“Jon Walker escaped.” Lauren said the words flatly. “That’s why the cops were at my house. They were bringing me here, for protection. But you should already know that.” She leveled her stare at him. “So why am I being grilled when you should be looking for Jon and not wasting time in here with me?”
“We are looking for him. But questions still have to be asked, and hell, Lauren, I thought you’d prefer to talk to me instead of the other detectives out there.”
The breath felt cold in her lungs. He was right. If she had to sit through the questioning, she’d rather face him.
“Why was she at your house?”
“I don’t know.” Truth. “Karen had a key, and sometimes she liked to crash there.”
“You’re sure you didn’t know she was going to be there?”
“No!” The denial sprang from her. She sucked in a deep breath. Held tight to her control. “After our argument, I hadn’t talked to Karen. I had no idea she’d be at my place.” Not until she’d found her body. A sight Lauren would never forget. “I saw her in my room. I saw what had been done to her.” Lauren’s gaze held his. “You know Jon’s way of killing. You know just what the Butcher liked to do.”
Jon Walker had been given the grim moniker of the Bayou Butcher—sometimes shortened simply to the Butcher—for a reason.
Paul leaned toward her, his body on the edge of his wooden chair. His eyes, a steely light gray, raked over her. Paul was handsome, tall, strong. He had one of those golden-boy faces that got witnesses to trust him far too easily, a very handy trick. “You’re telling me the Butcher was in your house? Did you see him there? The uniforms told me they didn’t see any sign of anyone else.”
Like the blood hadn’t been a sign of someone else?
She shook her head. “I’m not saying I saw him.” Another icy breath. “I’m saying I didn’t kill Karen. I wouldn’t! Jon Walker has been out for over—” Hell, what was it? She’d asked the cops on her ride there. “Over twenty-four hours. That would have given him plenty of time to get out here and—”
“You think he came for you?”
Her fingers pressed onto the scarred tabletop. “I was the one who put him away.” She’d made her career on that case. She’d been twenty-eight when she prosecuted the Butcher. Twenty-eight and secretly terrified of the monster who sat in the courtroom with her. But Lauren hadn’t let fear stop her. She’d done her job. Convicted that murdering SOB.
By the time she’d turned twenty-nine, the Butcher had been in Angola and she’d already been the DA. A DA who still had nightmares because of that case.
“Fuck, Lauren.” Paul’s hand crept toward hers. A crack had appeared in his mask. “I wasn’t even on duty when the call came through about Walker and you. The captain just sent me in here when you pulled up with the uniforms. I got the shortest f**king briefing on record.” His gaze held hers as his fingers covered her hand. “But if that sick sonofabitch is actually back and targeting you—”
The door opened behind Paul. Lauren glanced up, expecting to see the face of another detective or maybe even someone from her office.
She didn’t expect to see U.S. Marshal Anthony Ross standing there.
For a second, she simply stared at him as the memories came rushing back. Once, she would have done just about anything for that man. She’d wanted him more than breath. Needed him with a fierce desire that just wouldn’t stop.
Then she remembered…
He’d just walked away.
He’d been so busy walking that he hadn’t noticed when he left her in damn pieces behind him.
His gaze—a green that was bright and intense—dropped to her hand. Paul’s hand. His square jaw seemed to harden, then he stalked forward, even as Paul leaped to his feet.
“This is an interrogation,” Paul began as his body blocked Ross’s. “You can’t barge in here—”
“It’s one cozy interrogation,” Anthony muttered. “I bet that technique works wonders with the suspects.”
He shouldered around Paul.
Paul grabbed his arm. “Who the hell are you and just why are you in my interrogation?”
Anthony yanked out his ID. “U.S. Marshal Anthony Ross.”
Paul blinked.
“And I’m here because I’m in charge of tracking the escaped fugitive Jon Walker.” Lauren could almost hear the dumbass that she knew Anthony wanted to tack on the end of his statement. Anthony had never been gifted with a whole lot of patience—or finesse.
Paul backed away.
Then Anthony bent over her. His hands swept over Lauren’s arms. “Were you hurt?” There was a deeper, more intimate note in his voice. One that reminded her far too much of other times.
She shook her head. “I wasn’t the one he stabbed.”
“No, but you were the target.”
That seemed to be the consensus, dammit. Anthony sure seemed certain enough of that. She stared into his eyes, seeing the faint gold around his pupils. Anthony was big, easily six feet three, with wide shoulders that had once done him proud during his college football days.
But he didn’t run on the field anymore.
Now he ran down fugitives. Protected witnesses.
Stared at her with a leashed fury in his eyes.
“Are we even sure it’s Walker?” Paul’s question was quiet, considering. “I mean, there are other killers out there.”
He was right. There were plenty of killers loose out there. But Jon Walker was in a category all by himself.
Paul shook his head. “Walker just escaped from prison—shouldn’t his first move have been a run for the border?”
Anthony’s expression never changed. “Not if he wanted revenge.”
Her heart beat faster.
Anthony’s stare was unnerving as he told her, “He had a picture of you in his cell. I don’t know how or when he got it, but Walker had it pinned right above his pillow, just where he could see it every night.”
A shiver slid over her.
“He escapes, then twenty-four hours later, a woman winds up dead, stabbed in your bed, Butcher-style.”
Paul stood behind Anthony, silent, but with an avid gaze on them.
“You don’t have to be a genius to connect those dots,” Anthony growled. “Walker’s coming for you. You put him in prison. You’re the one he wants dead.”