Chapter 5
Maleah wasn’t surprised that Griff had
managed to arrange for visitation privileges for Derek and her at
the prison in Reidsville so quickly. He had placed a call to the
governor over the weekend and by noon Monday, she and Derek were
packing their bags. Barbara Jean, who handled a lot of the mundane
details for the agency, booked them two rooms at the Hampton Inn in
Vidalia, a twenty-minute drive from Reidsville. They had checked
into the hotel before six and then had driven over to the county
seat of Tattnall County where the state prison was located. Before
they had left Griffin’s Rest yesterday, Sanders, who had
confiscated their laptops earlier that morning, had informed them
that all pertinent files on Jerome Browning had been loaded into a
file folder. One file contained info on the penitentiary, the
oldest state prison in Georgia. Constructed of marble in 1937 and
opened in that same year, it remained the largest contributor to
the city’s economy.
Numerous buildings containing four
two-tiered cell blocks with single cells, the newer buildings
spanning from the original structure, housed the convicts. The cell
blocks were divided by population into two categories: general
population units and one special management unit. As a convicted
serial killer serving multi-life sentences, Jerome Browning was
housed in a maximum security area.
Maleah hadn’t slept worth a damn. She
would never admit it to Derek, but she was more than just a little
nervous about meeting Browning. In all honesty, she was borderline
terrified—terrified by the thought of how she might react when she
actually came face-to-face with Noah’s killer. While she had tossed
and turned for hours, longing for sleep that wouldn’t come, her
mind had wandered back more than a dozen years, to the day she had
met Noah Laborde, sophomore class president. It hadn’t been love at
first sight. She didn’t believe in such a thing, not then and
certainly not now. But it had been interest at first sight. They
had dated for nearly a year before she had finally agreed to have
sex with him.
Remembering the past in such vivid
detail, recalling moments with Noah that she had thought long
forgotten didn’t help Maleah’s already frayed nerves that morning.
After grabbing a quick shower and brushing her hair up into a loose
bun, she dressed in her professional garb—navy slacks, white shirt,
lightweight tan jacket, and a pair of sensible low-heel navy shoes.
After applying a minimum of makeup, she put on her wristwatch and
small gold hoop earrings. She took all of half a minute to inspect
herself in the mirror before slipping her small leather bag over
her shoulder and leaving the room.
She didn’t bother stopping to knock on
Derek’s door as she headed for the elevator. During the entire time
they had worked together on the Midnight Killer case, she couldn’t
recall a single morning that he hadn’t gotten up early, always
before she did. The Hampton Inn provided a full breakfast, which
meant they wouldn’t have to search for a place to eat this morning.
Just as she had figured, he was waiting for her in the dining area
adjacent to the lobby. Sitting alone at a table for two, a cup of
coffee in front of him, a folded newspaper in one hand, and a
soft-grip mechanical pencil in the other, he glanced up from the
crossword puzzle and motioned for her to join him. As she
approached, he laid down the paper and pencil and rose to greet her
with a smile.
“Morning, sunshine.”
God, she hated that he could be so
chipper at sixthirty in the morning. And she hated even more that
she had noticed how damn good he looked. Derek was nothing more to
her than her partner on this case, just as he had been on the
Midnight Killer case. Their personal relationship went no farther
than that. They certainly weren’t friends, not by any stretch of
the imagination. On good days, they worked well together. On bad
days, they tolerated each other.
“Have you eaten?” she
asked.
“Nope.” He glanced at the half empty
cup on the table. “However, this is my second cup of
coffee.”
“Coffee sounds good. I think I’ll grab
some cereal and a cup of yogurt.”
“You do know that breakfast is the most
important meal of the day,” he told her. “You should fill up on
protein—bacon and eggs. And of course, a couple of biscuits
smothered in butter and jelly.”
“If I ate like that every morning, I’d
soon be waddling when I walk.”
When she headed toward the self-serve
breakfast setup, she felt Derek’s gaze on her and knew he was
looking at her butt. Okay, so she had a bit of a hang-up about her
wide hips and ample rear-end. Nic had told her guys didn’t like
flat asses, that her JLo butt was a definite asset. If that was
true, then why was it that Derek seemed to prefer the long, lean,
borderline skinny model types?
Damn it, why do you
care what type of woman Derek prefers?
