The Roses of May (The Collector Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  “He doesn’t look out of place,” she tells him, pulling off her heavy coat and hanging it in the closet.

  “What’s that?”

  “Whoever’s leaving the flowers. Both times they’ve been left in broad daylight, so whoever it is, he doesn’t look out of place in this neighborhood. There are people on the street who work from home, or just don’t work, and he doesn’t stand out as not belonging.”

  “Tell Finney that?”

  “No, but I told Sterling and Archer.” She holds a hand out for his coat. He pulls off his gloves and scarf and shoves them into pockets before giving it to her. “Coffee?”

  “I’ll make it.” Because he’s had Priya’s coffee, and it definitely tastes like it was made by someone who doesn’t drink coffee. It’s an experience he’d rather not repeat.

  “I’ll meet you in the living room, then.” Leaning down, she reaches into the small drawer of the spindly table and pulls out a box of matches. She strikes a match without looking and lights the squat red candle as she presses a kiss to the worn corner of Chavi’s glittery gold frame.

  After she heads upstairs, he looks at the picture. Chavi was significantly darker than Deshani and Priya, almost as dark as her father, but Christ, she looks like Priya. Or maybe Priya looks like her. He’s seen her put on her makeup with nothing but a tiny compact, never faltering with the heavy black liner or the soft silver, white, and blue shimmers.

  How much of that is because she sees her sister looking back at her from the mirror?

  Shaking his head, he walks down the hall to drop his computer bag on the couch and turns into the kitchen. Priya may not like coffee but her mother mainlines it, and sure enough the coffeemaker is the most well-loved element of the kitchen. He has to fuss over it a moment, figuring out the settings because Deshani has something against basic coffee, but it doesn’t take long for it to start doing its thing. He can hear Priya come back downstairs, settling into the living room.

  When he walks back into the living room, he nearly drops the mug. Priya is stretched out on her back on the carpet, dark hair in a puddle around her, her legs crossed at the ankles and propped on the arm of the couch. Her hands are clasped against her stomach. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath to push back the images from the files he’s gone over often enough to memorize.

  “Blue,” she says.

  “What now?”

  “Chavi liked red; I’m all blue.”

  He opens his eyes, looks for the blue in her hair, around her eyes, the blue spark of the crystals at her nose and between her eyes. Her red lipstick is a few shades darker than all the pictures of Chavi, but she’s blue and silver, not red and gold, and maybe it shouldn’t make as much of a difference as it does, but it helps.

  He sits on the couch and reaches for his bag, but she shakes her head. “Wait for Mum. No sense in doing it twice.”

  So they spend the next hour talking about Ramirez and the woman in Counterterrorism she isn’t calling a girlfriend yet, about Vic and his panic about his eldest daughter going off to college in the fall. They talk about spring training, making guesses about who might make the long slog all the way to the World Series, and that’s something he was able to give her, that love of baseball and numbers and crazy statistics.

  Deshani comes home half past seven, dropping bags on the coffee table and grunting at them before trudging up the stairs.

  He glances at Priya.

  “She’ll be more human once she’s changed clothes,” she answers, plucking at her striped fleece pajama pants. “Once she gets home, she wants to be in real clothes.”

  “You two are the only people I know who consider pajamas more real than suits.”

  “Because you’d rather be in a tie than a Nationals shirt?”

  He doesn’t have an answer for that. Or rather, he does, but it isn’t going to help him any.

  Priya rolls to her hands and knees, then levers up to standing so she can get plates and silverware from the kitchen. She also comes back with a bowl, and shrugs at his curious look. “We only have two plates unpacked.”

  “Heathens.”

  “Quite literally.”

  He snorts, but accepts one of the plates. By the time Deshani joins them wearing leggings and a long-sleeve Cambridge T-shirt, Priya’s got the food sorted out for all three of them. The routine is comfortable, familiar from those seven-odd months they lived just outside of D.C. Deshani regales them with tales of her misogynist assistant, who can’t manage to hide how disgusted he is to be reporting to a woman, and her own delight in offering him a demotion if he’d prefer a male boss. It’s sharp and funny, and Eddison gets the feeling that the only reason the idiot hasn’t been fired is because Deshani finds him entertaining.

