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  Black at Heart

  Leslie Parrish

  Wyatt Blackstone has done his best to mask his romantic feelings for Lily Fletcher, the brilliant but fragile young woman whose technical skills have helped him track countless violent Internet predators. But now he must fin out if the woman he loves has become a rogue agent obsessed with cold-blooded revenge.

  Leslie Parrish

  Black at Heart

  A book in the Black Cats series, 2009

  Prologue

  Supervisory Special Agent Wyatt Blackstone had never had to attend the memorial service of one of his own team members before. After today, he hoped to God he never attended another one.

  Especially since it was his fault Lily Fletcher was dead.

  Against his better judgment, he had allowed a woman he knew shouldn't be in the field to participate in a sting operation with another FBI Cyber Action Team. She'd had no business being there. Lily had been an IT specialist, a computer nerd, young, untried, sweetly enthusiastic. But also haunted by her demons. Those demons had driven her to work a case she should never have been involved in. They had pushed her to be in on the takedown of a suspect with twisted cyber fantasies of abusing children had haunted her dreams.

  And there, everything had gone straight to hell. One › agent dead on the ground. Lily wounded and trapped before bleeding to death in a vehicle driven by a desperate madman.

  He was tormented by the thought of those awful, desperate hours she had endured.

  The memorial service had been small and private. The FBI had not made it a media event, as they could have. Wyatt hadn't wanted it that way; none of the group had. Because of the screwups that had led to her death, and his team's recent successful capture of a serial killer known as the Professor, the bureau acceded to his demands.

  Lily had had no surviving family and very few friends outside the bureau. Though many agents and FBI supervisors had attended the service in the nondenominational chapel, few had continued on to the cemetery. Not Arlington, though she had been entitled to that. Instead, Lily's thirty-year existence in this world was marked with a simple headstone in a small, private churchyard in Annapolis. Others nearby bore the names of her sister, her nephew, and her parents. He hadn't known her mother and father had died on the same day during I Lily's childhood until he read the dates.

  An entire family gone. Plucked off one tragedy at a time.

  After the chaplain's final graveside prayer, only Wyatt and the other members of his team, who had formed a family of their own, had remained. Ignoring the bitterness of the January day, they'd talked quietly, said their good-byes. Then they'd all drifted away, lost in their own sadness, wondering how things might have turned out, differently.

  Wyatt didn't think he would ever stop wondering.

  Even now, hours later, as he sat in the dark in his house, nursing a tumbler full of whiskey, he found it hard to believe. Sweet, quiet Lily, so eager to please despite being so visibly wounded by the horrors that had befallen her, was gone. Senselessly killed by someone who hadn't been fit to touch a single strand of her golden hair.

  "I'm sorry," he murmured, lifting his glass to his mouth. "I should have protected you."

  He sipped once. Then again. He needed the fire to spread through his body, burning out the anger, the helpless frustration. The grief.

  Wyatt never allowed himself to grieve. He'd learned as a child how futile it was to wish someone back from the dead, to ask why horrible things happened, to give in to sorrow.

  But Lily? He could grieve for Lily.

  Realizing it was almost midnight, he finally rose, needing to go to bed. The past several nights had been sleepless ones. Tomorrow was another workday, another chance to keep moving forward, stopping whatever ugliness he possibly could.

  Before he even reached the stairs, though, his cell phone rang. Wyatt pulled it from his pocket, slid it open, and lifted it to his ear.

  "Blackstone."

  No response at first, but a hollowness told him the line wasn't dead.

  "Hello?"

  Another long pause. Then a soft voice emerged from the silence like a specter appearing out of his own memories.

  "Wyatt?"

  He froze, haunted by the pain in that one whispered word. "Who is this?"

  "Help me, Wyatt. Please help me."

  Chapter 1

  Seven months later

  As far as murder victims went, Dr. Todd Fuller didn't, on the surface, seem a likely candidate to be sliced to ribbons in a no-tell motel in the middle of nowhere. A respected dentist from Scranton, he had a wife, a pricey house, a nice car, a thriving practice, no criminal record. A charmed life, in fact.

  There was nothing charming about him now.

  Wyatt surveyed the scene from the doorway, wondering why he still had any capacity to be surprised by what man was capable of doing to his fellow man. After everything he had witnessed throughout his life, including some of his very earliest memories, he shouldn't be able to register dismay for the fact that such things were possible.

  Yet he found himself having to close his eyes and take a moment to prepare before entering the room- because scenes like this one were usually reserved for twisted movies that delivered terror to the masses. Not the real world.

  Steady now, calm and emotionless, he stepped inside. He skirted the wall, his shoes covered with plastic, and gave a nod to the crime scene investigators in acknowledgment of their work area. He didn't bend to examine any evidence, didn't focus on anything except the overall feeling that lingered in the room long after the crime had been committed.

  He could only imagine the rage that had inspired it. In his years with the FBI, he had seen multiple homicides with less blood, inner-city gang-war battlefields without as much gore.

  Todd Fuller had suffered greatly in his final hours.

