Way of the Warrior (Troubleshooters #17.5)(37)

CHAPTER 2


Tom Dawson glanced up from his paperwork and frowned. “You’re early for your shift.”

“Yeah, well, I’m clockin’ in,” Joe retorted as he stormed into Tom’s office. He tossed the bag full of bloody roses onto the desk.

“What the hell?” Tom demanded.

Joe jerked his chin at the bag. “You tell me. This was left in Sadie’s car when she dropped by my house this morning. Why didn’t you tell me some * was leaving presents for her?”

Tom glanced toward the open door to his office then got to his feet with a sigh and shut it before resuming his seat behind his desk. “Maybe because I knew how you’d react—and so did Sadie.”

Joe raked a hand over his hair, pacing as much as Tom’s cramped office would allow. “This is bullshit, Tom. Bullshit! I can’t believe you’d keep this from me.”

“There’s nothing useful to tell you,” Tom admitted, spreading his hands. “The notes didn’t have any fingerprints on them except Sadie’s. And there were too many prints on the flower boxes and cards to get anything useful.”

“And that’s it?” Joe snapped.

Tom sighed again, this time with an edge of pity. “Whoever is stalking Sadie hasn’t done anything more than send her bloody roses and shitty poetry. I don’t even have a suspect to investigate.”

Joe pulled a hand down his face, hating how helpless he felt. The * had been right outside his f*cking house, a couple of yards from his door. And he’d moved fast. Sadie had only been inside for a few minutes. And Joe hadn’t noticed, hadn’t heard anything. Not the car door opening or closing, not another car’s motor. Which meant the guy had probably parked his car down the street and walked to Joe’s house from wherever he’d parked. Hell, for all he knew, the guy had left his little present and then waited in the bushes, hoping to get a glimpse of Sadie’s reaction, taking off only after Joe had ushered Sadie back inside. What if he hadn’t followed her outside? What would’ve happened then?

“You know how these kinds of things work, Tom,” he said. “From everything Sadie’s told me, it sounds like the guy’s upping his game. He’s been content to send her poetry, notes until recently. But they’re growing more explicit, more violent. And now he’s leaving bloody flowers in her f*cking car? What’s next?”

Tom spread his arms. “What do you want me to do, Joey?”

“What do I want?” He tossed the other bag he carried onto Tom’s desk.

“Jesus Christ!” Tom cried, his chair rolling back several inches with the force of his startled reaction.

“I want you to help me find this * before Sadie ends up like this!” Joe ground out, jabbing a finger at the mutilated rabbit inside the gallon-sized Ziploc bag. “That’s the source of the blood on the roses. I found it in my f*cking mailbox, Tom.”

Yeah, that’d been a nice surprise. Joe had noticed that his mailbox was ajar when he was backing out of the driveway to take Sadie to work and stopped to check it out. Clearly, the stalker had wanted it to be found, had wanted to send a message to Joe, a separate threat just for him that underpinned the one he’d left in Sadie’s car. And the best part? The rabbit’s head had been ripped off. Not cut off. That would’ve been humane by comparison. This sick bastard had ripped the motherf*cking head off.

And he hadn’t been content with that. Oh, no. He’d also gutted it, probably with a pocketknife, and a dull one at that. It was this kind of savage violence that spoke of something more than just a secret admirer who’d taken things too far. He was dangerous, unstable. And it was only a matter of time before he was no longer content to gut rabbits.

“This bastard is off his f*cking nut,” Joe assured his brother. “Considering there was no blood on my driveway or in the grass around the house, I’m guessing he caught the rabbit and gutted it to bloody up the flowers ahead of time and brought the corpse with him.”

Tom nodded, his brows furrowed. “As careful as he’s been up until now, preparing everything ahead of time to leave for Sadie makes sense. But my guess is ripping off its head and leaving it in the mailbox for you to find seems like an impulse of rage, probably because she was with another man. You need to be careful, Joe.”

“I’m not worried about me,” Joe informed him. “I’ll take the bastard out if he wants to try something with me. But I can’t just sit here with my thumb up my ass and wait for him to make a move on Sadie.” What he didn’t need to say was that when this guy finally did show himself, he knew it would be because he couldn’t control himself anymore, couldn’t restrain his obsession with Sadie any longer. And after seeing the guy’s handiwork on the rabbit, the thought of this sicko getting his hands on Sadie scared the shit out of him.

“I know how much Sadie means to you,” Tom told him, his tone infuriatingly calm. “She means a lot to all of us. Hell, she’s like the kid sister we never had.”

Kid sister. Right…

“But I can’t assign a deputy to be her personal bodyguard for who knows how long,” Tom continued. “Aside from sending out a couple of guys to process Sadie’s car and take prints off your mailbox to see if we get anything, there’s not shit I can do, and you know it.”