He held up a copy of the lift card and studied the nice ridges of the hypothenar zone and the tented arch and whorls of all four fingers. INDENT had fed the prints into AFIS but unfortunately hadn’t received a hit. Just like it was with the list of names on the writers list, Quinn knew in his gut that he was staring at the hand of a serial killer.
The cell phone hooked to his belt rang, and he answered without reading the caller ID. “Detective McIntyre.”
“Quinn. It’s here.”
He straightened in his chair and set the copy of prints on his desk. “Lucy?”
“Yes.” There was a pause, as if she were trying to swallow. “It’s here.”
“What?”
“The letter. It came to my house. She knows where I live.”
Shit. “Did you open it?” He gathered the papers on his desk and put them into his notebook.
“No.” A sob broke in her throat.
“You’re not there alone, are you?”
“Yes. Adele spent the night, but she had to leave. I thought I’d be okay here by myself. It’s broad daylight and I thought-”
“Are your windows and doors locked?” He grabbed his notebook and laptop and headed for the door.
“Yes.”
“I’m on my way.” He walked out the front doors and headed toward his unmarked car. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“It’s a twenty-minute drive.”
He unlocked the car door and set the laptop and notebook on the seat next to a dozen pink roses. “Not for me.” Probably not for her either.
Quinn hung up and called Sergeant Mitchell’s and Kurt’s cell phones. Neither picked up, and rather than leaving a message, he decided to call back once he had more information. Breathless had sent the letter to Lucy’s house, and that changed everything.
The drive took him fifteen minutes. He parked his car by the curb and grabbed his evidence collection duffle out of the trunk. With the duffle in one hand and the laptop and his files in the other, he jogged up the sidewalk. The door to the house opened as he took the steps two at a time. He stopped on the porch and looked at her standing within her dark house, the curtains and blinds drawn against the sunlight. Her white pajamas had red lips printed all over them and were a stark contrast within the gray shadows. A sob broke between the fingers she pressed against her lips, and then she was in his arms. He wasn’t quite sure how it happened. One second he was standing on her porch waiting for her to invite him inside, the next he was inside with the door closed behind him and the duffle at his feet.
She buried her face in his neck. “I thought I could handle this,” she cried as her hands grasped the front of his black polo shirt.
“Shh. It’s okay now.” He slid his free hand up and down her back, bunching the flannel shirt. “I’m here. I’ll take care of it.” He pressed a kiss to the side of her head as his palm slid up her spine to her shoulders. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.” Beneath the soft flannel of her pajamas, he didn’t feel bra straps. He tried not to think about what that meant.
“I always thought I could handle anything.” She shook her head, and her grasp on his shirt tightened. She seemed to want to burrow under his skin. “I always thought I was one of those fearless people who could survive a tsunami and outrun a bear. One of the smart ones who jumps in the life raft and doesn’t go down with the ship. But I’m so scared I can hardly think straight.”
He smiled into her hair. “Honey, no one can outrun a bear.”
“I know, but I always thought that if I had to, I could do it. I thought I was the smart one, the strong one, but this whole thing has just knocked me on my ass. I’m not brave or strong or in control.”
His gaze fell on the stark white envelope sitting on the coffee table. There would be plenty of time to deal with that later. “I’ll help you.”
“How?”
Yeah, how? He pulled back far enough to see her face. Dark circles smudged the skin beneath her eyes, and she was very pale. “When was the last time you ate?”
“Last night. Adele stayed here, and we had takeout.”
He brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “A real meal.”
Her forehead wrinkled in thought, and he fought the urge to press a kiss there. “Like in cook?”
“Yeah.”
“Wednesday Maddie made lasagna, but I haven’t been really hungry.”
“You’re going to make yourself sick.” He set his laptop and files on the table, then he grabbed her hand and pulled her with him into her kitchen. He flipped the light switch on his way toward the refrigerator. He let go of her hand, then opened the door to discover several boxes of old takeout and half a bag of chick salad, the kind that looked like weeds and flowers. He also saw a half gallon of milk, three beef weenies, and a brick of cheddar. “There’s not much here.”
“Except for last night, I haven’t been here all that much. Just a few hours during the day to try and get some writing done and to meet you with my mail.”
He shut the refrigerator and moved to open a few cupboards. “Your friend shouldn’t have left you alone today.”
“Adele’s a writer and is busy. All my friends are busy with deadlines. They can’t stay with me twenty- four/seven.”
His gaze skimmed over cans of soup and vegetables, jars of olives, and two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. “You should have called me.” He pulled out the macaroni and cheese and turned to look at her.
She shrugged but didn’t answer. He supposed she didn’t need to. They both knew why she hadn’t called him. “You’re going to cook?”
“Sure. I’ll make you something my mom used to make me when I stayed home from school sick. Where are your pots and pans?”
The bottoms of her slippers made a soft skidding sound as she moved across the tile floor. She walked to a cupboard next to the stove and bent over at the waist, drawing Quinn’s gaze to all those red lips on her butt. He wondered what she’d do if he grabbed her up and placed kisses everywhere those lips were printed.
“This ought to work,” she said as she straightened with a pot in one hand. She walked toward him, and his gaze lowered to the lips printed on the pockets covering her breasts. He thanked God she wasn’t a mind reader, or she probably would have tried to slap his head off like she’d done the morning he’d told her he wasn’t a plumber.
She handed him the pot, and he filled it with water. “Weenie mac and cheese is exactly what you need.” He tore the top off the blue box and dumped the noodles in the water. “Good old-fashioned comfort food.”
While the noodles boiled, he shredded cheddar cheese and cut the weenies. She stood with her hip shoved into the counter next to him with her arms folded beneath her breasts. To fill the time and take Lucy’s mind off the letter in the living room, Quinn talked about the Raymond Deluca case. Yesterday, Mr. Deluca had been convicted of killing his wife and her three children, and Quinn talked about the case and the evidence that had hung him.
“I remember when that happened,” Lucy said, watching as he drained the macaroni. “And the faces of those little kids in the newspaper.”
While Quinn mixed the cheese sauce and tossed the cheddar and weenies into the pot and turned the burner on low, Lucy set the table. She poured two glasses of milk. “This usually gets baked for a while with extra cheese and little croutons on top,” Quinn said as he filled two plates, “but you look too hungry to wait.”
“Maybe I am a little more hungry than I thought,” Lucy confessed as he held her chair. He sat across from her, and they ate for a few moments in silence.
Lucy reached for her glass of milk. “This is better than I thought it would be.”
Quinn stabbed a few noodles and a slice of weenie with his fork. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had weenie mac? It was a lunch staple at the McIntyre house.”
A little white mustache rested on Lucy’s top lip when she lowered the glass. She shook her head and licked it off with the pink tip of her tongue. “I did most of the cooking in my house. My mother had to work late a lot, so I
