A Profiler's Case for Seduction

chapter 2



Mark stood at a whiteboard in front of his team in the conference room they had commandeered on the first floor of the county courthouse/city hall. The room was midsize and filled with the requisite long tables and chairs where his fellow agents now sat looking at him expectantly.

The team had changed in the three weeks since the bodies had been discovered. Agents had been pulled off this particular crime when a grave of twenty skeletons of young men had been discovered just outside Oklahoma City. Richard Sinclair was the agent in charge, but he ran a fairly loose ship and rarely yielded his power over the others.

For a moment, as Mark stared at the five agents at the table, his brain blanked on everything except the silky look of Dora Martin’s hair sparking in the sunshine the day before and the mysteries he’d sensed in the depths of her dove-gray eyes when she’d been so vague about where she’d come from and what she’d been doing before winding up in Vengeance, Texas.

“Earth to Mark,” Agent Lori Delaney said drily, pulling him from thoughts of Dora and to his task at hand.

“Sorry,” Mark said, and raked a hand through his hair as if the gesture would banish any further thoughts of Dora. He turned toward the whiteboard where photos of the three dead men were taped. Beneath their photos was information about each man written in Mark’s precise handwriting.

“Sheriff Peter Burris,” Mark began, intending to go through all the facts they knew about each of the dead men for the hundredth time since they’d been called out on the case. He tapped on the picture of the dead man. It was a crime-scene photo, the burly sheriff barely recognizable after having been strangled and buried in his shallow grave.

“He was found with a note card on his body that read Liar. We now know that Peter Burris was a dirty lawman who was blackmailing Senator John Merris among other illegal activities. At the time of his murder he was married to Suzy Burris, an accountant who has since been cleared of having anything to do with her husband’s death.”

Mark slid sideways to tap his index finger on the second photograph. “Next victim is David Reed, with a note card that labeled him a cheater. He was a sports writer, known to be a playboy. He had a drug problem and was into the illegal sports betting scene. Although he was married to Eliza Harvey, we know that he was having affairs at the time of his murder.”

“I definitely would have killed him if he were my husband,” Lori Delaney quipped, making the other agents laugh.

They quickly sobered as Mark continued. “Eliza was our number-one suspect until she was cleared, which brings us to victim number three, Senator John Merris, who was labeled as a thief by the card the killer left on his body. We all know now that the good senator was a nasty piece of work who siphoned millions of dollars from the Dawson Exploration Oil Company and padded his own bank account at the same time he put hundreds of people out of work.”

“It’s almost like our killer did the world a big favor,” Agent Donald Thompson muttered, under his breath but loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

“They were all dirtbags, but they were still murdered,” Lori replied. “And I want this killer brought to justice.” She was an intense young agent with dark hair and eyes. Mark knew this was the biggest case she’d worked on in her short career.

“All three men were killed within a twenty-four-hour period of time and each of them had been strangled or suffocated,” Mark continued. “As we know, what few leads we’ve managed to get have led us nowhere. There is no question that these men were all killed by the same person or persons, and strangulation is a particularly intimate form of killing, but we have yet to tie these three victims to any one person to make a connection.”

“We’re working on it,” Agent Larry Albright replied with a weariness Mark knew the whole team felt. So far this had been one of the most frustrating cases Mark had worked. He couldn’t get a handle on the killer, none of them could even agree on a specific motive.

Certainly the three dead men all had their share of unsavory secrets, but murder usually uncovered secrets of one sort or another. Nobody was exactly what they portrayed to the outside world.

So far their investigation had run in all directions, focusing on enemies a state senator might have, and who might hate a playboy cheater and, finally, why somebody would kill a dirty sheriff. Each of these people could have faced the consequences of their crimes in a courtroom, but instead the ultimate judgment had been meted out by an unknown person or persons.

The FBI had no idea specifically where the men had been killed, only that, within a twenty-four-hour period, each of them had been strangled and buried in shallow graves on private land adjoining the college campus.

Mark knew the other men and woman on his team were leaning toward a vigilante scenario...one or two people getting rid of the dishonest, the disloyal and the mendacious in one single twenty-four-hour killing spree.

