Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [122]
She heard the tears in his voice, though he tried his best to disguise them with anger. She reached out again, hesitated again, her hand hovering. Finally, she touched his shoulder. She expected him to bolt. Instead, he sat quietly. She stroked his shoulder blades and ran her hand over his back. When the comfort started turning too intimate for her, she pulled her hand away, but he reached up and caught it, gently trapping it in his large hand. He looked up at her and brought the palm of her hand to his face, rubbing it against his swollen jaw.
“I’m glad you’re here.” His eyes held hers. “Maggie…I think I—”
She snatched her hand back, suddenly uncomfortable with his attempted revelation. He was beyond flirting. She could see him testing, struggling with feelings she didn’t want to know about.
“Whatever happens, it won’t be your fault, Nick.” She changed the subject while pretending to be on it. “You’re doing everything possible. At some point you have to let yourself off the hook.”
He looked at her with that deep gaze, the one that made her feel as if he was searching her soul. “Your nightmares,” he said quietly. “You haven’t let yourself off the hook for something. What is it, Maggie? Is it Stucky?”
CHAPTER 74
“How do you know about Stucky?” Maggie sat up, trying to ward off the tension brought on by just the mention of his name.
“That night at my house, you yelled out his name several times. I thought you’d tell me about him. When you didn’t…well, I figured maybe it wasn’t any of my business. Maybe it’s still none of my business.”
“By now it’s a matter of public record.”
“Public record?”
“Albert Stucky is a serial killer I helped capture a little over a month ago. We nicknamed him The Collector. He’d kidnap two, three, sometimes four women at a time, keeping them, collecting them in some condemned building or abandoned warehouse. When he got tired of them, he killed them, slicing their bodies, bashing in their skulls, chewing off pieces of them.”
“Jesus, I thought this guy we’re chasing was screwed up.”
“Stucky is certainly one of a kind. It was my profile that identified him. Over the course of two years, we tracked him. Every time we got close, he moved to another part of the country. Somewhere along the line, Stucky discovered that I was the profiler. That’s when the game began.”
The moonlight flooded the office now. She glanced at him, uncomfortable under his penetrating blue eyes that were filled with as much concern as interest. He must have bitten down on his lip. It was bleeding again. She shifted, dug in her jacket pocket and pulled out a tissue, handing it to him. “You’re still bleeding.”
He ignored the tissue and wiped a sleeve across his mouth. “What else is new? I fight like a girl.” Then his expression went serious again. “Tell me about the game.”
“Stucky probed my background. Somehow he found out about my family, my father’s death, my mother’s alcoholism. He knew everything, or so it seemed. About a year ago I started receiving notes. Actually, it’s not that unusual, but Stucky’s were. He always included a piece of his victims—a finger, sometimes just a piece of skin with a birthmark or tattoo, once a nipple.”
Nick shook his head but didn’t say anything.
“He started a sort of scavenger hunt with me,” she continued. “He’d send clues as to where he was keeping the women. If I guessed right, he rewarded me with a new clue. If I guessed wrong, he punished me with a dead body. I was wrong a lot. Every time we found one of his victims in a Dumpster, I felt like it was my fault.”
She closed her eyes, allowing herself to see the faces. All of them with that same horrified stare. She could remember them all, could recite their names, addresses, personal characteristics. It sounded like a litany of saints. She opened her eyes, avoided Nick’s and continued.
“He would quit for a while but only to move to another part of the country. We finally tracked him down in Miami.