and perceives that these wealthy young women have wronged him somehow. He’s exacting punishment. He’s coming. He can’t help himself.”
Laura Austin-Mayweather’s shocked gasp pretty much summed up the growing tension in the room. These people were talking about ongoing cases and estate security, placing blame and deflecting accusations. He was talking about one woman. “He’s already here. If you’re so smart, Montgomery, tell me—how do you plan to identify your killer and catch him before he succeeds in his quest?”
The detective’s light-colored eyes barely blinked. He’d be a tough one to go up against in a poker game. “We were misled by the gang involvement when he went after Miss Kline. But we know how he works now. We set up twenty-four-hour surveillance on Miss Mayweather, tap her phones and the security cameras here. Any time he calls we need to keep him talking as long as possible to help us pinpoint a location, or get some clue to his identity. The next time he delivers a message or tries to approach her, in any disguise, we’ll be ready.”
“That’s your plan? First, she’s too fragile, and now you’re using Charlotte as bait?”
“I hope that we can assemble evidence from enough of these stalking incidents to piece together their source— where he’s getting his inside information on these women. We find the common link and we can zero in on him.”
Trip scrubbed his hand over his jaw, not believing what he was hearing. “So you’re hoping this bastard terrorizes Charlotte long enough before killing her so that you can find your answers?”
“It’s a difficult choice, but I’ll be saving lives in the long run.”
“You’re not saving hers.” Trip turned to Jackson. “And you support this idiotic idea?”
“If we don’t find a way to catch him, my daughter will die—if not by his hand, then by driving her mad. I nearly lost her once—when she came back from those kidnappers, she was broken. I won’t let that happen again.”
Just a few long strides took Trip around the table and put him in Montgomery’s face. “How do you protect Charlotte when your unsub is living or working or regularly visiting in the same house where she lives? She has a fear of strangers. But how does she identify the enemy when all of your suspects are people she knows? How do you? She’ll be dead in her locked-up room before you figure it out.”
The huffing noise of a panting dog made Trip’s heart sink.
He spotted the red glasses and muddy jeans as soon as Charlotte appeared in the archway to the dining room. Max sat beside her, his leash held in a white-knuckled grip. She’d heard every word out of his big, stupid mouth. “Interesting plan. Maybe someone should ask me first.”
“AND YOU WONDER WHY I have trust issues. Now I can’t even mourn in peace.”
Trip stood at the bathroom door watching Charlotte, leaning over the edge of the tub, rinsing the last of the mud and suds from Max’s fur. Her bottom bobbed up and down as she moved, and he rolled his eyes away so he could concentrate on the discussion and not the distraction of all those curves emphasized by her clingy wet clothes. The woman really did have a seriously sweet figure, and a surprisingly sharp tongue for someone the rest of the world considered an introvert.
“I can’t believe it, all of you eating breakfast, plotting ways to intensify my nightmare or even get me killed.”
“I was the one defending you in there.”
She shut off the water and warned Max to stay put. “Because I’m too incompetent to defend myself?”
“Because you weren’t there.” Trip picked up one of the towels stacked on the toilet lid and handed it to her. She wrapped the towel around Max and rocked back on her heels as the dog climbed out of the tub. “Personally, I think Montgomery’s plan sucks. There has to be more investigating he can do, more suspects he can bring in, more clues he can uncover before resorting to surveilling you and hoping something new breaks on the case.”
Max licked her face while she toweled him dry—the perfect excuse for not making eye contact with him, the perfect barrier for keeping Trip at a distance. “Detective Montgomery told me he’s been investigating the RGK murders for two years now. I suppose he’s getting desperate. He must be if he thinks I can help him.”
“You don’t have to do this, Charlotte. Your father thinks catching the killer is the only way to save your life. But I don’t think he fully realizes the risk he’s taking.”
“And you do?”
“You do, too.” She was the only person in this house who’d been the victim of a violent crime. She knew better than any one of her well-meaning family the emotional and potentially deadly price they were asking of her. “Tell them no.”
Charlotte’s cheeks paled at the grim reminder. But her only response was to let the dog loose. The dog took two steps and shook himself from nose to tail, spraying water all over the bathroom—and Trip’s uniform. Point made. Discussion over. Shut up, already.
Or not. After letting out the stopper in the tub, Charlotte picked up a second towel and crawled around the bathroom, wiping splatters of water off the cabinets, walls and fixtures. “You said I could change things. That I didn’t have to be afraid the rest of my life.”
“I didn’t mean this.” Trip stepped aside to let the dog trot into the sitting room to find a warm spot on the rug to take a nap.
“How then?” Charlotte shifted her attention to the floor, mopping up the trail Max had made across the tiles. “One thing I agree with Detective Montgomery on is that this sicko will come after me again. He’ll leave a note or make a call—I haven’t revisited everything that happened during my kidnapping yet, and he’s enjoying the game too much. It’s like he was there. But those men are all in prison. How can he know so much about those weeks I was a hostage? Why is he doing this to me?”
“Charlotte.” Trip knelt down and pulled the towel from her hand.
She snatched the towel right back and kept working. “If I’m the one he’ll make contact with, then maybe I should help capture him. That’s being strong, isn’t it? I’d be taking control of my life, instead of the life outside these doors controlling me. Right?”
“It’s a crapshoot. I wasn’t talking about risking your life yesterday.”
Her hands stilled for a moment and she looked straight at him. “But catching him would make him stop, right?”
Oh, God. Those had better not be tears glinting in her eyes. Now Trip was the one rocking back on his heels as her pain, her bravery, her desperation twisted something deep inside him. But this was a woman he couldn’t lie to. “I think the threats will only escalate until we arrest him or—”
“—he kills me.”
“I don’t like that option.”
Trip’s husky whisper held her attention for one hushed, intimate moment in time.
And then she reached beneath her glasses to wipe the moisture from her eyes and resumed her work on the floor. “That’s why Dad is paying you to be my bodyguard, isn’t it?”
“I work for KCPD, not your father.”
After