He finished up going over the particulars of what they already knew and what they needed to know, and the group of agents dispersed and left the room. The only one remaining, as Mark began to set up video equipment, was the senior agent Richard Sinclair.

Agent Sinclair was the oldest on the team, a veteran who had seen all the ugly that the world had to offer in his many years in the bureau. He was also the person Mark felt closest to on the team.

“Going to view them again?” Richard asked as he once again sank down at a chair at the table.

“And again and again,” Mark replied. He set the video screen so that both he and Richard could watch the “movies” about to play. After loading the DVD into the recorder, he took a seat next to Richard, the remote control in his hand.

“You know that most of the others think you’re crazy about this,” Richard said, his voice deep and full yet holding no judgment. “They believe you’ve become obsessed and refuse to see reality.”

“I know, and that’s okay. I’m just following my instincts. If I’m wrong then all I’ve wasted is my own time. There are plenty of others to do the rest of the investigative work. I’ve got to follow through on my gut, right or wrong.” He turned to look at Richard, seeking not approval but rather simple acceptance.

“I’ve been at this long enough to know that sometimes all we have to go on is our gut instincts, and yours has proven to be right more often than not. Play the movie,” he said.

Mark punched the remote and the screen filled first with blackness and then suddenly she was there, Melinda Grayson, tied to a chair with a blindfold across her eyes.

Mark leaned forward, his gaze focused not on the woman in the center of the picture, but rather on the background, seeking anything that might provide a clue as to where the video had been shot.

In this particular scene the backdrop appeared to be nothing but a black curtain or sheet. Melinda was a stark figure in the straight-back chair, tears shining from beneath the blindfold and trekking down her pale skin. “Please, please help me.” Her voice pleaded with some unknown captor. The screen went black and Mark hit the remote to pause.

“What are you looking for? The tech team has been over these a dozen times trying to figure out where the video was made, if there are any sounds that could be amplified that might give us a clue. They’ve come up with nothing,” Richard said.

“I don’t know. I’m just looking for...” Mark hesitated and then continued, “For something we all might have missed.”

Richard got up from his chair and clapped Mark on the shoulder. “I know you do your best work alone, without somebody telling you what to do. Happy hunting,” he said, and then left Mark alone in the room.

Mark played the recording again, this time with his eyes closed, listening intently for any whisper of sound before she spoke. “Please, please help me.” Melinda’s voice filled his brain, but there was nothing else to hear, no traffic noise, no singing of birds...nothing.

He tried to imagine himself as the victim. He’d been kidnapped, a blindfold over his eyes. He’d been shoved into a chair, a rope tight against his chest, hurting him, making it difficult to breathe. His wrists burned from the rope that tied them to the arms of the chair.

Terror. He felt the simmering, near screaming of terror inside him. He was a prisoner of people unknown, he had no idea why they had him or what they wanted from him. He listened in his head to her voice once again.

“Please, please help me.”

It wasn’t what was there that caught his attention, but rather what he didn’t hear in her plea: a lack of sheer terror in the way she spoke the words. She hadn’t pulled at the binding of her wrists to the chair as she’d spoken, and she hadn’t desperately strained against the rope across her chest. She hadn’t looked or sounded terrified.

Maybe she just wasn’t the dramatic type. Maybe she’d somehow managed to remain cool and calm despite her dire circumstances. He picked up the remote and clicked Play to watch the next video that they’d received from the kidnappers.

There were a total of four DVDs sent by the captor or captors. The worst one showed Melinda being beaten by a figure dressed all in black and wearing a ski mask.

Mark didn’t know how long he sat watching the videos again and again, trying to figure out the question that had yet to be answered. There had never been a ransom demand—there had never been a demand for anything. So, why kidnap and beat a woman, videotape the crime, send the videos to law enforcement and then simply release her? It didn’t make sense and things that didn’t make sense bothered Mark.

The consensus among the other agents was that it was probably a student prank that had somehow gotten a bit out of control. The fact that she was missing at the same time the murders had occurred was merely a weird coincidence.

