She managed to send him what she hoped was a playful glance. “Is that a threat?”
“A promise.” With fluid ease he was upright, reaching out to pull her to her feet. Then, before she could guess his intention, he had leaned down to steal a brief, toe-curling kiss. “I intend to make you scream my name before I’m done.”
Lost in the dark heat of his eyes, Annie didn’t doubt him for a minute.
Chapter Ten
Annie expected the two-hour drive to be awkward.
She wasn’t familiar with unfulfilled sexual tension, but she assumed it would make her time with Rafe uncomfortable.
Instead, Rafe had kept her entertained with stories of his ranch and his numerous renovation mishaps, deliberately putting her at ease.
The knowledge stole another little piece of her heart and, even more dangerous, it threatened to fracture the wall of protection she had built around herself.
His charming distraction worked until they at last pulled into the narrow parking lot on the edge of town.
Annie leaned forward, peering through the gathering gloom to study the line of brick buildings that consumed the entire block.
She grimaced. The apartments looked like rows of squat, gray blocks shoved together with miniscule balconies and a view of a nearby trailer park.
“They all look the same,” she muttered, discovering a newfound appreciation for her condo in Denver.
Rafe nodded. “A perfect place to blend in.”
True. The apartments looked like a million others spread around the country.
Cheap. Impersonal. Unremarkable.
The sort of place for people who’d hit hard times. Or were running from something.
“Do you think he’s hiding?”
Rafe shrugged. “I think it’s suspicious he disappeared just after the crimes were committed,” he said.
She bit her bottom lip. Her memory of Brody Johnson was fuzzy, but she recalled a red-faced, infuriated man who’d screamed in a drunken rage before he’d taken a swing at her father. “So do I.”
He unlocked his seat belt and reached beneath the seat to grab his handgun, making sure it was loaded and the safety on before he shoved it in the waistband of his jeans. “You could wait here—”
“No.”
His jaw tightened at her abrupt interruption, but he reached to open the glove compartment and pulled out a stun gun.
“I thought you were going to say that,” he muttered, pressing the small black object into her hand. “Here.”
She sent him a startled frown. “I don’t need this, I have pepper spray.”
“Keep it.”
“You carry a handgun under your seat, surveillance equipment in your toolbox, and a stun gun in your glove compartment,” she muttered. “What kind of security do you do?”
He flashed a quick smile. “The fun kind.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure our ideas of fun are the same.”
His expression softened, his dark eyes lowering to her lips. “They could be.”
Oh Lord.
“Focus,” she warned, not sure if she was speaking to Rafe or herself.
He grabbed her braid, tugging her forward to press a fleeting kiss to her lips before he was shoving open his door and stepping out of the truck.
Annie swiftly joined him as he crossed the shadowed lot, his gaze in constant movement as he searched for hidden enemies.
They used the side stairs to climb to the third floor and pulled open a glass door that wasn’t locked. The town was larger than Newton, but the need for security was a low priority. Then they walked down the narrow hall, which smelled like stale cigarettes and musty carpet.
Halting in front of the door marked 3F, Rafe sent her a warning glance. “Stay behind me.”
Annie rolled her eyes as she gave a shake of her head. Rafe Vargas might be insanely sexy, but he was also bossy as hell.
Heaving a resigned sigh, Rafe lifted his hand to rap his knuckles on the door. There was a short pause before the man pulled it open without bothering to put the security chain in place.
He was as tall and thin as Annie remembered, but the years hadn’t been kind to Brody Johnson.
His face looked gaunt, with deep lines fanning out from the pale blue eyes. His brown hair that had once been a shaggy mane had thinned to mere wisps, and his shoulders were stooped.
He might be in his midthirties, but he looked at least ten years older.
“Yeah?” he groused, clearly hoping they were the pizza deliveryman.
“Brody Johnson?” Rafe asked.
It took a beat before the man realized his cover was blown.
