Assumed Identity

chapter Three



“You take care of whatever you need to and don’t worry about Emma.” Hope Lockhart pulled her toffee-blond hair from beneath Emma’s head where it nestled on her ample bosom and shook the loose, sleep-rumpled curls down her back. “I’ll take her across the street and get the spare room ready for you two. It’ll be a lot quieter in my apartment and she can sleep. You know I like hanging out with sweetie-pie here.”

Robin followed her friend into the hallway outside her office and pulled the blanket up over her sleeping daughter’s head. “I’m so glad you came over, Hope. Thank you.”

“Not a problem. When I heard the sirens and saw all the lights... You know what I thought.” Hope’s fearful expression echoed what every woman thought whenever KCPD, reporters and an ambulance gathered in this part of Kansas City—the Rose Red Rapist had claimed another victim.

Robin adjusted the ice pack over her bruised shoulder and gave her friend a hug. “I’m okay. At least, I will be once all the craziness calms down.”

When she pulled away, Hope’s deep gray eyes had narrowed into a frown behind the glasses she wore. She was looking beyond Robin’s shoulder to the three KCPD investigators inside her office. “Can’t you tell these people to go away and leave you alone, at least until daylight? It’s not fair that the victim has to deal with all this after being attacked. I don’t think I could handle so many people poking into my life, wanting something from me.”

Robin summoned a smile as she pulled together the gaping collar of the trench coat Hope had thrown on over her nightgown before running downstairs from her apartment above the Fairy Tale Bridal Shop she owned across the street. Her shy friend was stronger than she gave herself credit for. “Who came charging over here in the middle of the night when she thought Emma or I might be hurt?”

“I didn’t stop to think about it—I just did it. And you are hurt.” Hope tucked a damp, frizzing tendril behind her ear. “But talking to those detectives in your office without stumbling over my words and sounding like an idiot? Trust me, I’d rather babysit.”

“Well, I’m grateful.” Robin leaned in and pressed a goodbye kiss to Emma’s soft, warm cheek. She pulled back with a stern, sisterly warning for her friend. “Make sure one of the officers walks you across the street. Even that short distance isn’t safe anymore.”

“I will. I saw Maggie Wheeler outside, blocking off the parking lot with crime scene tape. She’s a client of mine. I’m planning her wedding to that Marine, remember? I ordered her flowers through you—”

“Detective Montgomery?” The back door slammed shut and a man’s deep voice called out, interrupting Hope’s soft gasp. The pungent smell of wet dog tickled Robin’s nose a split second before Hope hugged Emma tightly to her chest and retreated a step.

“Hope? What is it?” Robin turned at her friend’s stricken expression to see a K-9 officer with his brown-and-tan German shepherd partner striding down the hallway. The dog paused when his handler did, and shook himself from nose to tail. The cop pulled off his black KCPD ball cap and knocked the excess water against his pant leg, leaving a similar spray of water droplets on the concrete floor.

“Detective Montgomery?” The officer rapped sharply on the frame of the door to Robin’s office. His square jaw warmed with a shade of pink when he realized the two women were staring at him. “Sorry, ma’am. If you point me to a mop, I can clean up after Hans and me.”

Robin suspected the blush on those rugged features meant the apology was sincere. “That’s okay. I deal with plenty of water around all these flowers. That’s why the floor is sealed and the walls have moisture-resistant wallpaper. I’ll wait until everyone’s done before I tackle the footprints and rain we’ve all tracked in.”

“Pike?” Spencer Montgomery, the red-haired detective who seemed to be running this whole show, looked up from the notepad where he’d been jotting information and joined them at the doorway. He tucked the notepad and pen inside the pocket of his suit jacket. “Did you two find anything?”

“Rain’s washed away any scent we can track.” The nameplate on the officer’s uniform identified him as E. Taylor. Pike must be a nickname. “Looks like there was a scuffle in the alley, though—away from the loading dock where Ms. Carter said she ended up. The perp could have escaped through there easily enough. As for the man you claim rescued you—”

“He did.”