Mark didn’t believe in coincidences, weird or otherwise. He still believed the gray-eyed woman had something to do with the murders, that the whole kidnapping thing had been orchestrated for show and nothing else.

He frowned as he realized his mistake. Melinda didn’t have gray eyes. Hers were green. Dora had gray eyes, and the whisper of sweet flowers clinging to her.

A glance at his watch let him know it was just after noon. He had no idea what Dora’s class schedule was like, but a desire to find her and talk to her rose up inside him. He knew that if her schedule at the bookstore was the same as yesterday, she would be heading there around four.

As he walked down the long wide steps of the courthouse, he was accosted at the bottom of the stairs by a reporter who had become a familiar irritation to the entire team.

Paula Craddock, ace reporter for KVXT, a Dallas television station, stood ready to shove her microphone in his face. Mark had always tried to be kind to the media, mostly because his ex-wife had been part of that industry. But, after three weeks of media frenzy, it was becoming more and more difficult to keep a smile on his face whenever he encountered a reporter.

“Any break in the murder case, Agent Flynn?” She hurried toward him as he hit the sidewalk.

“No comment,” he replied.

She fell into step beside him, her photographer hurrying to keep up with them as Mark started walking down the sidewalk to where his car was parked. “Surely you have something you can tell the viewers. It’s a well-known fact that you’re one of the FBI’s brightest profilers.”

Mark turned to stare at her and finally gave her a tight smile. “And that’s what makes me smart enough to say ‘no comment.’”

As he picked up his pace, Paula sighed in frustration. She and her photographer hurried back to the bottom of the courthouse steps, where Mark knew she would take up residency, hoping to get something of substance for the latest on this tawdry, explosive murder case.

Mark got into his car and drove the short distance to the Darby campus. His brain was still engaged with the mystery of Melinda’s kidnapping and the murders.

It had always been easy for Mark to lose himself in the head of the killer. Sometimes it scared him a little how good he was at picking up vibes from the insane, the evil that could reside in people. But not this time. The note cards left with each man were calling cards of a sort from the killer they sought, but Mark couldn’t get a handle on what had compelled the killer to leave them behind. There had been no prints on the note cards, and that particular kind of card was sold in dozens of stores, including the campus bookstore.

Had the killer simply decided to off men with unsavory secrets...secrets that might not have been uncovered without their murders and the note cards that labeled each victim?

Certainly Mark had worked grave sites where multiple victims had been found before, but usually those burial sites had been created over months or years, not in a single twenty-four-hour period.

He found an empty parking space along a tree-lined street near the campus and got out to walk the rest of the way. He was lucky that his team understood that for the most part he was a lone wolf. His specific job required him to do less of the actual investigation work and more of the mind-game tasks that always came with catching a killer.

This was the first time he was having trouble connecting with the killer or killers. He couldn’t help but believe that the mere logistics of murdering three men and dumping their bodies suggested more than one person at work. They just didn’t have enough information for him to do his job effectively.

As he walked toward the building that held the lecture hall where Dora had been in class yesterday, his thoughts turned to her. He told himself she was the perfect tool to use to gain some knowledge about Melinda and her friends and colleagues on the campus. But that didn’t explain the quick beat of his heart as he thought of basking in the warmth of Dora’s smile once again.

He sank down on the same bench he’d sat at the day before. He had no idea if Dora had classes in the same building today, but this particular bench and building was fairly central in the campus. From this viewpoint he could see the comings and goings of students in all directions.

If he didn’t catch her between classes, he’d wait until later this evening and meander into the bookstore. He just knew that before the day was done he wanted...he needed to see Dora again. It was an alien emotion that he refused to dwell on because it unsettled him.

He’d like to learn a little bit more about Melinda’s graduate assistants, Amanda Burns and Ben Craig. The background checks had shown both of them to be law-abiding, upstanding citizens, not even a speeding ticket between them. They were both from good families and took their positions as Melinda Grayson’s assistants very seriously.

