Murder Notes (Lilah Love #1)

“No problem I can’t solve,” I say. “Thank you.”

He replies, but it’s just muffled words to me right now. I’ve tuned him out, repeating my own words to him in my mind: no problem I can’t solve. Except one, I amend. The one I left for Kane to solve. And that reality turns my thoughts to the alphabet row across the top of that letter left for me tonight. A is for Apple, it had said. And F, I decide, is for the fool I was for leaving myself exposed, a golden rule in law enforcement I’d learned in the police academy and later with the FBI. And yet, I’d done just that. I’d left myself so damn exposed I might as well be as naked as I was on that beach.

Memories assail me and I squeeze my eyes shut, mentally blocking out the images that want to be seen, but they persist, screaming in my mind like magpies. The impact is a punch in the gut that rivals the fat man in a clown suit who’d tackled me on Santa Monica Boulevard during my first week in LA. I’d tripped and cuffed that bastard, arresting him and then spending the night watching Stephen King’s It over a large cheese pizza. Because I’m Lilah-fucking-Love, and I’d owned the damn clown. My lips tighten. That’s the way I need to own my memories, and whoever wrote that note is trying to own me right now. I can’t let that happen. I have to think. I have to figure out what the hell just happened.

I shove off the door and walk to the counter, grabbing my briefcase and charging toward the office, my mind working as I do. Either Kane and I weren’t the only ones here that night, or he broke our vow of silence and told someone about it, someone who is now betraying us both, which I don’t believe. Not because I’m assessing his loyalty to me as rock solid, but he’s not stupid enough to give someone ammunition to use against him. I return to option A: we weren’t alone that night. And whoever was there kept silent until now. The night I came home. Why? What’s the motivation to taunt me now and not anytime in the past two years?

Reaching the office, I charge up the steps, and the minute I’m at the top, I cross to the desk, sit down, and pull my case file from my bag before tossing it onto the desk. Inhaling, I flatten my hands on the desk on either side of the file, but I’m not quite ready to open it again. Twisting my chair to the left, I face a wall decorated with nothing but three white boards on the left and a massive floor-to-ceiling bulletin board on the right. These were not my father’s. They were—are—mine, and as I stare at them, a piece of my mind sees all the many cases I once analyzed here. In fact, by the time I worked from this office, I’d already been labeled the “Murder Girl,” a joke made by a drunk coworker at someone’s retirement party that had stuck. The truth is that almost every single one of the cases I solved in this house started with a dead body. And I solved many of those cases because I wouldn’t give up. I locked myself in this room that I’ve come to know as Purgatory until I found a clue to follow. I reach for my badge, slip the picture out that I’ve hidden there, and stare down at a photo of me with Kane Mendez. I flip it over and stare at the pen marks that count down the perps I profiled, who my efforts helped convict: thirty-one. Thirty-one times that I’ve proven that the sins of my past, which include Kane Mendez, don’t define me.

I stick the photo back inside my badge and then stand up, walking to one of the whiteboards, grabbing a marker from the silver ledge beneath it, and stepping onto the wooden stool in front of it. Ripping off the cap, I start writing the names of the murders I’ve helped bring to trial. I stop ten names in and stare at them, picturing their victims, noting how bloody my life has become. And why is that? I write my answer in huge letters: BECAUSE I AM MURDER GIRL.





CHAPTER SIX

I don’t like the nickname Murder Girl, but standing here, staring at it now, written in my messy script on the whiteboard, I do not find rejection on my behalf. In fact, unlike this place, the title fits me. Irritated by this conclusion, I set the marker down, step off the ladder, and walk to my desk. Claiming my chair, I twist around, stare at my written words again: BECAUSE I AM MURDER GIRL. Murder-fucking-Girl. My fists ball on my jean-clad knees, tension knotting my shoulders. It fits. It’s me. It’s right even when I’m wrong.

I blame my parents.

That sounds cliché, of course, but in my case, it really is true. They forced me into acting classes in an effort to stir my desire for the spotlight. They wanted me to learn and understand characters. To get into their heads. I did learn. I know the murderers I hunt well. Too well. I’d never tell them that. They couldn’t handle it. Rich couldn’t handle it, which is why I should have told him already. Kane. Well, Kane would understand, and that makes him dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Death simply becomes me. In fact, some might say I’m so fucked up that I do death better than I do life. And while death is attracted to me, my own is not appealing. I mean, when does my note writer, who I think I’ll call “Stephen King Junior” for his or her creepy use of words, go from wanting to freak me out to wanting to bury me and be rid of me? Maybe tomorrow morning when I’m still here? And I’m not going anywhere until I finish the job I was sent here to do. Nor am I stupid enough to leave Junior alone and expect the same favor in return. Which means I need to focus on catching me an assassin and a King Junior before they catch me. And under tonight’s fucked-up circumstances, I’m going to need backup to allow me to focus.

This goal in mind, I roll my chair around and scoot to a second chest made of heavy black steel positioned under the wooden-shuttered window. Bending over, I grip the lock attached and guide it through a combination of numbers until it pops open. I open the lid and smile when I find my old friend just where I left him. Reaching inside to give him a friendly hello, I pick up Cujo, my version of a guard dog, a double-barreled shotgun that was once my father’s, but came with the house. I stroke it, my baby. My protection. Short, loud, and big, he only needs to be fed bullets.

After a quick inspection, I confirm that he’s locked and loaded. Ready to intimidate and ensure an attacker backs the fuck off. My service weapon is another story. It’s small, silent, quick, and lethal, and I don’t pull it to intimidate or make noise. I’ve trained long and hard, and to the point of near obsession, to ensure that if I pull it, you’re dead. Lowering the lid to the chest, I set the lock on top and turn in my chair again, rolling to the desk, where I set Cujo to my left, my cell phone to my right.

With my phone and my guard dog a reach away, I’m feeling much more at home now than minutes before. This might not be one of my preferred Otherworlds, but I’m starting to get back to embracing it. In fact, I was wrong when I said I don’t belong here. Damn it, this is my world. The younger, less-confident me forgot that, and I was reverting back to her by assuming her attitude. She ran. She let someone else take her home, this home and place, from her. Whoever left me that note tonight knows that, too. But that person knows the woman that I was, not the woman that I am. I was Lilah Love then, but now, damn it, I am Murder Girl. I’m her because dead bodies have a way of talking to me, and if they didn’t, there would be more dead bodies, more murders I didn’t stop. So yes. I’m Murder-fucking-Girl. I can hunt a killer and catch them. I can find a way out of this. My way out of this.

It’s at that moment that my phone rings, and I look down to find the expected number that belongs to Rich. Inhaling, I grab it and decline the call, texting him before he can call back with one word: Tomorrow.

He replies instantly: Now Lilah.