Maleah hurried through the line,
grabbed a carton of non-fat strawberry yogurt and, deciding against
eating cereal, headed toward the coffeemaker. Not fully
concentrating on what she was doing, she bumped into Derek and
quickly apologized before she even looked at him.
Their gazes met and locked for a full
thirty seconds before Maleah broke eye contact.
“It’s okay to be nervous about meeting
Browning,” he told her.
Ignoring his comment, she grabbed a
cup, filled it with hot coffee, and picked up a packet of Splenda
and a stir stick.
By the time Derek joined her at their
table, she had drunk half her coffee. As he set down a plate filled
with bacon, eggs, and biscuits, he glanced at her unopened yogurt
carton. After he sat across from her, they ate in relative silence
for several minutes.
“You aren’t nervous, are you?” Maleah
asked.
“Unsettled would be a better word to
describe how I feel about meeting Jerome Browning this morning,”
Derek told her. “Unsettled, curious, and wary. You need to be wary
of him, too. He’s cunning. If he senses any weakness in you, he’ll
use it against you.”
“And you and Griff think I’m weak,
don’t you? You think I’ll fall apart just because Browning murdered
my college boyfriend.”
“Neither Griff nor I think you’re weak.
But you will be vulnerable because of your connection to Noah
Laborde.”
She heaved a heavy, labored huff. Derek
was right. There was no use denying the obvious.
He reached over and laid his open palm
across her tightly fisted hand. The moment he touched her, she
jerked her hand away and lifted it off the table.
Ignoring her reaction, he said, “The
way I see this interview with Browning is you and I act as a tag
team, both of us questioning him. If at any time you become
uncomfortable and want to terminate the interview, then don’t
hesitate to let me know.”
“And you’ll whisk me up in your big
strong arms and carry me off on your gallant white charger.” The
moment the silly comment left her lips, Maleah regretted it. She
had a problem about speaking before thinking things through, and
this was especially true with Derek.
He didn’t respond.
She groaned. “Sorry.”
He laughed. “I didn’t know you thought
of me as a knight in shining armor.”
She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help
smiling. “Most of the time, I think of you as a royal pain in the
butt.”
“Likewise, Blondie.” He lifted his
coffee cup and saluted her with it.
Barbara Jean had lived at Griffin’s
Rest for several years, ever since Griff had placed her under the
agency’s protection during the hunt for her younger sister’s
killer. Within a few days, he had put her to work, there in his
home, under Damar Sanders’s guidance. Her attraction to Sanders had
not been love at first sight, but rather a recognition of two
lonely, wounded souls in need. Despite the fact that they were
lovers and sometimes in their intimate moments she called him
Damar, she thought of her friend and lover as Sanders. No one used
his first name, not even Griff and Yvette, his closest
friends.
She admired and respected Griffin
Powell as she did Sanders and shared a deep affection with Nicole.
She considered Yvette Meng a friend, but they were not close, not
the way she and Nic were. The beautiful Eurasian psychiatrist
possessed a quiet, gentle personality. Almost shy. Her unique
empathic abilities that allowed her to gain insight into a person’s
thoughts and feelings by a mere touch separated her from others.
Until recently, Yvette had lived in London, half a world away. But
then, three years ago, Griff had begun construction at Griffin’s
Rest on a retreat for Yvette and a small group of her protégés,
young men and women with special psychic talents.
Barbara Jean knew less about the
missing years of her employer’s life, from age twenty-two to
thirty-two, than Nic knew. And even though Sanders had told her
that he and Yvette had shared those years with Griff, he had not
divulged very many details. Sanders had been married long ago and
had lost his wife and child. He had never told her the specifics
and she had never asked. He, Yvette, and Griff had been held
captive on an uncharted Pacific island by an insane billionaire
named Malcolm York. They had eventually escaped, after they killed
York. The horrors they had endured together had united them as
comrades and bound them to one another forever.
Nic and Yvette shared a precarious
friendship, somewhat one-sided since Nic couldn’t quite manage to
overcome her concerns about Griff’s love for the other woman. Where
Nic needed to know more about her husband’s past and allowed the
secrets he couldn’t share with her to come between them, Barbara
Jean accepted Sanders for who and what he was. His past was just
that—his past. It had made him the man he was today, but other than
that, it had nothing to do with her.
If only Nic could see things as she
did.
Barbara Jean maneuvered her wheelchair
out onto the patio where Nic sat in a chaise lounge, her computer
resting in her lap.
