Undercover Hunter (13 page)

The spider wasn’t particular about what it caught. It didn’t limit its meals to flies or small beetles—it ate whatever tumbled into its web. He wished he had an offering for it, but the best he could do was leave some rotting food in the corner. Maggots grew on it, and eventually they became winged and fed themselves to the spider.

Some were tiny little fruit flies. Some were as big as deerflies. The spider had even caught a couple of moths.

No, it wasn’t so particular. Maybe he didn’t need to be, either.

So he left the room, turning out the light, and paced the house some more. Rubbing at his skin to assuage the crawling sensation helped until he realized he was bleeding again. So he went to the sink and washed and put on a bandage.

The woman. Maybe she really was his type after all. A life was a life, after all. He suspected she was long past purification but...it
was
purification. No reason it could only be achieved by the young.

Finally, focusing at last, he sat again and thought about her. How he might be able to get her.

Like the spider, he vastly preferred to have his prey come to him. Now he just had to figure out how to get her to come. First, he had to meet her. That was essential to drawing her in.

He’d find a way. After all, he’d gotten through the first three boys and he still didn’t see a bunch of FBI agents wandering around town. Stupid sheriff thought he could find Calvin all on his own.

Well, Calvin was about to surprise him.

Chapter 8

T
he storm continued to blow throughout the night. When fatigue finally caught up with DeeJay and Cade, it somehow seemed natural that they went to bed together. Stupid, now, for her to sleep on the couch.

But they didn’t make love. Almost by silent agreement, they snuggled in, out of the cold, and offered the kind of comfort only closeness could.

Things were almost back to normal, DeeJay thought as she drifted off to sleep. Normal...

She awoke from a nightmare. The wind still howled outside, though less violently, and the darkness blanketed everything. Breathing rapidly, her heart racing, she slipped out of bed and pulled on her slippers and fleece bathrobe. After a quick trip to the bathroom, she went back out into the kitchen and defiantly turned on lights and started coffee.

She’d had nightmares before, but this one was directly related to the case. She’d been struggling against bindings, trapped in a stickiness she couldn’t escape, watching in horror as a giant spider began to move toward her.

Just a nightmare, she told herself, reaching for calm. If ever a case was designed to give her horrific dreams, this one was it.

She was standing at the coffeepot, watching it brew, when Cade’s voice startled her.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

She whipped around to see him standing there in jeans he hadn’t yet buttoned, his feet bare, a sweatshirt in his hand.

“Just a bad dream.”

“Must have been more than bad.” He raised his arms to pull on the sweatshirt, and even in her disturbed state she registered the smooth ripple of muscles over his torso.

“I still feel as if someone walked over my grave,” she admitted, then turned to face the coffeepot again. Awareness of Cade’s sexiness wasn’t going to help anything at all.

But then his arms closed around her from behind. “This entire case is a nightmare. I’m not surprised it’s getting into your sleep.”

“I was trapped,” she confessed. “In a big spiderweb and it was coming for me.”

She felt him kiss the back of her head. “Ugh.”

That about covered it, she thought. The coffeepot finished brewing, and Cade reached around her, bringing out two fresh cups. Still standing behind her like a bulwark, he filled them.

“You ready to sit?” he asked.

“You can go back to bed,” she said. She was used to dealing with things by herself and feared the closeness growing between them.

“Yeah, right,” he said.

They moved to the living room. He turned on all the lights as if to drive back the remnants of her dream and sat beside her on the couch. He didn’t say anything, giving her the space to just think or to talk as she chose.

“I wish,” she said slowly, “that I thought it was just all this thinking I’ve been doing about spiders.”

“But?”

“You heard what Gage said. I look like this guy’s type. I guess that got to me more than I thought at the time.”

Cade frowned down at his legs for a few seconds. “I dismissed it, too. Really. You’re a woman, and you’re taller. Not his profile.”

She heard something in his tone, however. Her heart skipped uncomfortably. “But? There’s a but in there.”

“Sometimes these guys break their own profile. I don’t have to tell you that. I don’t blame you for being uneasy, even if it’s only coming out in your dreams.”

She looked at him, searching his face, then stared across the room as the truth of his words sank home. “Yeah. Sometimes they do.”

He slipped his arm around her shoulder, offering her comfort. “What do you want to do?” he asked finally. “We still have time before he should act again unless he’s accelerating. If you want, we can get you out of here and bring in someone else.”

