A Profiler's Case for Seduction

chapter 16



Friday afternoon Dora’s phone rang and to her surprise it was Mark. When she first saw his name on her caller ID, she assumed he’d called to cancel their date of sorts for the night. She figured everything she had told him about herself, about her past, had finally sunk into his overworked brain and he’d realized she wasn’t the kind of woman he wanted to spend time with.

Reluctantly she answered. “Dora.” His warm, deep voice swept over her and she closed her eyes, steeling herself for what she assumed was about to come.

“Hi, Mark.” She was grateful her voice sounded strong.

“Since I didn’t see you yesterday I just figured I’d call to confirm the plans for the night. I’ll be at your house around seven and then we’ll head to the bonfire together.”

Relief shuddered through her. Just one more night. She wanted just one more night to be in his company, to watch that slow, sexy smile steal across his features. “That sounds perfect,” she replied.

“I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it,” he replied.

“Me, too.”

“Then I’ll see you tonight,” he replied, and after murmured goodbyes they hung up. Dora sat on the edge of the sofa with her phone still in hand.

Tonight. She would spend the night with a man she shouldn’t love, a man who would leave her heart wounded when he returned to his life in Dallas.

He was a highly respected FBI agent, not the kind of man who would want to continue to pursue any sort of relationship with her after this evening. Tonight was their swan song and while the very thought caused her heart to ache, she was comforted by the knowledge that she was strong enough to survive Mark Flynn.

Over the past couple of months she’d recognized that she had become the woman she’d always wanted to be, strong and self-sufficient and without the need for a man or anyone else to define or complete her.

She’d invited Mark into her life because she’d wanted to, because she’d known nobody could throw her off her determination to build a healthy, productive life. And she knew she’d be fine without Mark in her life. But she couldn’t help that the thought created a pool of sadness inside her.

She rose from the sofa and placed her phone on the end table. She wanted to leave tonight with her house clean and at some point work in a long, luxurious bubble bath.

Yesterday she’d even gone off campus to a local dress shop and had bought a beautiful bright red sweater with gold-trimmed V-neck. That, coupled with a pair of skinny jeans, would be perfect for displaying school colors during a fun night.

She ate a light lunch knowing that there would be hot dogs, marshmallows and other treats at the bonfire. She consciously schooled her thoughts away from the murders and Mark’s suspicions about Melinda.

She wanted nothing negative to screw up what would be her final time with Mark. Even if he wanted to continue their coffee drinking and friendship for the remainder of his time in Vengeance, she couldn’t.

As far as she was concerned the moment she’d told him about where she’d come from, the moment he’d told her he thought Melinda was responsible for the crimes, it had ended with a whimper. Tonight would be the final cut.

She would bow out of attending the football game with him tomorrow night. She would no longer require him meeting her at the bookstore to walk her home and she definitely wouldn’t give him an opportunity to sit at her table, where she’d begun to believe he belonged.

It was time to let go.

The afternoon whizzed by as she cleaned and did laundry and tried to keep her mind focused only on positive things. In May she would graduate with a degree in criminal justice and then it would be job-hunting time.

The world would be an open canvas for her to paint what she would do for the rest of her life, and although the blankness of the canvas was daunting now, the idea was also exciting.

A part of her wanted to remain in Vengeance, but her job opportunities would be limited here.

Hours later, as she luxuriated in the old tub full of bubbles, she thought about her future. The good thing was, unlike so much of the housing market around the country, her house value had gone up due to the influx of people returning to college and the home’s prime location.

She would be able to sell the place and pay back Micah every cent he’d invested in her, although she would never be able to repay his unwavering belief in her.

It was just after five when she finished her bath with a quick shower to wash her hair. When done, she dried off and pulled on a lightweight navy shift to wear until it was time to get dressed for the evening.

She turned on her old stereo unit and tuned to an easy listening channel, then made herself a cup of tea and sat at the table where she’d spent so much time in the past couple of weeks with Mark.

If he took nothing else away from the time they’d spent together, she hoped he’d take a new understanding about how important good fathers were in the lives of their daughters.

Dora had no idea how her life might have been different if she’d had a loving, caring father and if her mother hadn’t been an alcoholic.

She still occasionally checked out the newspaper for the small town of Horn’s Gulf that was available online. Two years ago she had seen her mother’s obituary and she’d tried desperately to summon sorrow, but she’d only managed an uncomfortable relief.

