Mommy's Dearest (Black Rose Book 3) Read online

  “I don’t think I have a choice at this point. If I’m going to stay alive…well, like I said, I have no choice.” The thought sent a chill through her that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. She walked into her bedroom and begin dropping things she couldn’t live without into a large overnight bag.

  “Well, if I didn’t know any better I’d say your decision wasn’t based on love. That’s not a very romantic way to voice your opinion, Teegan.” He sounded hurt more than angry even though his gaze pierced her like shards of jagged glass.

  How could this man who had made his own way in a brutal world of violence truly need her? Their attraction was beyond anything she’d ever known before, but she couldn’t help but be deeply moved that he would admit his obsession for her. She knew some men would consider it a weakness. She decided in that moment that Thomas must have a good heart deep inside or he wouldn’t be so focused on protecting her.

  “Don’t be so sensitive. I’m angry at him, not you.” That seemed to soften his attitude somewhat. She turned away, rolling her eyes.

  “What is this?” he asked, looking on the bed at a wadded-up piece of fabric—a blood-stained, crumpled piece of material. Now the angry gaze was back. This man was the most intense person she’d ever met, and every bit of intensity seemed to be directed at her.

  She looked at it and cringed. “Well, if I didn’t know any better I’d say it has something to do with this flash drive.” She picked up the small device that peeked out from beneath the edge of the bloody garment. The gory find had clearly been placed there so Teegan would find it.

  “I knew it! That son of a bitch came back.”

  She tossed what used to be her favorite nightshirt back on the bed. “Well, he could have kept this. You bought me another one anyway.” There had to be something in this crazy situation that was good. In that moment, she realized that Thomas’ obsession was the only reason she was still alive.

  “I’m keeping it. It’s evidence. Bloody evidence, damn it.” He went to the kitchen, grabbing a small plastic bag to place it in and dropping the flash drive in the pocket of his tailored pants. “Get everything you need because you’re not coming back. I’ll be damned if you’re staying where you aren’t safe.”

  “But I’m safe with you.”

  Thomas gave her a slight smile. “Exactly.”

  Her stalker had crossed a line and was too damn comfortable coming back to this house. Thomas was beginning to wonder if their nemesis was trying to prove a point to him as well as Teegan. Maybe the piece of shit got off on a little healthy competition. Whatever he was doing, it was a sick fucking way to make a point. The fact that he knew that nightshirt was her favorite and he’d saturated it with a victim’s blood was pretty messed up.

  Thomas shook his head in disgust. Other men sent bouquets of flowers but this guy sent bloodstained proof of a kill, like a cat leaving a mouse on the doorstep as some kind of offering. He clearly wasn’t worried about getting caught. In fact, the guy seemed more concerned with terrorizing the woman Thomas now viewed as his. Thomas couldn’t let that stand.

  He was going to have to talk to his father about enlisting the help of Agent Turner. Thomas had crossed a lot of lines concerning his father but he wasn’t about to cross that one. His father had a love-hate thing going with the FBI agent so this situation had to be handled delicately or the family could end up in prison.

  It was odd to him how the unlikely pair of men had formed a connection. Sometimes it almost seemed inevitable because even though the two men were so different they were also very much alike. Even their women didn’t interfere in that unlikely friendship. Only time would tell just how far both men would be willing to go to keep the unlikely bond intact. It was looking like that day of reckoning might be sooner rather than later.

  “Let’s go. We’re out of here.” He roughly grabbed her arm, half-walking, half-dragging her out the front door. The ride home was accomplished in silence. When they arrived at his house, he opened her car door and helped her out. She moved to step into his arms but stopped short when he spoke. His voice was curt. “Upstairs. Now.”

  She wasn’t about to argue with him. He was clearly angry and that anger was being directed at her for some reason. She ran up the stairs in an effort to get away from him. He was close on her heels and when she attempted to close the bedroom door, he stuck his foot in it stopping her. He shoved the door open and she staggered slightly before regaining her balance.