  It’s a little disturbing.

  It’s only after the meal is cleared, and Priya’s fingers are crumbling the fortune cookie without actually eating any of it, that Deshani sighs and glances over at the battered black case. “All right. What’s the bad news?”

  Christ.

  He leans back into the couch, scrubbing at his face to pull his thoughts into some semblance of order. “When Aimée Browder was murdered in San Diego, we came to the conclusion that it must honestly be a terrible coincidence.”

  Priya closes her eyes, too deliberately to be called a wince, but it still makes him feel like a heel. There’s probably a better way to start this conversation but damned if he knows what it is.

  “You didn’t notice anything out of place, no one who looked familiar from Boston, and we couldn’t find any connections. As strange as it was for you to have ties with a second victim, there wasn’t anything to point to it being anything more than a freak chance.”

  “You suspected, surely?” Deshani asks sharply.

  “Yes, but there was nothing to back it up.”

  “The flower deliveries would have changed that, though.”

  He nods reluctantly. He doesn’t want to make Priya feel bad—worse—but her mother’s statement is an obvious one. “There wasn’t any reason for you to attach significance to them. Not without knowing the details of the other cases.”

  “Why are the flowers significant?” Priya asks quietly. She leans against Deshani’s bent legs, her eyes still closed, and Deshani’s fingers run gently through the blue-streaked hair.

  “Just like Chavi was found with chrysanthemums, each victim has been left with some kind of flower. The first girl had jonquils; the second had calla lilies.”

  “And Aimée?”

  “Amaranth.”

  Priya lets out a soft huff. “Her mother grew amaranth. She had a garden on the roof of their front porch, and she grew amaranth to cook with. Aimée used to steal some every day to pin around her bun. Her mother could never keep a straight face when scolding her for it, and they’d always end up laughing together. You know another name for amaranth?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Love-Lies-Bleeding.”

  Oh, hell.

  “So whoever’s delivering the flowers is copying the order of the murders,” Deshani says. She frowns down at Priya’s hair, using her thumb to measure growth from roots to the base of the colored streaks. “We need to fix this.”

  “I keep meaning to ask.”

  Eddison clears his throat.

  Deshani arches an eyebrow in response.

  “There isn’t a way to know yet if this is our killer, or a local creep who figured out who you are and is getting off on terrorizing you. The presence of the flowers in San Diego, the similarity you remember in the cards, suggests the former, but we can’t back it up yet.”

  “What would be proof?”

  He freezes, and both women shift to look at him more clearly.

  “Oh,” Priya whispers.

  “Oh?” Deshani echoes, tugging lightly on a lock of her daughter’s hair. “Meaning what, precisely?”

  Eddison nods. “Unless or until he tries to attack, or we catch him in the act of leaving the flowers, there’s no way
to know. The flowers by themselves don’t mean enough.”

  “Don’t mean enough?”

  “Aren’t by themselves a threat,” Priya says. “Without evidence to the contrary, they’re both gift and warning.”

  “Schrödinger’s flowers,” snorts her mother. “Lovely.”

  “What does that mean for FBI involvement?”

  Why didn’t he ask Vic to come with him? Vic is so much better at all of this.

  “Eddison?” Deshani’s eyebrows are in danger of disappearing into her hair. “Why do you look like we just called an executioner?”

  “No matter who’s leaving the flowers, it’s still an FBI matter,” he tells them. “It crossed state lines, which makes it ours.”

  “But?”

  With a sigh, he gives them a carefully edited version of Vic and Finney’s history with Section Chief Martha Ward, and her very narrow view of case responsibility. They listen intently, with the kind of focus that can be intimidating if you don’t know them and downright terrifying when you do. When he’s finished, mother and daughter share a long, inscrutable look.

