Murder Notes (Lilah Love Book 1)

First class to New York City, my pre-Hamptons destination, is full of two types of people: rich, pompous asses who look down on everyone in coach and people who want to get sloshed and go to sleep with leg room. I kick off my shoes and stretch out my jean-clad legs, hoping the seat next to me remains as empty as it is right now.

“Drink, Miss Love?”

I glance up at the sound of the question laced with a Texas twang to find a middle-aged, bleached-blonde flight attendant, her hair puffed and frozen with excess hairspray. “Bloody Mary, heavy on the Mary,” I say.

“Pardon me,” she says, “but what does ‘heavy on the Mary’ mean exactly?”

Is she fucking serious? “Mary,” I repeat. “Heavy on the Mary.” This earns me several mascara-laden blinks, and I grimace. “The bloody is obviously the tomato juice, which means the Mary is . . .” I hold a hand out, certain she will be amazed by my brilliance, allowing her to reply with awe, but all I get are another few blinks. “Vodka,” I say. “Just bring me vodka on the rocks. The rocks would be ice.”

She laughs nervously. “Of course. Coming right up.” She hurries away and my cell phone buzzes from the pocket of my brandless black backpack that will soon be scandalously unacceptable. I reach down and grab it, glancing at the message from Director Murphy:

I type my reply and hope it ends the conversation.

My phone rings. “Damn it,” I whisper, tapping the Answer button. “Agent Love,” I say.

“Agent Pain in My Ass, at the moment. The Hamptons might be home to you, but we have procedures to follow. When do you arrive?”

“I land in New York City at seven. I’m taking the train into the Hamptons from there.”

“I have higher powers all over me about our dead body. Take a chopper.”

“That’s expensive.”

“So is bad press and a community in panic. I want you there now, not later. Get me answers. I’ll e-mail you reservations and have the locals waiting on you when you land. And I expect to hear from you tonight.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes, Director Murphy. I will call you once I make contact with the locals.”

“That’s more like it. Have a safe flight, Agent Love.” He ends the connection.

I shove my phone back in my backpack just in time to be handed a glass of vodka. I down it and grimace. Damn, it sucks without the tomato juice. What the hell was I thinking? “Now I’d like a Bloody Mary,” I say to the attendant.

“Extra . . . Mary?”

“Just a Bloody Mary,” I say, letting my head sink back against the cushion and hoping like hell a little more booze is enough to put me to sleep. I have enough to deal with when I get home. I don’t need to deal with it on the way there as well. My damn cell phone rings again. I pull it out of my bag, note Rich’s number, and turn it off. He probably just found out I’d left, and I can’t focus on his misplaced outrage right now. I grab my case file, which now has the data from the local murders inside and the assumed-to-be-connected case in New York, as well as my MacBook. I pull down the tray table and flip open the file. I’m immediately staring at the image of today’s victim, a man who shares two things in common with my attacker from years before: he’s Mexican, and he’s got the same ink on his arm. I thumb through the photos and find a shot of the tattoo, confirming that, yes, it’s the exact same image I remember: the Virgin Mary, bleeding from the mouth. And since I’ve googled and researched that image many times, I know that there is no documented gang or organizational affiliation, despite my certainty there is one.

I move on to our first victim, a white female, also in her thirties. Also killed with a bullet between the eyes, her clothes missing when we found her. But there’s no tattoo on her body, and her career as an investment banker doesn’t exactly scream gang. A cult, maybe? Yes. No. I’m back to a solid maybe. Flipping to the next case, I’m now looking at the New York victim, a white man, fortyish, with no notes on his career. Sure enough, the body’s been stripped naked as with our local cases, and the cause of death is a bullet between the eyes. Other than the MO of the murders, these people have nothing in common, which to me reaffirms my instinct that this isn’t a serial killer. This is a hit list. I know it. I feel it.

My drink appears beside me, and I glance up to find the flight attendant, “Texas,” I decide to call her, standing beside me, rambling on about something in a sticky-sweet voice. I really hate sticky sweet. It reminds me of the Hamptons. I nod, having no idea what I’m agreeing to, and then down my drink. And thank the Lord above, she responds by walking away.

