True Colors (36 page)
Logan heard the double meaning, and the gravity of it pulled at his heart. “Are you worried about breaking?”
She didn’t breathe for a long moment. “Maybe.”
“You won’t. You’re the strongest person I know.”
“But it’s in me, Logan. Butch’s memories . . . they’re inside me. They feel like
my
memories. It’s like there’s this evil . . . seed planted inside me now. What if it grows?”
my
memories. It’s like there’s this evil . . . seed planted inside me now. What if it grows?”
“Well, to continue the analogy, it would have to be nurtured to grow.”
“It grew in Butch.”
“But he chose to let it grow, Alex. He became a serial killer.”
She shifted away from him, taking the sheet with her this time, and turned so she could see his face. “Are you serious? He’s a serial killer?”
He nodded, wishing he hadn’t dropped it on her like a bomb, but it was too late now, and he hadn’t had a chance earlier to ease her into what he’d learned. “The FBI has DNA evidence that Butch McGee has tortured and killed twenty-three women.”
The pink in her cheeks washed away, the hand clutching the sheet to her chest tightening until her knuckles turned white. “Oh my God.”
“You’re the only one that the FBI knows of who’s survived an encounter with him.”
Realization creased her forehead like pain. “I’m the one who got away.”
“And the one who can help the feds put him away forever.”
She raised her chin, her lips pressing into a resolute line. “Then I need to talk to them.”
The muscles in his chest squeezed. Another woman might have been terrified that McGee might try to come after her again. Another woman might have wanted to hide or even demanded protection. Not Alex. She was so gung ho to help that it scared him, and he thought of the look of determination on her face when she’d reached for Toni Wells’s hand.
She had no concept of the consequences to herself. And yet, she possibly held the key to catching a serial killer who’d eluded the FBI for years.
“I need to talk to them, Logan. You know I do.”
A wave of protectiveness flowed over him even as he resigned himself to doing his job. “I know. A couple of FBI agents are due in tonight. They’ll want to talk to you as soon as possible.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“I’ll be with you the whole time, okay? Just . . . can you promise me something?”
“What?”
He caught her hand and threaded their fingers. “Promise you’ll start thinking twice before you fling yourself into someone else’s hell with the idea of helping them.”
“I did help Justin, though.”
“Yes,” he conceded. “But there might have been an easier way.”
“What could be easier than witnessing the truth firsthand?”
“But it
wasn’t
easy,” he said. “You came out of it bloody and bruised.”
wasn’t
easy,” he said. “You came out of it bloody and bruised.”
“The bruises faded in less than an hour, and there isn’t any lasting damage.”
“But what about on the inside? You’re worried about how much you can take, Alex. That’s damage, in my opinion.”
Her brows drew together, and she settled back against the pillow. “I’m fine. For now, I’m fine.”
Yeah, that sounded confident. Still, he didn’t challenge her. Not this time. “I just want you to think before you do stuff that puts you at risk.” He pulled her against him, rubbing her arms and resting his chin on the top of her head. “You can’t save everyone, you know.”
“I don’t want to
save
Butch McGee. I want to stop him.”
save
Butch McGee. I want to stop him.”
“I meant the Justins and Tonis of the world.”
“You have to admit my method saved a lot of time. There are no shades of gray, no worries about who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. We kept a teenager from a potentially destructive path. Justin didn’t think anyone would believe him, and we proved him wrong.”
“And you got off on that power, didn’t you?”
He felt her hold her breath in his arms, sensed her think carefully before she answered. So it surprised him when she said simply, “Yeah, I did. I’m the only one who could have done that. Besides Charlie, and her flashes are so short, she might not have gotten the full story.”
He relaxed some, relieved that she admitted it, even if the substance of the admission worried him. “We’re going to have to keep an eye on you.”
“That’s what I have you for, right?”
Smiling, he hugged her close and kissed her hair. “Damn right. You can’t chase me away with your empathic . . .” He trailed off, hunting for the right word.
“Freakishness,” she said.
He laughed, surprised that he could. “Well, it is kind of freaky.”
“Tell me about it.”
He put his fingers on her chin and gently angled her head back so he could kiss her, slow and sweet. His ringing cell phone interrupted right when things turned urgent.
