Unauthorized Obsession (Unauthorized Series Book 3) (4 page)

Sergeant Aria Gale sat at her desk and munched on her morning bagel, her fingers flying over the keyboard. The detective’s office door opened and she looked up to see who her fellow early bird was. Gagne. She should’ve known. She waggled her fingers at him and turned her attention back to her work. Gagne was in the office as much as she was. In fact, if there were one person in the world who she thought might guess that she was no longer married, it was Gagne. No one else knew how early she came in or how late she stayed, or the fact that many nights, she just caught a few hours of shut-eye in the sleep room and then got right back to work, loneliness and denial her constant companions. At this point, work was her best friend, and she never ran from it.

The case she had gotten from Officer Price yesterday was turning out to be a killer, and she didn’t want to waste time. Officer Price didn’t realize that the man who had sent her flowers, a gift, and a box full of hair, was exceedingly dangerous. Aria didn’t want to waste one more day gathering all the facts. Officer Price needed to have her nose rubbed in these reports and quickly.

Aria printed off one more piece of paper and took everything to a meeting room where she could spread it all out over the long tables there. She cross-referenced and stacked pictures and took notes until she was certain she had every piece of information how she wanted it. She glanced up at the clock. 7:00. Forty-five more minutes until the only forensic document examiner they had on staff came into work. Good, she had a chance to go over what she had found one more time.

If she was correct, the crook who was currently focusing on Officer Price had done this at least four times before. She surveyed the papers on the desk. They painted a grim and terrifying picture. Aria thought hard, trying to form connections from the words on each page. She strode to her desk and grabbed a handful of paper clips, then pulled the trash can to the middle of the floor. She paced and thought and twisted the paper clips into tiny silver pieces before she threw them away. When a glance at the clock on the wall finally told her the forensic document examiner was in, she dropped her paper clips, gathered up her handwriting samples and strode purposefully upstairs.

***

Kara picked at her breakfast. The last thing she wanted right now was food. She had too many thoughts swirling around in her brain. The night before, after she had finished talking to Zane, she had gone inside, avoiding Joe’s intense gaze as well as she could. Ivy had sprinted up to her and asked who the handsome stranger was and what he had wanted.

“Seth didn’t tell you who he was?” she had asked quietly.

Ivy rolled her eyes. “Seth doesn’t talk to me.”

Kara pursed her lips together. That was irritating. She wondered if Seth knew she and Ivy were sisters. When Ivy started clamoring again to know who the tall, dark, and handsome stranger was and what he had wanted, Kara whispered it to her. Ivy squealed, drawing the attention of every cop in the place.

“Shh, don't tell Joe. He’ll look Zane up in the computer.”

Ivy had cast a happy glance over to Joe who was glaring at them suspiciously. Kara had packed her things, called out her goodbyes, and left quickly, hoping everyone would forget about it by the next day.

But
she
hadn’t forgotten. She had barely slept the night before, thinking about Zane and worrying about what Sgt. Gale was going to say. Maybe if she went in with only thirty minutes to spare again, Sgt. Gale wouldn’t get much of a chance to yell at her today.

She stood up and fed the rest of her eggs to Duke, who managed to eat most of them with one bite but then spread tiny pieces of egg from the kitchen all the way across the living room as he tried to get up the last scraps with his tongue. Still deep in thought, Kara didn’t notice.

Her phone rang and she grabbed for it. A number she didn’t recognize from the station.

“Price.”

Sgt. Gale’s voice blared through the phone and cut through her introspection. “I want you down here in thirty minutes. And keep your eyes open. Your stalker is a very dangerous man.”

Kara’s stomach swooped and dropped until she felt she might puke. An empty hiss sounded in her ear. She looked at the phone. Sgt. Gale had hung up.

Kara ran to her bedroom, not noticing when she stepped in egg, and pulled her uniform on. Her worst fears were coming true and the negative anticipation was cutting an acid-lined hole in her chest. A sudden piercing longing for the simplicity and safety of her childhood rocked her. But that was over. The world wasn’t safe anymore. She should know. She was one of the many guardians needed at the gate of civilization these days. She pulled on her boots and ran out the door.