  He shook his head. “No way. You’ll never get away from me, girl.” He picked her up and tossed her roughly onto the bed. A humorless grin crossed his face as he watched her scramble back up against the headboard. He yanked off his tie, grabbed her hands, and bound them up so quickly that she didn’t realize what he was doing until it was too late.

  Her eyes got big when he pulled a knife from his pocket and flipped it open with the expertise of a man who was infinitely comfortable handling weapons.

  “You’re scaring me, Thomas.”

  “I know. I can fucking smell it. Your fear is making me so hard.” He straddled her body, the blade slicing through her shirt like hot butter. She could feel the light brush of his fingertips as he laid the fabric open, giving him a view of her breasts. “So fucking beautiful,” he whispered. “God,” he said, shaking his head. “I fucking love you, woman.” He trailed the tip of the knife across her collarbone. “You know, fear can be a profoundly effective aphrodisiac, my love. If I ran my finger up and down your slit right now, I bet I’d discover that you’re soaking wet.”

  As her cheeks heated, she knew she was just as fucked up as he was: a woman who fed off of his crazy bloodlust. She knew he was speaking the truth. She could feel the liquid heat of her arousal pooling between her legs.

  “I’m not like my parents, Teegan. I enjoy killing for its own sake. It isn’t about justice for me. It is about the hunt and the takedown, though. So nature or nurture? Who gives a fuck? I’m a killer. Simple.” He tilted her chin toward him. “Can you love a man who enjoys the feel of blood on his hands? Because if you can’t, I have no choice but to make you.”

  Without waiting for a response, he slid the knife down and began cutting away her skirt and then her panties. When she was laid bare before him, he pushed her knees apart and began fucking her with the knife handle. Gushing sounds from her soaked pussy mingled with her moans of pleasure as he thrust the weapon in and out of her.

  “Oh, God,” she moaned. “Please don’t hurt me, Thomas.”

  His only answer was the intensity of his eyes cutting through her. He offered no promise or assurance of safety. She was at the mercy of his will, under his control, and although even a week ago she would have found both circumstances unacceptable, in her heart of hearts she confessed the truth: some part of her was reveling in the attention as if it were a delicacy being fed to her by the hand of a madman.

  “Fuck my knife, baby. Come all over it.” It was a command she was more than willing to obey. A forbidden fuck that was so damn delicious she wanted more. Her body bucked in feverish obedience to his demand.

  He gave her no time to recover from her shuddering climax before pulling her down to the end of the bed and flipping her over onto her stomach. When she tried to scramble away the sting of his open hand against her ass immobilized her. She could hear him unzipping his pants. Then he was gripping her hips as his cock slammed into her, sending a searing mixture of pain and pleasure through her.

  “Take that cock, girl. It’s yours. It’s all yours.” His hand smoothed over her reddened ass before he used her hips to hold her still as he pumped furiously in and out of her body, every movement a desperate effort to fill her with the anger and jealousy that was slowly consuming him.

  “You’re mine. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to get close enough to you to do you any harm. This shit with him going in and out of your house is going to stop, right now.” Another smack. The stinging contact sent her hurtling over the edge of pleasure. She ca
me with a force that made her feel like her heart would stop.

  She was getting to know him and understood that this rough fuck was necessary for him to rid himself of the intense emotions that had been building within him all day. Being out of control was a distraction he did not need.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  “We’ve got a body and it looks fresh.”

  “Just another night in the big city. Is it our guy?”

  “Yeah, she’s wrapped up tight.”

  “Damn it!” Agent Turner slammed the dashboard with his fist as he moved through traffic and made a U-turn. Then he gunned it.

  “This guy’s escalating.” Rene shook her head as she looked out the window at the lampposts speeding by in a blur.

  “That’s a fact. What the hell? We don’t even get into one case and he’s off killing someone else. It’s like he wants to keep us so busy that we can’t keep up. The press is turning this into a circus. I’ve got brass breathing down my neck.”