Swearing, he swiped it up from where it sat on the bedside table and flipped it open. “Logan.”
“Yeah, it’s Don. I’m on the scene of a murder. Woman found by neighbors when they noticed she hadn’t picked up her newspapers in the driveway like usual. They thought she might be sick so checked on her. Looks like Butch McGee has claimed a twenty-fourth victim.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
B
utch gulped down an iced mocha and stared with narrowed eyes at the sunlight glinting off the fender of the recently washed royal blue Ford Escape in Alex Trudeau’s driveway. When his retinas started throwing off black dots, he blinked and looked away.
utch gulped down an iced mocha and stared with narrowed eyes at the sunlight glinting off the fender of the recently washed royal blue Ford Escape in Alex Trudeau’s driveway. When his retinas started throwing off black dots, he blinked and looked away.
He needed . . . a fix. Like a crack addict, withdrawal had set in. He’d slashed his pleasure into Sally Blake not that long ago, and already the need had built to a new high.
And Alex Trudeau, goddammit, was nowhere to be found.
He’d returned to her house with his gun, intending to kill the dozen or so dogs that guarded her bedroom so he could at least feel close to her, smell her, perhaps collect some souvenirs, but a cop car parked out front ruined his plan.
So instead, he sat in the Fusion, casual in sunglasses as he pretended to consult a map, and surreptitiously watched a woman who had to be Alex’s sister, considering the resemblance, lead six dogs out to the SUV in her driveway.
Each dog was physically challenged in some way, he noted. Missing a leg, an ear or an eye. One, a big German shepherd, appeared to be completely blind, considering the way the Alex-like woman kept making kissing noises at it to steer it toward the SUV.
Alex Trudeau liked damaged things. How interesting.
Spotting the cop leaning against the front fender of the cruiser looking toward him, Butch folded the map and tossed it into the passenger seat. He steered the rental around the next corner and did a U-turn in the middle of the road.
Hopefully, where Alex’s dogs went, so went Alex.
CHAPTER FIFTY
A
lex wandered into Charlie’s living room, hungover from a three-hour deep-sleep nap, and found all her pooches in various positions of sleep and watchfulness scattered around the floor. Six heads lifted to watch her, but each mutt seemed to get that she wasn’t up for a ground assault delivered with puppy love.
lex wandered into Charlie’s living room, hungover from a three-hour deep-sleep nap, and found all her pooches in various positions of sleep and watchfulness scattered around the floor. Six heads lifted to watch her, but each mutt seemed to get that she wasn’t up for a ground assault delivered with puppy love.
Instead, she stopped and visited each dog, murmuring reassurances accompanied by an abundance of ear and belly rubs. “Aunt Charlie brought you to her house so you wouldn’t be home alone, huh? That was awfully nice of her. She’s a good aunt.”
In the kitchen, Charlie was emptying the dishwasher in slow motion. When she spotted Alex, she stopped, a guilty look on her face. “Did I wake you? I was trying to be quiet.”
Alex shook her head as she ran a hand through her disheveled hair and sat down at the kitchen table with a graceless plop. “I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Logan and Noah are at the home of the murdered woman,” Charlie said. “The feds went straight there after their plane landed, too.”
Alex nodded wearily as Phoebe hobbled into the kitchen and nudged her long nose under Alex’s palm. Alex obliged the not-so-subtle request with an answering chin stroke.
Charlie watched for a moment, as though gauging Alex’s well-being, then went back to stacking clean plates in the cupboard. “There’s a cop staking out the backyard and another one parked in front of the house,” she said. “Logan wasn’t keen on leaving you here, but Noah and I convinced him that you needed your beauty sleep.”
Alex gave a soft laugh. Beauty sleep. A nice way of describing lapsing into yet another empathy-induced coma.
Charlie nudged the dishwasher door closed with her hip. “Want some coffee?”
“Make it espresso. A quadruple shot.”
As Charlie retrieved a cup from a cupboard, Alex said, “How’s Mac doing? I’ve dropped the ball the past few days on checking in with him.”
Charlie filled the cup with coffee and brought it to Alex at the table. “I’m going to suggest that he spend some time at the cabin, like we talked about before.”
“That good, huh?”