Certain perhaps beyond logic that the tattoo connects all these victims, I tab through the New York victim’s photos, scanning the body shots for ink that I don’t find. Either the New York officials screwed up and didn’t document the tattoo, screwed up and didn’t give me all the shots, or there simply wasn’t a tattoo. From that I surmise that either the method of murder is coincidental, or it’s not a coincidence. I grimace. Wonderful. Compliments of the vodka, I’m a rocket scientist. Texas and I might even be able to communicate now, which is not a good thing.

Shoving the documents back into the file, I shut it and stuff it in the side of my seat, letting my head settle on the headrest behind me, my lashes lowering, as I wish I were on a jog, which is where I do my best thinking. Execution-style does not mean assassin, but every instinct and piece of training I own tells me it does. This could be a hit list, and some—or maybe just one—of the victims could just happen to be a part of a gang or group that the tattoo represents. My mind goes to the tattoo on this morning’s body, and then instantly I am back on the beach, back underneath that man. I shove the bitch of a memory aside and do what I’ve learned rescues me from me: I force myself into my first gruesome crime scene memory—its horror making it more vivid than any crime scene memory prior to it—and suddenly, I’m two years in the past.

The emergency and police vehicles tell me I’ve found my crime scene. I park at the curb just outside the apartment building’s parking lot and slide my leather bag over my head before popping the door open. I step outside my gray Ford Taurus and shut the door. It’s new and basic, because new and basic is what I’d hoped to find when I arrived here a few weeks ago. I cross the parking lot, walking toward a crowd gathering outside the yellow tape. I trip on my own feet, irritated that I’m anything less than cool and confident, but the reality is, my new department isn’t exactly welcoming me ~with open arms. The whole “young, female, and damn good at profiling” doesn’t work for the men in my department.~

Weaving through the crowd, I approach the line and a uniformed officer. “FBI,” I say, pulling my badge out from underneath the black sweat jacket I’m wearing over a black Garfield T-shirt that sports my favorite reply to idiots, “Whatever.”

The gray-haired, potbellied asshole gives me a once-over. “Since when do twelve-year-old interns get badges?”

My irritation is instant. “I have two pet peeves, Officer, and you’ve managed to hit them both,” I say, ducking under the tape to face him. “Ignorance with a mouth hole and a cop who stuffs too many doughnuts in said mouth hole and can’t touch his toes let alone do his job justice.”

“Bitch.”

My lips curve. “Damn, I like that name. Have a good day, Officer.” I start walking, lifting my hand and wiggling my fingers in departure.

A man in a suit greets me, his detective badge hanging on his chest. “You’re Lilah Love,” he says.

I don’t ask how he knows. “That’s right.”

“I’d say welcome, but there’s nothing welcoming about today.” He motions to an open apartment door. “We appreciate the feds loaning you to us today. I’m Detective Smith.” He shakes my hand.

“Happy to help,” I say.

He grimaces. “I doubt you’ll say that after you see the scene.” He motions to the apartment next to us. “Suit up in there. You need to be in hazmat gear.”

This is a first. “Hazmat? Why?”

“You’ll know when you get there.” He turns and walks away.

I grimace and enter the apartment, to be greeted by a guy in jeans and a T-shirt with red hair who looks me up and down. “Who the hell are you?”

“Lilah Love,” I say. “I’m supposed to suit up.”

“Lilah Love,” he repeats. “Who wanted you to grow up and be a stripper?”

“That joke is about as original as a teenage boy thinking a green M&M makes him horny.”

“M&M’s make you horny?”

Great. He doesn’t know that common teen joke. I really hate when no one but me gets my jokes. “No. They make you happy. And fat if you eat too many. Just like how bad jokes make you stupid.”

His extremely thick brows twist into a furry glower. “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.” He reaches to a rack just behind him, grabs a hazmat suit, and shoves it at me. “Put it on. Don’t worry. You can leave your clothes on.” He wiggles a brow. “Unless you don’t want to.”

I give him a deadpan stare. “You’re so funny,” I say, my tone intentionally flat.