“—I’ve got no clue where he disappeared to. There’s no car, no footprints, no sign of him anywhere.”

Spencer Montgomery nodded. “His sudden departure might mean he has reason to avoid talking to the police.”

The need to defend the man who’d saved her life charged Robin’s weary body with renewed energy. “And it might mean he had to get to work at an early morning job. Or go home to his family.”

As soon as she said the words, Robin wondered if there was any truth to them. There was something about Mr. No-Name Lonergan—his reluctance to hold Emma, his gruff demeanor and brute strength, that odd comment he’d made about not knowing if there were any children in his life—that made Robin think he was a man without any familial connections to civilize him. What kind of man roamed a downtown neighborhood in the middle of the night during a storm without benefit of umbrella, raincoat or even a cap? Where had he come from? Why had he disappeared? Where had he learned that choke-hold thing he’d done to her attacker? He’d never given her his first name, and she’d been too out of it to even think to ask. What if Lonergan was a criminal? He certainly looked the part of a TV or movie villain with that scarred face and misshapen nose that indicated he’d seen more than one fight in his lifetime.

But something about the sense of isolation that had fit him as tightly as the T-shirt he’d worn tugged at her compassion. She didn’t suppose he owed her anything, not even the courtesy of a proper goodbye. But she owed him everything. Bad guy or not, he’d been her hero. Robin swore to herself, not for the first time that night, that she would track down her mysterious savior and thank him properly for being there when she and Emma had needed him.

“Maybe.” The detective seemed to consider her reasoning and then dismissed any option but his own. Lonergan was still a person of interest, if not a viable suspect, on his list. Spencer Montgomery glanced up at the K-9 officer and gave his orders. “Keep an eye on things until the CSI’s are done processing the scene. And keep those damn reporters out of everyone’s way. We’ll debrief later this morning.”

“Yes, sir.” After he’d been dismissed, and the lead detective had returned to his conversation with his partner in her office, the brawny K-9 officer looked down at Hope, still frozen in place beside Robin, and winked. “Hans won’t hurt you, ma’am. Not unless I tell him to.” The officer’s teasing grin vanished when Hope’s eyes widened like circles rippling across a lake. He quickly raised a gloved hand. “But I would never give him that order. I just meant he only does what I tell him to. Ma’am?”

“Hope?” Robin reached for her friend. “He was teasing you.”

“I know.” But the tight press of her lips and ashy skin indicated that what she knew and what she believed weren’t the same thing. “He’s a cop. He’s a good guy.”

“Maybe Officer Taylor could walk you and Emma home,” Robin suggested.

“No!” Her friend’s answer was too fast and too succinct to be polite and her cheeks instantly flooded with embarrassment.

“I don’t mind,” the big man offered. “Security is what Hans and I do best.”

“No.” Hope’s gaze darted up to meet Pike Taylor’s, but then settled, almost deliberately, at the middle of his chest. “I mean, no, thank you. Officer Wheeler’s outside. She’s a friend. I’ll ask her.”

Robin’s concern shifted from defending Lonergan to the situation at hand. The Hope she knew was a gentle, patient soul—not this skittish woman who was visibly shaking in her soggy slippers.

“Hope?” She put a hand beneath Emma before touching her friend’s shoulder.

Hope snapped her gaze to Robin. “I’ve got her,” Hope reassured her, hugging the infant in her arms. And though she sounded more like the friend Robin relied on, Hope’s gaze was darting from the officer’s chest down to the dog, where he lay on the floor, panting, while his tongue lolled out of the side of his long black muzzle. The shepherd looked completely relaxed and disinterested in the people coming and going around him. Her friend, however, seemed ready to bolt. “I’ll go find Maggie Wheeler. You still have the spare key I gave you?”

“Yes. I’ll let myself in.”

