The Heart of a Killer by Jaci Burton
"How far do they go?"
"Just around the block usually. He wouldn't go as far as the park. Not this late at night."
"Maybe he went to bed early."
She laughed. "My dad hasn't gone to bed early one night in his entire life."
"Okay. So let's check the block."
She started to walk down the path, then stopped. "He would have left the porch light on. And the house lights."
She turned and headed to the front door, turned the knob. The door opened. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She lifted her gaze to Dante and lowered her voice. "Something's wrong. If he went to the bar or out somewhere he'd have left lights on, and Rusty would be here. He'd bark. And Dad only leaves the door unlocked when he's home."
Dante pulled his gun and stepped in front of Anna. She pulled her gun, too, moving next to Dante. "I know the layout of the house better, and Rusty knows me. If he's in here and he comes running, I can calm him down."
He nodded. "Stay close to me."
She pushed the door open, leaving the lights off. If someone was inside, she didn't want him to know they were there. Familiar with the layout of the house, she moved inside, stepping light and easy through the living room. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she noted nothing seemed out of place. That was good. Dante pressed his shoulder against hers. She nodded and they moved into the kitchen.
That's when she saw it, highlighted by the moonlight shining in through the back door onto the floor.
Blood.
Her heart slammed into double time and she broke into a sweat.
Dante saw it too and turned to the side, his gun pointed up as they followed the blood trail from the dining area to the back door. She reached out for the handle and Dante grabbed her wrist. She jerked her gaze to his.
"Prints," he whispered.
Shit. She didn't want to think like a detective right now. Her dad might be out there. Dante grabbed a towel from the counter and handed it to her. She nudged the partially open slider and walked outside.
More blood on the patio. Panic rose and she swallowed past the dryness in her throat.
Not now. She refused to let it consume her. She forced her breathing, in and out, with normal breaths. Shaky breaths.
"Anna," Dante whispered. "Hold it together."
She waved him off and stepped off the patio and into the yard.
That's when she heard the whimper and hurried to follow the sound.
It was Rusty lying next to her father. He hadn't barked, hadn't moved, because he was protecting her dad.
No.
Her dad was at the back of the yard near the bushes. She dropped to her knees, saw the blood everywhere.
Tears pricked her eyes. "Dad."
He was unconscious, blood all over his face and body. His shirt had been ripped open and half a heart had been carved into his chest. The killer hadn't been able to finish. Something had stopped him. She laid two fingers on the side of her father's neck, fervently praying.
She couldn't find it, searched again. There! Faint, but it was a pulse.
"Dad. Daddy, it's me, Anna. Can you hear me?"
He didn't respond.
She heard Dante on the phone. She assumed he was calling for an ambulance and for police units, but it was all white noise to her.
"Anna, I'm going to check the area."
She nodded and leaned over her father again.
He didn't respond and she wanted to curl up next to him right there on the ground and offer him comfort. She swept her hand over his hair. "Stay with me, Daddy. Help is on the way."
She picked up her father's hand and held it--along with her breath--until she heard the wail of the ambulance and saw the lights out front. Dante came back, too.
"Front door wasn't messed with, but back slider was. Uniforms are here, too, doing a canvass of the area. More black-and-whites are on the way, and I've called Roman."
Anna wasn't really listening, at this point didn't give a shit about the suspect. All she cared about was her father making it out of this alive, and surviving the attack.
Dante dropped to the ground and checked her dad's vitals, then shifted his gaze to hers. "He's still here, Anna."
"I know. He's going to make it. He has to."
The EMTs arrived a few minutes later and started working on her dad, and Anna got out of their way. She'd been to enough crime scenes during her tenure with the force to decipher their language. It wasn't good. His blood pressure was dangerously low, he was in shock and he'd lost a lot of blood. They put him in the ambulance and headed off.
"Go," Dante said. "I'll wait for Roman to show up. You keep watch over your dad."
She nodded.
"Anna."
She stopped.
"I know he's your father and you have every kind of emotion tied up in this. But keep your eyes open at the hospital. If your dad saw this guy, the killer knows it and he may be on the lookout to finish the job he started. I'll make sure they send a uniform to watch over him, too."
She nodded and hurried off to her car so she could follow the ambulance to the hospital.
She wasn't leaving her father's side. Not until he woke up.
And he would wake up.
He had to.
Dante paced the back porch, Rusty at his side. He curled his fingers in the dog's fur. A perfect witness. He was sure the dog had seen everything.
"Wish you could tell us who did this, Rusty." Because so far no one else could. Anna's father had been found in the backyard, but the yard was surrounded by a fence and tall trees, obscuring the vision of his neighbors on either side. Dante had gone to talk to both. One had been inside watching television and hadn't heard or seen anything. The ones on the other side weren't home, and there was a park behind his house. Uniforms were canvassing the rest of the neighborhood, but so far had come up with nothing.
How had this night gotten so fucked up? He dragged his fingers through his hair and wished he could be at the hospital right now with Anna. No matter how many times he lifted his phone out of his pocket, the display was empty of messages from her. Nevertheless, he pulled it out again.