  “Small picture,” Deshani says eventually. “How likely is she to prevent the agents coming down here?”

  “If it stays intermittent, not very,” he admits. “Finney doesn’t like politics and he doesn’t want to leave the field, but if it comes down to it, he’s been in the Bureau almost as long as Vic; if he wants to take a swing at her, he can probably make it hurt. As long as the visits don’t take up much time, she likely won’t interfere.”

  “Until they get more frequent?” Priya shakes her head, and there’s something shadowed in her eyes, something he’s not sure how to ask about. “When the lab reports on the bouquets start showing more time and expense than she’ll approve?”

  “Priya . . .”

  “Are we stuck in the middle of this?”

  “Maybe.” He ignores Deshani’s muttered curses in favor of maintaining eye contact with Priya, trying to be as reassuring as possible. “Vic and Finney aren’t going to just roll over and take it. They’re going to fight for you. We just have to catch this guy before it comes to that.”

  “But in the meantime, my daughter is left at the mercy of someone who knows where we live and may have killed her sister.”

  He can’t help but cringe at that.

  “So what’s being done right now?”

  “Finney’s looking into Landon,” Eddison says. “The lack of a last name is making it difficult.”

  “So you think he’s a possible suspect?”

  “Person of interest, at this point. We’ll see where it goes.”

  “Is it always waiting?” Priya asks quietly.

  “It is, until it isn’t.” He gives her a lopsided smile. “But you already know that.”

  “So we wait.”

  “Why did you come all the way out here to tell us this?” Deshani’s head is cocked to one side, her thumbs tapping the top of her feet in a repetitive but indiscernible rhythm. “There’s nothing that couldn’t have been delivered over the phone.”

  “Because I wanted you to see my face when I promise you that I’m not letting this bastard touch you.”

  Both women study him long enough to make sweat bead along his hairline. They have that effect on people separately; together they can be overwhelming.

  Then Priya lets out a huff of air that might be laughter. “He needed to see our faces, Mum. We’re family; he wants to make sure we’re okay.”

  Deshani’s snickering isn’t what brings the blood rushing to his face, but it doesn’t help.

  He can’t say she’s wrong.

  The next morning, Eddison brings fresh donuts and sits on the couch with a stack of paperwork while I Skype with my tutor in France. Despite everything else going on, I’m actually on top of my assignments, and the tutor is confident I’ll be able to fold into a normal classroom without too much difficulty come fall.

  Mum and I discussed trying to graduate early, here in the States, and starting university in the fall, but that felt a little like cliff-diving: exhilarating in theory, maybe not the most sensible way to live your life. The school my tutor is partnered with has a lot of international students, so they have a good support system in place for kids struggling with the transition to all French, all the time.

  When I’ve gotten in enough work to feel virtuous—and Eddison has drunk half his body weight in nonhotel coffee—we bundle up to head out to chess.

  “You walk this every day?” he asks.

  I shake my head, waiting for the light to change at the intersection. “I average out to three times a week. Just whenever I feel like it.”

  “Any pattern?”

  “I tend to skip Tuesdays; they’re popular for doctor appointments.”

  Eddison nods, silently repeating the words, and it’s like I can almost see him writing it down in his little mental notebook. As much as he lives out of the Moleskine in his back pocket, he really does try not to whip it out as a part of normal conversation, even when it involves a case.

  It’s warm enough today that my heavy coat isn’t necessary, cold enough that the hoodie over a long-sleeve tee isn’t quite doing the trick. I still have my scarf wrapped around my throat and tucked down under the zipper, with gloves and hat and boots in place. But it’s mid-March in Colorado, and it’s finally starting to feel a little like spring.

  He has the photos that I took from chess, but he wants to get a feel for the men themselves. Specifically, though he hasn’t said it, he wants to get a feel for Landon.

  Happy hails me from halfway across the parking lot. “Blue Girl! Come play me! I’ve been losing!”