Mark knew from casual conversations with several other students and staff that both Amanda and Ben worked hard for Melinda, helping her with research and the mundane tasks that a professor of Melinda’s ilk would need done. They were both bright and apparently devoted to their boss.

All thoughts of Melinda Grayson flew from his head as Dora stepped out of the building and into the afternoon sunshine. Her long legs were encased in navy dress slacks, and a feminine long-sleeved white blouse with pearl buttons emphasized her slender waist and the fullness of her breasts.

A knot of heat twisted in Mark’s stomach as her eyes indicated surprise, yet her mouth curved in a smile that drove all rational thoughts of murder and mayhem out of his mind.

* * *

Dora’s heart gave a healthy bounce in her chest. Mark was obviously waiting for her. Like yesterday he was dressed in black slacks and a white shirt and black jacket and his hair looked as if it had never met a comb or brush. Yet the messiness of those rich dark strands only added to his overall attractiveness.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she said, and tried to ignore her jitters.

“I was just hanging around wondering if maybe you’d like to catch a cup of coffee with me again,” he said.

Two days in a row. Dora couldn’t help the fact that his words caused a little thrill to race up her spine. “Unfortunately, I don’t have time today. I’ve got to get right to the bookstore for work.” It was probably for the best, she thought, that this casual meeting for coffee...that he didn’t become a habit.

“What time do you finish up at the bookstore this evening?” he asked, obviously unwilling to let the topic drop. Once again a small dance of pleasure kicked a jig in the pit of Dora’s stomach.

“We close the store at eight on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she said. “We’re closed on Sundays and open the rest of the week until ten.” She closed her mouth, realizing she’d given way more information than he’d asked for and that’s why she didn’t trust herself to have relationships at this point in her life.

“So, you’ll be off at eight this evening,” he said, apparently easily picking through the minutia she’d just offered him. She nodded. “Then why don’t I meet you at the bookstore at eight and we can grab a cup of coffee or something then?”

“That sounds great.” Dora heard the words falling from her lips and knew they were probably the wrong thing to say, but she didn’t seem to have the power to stop them.

“Great!” His blue eyes glowed with obvious pleasure and his sexy smile curved his lips. “Then I’ll see you later.”

She stood stock-still as he turned and headed down the sidewalk away from her. You should have said no, a little voice whispered inside her head.

Turning in the opposite direction to head to the bookstore, she tried to list all the reasons it was wrong to have coffee with Mark again, but she kept coming up with the same defense...it was just a cup of coffee with a man who would soon be gone from town.

It shouldn’t feel as frightening, as exciting or as earth-shattering as it did. She chided herself for being so silly, for trying to make it all bigger than it was in her mind. He was an out-of-towner, with only colleagues around him every day for almost a month. Maybe he just found himself a bit lonely for regular conversation and she was convenient.

By the time she walked into the bookstore, she had rationalized it all in her mind. The first thing she always noticed upon coming in to work was the scent of the store...the smell of paper drifting in the air from all the textbooks on the shelves.

Dora loved the smell of books, the weight of one in her hand. The store sold more than textbooks and research tomes. There were T-shirts and other apparel in the school colors of red and gold, glasses and tumblers with the Darby Gladiators logos, candles and key chains and an entire assortment of candies and snacks.

“How’s it going?” she asked Kathy Taylor, a young night student who usually worked just before Dora came in.

“Slow. I’ve only sold one candle all day long. But, on the bright side, I’ve managed to use the quiet time to write a paper that needed to be done before Thursday,” Kathy replied.

“If it stays quiet, then hopefully I can work on studying for a test we’re having on Friday in my forensics class.” Dora set her laptop on the counter next to the cash register.

“If things go this evening like they have all day then you should have a good five hours of quiet time to study.” Kathy grabbed her bright pink backpack and slung it over one shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Not if I can help it,” Dora replied with a grin. “Tomorrow is my night off.”

“Enjoy,” Kathy replied as she breezed out the door.

Dora settled on the chair behind the register and opened her laptop, intent on reviewing the notes she’d taken that day in her classes.

