A Profiler's Case for Seduction

chapter 13



Dora was feeling good about her life, about herself. The past week she’d felt stronger than she ever had in her entire life. She was focused, driven to succeed, and had the additional pleasure of Mark’s company in the evenings.

She’d tried not to look forward to or worry about where things were going between herself and Mark. She knew their case against the drinking rancher had fallen apart and she had no idea how much longer Mark and the other FBI agents would be in town. She was simply enjoying taking things one day at a time.

She refused to allow herself to love him, even though there were quiet moments in the middle of the night when the emotion fluttered inside her heart. She knew better than to embrace it.

As she walked on the sidewalk from one class to her next, she passed the bonfire site and smiled to herself. She thought of sharing the night of craziness and school spirit with Mark.

What had been on her mind throughout the morning had been the idea of making love with Mark again. They’d managed to get through the week with just enough physical contact between them to set her on a simmer that begged for release.

As if he’d been conjured straight out of her mind, she saw Mark approaching in the distance. Despite the fact that she couldn’t be in love with him, her heart lifted at the mere sight of him.

She smiled and waved as he drew closer, close enough that she could see the fire in his eyes and the determined set of his jaw. Uh-oh, somebody was having a bad day.

“Hey, you,” she said as he walked up to her. She smiled up at him, but no answering smile lit his stone-hard features. Instead, he took her by the upper arm.

“We need to talk.” He started to tug her down the sidewalk.

“Mark,” she protested, “what are you doing?”

“We’re going to your place. I have some questions to ask you.”

“I can’t go now,” she exclaimed. “I have a class to get to.”

“Forget your class.” He released his hold on her. “I need to talk to you now. It won’t wait until after your class.”

She stared at him, suddenly afraid as she saw no kindness in his eyes, only hard, cold orbs piercing through her. Whatever conversation he wanted to have with her, she knew she didn’t want to have it here in the center of the campus.

“Okay, let’s go,” she said.

It was the longest walk of her life. Mark didn’t speak a word and she didn’t, either. He had found something out, something about her...about her past. With every step they took she realized that he knew she wasn’t the woman she’d portrayed herself to be to him. He knew what she had been and now he wanted to tell her what he thought of her.

Her steps began to drag the closer they got to her house. She didn’t want to hear the disgust, and she didn’t want her last vision of him to be one where his eyes were full of revulsion.

Tears stung her eyes and she quickly blinked them away. It didn’t really matter what he thought of her, she told herself. He was only temporary in her life anyway.

She didn’t care what he said to her. She’d give him all the ugly he wanted. If he couldn’t accept who she had been, and who she was now, then to hell with him anyway.

It took her two stabs to get her key into the lock of her front door. She opened the door and stalked into the living room and then turned to face him, her chin lifted in defiance.

“So, exactly what do you want to talk about? The fact that I was a drunk or the fact that I was a whore?”

He blinked twice and appeared speechless. “Dora, I don’t know—”

“You’re right, you don’t know,” she said, interrupting whatever he was about to say. “You don’t know what it was like for me in that small town where my father was an evil, hateful man and my mother was an alcoholic who bedded every man in town in the back room of the little café she owned.”

To her horror the tears she’d been determined not to shed stung her eyes once again. She swiped at them angrily and realized she had come to a place in her life where she would own what she had been, but she refused to allow anyone else to tell her what she’d been.

“You don’t know what it was like, to be branded just like your whore mother before you’ve ever kissed a boy, to let a town label you as a bad girl when you’ve done nothing wrong. I was Horn’s Gulf’s dirty little joke, along with my mother. Despite everything I was a virgin on my wedding night to Billy Cook, who was supposed to be my knight in shining armor. Instead, he beat me and told me every day that I’d come from dirt, that I was nothing but dirt.”

Mark remained standing frozen in place, his features reflecting nothing as the words tumbled out of her. “My life in Horn’s Gulf was not a safe place to be. When I finally married Jimmy I thought I’d found my safe place, a man who might respect and love me, but when he told me I was nothing more than my mother’s daughter and nothing could make me respectable or clean, I lost my heart, my soul, my very mind. I crawled into the bottom of a bottle of gin and wanted to die.”

For the first time since they’d stepped through her front door she stopped long enough to draw a deep breath. “So, I’ll ask you once again,” she said softly. “What do you want to talk about, the fact that I was a drunk or the fact that I was rumored to be the town whore?”

Mark appeared shell-shocked. “I actually came to ask you about Melinda.”

“Melinda?” Dora looked at him blankly. She backed up a couple of steps and when her legs hit the sofa she sank down. “What about Melinda?”

The anger that had sparked in his eyes when he’d first approached her on campus, before her diatribe on her past, was back. “When were you going to tell me that you and Melinda Grayson were sisters?”

