Driving into the parking lot of an apartment complex, Josh brought the car to a stop in the first empty space he saw.
“My point is, what’s the problem you seem to be having with this?” he asked.
He was a guy. She didn’t expect him to understand. Hell, she could barely understand all the tangled emotions herself. This unexpected twist made her life seem so confused, so jumbled up. There were times when she didn’t know what to think, what to feel.
“The problem, oh insensitive one, is what do I do about my ‘old family?’ Uncle Adam, Uncle Tony, Aunt Angie, Aunt Anna.” She went down the list of the people she’d believed until two months ago were her father’s brothers and sisters. “Are they just strangers to me now? What are they to me and to the others?” she demanded with frustration. “Not to mention what are they to my dad? How am I supposed to regard them now that I know we’re not blood relatives?” she asked, frustrated.
Everything had turned upside down for her. She couldn’t be laid-back about the whole thing, the way her older brother Tom was. For her, all this had brought up real questions, real concerns. Moreover, it had left her with a dilemma on her hands that she had no idea how to resolve. Who was her family?
Josh still didn’t really see what the problem was. Maybe because, in a remote way, he’d found himself in the same sort of position, except that in his case, the positions had been reversed. He’d lost his real father and found himself on the receiving end of a whole handful of generous “fathers.”
“Well, speaking for myself, the word ‘family’ doesn’t strictly refer to people with the same blood in their veins as you. After my dad was killed, a lot of his old buddies made it a point to come around to check on my mom and me to see if we were okay. The lot of them took turns looking out for us. After a while, it was like having five surrogate fathers around. They weren’t my dad and they couldn’t take my dad’s place, but they did help to fill the void he left. They were the ones who got my mother through those dark times. I loved the lot of them and I think of all of them as family.
“The uncles and aunts you started out with before all this came to light are still your uncles and aunts in spirit if not in the strict definition of that according to the law. And let’s face it, the way you feel about a person is all that counts.”
Bridget looked at her partner for a long, silent moment, more impressed than she wanted to let on. “That’s pretty profound coming from you. I guess even a stopped clock has to be right twice a day.”
He grinned. Now that was the Bridget he knew and loved. “I have my moments,” he acknowledged.
“Yeah,” she agreed with a half smile. “Every twenty years or so, you do.”
“Have you thought about talking to your Uncle Adam about how you feel about this? I mean, he is a priest and all and they’re supposed to be able to offer guidance when one of their ‘flock’ has an emotional crisis to deal with.” He raised his eyebrows in a unified query. “Right?”
She shook her head, vetoing the idea. “It might feel a little weird for both of us, considering that he’s part of that crisis.”
“He might surprise you.”
“Two surprises in one day? I don’t think I could handle that,” she said flippantly. “Having you actually make sense is earth-shaking enough for me to try to come to terms with. Going for two might be asking for trouble. Who knows, the next thing that might happen is I’ll be hearing the hoofbeats of the four horsemen.”
Getting out of the car, he looked around the sprawling, newly upgraded complex. “I’d rather settle for that than what we’re about to do next,” he murmured under his breath.
They’d arrived at the apartment complex that was listed as Karen Anderson’s last known residence. A residence the serial killer’s latest victim had shared with her boyfriend.
Remaining beside the car, Josh scanned the area more intently, searching for apartment number 189. He was in no hurry to find it and in less of a hurry to do what he had to do.
His feet felt glued to the asphalt.
“Poor guy doesn’t know what’s about to hit him,” he muttered grimly. Spotting a map of the area posted behind glass and next to the mailboxes, he made his way over to it. Bridget followed. “His girl goes out without him for a night out on the town and comes back dead.”
“Ordinarily, if this didn’t have the Lady Killer’s MO all over it, I would have reminded you that your ‘poor guy’ would most likely be considered a person of interest. First rule of thumb in a homicide investigation, remember?” she said glibly.
“Thanks,” Josh said with a touch of sarcasm. “I didn’t know that.” And then he grew a little more serious. “He still might be a person of interest, you know,” Josh speculated.
That caught her by surprise. “You think this guy’s our serial killer?”
“No.” He doubted if they would get this lucky this early in this year’s cat-and-mouse game with the Lady Killer. “But I think he might have taken advantage of the fact that there was a Valentine serial killer on the loose the last two years, done his homework and done away with his freewheeling girlfriend by copying the serial killer’s MO. It’s not like that hasn’t been done before,” he reminded her, “hiding a murder in the middle of a bunch of other murders.”
Bridget nodded. The theory did make a lot of sense—as if they needed the extra confusion. “Just when I start to think of you as just another handsome face, you actually have a thought and blow everything out of the water,” she pretended to lament.
“I am another handsome face,” he acknowledged teasingly, “but I also like keeping you on your toes, Cavanaugh.” The moment the surname had slipped out of his mouth, he slanted a look at her face, waiting to see—or hear—her reaction.
As expected, she frowned—but not as deeply as he thought she might.
“Don’t call me that yet,” she requested. “Not until I get used to the sound of it. Deal?”
“Deal,” he echoed. “Whatever you want.” And then he pretended to be feeling her out. “Is it okay to call you Bridget?”
Bridget laughed and shook her head. Leave it to Josh to lighten the moment. It was a quality she really liked in him. “That’s not about to change, so yeah, you can call me Bridget.”
“The apartment’s over in that direction,” he announced, pointing to an area to their left. “It’s just after the duck pond.”
“Duck pond?” she echoed.
“That’s what it says on the map. Looks more like a duck puddle if you ask me,” he declared as they walked by it. “One way or another, we need to get this over with sooner than later.”
She completely agreed. She never liked putting off anything just because she found it unpleasant to deal with. “Man after my own heart.”
Leading the way, Josh turned and looked at her over his shoulder and winked. “You should be so lucky.”
The wink sent a ripple through her that she deliberately ignored. “Ha! The luck,” she fired back, happy to be bantering with him again, “would be all yours.” What they did, day in, day out, was dark enough. A little lightness was more than welcome.
He probably would be the lucky one in this, he thought. If he were in the market for something stable and permanent—
Which he wasn’t, he reminded himself firmly before his mind could go wandering.
This wasn’t the time.
They stopped in front of the ground-floor garden apartment door with the appropriate numbers affixed on it and rang an anemic-sounding bell.
When