Kiss Me, Kill Me

Lucy really didn’t understand why Patrick was being so negative about Sean. She pushed. “Patrick, you need to trust me. I’m twenty-five, I can pick my own boyfriends. Sean has been wonderful for me. He’s teaching me how to have fun, something I’ve missed for a long time. He makes me laugh. If you’re worried that if things fall apart it’ll impact you and your business, don’t. I’m mature enough to know that relationships don’t always succeed.”

“Why do you care what I think anyway?”

“Because you’re my brother and I love you.”

Patrick rubbed his eyes. “Luce, I’m sorry I’ve been a wet blanket. I don’t want to be.” He looked at her with the love and kindness she’d always associated with him. “Your happiness means more to me than anything. But I know Sean. Business? He’s honestly the smartest person I know. He’s a lot smarter than he acts sometimes, truly brilliant, and not just with computers. Also, he really cares about people, and he never gives up. He has a lot going for him.

“But with women,” Patrick continued, his tone going from admiring to disdainful, “time and again, he’s been shallow and self-indulgent. He has a past I’m sure he hasn’t shared with you, and I don’t think you’re going to like it very much. He doesn’t stick, not in relationships. He doesn’t even see it in himself. In the short time I’ve known him, he’s had dozens of girlfriends. Models and actresses and trust-fund bimbos. Most of them as self-indulgent as he is. He grew tired of them, because that’s the way he is. You deserve someone who will love you, who will stick by you, forever. In good times and bad, that kind of commitment. You need to come first.”

Lucy didn’t like this conversation, and almost regretted having started it, but at least she knew exactly where Patrick stood. “I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think you know Sean as well as you think.”

“Maybe you don’t.”

“Just let me work my way through this. Sean isn’t perfect, and neither am I. But you need to have faith in me, even if I make a mistake. No matter what happens, I’ll be okay.”

He shrugged. “I can’t change the way I feel. I’m sure you’ll be fine-you always seem to bounce back. I’ve always supported your decisions because I understood them, but you need to be honest with yourself. Your decisions about men have never been good, and I don’t see them changing now.”

Nothing Patrick could have said would have stunned Lucy more. She got out of the car, stepping into the rain, and walked to the front door without looking back.

Maybe she had it wrong. Maybe he was talking about her ex-boyfriend Cody, or the one disaster of a relationship in college. Not what happened nearly seven years ago when she was eighteen.

She pushed it aside and walked through the door. Patrick couldn’t have been thinking about what had happened with Adam Scott, or how she’d been foolish and stupid.

Dillon and Kate were in the family room watching a movie. She called out to them that she was setting the alarm, then went straight upstairs, not wanting to talk to anyone.

Patrick wasn’t thinking about her ill-fated online chats with the man she thought was college student Trevor Conrad. She’d never rid herself of the guilt she still harbored over her stupidity back then. She’d thought she was so smart, so safe. She had been anything but. Maybe it was that lack of common sense that had kept her out of the FBI.

“No, he didn’t mean that.” Lucy pushed it from her mind.

But Patrick’s other words came back.

He grew tired of them, because that’s the way he is.

She’d believed Sean when he’d told her that he liked her because she wasn’t like his other girlfriends, but maybe it was just a novelty. Maybe he’d grow tired of her-she was certainly not the fun and exciting, drop- everything-let’s-go-to-Hawaii type. He’d been talking about going away with her for the weekend practically since they met-and he was getting irritated that they hadn’t yet done it, she could tell.

She didn’t know why it bothered her so much. She’d told him she wanted to go slow, take things one day at a time. Could she really blame him if he decided she was too boring and serious for him?

Tears stung her eyes as if he’d already dumped her.

She cared about Sean so much … she couldn’t change that even if she wanted to. She was surprised at how close they’d gotten so quickly. Maybe Patrick had a point that she needed to take a step back emotionally.

If she could.

ELEVEN

Suzanne drove nearly two hours to meet Jill Reeves, the roommate of the first Cinderella Strangler victim.

Jill, who’d been a freshman, dropped out of college after the murder of her roommate and moved back home to Hamden, Connecticut, outside of New Haven. Suzanne had read Vic Panetta’s notes from his interview of her, and while Suzanne didn’t think that the senior detective had missed anything, it didn’t hurt to have another sit-down. Because of the long drive, she called Reeves’s mother first to confirm that her daughter would be home.

She called Panetta as she was waiting for a pool car at FBI headquarters. “I’m leaving in two minutes for Hamden. Sure you don’t want to come?”

“Knock yourself out, kid. I have another case I’m in the middle of. Should be able to wrap it up today. Plus, I have a stack of paperwork I want to finish before sundown. I’ll let you know if I learn anything from our lab.”

“Maybe we should work on a more effective deterrent to homicide: Save a tree, don’t murder anyone.”

She hung up and maneuvered her way through Manhattan traffic. She’d left at the tail end of the morning commute, and once she was off the island, highway traffic moved at a steady clip.

Jill Reeves and Alanna Andrews had been best friends growing up; they’d even gone to Columbia together. Two months after they got there, Alanna was murdered. Jill, heartbroken, dropped out at the end of the semester and went home. Suzanne, normally suspicious, had wondered if Panetta had followed up with the girl-until there was a second murder, there had been no reason to believe that a serial killer was responsible for Alanna’s death. In fact, he had-he’d even driven to Hamden for Alanna’s funeral and talked to her parents, trying to assess whether someone from her hometown had taken advantage of her relocation to kill her. But the facts stayed the same; Alanna had disappeared from a party that the two girls had attended. Jill had gotten drunk and went home with a guy, believing that Alanna was fine-or Jill had been too drunk to care. The next morning, her roommate didn’t show up and didn’t answer her cell phone. Jill called the police.

This fall would mark Suzanne’s ten-year anniversary with the FBI. She’d seen a lot of crap on the Violent Crimes Squad, and knew that there were always some cases that were never solved. She didn’t want this to be one of them.

Hamden was a sleepy and quaint town; small, but still bigger than the teeny Louisiana town Suzanne had grown up in before moving to Baton Rouge as a teenager. The Reeveses lived in a well-maintained and renovated older house near the downtown area. It was kind of cute, but after living in New York for nearly ten years, Suzanne would go crazy in a town this small.

Mrs. Reeves answered almost as soon as Suzanne knocked. “I saw you drive up. Jill is in the living room.”

“Lovely home,” Suzanne said.

“Thank you.” Mrs. Reeves beamed as she closed the door. “It’s been in my family for more than a hundred years. My husband and I are trying to bring it back to its original glory.”

“You’re doing a terrific job.”

Jill Reeves sat on an antique couch, her back rigid.

“Honey, this is the FBI agent who called. Suzanne Madden.”

“Madeaux,” Suzanne corrected.

Mrs. Reeves frowned, then said, “Madeaux. French?”

“Cajun.” She smiled at Jill. “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me.”

Mrs. Reeves said, “We’re still in shock. Alanna was always such a good girl. I don’t know what possessed her