“Probably never,” Dora replied truthfully. Everything was out of kilter. She felt like she’d just laid her heart, her very soul, bare for nothing, and his only response was to ask her about her sister. “It’s not something I broadcast. We aren’t close and I never wanted Melinda’s star to be tarnished by me.”

“Her star? I’m trying to take her down for the murders of those three men,” Mark replied.

Dora gasped in shock. “What are you talking about?”

“I believe she staged her own kidnapping with a partner and then while she was supposedly kidnapped she and her cohort murdered those three men.”

“You’re crazy.” Dora stared up at the man she thought she knew, the man she’d fought not to love. “Melinda would never be part of something like that. She’s the one who saved me. If not for her and my brother Micah I’d still be in a gutter somewhere in Horn’s Gulf drinking my life away.”

“I’m telling you, Dora, she’s in these murders up to her neck. It would have been nice if you’d told me about your relationship with her. The fact that you didn’t makes me wonder what other secrets you have.”

Dora laughed, an edge of frantic hysteria rising up inside her. “I’d say I’ve pretty much spilled all of my secrets now.” He’d come here to ask about her relationship with Melinda and she’d given him every piece of her squalid past. “The only thing you might not know about me now is that I was born Isadora Grayson. But, I’ve always been Dora.”

“What I’m trying to figure out is how we missed this when we ran a background check on Melinda. I believe she is involved in these crimes and I’m going to work my ass off to prove it.” He raked his hand through his hair. “And now I’ve got to enter you into the murder mix. You should have told me, Dora. You should have been up-front with me from the very beginning when you knew I was in town to solve the crimes.”

“I should have done a lot of things differently,” Dora replied with a sudden onset of bone weariness. “Get out, Mark. I think we’re done talking now.”

He didn’t hesitate. He turned on his heels and left the house, slamming the door after him.

Dora stared at the place he had stood, a wealth of emotions welling up inside her. Grief ripped through her heart, the easiest emotion to identify.

He’d never said a word while she’d spewed the sordid details of her past. His expression had never changed. There had been no hint of compassion, no spark of any understanding. There had been absolutely nothing at all.

He’d shut down, turned off, and he hadn’t even been here about her past. Another burst of hysterical laughter blurted from her and she shoved her hand against her mouth to stanch it as tears began to fall.

She’d worried about how their relationship would end, afraid that he was getting closer than he should, that it was going to hurt to let him go.

Now she didn’t have to worry about any of that anymore. She hadn’t let him go. He’d run from her just as she suspected he would if he ever found out about the woman she’d once been, the woman she vowed never to be again.

She curled up in a fetal position in the corner of the sofa. Mark thought Melinda had something to do with the murders. That was impossible...wasn’t it?

She had to admit that Melinda’s assistants probably knew Dora’s sister better than Dora did. Even though Melinda had appeared with Micah a little over three years ago to rescue Dora, Melinda had been distant, cool, and had made it clear that she was disgusted with Dora’s state and was there just to do what had to be done.

When Dora had finished her rehab stint, it had been Melinda who had picked her up from the rehab and brought her here to Vengeance to start fresh with a new life plan.

Throughout the time that Melinda had guided her through the paperwork of scholarships and class choices, she’d remained cool and disconnected, obviously not interested in pursuing any kind of relationship with Dora.

The cool professionalism had been part of the reason Dora had decided not to tell anyone on campus about their relationship, because there was no relationship except in the accident of their births to the same people.

Who was Melinda Grayson? Truthfully, Dora didn’t know. She had no idea what Melinda had experienced between the time she left the family ranch at the age of eighteen and when she’d appeared to help Dora. Years had gone by between those times, years when Dora had no idea what her sister was doing beyond building her career.

In those missing years Dora had no idea where her sister had lived, who had been her friends or what morals and values she had embraced.

But Mark was talking about Melinda staging a kidnapping where she allowed herself to be beaten. He was accusing her and a male partner of strangling or suffocating three men and burying them in shallow graves. Only a monster would be capable of that.

Immediately, she thought of Micah and Samuel, one hero and one monster. Was it possible that Melinda was just another monster in the family?

She thought about picking up the phone and making an appointment to meet with her sister. And what would she say to her? Dear sister, did you do all the terrible things the FBI believes you did? Did you know the agent who was my friend, my lover, has vowed to bring you down?

Samuel had been evil enough to try to kill his twin brother, Micah, among all the other heinous crimes he’d committed. Did that same evil run through Melinda’s veins? An unexpected shiver worked up her spine. She was suddenly afraid, but she wasn’t sure what she feared, who she feared for.

Tears once again trekked down her cheeks as she thought of Mark. She would only see him again now as part of his investigation. He might think she knew something about her sister, but she couldn’t help him. Once he realized that she knew virtually nothing about Melinda’s life, past or present, then there would be no reason for him to ever see her again.