“I’ve put on the kettle for tea,”
Barbara Jean said. “Would you care for a cup?”
“No, thanks.” Nic glanced over her
shoulder and smiled. “I’ve been going over the information on
Jerome Browning again and some things don’t add up.”
“Such as?” Barbara Jean asked as she
wheeled herself out into the morning sunshine.
“The original Carver didn’t mail the
pieces of flesh he removed from his victims to anyone. Those
triangular pieces were never found.” Nic paused for a moment,
closed the lid on her laptop and faced Barbara Jean.
“So, the copycat killer is not
following every detail of the Carver’s MO, is he?” Barbara Jean
said.
“No, which makes me ask why he isn’t.
And if he’s differing in one aspect, then he’s possibly going to
differ in other areas.”
“I haven’t actually studied copycat
cases in general, but it stands to reason that there might be
differences between the original and the copy.”
“In most cases, the copycat closely
mimics the original, but often deviates in small details,” Nic said
as she closed her laptop and set it on the glass and metal side
table to her right. “Our killer sending Maleah the triangles of
flesh from the first four victims, coupled with the fact that he’s
copying the killer who murdered Maleah’s college sweetheart, tells
me that he wants her involved.”
“Does that mean that neither you nor
Griff is his ultimate target?”
“I don’t know. My gut tells me that
it’s one of us, but what if this new Carver has been killing Powell
Agency people in order to set things up to lure Maleah into some
sort of vicious game he’s playing?”
“Have you talked to Griff about your
theory?” Barbara Jean asked.
“I’m afraid Griff is concentrating so
much on a possible connection between the Powell Agency murders and
the rumor in Europe about Malcolm York being alive that he isn’t
giving consideration to any other possibility.”
“Sanders says there is no way York can
still be alive.” She lowered her voice. “When they left the island,
York was dead. They were certain of it.” Barbara Jean preferred not
to think about the fact that Sanders was more than capable of
cold-blooded murder, as were Griff and Yvette. She understood why
they had killed York and knew in her heart that under the same
circumstances, she would have done what they did. They had
destroyed the monster who had tortured them with such great
pleasure.
“Griff says the same thing.” Nic stood
to her full five-ten height, her feet bare, her long, tan legs clad
in white walking shorts. An oversized orange and white UT T-shirt
hung loosely to her hips. “He’s convinced that someone in Europe is
using York’s name, but he has no idea who or why.”
“I know very little about the years
Sanders spent on Amara, only that he blames York for the death of
his wife and child, and that York forced him to do some terrible
things.”
“I’ve grown to hate Malcolm York with
every fiber of my being.” Nic walked to the edge of the patio and
gazed out over Douglas Lake. “Even after all these years, he still
haunts Griff.”
“As he does Sanders and
Yvette.”
At the mention of Yvette’s name, Nic
glanced over her shoulder at Barbara Jean. “They both love her, you
know. My Griffin and your Sanders.”
“Yes, I know. And she loves them. But .
. .” Barbara Jean paused, hoping to find the right words. “Griff
worships the ground you walk on. You are the love of his life.
Never doubt that for a moment.”
Nic offered Barbara Jean a forced
smile, then looked back out over the lake. “I don’t doubt his love
for me. But as long as he doesn’t trust me with the complete truth
about his past, that past will stand between us.”
Maleah was in the driver’s seat. Derek
had learned early on during their partnership on the Midnight
Killer case that she preferred being the driver. Since he couldn’t
care less, he hadn’t put up a fuss about it. No doubt it had
something to do with her personal control issues. The lady most
definitely had a problem with any man—but him in particular—being
in charge of her.
He kicked back and relaxed as she
headed her Chevy Equinox southeast on GA-30 E / US-280 E. If they
weren’t delayed by roadwork or accidents blocking the highway, they
should be at the prison in about twenty minutes. Even though their
scheduled visitation with Browning was at ten, Maleah had insisted
on leaving the hotel at nine.
“I’d rather get there early and have to
wait than run the risk of our being late,” she’d told
him.
He had learned the hard way not to
argue with her over insignificant matters. He chose his battles.
Otherwise, they would be at each other’s throats all the time. In
the beginning of their professional association, they had disagreed
on everything. If he said the sky was blue, she’d say it was gray.