Hope forced a smile and flattened her back against the wall to scoot around the police officer and his dog. “Emma and I will be at home when you’re done. Good luck.”

She’d disappeared through the heavy steel door to the parking lot before Officer Taylor spoke. “Did I do something wrong? Is she okay?”

There was shy and tongue-tied, and then there was freaking out. Robin shrugged her confusion, then winced at the pain radiating through her shoulder. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve never seen her act like that before.”

“Sorry I scared her. I would never sic Hans on her.”

Robin nodded, adding her friend’s behavior to the list of things that perplexed her tonight. “I know.”

“Well, we’d best be getting back to work. Ma’am.” Officer Taylor put his cap back on and tipped the bill to her before tugging on the dog’s collar and giving a command in German that prompted the dog to its feet and into step beside him.

Left alone for a few quiet moments, away from the chaos that had descended on her shop and the parking lot outside, Robin inhaled a steadying breath. Part of her wanted to go after Hope to find out what had upset her so, and part of her wanted to curl up in bed with Emma so they could get some sleep and recapture the serenity of their life before the man with the baseball bat.

But Robin knew she wouldn’t be much help to her friend, nor would there be any real relaxing, until she finished her interview with the police and got her life back to its normal routine. If normal was even possible.

While she considered herself infinitely practical, and was used to dealing with the problems in her life on her own, something in Robin’s world had shifted tonight. Her confidence had been rattled and, for the first time, she wondered if she’d been selfish to bring Emma into her life. She’d wanted a family to fill her big house and empty heart so badly that she’d jumped at the chance to adopt Emma when her birth mother had terminated her parental rights. But maybe she had no business being a single mom. Tonight she’d been terrified—not just for herself, but for Emma. She’d been helpless to defend herself or her daughter.

And then Lonergan showed up out of nowhere. Despite his ghostlike appearance, he was solid and real. She’d leaned on him when she’d been too weak to stand and too frightened to think, and he hadn’t budged an inch. Robin didn’t doubt that he could kill a man with those big hands of his—he’d tossed that creep aside like a bag of trash. Yet he’d cradled Emma as though she was the most fragile treasure in the world.

He’d been growly and gruff and overwhelming, and had no interest in accepting the proper thanks he deserved. Still, Lonergan’s sudden disappearance left a void in her world. Any real sense of security was gone. She was usually such a good judge of people. Hadn’t she sensed some sort of interest in his icy gaze? Even if it wasn’t sexual, she was certain that there’d been a connection between them.

But gone was gone. She had no idea why one man would come after her, and another would run away.

“Ms. Carter?” Spencer Montgomery was at the doorway again, waiting for her to come in to finish answering his questions. “Is the baby settled?”

With a nod that was more a surrender to the inevitable than an answer to his question, Robin followed him back into her office.

“CSI Hermann needs to process you.” Detective Montgomery introduced the petite brunette woman wearing a blue CSI vest. “Is it all right if she does that while we finish our interview?”

“Of course.” Since shooing them out and holing up with her daughter for a couple of hours wasn’t an option, Robin offered them a cooperative smile, instead. “Did you find that woman I saw earlier? Did she get home safely?”

Detective Montgomery shook his head. “Your description was pretty vague, but there have been no other assaults reported. I’ve got street patrols keeping an eye out for her, just in case, but they haven’t spotted anyone else.”

“It looks as though the attack tonight was all about you.” Oh, goody. Spencer Montgomery’s partner, Nick Fensom, pulled out the chair behind her desk and invited her to sit. He was shorter than his partner, dark-haired and stocky. Even his jeans and leather jacket were a contrast to his suit-and-tie associate. “You were about to tell us why you stayed late after work tonight?”

Right. That mess. Numbers that wouldn’t balance seemed insignificant compared to her daughter being thrust into danger and nearly dying herself.