“Shit.” He took an instinctive step backward. “Who are you?”
Quick to take advantage of the man’s shock, Rafe grabbed her arm and stepped into the apartment, closing the door behind Annie.
“I just have a few questions,” he said, his voice and manner filled with the sort of authority that easily convinced the nervous Brody they were there on official business.
The man held up his hands, his expression wary. “Look, I don’t want any trouble.”
“No trouble.” Rafe folded his arms over his chest, while Annie glanced around the apartment. There wasn’t much to see. A cramped living room with secondhand furniture, connected to a narrow kitchen. Through an open doorway she could see the bedroom and a bathroom that clearly needed a good cleaning. “Answer my questions and we’ll be on our way.”
“Fuck.” Brody shoved unsteady fingers through what was left of his hair. “If this has something to do with the women who’re missing in Newton, I don’t know nothing about them.”
Rafe narrowed his eyes. “You heard about that?”
Brody pointed toward the newspaper that had been tossed on the moss-green carpet. “Who hasn’t?”
Rafe looked unimpressed. “When was the last time you were in Newton?”
“I left fifteen years ago and never looked back.”
“People said you disappeared in the middle of the night.”
Brody hunched his stooped shoulders. “Wasn’t anything there for me.”
“And that’s all there was to your abrupt departure?” Rafe pressed, not bothering to disguise his disbelief.
“People move all the time.”
“Yeah, but they don’t change their names.”
Annie remained silent during the tense exchange, watching the emotions flit over Brody’s pale face.
Annoyance. Caution. And an unmistakable fear.
The questions were bringing up more than bad memories.
They were spooking him.
But why?
“I’d finally gotten sober.” He tried to bluster. “I wanted a fresh start.”
Rafe gave an incredulous snort. “And a fresh start included going underground and using a false identity?”
Brody parted his lips only to abruptly stiffen as he took a closer survey of their casual clothing and Annie’s obvious unease. “You aren’t cops,” he snapped.
Rafe moved forward, his aggression prickling in the air.
“Answer the questions.”
Brody seemed to shrink beneath the force of Rafe’s more dominant personality, but there was a petulant twist to his lips.
Brody was weak, but he didn’t respond well to the threat of being bullied.
“Rafe,” she murmured, touching his arm as she moved to stand between the two men. She patiently waited until Brody gave her his full attention. “You probably don’t remember me, I’m Annie White.”
“Annie who?” He frowned before his eyes abruptly widened. “Oh hell. You’re the daughter.”
She swallowed a humorless burst of laughter.
Once she’d been Annie White. The sweet, always-with-her-head-in-the-clouds girl with the pigtails.
Now she was “the daughter.” The spawn of the Newton Slayer.
“Yes,” she said.
Oddly, the fear only deepened in the blue eyes.
?
??Who sent you?” Brody rasped.
She raised her brows in confusion. “No one. I swear.”
He sent a nervous glance toward the yellowed blinds that covered the window. “Then what do you want from me?”
She kept her tone soothing. The man was skittish about something. “I’m worried.”
“About what?”
She didn’t have to fake her expression of regret. Dragging up the past was clearly as sucky for Brody Johnson as it was for her. “As much as we might both wish to put Newton behind us, we can’t. Not when women have started going missing again,” she said with a stark simplicity. “It’s up to us to try and stop it.”
He shook his head, his face paling to a sickly shade of ash. “It can’t be. The Newton Slayer is dead.”
Annie shrugged. None of them could afford to have their heads stuck in the sand. “Then we have a new Slayer.”
“You’re sure?” he muttered.
“No one can be sure. Not yet,” she admitted, holding his gaze as she took a step forward. Or at least she tried to take a step forward. She was brought to a sharp halt as Rafe grabbed the waistband of her jeans and tugged her back. Swallowing a sigh, she ignored the possessive hand that remained on her lower back. “But we can’t wait.”