If he said the sun was shining, she’d say it was partly cloudy. If
he voiced an opinion she didn’t like, she’d call him an arrogant
jerk.
“Do you want to go over anything again
before we get there?” he asked.
“No. I think we’ve talked the subject
of Jerome Browning to death, don’t you?”
“Probably. Just remember—don’t
underestimate him. And don’t expect him to give us anything without
wanting something in return.”
“I’m not an idiot, you know.” She kept
her gaze fixed on the road ahead.
He wanted to reply that no one had said
she was an idiot or even thought it. A prickly pear, yes.
High-strung and confrontational, yes. But instead, he asked, “Mind
if I find some music on the radio?”
“Be my guest. But please make it
something soothing.”
He found a “lite sounds” station, the
first tune, a relaxing piano concerto. “Does that meet with your
approval?” he asked.
“It’s fine.” When she glanced his way,
he smiled and winked at her. She frowned and hurriedly looked away,
returning her gaze to the view through the windshield.
Ignoring her completely, he closed his
eyes. His mind immediately focused on Jerome Browning.
Derek hated the deals law enforcement
made with criminals, plea-agreements that allowed lesser sentences
in exchange for information. The DA who had prosecuted Jerome
Browning had been forced into one of those god-awful deals.
Browning, who should be on death row, was instead locked away in
the maximum security division of the penitentiary. He had brutally
murdered nine people, five women and four men. But not long after
his arrest the authorities learned that he had killed before, when
he had been a teenager. Twenty years before Browning had been
arrested and charged with the Carver murders, a series of six
missing teen girls in Browning’s old neighborhood had been presumed
murdered. Their bodies had never been found. And all six cases had
remained unsolved. Browning had bargained for his life—and won! He
had agreed to confess to the murders of the six teen girls and tell
the police where they could find the bodies. In exchange for the
information that could bring closure to six families, Browning had
been granted life imprisonment instead of the death penalty he
deserved.
Browning would spend the rest of his
life behind bars, but he was alive. Like the families of the people
he had murdered, Derek believed that Browning should have been
executed.
Everything Derek knew about Browning
forewarned him that Maleah would be facing a deviously clever
psychopath, one who would not hesitate to use her for his own
amusement.
But Maleah was no featherweight in any
battle of wills. She was strong, tough, and smart; and God help
her, she never gave up on anything or anyone she believed in with
her whole heart. He didn’t know what demons she had fought and won
in her past, but he saw beyond the exterior beauty to the deep
scars inside her. Maleah Perdue was a survivor.
Derek suspected she just might be a
worthy opponent for Browning.
But at what cost to her?
Griffin Powell had entrusted Maleah to
Derek, expecting him to keep her safe and protect her from
emotional trauma. Griff had a protective attitude toward all of his
employees, but Maleah was special to him because she was his wife’s
best friend. And the big man possessed an exaggerated sense of
responsibility when it came to the people in his life, especially
the women. Apparently, on a subconscious level, Griff thought of
women as the weaker sex. He was, in so many ways, an old-fashioned
gentleman. A good old Southern boy, raised the right way by his
mama.
Derek might have been born with a
silver spoon in his mouth and Griff a poor boy, but Griff was far
more of a gentleman than Derek ever had been or would be. Derek had
spent most of his life rebelling against his mother, his family,
and the inherent snobbery and selfindulgent lifestyle that
inherited wealth so often imposed on the heirs to
multi-million-dollar fortunes. From his early teens, he had
deliberately done the unexpected, anything and everything to piss
off his mother and grandparents, and to snub his nose at the
society in which they existed. Military boarding school had been
their solution. His response had been to skip college after high
school graduation and bum around the world like a penniless
vagrant. He had certainly seen the world through the eyes of a man
who had to earn his keep wherever he went.
At twenty, flat broke and determined
not to touch his trust fund, he had joined a group of unsavory
characters, a sort of ragtag group of wannabe mercenaries, bluffing
his way into their fold. He had learned later on that he hadn’t
fooled them and they hadn’t expected him to survive his first
mission. He’d been nothing more to them than an expendable foot
solider.
At twenty-four, he had returned to the
States, worldweary and old beyond his years. Then he had taken just
enough money from his trust fund to attend Vanderbilt and had
graduated summa cum laude. He came from a long line of highly
intelligent savvy businessmen and his family had expected the
prodigal son to take his place in the business world alongside his
uncles and cousins. He had shocked them all when he had joined the
FBI.