“I’ve been on maternity leave for a couple of months,” she explained, squeezing her fingers between her knees in her lap to stop their sudden trembling. “When I came back to work this week, I discovered there were some discrepancies in my books. Money missing. On paper, anyway. Since Emma wasn’t sleeping, I thought I could use the time to try and figure out where the problem is.”

Detective Fensom pointed to the wrinkled files and printouts that had been in the rain-soaked diaper bag with Emma’s things. Now the damp papers were in sealed bags and labeled as evidence on her desk. “Did you find the problem?”

“No. I was going to take them home and study them there. I’d already disrupted my daughter’s routine more than I should.”

“Do you think someone’s stealing money from you?” he asked.

“The people who work for me are also my friends.” Did she have to defend everyone who was on her side tonight?

The detective shrugged. “Sometimes, even friends can run into trouble and resort to doing something desperate.”

“None of my friends attacked me.” Robin tilted her chin up as the conversation went off on a whole new tangent about how long she’d known her employees, and how well did she trust them? She promised a list of names and addresses, as well.

Holding an ice pack over the deep bruise on her collarbone, Robin turned her head while Annie Hermann snapped a photo of Robin’s hand and then proceeded to scrape beneath her fingernails, collecting whatever she’d scratched off her attacker into a small manila envelope. “Looks like you got some trace off your attacker,” the criminologist speculated. “If we’re lucky, there’ll be enough here to get DNA.”

Nick Fensom shook his head. “Since when have we ever been lucky with this guy?” The CSI flashed him a chastising look and the detective quickly apologized to Robin. “Other than you turning this attack into an attempted rape, Ms. Carter, and not getting hurt any worse than you did.”

The EMT had said she was lucky, too. She might have a broken back and be paralyzed or dead if it hadn’t been for the diaper bag cushioning the most critical blows. As for the rape? She was still unsure why he’d opted for clubbing her in the head rather than pulling her pants down the rest of the way and completing the awful deed.

But luck had nothing to do with her surviving tonight. A mysterious man had stepped out of the shadows and saved her.

“Are you sure you didn’t see him?” Robin asked, turning the conversation away from accounting, serial rapists and possible motives. “He’s hard to miss. I can describe him for you.”

“Your attacker?”

“No. The man who rescued us.” She shifted uncomfortably in her chair as CSI Hermann processed the other hand. Robin owed him a lot more than a thank-you. “He had a broken nose.”

Spencer Montgomery pulled out his notebook again. “He got hurt?”

Robin shook her head, pointing out the details as if the marks were on her own skin. “They were old injuries. His nose was crooked and had one of those bumps from where it healed wrong. And he had scars—one here—” She traced a line along her jaw to her chin. “And there was one up here, running above his ear at his temple. He wore a buzz cut and his hair was silvery white.”

“He was an old guy?” Detective Fensom asked.

“Not with muscles like that. He was my age, maybe. Pale blue eyes. Very...” Masculine. She couldn’t think of a better way to describe her rescuer. He’d been all man, with no soft edges to lessen the feral impact he’d had on her.

“He was very...?” Detective Montgomery waited for her to finish her description.

She could hardly say that her senses were still humming with feminine awareness now that the shock of the attack and fear for Emma’s safety had receded. “When I was lying on the ground and first saw him, I thought he was a ghost. Or a giant. I don’t know that he was unusually tall—six-two, maybe. Not as tall as your Officer Taylor.” She stretched out her uninjured arm, indicating the breadth of those shoulders and chest. “But he was big. This is a guy who works out. He looked...dangerous.”

“Does this ghost have a name?” Detective Montgomery paused with his pen hovering over his notepad. “I don’t like it when potential witnesses flee the scene.”

At least the relentlessly inquisitive detective hadn’t called him a suspect. “He wasn’t fleeing. I get the idea he’s not a very social kind of a guy. I asked Mr. Lonergan if he saw the man who attacked me, and he couldn’t tell me any more details than the description I gave you. He stopped the attack. Got us safely inside. I don’t think he saw the need to stick around.” The two detectives exchanged a curious look across her desk when she mentioned her rescuer’s name. “What? Do you know him?”