Not that he would want to.

The absurdity of what had just taken place might have been funny if her heart wasn’t breaking. In the past she would have headed for the nearest bar, eager to numb the keening death of her heart.

Instead, she got up from the sofa with a final swipe of her tears, grabbed her books off the chair and then headed out the door.

She had classes to attend, a life to build, and this was just a reminder that she was meant to be alone...and she was okay with that because she had to be and because she was strong enough to remain alone.

* * *

Mark meandered along the paths of the campus, his head spinning with all the words that Dora had spoken and all the information he hadn’t asked for but had received.

The anger that had driven him out of Amanda’s apartment to find Dora was mixed up now, and he desperately wanted to find that anger again. He wanted to be enraged with Dora and the fact that in all the time they had spent together she’d never told him about her sibling connection to his number-one suspect in the case.

Granted, when they had been together they had spoken little about the cases and had instead talked about other, pleasant things. But in their first get-to-know-you conversation he’d asked her about her family. It had been a perfect opening for her to tell him about her relationship with the esteemed professor Melinda Grayson. Why hadn’t she?

What could she know about her sister’s crimes and how far would she go to protect a woman she saw as her salvation? There was no question that Dora admired and worshipped Melinda.

He finally set himself on a course to head back to the war room where he could use his laptop. There was now a new player in the game...the woman he’d fallen in love with, a woman he now realized he didn’t know at all. He had to run a thorough background check on Dora. As an FBI agent he would be remiss in his duties if he didn’t.

She was now an unknown entity in the case.

Consciously he shoved all thoughts of anything else he’d learned about her out of his mind. He couldn’t think about that now. The case was all that was important. If he allowed himself to linger on the images Dora’s words about her past had evoked, if he embraced the torturous emotions that had shimmered in her eyes, then he’d be distracted from what had to be done.

He couldn’t afford to be distracted any longer. Prove it or disprove it. Richard’s words rang in his ears. He had to lay aside any feelings he’d entertained about Dora. From this time forward she could be nothing more to him than a piece of the puzzle he needed to solve.

In his deepest, darkest thoughts, he wondered if the man he’d envisioned in his head as Melinda’s partner, if the deep laughter he’d heard in his dream, had actually been a woman. Two sisters playing a deadly game?

Before the thought could truly take hold he dismissed it. Melinda’s partner was a male from the videos, but more importantly he believed he knew Dora well enough to discount her as a suspect in all of this. Unfortunately, he couldn’t use just his gut instinct to make that decision. Once again he had to prove it or disprove it. Either Dora was involved or she wasn’t, but he’d have to use cold, hard facts to make the call.

He hated this. He hated the position he now found himself in, questioning the guilt or innocence of a woman he’d come to care about deeply, a woman he thought might have a place in his future.

It was obvious she hadn’t wanted him to know anything about her past and now he was going to dig into it, find out everything he could about her. Then he would have to question her once again, to find out where she’d been during the twenty-four hours that Melinda had been gone and three men had been killed.

The war room was empty when Mark arrived. The first thing he did was call Ben and cancel the appointment he’d made with the young man for that evening.

As he remembered the suppressed fear that had shone from Amanda’s eyes while he’d questioned her, the potential of Ben Craig being the man involved in the murder had become a more viable scenario. The last thing he wanted to do at this moment was spook the cool, slightly arrogant young man who was so close to Melinda.

What he’d like to do was question the cool, beautiful professor herself, but that option had been taken off the table when she’d mysteriously returned after being “released” by her captor. The police and the FBI had gotten one shot apiece at questioning her and at that time she’d been considered nothing more than the victim of an unusual crime. He could have sworn that during that initial interview she’d mentioned that she’d had a sister who had died years ago. Maybe that’s why nobody dug too deeply into Melinda’s familial relationships. Still, it should have been done more thoroughly.

Unfortunately, since that time, Melinda had gotten a lawyer, compliments of the Darby College legal team, who wanted no hint of blemish about the illustrious professor. It had definitely hindered the investigation going forward having Melinda protected by a lawyer.

Still, Mark felt as if the dots were beginning to connect. He was gut certain that Amanda had placed the note of warning beneath his windshield. He was also equally sure that the young woman was terrified and obviously didn’t know whom to trust. She’d implied a distancing of herself from Melinda and a closeness between Melinda and Ben.

Those were the pieces of the puzzle. Ben and Melinda. Amanda and Dora. Somehow, they were all connected, and he just needed to find how they fit together and then he’d have his answers. Hopefully he would be able to prove that Ben and Melinda were guilty of staging a kidnapping and killing three men. And he was equally hopeful that he could disprove any theory that took Amanda or Dora to the wrong side of the law.