“And horny, sweetheart,” he says, tossing rubber boots next to me. “Those really get me hot.”

Pretty sure I’m losing brain cells every moment I participate in this conversation, and desperate to save the ones I have left, I give him my back and step into the all-white suit. Once I’m covered up to my shoulders, I zip up and leave the hood and mask dangling. I then pull a pair of rubber boots over the tops of my black Converses, their color masking the dirt from numerous sandy crime scene visits. The choice of brand masks my normal penchant for Louis Vuitton in all forms, including sneakers. Feet covered, I ignore the redheaded asshole and walk outside, immediately heading toward the crowd.

Detective Smith greets me with a command. “Hood and mask on. And good luck.” He steps aside and clears a path that leads me to a tarp walling off an investigative area and another apartment. I start moving again, and there is the clawing sense of dread in my belly that is always there just before I see a body, those moments before death whispers my name. And it does. Every day and every night. Blood rushes in my ears. Adrenaline pours through me. I pause and pull my hood and mask into place. Another few steps, and I barely register the moment I pass through the opening in the tarp, or the moment when I see the plastic sheets on the floor covered in ~bloody footsteps that warn of what is waiting on me at the actual murder scene. Or even the cop by the door who mouths, “Good luck,” before motioning me forward.~

I step into the room, liquid sloshing at my feet. Everything slows down then, and my tunnel vision forms. My feet are plopping into a pool of red, so much red. My gaze swims past my feet to search for the body that isn’t there, catching on another person in a suit that points upward. I look to the ceiling, and my throat goes dry. There is a body anchored there, and it’s not in one piece. The limbs are detached and reconnected in odd places: the legs where the arms should be. The hands where the feet should be. The arms where the legs should be.

My gaze jerks back down to the blood that has started to congeal around my boots, and suddenly the room is spinning and my stomach is knotted. I rush for the door and exit, walking as fast as the tarp allows, and then turning and leaning against the walled area behind it. My knees go weak and I sink low, pulling away the face mask I’m wearing and gasping for air, my lashes lowering.

“You okay?”

I blink and open my eyes to find a man squatting in front of me. “Fine,” I say. “I’m fine. I’m going back in.”

“Everyone who’s gone in has come out just like this,” he promises. “Take a minute to catch your breath.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“I’m Rich,” he says, giving me this Ken-doll smile that reaches his pretty-boy blue eyes. “I’m here if you need me.” He’s coddling me. I do not need to be coddled.

“Yeah, well, fuck you,” I say, pushing to my feet. “I don’t need to breathe, and I don’t need you.” I pull my mask back into place and charge for the door.

Everything goes blank then. Everything is just black space until I am suddenly in another memory. I’m in the Hamptons. I’m at a fancy restaurant with him. He’s staring at me with those damn brown eyes. He ~reaches up and touches my face, then my leg. I was young and foolish. He was older and not even close to foolish.~

I shove aside the memory and I’m immediately on that beach, that hellish night again, and he is there. ~I am trembling all over, blood at my feet, all over my body. “Go inside,” he orders. “Take a shower.”~

“No,” I say. “No, I—”

He grabs my arms. “Go the fuck inside. Do as I say.”

“No, damn it. No!”

“Miss Love. Miss Love!”

I blink and sit up, realizing Texas is leaning across the seat and grabbing my arm, looking quite mortified. “Oh God,” I murmur. “Did I scream out?”

“Yes,” Texas confirms. “Quite loudly.”

“Fuck me,” I gush out and then hold up a hand. “I mean. Sorry about that. Are we about to take off?”

“We’re about to land. You slept through the flight,” she gives me a disapproving look and moves away.

I shift in my seat, and the file falls to the ground, the contents spilling out. Bending over, I reach for it, stuffing the contents back inside, and the tattoo photo catches my eye. I stare down at it and flash back to me lying on that beach, with my attacker on top of me, my gaze on his arm etched with the Virgin Mary, blood dripping from her mouth. I never knew who he was or why he came for me. I’d run instead, but I can’t run now, and I don’t want to, anyway. I have a killer to catch. One that seems to have more than one connection to me and my past.