Page 15 of Ace of Spades
“Good morning,” a woman with a little boy at her side said when they arrived at the crosswalk at the same time. At seeing Annie in his arms, she glanced from him to Taylor as if trying to puzzle out why they had a black baby. That happened sometimes, those odd looks, and he always found himself tightening his hold on Annie, while clamping down on his urge to say something snarky.
“Morning, Rhonda,” Taylor said. She bent down. “How did you do on your spelling test, Jared?”
“C-A-T,” Jared responded with a big grin on his face.
“Wow, that’s very good.”
“I can spelldog,” Sarrie, Taylor’s six-year-old, said. “Andcow, andhouse, andRosie, and ...”
The group crossed the street, the kids tossing out all the words they could spell. Nate stayed at the corner with Annie, waiting for Taylor to return. He never went any farther than this. From here, he could keep an eye on her and the girls as they walked up to the school’s entrance. There were too many mothers and their children on that side for his comfort.
“Bye-bye,” Annie said, waving her little hand.
Brianna turned, walking backward, a grin on her face. “Bye-bye, Annie.” She waved back.
“Nae walk.” Annie leaned away from him, wanting to go with her sisters.
“You’ll see them this afternoon, little girl.” He turned her away from being able to see them disappear past those double doors, having learned that she would cry at losing sight of them. He glanced over his shoulder. “Here comes Taylor. Time to go home. Rosie’s already missing you, you know.”
“Rosie!” she yelled into his ear, forgetting she’d been ready to cry.
Taylor walked up to them, holding out her arms to take Annie from him. Usually, Annie went right to her, but for the first time, she shook her head. “No.” She patted his cheek. “Walk, Nae.”
“What do you know? The big, bad wolf isn’t so unlovable after all,” Taylor said, amusement in her voice.
He gave Taylor a smirk, but the heart that had turned into a solid chunk of rock the day his mother had climbed into Harmon Baker’s truck suffered a hairline crack. He hid his face behind Annie, not wanting Taylor to see that something was going on in his head that even he didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand, truthfully. He was perfectly fine with his life just the way it was.
“We need to get this little one home so we can get going.” He pried Annie’s hands from around his neck, then handed her to Taylor. “I’ll wait in the car. If we both go in, we’ll never make it to our meeting in time.”
“True. Come here, sweet Annie. I think Rosie has your breakfast ready. Tell Nate bye.”
“Bye-bye,” Annie said, waving to him as she was carried away.
Nate waved back before sliding into his car. Coming here with Taylor was a bad idea, something he needed to put a stop to. It put silly ideas in his head, made him wonder what it would be like to have a family. He wasn’t family material. What if the rage simmering inside him took control and he turned into his father? He’d looked it up. Twenty-five to thirty-five percent of abused children grew up to be abusers themselves. Although those weren’t alarming odds, how did one know if they were going to be one of the twenty-five percenters? It was a risk he wouldn’t take.
So he stuck to seeing women who wanted nothing more from him but a few hours of mutual enjoyment. Except it had been—he counted in his head—five or six months since he’d gotten laid. He tried to blame it on work. All the shit that had gone down with Alex’s investigation into the Alonzo crime family, and if that hadn’t been enough to worry about, Alex had fallen hard for Jose Alonzo’s niece. Fortunately, that had worked out, and now Alex and Madison were married. But not before baby brother had gotten himself shot and almost died. Nate prayed he’d never have to stand over one of his brothers’ hospital beds again.
In the middle of all that, a woman from Court’s past had walked back into his life, bringing all kinds of trouble with her. After some tense times, Court had married his Lauren two days ago, and the two were honeymooning at some resort in Mexico.
From the day their mother had walked away, Nate had been responsible for his brothers, long used to putting their needs and happiness above his. He wouldn’t have had it any other way. With all that had gone down the past year, though, he’d put his life—what little he had—on the back burner.
Taylor walked out, heading for the car. Even in what he thought of as her FBI uniform of dark pants, a cotton blouse—which she rotated between blue, red, and white—a jacket that hid her gun, and sensible shoes, she was still sexy as hell. And who was he kidding? It wasn’t anything going on with his brothers or the job that had him being celibate for too many months. It was the woman. Her. Taylor Collins.
Not that he’d act on it. He was too afraid that it would only take one night with her and she’d become his drug of choice. She would stay off-limits, and he would keep on taking showers, just longer ones.
Using a long-range lens, the man snapped pictures of his angel and the girls she often visited. When she came in the mornings, she walked them to school, but this was the first time the man was with her since he’d started watching them a few weeks ago. He’d seen the same man at her apartment last night, but he hadn’t stayed long. Maybe he was just a friend, but even that made him angry.
She belonged to him.
He drove straight home, anxious to develop his newest photos.
They were in yet another meeting, this time in the boss’s office, trying to get a handle on their perp. “In his warped mind, I think he believes he’s saving them,” Taylor said. She’d given the wedding rings and white dresses a lot of thought, and to confirm that feeling, she’d called one of their profilers in Virginia. “Pauline agrees. She thinks, as I do, that we’ll find out that his mother was a prostitute and that something happened to her.” She glanced at Rothmire, getting a nod to continue. “The question is, is he putting the dresses and rings on them before or after he kills them?”
“I think after,” Nate said. “I have trouble believing he convinced three prostitutes that he was marrying them. One maybe, not all three. And something else. Does he think he’s really marrying them?”
“Good question.” Taylor thought about it for a moment. “I’d say yes. I think our bad guy is one messed-up dude. I asked Pauline to work up a full profile. It will be interesting to see what she comes up with.”
“So you both agree our subject is a male?” Rothmire asked.