Brody shifted nervously, clearly wishing he’d never opened his door. “What do you want from me?”
“I’m hoping that the past can help us find them before it’s too late.”
He was shaking his head before she finished speaking. “I told you. I don’t know anything about it.”
Without warning, Rafe was gently grabbing her upper arms and tugging her aside.
He was clearly done playing.
“Why did you leave Newton?” he demanded, pointing a finger in Brody’s face as the man’s lips parted. “Lie to me and I’m not going to be happy.”
There was a brief hesitation before Brody gave an explosive sigh, his hand scrubbing over his face in a gesture of bone-deep weariness. “Shit. I knew this would eventually come back and bite me.”
Rafe studied him with a steady gaze. “What would bite you?”
“Stay here.”
With jerky motions, Brody turned to head into his bedroom. At the same time, Rafe quickly jogged the short distance to the window, pulling back the blinds so he could peer outside.
“What are you doing?” Annie hissed.
“Making sure the bastard isn’t crawling out his bedroom window.”
“We’re three stories up.”
He sent her a dark, somber, too-knowing gaze. “Men will risk anything when they feel cornered.”
A tiny shiver inched down her spine.
She sensed he was intimately familiar with desperate men and the lengths they’d go to.
“I don’t think he’s going to run,” she said.
“Why not?”
“It’s not easy to live with a secret.”
Rafe winced at the soft words.
He understood exactly what she meant.
The visions.
They’d not only tormented her on a personal level, but they’d become a shame she couldn’t share. Not unless she wanted people to think she was crazy.
With an effort, Rafe resisted the urge to walk across the room and wrap Annie in his arms. Instead he pulled his firearm as Brody wandered back into the room, his hand digging into a small canvas bag. “Careful,” he growled in low tones.
Brody jerked his head up, his gaze latching onto the gun. “I don’t have any weapons,” he stuttered. “Not since I blasted off my little toe when I was sixteen.”
Rafe’s hand never wavered. “Then what’s in the bag?”
“It was supposed to be my retirement fund,” Brody said in disgust, tossing the bag onto the coffee table in the center of the room. “Instead it nearly got me dead.”
Rafe inched forward, keeping his gaze latched on Brody.
Of course, Annie was there before him, the stun gun he’d given her already consigned to her purse. He cursed as she reached into the bag to pull out a stack of 8x10 black-and-white photos, blatantly ignoring his glare of frustration.
Christ, once they were alone they were going to have a long talk about her lack of caution.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
Peering over her shoulder, he was immediately distracted.
The sight of dead bodies tended to do that.
“What the hell?” Plucking the photos from Annie’s unresisting fingers, he swiftly glanced through them. There were seven graphic pictures of individual women stretched on a cement floor with their throats slit and their eyes staring sightlessly at the camera. And others of the bodies piled in the corner of what Rafe suspected was Don White’s bomb shelter. No doubt that was how the murdered women were first discovered. His stomach clenched with horror even as he lifted his head to glare at the silent Brody. “Start at the beginning.”
Brody grimaced, wiping his hands on his jeans as if he felt contaminated by simply touching the canvas bag.
Rafe knew the feeling.
“If you’ve been to Newton you know I wasn’t exactly a choirboy,” the man muttered. “I drank too much, smoked weed, hung out with the wrong crowd.”
Rafe held up the photos. “Did your bad habits include any crimes?”
“None that included death or mutilation,” Brody said, a visible shudder racing through his too-thin body. Rafe suspected it was real. The man wasn’t that good an actor. “Mainly I was a petty thief,” Brody admitted. “And occasionally I . . . sold information.”
“You were a snitch?” Rafe demanded, surprised the cops would use intel given to them by a habitual drunk.
Brody shrugged. “I gave up the names of a few local dealers for the reward money.”
“That must have made you unpopular in a town as small as Newton,” Rafe drawled.
