A Killing Cupid (Sensory Ops) Read online

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  A Killing Cupid

  Copyright © 2013 by Nikki Duncan

  Published by Nikki Duncan

  Cover by Nikki Duncan

  ISBN: 978-0-9852147-3-9

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First electronic publication: 2010

  www.NikkiDuncan.com

  Of all the Valentine's Days I've spent single, this one... What in Hell was I thinking?

  Lana Quinn stopped three steps from her front door and stared. Stared at the romance red envelope propped against her door beside a single red rose. It was a greeting she'd sought out. One she'd told herself she wanted, and could handle.

  Closing her eyes for the briefest and shallowest of breaths, she told herself again that she could handle what came next. The strength to finish what she started had been drummed into her from childhood, and she wouldn't have uncovered the stories she had if she'd released the lesson as an adult.

  Logic lifted her feet and carried her to her door. She picked up and sliced open the waiting message. She knew what was coming. She had planned for this moment. Fought for this opportunity. An opportunity she’d had no guarantee would work out.

  Lana pulled the coordinating slip of heavy paper from the envelope. Her lungs seized.

  Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear.

  Through the awakening of touch, your death will be an awfully big adventure.

  Your Cupid

  A chill skittered along her spine. The hairs on her arms hummed like rhythmically rubbed rings of crystal champagne flutes.

  "Lovely. A Shakespeare and Peter Pan quoting Cupid. What more could a single girl need on a lonely Valentine’s Day?"

  "Ye’r not alone, Quinn." Aidan Burgess, second in command of the FBI Specialized Crimes Unit, had a sexy Scottish brogue that enhanced rather than diminished his arrogance.

  She wanted to ignore his voice piping through the earpiece the team had given her, as well as the knowledge that he and most of his team waited in the town house next door. That he was the agent taking point on this case, and that she’d promised to play by his rules, kept her from following up on the desire.

  She wanted this story.

  "Are you referring to you, or someone else?"

  "Both." His voice hardened. "Don’t do anything stupid."

  It was too late for that, but she couldn’t dwell on unrequited longings. Shaking off the destructively distracting thoughts, she unlocked her front door.

  Fragrant petals littered the floor of her small, softly lit foyer—a foyer that should be dark. A crystal vase, holding eleven blood-red roses, sat on the heavy iron table behind her sofa. Her heart thrummed. She didn’t have to count the roses to know she held the twelfth.

  The Killing Cupid. A serial who had begun killing three years earlier. Each year he killed one woman a day for seven days. His seventh kill was always on Valentine's Day.

  Certain he would begin again this year, Lana had set herself up as a target even before he'd started killing. She'd spent the year tracking down every cash transaction in every flower shop in Miami. Then, the Sunday before his first kill was expected, she'd written an article reminding single women of the importance of hyper vigilance when it came to their safety.

  She hadn't named The Killing Cupid in the article, or even mentioned the kills from the previous years. She had instead kept the article factual and angled it toward the rise in rape victims around Valentine's Day.

  The Killing Cupid had let her know almost immediately that she'd gotten his attention. After each of his kills, he'd called her work line and asked if she would be his Valentine.

  A shiver traipsed down her spine. She could go the rest of her life without celebrating Valentine's Day.

  "Keep your cool, Lana. We need concrete evidence."

  As long as it's not my corpse. She wanted to respond, to engage in the verbal sparring they settled into naturally. She had to satisfy herself with his unrebutted disdain.

  Cupid was in her home and the feds waited next door for her cue.

  Lana swallowed and forced her wobbly legs to carry her to the table. She’d faced danger before and survived. Tonight would be no different. Except for the trained feds monitoring her.

  Lana sat her things on the table. Her gut clenched at the sickeningly sweet scent clogging the air. Never again would she think of roses as beautiful or try to remember the meanings that people attached to them. Roses had come to reflect painful deaths. When tossed on a coffin being lowered into the ground, whatever their color, they were as black as death’s darkness.

  She slipped the twelfth rose into the vase before heading for the living room and the light switch. She’d studied the other killings. He would make sure all the roses were together before leaving and he'd want to watch in the vividness of bright light as he drained her of life. As she took her last breath.

  If it meant speeding things up she would help him set the scene.

  The woman's pain was Cupid’s arousal. The profiler she'd consulted, as well as Aidan's team, had added that Cupid would be almost as excited by the knowledge that those left behind would suffer as greatly as his victim. He’d quoted All’s Well That Ends Well, but this night would not end well for at least one of them.

  "Do you hear him? Sense him?" Through the hidden camera in her earring Aidan saw what she saw. Rather than speak, she shook her head. The side-to-side sway of the camera would be enough for him.

  "I have to say there's something to your inability to respond. You've never been easier to get along with."

  She scowled at Aidan's taunt and focused on the knowledge she was being watched, studied, analyzed by a killer.

