Forbidden Temptation. Paula Graves
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name. Alice Donovan. A quick Internet search had connected her to a flower shop on Twentieth Street. He made a note in his day planner to stop by the place later that afternoon, see if the other employees could help him flesh out who she was and how she might have ended up at the mercy of a killer.
He’d had less luck with the dark-haired woman he’d seen at the pub the night before. He had her address now, but the reverse directory updated once a year. Apparently she’d moved into the house on Mountain Avenue less than a year ago.
He let it go, for now. Steve, his teaching assistant, had e-mailed some new information that needed his attention.
Steve had attached three new articles, two from Tennessee and one from Arkansas, all dated between six and nine months earlier. They filled in a gap between the Colbert County murders and the Texas murders he’d documented last year.
The killer he’d informally dubbed Orion, after the hunter in mythology, seemed to move around a lot. From job to job? Or did his job allow him to travel widely and at will? It was a question Daniel hadn’t yet answered to his own satisfaction. A traveling salesman would make a lot of sense, considering how widespread the murders were. But his crimes also seemed to indicate a certain level of trust on the part of his victims—he couldn’t have killed so many women without being caught if women were wary about him.
Maybe there wasn’t just one killer. Maybe he was all wrong and Orion was a series of different killers with similar M.O.s and signatures. It was possible, wasn’t it?
Maybe he was seeing what he wanted to see, putting together patterns that didn’t really exist because he needed those patterns to take shape and make sense of a mystery he’d been trying to solve for the past thirteen years.
Daniel scrubbed his hands over his gritty eyes, thinking back to the shock of seeing Frank Carter at the crime scene that morning. His memory of Tina’s brother was little more than a series of snapshots frozen in time: Frank watching from the stairs as Daniel picked up Tina for a college formal. Frank eyeing Daniel’s new Firebird with all the hungry interest of a fifteen-year-old with a learner’s permit burning a hole in the pocket of his Levi’s.
Frank’s dark, tragic eyes as he watched the shiny silver casket being lowered into the grave bearing a simple gray stone marked with his sister’s name.
Did Frank see the similarities? The telltale slash marks, the obscene pose mimicking peaceful death? Surely, he did. How could he not?
He wondered, with envy, if Frank had been able to let go of that one violence-stained moment of his life and move on. Maybe he didn’t spend his free time obsessing on crime stats and police reports, looking for those key similarities that might suggest Tina’s killer was still out there, still taking lives.
Still catchable.
Good for him if he didn’t. Good for him if he could close his eyes at night and sleep in peace. Daniel couldn’t.
He hadn’t slept peacefully in thirteen years.
MELISSA BANNERMAN slumped in the armchair across from Rose, her expression stunned. “Someone murdered her? Last night?”
Rose nodded.
“My God.” Tears welled up in Melissa’s eyes, spilling down her cheeks. “Oh, my God.”
“I hate being the one to have to tell you—”
“How did you find out?”
“I heard it on the radio, just before you got here.” The two o’clock news report had finally confirmed what Rose had already known. Alice Donovan was dead.
“My God. Her poor parents.” Melissa shook her head.
“I called the flower shop this morning like I said I would,” Rose added. It was the truth, if an incomplete version. “The woman who answered was obviously upset when I asked for Alice. I managed to get her to tell me that Alice hadn’t shown up at work on time and they couldn’t reach her at home.”
“She lives only a block from here.” Melissa wiped her cheeks, her expression slack and numb.
“I’d gotten that out of her employee. I went to check, but the police had arrived, and I’d thought it best to get out of the way.”
“Was she in her apartment?”
“The news reports don’t say.”
“She just had a new alarm system put in her apartment. I told her it was overkill, but there’ve been two murders in the neighborhood recently, and she didn’t feel safe.” Melissa sniffled. “God, what about funeral arrangements?”
“I imagine there’ll be some delay, given the circumstances. Give her family time to process everything, and they’ll be in touch, I’m sure.” Rose took a deep breath. “Will you let me know when you get the details? I’d like to pay my respects.”
That wasn’t the truth; she could think of a million things she’d rather do than attend Alice Donovan’s funeral. But she knew in her bones that he’d be there. The one who’d killed her.
So she had to be there, too.
“The other murders—they were both young women, too, weren’t they?” Melissa asked.
“Yes.” Sherry Nicholson had been twenty-eight, Elisa Biondi twenty-six. Both had lived in Southside and both had been to Southside bars within a day or two of their deaths.
“I don’t want to think about my wedding today.” Melissa stood and wiped her eyes. “It’s too cruel, thinking happy thoughts today. I’ll call Monday and we’ll regroup from there.”
Rose saw her out, watching from the doorway until she was safely to her car in Rose’s driveway. As Melissa backed her Lexus onto Mountain Avenue, Rose started to close the door.
Until she caught sight of the blue sedan across the street.
A ripple of unease fluttered through her. The windows of the car were tinted dark, but she could make out the shape of someone in the driver’s seat.
Heart thudding, she went back inside the house and locked the door behind her, taking deep breaths to calm herself.
It could be nothing. A salesman between appointments, pulled over to talk on his cell phone. Someone considering one of the empty apartments dotted along Mountain Avenue.
Or the man who’d accosted her this morning on her way back from Alice’s.
She peered out the tall, narrow window that flanked the door, hoping the bright daylight would hide her from view.
The sedan was gone.
She slumped against the wall, not sure whether to be relieved or alarmed.
HIS HEART POUNDED a swift, steady cadence, blood rushing in his ears. He always felt energized after he took his prey, but this time was different in an entirely unexpected way.
Because of her.
The pretty brunette who’d tried to warn Alice that she was going to die.
He hadn’t planned to kill sweet Alice last night. He’d noticed her when she arrived at the club, her wavy dark hair spilling around her shoulders in soft waves. Pretty in an obvious way, she’d fascinated him with her reckless need to dance off whatever was bothering her. He’d fantasized about the first cut, the blood trickling over her pink cheeks and down into the cleft between her full breasts. But he hadn’t planned to kill her. Until he’d heard the other woman’s warning.
“I see death.”
Somehow, she’d known, even before he’d made his selection. She’d known that Alice was the one.
When she’d showed up outside Alice’s apartment this morning, he’d known for certain that something special was happening.
He’d found his muse.
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