And again, nothing. Did that mean she had nothing to tell him, or was she in a corner somewhere having a panic attack?
He had to get to her.
But he also wanted this crime scene to yield something. Not only had Roman showed up, so had Pohanski, once he'd heard it was Anna's father who'd been the victim of the latest attack.
Pohanski supervised the crime scene himself, breathing down everyone's neck to make sure not a single thing was missed. Then he pulled Dante and Roman aside as the CSU team made their sweep.
"What the living fuck is going on here?" he asked.
Dante filled him in on what they'd found at Frank Pallino's house.
"So someone broke into his house, beat up Frank and started to cut him, but something stopped him."
"Yeah, it looks that way," Dante said. "Maybe a noise, or maybe it was Frank's dog, or it could have been Anna and me showing up. There's no way to tell what it was that sent him running out of here before he finished the job."
"He also changed the venue. Not the alley this time," Pohanski said.
"I don't think he could have gotten Frank to the alley where the first two murders occurred, since we've had it under surveillance," Roman said. "We've beefed up security there, with cameras, lights and patrol units putting in twenty-four-hour rotation."
"Well, that worked, but it didn't help Frank any." Pohanski shook his head. "This is a nightmare."
Dante couldn't disagree.
"Why Anna's father?" Pohanski asked.
Roman looked to Dante, who took point on this one. Good thing he was such a master at lying. "It has to be about Anna. The flowers, the notes, people she knows and is close to. Now her father."
"She wasn't close to or related to George Clemons."
"No, but we all were," Roman said. "And that got Anna involved with the case." Pohanski nod
"And then the notes and flowers started. He was trying to get her attention. Now her father. My guess is he's either targeting Anna, or by killing her father the suspect wants her distracted, her attention diverted from the case."
"He's going to get his wish," Pohanski said. "With her father in the hospital there's no way she's going to be able to put a hundred-percent focus on working the case."
That's what Dante was afraid he'd do. "You pull her off this case it'll kill her."
Pohanski leveled his gaze on Dante. "Better than the suspect doing it. Tell her to spend time with her dad. She doesn't like it she can come see me. Right now she's on leave."
Fuck. Dante didn't want to be the one to deliver that news. "I'm heading to the hospital. You keep me informed if you find anything?"
Pohanski waved him off. Dante was torn between wanting to be on the crime scene every second and going over the area with a magnifying glass with the techs, and needing to be with Anna.
"I'll let you know what we find," Roman said. "You let me know about Anna's dad."
Dante nodded. "Thanks."
He drove to the hospital, found out that Frank had been moved up to the ICU.
At least he was still alive.
But when he walked into the room and saw Frank lying there, Dante's stomach sank.
His face was swollen and bruised and so were his arms. The parts of him that weren't battered were as white as the sheet he lay on. He was hooked up to bags of blood, lines running out of his body, plus a ventilator that looked to be doing the breathing for him.
Shit.
Anna sat at his bedside rubbing his arm. She didn't look in any better shape than her father, minus the bruises and wiring.
"Hey," Dante said as he stepped into the room.
Anna lifted her gaze to his. "Hey. Where's Rusty?"
"Your dad's next-door neighbor--the one with the black Lab--is taking care of him for now."
She nodded. "Good. Thank you."
Dante stayed in the doorway. "How is he?"
She stood, and they walked outside the curtained room together and down the hall, pressing the button to leave the ICU.
Only then did Anna's shoulders slump.
"Need some coffee?" he asked, wrapping his arm around her.
She shook her head. "I'm fine."
He didn't take it personally; he understood the trauma and anger. "How's your dad?"
"It's not good. Massive internal bleeding, broken ribs, damage to his lungs, broken legs. The suspect kicked him in the head, so there's a brain injury, too."
Dante sucked in a breath and tried to tamp down the fury that welled up inside him.
"He never woke up. I never got to say anything to him." Her voice wavered as she lifted tear-filled eyes to him. "The doctors told me there's no brain-wave activity. He's not going to wake up, Dante."
His fury turned to pain that wrapped itself around his heart and squeezed tight. "I'm so sorry, Anna."
Despite the wall of brick her body presented, he pulled her into his arms anyway and held her. "We'll make him pay, baby."
She lay against him, unmoving. "I have to disconnect him. His organs are so damaged most of them aren't usable for donation, but they can use bone and tissue. Dad would have wanted that."
He smoothed his hand down her back. "You ready for that?"
She pushed away, her expression so cold it worried him. "It's not like letting him linger is going to bring him back. He'd be mad at me if I did that, and I'd only be doing it for me, not for him. He's gone."
"God, Anna. I'm sorry."
There was a fire in her eyes as she looked up at him. "So am I. He didn't deserve this. It's my fault."
"What? How can this be your fault? It's the killer's fault. Not yours."
"If I'd caught him, my dad would still be alive and wouldn't have had to endure the beating he got. No one deserves that. George didn't, Jeff didn't, and sure as hell my father didn't."
She wasn't thinking rationally. Dante knew it, and yet he wanted to shake some sense into her. "This isn't your responsibility to bear."