Kara made it to the police station with twenty minutes to spare and reluctantly sprinted upstairs to find Sgt. Gale. Glynda pointed her to a conference room where Sgt. Gale was pacing, a brutal gaze on her face, her hands twisting and turning something. The two long tables placed end to end in the center of the room were covered with police reports, pictures, and notes. Kara tried to take in everything at once, her stomach feeling more leaden with each additional glance.

Sgt. Gale peered at her, something like a snarl lifting her lips. Kara recoiled and waited to hear what she would have to say. Sgt. Gale snatched a piece of paper off of the table and thrust it into Kara’s hands. “Does this look familiar?”

Kara read the handwritten note quickly.
Your boyfriend is a piece of shit.

Kara grimaced and tried to hand the note back, shaking her head
no
. Sgt. Gale strode down the length of the table and picked another piece of paper off the far end, handing it to Kara and refusing to take the other one.

Kara recognized this one immediately. It was the note she had received with the box full of Dawn’s hair. She read it over again.

Dawn needs to pay, don't you think? For hurting you? This will make her remorseful. And if it doesn’t, don't worry, I’ll think of something else.

She glanced back to the first note, thinking immediately that Sgt. Gale must be insinuating they were written by the same person. But they didn’t look similar. In her note, the letters sloped to the right and in the first note, the letters sloped to the left. Plus the sizes were different. But there had to be a reason for all of this.

She held them both up and looked at Sgt. Gale. “Were they written by the same person?” she ventured, hating how small her voice sounded.

“The handwriting expert says yes.”

Kara looked back at the two items in her hands and tried to make the comparison herself. The way the "I" looped was kind of the same. Her eyes traveled over the other letters looking for more comparisons and found none. But she wasn’t going to argue.

Sgt. Gale took the second note out of her hands and replaced it at the end of the table, then walked slowly back to her. She jabbed her finger at the first note. “Over the past ten years four women,
that we know of
, have had to deal with this dirt bag.” Deftly, she gathered four pictures and placed them on the table directly in front of Kara. “Amber Lansing, Tiffany Stewart, Cassie Russo, and Margaret Timmons.”

In her mind’s eye, Kara could see a fifth picture at the end of the line. Her own.

Sgt. Gale stopped for a moment as if she sensed this too. Then she pushed on. “Ten years ago, Amber received twenty-two notes over the course of a year and a half. Then she moved away and we don't know what has happened to her since. Tiffany received only six notes, but the last one was this one.” Sgt. Gale plucked the first note from Kara’s hands and held it up.
Your boyfriend is a piece of shit. “
Along with a note came four pictures.” Sgt. Gale placed the note back down on the table and snatched a pile of pictures off the table, thrusting them into Kara’s hands.

Kara’s heart felt sluggish in her chest. Her whole body was heavy with apprehension, but she had no choice but to look. Her eyes crawled over the photographs as her hands shuffled them. The pictures showed a man standing next to a barstool, his entire body between the legs of the woman sitting on the stool. His arms were around her waist, and each picture showed something slightly different. In one he was whispering in her ear, and another he was kissing her neck, in the next he was raptly listening to her, and in the last their lips were locked together.

When Kara reached the last picture, Sgt. Gale took them from her and held them up as she had the note. Her eyes flinty, she said, “This was her boyfriend, Tim Hardy, and a day later he disappeared. His missing person's case is still pending.”

Kara grimaced like she’d been sucker punched. Sgt. Gale noted the look with her cool gaze and pressed on. “Cassie,” she said, tapping on the third picture. “She received eighteen notes over a seven month period. One night she was assaulted and raped after leaving a friend’s house and she never received another one. The rapist was never caught.”

Kara’s eyes flicked to the picture of the last woman. She touched her own cheek lightly as she realized that each of the women looked similar. All had dark hair and cat-like eyes that stood out as their most prominent feature.
Like my own
, she thought.

