Her phone buzzed.
Jag: Where are you?
Callie: On my second glass of wine at Georgio’s and about to dig into their chocolate cake.
Jag: Day drinking and cake? That must have been a shitty meeting.
Callie: You have no idea.
Jag: I get off work in an hour. Do you want me to come get you? Or will you be okay to walk home?
She chuckled. Getting good and drunk right about now sounded like a really good idea.
Callie: I’m going to get two pieces of cake to go and get a bottle from the store. I’ll see you at home.
Jag: Home? That’s very Freudian. haha.
She rolled her eyes.
As much as she enjoyed being around him again, for the sake of her heart, she needed to get out of his house, even if it meant she went back to the mainland.
Chapter 5
One of the nice things about being the chief of police was that for the most part, he got to keep bankers’ hours.
Well, that’s the lie he told himself.
If he wasn’t in the office or on the streets, he was doing the one thing he promised his parents, two sisters, and one brother that he wouldn’t do and that was obsess over the Trinket Killer.
He tried to stop investigating, but it proved to be impossible. The cold case detectives gave him monthly updates, which consisted of: sorry man, we’ve got nothing. Jag spent every morning before he went to the office staring at twelve dead girls and every night before he went to bed doing the same thing. He constantly looked over his shoulder, waiting for the Trinket Killer to show his ugly face.
He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his back. His home office he kept under lock and key. If anyone in his family saw it, they’d have him committed.
If Callie saw his victim wall, she’d be pulling him knee-deep into her book, and he just wasn’t ready to do that. Neither one of them had been able to uncover anything new. It was as if the killer was sitting back, watching them and laughing at their inability to solve this one.
He stood and planted his hands on his hips, rolling his right hand over his weapon. He let out a long breath and inched closer to the wall. Besides their obvious similarities in appearance, there was nothing else to connect them to each other. Not one victim knew the other.
Four were lesbians. One considered herself bi-sexual.
And then there was Stephanie, born Steven.
She’d gone through her transition years ago but didn’t have the surgery until a year before her murder, and according to Callie, she hadn’t been happier. She even had a girlfriend, though a secret one.
One that she’d never introduced to Callie, or even given her name.
That shouldn’t come as such a shock to him considering how long he and Callie managed to keep their relationship out of the public eye. That said, their families knew months before Stephanie’s death.
But both Callie and he agreed, even in a drunken stupor, that Stephanie’s girlfriend had something to do with her death.
He turned and tapped at the keyboard in front of his computer, pulling up the FBI profile report. His captain had asked him to call in the Feds for support after the eighth murder. He did so willingly and absolutely believed their assessment.
The unsub is most likely a white male, approximately between thirty and forty years of age. He’s organized and highly educated. It is not sexually motivated. There is no rape or any mutilation of the body. The unsub is targeting a specific type of woman. Because he leaves the same trinket behind, we believe these women remind him of someone. That he is killing the same woman over and over again.
Pretty standard stuff.
But because they didn’t notice the change from gold to silver with the trinket, and perhaps they missed other things, this profile wasn’t viable anymore.
The sound of footsteps coming down the stairs caught his attention. Quickly, he locked the door and headed toward the kitchen. Callie would be nosy, she always was, and she’d want to know what was in that room.
Either he was going to have to get her drunk every night, because he never took advantage of a woman who had too much to drink, or he was going to have to let her either go back to the inn or to the motel once the weekend people went back to the mainland.
She groaned as she sat down at the island.
“Not feeling so well this morning?” he asked.
“Why did you let me drink so much?” She took the mug of coffee he offered.
“I tried to stop you, but you told me you’d toss the bottle at me like you did the ring.”
“Umph.” She smacked her hand against her forehead. “You must hate me for losing that ring. It must have set you back a pretty penny.”
“You’d vomit a little in your mouth if I told you what I paid for it.”
“It was a gorgeous ring, and I’m sorry I lost it so you couldn’t return it. I should find a way to pay you back.”
“You know what.” He leaned against the counter, holding his mug and staring into her dark-chocolate eyes. “Us being able to apologize to each other and spend time together without killing each other is payback enough.”
“You’re a good man, Jag.”
“Can I have that in writing?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely not.”
He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “I’m going to get the paper. I just have to go into the office for a few hours today. I thought maybe we could break out the Harley and take a ride.”
“I think I’d like that,” she said with a smile. “You’re a dangerous man, Jag.”
“Why? It’s not me that will be between your legs. It’s my bike.”
“You