She waved her hand. "Whatever. I need to go sit with him."
"I'll go with you."
"No. I need to be alone with him if you don't mind."
"You shouldn't be alone, Anna. Not right now."
She pinned him with a hard stare. "Look, Dante, I appreciate you being here for me. But I can handle this. I'm fine."
"You're not fine."
"Don't think you know what's best for me. You don't."
She jammed the button and told the desk nurse her name. The door buzzed and she opened it. "Leave me alone for a while, okay? I need this."
She closed the door behind her and left Dante standing in the hallway by himself.
He'd never felt more useless.
Anna held her father's hand, letting her fingers linger on his pulse, his life force.
Even though he wasn't really in the shell of his body anymore. Not his brain anyway. Some monster had destroyed him, had taken the laughing, sweet, wonderful man she knew and killed him.
"I'm sorry I didn't find the killer in time to save you, Daddy," she said, squeezing his hand. "I'm sorry I failed."
She hated the tears that seemed to be falling endlessly. She grabbed another tissue and wiped them away.
"I know you wouldn't want me to cry. You'd tell me to stay strong, not to grieve and to get my ass back to work." She rubbed her fingers over his hand. "It'll be hard for me to do that, but I will. I'll make him pay for it, Dad."
No response. Logically she knew there wouldn't be one, but she couldn't help but hope for a miracle. A tiny movement of his fingers, a smile, anything that would give her hope that he was still in there, even though the sensible, adult part of her knew all hope was lost.
She shuddered in a breath, pushing away the child within her that just wanted her daddy to wake up.
"I'm going to take care of Rusty for you, so you won't have to worry about that. He's going to be my dog. I promise I'll look after him."
Her only link to her father would be that dog. She'd cherish Rusty as if he was her baby.
She rose and climbed onto the bed to lie next to her father. What would it hurt? She couldn't damage him. He was already gone, had a peaceful look on his face despite all the bruising from the beating.
She reached up to touch his face, willing him to open his eyes, to smile at her, to say it was all a joke.
But he didn't move, didn't open his eyes.
"What am I going to do without you, Daddy? I already miss you so much. Who am I going to go to for advice when I need it?"
The whir and beep of the machines that did his breathing for him reminded her that her father was, in essence, a machine now, kept alive by technology.
Still, he felt warm to her. His body against hers was her last few minutes of comfort, just as he'd always comforted her with a hug or by sitting next to her whenever she was hurting.
And when the surgical team came in to prepare him for donation, she slid out of bed, kissed her dad's forehead and let them take him away. She sat in the chair in the empty room that felt so much emptier now without his presence.
"I love you, Dad. Say hi to Mom for me."
She bent her chin to her chest and sobbed.
Twenty
Anna managed to get through her father's funeral, through smiling and small talk with all the well-wishers who'd brought food and condolences the days before and after. She was polite, she made conversation, did all the things that would have made her father proud.
The guys were all there with her. Dante, Gabe and Roman stayed by her, bolstered her when she thought she wouldn't be able to do it. She'd tried to shake them off, tried to do this alone, but they refused to let her. She could go it alone if she wanted to, damn them all.
She loved them for it, because she wouldn't have been able to get through those grueling days without them.
Rusty had come home with her th
Two lost souls without their daddy. Rusty would look up at her with his soulful brown eyes, the saddest look on his face.
Yeah, she understood. That look broke her heart, and as she wandered aimlessly around the house, or did some packing up around her dad's, one thing became clear--she absolutely had to get back to work.
She thought endlessly of ways to get back on the case so she could find the bastard who killed her father.
It was the only thing that compelled her to get up in the morning, get in the shower and get through the day--find the killer.
But Pohanski refused to relent, insisted she needed more time to heal before she came back to the job.
Fuck the healing. She needed to work. She'd heal when they caught the killer.
And she was already tired of babysitters. Roman had come over this morning to have coffee with her. She loved these guys, really she did, but she was tired of them watching over her, staring at her as if they expected her to snap at any moment.
Right now he sat at her kitchen table rolling his coffee cup between his hands, his attempts at small talk woefully pathetic. She wanted to talk about the case, about the progress in finding her father's killer. They wouldn't tell her anything.
"So Tess has a new client," Roman said.
She had to make an attempt to at least act interested. "She does? That's great."
"Yeah. First Third Bank, their corporate branch, which means she's going to be busy for the next few months doing their books."
"I imagine she will be. How are the two of you doing?"
He smiled. "Pretty good, but you know how that goes. Since this case began I've hardly had any personal time. And now she's got this new client. So I'm busy, she's busy. We don't get to see each other as much as either of us would like."
"Yeah, I know how that goes." Really, she didn't, but she was glad Roman had someone like Tess in his life. "If you like her, you'll make it work."
Then silence. Blissful silence. She glanced down at the display on her cell phone. "You on duty today?"
"Honey, we're all on duty until this killer is caught. Pohanski is on the rampage about it since--well, since your dad. He's got us all working double shifts. I just wanted to stop by to see if you're hanging in."