'Tis the Season for Romance Read online

  Because this could take some time, given how stubborn I know Clay to be.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. He leans forward, obvious concern in his expression.

  “No.”

  Kynan blinks, and his eyes harden a bit. Not because he’s offended by my answer, but because he’s offended by whoever has caused me not to be okay. “Talk to me,” he demands.

  Instead, I ask him a question. “When you hired me, did you do a deep background check?”

  I get an instantaneous shake of his head. “Just your references and a criminal record check. I didn’t think I needed to do more since you were so highly recommended. Is there something I should be worried about?”

  Now I shake mine. “No, not like you’re thinking.”

  Kynan waits me out. A patient man, he doesn’t need a lot of words. Besides, I’m the one who has a story to tell.

  “My parents are dead,” I say, figuring that’s the most appropriate place to start.

  His surprise is given away by a slight jerk of his chin. “You said you went to visit them in Atlanta at Thanksgiving.”

  Nodding, I give him an apologetic smile. “I did. I visit their graves every Thanksgiving.”

  “Fuck,” he mutters, leaning forward to clasp his hands on his desk. “I’m really sorry, Corinne.”

  I hold up a hand, indicating it’s not his fault he didn’t know. Softly, I ask another question. “Have you ever heard of the Salt Slasher?”

  Kynan’s eyes cloud with worry, and he slowly shakes his head.

  “He was a serial killer in Atlanta. He had about a five-year spree of terrorizing the city, but he only killed once a year… on Thanksgiving, so it was extremely hard for law enforcement to gather tangible information to lead to his capture.”

  “When was this?” he asks.

  “His first murder was sixteen years ago,” I reply. Only fifteen at the time, I had a vague memory of hearing about it. Obviously, my parents had been worried. But at fifteen, I’d been interested in boys and Friday night football games, not murders.

  Kynan leans a little to the left, pulling a drawer open. From within, he pulls out a pint flask and two paper cups. Quietly, he unscrews the cap and pours an inch of brown liquid into each. It’s quaint and charming, and I appreciate the drink he hands me. He knows this story isn’t going anywhere good.

  I accept the cup, bring it to my lips, and shoot it down. After he swallows his own, he says, “I was still in England at the time.”

  “It was national news, but it only came up once a year and was quickly forgotten again. At any rate, the killer targeted married couples. He’d stalk them for weeks ahead of time to learn their routines, sometimes stealing keys and security codes, always patiently waiting until he felt he could sneak in and do his dirty work undisturbed.”

  “And what exactly was his dirty work?” Kynan asks, his voice slightly hoarse, and I realize I don’t think I’ve ever seen this man more uncomfortable in my entire time working here.

  It’s amazing how time can numb certain things, and I find myself able to relate the gruesome details to my boss without so much as blinking an eye.

  “His modus operandi was always the same. He’d slash his victims’ throats while they slept in their bed. Always starting with the man, then moving to the woman. It was so quick, so violent, and so very silent because he cut their throats, and the victims never knew what had happened. After they were dead, he would pour salt into their throat wounds, and that’s how he became known at The Salt Slasher.”

  “Bloody hell,” Kynan mutters, raking his fingers through his hair. “Am I to assume your parents were his victims?”

  I nod, looking down at my lap and noting my hands are clasped so tight my knuckles are white. While I can talk about the way Richard Katz killed in general, it becomes infinitely more difficult when it comes to my parents’ deaths.

  Without lifting my gaze, I tell him the worst of it. “I was away at college—my senior year at Duke. I wasn’t supposed to come home until Thanksgiving, but I decided to come in the night before to surprise my parents the next morning. I planned to sneak in, get some sleep, and be awake before them with coffee waiting and get an early start on preparing the turkey.”

  I take a breath, trying to ground myself. I’m sitting in Kynan’s office, and the chair under my butt is solid. I am not back in my parents’ house. That’s done, and this is just a straight recounting so Kynan understands why I need some time off.

  Letting my breath out, I continue, but I do so by raising my face so I can look him in the eye. “I let myself in quietly through the front door. The alarm wasn’t on. I thought that was a little odd, but I didn’t really pay it much attention. Instead, I just locked the door and set it. I tiptoed down the hall to my room, and I was about to go in there when I heard something… strange. It came from my parents’ room.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  I hold up my hand again. Because yes, I have to. I can’t start a story like this and not finish. “Their door was open. By the glow of light coming out, I could tell maybe a bedside lamp was on. And that sound… it was rasping and repetitive. My curiosity made me go look.”

  Kynan’s expression is tense, and he looks like he’s about to crawl out of his skin. I’ve felt that way myself. Honestly, years of therapy is the only reason I can talk about it now.

  Clearing my throat, I say, “It was The Salt Slasher… His name is Richard Katz, but I didn’t know that then. In fact, I couldn’t even comprehend what I saw at the time, but both my parents were already dead. Both in bed, blood all over the place, with their throats slashed open by his knife. And I just watched in horror as he held a Morton salt canister as he loomed over my dad, steadily shaking it. That was the rasping sound I heard.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Kynan mutters.