However, forensic science couldn’t compete with the brilliant blue of Mark’s eyes or those tousled strands of darkness atop his head that begged her fingers to provide some sort of order.

No touching, she told herself. It was bad enough that she’d agreed to have coffee with him a second time. She certainly couldn’t fantasize about how his hair would feel beneath her fingertips. That would be going against everything she’d promised herself.

Her education, that was all that was important to her. She’d tried the marriage route...twice, in fact, and with disastrous results. Men weren’t good for her. She’d made the decision three years ago to get her degree, get a great job, and that would be enough to fulfill her for the rest of her life.

With a new resolve, she began to read the notes she’d taken in her forensics class that day, trying her best to memorize everything she suspected would be on the next test.

She was interrupted only twice by students coming in to browse, but her concentration was broken many more times as she continued to think about Mark Flynn.

Her attention was divided between trying to study and the clock on the wall opposite where she sat. The minutes crept by with agonizing slowness.

She reminded herself that it hadn’t been a man who had gotten Melinda out of the circumstances of their early life...it had been education. Three years ago Melinda and Micah Grayson, a brother she’d only recently learned existed, had given her the same opportunity to make something of herself. As far as Dora knew the two had been estranged since first meeting, but had come together as a united force to save Dora.

When Melinda had been kidnapped, Micah hadn’t come forward because he was working an important undercover case. Although Dora had been terrified for her sister, she also hadn’t gone to the authorities because she had no information to offer them.

Micah had paid for the little house where she now lived just off campus with the understanding that once she was on her feet and had landed a good job, she’d begin to pay him back for his investment in her. He also gave her a small monthly allowance to help with utilities and groceries. Melinda had helped her with financial support and scholarship grants and awards, and had guided her in her choice of classes, but the two sisters had remained virtual strangers.

The last thing Dora wanted to do was misstep and prove to the two people who had done so much for her that the truth was she was just the same old screwup she’d always been.

For a moment she was mired in her past, and her head filled with the scent of cheap booze and sweaty males, of fried food and the sound of her mother’s drunken laughter.

She was back at the Daisy Café on the outskirts of the small town of Horn’s Gulf, Wyoming. The Daisy Café, a cheerful name for the most dismal place on the face of the earth.

She remembered every whack of the belt that her father had wielded as a weapon, the drunken shouts of her abusive first ex-husband and the killing words of her second husband, words that rang with an unadorned truth and had spiraled her down and out of control.

With a shake of her head, she shoved aside those distant memories of her hometown and all the despair the thoughts of that place and those times created inside her.

A glance at the clock let her know that there were only two hours left and then she could close up shop. Maybe Mark wouldn’t show. Maybe something would come up that would keep him from being here when she closed for the night.

She told herself it didn’t matter whether he showed up or not. She had no vested interest in him. He meant absolutely nothing to her. She just liked looking at him, and she hadn’t realized, until she’d had coffee with him yesterday, that she’d hungered for the normal conversation between herself and a man.

She’d made no real friends here, hadn’t given herself a chance to enjoy any kind of a personal life. She had her studies and her work and she’d told herself that was enough, but she recognized now that she’d been socially starving herself.

Even if Mark didn’t show up for a cup of coffee, Dora made a vow to herself that the next time one of her fellow students invited her to come along for a quick bite to eat in the student lounge she’d go. For three years she’d isolated herself, afraid of making a mistake, afraid that any distraction might throw her off course or that she’d say something that would hint at the secrets she held close to her heart.

But, she was stronger now than she’d been when she’d first started school. All work and no play was noble, but it was also unnatural. A little play didn’t hurt as long as she didn’t lose control of what was important.

At quarter until eight she went into the bathroom and checked her hair, then sprayed a touch of her favorite perfume on the side of her neck.

She straightened her blouse and tucked it into her waistband, then stared at her reflection and told herself she was once again being silly.

And then he was there...standing at her counter, his gaze going around the room and then landing on her with a smile. “I’ve always loved bookstores,” he said.

She nodded. “All that paper scent and being surrounded by such knowledge,” she said.