He got out his laptop and began the search to find everything he could about Dora Martin, who he now knew had been born Isadora Grayson.

He was still seated there hours later when Richard came in just before the four-o’clock briefing. “Working hard or hardly working?” Richard asked with a touch of humor.

Mark leaned back against his chair and stretched his arms overhead, trying to digest everything he’d managed to glean both in his time hunting via the internet and by making a few phone calls to Horn’s Gulf, Wyoming.

“Dora Martin is Melinda Grayson’s sister,” he said to Richard.

“Your bookstore lady?” Richard sank down in the chair next to Mark. “How did we miss this? How did you miss this?”

“She never told me,” Mark said, fighting against a trace of bitterness. “And it’s not in any of the background work we did on Melinda.” Mark shoved the laptop away and turned to look at Richard. “I’ve spent the last couple of hours finding out everything I could about Isadora Grayson Cook Martin.”

“And what have you discovered?”

“Their father is named Buck and her mother was Daisy. Buck is still alive but Daisy died two years ago of alcoholism. Daisy had a total of four children. The two girls she and her husband raised and two boys she apparently gave up to their father to raise on a neighboring ranch. Dora never knew about her half brothers until they met a few years ago. One of her half brothers is Samuel Grayson.”

Richard raised an eyebrow. “The creep running the show in Perfect, Wyoming. I’ve heard stories about our work there, but I don’t know much about it.”

Mark nodded and then continued, “Dora and Melinda were raised in Horn’s Gulf, Wyoming, and although I wasn’t able to get a lot of information online except official public records like birth, death and marriage certificates, I have made a few phone calls and gotten a better picture of Dora’s life before she came here to Vengeance.”

“Anything jump out at you that can be tied into what’s happening now with the murders and Melinda?”

“Nothing concrete, although I’m certainly beginning to develop profiles on both Dora and Melinda based on their histories.” He tried not to allow his compassion, his grief for Dora, to play into his.

“I spoke to a schoolteacher who taught both of the girls in grade school. Mrs. Carlson is retired now, but she had a keen memory of the Grayson girls. She said that Dora missed a lot of school, and when she was there she was always sporting some injury or another...a broken arm, smashed fingers, a black eye. Mrs. Carlson said Dora tried to make friends, but because of the reputation of her mother, most of the other children either bullied or made fun of her.”

“What was wrong with her mother?” Richard asked.

Mark’s stomach tightened. “She was an alcoholic who ran a small café on the outskirts of town. According to Ida Carlson, Daisy Grayson was a disgrace, a mother who rarely parented, but spent most of her days drunk and bedding down men in a back room of the café. Dora worked part-time for her mother from the time she was fourteen until she was eighteen and married Billy Cook. That marriage ended two years later due to irreconcilable differences. After the end of the marriage Dora returned to working at the café.”

“And what about Melinda?”

“Ida said Melinda was in school almost every day, focused completely on her class work. She made no friends, but also wasn’t bullied or bothered by the other students. Ida said she thought the other children were afraid of Melinda, but she never saw Melinda do anything to warrant the fear. The day that Melinda graduated she left Horn’s Gulf and nobody heard from her again.”

“So, tell me about these developing profiles,” Richard prompted.

Mark frowned, thinking about the call from the old teacher and all the information she’d willingly shared with him about the Grayson girls.

“It’s obvious they both came from abusive backgrounds, but it’s equally obvious the two of them developed differently. I would guess that Dora was the scapegoat for much of the physical abuse, probably from the father. She’s the one who often showed up at school with signs of the abuse, while Melinda managed to skate under the radar. What’s interesting is that many times in cases that this, it’s the eldest who gets beat the most, and takes the beating to protect a younger sibling, but it sounds like that wasn’t the case with Melinda and Dora.”

Once again Mark fought against an overwhelming sadness as he thought of the child Dora had been and the brutality that had made her childhood “not a safe place to be,” as she’d described it to him.

“My initial thought is that Melinda developed coping skills very early. Those coping skills might have been the ability to scare the hell out of her fellow students, to isolate herself and focus only on her own needs and wants and the desire to escape. She apparently didn’t step in to help Dora in any way, which leads me to believe she lacks empathy.”

He frowned. “Dora, on the other hand, seems to have developed no coping skills. Despite the attitude of her friends, she continued to attempt relationships, leading to two bad marriages. She, too, was isolated but not by choice. She became an alcoholic and spent six months in a rehab center and that’s when her half brother Micah and Melinda got her set up here to start over.”

“So, what’s the bottom line?” Richard asked, obviously wanting to cut through the fat to get to the meat.

“With what I’ve learned so far, I believe that Dora Martin was a likely candidate to commit suicide.”

“And Melinda?”

Mark hesitated a moment and then looked at his superior. “Melinda was the most likely to be a full-blown sociopath.”