  Truer words were never spoken. I smile sympathetically because I can imagine how horrifying it is to hear this for the first time. “I don’t know what came over me. I could have screamed, fainted, or done something to call attention to myself. Instead, I quietly backed down the hall to the front door. He was never the wiser I had been there watching. I didn’t kill the alarm, though, knowing it would go off when I opened that front door. It’s amazing how collected I was at the time. As soon as I pulled it open, I bolted and ran as fast as I could down the road with that alarm shrieking behind me. I just wanted him to leave, you know? Leave my parents alone before he could defile them anymore.”

  “Where did you go?” he asks, his voice barely audible.

  “About three blocks down before I stopped running and had the presence of mind to call 9-1-1. I hid in some bushes. My phone had been in my hand the entire time, and I didn’t even know it.”

  “Was he caught?” Kynan asks.

  “Not that night,” I murmur. “But not long after.”

  A million questions are burning in Kynan’s eyes, yet he doesn’t ask a single one. I’ve told him the important stuff, but I’ll tell him more if he wants. However, I know him well enough to know he’ll leave me in peace and probably google all the details later.

  It’s enough he knows the background.

  “Just a bit ago, I ran into the FBI agent who was in charge of the case,” I say.

  Kynan’s eyebrows shoot up. “Clay Brandeis? Did he know you worked here?”

  “No,” I reply with a mirthless laugh. “We were both kind of shocked.”

  “I’m sensing it wasn’t a great reunion,” he opines.

  “We have a very complicated past,” I say, knowing it’s a vague answer, but it’s personal. “Let’s just say he was a hero to me, but he pushed me away.”

  I can see the inner workings of Kynan’s brain as he puzzles over that cryptic statement, but I don’t wait for him to come to any conclusions.

  “I want time off to spend with Clay,” I say with a wave. “And I don’t know how long that might be.”

  Kynan narrows his eyes. “Are you going to kidnap him? Because
I get the distinct impression from your tone and innuendos that he might not want to spend time with you.”

  That actually makes me laugh. “No. I promise not to kidnap him. But he’s not going to be able to say no to me.”

  “Okay,” Kynan says, holding both hands up in surrender. “I really don’t need to know more about this story. Take all the time you need.”

  I incline my head, my tone overly grateful. “Thank you, Kynan.”

  “I hope you get what you’re looking for,” he murmurs.

  “So do I.”

  Chapter 3

  Clay

  * * *

  It concerns me how shaken my encounter with Corinne yesterday at Jameson’s headquarters left me. Afterward, I’d returned to the FBI building and attempted to do my work. I managed to fill out some reports and review a new case. While we’re technically on Christmas holiday, I brought it home to go over again. Maybe I’ll even take Griff and Bebe up on their offer to eat Christmas dinner with them. We can talk about it then.

  I’m completing my morning run, something I do religiously every day, as long as the weather permits. It’s cold and overcast, but the sidewalks and streets in South Side are dry and safe. I do five to seven miles, mood permitting, and I also hit the gym several days a week. In this line of work, I have to be in good physical condition, but, more than that, the exercise is a stress reliever.

  Which is why I’m choosing to run seven miles today because I can’t stop thinking about Corinne.

  I can’t stop thinking about how beautiful she looked. Confident. And poised, self-assured, happy, and successful.

  After all these years, had I thought she’d be wallowing in misery? I never wanted that for her, but maybe I had expected it. I had thought her experiences had ruined her, but I clearly wasn’t giving her enough credit.

  Fuck… over the past nine years, I had managed to go weeks—sometimes even months—without thinking about her, but now she won’t leave my mind.

  Of course, there’d be those days when I did nothing but think about her. Wondering what her life was like and if she had truly been able to move on. She had seen such terrible things. Horrors that no one as good and sweet as Corinne Ellery should have ever seen.

  And it’s my fucking fault it happened.

  My fault for not being able to catch that motherfucking Richard Katz before he destroyed that beautiful family. And that’s not to say that every family from the very first wasn’t important and deserving. They were all immense tragedies. But I didn’t bond with them the way I had with Corinne after her parents were slaughtered. We remained close over the next few years while the cogs of justice spun ever so slowly. Corinne was the most integral piece of our case because she was our only eyewitness.

  After he was caught and until he was convicted, Corinne and I continued to talk and see each other. Ostensibly, we always said it was to talk about the case. I’d keep her updated on the legal aspects, and she’d let me know how she was doing. In that time frame, she received her undergrad degree and entered medical school. We saw each other when we could in the summers. Otherwise, we talked and texted on the phone. Soon, our conversations had nothing to do with Katz.

  I’m not sure how it happened, but we became really good friends.

  What in the hell is she doing in Pittsburgh now? Last I’d heard—and I’d sometimes checked up on her over the years—she had a successful psychiatric practice in Washington, D.C. How had she gone from there to working for Kynan McGrath at Jameson?

  The last time I saw her was nine years ago in a bar in Buckhead. It was after the verdict had come in, and we went out for celebratory drinks. We weren’t the only ones. The district attorney was there, my FBI partners at the time, and some of the court support staff—all people who had been heavily invested in the outcome of the trial.