“He has good days and bad days. I just really think he needs some time away to get it together.”
“We can gang up on him, if you want.”
“Sounds good to me. When you’re feeling better.”
Alex couldn’t suppress a timely, jaw-popping yawn.
“Maybe you should sleep some more.” Charlie returned to the dishwasher to finish putting away clean glasses. “There’s no point in fighting it.”
Alex didn’t respond at first, smiling softly when Raquel trotted into the kitchen, Dieter right behind her with his nose vying for a shot at her butt. Both dogs crowded around Alex, bumping Phoebe out of the way so they could get some attention.
Alex used both hands to fluff and scratch and pat, gradually relaxing when Dieter’s pink doggy tongue gave the back of her hand an affectionate lick. If things got so bad that she couldn’t touch other people, at least she could look forward to warm, loving contact from her mutts.
“Is it going to be like this forever?” she asked Charlie. “I have no control over my own body anymore. I mean, I haven’t felt this exhausted . . . ever.”
“I wish I could say you get used to the flashes and their aftereffects, but they take a lot out of you. And yours are a hell of a lot more intense than mine.” Charlie wiped down the counter before draping the dish towel over the faucet and facing Alex. A moment passed in which Alex sensed her sister’s intense scrutiny.
“You should go back to bed,” Charlie said, her concern evident. “You’re going to make yourself sick if you resist.”
Alex sat back, dialing it down on the pooch lovefest to look at her sister. “So, what, I’m going to spend the rest of my life sleeping it off? Like a drunk after a bender? How am I supposed to do my job? How am I supposed to have a life?”
“You’ll find a way, Alex. You’re resilient as hell. And you’re not alone. You’ve got me and Logan and Noah and Dad.”
A bitter smile twisted Alex’s lips. “I noticed you left Mom off that list.”
“She’s special,” Charlie said with a rueful laugh.
Instead of laughing, Alex blurted, “I head-tripped her.”
Charlie sat down across from her, eyes wide. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“It was . . . awful. She found a man after he committed suicide.”
“Oh, God.”
“She felt responsible, like she’d driven him to it.”
“How?”
“Some kind of con.”
“Con? As in con
artist
?
Mom?
”
artist
?
Mom?
”
Alex nodded. “She wanted to return the man’s money, but he’d killed himself. She planned to run away from home with another man . . . Ben, and—”
“
Mom? Our
mom?”
Mom? Our
mom?”
Alex nodded. “Yes, I know, it’s unbelievable. Her name was different. Eliza. Oh, and she had sisters. Agnes and Rena. Older. I think they were all con artists. Like grifters or gypsies.”
Gus wandered into the kitchen and bumped the top of his head against Alex’s leg until she ruffled his floppy ears.
When Charlie remained silent, Alex focused on her sister to see that shock had arched her brows. “What?” Alex asked.
“Did you say Rena?”
“Yes. Agnes and Rena.”
“Alex, the cousin who came to see me back in March? Laurette? Her mother’s name is Rena. She wanted to reunite Mom and Rena before Rena died of cancer. They’re sisters. Mom admitted it during a weak moment after you were shot, but she’s refused to talk about it since.”
Alex’s mind began to race. Suddenly, she saw a way to get some answers. “You know where Aunt Rena is because of Laurette, right? Have you tried to go see her?”
“I’ve called a few times, but Laurette’s sister, Jewel, has been resistant to a visit. I don’t want to barge in on them during a bad time. She said Rena is very ill.”
“Did Jewel say how long . . .”
“I don’t know. It sounded as though it wouldn’t be long. I think Laurette might have been shooting for a deathbed kind of reunion.” Charlie sighed. “So I’m afraid that leaves us with Mom. The queen of denial.”
Other books
Taming the Beast by Heather Grothaus
Soul Sweet by Nichelle Gregory
Death Line by Geraldine Evans, Kimberly Hitchens, Rickhardt Capidamonte
Death of Yesterday by M. C. Beaton
Madam President by Cooper, Blayne, Novan, T
Found by Tara Crescent
Gawain and Lady Green by Anne Eliot Crompton
Hard Edge by Tess Oliver
The Death Collector by Neil White
Tough Guys Don't Dance by Norman Mailer
