today, Jerome. But if you’re not in the mood to talk about what I want to talk about . . .” She uncrossed her arms, glanced at her wristwatch, tapped the glass face and said, “Five minutes. That’s as long as I’ll wait for you to tell me something that interests me.”
Browning remained silent for four minutes. The silence in the large, nearly empty room echoed with the sound of their quiet breathing. One guard cleared his throat. Another coughed a couple of times.
“You’re here because you think I might know who has mimicked my unique modus operandi almost perfectly and has recently killed four people.”
“And do you know who he is?” she asked.
As if believing he now had the upper hand for the time being, he smiled and shrugged.
“All right,” she said. “You tell me what you want in exchange for answering my question.”
“Ah, Maleah, my sweet beauty, you’re very bright. You catch on quickly. Games are so much fun, don’t you think?”
“You’re wasting time,” she told him.
“All right. I’ll cut straight to the chase.” He chuckled. “I want to know what color panties you’re wearing.”
He closed his eyes, licked his lips as if savoring a delicious morsel and sighed with a sickening sound of satisfaction.
“I assume the copycat killer is an admirer,” Jerome said. “I assume he has studied my work. Perhaps, he’s even communicated with me.”
“Has he?”
“That’s another question that requires payment.”
“You haven’t answered the first question yet. Not to my satisfaction.” She looked him in the eye.
“I don’t know who the copycat killer is,” he said, and then hurriedly added, “Not exactly, but . . .”
“But what?”
“There are things I do know. Things that can help you find him.”
“Why should I believe you?”
He grinned.
“Even if you answer every question I ask, how would I know whether or not you were lying to me?” she asked.
“You’d have to take me on faith. But if you do that, I can promise you that in time, you’ll discover everything I tell you is true.”
“Okay, let’s say I take you on faith. But first, you’ll have to give me something right now, something to prove to me that I can believe you.”
“He’s going to kill again soon, if he hasn’t already.”
She snorted. “That’s it? Sorry, Jerome, but you’re going to have to do better than that.”
“I’ll tell you something about the next person he’s going to kill, if you’ll tell me something I’d love to know.”
“My bra matches my panties,” she said glibly.
“That information paints such an erotic picture in my mind,” he told her. “But that wasn’t my question.”
“Then what is it?”
As nonchalantly as if he were asking her about her favorite flavor of ice cream, he asked, “Was he your first?”
She stared at him, puzzled by his question.
“Noah Laborde,” Browning said. “Was he your first lover?”
She should have been prepared for this, but she wasn’t. Damn it. She wasn’t.
“You do remember Noah, don’t you? Good-looking young man, fresh out of college. Quite an up-andcomer in the Atlanta business world about twelve years ago.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I remember Noah Laborde. And yes, he was my first lover.”
Browning smiled as if he thought he had won a great victory. He hadn’t. But she had. He just didn’t know it yet.
“He’s going to begin varying the sex of his victims. You won’t know from one kill to the next if he will choose a man or a woman.”
“We learned that from your files, so we assumed if he followed your lead, he wouldn’t stick with two female kills followed by two males.”
“Looks like you’re a step ahead of me.”
“Tell me something else, something I don’t already know.”
“Why should I? It’s not my fault that I told you something you already knew.”
“Ah, come on, Jerome. Fair’s fair.”
“You surprise me.”
“Do I?”
“I believe I may have underestimated you, sweet Maleah.”
“If you have, you wouldn’t be the first.” She stood up and glared down at him. “Pay your debt. Give me some information that I can use. If not, when I walk out of here today, I won’t be back.”
“You could be bluffing.”
“Only one way to find out—call my bluff.”
She turned around and walked toward the exit door, her escort following. Just as he unlocked the door and opened it, Browning called out to her.
“You’ll be back. You won’t be able to stay away.”
She paused for half a second and then started through the door.
“The next victim won’t be brown-eyed,” he told her.
She kept walking without responding in any way. Keeping in step with her guard escort, she followed him back to the warden’s office where Derek was waiting.
Derek took one look at her and knew the session with Browning had rattled her. But he also knew that she was okay. He could see the steely determination in her eyes and the stiffness in her spine. Whatever had transpired between her and Jerome, she had come through the battle with nothing more than a minor flesh wound.
She acknowledged his presence with a glance, then marched straight to the warden. “I won’t be back tomorrow.”
“Then you’re finished with—?” the warden said.
“No, I’m not finished with Mr. Browning. Not by a long shot. But he needs to think that I am.”
Warden Holland nodded. “I will need twenty-four hours’ notice before your next visit.”
She shook his hand, said thanks, and motioned to Derek that she was ready to leave. He tried to talk to her, but she told him flat out that she was in no mood for conversation.
“Not now. We can talk on the way back to Vidalia.”
And so he waited, giving her the time she needed to decompress after game playing with a cunning madman.
When they reached the designated parking area, she said, “You drive.” And then she tossed him her keys. He grabbed the keys mid-air, remotely unlocked the SUV and, gentleman that he was, opened the passenger door for her.
And then he waited until they were several miles from the penitentiary before he said, “The warden is going to have a list of all of Browning’s visitors for the past year, along with the names and addresses of the people who
