Lovegame(73)

The second we enter the ballroom, I feel Veronica’s eyes on me. I turn to find her and we lock gazes for several long, loaded seconds. I start to cross to her but I’m still shaken from seeing that photo of her with Liam Brogan, still burning with rage at the knowledge that he was ever that close to her, and the suspicion—no, the knowledge—that before he left here he’d been even closer.

The sick son of a bitch.

Back when I was a profiler working this case, there were a few things about Brogan’s murders that always bothered me.

The escalating age of the victims that I was certain was modeled after a child who was growing into a young woman while the agents in the case were certain the girl was long grown.

The voyeuristic staging of the body that the others always thought signified a fantasy that he was playing out but that had always seemed nearly performance-like in nature to me.

And perhaps, most important, the way the crime seemed so much more about the rape than it did the actual murder, as if death was an afterthought instead of the goal.

We had caught him, despite our differing opinions regarding motive, but the whole thing had left such a sick taste in my mouth that I’d left NCAVC not long after. But the case had haunted me, the questions I’d never gotten answered poking at me even through the success of Belladonna and my subsequent books. At the time, I hadn’t had a clue where those answers would take me, any more than I’d realized just who stood to get hurt by them.

Now I do, but I’m in too deep to stop. For myself, for the book, and—most important—for Veronica.

Which is why I stand my ground, eyes locked with hers across the crowded ballroom but unsure of what I should say to her—or even, what I want to say.

Finally, I say to hell with it and head toward her. After seeing that picture, after all the crap that’s been chasing itself around in my head, I want to touch her. To hold her. To make sure that, after everything I fear she’s gone through, she really is okay.

But I waited too long. As I cross the ballroom, her eyes dart from me to her mother and back again. Then she very coolly, very deliberately, turns her back on me.

If this was any other day or if I hadn’t just seen proof of her exposure to Brogan, I might be tempted to ignore her very obvious No Trespassing signs. But today is what it is—it’s the day I woke up to see that I had all but savaged her while we made love and it’s the day I saw a picture of Brogan’s filthy hands all over the young girl she once was. If she’s putting up walls then I’m damn well going to respect them.

And so I don’t finish crossing the ballroom. I don’t approach her. I don’t even side-eye the many men—and a few women—who are very obviously vying for the chance to warm her bed tonight.

I head out instead, handing my ticket to the valet at the front door. I’m one of the last to arrive—and one of the first leaving despite the late hour—so he’s back with my rental car in only a couple of minutes. The small BMW looks out of place amid the Ferraris and Bentleys, but instead of bothering me as it would some in this town, it actually amuses me. At least until my phone buzzes and I glance down to see that Veronica has texted me an address. No explanation, no invitation, not even a time to show up. Just an address in Manhattan Beach and a number I can only assume is a gate code.

I stare at it for long seconds, trying to decide if it means what I think it does. I can’t help thinking that I’m getting ahead of myself, but when I turn to look up at the ballroom in an attempt to find an answer to a question I’ve barely let form, I see her. She’s on the balcony, leaning against the wrought iron with her hair blowing gently in the wind as she looks down at me.

I glance back at my phone, think about texting her to ask what the hell is up. But before my thumb can so much as press the first key, she’s gone and I’m left staring up at an empty balcony and wondering how the f*ck the guy with all the research is also the one constantly standing around trying to figure out what the hell just happened.





Chapter 20


It takes me a lot longer to get out of the house after the party than I planned on—like close to two hours more. But Mom took forever saying goodbye to people and then she wanted to do a full party postmortem, no matter how many times I promised her we’d do it, when we met for breakfast on her actual birthday. I only escaped because I told her if she kept me any longer I was going to fall asleep behind the wheel—and even then she tried to talk me into staying the night at the house.

But I don’t sleep in that house. Ever. And she knows it, too, which is why she took my refusal fairly well despite the number of times she brought up the idea. And by fairly well I mean she pouted only for about five minutes. That’s pretty much a record for her.

By the time I’m finally on the road to Manhattan Beach, it’s a little after three in the morning and I figure Ian is long gone. No matter how much he wants me, there’s no way he sat outside my house for more than an hour and a half. Especially without knowing for sure that the address I gave him actually belonged to me.

I’m still not sure why I did it when I’ve made it such a point not to invite anyone to my home. I can tell myself it’s because I don’t want to be alone tonight, that between the bathtub and the garden I don’t trust myself not to do anything else crazy. But while that might be true, I also know that it’s much more than that, too.