out of Conner’s arms, ignoring his shocked gaze. She shook her head as if to clear it and concentrated hard, trying to pick up on the buzz that she should hear from the other people in the park—the static. She looked around; there were at least a dozen people. She should hear them.

Her eyes spun back to Conner.

She watched wariness enter his gorgeous green eyes. “You’re not going to start calling me Agent Jackass again, are you? That’s starting to get around the office.”

“What did you do to me?”

“I...kissed you?”

Adrienne could tell Conner wasn’t sure how to handle her strange reaction. She didn’t blame him. She knew she was acting abnormally, but something was wrong here.

“You’ve done something to me.” Adrienne shook her head again, as if to unclog something.

“Well, my kisses have been known to cause a commotion in many a lady,” Conner joked.

“It’s you. You’re the problem.” Adrienne threw herself back down on the bench looking at him with wide eyes.

“What?” Conner obviously had no idea what she was talking about.

“Wait. I have to think.” Fortunately thinking was much easier without the noise and headache.

When she had worked with the FBI before, the pain from her gift had been a constant. Only when she could physically remove herself from people had she had any relief from the noise and discomfort. But since she had come back to help Conner and Seth, she’d experienced some pain, but not constantly. And her abilities had worked, but not constantly.

Adrienne looked down at the burn on her arm. Her gift had worked this morning at the coffeehouse—she remembered the excruciating pain in her head. She had even gotten a nose bleed. Then she had passed out and felt better when she woke up. No headache at all, just the pain from the burn.

Conner had been there with her when she had woken up.

And at the field office today, nothing seemed to work when she was looking at the pictures of the murders, until Conner and Seth had been called away. Once they were gone, it had completely overwhelmed her. Images, sounds, the thoughts of the killer. And the agony that came with them.

All gone away again once Conner was back.

Adrienne remembered when she had first laid eyes on Conner two days ago. She had walked into the barn and was absolutely shocked to see someone standing in there besides Vince. Vince’s buzz was a constant that she was so used to she totally didn’t notice it anymore. But other people’s should’ve been evident. Adrienne remembered how taken aback she had been at the silence, although it hadn’t been long before Conner had made her so angry she hadn’t even noticed the quiet.

Conner. It kept coming back to Conner.

He was looking at her expectantly, although she had to give him credit, he had waited quietly like she had asked him to. Adrienne reached over and grabbed his hand in hers.

“Do I need to apologize for kissing you?” he asked warily.

Adrienne smiled shyly. “No.”

“Good, because I don’t think I can. You want to fill me in with what’s going on?”

“I think I know what’s wrong with me.”