Page 4 of Marked For Revenge

After Theo and Ava had been told it could be hours before a bomb squad showed up and cleared the explosive, Ava and Theo had left to drive to Monica’s parents to tell them of their daughter’s murder. Neither Ava nor Theo had invited him to go along with them, and Harley hadn’t pressed. Ava already had enough blows to handle tonight without him adding more, even though he would have liked to get in a question or two with the dead woman’s parents. That way, he might be able to figure out why the killer had left explosives under her body.

There’d certainly been no other such devices near the other two dead women, and it was always a flashing red light when a murderer changed his MO. Of course, maybe the killer was still evolving, still creating a signature that some predators had. The MO was a given in a crime, but not every serial killer had a signature.

This one did though.

The facial beatings, posing the bodies, the locations of the dumpsites, drugging the victims. And, of course, the cloth masks. The ones of Ava’s face.

Yeah, this killer had a very sick signature.

Harley suspected that seeing those masks was giving Ava some nightmares. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. She was a veteran cop. A good one. And she had to know that, one way or another, this executioner had her in his sights. That twisted at Harley, too, because he doubted the killer would give any consideration to the fact that Ava was pregnant.

In fact, the pregnancy might be a motive for the murders.

No way could he ignore the fact that the murders had started three months ago, right about the time Ava was letting people, including Harley, know she was pregnant. So far, this sick SOB had seemingly gone after women who’d lost babies, and maybe that’s what the killer wanted in store for Ava. Harley had to make damn sure that didn’t happen.

Because Ava had shared the ultrasound results with him, he knew she was carrying a girl. A daughter. Before Ava had told him she was pregnant, Harley had never actually considered fatherhood, but he was more than considering it now. He wanted his baby girl in his life, wanted to be the best possible father he could be, and that started with keeping Ava and her safe.

He glanced up from his laptop again when the front door opened. Since he was sitting in the open-bay bullpen, Harley had no trouble spotting Ava and Theo as they came in. He also had no trouble spotting just how much of a toll the notification had taken. They looked weary and exhausted.

“I need to call the bomb squad and push for some answers on what the heck is going on,” Theo said to him, “but Ava can go ahead and update you on what we do have.” He headed into his office.

“How rough was the notification?” Harley asked.

Ava nodded and sank down in her desk chair. “Rough.” She squeezed her eyes shut a moment. “I really need to stop this guy.”

Yeah, and he figured some of that need was because the crimes were personal in that they were linked to Ava. Unfortunately, Harley had read nothing in the case files to indicate what exactly that link was.

“Monica had a miscarriage when she was married,” Ava added a moment later.

“So, that fits with the other victims.” He waited until her gaze came back to his and then leaned in and lowered his voice to a whisper. “How many people know you had a child when you were a teenager?”

Her mouth tightened a little. “Only a handful who are still living. You, my father, the baby’s father and Duran Davidson.”

No need for her to spell out that Duran was her father’s close friend along with being his campaign manager. Harley suspected Duran had done all sorts of things for his boss. Maybe even covered up a crime or two.

Ava sighed. “I gave birth to the baby in Dallas under an alias that my father had set up, but the housekeepers might have overheard something. If there was gossip, though, it didn’t get back to me.”

It was possible Edgar had paid off the staff to stay quiet. But money didn’t always buy silence. After all these years, someone could have spilled Ava’s secret.

“How long were you in Dallas before the baby was born?” Harley asked, hoping it would spur her to aim her thoughts in that direction. It wasn’t necessarily the right direction though. The murders could be connected to something much more recent in Ava’s life, like her pregnancy, but it was ground that needed to be covered.

“Four and a half months,” Ava answered. “Before I started showing, my father arranged for me to stay with Duran’s grandparents, who owned a ranch outside Dallas. Then he told everyone I was doing a student exchange program in Ireland for six months. The grandparents died years ago, and they would have never gone against my father. They kept quiet about my pregnancy and the baby.”

Maybe, but all it would take was one slip of the tongue and people would know the senator had a pregnant teenage daughter. Still, Harley couldn’t see how such a slip would come back to the murders. If Ava was the key, and he was positive she was, then there had to be a trigger that’d gotten all of this started.

“How about the baby’s father?” Harley pressed, still keeping his voice low so the deputy wouldn’t overhear. “Would he have told someone?”

She took a moment, obviously processing that. “It’s possible. I haven’t seen or heard from him since my father whisked me away in secret to Dallas, but his name is Aaron Walsh.” Ava paused again. “After the first murder, I ran a background check on him.” She typed in something on her laptop, pulled up a file, and turned the screen so he could read it.

It only took a glance for Harley to see that Aaron Walsh hadn’t exactly led a charmed life. Orphaned at a young age and brought up in foster care, he was two years older than Ava, which meant he would have been eighteen when she got pregnant.

During that “too much to drink” confession, Ava had said her father had threatened Aaron with jail time to force her into giving up the baby for adoption. Her father had also used that jail time threat to basically run Aaron out of San Antonio and force the young man’s silence. But since the statute of limitations would have played into this at the seven-year point, how had Edgar made sure that Ava’s lover would stay quiet?

That was a question he’d ask Edgar, and Harley didn’t think the man was going to like having the past tossed in his face.

Harley kept reading from the background check on Aaron. Shortly after Aaron had left San Antonio, he’d done a six-month stint in jail for auto theft. He’d stayed clean behind bars and had gotten an early release. After that, he’d done two more years on parole. And that was it. Nothing else in the background.

“I haven’t been able to find anything else on Aaron,” Ava explained. “He didn’t put in for a legal name change, but it’s possible he moved and just started using an alias. Or he could have stolen the identity he’s using.”

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