  Some murders were passionate and some impersonal. He had met killers who claimed to have merely lashed out in a moment they regretted one second too late and others who truly believed they had simply taken care of something that needed to be done. A few were remorseful, some soulless and happy with what they had achieved. Others calculated their crimes, meticulously planned them, with death the goal and the act of killing merely the means to achieving it.

  This had been like all of those, and yet, like none of them.

  Wielding a knife on a helpless victim, feeling the gush of warm blood spill from his veins, could never be an impersonal act. But the planning involved, and the time it had taken, would have required a level of removal, a dispassion. This killer hadn't lashed out; he had reined in. Inhaled his rage and his emotion. Controlled himself completely while also savoring every minute of it.

  In this room, the killer had calmly and patiently accomplished the objective-a man's death-in the most vicious way possible.

  Wyatt knew all that. Because it wasn't the first time he'd seen this unsub's handiwork.

  Like the two that had preceded it, this murder had been carefully orchestrated by someone whose goal was not just death. Something deeper was at work here.

  Pleasure? Insanity?

  Revenge? Are you wreaking vengeance on all of them because you can't get to the one you want?

  He thrust that thought away, not wanting to let any preconceptions color what he was about to learn regarding the murder of the dentist.

  "You Blackstone?" a voice asked.

  Nodding, he watched as a plainclothes officer stepped into the doorway. "Detective Schaefer?"

  "Yeah. You made good time. Didn't think you'd show up until midmorning."

  Considering how little he slept these days, it had been no great feat to leave his Alexandria home within thirty minutes of the detective's four a.m. phone call. And the desire to arrive
before the body could be removed had prompted him to drive a little faster than normal. He'd pulled up outside the western Maryland hotel just as the automatic streetlights had clicked off, the hazy, gray morning chasing away the last remnants of dark night.

  Wyatt extended his hand to the detective. "Thank you for contacting me about the case."

  Schaefer, a middle-aged man with a strong grip and intelligent eyes that belied the crumpled suit and rumpled hair, nodded as they shook hands. "Not a problem."

  "Have you learned anything more?"

  The detective shook his head. "Just the basics I told you about on the phone. Guy went missing two evenings ago. Pennsylvania police were investigating. A local cruiser spotted his car in the parking lot late last night and ran the tag. When he noticed the smell coming from inside, he got the manager up and they found the vie like…" He waved an expansive hand. "Well, like you see."

  Steeling himself against the smell of death, Wyatt stepped farther inside and scanned the room. "What do you know about him?"

  "Not a lot. Missing persons report gave us the basics, but I'm sure we'll learn more about him as the day goes on." He shook his head and snapped his chewing gum. "One thing I do know-his funeral ain't gonna have an open casket."

  "Indeed."

  Wyatt already knew more about the victim than this detective did, including the fact that Fuller's wife was a thin blonde with a pixie haircut, freckles, and a childlike figure. He had a picture of her on his BlackBerry, as well as one of the pre-sliced-up dentist.

  Handsome couple, although they'd looked more like father and daughter than man and wife. Which came as no great surprise.

  As soon as he'd heard about the murder, he'd contacted the one person he could trust with this particular situation, IT Specialist Brandon Cole, and asked him to find out everything he could on the victim. The always-energetic young man had not wasted a second, working from home in the predawn hours. And he'd called him back forty minutes later, following up with an e-mail detailing what he'd found.

  Brandon knew the stakes here. He knew what Wyatt was thinking about this case, about who could be killing these men and why. He didn't believe it. But he knew.

  Actually, Wyatt didn't truly believe it, either. And yet here he was.

  You know you have to consider the possibility.

  Was it possible? Of course. Anything was.

  But probable that someone he knew, someone he liked, someone he'd protected, could be responsible for this?

  It seemed beyond belief. The evidence, however, could not be ignored.

  "Sounded like you weren't too surprised by what we found here," said Schaefer.

  Again surveying the room, the massacred victim, the dried blood, the lingering aura of violence, he shook his head. "No. Not surprised."

  Then his gaze focused on one spot. On the item that had most drawn his attention when he'd learned of this particular murder. "A tiger lily," he murmured.

  "That what it is?" Schaefer followed his stare. "I don't know shit about flowers."

  "I'm fairly certain." Wyatt's even tone betrayed none of the intensity coursing through him all because of that one vivid tropical flower.

  "Well, like I said on the phone, I saw the bulletin last week about brutal murders of men in small, out-of-the-way hotels. The flower thing sounded nutty. But once I saw this one, I figured this was exactly the kind of case you were watching for."

  "It is. And I appreciate getting the call so quickly."

  Drawn to that single blossom, Wyatt stepped to the bedside table, still cautious to avoid the remains and evidence markers littering the floor. Fortunately, the particular type of flower had no scent, unlike the one at the Virginia crime scene. Last time, it had been an Easter lily, the scent of which always made him think of funeral homes, caskets, and grief. The room had already reeked of death, just as this one did. The flower had just made it worse.