  “Not to mention the whole city is walking in fear. People don’t even go to their cars after work in broad daylight without a security guard.”

  Blue lights flashing in the distance signified they were close to the scene. “One good thing: I don’t see the vultures here yet,” Turner noted. He pulled in, kicking up dust on the shoulder of the road. “Don’t contaminate my fucking scene,” he snapped at a uniformed member of Louisville PD as he exited his car, slamming the door too hard.

  The uniform threw his hands up in the air in mock submission. “I haven’t touched anything, Your Highness.”

  “That’s Agent Turner to you.”

  Rene leaned in, speaking low enough to not be overheard, “Be nice. You may need the guy someday.”

  “True,” he said and nodded his head in reluctant agreement.

  Not one to have to be right, he stuck his hand out in the uniform’s direction, “Sorry. I’m frustrated with these killings. The guy’s killing them faster than we can get autopsies done.”

  “Yeah, he’s clearly escalating,” the uniform agreed.

  Turner and Rene walked over to the body, kneeling down to get a closer look. It had been wrapped from head to toe in true Mummy Man fashion. Agent Turner pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and slid them on. He took a pen from his pocket, pulling the gauze down just enough to get a glimpse of the victim’s neck. “We’ve got some bruising here. Huh. That’s not the MO of Mummy Man.”

  “Sometimes when they escalate they get more violent. It’s still suffocation so it is true to form.”

  “True.” He pointed at a hand. “Chipped fingernail polish, cheap clothing”—he lifted her upper lip—"decayed teeth, and she’s dressed like a streetwalker.”

  The uniform walked over, being careful not to disturb anything. “Shit. I’ve seen her on the stroll. Goes by Evie, if memory serves me correct. She always wore a gold necklace with her name on it.” There was a tinge of sadness in his voice as if she were an old friend.

  Sometimes uniforms bonded with the street regulars. Seeing the same people night after night was part of the work routine for the PD. No one would be seeing Evie anymore and it would change the dynamics of the neighborhood. Without meaning to, she’d left her mark on the world and on the officer too. She would be missed by all the regulars. The streets were a web of eccentric people bonded together in their own relationships and friendships.

  “So…he must have been looking for an easy target this time.”

  “Which means he needed to blow off some steam,” Rene noted. “Somebody pissed our boy off. Maybe that’s why there’s bruising around the neck. He choked her because he was pissed at somebody.”

  “Maybe another victim didn’t work out and our boy took it out on poor Evie here.”

  “Could be. The problem is most people aren’t going to contact the police to tell them when something like that happens, unless it’s a soccer mom in the ‘burbs. Nobody on the streets is going to advertise that they had a run-in with a serial killer. There’s a definite stigma associated with being the target of a madman. I mean, what if they know you survived and come back to finish the job? Nobody wants the stink on ‘em.”

  “No, but they might talk to their friends, so if we hit the streets and get the gossip we may be able to find out more about our resident bad boy. Bag her hands. The ME just pulled up and I’d like to see that body transported before reporters descend on us.”

  He watched as Rene bagged the hands. Even though they were already covered by plastic wrap and gauze, they wouldn’t risk losing evidence that could help them catch the asshole that was keeping them from a good night’s sleep and a hot meal. Of course, their plight was far less tragic than poor Evie’s.

  The sooner they got this sicko off the streets the better. Each body, as it told its own story, picked up something and left something behind. Even something as simple as dirt or leaves could reveal the location of a killing. This wasn’t the scene of the crime, but finding out where that was could mean also finding the killer. Both agents suspected the body had been dumped after the killing had taken place elsewhere.