  Her senses buzzed. She had discussed the layout of the town home with Aidan and his team. There weren't many good hiding places, but they'd brought in extra blankets and home goods to fill all the possibilities except the bedroom closet.

  Having the upper hand in protecting herself didn’t settle her fluttering stomach.

  Trying to act as she did every night, she slipped off her Ferragamo pumps and turned on the stereo. Her favorite Chopin CD played through the speakers she’d recently had installed. The soothing strains weren’t settling tonight. Neither was the power of the home she'd carefully created. She may never feel settled again.

  "Seriously, Lana? Elevator music?"

  She struggled to suppress a laugh at the disgust in his voice. He probably listened to heavy metal.

  Lana shook back her hair and walked into her bedroom, flipping on the lights as she went. More scared than she’d expected to be, she considered going to the kitchen, drawing out the inevitable. More scared than she’d been when she’d been kidnapped and held prisoner with several other women to be sold into slavery in another country, she questioned the wisdom of her involvement in this case.

  Aidan had been the one to carry her to freedom from the kidnappers. Since, he’d hovered in her space. In her mind.

  He did the same now. He irritated her and rubbed her the wrong way, but he wouldn’t fail her. He wouldn't allow her to be hurt.

  She rolled her neck to loosen the rapidly building tension. Her senses
hummed with visceral awareness of her room. Nothing had been moved. Nothing new had been brought in, but it was like walking through a forest without a single chirping insect. The absence of the expected was the signal that something wasn’t right.

  Cupid was close. Very close.

  Tilting her head to the side, she inhaled slow and steady. The air felt different—cold and lifeless. She smelled only her perfume.

  "You sense him."

  She made the slightest upward move of her head that Aidan would read as a nod. She wouldn't give more away because she would lay monumental odds that she was being watched from very nearby. Her heart raced, slamming into her ribs in a succession of painful pulses.

  "You remember our code word? You say that and I’m there."

  Pleasure. She remembered it. She just wasn’t so sure she'd be able to speak when the time came, her throat was so thick with terror. What had she been thinking? Was a story really worth this risk?

  She’d thought she would have an advantage over the other victims. Instead, the detailed awareness of what was coming raised the dread.

  There was no way to brace herself for the things she’d heard had happened to those other women. The things that would happen to her if the slightest thing went wrong.

  "Lana. You can back out of this. You can walk out of that room right now."

  She could. She could mutter the code word and have Aidan at her door pretending to be her date. He could search her place and find the killer. Except The Killing Cupid never left DNA behind.

  Without going through with the plan, without getting hard proof that he was there to kill her, Cupid wouldn’t go down for the other murders.

  Other than flowers, a note and a dead body, he never left evidence. No DNA. No survivors. No witnesses.

  She was their last resort. She was the woman who could save countless others.

  No pressure. Lana shifted her shoulders slightly, picturing a steel rod slipping through her vertebras. This bastard would not scare her away.

  Aidan and his team had warned her that Cupid wouldn’t make his move until she was at her most vulnerable. She would get vulnerable.

  Pretending she was being watched by a man she loved, a man who would be tender and kind, she pulled the tail of her blouse from her skirt. That Aidan's face was the one she pictured was something she wouldn't allow herself the dwell on, but it got her through.

  Blocking the danger from her mind as much as possible, fantasizing that the sexy voice in her ear was in her room, she walked to her full length mirror. Facing herself, acutely aware that Aidan could see her reflection, she slipped free the first button of her blouse.

  "Ooh hell." Aidan’s brogue deepened as he drew the words out. If the rest of the team watched...

  Don’t think about it. Do what needs done. The Killing Cupid liked strong, confident women. She would give him one. She breathed deep, calmed her racing heart a little and met her own gaze while picturing instead an arresting, warm milk-chocolate one.

  Emboldened, she slipped the next button free. And then the next.

  One by one, moving lower and lower until she slipped the last disk from its hole, she pictured Aidan’s gaze on her. As she slid the blouse over her shoulders and allowed it to fall to the floor, she imagined his eyes softening with desire.

  Her stomach clenched.

  She reached across her body and lowered the side zipper of her skirt. The brush of her arm over her satin covered breast struck her as clearly as if it was Aidan’s touch. Her nipple puckered. A low moan rumbled in her ear.

  She smiled. He may not like her, but he liked what he saw.

  The skirt dropped to join her blouse. Only her pink, satin bra and matching thong blocked her body from Aidan’s gaze. If he stood in front of her—

  "Lana." Warning weighted Aidan’s voice.

  "Wow." A gravelly voice immediately followed and shattered the erotic haze she’d slipped into. "Seems I saved the sexiest for last."

  She spun on the ball of her foot and swallowed. A tall man, easily clearing six feet and two hundred and fifty pounds stood outside her bathroom door. She’d expected him to come from the closet. Had he, she would have seen his reflection in the mirror.

  How had she forgotten for a second that a killer was in her home? What the hell was wrong with her that she’d given thoughts of Aidan so much control? "You’re..."