Sgt. Gale’s eyes also settled on the last picture. “Margaret received fourteen notes over a six-month period. Her uncle was a cop and he was the first one to make the connection between the previous three cases and hers. He got her a concealed carry permit, installed an alarm at her house, and took her to gun and self-defense classes. He also began to escort her most places she went. Still, one day after work she was assaulted by a masked man in the parking lot and she managed to get her gun out and shoot him in the left arm. He took off and she never received another note. It was raining heavily so they weren’t able to gather any useful evidence at the scene, but she never heard from him again. In fact no one has for almost three years, until you got your first contact from him.”

Sgt. Gale finally stopped talking and glared at Kara. “Still think it was a good idea to keep this to yourself? Still think it’s not a big deal?”

Kara felt sick to her stomach. She tried not to show her feelings on her face. Instead she shoved them aside and went on the offensive. “You mentioned Tiffany’s boyfriend, the one who disappeared. Did any of the rest of them have boyfriends?”

Sgt. Gale’s eyebrows shot up. Grudgingly, she said, “That’s where this gets interesting. Amber, the first victim, didn’t have a boyfriend. Cassie, the third victim did have a boyfriend, but he was arrested the day before she was assaulted. He was eventually convicted of burglary and is still in prison. Margaret did have a boyfriend, but he had an accident at work the day before she received her tenth contact and ended up losing his job and eventually moving out of state.”

“What kind of an accident?”

“He worked in a dry cleaning shop. The steam valve on his machine exploded and burned him. There were signs of sabotage so the owner blamed him, saying he was trying to go out on Workmen’s Comp.”

Kara’s thoughts swirled and twirled with all the information. She glanced down at the long table and wondered if Sgt. Gale would let her sift through the reports, notes, pictures, and other evidence. A glance up at Sgt. Gale’s face showed that the sergeant knew what she was thinking and the answer was
no way
.

Kara sighed in defeat. “What now?” she asked.

“Now, you come to me the second you have another incident. Now, you go to work and you stay out of my way. Now, you keep your eyes and your ears open and get back to me with anything that happens no matter how small. I can’t find this guy with no evidence.”

Kara looked down at the two long tables spread with paperwork. “It looks like you can’t find him
with
evidence either.”

Sgt. Gale stared at her, her eyes flat and dead. Then she pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed a number, her eyes flashing angrily. Kara could hear a ringing sound. Her arms and legs felt shaky.
Why had she said that?

Someone must’ve picked up on the line because Sgt. Gale started speaking. “Let me talk to the chief.”

Great, I fucked up now,
Kara thought. She wasn’t sticking around for this. She opened her mouth and tried to force words out. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to … I have to get to work,” she stammered halfheartedly. Then she turned on her heel and fled.

Kara woke up the next morning, not sure how she had escaped the day before without getting chewed out by the chief. Neither Sgt. Gale nor the chief had tried to catch her during her busy shift. Today was Saturday so even if Sgt. Gale was working, that meant the chief was taking the day off. She checked her phone and breathed a sigh of relief when there were no messages. No creepy guys hanging around her house and no bosses chewing her ass. And tonight she had a
date
! Excitement rippled through her at the thought. She jumped out of bed and started her day, determined to get all of her errands out of the way early so she could properly prepare for it. She hadn’t been on a date in forever and she wanted to look nice.

Duke pushed up from his dog bed and followed her into the kitchen, hoping for a treat. She broke off little pieces of her breakfast sandwich and fed it to him under the table like a child. She didn’t care if he begged as long as he did it with good manners. Sitting under the table quietly and waiting was good manners in her book. Her mind quickly ran over the shift the night before. Joe had been waiting for her when she came out of Sgt. Gale’s office and had immediately asked what the guy had wanted the night before. When she told him, his eyebrows drew down fiercely and he demanded the guy’s name. When she wouldn’t give it, he acted irritated again and said, “What if the guy is your stalker?” Kara had laughed and shook him off, finding her recruit quickly, then hitting the road. Joe was a great guy, but sometimes he didn’t know when to give it a rest. They’d been assigned a district across town from the one Joe and Ivy had so she hadn’t had to deal with him again for the rest of the night. Seth had done well during the shift. They’d had two car accidents, a domestic dispute, two alarm calls, a barking dog complaint, a harassment case, and one fraudulent check case. Seth’s stutter seemed to be getting better, as long as he wasn’t talking to Kara.