“Exactly,” he said, his blue eyes brightening as if pleased that she apparently felt what he did when in a bookstore. “At work I’m surrounded by technology, have the latest Android phone, all the computer gadgets imaginable, but I still like the weight of a real book in my hands.”

At that moment a couple of students came in and as Dora waited on them she kept one eye on Mark, who wandered the store looking at the various offerings. He was a curious man, reading labels and studying contents of the items he perused.

There had been several moments when they were having coffee the day before that his gaze had been so intense on her that she’d felt he was studying the contents of her.

Her breath grew tight inside her chest, making it difficult to breathe. Despite this, she finished ringing up the students. It’s just another cup of coffee, she told herself, and yet she had the feeling that she was about to make yet another big mistake in her life.

* * *

Amanda Burns slammed the door to her tiny apartment and tossed her laptop case and purse on the sofa, which was half-smothered by decorative throw pillows.

She’d like to take one of those pillows and smother Ben, the rotten rat. Melinda had assigned them a research project and they were supposed to get together this evening to work on it. But Ben had done it alone and presented the papers to Melinda that day, making him the official golden boy of the moment.

Amanda fought the impulse to reopen her apartment door and slam it once again, needing a release of the anger that ripped through her.

Ben Craig was a sneaky snake who would undercut Amanda whenever possible to get and to stay in Melinda’s good graces. This wasn’t the first time he’d done that.

Instead of slamming her apartment door once again, she shoved a couple of the pillows onto the floor and sank down on the sofa, picking at a cuticle until it was bloody.

It was hard to believe that she’d once had a bit of a crush on the handsome grad student. Ben, with his short auburn hair and dark eyes, had an intelligence and a suave unruffled manner that had instantly drawn Amanda to him.

However, it hadn’t taken her long to realize there was only one person he adored more than himself, and that was Professor Melinda Grayson.

Amanda stuck her finger in her mouth and realized she’d just managed to ruin a perfectly good manicure. Somehow, that was Ben’s fault, as well.

Amanda adored Melinda, too. The beautiful, bright woman was not just Amanda’s professional role model, but also her personal heroine. She was so gorgeous, so intelligent, and her strength absolutely amazed Amanda.

She’d been through so much with the kidnapping. They’d beaten her and broken her arm, and yet before she was fully healed from the awful ordeal she was back teaching, unwilling to let her students down.

And that creep Ben had gone behind Amanda’s back to make himself look good and make Amanda look like a slug. Amanda could positively wring his neck.

On impulse she jumped up from the sofa and went to the tiny closet in the small bedroom. She opened the door and looked up on the top shelf. Nestled next to a large shoebox containing a pair of red cowboy boots that had been an impulse buy was a tin lockbox, half-covered by a nubby light blue blanket. The locked box was positive proof of Melinda’s complete trust in her.

Amanda closed the closet and returned to the sofa, where she once again sank down and pulled a pink flowered throw pillow against her chest.

Ben could knock himself out sneaking around to complete projects and presenting them to Melinda to garner favor, but that box on Amanda’s closet shelf spoke of who among the two grad students Melinda trusted the most.

She still remembered the night Melinda had shown up here clutching the tin box tight against her chest. It had been the evening after the day of her release from her captors and there hadn’t been a hint of the confident, strong woman.

Melinda had looked small and frightened, her green eyes huge as she’d handed Amanda the box and explained that it had all of her important papers inside.

“The key is in my desk drawer at the college,” she’d said, and then had jumped when a car squealed around the corner outside. She’d wrapped her thin arms around her body, as if to stanch an inward tremble, as if to protect herself from further harm.

“If anything happens to me, then you’ll have everything safe here,” she’d said.

Amanda’s heart had fluttered with fear for her mentor. “Do you expect something else bad to happen to you?”

Melinda had given her a rueful smile and raised the arm with the cast. “I didn’t expect this to happen to me,” she’d replied. “Would you keep this safe for me here?”

Amanda had assured her she would. What Melinda didn’t seem to understand was that Amanda adored Melinda so much she would do anything for her...anything at all.