Nick Fensom gave his partner a curt nod, and then excused himself from the conversation and exited the room. “I’ll check it out.”

“You do know him.” Ignoring both pain and fatigue, Robin pushed to her feet and laid a hand on the sleeve of Spencer Montgomery’s light gray suit. “I don’t care if he’s on your most-wanted list. Please don’t pester him. I don’t want to get him into trouble. He saved my life.”

“It’s my job to pester people. If I don’t ask questions, I don’t get answers. And I like answers.” Pulling away without betraying his suspicions about Lonergan, he folded up his notebook and tucked it away. “Is there anything else you can tell me about the attack?”

Other than the fact there wasn’t a muscle in her body that didn’t feel battered and in need of a long, hot bath? Robin shook her head. “I’d like to get back to my daughter. Are we finished?”

“For now. CSI Hermann and her team need to finish processing your car before you can drive it home.”

With her home nearly forty minutes away out in the Missouri countryside, and dawn ready to peek around the corner in another hour or two, that wasn’t going to happen. “We’ll be staying in town tonight. At my friend Hope Lockhart’s apartment across the street.”

The detective nodded, added that information to his notepad, and turned to the dark-haired CSI still labeling items and packing her evidence kit. “Do you need anything else, Annie?”

CSI Hermann looked up from her work and frowned an apology to Robin. “Just so you know, we removed the severed seat belt so we can take it back to the lab and compare tool marks to see what kind of blade was used.”

One more thing for Robin’s to-do list—get her damaged car into the shop for repairs. “I understand.”

“We need to take the car seat, too, and the sleeper your daughter was wearing. We’ve already dusted for prints, but if the perp left any evidence behind—”

“He was wearing gloves.”

With a sigh that sounded like frustration, Annie Hermann brushed the dark curls off her forehead, giving Robin a glimpse of a fresh pink scar in her hairline. “I’m familiar with that scenario. But there could be a fiber or some other kind of transfer left behind that we can use.”

“I already changed her to keep her dry. Her clothes are here in the hamper.” Robin turned to get them, pulling out the baby towels she and Lonergan had dried off with and reaching back inside. But the criminologist asked her to stay put. She waved her gloved—sterile—fingers in the air as she circled the desk to collect Emma’s things.

Feeling that unfamiliar helplessness again, Robin hugged the damp towels to her chest and watched the woman bag and label Emma’s clothes. Since she wasn’t physically being allowed to do anything to reclaim control over her life tonight, Robin’s brain went to work. She put together Annie Hermann’s scar and frustration, and finally placed the younger woman’s face from shots she’d seen on the evening news. “You’re the CSI who was attacked at that murder scene on New Year’s Eve.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did you catch him?”

“We did.” The younger woman’s gaze bounced away, seeking out Nick Fensom as he reappeared in the doorway. Although he had a phone stuck to his ear, his blue eyes narrowed and focused on the petite brunette. She nodded at some unspoken message and turned back to Robin with a businesslike smile. “Unfortunately, the man was an accomplice, cleaning up after the Rose Red Rapist. Our serial rapist still eludes us—as does the woman who hired my attacker.”

“A woman?” Stunned by her answer, Robin set the towels on the corner of her desk and laid the ice pack on top. She’d read in the Kansas City Journal about the task force’s suspicion that the serial rapist had an accomplice who helped erase evidence of the crime after each attack. But how could any female want to help a monster like the Rose Red Rapist?

“Yes. Before my attacker died, he indicated that he’d been blackmailed into covering up the crimes by a woman.” She paled as she relived what must have been a terrifying experience for her.

Nick Fensom disconnected his call and tucked the phone into his pocket as he strode across the room. He curled his fingers around Annie’s and squeezed her hand. The movement was subtle, probably unnoticeable to anyone who wasn’t already curious about the relationship between the two of them. “Everything okay, slugger?”