She hadn’t gone to the funeral and had spent a long time trying to figure out who might have been in attendance for the alcoholic who had bedded half the town’s men. Certainly Daisy hadn’t had any female friends who would have shown up to shed a tear. Most of the men Daisy had slept with had been married and wouldn’t be attending her funeral.

It was the sad ending to a sad life and Dora had only been grateful that she’d finally managed to break the chain of alcoholism and abuse in her own life.

Glancing at the clock on the oven, she sipped her raspberry tea and listened to the music dancing through the room. She was tired of thinking about everything. Tonight she would feel, not think. Tonight she would laugh and have fun despite the coming heartbreak of Mark.

Tonight there was no past, no future, just the moment and the fun of celebration. Then it would be time for Dora to put all things Mark behind her and get on with her goals.

She’d just about finished her cup of tea when a knock fell on her door. Startled, she glanced at the clock to see it was not quite six o’clock, far too early for it to be Mark.

A peek at the window showed Ben Craig standing on her porch. She opened the door and he offered her a wide smile. “Dora, I’m sorry to bother you, but could I come in for a minute?”

She opened the door wider to allow him inside. “I figured you’d be frantically finishing up the last-minute things at the bonfire pit,” she said, wondering why he was here.

“I am,” he replied as he followed her into the living room. “I just have a few more things to take care of and then we’ll be ready to roll. It’s going to be an awesome night.” His eyes glittered with excitement. “I’m really only missing one thing.”

“And what’s that?” Dora turned to face him.

He took a step toward her. “You.”

Before Dora had a chance to protest, he grabbed her, twirled her around and then slammed her against him as he held a strange-scented cloth over her mouth and nose.

Don’t breathe, a voice screamed inside Dora’s head as she struggled vainly against him. His body was hot against her back, his arms strong as they struggled.

Don’t breathe, Dora. The words played and replayed in her head. She attempted to twist out of his grasp, kicked one leg out as she lost her balance. The clumsy kick only managed to connect with a small accent table and she heard the pretty vase on top of it thump and roll on the floor.

She had no idea what was happening, why this was happening. The only thing she knew was she had to hold her breath until she could get away from him. Yet, even as she thought this, she felt the burn of her lungs, the desperate need for air.

Don’t breathe, she thought, and did just the opposite. She breathed and immediately her head spun, her brain losing focus as she slumped against him and dove into the awaiting darkness.

* * *

Mark drove his car to Dora’s with the intention that they would leave his car there and walk to the celebration on campus. There had been no word back from the handwriting expert and so everyone and everything was in a wait-and-see mode. He was determined to keep his work out of his head for the remainder of the night, although he’d opted to wear his windbreaker with the bold FBI letters on the front and back.

There was no way he wanted the local law officials or campus security to mistake him for one of the drunken revelers. He’d heard that stun guns would be the weapons of choice for the students who got out of control.

Despite the limbo that the investigation was in, in spite of his feeling that Dora intended to kick him to the curb, he was looking forward to the night with her.

The sidewalks were already filling with students and alumni, clad in Gladiator garb and shades of red and gold, making their way toward the campus as Mark pulled up to the curb in front of Dora’s house.

It promised to be a perfect-weather night, although several clouds skittered across the sky, bringing forth a false sense of early night.

He’d seen the fire pit earlier in the day and it had reminded him of something out of Old Salem when they’d burned witches at the stake. Tonight a straw-stuffed Blue Jay football player would be the official guest of honor.

Already the scent of beer and popcorn filled the air, but what he wanted to smell more than anything was the scent of Dora, that wildflower fragrance that drove him half-mad.

He got out of his car and walked to her front door with a simmering excitement inside. Tonight he had to somehow make her realize that they deserved a future together. He had to make her understand that he didn’t give a damn where she’d come from or what had happened before he met her. Her past meant nothing to him. He was only interested in her future.

A glance at his watch let him know he was precisely on time. It was exactly seven o’clock. He knocked on her door, surprised when it eased open on its own.

“Dora?” He stepped inside as he called her name. There was no answering response. He stepped into the living room and called her name louder. Still no reply and that’s when the first stir of anxiety shot off in his stomach.

A quick glance showed him that her purse was on the table, along with a teacup of half-drunk tea. He touched the cup. Cold...as cold as his heart as he cried out her name yet a third time.

She should be able to hear him, no matter where she was in the house. He raced up the stairs to the bedrooms, looking first in the spare room that only held a chair and a single bed and then in her room, where a sweater and jeans were neatly laid on the bed as if just awaiting her to pull them on.