“Are you asleep?” Maleah asked
Derek.
“Nope.”
“We’re almost there.”
He opened his eyes and sat up straight.
“Have you ever been inside a maximum security prison before
today?”
“No, I haven’t.” She paused just long
enough to inhale and exhale. “I suppose you have.”
“Yes, I have.”
“I don’t need another lecture, so
whatever you were going to say, keep it to yourself.”
“I wasn’t going to give you a lecture,”
he told her.
“Good. Just remember that I will be
conducting the interview, okay?”
“Sure thing. As long as you understand
that I may want to occasionally make a comment or ask a
question.”
“Keep your comments and questions to a
minimum, will you? You’re here as an observer. That is your area of
expertise, isn’t it, observing and forming an
opinion?”
“Yes, ma’am, it is.”
He had to bite his tongue to keep from
telling her that he had been observing her for quite some time and
had formed a definite opinion. She was, without a doubt, the most
irritating, aggravating, combative woman he’d ever
known.
They followed normal procedure, up to a
point. They had parked in the facility’s designated visitor parking
lot. They had presented positive ID prior to their admission and
then undergone a preliminary search by electronic surveillance
instruments. But after that, they were escorted to the warden’s
office. Slender, gray-haired Claude Holland greeted them with quiet
reserve, his facial expression giving away nothing and his
handshake firm and quick. He scanned Maleah, his gaze simply sizing
her up. She suspected that her appearance surprised him as it did
so many people who expected a female private security agent to be
big and burly, not blond and petite.
“I’ve arranged for you to meet with Mr.
Browning in our visitation area, but there should be no physical
contact with the prisoner at any time,” Warden Holland said. “I
mention this simply because you might normally expect to shake
hands.”
Maleah nodded. “I
understand.”
“This is not a scheduled visitation
day, so there will be no other inmates seeing visitors. You’ll have
one hour with Browning, but if at any time before the end of that
hour, you wish to leave, then simply tell one of the
guards.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I assume that if we need to visit Mr.
Browning again, that could be arranged,” Derek said.
“My instructions from the governor’s
office are that your visitation privileges are open-ended,” Warden
Holland replied. “All I ask is that you give us twenty-four hours’
notice.”
“Yes, of course,” Derek
said.
“And I should warn you, Ms. Perdue,”
Warden Holland said, “Browning will be in restraints during your
interview.”
“I assumed that was common practice for
convicted murders, especially serial killers, but I have to admit
that my knowledge of the penal system is limited.”
“No, it’s not common practice for
inmates to be in shackles during visitation periods. But Browning
is no ordinary inmate. His charm is deceiving,” Warden Holland
said. “We learned that early on. He can go from calm and
cooperative one minute to aggressive and dangerous the next. He has
attacked the guards and other inmates on numerous
occasions.”
“Thank you for telling us,” Maleah
said.
Claude Holland nodded and then motioned
to the two uniformed guards standing at the back of the room.
“Please escort Ms. Perdue and Mr. Lawrence to the visitation area.
I’ll call now and have Browning brought there to meet
you.”
Doing her best to concentrate not on
where she was but on what she needed to do, Maleah walked quietly
alongside Derek. Neither of them commented on their surroundings.
The moment they entered the visitation area, her heartbeat
accelerated, the sound drumming in her ears. There was no reason to
be afraid, no reason whatsoever. She and Derek were perfectly
safe.
Derek stood at her side, her shoulder
brushing his arm. The two guards remained in the room, each
stationed on either side of the door through which they had
entered. She took a deep breath, held it, and then gradually
released it, beginning with her belly and working upward to her
throat. A yoga relaxation technique.
Two more guards entered the area, one
on either side of the prisoner as they escorted him into the
visitation area. Maleah stared directly at a handcuffed and
shackled Jerome Browning. He looked older than the photos included
in the Powell Agency files she and Derek had been given; but he was
still tall, slender, and intriguingly handsome. Even dressed in
prison garb of white shirt and pants and confined with restraints,
he managed to exude an aura of worldly sophistication that totally
surprised Maleah.
The moment he saw her, he smiled. A
hard knot formed in the pit of her stomach. The smile was neither
warm nor friendly. It was the type of smile she imagined would be
on a cat’s face when he had just spotted a delectable little mouse,
one he looked forward to tormenting before devouring.