“No!” The word erupted from her with force. She turned to face him again.

He spread his hand. “Okay, okay. I just want you to know that you have options here. You wouldn’t be the first person who couldn’t work a serial killer case.”

“I’m not going to let a nightmare scare me off. Or some stupid remark that probably means nothing...”

Then her voice trailed off as another thought struck her.

“DeeJay?”

She bit her lip so hard she feared she would break the skin. “What if Gage is right? I know it seemed to come out of nowhere when he said it, I know there’s no reason to think it was anything but a stray thought. But it remains—sometimes stray thoughts pop up for a reason.”

He thought it over. “Maybe. It’s possible.”

“I thought of the spiderweb thing, and we’re thinking that I’m right. Where the hell did that come from? Something niggled at me. Maybe something niggled at Gage, as well. No way to know.”

His arm tightened a bit around her shoulders. “Say he picked up on something. No way to be sure, as you said, but you’re never going to be alone.”

She shook her head as a sudden resolve poured through her. “We have to be proactive.”

“DeeJay—”

She interrupted without apology. “No, Cade. If there’s even a small chance that Gage sensed something important, we have to take it before a new boy disappears. I need to make myself available. I need to take the risk.”

“No. I can’t allow that. Even on the slim possibility that Gage picked up on something, it’s too dangerous.”

“Not really. Our perp is used to charming kids. He’s never dealt with an army MP before.”

She waited for him to argue, but he didn’t. A long time later he said heavily, “No, he hasn’t. But if you’re going to try this, we’re going to plan it very carefully. I don’t want any slipups if he moves against you.”

“I’ll be his biggest slipup if he does,” she said firmly. She’d dealt with nearly every kind of creep, some of them at the end of her fists. She knew she could take care of herself. She knew it in her bones.

But that didn’t make it any easier to think about. This guy was truly unhinged in ways she could scarcely imagine, and that made him dangerous in a whole different way.

Silence fell inside the house while the storm howled its fury outside. Chilly drafts crept through the place like unseen ghosts wafting here and there.

“I’ve got to think about this,” Cade said finally. “Really think about it. And we need to talk it over with Gage. He’s the boss, we’re just here to assist.”

“Fair enough,” she agreed. But her stomach had turned into a hard lump, and her fists clenched tight. Maybe she was losing her mind at last. It was always possible. The link between her and this killer was virtually nonexistent, other than that one man thought she resembled the victims. It would probably be a waste of time, she told herself. She was the wrong sex, the wrong height for this guy.

But that didn’t mean squat. Like it or not, these types sometimes changed their patterns, breaking their own molds.

“One thing,” she said finally.

“Yeah?”

“Whatever we decide to do about my suggestion, we have to keep looking at everything else. I don’t want to waste time because I have a feeling.”

“Of course not. We’ll keep on looking for the needle in this huge haystack by every means.” He caught her chin in his hand and urged her to look straight at him. “Whether you agree or not, Gage has the final word.”

“I can take orders,” she answered stiffly, staring into aquamarine eyes in which she could have cheerfully drowned at another time.

He sighed. “Yeah, you can take orders. Like you took the order not to pursue your last investigation in the army. Sure, I’m counting on that.”

His response shook her out of the cloud of doom that had been hovering around her since she woke from the nightmare. She jerked her chin free of his gentle grip and shoved his arm lightly. “Don’t be an ass, Cade. I said Gage had the final word.”

He just shook his head. “I want one promise.”

She hesitated. “If I can.”

“That you won’t try to do something on your own if you don’t agree with Gage or me. At least for the love of heaven, let us know.”

“If time allows.”

“If time allows?” He shook his head almost fiercely. “I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours, but I swear, DeeJay, you’re going to drive me nuts. Totally bonkers. Rule number one—never keep your partner in the dark. Hear?”

“I hear. And I’m not planning anything crazy. Mainly I want to see if I get approached in some way that doesn’t seem exactly right. I’m not looking to wind up in the spider’s web.”

He closed his eyes. “Famous last words.”

They turned out to be the last words for a while. She had no idea what drove him, but he scooped her up as if she weighed nothing at all and carried her back to the bed.

It was a good thing she didn’t feel like sleeping, because he showed her he could do as much with his tongue as he could with his hands.

Startled, transported by a new experience, she felt worshipped. He started at her feet, first rubbing them gently until she couldn’t help relaxing. Then he bent and ran his tongue along the arch of each foot. He might as well have plugged her into an electric socket. She felt the zap of desire from her feet to her head and arched helplessly.

