“They’ll get started on this immediately,” he told Dan.
He frowned when Dan took his picture quickly with his camera phone.
“Uh, sir—”
“Just making sure you’re who you say you are,” Dan said, smiling.
He kept his smile in place as he quickly sent the photo to Axel.
Axel got back to him right away with a quick text.
Yes, that’s Mike.
Dan smiled at the startled agent. “Thank you. Can’t be too careful these days,” he said cheerfully.
“Ah, right. Well, if that’s all.”
“Thank you.”
The young agent left.
Dan turned back. Carly Britton didn’t look quite as professionally all-together as she had when they walked in.
“I’m scared to leave,” she whispered.
“We can take you somewhere,” Dan offered.
“No, uh, I have my car... I can’t just leave my car. I need it. I work. But I am married. I have a husband. Oh! That didn’t help. The killer...he killed the man and wife and the nurse or maid or whoever she was...”
“Ms. Britton—” Dan began.
“Mrs.!” she exclaimed. “I just told you I had a husband. Oh, I’m sorry. I mean, calling me Carly is just fine. We tend to be on a first-name basis in the industry. I’m just... I knew them! I hired them. I’m scared.”
“Do you have an alarm system?” Dan asked her.
“Yes, but—”
“He’s targeting people who don’t have alarms, we believe.”
“Believe! That’s no guarantee.”
No, he had no way of guaranteeing anything when it came to a psychopathic killer.
“I’ll alert the local police station. They’ll watch your property. They’re on the alert already, and with what you’ve given us—”
“You’ll catch him tonight?” she asked dryly.
“We’re happy to follow you home and see that you get there,” Katie told her.
The woman sighed. “Thank you,” she said and hesitated. “Would you look around the place, too?”
Dan looked at Katie.
“Sure,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound as weary as he felt.
They locked up the offices and headed down to the garage with her.
Carly had an expensive car, in a red that matched her lipstick.
Katie went along with Carly, sliding into the leather passenger seat. Dan followed them in his vehicle, falling in behind once Carly pulled out of the garage.
Carly lived in the Garden District, so it wasn’t far. She had evidently called her husband as she drove, and he was at the gate to their house, a sumptuous Victorian, when they arrived.
“This nice man is on the case,” Carly told her husband, a balding man in his fifties. “He’s going to look around the house.”
“We do have a state-of-the-art alarm system, Officer...”
“Oliver, just Dan Oliver. I’m a consultant on the case.”
“They sent a consultant to see me?” Carly asked, apparently thinking she’d been sent someone second-rate.
He wasn’t in the mood for a fight.
“Yes. It’s been a very long day for us. If you wouldn’t mind...”
“Yes, please!” Carly said.
Her husband led the way in.
It was a big house. It took him thirty minutes to go through it, assure them no one was hiding under any of the beds, and he advised they should set their alarm anytime they were in the house.
They managed to leave at last.
“Where now? What now?”
“We hope the tech and forensic people can get something. We go to your place. We pick up dinner and go to your place. I’m bushed.”
“Me, too,” she said softly.
They did a drive-through restaurant for a bag of po’boys. When they reached the house, the dogs were waiting at the gate.
Katie and Dan greeted them and went into the house. He looked up for the cameras as he passed—they all seemed to be in place.
In the kitchen, Katie set down the bag of food. She hesitated, looking at it, looking at him.
He didn’t know what drove him; they were both exhausted. But he found himself walking over to her and pulling her into his arms. She didn’t protest; she looked up at him with no surprise.
“No commitments,” he said. “You don’t even have to call me in the morning. Oh, wait. I’ll be here in the morning.”
She didn’t speak. She kissed him.
They began shedding their clothing downstairs. She hesitated when she felt his weapon, and he set his hand on it as well.
“Always with me,” he told her.
They made it up the stairs, laughing as they entangled with clothing on the way.
He headed to the guest room again. Maybe that meant no commitment.
No commitment, and no discussion, no talking...just breathless whispers that made no sense, sounds of pleasure that escaped. He focused on the feel of her skin, the scent of it, the way she moved, her flesh against his, naked and sweet.
The taste of her.
They made love, kissing, touching, caressing everywhere. It was even better than it had been the first time: it was exciting, it was comfortable, it was knowledge of one another, growing.
Climax, wild, exhilarating, almost violent in the force of it. Lying together, letting time go by, breathing, simply holding each other. Then his phone, in his jacket on a chair in the kitchen, began to ring. He leaped out of bed, heedless of his state of undress and tore down the stairs.
It was Axel.
“Yes, Brian and Aubrey... You found out who they really are? Do they really exist?” he demanded. “Did they manage to get social security numbers into the system—”
“Hey, hold up,” Axel told him wearily. “They existed.”
“What?”
“The two existed. They were from Baton Rouge. They disappeared about a month ago. Their families looked for them everywhere.”
“Then...wait. Is our dead woman Aubrey? And Neil-slash-Brian—”
“No. Two bodies that were dug out of the bayou a day ago just proved to be them. It looks like their throats were slashed. They weren’t dismembered. But they’ve been in the bayou, and the medical examiner is having a hell of a time. They’re...decomposed.”
“Then, how—”
“Dental records. It’s them. The two we knew as Neil and Jennie murdered the real Brian and Aubrey