He stared at the clothes and then focused his attention on the closed bathroom door. Was she running late? Still doing makeup or finishing up a shower?

It was completely out of character for her to be late. Heart thudding an anxious rhythm of dread, he advanced on the closed door.

He knocked on the door, a firm rap that would wake the dead. When there was no immediate response he flung open the door and gasped a sigh of both relief and alarm as she wasn’t there.

The room held the trace of her in the lingering scent of her perfume, but other than a damp towel that spoke of an earlier shower or bath, there was nothing to tell him what had happened to her.

He raced back down the stairs, his brain firing on all cylinders. The half-empty glass of tea, the clothes ready to wear and the purse on the table...all were indications that Dora had left the house unexpectedly.

Gone. But where? And why? She had no friends and she certainly wouldn’t have left the house on her own volition with the door open and her purse on the table. She knew he’d be here at seven, and there was no way she’d left the house and stood him up.

He looked around the middle of the living room. When he spied the poppy-colored vase half-hidden at the foot of the sofa he realized there had been some sort of struggle and that she’d been taken from here. For a moment he was frozen, his brain not working like a seasoned FBI agent, but rather like a man missing his mate.

Panic set in. Where was Dora? Something bad had happened here. He could smell the evil in the air, as the hairs on the nape of his neck raised in fear.

Do something, Mark, a voice screamed inside his head. That scream snapped him into action. He quickly checked all the windows on the ground level and found them locked and intact. She’d known whoever had come in. She’d apparently opened her door to the person, allowed them into her living room.

Failu.

The letters on the small card he’d found in the bottom of Melinda’s drawer suddenly flashed in his head, like a neon sign blinking over and over again. Failu.

Failure. Maybe he’d been wrong in thinking the card was meant for him. Maybe somebody who knew about Dora’s past had just been waiting to label and get rid of her.

The great Melinda would see the sister who had stayed behind, who had become an alcoholic, as a failure. Although she’d helped Dora escape from Horn’s Gulf, she might only hold disgust and embarrassment for Dora.

And what better night to murder again? With the throngs of people on campus, with the law and security on babysitting duty for the students and out-of-town guests, it would be easy for two people to disappear for a night of murder and madness.

Amanda. She held some of the answers, and without full knowledge of what the assistant knew, there was no way for Mark even to begin to know where to look for Dora.

As he ran down the stairs to his car at the curb, he pulled out his cell phone and called Richard. With clipped, terse words he told his boss what was happening, what he believed and that he was on his way to Amanda’s place for a shakedown.

“I’ll send Albright and Thompson to Dora’s place to check for forensic evidence. Lori and Joseph are already somewhere on the campus. I’ll tell them to keep an eye out for both Craig and the professor. If we have them in our sights, then they can’t be committing murder.”

“Get somebody to find Andrew Peterson, just in case my first instincts are wrong,” Mark said as he got into his car.

“I’ll take care of it,” Richard replied. When the two men had disconnected, Mark started his engine and the resulting roar of the engine mirrored the roar of terror that shot through his heart.

Dora was the next victim. She would be found somewhere with a note card placed on her body that read Failure. He had to stop it. He couldn’t let this happen.

He pulled to the curb in front of Amanda’s apartment building and parked with a screech of tires. He was out of the car like a flash.

Somehow he felt Amanda was his only hope. He believed the young woman knew a lot more than she’d told anyone. Mark needed any and all information she had about Melinda. Dora’s life hung in the balance and he’d do whatever necessary to get some answers out of Amanda. He didn’t care that she was afraid—it was time for her to step up before another murder occurred.

When he reached her door he banged on it with both fists, the terror inside him just barely contained. He didn’t even want to consider what his next move would be if Amanda wasn’t home.

He was about to pound on the door a second time when it opened. “Mark!” Amanda said with a startled look on her face. She was clad in jeans and a sweatshirt that read Gladiators across the front.

“I need to talk to you,” Mark replied, striding past her and into the small apartment. As she closed the door behind him he turned to look at her.

“Dora has gone missing. I need you to tell me everything you can about Melinda and if I think you aren’t telling me everything you know I’ll arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

He should feel bad, threatening a young woman, but he was beyond compassion, caught up in a race for Dora’s very life.

“Dora’s missing?” she echoed. She walked on wooden legs to the sofa and sank down. Tears filled her eyes as she stared up at Mark. “I think Melinda and Ben concocted the whole kidnapping scheme.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Just stuff I’ve heard between the two of them, little snippets of conversations. They never said anything directly to me about it, but sometimes I overheard them talking. I heard Ben tell Melinda that she should be glad he only broke her arm, that if he’d broken her leg it would have been difficult for her to get around campus.”