  But as time wore on, people started leaving to go home until it was just Corinne and me at that bar. When we were finally alone, she did something I imagined her doing a million times, but never thought she would.

  She leaned over and kissed me.

  Not on the cheek and not in gratitude, but on the mouth with longing and desire.

  And I was an asshole who took advantage of the situation, kissing her back with an intensity I wish I could have tempered some, but there was just no way. Over the two years I’d known her—throughout the grim work and horrible circumstances—I’d somehow come to see her as more than a friend.

  I’d fucking fallen in love with her.

  Our age difference hadn’t mattered—she’d been just twenty to my twenty-eight when her parents were murdered. It hadn’t mattered that I’d been the FBI agent who’d hunted down their killer or that she’d been a victim. It hadn’t mattered she’d been vulnerable, and I’d wanted to be her hero.

  Every goddamned bit of it had been inappropriate. Yet, I’d still kissed her with everything I had. In my mind, I’d reasoned I deserved it just once because it was all over now that Katz was behind bars and would be getting justice when he died by lethal injection.

  In my heart, I’d known it was wrong. No matter how much I wanted her, the one thing that would keep me away was that I hadn’t caught Richard Katz before he could murder her parents, and that was something I couldn’t forgive myself for. Moreover, I’m convinced there was no way Corinne—in the long run—would ever be able to get over that. She was riding a high at the end of his trial. She’d felt vindicated and powerful when he’d got the death penalty.

  And so we kissed, and it was amazing, beautiful and very, very temporary.

  Because I knew she would eventually come down from that high only to realize I’d let her down. Wincing, I recalled the moment.

  When Corinne moaned into my mouth, I finally jolted into action, pulling back from her so fast I almost toppled off my barstool. Her head was tilted, all that dark hair hanging over one shoulder. Her swollen lips begged to be kissed again.

  I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I kissed you first,” she pointed out.

  “I get that. But we can’t. It’s inappropriate.”

  She smiled… reaching a hand out. I moved off my stool to stand, leaning away from her. She frowned, not understanding how I could go from a meaningful kiss to aversion so quickly. “The case is over. Nothing is holding us back now,” she said.

  “Yeah, there is,” I replied bitterly. “I failed you. I didn’t catch him fast enough to prevent your parents’ deaths. And no matter how you might feel about it, I can’t ever forget that. Frankly, you shouldn’t either.”

  She said nothing. Just stared at me in shock, never in a million years understanding the guilt I carried. By her expression, I could tell it never crossed her mind.

  But it would.

  I knew it would come, and it would ruin us if we were together.

  “Goodbye, Corinne.” My voice was low, and those were the hardest words I’d ever had to say in my life.

  I saw her eyes well with tears, but I still turned my back on her and walked away.

  * * *

  I never looked back.

  Yesterday was the first time I’d seen her since then—since I’d kissed her, made her cry, and left her. Throughout the years, I’d heard Corinne had attended all the appeal arguments, but I never went. I didn’t want to run into her, and my presence wasn’t required.

  Honestly, I thought I’d never see her again, and I’d made peace with that.

  And now, everything’s fucked up.

  I’m on the last block of my run, which will lead up to the front stoop of my rowhouse duplex in South Side. My place is barely ten minutes away from the FBI building, which makes for an easy commute.

  As I approach my home, my brain takes in the fact that someone is sitting on my front stoop. It takes more than a moment—perhaps through denial—to realize it’s Corinne.

  She’s appropriately dressed for the cold weather, wearing jeans and a heavy parka with gloves and a knit cap. The fact it�
�s overcast makes it seem infinitely colder to me, despite the fact I’m sweating my ass off from my run. A shiver runs up my spine over how beautiful she is.

  I slow to a walk half a block from her, trying to think of what to say. Her head turns my way, and she gives me a friendly wave. She rises off the stoop, wiping at nonexistent dirt on her butt. I have no choice but to continue walking toward her to see because, at this point, it would be rude and entirely cowardly to turn around and run the other way.

  She smiles when I reach her. I don’t smile back because just seeing her is churning up all kinds of emotions.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, then have another thought strike me hard. “And how the hell do you have my address?”

  She ignores my questions. “You can’t avoid me.”

  “I can if you’ll let me,” I reply a bit snidely.

  “Clay… this is ridiculous. We were friends once.”

  “No, we weren’t.” It’s a lie. Truthfully, we could have been more.

  “Yes, the fuck we were,” she snaps, and I’m shocked by her ferociousness. “We were good friends. You came to my college graduation. We talked several times a week.”

  “That was case related,” I mutter.

  “Coming to my graduation was not,” she snaps.

  And she’s right about that. I went to her undergrad ceremony at Duke because I was so proud of her. Hell, I’d been half in love with her at that point.

  She sighs, clearly frustrated. “We were good friends. We had a bond most people will never have because of our shared experience with Katz. You don’t have a good reason for avoiding me all these years. Don’t even try because you’ll never convince me otherwise. But fate brought us back together.”

  Fate? Is she kidding me? Even fate can’t be cruel enough to put the one woman I’ve ever really loved back in my line of sight to torture me again.

  “You really believe that?” I demand angrily. “Because fate sure as hell fucked you over, didn’t it?”