Then he dragged his tongue up the insides of her legs, pausing at times to just kiss her. By the time he reached the insides of her knees, she knew she had never felt so cherished.

Higher he moved, parting her legs gently, approaching but not quite reaching their apex. The desires he woke in her felt like a spell. She couldn’t have stopped him to save her life, couldn’t have resisted even a little bit.

Just as she thought he would at last kiss her very center, he moved up and began to trail his tongue from her neck down to her breasts. Helplessly, she clutched at his shoulders, torn between a need to have him hurry and a need for him to take forever. She never wanted this to stop.

Sheer torment and sheer delight met head-on in her as he found her breasts and sucked them as gently as he had licked and kissed her elsewhere. She grabbed his shoulders, trying to bring him closer, but he resisted. Clearly this was going to happen his way.

She groaned as his mouth left her breasts and worked its way down over her belly, causing muscles to ripple helplessly. “Cade...” His name was the only coherent word that escaped her. She was capable of nothing else.

Then, at long last, he closed his mouth over the sensitive nub of nerves between her legs, a sensation so intense that at once it hurt and felt so good she almost couldn’t bear it.

But he offered her no quarter, lashing her with his tongue, nipping gently with his teeth, carrying her to a mindless place where nothing existed except sensation. Colors exploded behind her eyelids, as if fireworks and rainbows were the only way she could process what was happening to her.

The explosion that tore through her made the entire world vanish. She might have fainted—she didn’t know and didn’t have time to wonder, because then he slid up over her and entered her, pumping into her until she began to fly all over again.

She knew the moment he found his own explosion of pleasure, but she followed him so swiftly it seemed simultaneous.

For a long time, she was aware of nothing except his weight on her.

* * *

She had no idea how much time passed. It seemed not to matter. He stirred first, rolling off her and pulling her close. They’d visited a realm she had never known existed. Visited worlds beyond her imaginings. She wished she dared to let him know how she felt.

She hoped he felt the same. And then she cursed her own weakness. For the first time it occurred to her that she might be seriously messed up.

A long, long time later, he sighed. “Did I make my point?” he asked.

“Mmm?” She still had hardly enough energy to speak.

“Take care of yourself. You matter to me.”

His concern warmed her almost as much as his way of showing it.

Reality, however, wouldn’t go away. The case insisted on creeping back into her mind—what they needed to do, the uncertain time frame before another youngster disappeared.

“You’re tensing again,” he remarked. “Okay. You hit the shower, I’ll make more coffee. It must be almost late enough to call Gage.”

* * *

She emerged into the kitchen wrapped again in her robe with a towel around her head. Fresh coffee was waiting, and she smelled toast.

“Grab a seat,” Cade said. “I’ll be calling Gage shortly.”

“How’s the weather?”

“It might have calmed a bit, but only a suicidal idiot or a plow driver would attempt to move out there.”

Instead of sitting, she went over to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, giving him a hug. “Thank you.”

He returned her hug, giving her a squeeze, as well. “I should thank you.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead, then said, “Now sit. Neither of us has had enough sleep, and I don’t want to burn the toast because you’re a major distraction.”

A silly smile twitched the corners of her mouth as she took a seat at the table. Maybe she wasn’t as messed up as she sometimes thought.

The table, where the files still sat stacked like a reminder, although it seemed to her that Cade might have been looking through them again this morning. “Find anything?” she asked.

He glanced over his shoulder. “In the files? No, and that started me thinking. Give me a minute to finish the toast.”

A short time later he put a huge stack of toast on the table along with their coffee. Two jars of jam and butter followed. She reached for a slice, picked up her knife and began to spread it with butter.

He set a mug of coffee in front of her, then sat in his own place. His hair was still mussed from bed, but he looked good enough to eat in a blue sweatshirt and jeans. Damn, she had to get her mind back on track.

“Okay,” he said, spreading his own toast with raspberry jam, “the thing that struck me was how little I found in the autopsy reports. Something is missing.”

She froze with the toast halfway to her mouth. “Missing?”

“Missing. You read them. Slow asphyxiation, proximate cause the plastic wrapping. No signs of strangulation, and minimal signs of a struggle against bindings.”

She nodded slowly. “But these were just terrified kids. They might not have been able to fight hard. Maybe they were too scared to fight.”