  This one, though, did not. It was beautiful, its pale orange petals, though brownish and wilted around the edges, still curled closely together. It had obviously been cut just as it began to open and blossom, before it reached its full potential.

  The roar of the tiger cut off with a sharp snick of the blade. A symbol for what had gone on in this room? For why it had gone on?

  There was much to learn about Todd Fuller. Wyatt wanted to know whether there were any hush-hush rumors about him swirling in his community. Rumors that persisted despite his upstanding reputation as a good dentist, a family man, a generous contributor to children's charities. He wanted to understand the man's relationship with his little-girlish wife. And he most wanted to know exactly what he had been doing here, so far from home, in this dingy hotel.

  If this case proved to be like the last two, he suspected the answer to all those questions would be found in the man's computer hard drive. His browsing history would show visits to secret, twisted Web sites that appealed to a certain type of sadistic individual. His e-mail file would contain communications between murder victim and killer. And they would invariably involve a child.

  Yes, if Fuller was like the others, he had come to this hotel thinking he was meeting a father with a young son or daughter he was willing to exploit.

  "So, what's the deal? Some florist get mad about the prices of roses around Valentine's Day and tumble off his rocker?"

  Wyatt forced a faint smile. "Not exactly," he said, barely paying the detective any attention. He had questions for the man, but for now, his focus was on that lily. And on the single drop of blood that lay beside it, congealed and dark on the cheap Formica tabletop. Had it accidentally fallen from the killer's gloved fingertip as he lovingly left the calling card?

  More imagery. The soft flower resting beside the ultimate symbol of violence-spilled blood-in a blatantly symbolic display of innocence shattered.

  Not an accidental drop. Intentional

  A crime scene investigator glanced over. "Place like this, we'll find tons of prints."

  "Of course you will."

  On the headboard, on the table. On the door, on the walls, on the television remote, on the cracked ice bucket. None of which would matter.

  Because none of the fingerprints would match any of the hundreds found in the hotel room just outside Trenton, New Jersey, or the room in Dumfries, Virginia. Any prints, smears, or partials would be from the nameless travelers who had stopped here days, weeks, months ago.

  A faint dusting of powder at the previous scenes and a tiny speck of rubber told them this unsub wore medical gloves. And if he took them off, he wiped clean anything he touched. The faucets in the other two cases had been immaculate-the only place without a single smear. Wyatt believed the unsub had touched them bare-handed, while washing the blood off his tools and himself.

  He didn't doubt these crimes were the work of one killer. The signature was the same, the means, the locations, everything right down to the type of flower left at each scene. Lilies.

  "There is a strange-looking bloodstain on the carpet, over there by the closet door. It's curved, like maybe from someone's heel."

  Wyatt's brow shot up in interest.

  "But I dunno; it could have been the handle of a weapon or something," the CSI said, sounding resigned. "It was pretty small to be from the man who must have done this."

  Too small for a man. The investigator didn't even speculate on something that immediately entered Wyatt's head.

  A woman. God.

  The small-town CSI had never even considered it, obviously not thinking a woman would be capable of such ferocity, such viciousness.

  Wyatt knew better. He knew full well what a woman was capable of. Had known since his very early childhood, the memories of which sometimes taunted him with all he'd lost and all the darkness that was possible in this world.

  But this case? This woman?

  No. He couldn't believe it. Not until there was not one bit of doubt.

  "We might find some of the killer's own hair or skin.

  This victim h
ad to have put up a fight-he wouldn't just lie still for something like this."

  Wyatt schooled his expression to reveal nothing of the wild thoughts running rampantly through his head. He forced away the mental speculations about the killer's gender, knowing he would have to deal with them later. Giving his full attention to the CSI, he replied, "He might have been unable to move." If the pattern held, anyway.

  "Tied up, you mean?"

  "Not exactly." He did not elaborate. The autopsy would have to reveal whether Dr. Fuller's spinal cord had been severed with a sharp blow to the back. In the other cases, the men had apparently walked into the rooms and been struck from behind, left instantly crippled and helpless.

  There wouldn't be much other evidence. There almost certainly would be no witnesses. The person doing this was careful and thorough. No one would have heard a thing. These out-of-the-way hotels were cheap and anonymous, barely eking out a living for their owners, with most rooms empty on any given night of the week. The bill would have been paid by the victim, who would have reserved the room by phone. He would also have instructed that it be left unlocked, the old-fashioned key on the dresser. Just as he had been instructed by the person he had come to meet.

  And because this place looked to be surviving guest by guest, the staff would have done it.

  As if he had read Wyatt's mind, the detective said, "The manager pulled the room records for me."

  "The victim paid for the room himself," Wyatt murmured.

  "Yeah. With one of those disposable gift-card credit cards."

  Harder to trace.

  "His wife didn't even know he had it. And he booked the place for four nights."

  Acting to pattern. Dr. Fuller had paid for a few days on either end of the night in question, thinking to cover his tracks. Arrive anonymously, depart the same way, nobody to mark the time of either one. Which would explain why the body had lain here to decompose thirty-six hours, rather than being discovered by the staff or the next guest.