Jake closed the file.
Don’t get obsessed, he reminded himself. He wasn’t the Lone Ranger. Hell, they’d had the help of Ethan Franklin, an FBI agent, too, and though Franklin might be swaggering, arrogant and irritating beyond all measure, he knew his business.
Tomorrow they were due to meet again. Franklin was studying murder reports across the country, trying to find out if there had been similar killings anywhere else. Then, as they had today, they would hash it all out for an hour or so, go through the endless sheets of information and compare notes. All they had from the past and from the present.
And what the hell did they have from the present? A body. A body with clear evidence of a brutal death, that mocked the means of murders from the past. The body of an unknown woman who had been found in a severe state of decomposition, washed from a shallow mud grave.
And from the past…
Nancy.
He could remember her standing on the deck of the Gwendolyn. “I don’t believe that poor kid murdered anyone. We’ll keep finding them, Jake. Bodies, more and more of them. Unless that cult is stopped. I think Peter Bordon has a God complex. He thinks he has the right to take human lives. He thinks he’s God’s hand, or will, or something like that.”
“We’ve gone after him hard, and we will lock him up,” Jake assured her.
“We won’t really get him—not until someone can get the D.A. evidence to take to trial to prove that he’s the power behind the deaths.” She’d glanced at her watch then. “I have to go!”
Something about her manner had bothered him that night.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. I have a husband, remember?”
But she hadn’t gone home. And the next morning had been the first time Brian Lassiter had arrived on the Gwendolyn, ready to take him on.
But she hadn’t been there. And then…
The tension. The fear. The accusations. The hunt.
It had been several weeks before she had been found, despite the fact that she’d been a cop and that every law enforcement officer in the state had been looking for her. But then, she’d gone deep into the canal. What faint tire tracks the best people in the field were able to find indicated that she had lost control of her car.
And between the time she’d disappeared and the time she’d been found, Bordon had been arrested for fraud and tax evasion, and been locked up. He’d been free, however, when Nancy had disappeared, when she had died.
Every muscle in his body seemed to knot up.
Don’t get fucking obsessed, he reminded himself again.
He swore suddenly and looked at the empty glass of iced tea in front of him. Where was that coffee he’d asked for? What the hell had happened to the service at Nick’s?
Nick’s was busy. Ashley was stopped several times as she walked through the restaurant, heading for the coffeepot to fulfill Detective Dilessio’s so graciously stated order. When she at last made it back to the service station near the right end of the bar, she ran into Curtis Markham, a South Miami police officer.
“Hey, kiddo! How are the classes going?” he asked her.
Curtis was definitely a nice guy. Around thirty, he was married, with one son. His wife worked for one of the airlines. They often came in together, and sometimes, when she worked Sundays, he took his small sailboat out with his son, Chris, then came in to Nick’s to catch the end of a game or teach Chris the finer points of pool. His sandy hair was graying, but, thanks, perhaps, to his determination to keep up with his son, he was slim and wiry. Curtis only drank one day a week—Sunday. Tonight, sitting at the bar, he was drinking a diet soda while munching on fried fish tidbits.
“Classes are great, Curtis,” she told him. “Thanks.”
“Good. I was afraid you were going to regret joining the force,” he told her.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “The academy’s hard work. Then you get out and spend your days dealing with the scum of humanity. You put your life on the line every day, and you get paid pennies. I was afraid you’d maybe come to think it was a thankless job.”
She smiled. “Do you feel that way?”
“Only sometimes.” He grinned. “Usually what I see on the streets just makes me think I’m a lucky guy. I go home and thank the Lord that I’ve got a good kid and a beautiful wife.”
She laughed. “You may be the only really cheerful cop I know, I have to say.”
He arched a brow. “We’ve got grouchy cops around here?” he asked softly, looking around the place.
She whispered in return. “Outside. A Miami-Dade detective. Jake Dilessio. Temperamental. Then again, maybe it’s just me. I don’t think he likes me very much.”
“Jake is outside?” Curtis asked.
She nodded. “In fact, I think I’d better get his coffee to him fast.”
“If he’s grouchy now, he may have good reason.”
“Oh yeah?”