Mine to Keep (Mine #2)(38)
Author: Cynthia Eden

That was the same damn thing he’d asked himself that day. And every day that followed. “I thought I’d hit his heart.” He should have hit it. That close… “But there wasn’t exactly time to stand there and do an exam. I grabbed Drake. Threw him over my shoulder, and I dodged fire as I ran. Noah brought the chopper in because without an aerial extraction, we were dead.” He stared down at their hands. His looked big, rough.

Hers were so delicate.

“Heavy snow started falling. In that part of Russia, the snow can drop from the sky for days. It can bury everything and everyone in its path. I thought…I thought the snow became their graves.” After Ben and Drake had been secured and patched up, he’d gone back to try and retrieve the bodies, but it had been hopeless. He’d searched, nearly getting hypothermia, but there had been nothing to find.

“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

Trace knew his laughter held a bitter edge. “Why didn’t I tell you that I shot my best friend and left him to die in the middle of a snowstorm? Maybe because I didn’t want you thinking I was a cold-blooded killer.”

She flinched. Her hands pulled from his.

Oh, right. “But then, you do think that now, don’t you? So confessing to my kill in the past hardly matters at this point.”

Trace turned away from her and paced toward the window. The glittering lights of the city stared back at him. At least it wasn’t snowing. He hated the snow. Every time he saw it, he thought of blood.

“Tucker is the one who attacked,” Skye said, voice soft. She hadn’t followed him to the window. “You were protecting yourself. Your other teammates.”

The lights were so bright. “I understood, that’s the worst part. I knew exactly how he felt. He loved her so much that nothing else mattered, and without her, there was no control for him. He was desperate, hurting, and I left him there.”

Only the ghosts from his past had come back to wreck his life. “Tucker liked the up-close attacks. They were his specialty.” His…and Trace’s. “He could get close to anyone without his prey ever knowing. Slip right up and slip his knife into his enemy’s heart.”

He heard her sharply indrawn breath.

“A-a knife to the heart?” Skye asked. “Just like—”

“Like Sharpe and Parker? Yes.” And there was more. “Slicing the throat is a personal way to kill. We saw attacks like that during our time together. When you wanted to send a message, when you wanted to be sure that your prey—and their family—didn’t talk, the killers slit their victims’ throats.”

In the glass, he saw her reflection. Skye walked—very tentatively—toward him. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that my dog tags should’ve still been in a grave outside of Siberia. But I found one in Parker’s apartment, and you found the other on his dead body. When it comes to messages, I think that’s pretty clear.” He faced her. “Maybe I didn’t leave a dead man out there after all. Maybe Tucker survived, and now he’s come back to make sure that I suffer for what I did to him.”

“You think…you believe he’s going to kill you?”

His hand lifted, and he stroked her cheek. Such smooth, silken skin. “I told you that I understood how he felt.”

She nodded.

“Killing me would be too easy. Death won’t be quick for me. He’ll want me to suffer.” He and Tucker had been too alike, in many ways. “At the end, he made me a promise.”

“What sort of promise?”

“He said, ‘You’ll know…you’ll lose…all.’” And Trace knew exactly what Tucker meant. Tucker had wanted Trace to feel the same agony that he experienced.

“H-how will he do that?”

Trace stared back at her, and he forced himself to tell her the terrifying truth, “By hurting you.”

Chapter Ten

Alex Griffin shone his flashlight to the left. Then to the right. He was in another alley. One that reeked of piss and garbage.

He had a small team of uniforms with him. Grumbling rookies who weren’t happy to be on the backstreets of Chicago searching through dumpsters.

Like he gave a damn if they were happy or not.

Trace Weston hadn’t needed to carry on about the arterial spray from Parker Jacobs. Alex had seen the splash of blood before at crime scenes. He knew how death worked. His job gave him an up-close and personal look at death each day.

Even before Weston had spoken, Alex knew that Parker’s killer would’ve been hit by the spray of blood.

And I also knew that the killer would need to ditch his clothes.

Because when you walked around, covered in blood, peopled tended to notice.

“He wouldn’t have gone back to the main street, not right after the kill,” Alex said.

The uniform closest to him, Sean Coleman, gave a quick nod. “So he ran away through the alleys.”

“I don’t think it was a panicked run.” Alex stopped next to another big, green dumpster. “I think he planned to kill Parker all along, and I think he had back-up clothes waiting.” The better to blend in with everyone else.

Sean raised his brows and glanced at the dumpster. “Hell, another one.”

“Up and in,” Alex told him, shining the light.

Sean hefted himself into the dumpster. “It’s like finding a microscopic needle in a—” Sean broke off.

Alex grabbed the side of the dumpster. “What is it?”

Sean rose. His gloved hands held a shirt, and when Alex’s light hit that shirt—blood. “I’ve got you,” Alex whispered. That shirt was his key. The techs could scan it for DNA, for evidence…this was it.

He was going to stop the killer. No more victims would fall on Alex’s watch.

***

The shower water thundered down on Skye. After Trace’s confession, she hadn’t exactly been sure what to say.

She’d survived the attack of one maniac before. Now she was supposed to just wait, knowing that some other crazy jerk wanted to come after her?

Sometimes, life could just be a hard kick in the face.

You think you’re happy. You think you have a chance…

And then the chance is ripped right from your hands.

She leaned forward, putting her face under the spray. All of the blood was gone now. It should be. She’d scrubbed herself until her skin felt raw.

Tendrils of steam floated in the air around her. The glass that surrounded the walk-in shower had completely fogged over.