Devious - Lisa Jackson [139]
“Apparently.”
“We need to call Montoya.”
“Already left him a message,” she said, too calmly for his satisfaction.
Suddenly, this tiny little carriage house, the one he’d thought was so homey and cozy, smelling of Val’s perfume and potpourri, now felt like a death trap, open to any twisted bastard who decided to take a potshot at her. A phone rang. Letting him hold the ziplock bag with the BlackBerry, she snagged her cell from the counter and looked at the caller ID.
“Montoya,” she said.
“Tell him to get the hell over here!”
She was nodding as she answered, and after a short conversation, she hung up. “He’s on his way.”
“Good. When he gets here, I’ll go get my things.”
“Your things?”
“Until whatever is happening is over, until the madman who’s doing this—and now targeting you—is dead or behind bars, preferably dead, I’m sticking to you like glue! Bo and I are moving in.”
“But—”
“No arguments, Val. I’ll camp out on the couch, but you’re too important for me to just sit by and let some maniac walk into your house whenever he wants! Holy Christ, no! We’ll change the locks on all the doors, even at the main house. Call Freya and tell her what’s going on. I’ll go double-check everything at the main house as soon as Montoya arrives. And when he gets here, we’re going to demand police protection.”
“Whoa! Hey, slow down,” she said. “I don’t think I need that. If the guy wanted to kill me, he could have easily. I was in the shower, for God’s sake. I saw him and he probably saw me, but there was no attack.”
“Yet.”
“He just wants to terrorize me, and yeah, he has.” She was nodding, twirling her cell phone in her fingers nervously.
“He didn’t just terrorize two other women.”
“Who were nuns at St. Marguerite’s.” Slade could tell by the way her eyebrows puckered together that she was thinking. Hard. Piecing it all together. “The killer just knows I’m nosing around, and he wants me to back off.”
“The threat was pretty damned specific.” Slade wasn’t going to take any chances. “He wants to terrorize you, yeah, maybe convince you to stay out of it, but now that you’ve seen Cammie’s diary, been poking around St. Marguerite’s and St. Elsinore’s, he’s out for blood.”
“What the hell is it he wanted from the diary?”
“Who knows?” Slade’s mind was racing over the pages filled with sexual adventures written in a flowing hand—all true? Or were there fantasies involved? They may never know, but they were important to someone. “Maybe the police have found something,” he said.
He saw her shudder, knew she didn’t like anyone, even detectives from the Robbery/Homicide Division of the police department, prying into Camille’s personal life. “I hope.”
“And maybe,” he pushed, “we should just leave the investigation to the police. That’s their job; we could be getting in the way.”
“No way.” She leveled her gaze at him. Stepped closer. “It’s not that I don’t trust the police. For God’s sake, I was a cop. But I know how thin a department can be stretched, how many man-hours it takes to work a crime like this. I believe they’re throwing all their muscle into Camille’s murder and that they’ll probably be creating a task force, getting help from the FBI, and that’s all well and good. But this is Cammie we’re talking about, my only sister.” She was now facing him, her bare toe pressed against the tip of his cowboy boot. “I’m not backing off, Slade.” Her eyes were earnest, the pupils large. “And you know it. You know me. So don’t waste your breath.”
Her gaze held his, and in that instant, all he could think about was kissing her, dragging her into his arms, pressing the length of her to him, and making love to her until dawn. Only afterward, when the ghosts of the night, the phantoms that haunted them, receded into the shadows and the light of the new day streamed through the windows to warm their naked, sweat-soaked bodies, would he release her. But that, of course, was impossible.
“Okay,” he agreed with more than a little reservation—oh, hell, he didn’t want her getting hurt or