Undercover Hunter Read online

  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 t
ongue 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.”

  “To a point, that’s possible. Asphyxiation inside a bag takes a long time, though, and usually induces a hell of a fight. But did you see a tox screen in there? For any of them?”

  Her head jerked a little. “No. Fill me in.”

  “It’s speculation, but think about it. They go with him willingly. Maybe he even turns his little plastic handcuffs into some kind of game so they don’t fight too hard. Maybe they don’t fight at all. At least not until they realize something bad is happening. But apparently that didn’t last too long. Abrasions were actually minor, given the circumstances. I’d have expected raw skin from a violent struggle, especially once their faces were covered with plastic. Some evidence of a blow or two. But it’s not there. Just like the toxicology isn’t there.”

  She was beginning to see it but wanted to hear his scenario. “Tell me.”

  “Okay, our perp establishes himself with the kid. Friendly. Nice. Someone they can talk to, whatever. Regardless, he gains their confidence. At some point they go off with him. He creates a game for them that gets them to acquiesce to the cuffs. With a kid that age it wouldn’t be hard. Maybe part of the game is wrapping them in plastic up to a point.”

  “I can’t imagine a game like this.”

  “We don’t really need to, although I have some ideas. Just keep in mind the age of the victims. God knows how he got them to go as far as they did, but it’s apparent from the autopsies that there was very little violence or struggle. So just accept the premise for a moment. All these kids were reaching toward adolescence, becoming sexually aware and maybe even active to a point. He could have promised them the best sexual experience of their lives. I don’t know. Just stick with the point—he got them bound before they knew they were in trouble.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. She tried to take a bite of toast, but finally put it down. “You’ve mentioned toxicology twice.”

  “Because it’s missing. My scenario is that he gets these kids to cooperate until nearly the last minute. Then, like your spider, he stings them.”

  Everything inside her froze. She stared blindly, absorbing what he was saying. “Oh. My. God.”

  “A paralytic maybe, so he can finish wrapping them and watch them suffocate. I’d like to think he knocked them out, but...” He shook his head. “
Not likely. He had to get something out of this. Your spider analogy really got me to thinking. Spiders paralyze their prey before they wrap them. And there’s not one tox screen in the bunch. The cause of death seemed obvious, so why look any further? Hell, nobody would have thought to look for a minute needle puncture, especially with bodies that old, however well preserved. Decomposition would probably have made it all but impossible, and I doubt anyone even considered it. They thought they had all the pieces.”

  A nauseating feeling washed over her in waves, and she put her head in her hands. She’d forgotten the towel wrapped around her head, but as it started to tumble, Cade moved swiftly to catch it. She was vaguely aware that he tossed it over the back of a chair.

  “DeeJay?”

  “Give me a minute,” she said, her voice muffled. “I’m not feeling well.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  What he said made perfect sense, but the imagery horrified her. A few minutes passed before her stomach stopped rolling over. Finally, she reluctantly reached for the toast as a way to settle the rest of her nausea. Maybe some jam would help it go down. She scooped some onto it.

  “Adolescence,” she said. “That’s probably a key point.”

  “It seems obvious now.”

  “I was thinking small, easy to take and handle, but what you just said...”

  “Boys that age would be easy to get that way. They’re a bundle of walking, raging hormones. Adventurous, too. Think of all the autoerotic strangulations.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  He paused. “You’ve dealt with it?”

  “Unfortunately. One case. It didn’t require a whole lot of investigation. The file was closed almost immediately, but I’m sure the hell continued for his parents.”

  “Yeah, it would. DeeJay, eat. You haven’t slept, now you’re not eating. I need a partner.”

  She bit into the toast. Not even the jam could keep it from tasting like dry cardboard. The hell of it was, she could see the ugly logic in what he was suggesting. All of it. However twisted it might be, there was always some kind of purpose behind what a serial killer did. Some kind of play or scenario in their own heads that they acted out at the expense of others. Whether they felt empowered by their actions or got some kind of sexual thrill, there was always a reason for their rituals.