Kara went over the cases in her mind one more time and then put them to rest. This was her first weekend off in two months and she was going to enjoy it. No thinking about work at all, and hopefully no thinking about her stalker. God she hated that word. It automatically seemed to put her in some sort of a victim category and if there was one thing Kara never wanted to be, it was a victim.

Her phone buzzed. It was a text message from Ivy.
Are you taking Duke to the dog park today? I’ll go with you.

She texted back.
Yes, around three. I’ll pick you up.

Kara had shopping and other errands to do. She finished everything quickly and efficiently, then dropped a few items off at her house, herded Duke into the car, and drove to Ivy’s house to pick her up.

Ivy ran out her door and jumped into Kara’s car with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. Duke immediately climbed into her lap and covered her face with slobber. Ivy barely noticed. “Your date is tonight!”

Kara laughed. “You sound more excited than I am.”

Ivy managed to get a hand clamped around Duke’s jaws and pushed him sideways so he could only lick the window. “Aren’t you excited?”

“I am. I really am. But Joe thinks the guy is my stalker.”

Ivy’s face fell immediately and she lost her grip on Duke. He turned in her lap and coated her face again. “Oh my God what if he is?”

“Don't you start, Ivy. Of course he’s not my stalker. Stalkers don't operate that way. Besides, I would know if there was something off about him. There isn’t. He’s a perfectly normal guy.”

Ivy nodded solemnly. “People thought Jeffrey Dahmer was normal too.”

Kara turned to her. “Really?”

Ivy shook her head just as solemnly. “I have no idea.”

Kara uttered a surprised laugh and shook her head. Ivy was still a mystery to her sometimes. They made it to the dog park and Kara wrestled a leash onto Duke then walked him inside the fence and wrestled it back off of him. He ran off to play with every dog in the place at full speed. Ivy and Kara walked the concrete path around the park and laughed and talked. On their third lap around the place, a woman holding hands with a young girl led two large golden retrievers into the park. The retrievers caught Kara’s eye because they reminded her of the dogs she had seen at Zane’s house. She watched the woman and the dogs closely.

The woman was short and petite, with a willowy figure and long blonde hair that hung straight down her back almost to her butt. Her face was heavily made up and she looked out of place at the dog park in her high heels and gold bracelets. Kara and Ivy passed them as the woman let go of the child’s hand long enough to take the leashes off of the two gorgeous golden retrievers. Kara studied the child. She looked nothing like her mother, if indeed this woman even was her mother. The child was dark and sturdy where the mom was fair and extremely slender. Black curls framed her cherubic face and black eyebrows set off her dark eyes. Kara strained to hear what the woman said, wanting to know what she called the two dogs. They couldn’t possibly be Kevin and Lucy, could they?

The woman spoke, but the dogs had already run off. She was speaking to the child. “Be a good girl, Zaina, and stay close to me. We’ll sit on the bench.”

Kara’s head swung backwards when she heard the girl's name, her eyes incredulous.

“What?” Ivy asked her, pulling on her arm. “What’s wrong with you?”

Kara shook it off.
Coincidence
. It had to be. She mumbled something but stopped talking immediately because the woman was talking again. “Xena and Hercules only need about ten minutes to run around and then we can go shopping.”

They weren’t the same dogs at all.
Her breath came a little easier and she turned to Ivy. “Nothing, sorry. We should get out of here soon, I need to get ready for my date.”

Ivy called Duke and wrestled his leash back onto him. They left the dog park and Kara only looked over her shoulder at the woman and her child once.