“You left the note on my car.”

Amanda nodded. “I was starting to believe that Melinda and Ben had killed those men, and then I heard your name mentioned between them. I wanted to let you know that Troy Young was innocent and I needed to warn you that you might be in danger.”

She raised a trembling hand to swipe away several tears that had escaped her eyes. “I wanted to believe I was wrong in my suspicions. I wanted to believe that Melinda was a brilliant, wonderful woman who would never be involved in any criminal activity. But truthfully, she scares me and she has Ben completely wrapped around her finger.”

Mark’s cell phone rang and he held up a finger to Amanda as he answered. “Agent Flynn.”

“We’ve checked both Ben’s apartment and Melinda’s place and nobody is home at either place,” Richard said. “The police department has stationed a man on each address to see if either of them turns up.”

Mark fought against a new wave of fear as he thanked Richard and then disconnected the call. If Dora wasn’t at either of those places then where could she be? Was she already dead and buried in a shallow grave? His brain rebelled at the very thought.

“Do you know if Melinda has another place besides the one where she lives? Does she own a getaway cabin or anything like that?”

Amanda frowned. “Not that I know of.”

“Neither Melinda nor Ben are home. Do you have any idea where they might be right now?”

“I imagine they’re already out at the bonfire site.” Amanda jumped up from the sofa. “Maybe there’s some information about Melinda owning another house or something in the paperwork she left with me on the day after she was supposedly released from her kidnappers.”

Mark stared at her, his heart thumping. “Papers?”

Amanda walked over to the closet, opened it and then withdrew a tin lockbox from the top shelf. “Melinda brought this to me for safekeeping,” Amanda explained. “At the time she told me she was afraid of what might happen to her next and that this was all the paperwork anyone would need if something bad happened to her.” She held the tin box toward Mark, who grasped it eagerly.

“Get me a sharp knife or a screwdriver,” he said as he carried the box to the small table. The box was locked, but it was cheap, and if Mark couldn’t pick the lock, his adrenaline would give him enough strength to tear it apart.

He was vaguely surprised when Amanda pulled a pink case from under her sofa and opened it to display a small tool kit, complete with hammer, screwdrivers and pliers.

Aware of time ticking by, time that could possibly be measured by Dora’s last gasps, he grabbed the Phillips-head screwdriver and attacked the lock.

After several agonizing minutes, he threw the screwdriver aside with frustration and picked up the hammer. He attacked the box as if it were the person who had taken Dora, and by the time he’d struck the lock several times the lock sprang and the lid unlatched.

Inside were three items and a digital camera. Mark stared at the three things: a gold-plated cigar lighter, a thick rope gold chain and a tie tack bearing the initials of JM.

JM.

“John Merris,” he muttered to himself. Souvenirs. This was a box of souvenirs from the murders. He was vaguely aware of Amanda moving to stand next to him.

Sheriff Burris was a cigar smoker and David Reed’s ex-wife, Eliza, had mentioned that David always wore a chain around his neck, a chain that hadn’t been found on the body.

Mark’s heart thumped in his chest as he picked up the camera and turned it on. The first photo displayed was a picture of Senator John Merris, obviously dead and resting in the shallow pit that had been prepared for his body.

“Oh, my God,” Amanda exclaimed, and whirled away from the table.

Mark hit the button to go to the next photo...and the next...and the next. Prove it or disprove it. The words rang in his head.

With fingers that trembled, Mark pulled out his cell phone and called Richard. “You need to get over to Amanda Burns’s apartment. She has in her possession everything we need to nail Melinda Grayson and Ben Craig for the murders.”

He disconnected the call and then turned to Amanda, who had huddled into a small ball in the corner of the sofa. “Stay here,” he commanded. “An FBI agent will be here to collect the box and its contents. Tell him everything you told me.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, her voice small and fearful.

“To the bonfire. I’ve got to find Dora before those two monsters make her their next victim.” He left the apartment at a run, forgoing his car for the swiftness of his feet as he raced toward the campus.

Night had fallen and a raucous noise drifted on the air from the bonfire site. Laughter and screams and cheers mingled together to form the sound of a rioting, drunken crowd.

He checked his watch. It would soon be nine and the fire would be lit, kicking off the homecoming festivities. The air smelled of popcorn, apples and madness.

Wild. The night was filled with wildness and it whipped through him as he ran, praying he wasn’t already too late.