Die For Me: A Novel of the Valentine Killer (For Me #1)(35)
Author: Cynthia Eden

She’d been so confident. So certain.

One foot.

In front of the other.

You love all of me, right?

He’d been teasing her, or so she’d thought.

The good and the bad? You’ll stay with me, for better or worse?

She’d kissed him. That’s what I get to promise in the vows.

One foot.

In front of—

“Katherine?”

Her chin snapped up. It was Joe’s voice. She was in front of Joe’s Café. Joe and Ben were both there, both rushing toward her, then freezing when they saw her gun. They shouldn’t be scared. There were no bullets in her gun. Valentine had taken them away.

Like he’d taken everything away from her.

“Katherine, what’s happened?” Joe demanded.

I’m in shock. She realized it because she’d been this way before. She could hear the scream of police sirens getting closer now. Because she’d walked two blocks toward them? She didn’t remember walking that far.

Ben reached for her arm. She flinched and her confession slipped out: “I don’t like to be touched.” Except by Dane. She didn’t mind his touch.

He nodded and his hand opened. “Give me the gun,” he said.

Her fingers tightened around the handle of her weapon. “He’s…he’s coming to hurt me.”

Ben stared into her eyes. Behind the lenses of his glasses, his brown gaze was deep. Worried. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Easy to say. He didn’t know her. Neither did Joe. And Joe was coming up on her left. Looking just as worried as Ben.

“Katherine!” The roar of her name didn’t make her flinch. She heard the thunder of footsteps rushing toward her.

Then she realized Ben and Joe weren’t the only ones there. A small crowd had formed. Fearful folks gazed at her and her weapon.

A hard hand closed around her shoulder. “It’s all right!” Dane’s thundering voice carried easily. “I’m a police officer. The situation is under control.”

He was lying. Nothing was under control.

Katherine turned into Dane’s arms. He took the gun. Led her away.

And even though Joe called her name, she didn’t look back. She was too afraid of the horror that she’d see on his face.

Katherine sat at Dane’s desk, her shoulders hunched forward, with a cup of coffee—the bad shit that most of the cops avoided—cradled in her hands. She hadn’t spoken much, or actually at all, since he’d brought her in to the station.

Dane and Mac had searched her gallery. The PD had hunted for blocks, roping off the area, but there had been no sign of Valentine. The guy’s face—an image provided by the Boston PD—was being flashed on every TV in New Orleans. But the man had vanished.

“Did you actually see Valentine?” The quiet question came from Marcus. The profiler had shuffled up beside Dane.

Katherine didn’t stir at the man’s question. She hadn’t stirred at anything.

Dane inclined his head to the nearby uniform. “Keep an eye on her,” he ordered.

The sandy-haired man immediately stepped toward her.

Dane hauled the profiler into the nearest empty interrogation room. “What the hell are you implying?” Dane demanded as soon as the door shut behind them. “No, dammit, I didn’t see Valentine. The bastard was there, he dumped the body, he terrorized her, then he got the hell out before the cops could get to him.” Valentine was good at getting away. Too good.

Marcus swallowed quickly. “I just meant we only have Katherine’s word—”

“She’s in shock. Did you see her? Did you actually look at the woman? She’s barely holding it together.” Because she’d been alone with her worst nightmare. Trapped. And that knowledge pissed him off. He should have been with her. He’d said he would protect her.

“If the guy had wanted,” Dane muttered, the fury he felt directed at Valentine and at himself, “he could have killed her right then.”

Marcus shook his head. “That’s not what he wants.” Now his voice was far more confident. “That’s never been what he wanted.”

“Then tell me. Make me understand. Just what is it that the prick wants?”

“Katherine.”

He’d had her, been alone with her in that dark gallery. But from what Dane could tell, the woman didn’t have so much as a scratch on her.

“I should have realized he’d go after Dr. Lancaster,” Marcus continued.

Was that guilt in the man’s voice? Dane studied Marcus and saw that, yes, it was.

“One of the reasons I thought Katherine was originally a participant in the killings was…well, it was because she was tied to one of the victims in Boston.”

“Tied how?” He’d gone over Hobbs’s report and hadn’t seen a connection.

“Katherine and Stephanie Gilbert, the final victim in Boston, were both foster children at the same home years ago.”

Katherine had walked in on Stephanie Gilbert when Valentine was killing the woman. No, after the kill.

“From what I could gather, she and Katherine stayed in the same home for two months. Just two, but during that time, Katherine went to the hospital twice. Once for a broken arm, and once because she’d been stabbed in the right thigh with a kitchen knife.” His lips tightened. “Stephanie was relocated after that, sent for additional therapy.”

Dane lifted his hand. “What are you telling me? That you think Katherine wanted Valentine to target Stephanie because the woman had hurt her when they were kids?”

“That was one possible theory.”

“It’s possible bullshit.”

Marcus flinched but held his stare. “Do you know what a killer’s signature is?”

“It’s the way he kills,” Dane said instantly. “The slashes on the arms, the carving of the chest. All of that shit is Valentine’s twisted signature.”

“A killer’s signature doesn’t change over time. The signature is what the killer has to do in order for the kill to give him a feeling of completion. Satisfaction.”

Twisted f**k.

“With Valentine, part of his signature is that he’s controlling his victims. He’s tying them up, torturing them, dominating them. He’s punishing those who wind up on his table, the same way he was punished by his own mother. That’s why he re-creates the same wounds on their arms.” He paused. “Three years ago, I thought Katherine might have been involved in the Gilbert murder—”