  Serial killers were a different breed, but they were no different than anyone else in one important way: they were creatures of habit. They had comfort zones, places where they felt at ease indulging their darkest needs. Many of them enjoyed going back to the scene of the crime. In Turner’s view, odds were good that this guy was that type of killer because he’d likely kept the victim’s necklace as a trophy. Personal items picked up the spirit of those who had gone on, at least that’s what a lot of killers believed. They loved nothing more than to use a trophy as a means to go back and revisit the killing in their mind. A necklace that spelled out the victim’s name? That detail could very well be what doomed Evie to an evening with Mummy Man.

  That thought process was all part of Agent Turner’s innate gift of getting into a killer’s head. He had a sixth sense about individual motivations. He studied until he learned their habits. Then it became a chess game of staying one move ahead of them, when he could meet them on their own terms and take them down. A killer always felt safer when things were done on their terms; or at least that’s what the agent had the gift of making them believe.

  “I’ll get whoever did this to you,” Turner murmured under his breath to the lifeless body. “Your life may not have meant anything to him but it does to me.”

  Rene looked at her partner as he spoke and respected him more than ever. He was a hardened investigator from years of working horrific crime scenes, yes, but he had taken what would have made another man callous and uncaring and used it to make a difference.

  He had stared into the abyss for many years and though it had darkened his soul, it had formed his character. He knew how serial killers thought because he’d witnessed it firsthand. He would use that knowledge and take great pleasure in catching the fiend the press had dubbed The Mummy Man.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Thomas and Teegan were enthralled by the action unfolding on the computer screen. The woman’s head bobbed as she struggled to open her eyes. The room had dirt walls.

  “Probably underground bunker or some sort of root cellar,” Thomas mused aloud.

  The man had covered his face with a black hood. Moving steadily and efficiently, he meticulously wrapped a thick layer of plastic wrap and then a top layer of gauze around the woman, entombing her form from head to toe.

  “The hood and the wrapping are both kinks,” Teegan said in a low voice.

  “And what do you know about kink?” he whispered.

  Teegan could feel the heat starting in her chest and moving up her neck until her cheeks warmed and grew flushed.

  “Aw, is little Teegan embarrassed?” It was a taunt, revealing the colder side of her new roommate.

  “Are you having fun? At my expense? This whole thing of you running hot and cold has got to stop if we’re going to be roommates.”

  “Oh, my innocent little Teegan. We are much more than th
at. Roommates don’t fuck like we do. Unless they’re friends with benefits and that is definitely not what’s going on here.”

  “And just what is going on?”

  “You’re mine. That’s what’s going on. Simple.” His look was direct, brooking no argument, before he tilted his chin toward the screen. “Now, watch. We’re trying to catch a killer.”

  “You expect me to watch him kill her?”

  “Yes, I do. It’s the only way you’ll truly realize just how serious this is.”

  As if on cue, the killer wrapped his arms around Evie’s neck and began squeezing. Teegan gasped in horror as the woman’s body twisted and jerked in an unsuccessful attempt to free herself from his merciless hold.

  “Oh God…I can’t watch,” Teegan wailed, covering her eyes. She was shocked when her lover tugged her onto his lap. She’d seen enough so he didn’t stop her when she pressed her face against his neck. She’d never seen a dead body before and she’d never witnessed a murder.

  Thomas smelled clean, like linen and something crisp and clean with dangerous, mysterious undertones that she couldn’t quite identify. She needed him, and she trusted him to keep her safe. She couldn’t count on anyone else.

  There was a dark side to this man who had so thoroughly and unexpectedly bewitched her. On the outside he looked like the epitome of success and prosperity, but beneath that professional façade was a man who would kill to keep her in his arms. It made no sense but she was finding it impossible to put up a meaningful fight to keep her sanity where this man was concerned.

  He ran his hand over her long silky hair as if petting her, in a simple reassurance he would protect her and keep her safe. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and kept his lips there as he spoke softly against her hair. “Teegan, I love you. I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know how it happened. All I do know is that I feel this fist in my chest twisting the breath out of me when I think about losing you. I don’t trust myself when it comes to you. The thought of losing you makes me feel…lonely, in a way that I’ve never felt before.”