Priscilla, the office secretary, sighed. She wished he would just answer his damn phone. When it rang for the third time in half an hour, she stalked down the hallway, the staccato tapping of her high heels sounding loud and vicious. At Dr. Trimble’s open office door, she paused. At first glance, she saw no sign of him, only piles and piles of journals, boxes, books and file folders.
Jesus. The man was a pack rat with a Ph.D.
Grabbing the knob, the temptation to slam the door shut was strong, until she saw him. Dr. Jared Jerome Trimble. A rush of emotion flowed through her as she studied his features. She’d never thought she’d be attracted to a man with a beard, but the professor’s goatee looked sexier than the stubble that had made George Michael’s fame. And Jared’s eyes! She’d never seen eyes the color of his, gold with a few brown flecks. Yes, indeed, his six-foot tall muscular frame certainly caught the eye of many a female student and visiting faculty member. She’d never admit that he’d caught her eye too. Nice to look at, but a heartbreaker.
Contrary to the rumors, though, Dr. Trimble didn’t chase skirts. Women chased him. They didn’t hang around long, though. Most women didn’t have the patience to put up with a man like Dr. Trimble. After the second or third time he’d stood them up, women gave up on him.
There were only two things that kept his interest. Anthropology and crossword puzzles.
Priscilla smiled, picturing a woman waiting impatiently at a cafe table, until the phone fell silent. Good luck to that poor woman. She pulled the door shut quietly and left the professor sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of pictures.
* * * *
Jared glanced up when the door closed, but then went back to work. When the phone rang again an hour later he was examining a pile of skulls. Well, only a photograph of the mound, but the image spoke volumes to him.
Spread out over every surface of his office were graphic pictures of destruction and dismemberment, some ancient and some all too recent. All of them concerned with one thing. Death.
When attendance in his class had fallen off a few years ago, Jared had decided to add some popular elements back into the curriculum. Anthropology consisted of much more than simply digging up ancient civilizations, it comprised a way of understanding man and his evolution. Taking a page out of popular television shows, he’d come up with new components to his syllabus.
His new program scored a hit with the students, and had gained him tenure and a bit of notoriety among his peers. The school staff thought the concept macabre, but they couldn’t question its appeal, especially when other instructors at area colleges copied his methods. His latest topic had been the most popular and most gruesome. Death trophies.
Crime profilers were all too familiar with killers who took items from their victims, especially since the type of objects taken were as individual to the killers as their fingerprints.
Jared knew the practice of taking trophies had existed long before modern day serial killers made the concept popular. Ancient Aztecs took the heads of the conquered, stacking them in macabre displays in their temples. The Nazis stole the wealth of their victims. Mostly money, gold and artwork, but their quest to profit from their crimes caused them to harvest the hair, skin and teeth. Even more common trophies were the victims themselves. The victorious often made slaves of the residents of the countries and communities they conquered. In fact, in relation to this lecture, he should do some additional research on modern day slavery, of which there were many kinds: sex slaves, and recently, a case of involuntary servitude of maids in a ritzy New York neighborhood.
When he’d started college, he’d envisioned himself digging up pottery and old skeletons, coming back to a safe office and typing up long, scholastic reports. He’d never dreamed that part of his job would be dissecting of the whys and wherefores of genocide, He loved routine and concrete answers, not peeking into the minds of insane, power hungry individuals. If he had known, he would have promptly changed his major to something more mundane, like underwater basket-weaving. In the end, though, he couldn’t complain. The work might have tended toward the gruesome, but was certainly never boring.
A shrill peal pulled him out of his reverie. Would that damn phone never stop? He stretched to press the speaker phone button. “Hello?”
“Professor Jared Trimble?” a male asked.
“Speaking.”
“I’m special agent Mark Powers. Your name came up as an expert in your field.”
“I’m honored, sir, but there are other faculty members on staff with more experience and expertise in anthropology—”
“Oh, this isn’t about anthropology,” Mark interrupted.
“Then what is it about?”
“Crossword puzzles. It seems I have a serial killer with a fondness for cruciverbalism.”
Chapter 3
It happened so fast. How many times had a victim told her that and she’d scoffed, yes, scoffed at them. Sylvie Morgan had always believed that with the right precautions and forethought, all kidnappings and assaults could be prevented.
She leaned her head back against the wall and wished the cool plaster would cool the heat of her anger. She needed to think calmly, use all the resources available to her, and not panic. This whole situation would have been almost bearable if her captor had only taken her and not Deion. However, that had been part of his plan. He’d purposefully used her child to distract and disarm her.
Her heart clutched in her chest. What would she do if something happened to Deion? What if her one moment of carelessness got them into a situation she couldn’t get them out of? His head rested on her thigh as he slept. Despite her initial panic, she’d managed to stay in control of her emotions and not upset her child. But now what?
The room held no clues as to their whereabouts. The windows were securely boarded up, the walls painted flat black, and a fluorescent light blazed overhead. No sign of a light switch or any way to douse the light. Of the two doors in the room, one led to a tiny bathroom. A state-of-the-art cipher lock secured the other, a steel-reinforced panel, and from the sound she’d heard when her captor left, barred on the outside.
What’s worse, she’d been imprisoned in her own damn house. Well, not the one she lived it, but the one she’d grown up in and still co-owned with her sister, Lia. At least, Sylvie thought she was still in the house. After he’d gassed her, she’d been unconscious for an unknown period of time. Even now, she felt groggy and sick.
No. No doubts. This was her house. It might have been imagination, but the house felt the same, sounded the same, smelled the same as it had growing up. Worse, she didn’t even have to ask herself how this debacle had happened. Since their capture, she’d walked herself through every miserable mistake she’d made. Beaten herself over the head with them, in fact.
She should have simply called the management office to find out why the big pink Victorian mansion no longer operated as a bed and breakfast. Instead, she’d walked in the front door.
Granted, the management office wasn’t open on Sundays, a lame excuse. She should have kept on walking.
Instead, she’d scoped out the place. Watching another woman and her son concluding their portrait session had given her a false sense of security.
On the spur of the moment, she’d decided to have her portrait taken with Deion. A professional portrait to hang in the front foyer as an affirmation of her love for her son.
The photographer had given her the creeps. Old and wrinkly, he’d looked like an ancient vampire with his dyed black hair spiked with gold gel, a glittering diamond stud in his left ear, and eye makeup that would make any Goth sit up and take notice. Only in San Francisco. She’d wondered, just for a moment, if he was gay. At first, it amused her to think he was hitting on her, then she realized he’d shifted to subtly digging around into