  Eddison snorts softly beside me.

  Shaking my head, I walk up onto the grassy island and greet everyone. Gunny is asleep, the sides of his face covered by the flaps of a hat I’m pretty sure I saw Hannah knitting last week. Landon is down at the opposite end, where he tends to hover. Gunny doesn’t quite trust him, I think, but won’t tell him to leave. “This is my friend Eddison,” I announce. “He’s in town for a couple of days.”

  Eddison nods, looking a bit menacing in his long tan coat. Somehow, the neon-green scarf isn’t quite enough to ruin the look.

  Pierce scratches at his nose, looking Eddison up and down. “Cop?” he asks finally.

  “More or less.”

  Several of the men nod, and that’s about as far as introductions go. The photos I emailed had captions with names so far as I knew them, and while names like Yelp and Corgi and Happy aren’t especially helpful, they were something to start on.

  I sit down across from Happy so I can hear the conversations start back up. Eddison prowls around the tables, looking down at the games in progress. I guess cop (more or less) is enough like veteran to establish rapport. No one looks at him twice, really.

  Except Landon.

  Landon fidgets, more than usual. His eyes dart around as if to see how everyone else is taking the intrusion, and he drops almost every piece as he tries to move it. One of the rooks drops so hard it leaves a dent in the board, despite the felt padding on the bottom.

  As Eddison settles onto the very end of the bench next to Landon, he strikes up an easy, comfortable conversation with the other men. It’s interesting to see the agent side of Eddison, when he isn’t tap-dancing around a child’s sensibilities.

  They talk about neighborhoods and safety, and I don’t think they even realize how much they’re telling him about where they live and what’s going on around them. He invites introductions from them, garnering last names without any apparent effort, and makes them all laugh with stories from physical training at the FBI academy, which they try to top with boot camp escapades.

  Landon is again the exception. He doesn’t offer his name—not even his first one, though it’s already been said by one of the others—and he doesn’t look away from the board the entire time they’re talking neighborhoods. Eddison takes note of whenever Landon flinches, and I’m willing to bet
he has a map of Huntington ready to mark up with possible areas for Landon’s residence.

  Without any overt intimidation, Eddison has Landon absolutely terrified.

  It’s a little worrisome, actually, because yes, Landon is a creep, but he shouldn’t be this scared unless he’s a creep with something to hide. It’s also kind of hilarious, because Eddison and Mum have more in common than I thought. I’m pretty sure he’d be offended if I told him.

  I’ll save it for a special occasion.

  Generally—by which I mean every single time I’ve been here—Landon doesn’t leave the pavilion until I do, so he can follow me into the market. This time, he barely makes it an hour before he mumbles a goodbye and walks very quickly away.

  Steven, one of the Desert Storm vets, looks after him, glances at Eddison’s thoughtful smirk, then turns to me. “You should have said if he was bothering you.”

  “Didn’t want to disrupt the dynamic.”

  “Safety’s more important.”

  But they’re old soldiers, and sometimes there are different views of what is or is not appropriate behavior between males and females. I like the vets, and their awkward chivalry, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to assume we hold the same views.

  “Eddison is in town for a work thing,” I say instead. “Being able to assess whether or not I’m paranoid was just a perk.”

  Steven turns back to Eddison, who’s settling himself comfortably into the abandoned camp chair. “So is she?”

  “Paranoid?” At Steven’s nod, he shrugs. “No. Man doesn’t run like that unless he knows he’s thinking wrong thoughts.”

  “Going to do anything about it?”

  “Can’t arrest a man for thinking, but he’s less likely to act if he’s got the fear of God in him.”

  And they all nod, because the man took care of business, and if it weren’t so entertaining, I’d probably be offended.

  Sea level and mountains have very different kinds of cold, even if the temperature is theoretically the same, so Eddison doesn’t even make it another hour before his teeth start chattering in spite of the heaters. I kiss Gunny on the cheek, making the others catcall and chortle, and lead Eddison into the store.