There was no doubt that the two of them cared deeply for each other because Annie Hermann’s cheeks warmed with color at even that simple contact. She summoned a smile to ease his concern. “I’m okay.”

Robin wasn’t the only one in the room who’d noticed the trading of comforts between the stocky detective and the CSI.

“You two get back to work.” Spencer Montgomery excused his coworkers from the room before stopping across the desk from Robin and handing her one of his business cards. “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

“Wait a minute, Detective. Everything I’ve read about your task force says that the Rose Red Rapist abducts his victims and rapes them at another location.”

“That’s right.”

“Then why did he...rip my clothes right there in the alley? Like he was going to hurt me there?”

“Maybe you foiled the initial attack by fighting back so hard. You messed with his routine. He lost his temper.” She could tell he was only speculating possible explanations.

“If that man was trying to rape me...” She breathed through that frightening possibility before voicing her real concern. “Then why endanger my daughter? Why bother cutting up my backseat? He said he didn’t want the car. What did he want?”

“I can’t answer that yet.” His cool gray eyes narrowed, as though assessing whether or not she could handle his response. She must look stronger than she was feeling at the moment because he continued. “After the Rose Red Rapist attacks this past year, our task force looks into any type of assault against a woman in this neighborhood. There’s an outside chance your attacker is the man we’ve been looking for, and something you did put him off his game. He could be copycat. He might have targeted you for some other reason. Any information we get that eliminates suspects helps us as much clues that point us to our unsub do.”

“Unsub?”

“Unknown suspect. Even without the mission of this task force, I’m a cop. We don’t like criminals hurting anyone here in Kansas City. Whether this attack is related to my investigation or not, I intend to look into it thoroughly.”

“Good. Because I like answers, too.” Answers to why her business was either missing money or keeping shoddy records in her absence. Answers to why that man had singled her out tonight—was she just a crime of opportunity because she’d stayed late? Or had she been targeted for more personal, more unsettling, reasons?

Seeming to appreciate that she was on the same page with him, the red-haired detective extended his hand across the desk. “Be safe, Ms. Carter. I’ll be in touch.”

Robin shook his hand. “Thank you.”

He left her office and turned down the hallway toward the workroom and back exit.

Robin picked up the wadded towels and wiped the lingering moisture from the corner of her desk. She tossed the ice pack into the freezer of her mini-fridge and started to gather her things to follow Hope and Emma to the apartment across the street.

But Robin didn’t get very far before the ache in her shoulder, the weight on her mind and the emptiness of her office suddenly overwhelmed her. She sank into the desk chair and hugged the towels to her chest, unsure whether she felt like cursing or crying. Her body was exhausted, her brain weary, and yet, she was too revved up to sleep. She couldn’t drop her guard like that again. She had Emma’s well-being to consider, not just her own. How could she make a selfish choice like working late, relying on a silly whistle to keep her safe? Only one thing had made her feel safe tonight. Only one thing had finally quieted Emma.

Lonergan. He looked more like the muscle-bound henchmen she’d seen in a dozen action-adventure movies than he did any Hollywood heartthrob.

And yet tonight, he’d been her hero.

She lifted the towels to her face and buried her nose in their cool dampness. The scent of her rescuer still lingered there, spicy and clean—dangerous, somehow. More dangerous than any threat lurking out there in the dark streets.

That was what she needed to feel safe and in control of her world again. What she needed to keep her daughter safe. He was what she needed. No one could make her afraid if he was around.

Except maybe the man himself.

Ignoring a twinge of common sense that warned her she was putting her hope in someone she didn’t completely understand, Robin dropped the towels and dashed into the hallway to catch up with Spencer Montgomery.

“Detective?” Montgomery turned as he shrugged into a dark blue KCPD raincoat at the shop’s back door. “If you find Mr. Lonergan, would you let me know? I’d like to thank him.”

The detective offered her a curt nod before following his partner and the CSI out the back door.