  "Going to awaken you more completely than whatever man you were just fantasizing about."

  Cupid was dressed head to toe in a plastic suit—if he wore that suit the entire time, it explained the lack of DNA. A large strap-on hung from his right hand, but his desire at seeing her strip tease was evident beneath the plastic suit. A stocking covered his head, distorting his features. He was creepy, but not unattractive and he somehow seemed familiar.

  "Lana, I’m coming in."

  "No, you’re not." She hoped her words stopped Aidan while also giving Cupid pause. A disconcerting blast of awareness swept over her. She knew this man. She'd gone this far, and damn if she wasn't walking out with one hell of a story.

  "You, Lana Quinn, are in no position to tell me what I will and will not do." Cupid stepped over a black bag sitting at his feet.

  She didn’t want to know what he carried with him to awaken her. She would do this quickly. She would get what they needed to convict him. She would call in Aidan and his team.

  She listened for signs that Aidan was moving in while moving forward with the plan. He had to know that waiting was best, and that she wasn’t entirely helpless. She stepped forward with her chin raised. "You, Cowardly Cupid, are in no position to make assumptions regarding me."

  His lips thinned beneath the stocking. His hand fisted harder over the leather strap in his hand. Clearly he was used to the sudden terror of his invasion paralyzing his victims.

  "You would do well not to ire me."

  "Ire you?" She cocked her head, angling her right ear a little forward to make sure Aidan got a clear image of the man. Just in case. "Who talks like that? For that matter, who quotes Shakespeare and then Peter Pan in the very next line?"

  "You know your literature." He bowed his head. Reluctant admiration of her knowledge reflected in his voice.

  "I do." So did he. Suspicion tingled along the back of her brain. She took another step.

  "It’s that literature degree."

  How did he know that about her? She patted a hand over her left breast and took another step. "You've studied me. I’m flattered."

  "You should be."

  "Stop baiting him." Aidan snarled in her ear.

  "I would be more flattered if you would remove that suit." She waved her hand toward the strap-on. "If you would allow me to be with the real Cupid, rather than a tool."

  "I can’t do that."

  "Pity." Lana shrugged dramatically and stepped closer still. Only two feet separated them. If he reached out, he would have her in his grasp. "I was hoping to spend the evening with a real man. Maybe you can’t awaken me without aides?"

  "Bitch!" His hand swung high and had her bracing for the stinging slap that didn't come. "You dare challenge me."

  "Yes."

  Aidan’s guttural growl grated her ear. Success meant risks. They all knew this. Just as she knew that an assault on Cupid’s manhood would be the only way to garner results.

  Enraged, Cupid shoved back the plastic hoodie and yanked off the nylon. She gasped and stepped back. "Leon. What the hell?"

  "You know him?"

  She ignored Aidan. She and Leon had worked together for ten years. He was a family man with a solid career. Despite the psychology classes she’d taken and everything she'd learned from her father she’d never have suspected him. "Why would you do this?"

  "Become The Killing Cupid?" His lip curled in disgust as he closed the distance between them.

  She shook her head hoping to hold Aidan off a little longer. She wanted to know what had set Leon off. She stepped back, edging toward the living room. He was adequ
ately thrown off his guard that she might escape without him touching her. "Yes. Why?"

  "To show holier-than-thou bitches like you where you really belong."

  The urge to suppress powerful women suggested that he lived in the shadow of one. His wife was just the opposite though. She was a quiet, meek housewife who waited on him hand and foot. Hell, she was June Cleaver transported to modern day.

  "I thought you were better than this, Leon."

  "No. You just thought you were better." He stepped forward again, slapping the strap-on against his thigh. "I was going to allow you to live. Who better to immortalize me than the most read, syndicated journalist in Miami?"

  "What changed your mind?"

  "I've listened to your calls, eavesdropped while you record notes to yourself in your voice recorder. You were getting it all wrong."

  "How so?" She back-stepped into the living room where she would have more options for escape. They wouldn’t need his DNA with the way he was running his mouth.

  "You claimed I did this as overcompensation for my inability to be with women."

  "The evidence fit the profile of a serial rapist and killer."

  "I am not a rapist!" He surged forward.

  She jumped behind the couch, positioning him closer to the door. Closer to Aidan and his team. "You didn’t have intercourse with those women. Using that dildo you're flinging around doesn’t mean you didn’t rape them."

  "Those women enjoyed what I showed them as much as they deserved to die."

  "Right, Leon. You have an inferiority complex and see that as justification to kill people?"

  "You know nothing about me."

  "I know you have a lovely wife and son." And she was tired of playing the bait. "They deserve better than the legacy you're building."

  "She's a constantly bitching whore. Always complaining about having given up her career to raise that brat of ours."

  "Stay where you are." Aidan snapped commands into her earpiece. "We’re coming in."

  "That's it, isn't it?" Lana asked. Her time for answers was shrinking. "She's started resisting the things you want most and this is your release. This is how you convince yourself of your importance."