Murder Notes (Lilah Love #1)

Murder Notes (Lilah Love #1)

Lisa Renee Jones



CHAPTER ONE

There is blood in the ocean.

I don’t notice it at first, but then, most people don’t. It’s called denial. We refuse to see what we eventually have to cope with, or perhaps even confess. For the innocent, they don’t expect the brutality of the actions required to take a life, so they simply cannot process the inconceivable. For the guilty, it’s all about denying your own ability to do such a thing, and denial can be a slow, brutal sword that carves you inside out. Though there is another class of people that are more animal than human. Those so sick, so demented that they feel a fleeting joy from death and then seek more joy by doing it again. And again. You won’t find guilt in their eyes. You won’t find remorse. There are times when I’ve felt like one of those animals, but then the guilt starts again.

But you see? There is no remorse. I’m not sure what that says about me.

And so I walk on the beach, not seeing what is there, and it’s like so many other walks along East Hampton’s beach. Cool sand between my toes. The taste of salt on my lips. A gust of wind lifting my long brown hair from my neck. I see it happening, like I’m above the scene, looking down. Like I’m dead and that other person on the beach is alive. Sometimes I can almost hear that wind whisper my name, too: Lilah. Lilah. As if it’s calling me to a place it knows I must travel, but I continue to refuse. It is a gentle, soothing caress of a whisper—a seductive promise that acceptance will bring relief, even forgiveness.

The wind lies. It always lies.

But then, that’s why it wants me. Because of my lies. Because it knows how they haunt me. It knows my secrets when no one else knows. Only that’s a lie, too, and I blink to find the only other person who does know in the distance and closing in quickly.

He walks toward me, graceful and good-looking, his suit ridiculously expensive, the wet sand beneath his black lace-up shoes impossibly smooth everywhere he steps. But then he’s a man who easily convinces people he walks on water, so why not sand? A man whose accomplishments are second only to his arrogance, while his charisma is just one of his many weapons. He can kiss a woman and make her crave more—he certainly did that to me—but I remind myself that this does not make me naive, as he also has the power to utter only a word and have grown men follow him. He is the picture of perfection that very few see is framed with broken glass. But I see. I know things about him no one else knows.

Like he does me. And therein lies the problem.

Rejecting him, I turn away from his approach, facing the ocean, a new dawn illuminating the sky, a strange red spot tainting the deep blue of the water. It begins to grow, and grow some more, until the lifeblood of someone gone and possibly forgotten spills through it like oil set on destruction. Blood is now everywhere. There is nothing else but it and the guilt that I’ve tried to deny.

And suddenly he is behind me, his hand on my shoulder, and I shiver with that touch. He did this. He spilled this blood.

Only . . . no. That doesn’t feel right. I think . . . I did this.

I wake from one of my freak-show nightmares, which I thought were finally over, to a dark room, my cell phone ringing on the nightstand and my body aching from the need for sleep.

“Rich,” I murmur, shoving against the big, hard body that has managed to drape over mine. “Get off. My phone’s ringing.” He doesn’t move, which is a problem that reaches beyond this moment and more directly to us working in the same field office and hopping into bed together. “Rich, damn it.”

He gives a groan and rolls in one direction while I go the other and grab my cell, glancing at the caller ID. It’s the local PD. “Special Agent Love,” I answer.

“We’ve got a body off the Santa Monica Pier and need your assistance,” the man on the line says. “Early-morning jogger made the discovery and called it in.”

I glance at the clock, 5:00 a.m., and wonder what idiot jogs at four in the morning, in the dark, on the beach, but this isn’t my job anyway. “That’s the local authority’s territory. You’ve got the wrong girl.”

“You are Special Agent Lilah Love, correct?”

“You knew that already,” I say irritably, and since this clearly isn’t going away easily, I sit up, preparing to fight for my need to sleep.

“Then you’re requested by name. Director Murphy sent the directive.”

My boss is meeting me there? This is more than me lending my profiling skills to the locals if he’s joining me, and my exhaustion fades into concern. “I’ll be right there.” I end the call and throw off the blankets, grimacing when I realize I’m wearing Rich’s shirt, which is not sending him the noncommittal message I need to send after dodging last night’s “talk.” But it smells good, the way he always does, I think as I push myself onto my feet and stumble toward the bathroom.

Stepping into the tiny bathroom, I scrape my foot on a cracked tile and grimace, then take up residence at the equally tiny, ancient sink and grab my toothbrush.

“When are we going to finish that talk we started last night?”

At the sound of Rich’s voice, I start brushing my teeth, making sure I’m as incapable of talking about moving in with him now as I was when we were having sex last night. “Lilah,” he says impatiently, my reprieve lasting all of ten seconds.

I glance over at him through the long drape of my messy dark-brown hair to find him leaning on the doorway. Naked. The man is all kinds of blond, hard-bodied goodness, but still. Good grief. “Why don’t you have clothes on?” I ask, though I’m not sure he can understand me with my mouth full of foam.

“I’m serious, Lilah. We’ve been hot and heavy for six months. We need to have this talk.”

“You’re naked,” I say, yanking the toothbrush from my mouth, since clearly he didn’t hear me the last time. “I’m not talking to you naked.” I go back to brushing my teeth.

“You aren’t naked. I am.”

“Aren’t you funny,” I say, turning on the water and rinsing my mouth, and since he’s still standing there when I’m done, I face him. “I’m serious, Rich. You’re naked. I have a dead body waiting on me. The two do not compute. Now is not the time.”

“You’re one of the top FBI profilers in the country,” he states. “You always have a dead body waiting on you. Which is why we never talk.”

I turn and press my hands to the sink, showing the white ceramic more interest than it deserves, while his naked body might deserve more than I can afford to give it right now. “Everyone has their fetishes, I guess.”

“You don’t like dead bodies. Why do you say shit like that?”

Because I want to scare you off, I think, and I might actually really freak him out if I insist I do have a fetish for dead bodies. Of course, as logical as Rich is, he’d know it’s because they help me catch killers. Instead, I just say, “I’m getting dressed.” Hoping he takes a hint and does the same, I turn to walk into the closet. Thankfully, his sound of frustration is followed by a shift in the air that tells me he’s finally gone to dress. Wishing for the shower I don’t have time to take, I yank a pair of faded jeans and a black V-neck T-shirt from their hangers, get dressed, and then lean on the wall to pull on black combat boots.