“I did a lot of things that made me unpopular.” Brody abruptly glanced toward Annie. “I’m sorry.”
She blinked, giving a shake of her head as if she was still lost in shock from the disturbing pictures. “For what?”
“For making a scene at the diner.” Brody grimaced. “I was angry at my parents for selling the farm and I took it out on your father.”
“It’s the past,” Annie said, too kindhearted to point out that he’d done more than yell at the man who bought his farm. He’d terrified a young girl.
“Yeah.”
Rafe bent to tuck the pictures back into the bag before moving closer to Annie.
She’d lived through the nightmare of being in that bomb shelter. She didn’t need photographic reminders.
“You were going to tell us how you got the pictures,” he prompted Brody.
“My point was that people around Newton knew I’d do anything for a few bucks or a six-pack,” he said.
Rafe studied the man’s bleak expression. “Anything?”
“Unfortunately.” Brody shoved his hands in his front pockets, his voice filled with self-loathing. “God, I was such a fuckup.”
On the point of agreeing, Rafe was halted when Annie gave his arm a warning squeeze.
“We all make mistakes,” she assured the older man. “Can you tell us what happened?”
Brody took a long minute before he gave a jerky nod of his head, blatantly swayed by Annie’s sweet charm.
Who wasn’t?
“I was living in a shitty trailer on the edge of town,” he grudgingly shared, his voice hoarse. “One night I came home—drunk as usual—and someone shoved a bag over my head and pinned me against the side of my truck.”
“Since I doubt it was a robbery, I assume they wanted something from you?” Rafe asked in dry tones.
“They gave me an option.” His short burst of laughter was filled with more pain than humor. “I could earn three hundred dollars for burning down the old courthouse or I could have a bullet put through my brains.”
“What was in the courthouse?” Annie asked the question that was on Rafe’s lips.
&n
bsp; “Nothing as far as I knew,” Brody said, a strange edge in his voice. “It’d been abandoned for years.”
Rafe cocked a brow. “You agreed to burn it?”
“Hell yeah.” Brody looked at Rafe as if he’d lost his mind. “I had the barrel of a gun shoved under my chin. I would have agreed to set fire to the entire town.” He gave a lift of his shoulder. “Besides, three hundred dollars would keep me in booze and weed for weeks.”
“Nice.” Rafe curled his lips. He tried to have empathy for others. No one was perfect. But this man . . .
Christ.
Brody flushed. “It’s the truth.”
Annie gave his arm another squeeze, her gaze remaining on Brody. “So what happened?”
The man dropped his gaze to the tips of his worn boots. “I slept off my hangover, and the next night I broke into the courthouse with a can of gasoline and a lighter.”
“Was anyone else there?” Rafe asked.
“No, it was empty. Or at least I didn’t see anyone when I headed to the basement,” he amended. “What I did see was a shitload of boxes stacked to the ceiling.”
Annie frowned in confusion. “Boxes?”
Rafe stiffened, instantly making the connection between an old government building and a timely fire that occurred only days after the Newton Slayer was killed in jail.
“Evidence,” he said, slowly lowering the gun, although he kept it in his hand.
Annie gave a shake of her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Teagan said the evidence gathered after the murders was destroyed in a fire.”
Annie sucked in a shocked breath, turning her gaze back to Brody. “You burned the evidence?”
“I didn’t know what it was at first,” he protested, no doubt accustomed to trying to minimize his stupid decisions. “I opened a few boxes and it looked like a bunch of worthless paper. My first thought was that it was the perfect tinder to get the fire really going.” His gaze flicked toward the bag in the middle of the floor. “Then I caught sight of a box that was marked ‘Newton Slayer.’”
“That’s where you found the photos?” Rafe demanded.
“Yeah. They were on top of a bunch of plastic bags filled with bloody clothes and other crap from the crime scene.”
“Why would you take them?” Annie asked, astonishingly innocent despite the trauma of her past.