Dark Obsession

He propped a booted foot on the bottom step and leaned forward so she didn’t have to look up very far to see him. Strangely, his features stood out prominently in the darkness. She could see him clearly, the well-defined angles of his handsome face, the nose that was a little broad but well shaped, lips that were full and sensuous but unsmiling. His cheeks were roughened with stubble, giving him a dangerous, almost sinister quality. He looked pale in the moonlight, but somehow undiminished, somehow vitally alive.

Erin shivered again and looked away, clutching the silver cross more tightly in her hand. Too late, her mind screamed over and over. Too late, too late, too late. Why hadn’t she come sooner? Why hadn’t she been here when Megan had needed her the most? Why hadn’t she sensed something was terribly, terribly wrong?

She had. She had sensed it. She just hadn’t wanted to believe it. Hadn’t wanted to be lured back here, to this city, to this very apartment, where her nightmares had first begun.

Erin felt something touch her shoulders, wrap around her gently, like an embrace. He’d removed his leather coat and tucked it around her, and she thought how strange that he would be the one to perform such an act of kindness. He seemed so distant, so emotionless, but perhaps that was the way he handled his job. He probably saw bodies every day.

But not her sister’s body. He didn’t see her sister’s body every day.

Trembling, Erin wrapped the coat more tightly around her shoulders. Detective Slade stared down at her with his protected gaze and said, “Would you like to go inside? We can talk there.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t leave her.”

“You can’t help her now,” he said, not unkindly. “You’ll only make yourself sick if you stay out here.”

“When will they take her away?”

“In a little while. The CSU guys have to get here, and someone from the M.E.’s office—” At her blank look he stopped and clarified. “Crime Scene Unit and someone from the medical examiner’s office. You don’t want to be here for that.”

“I’m not leaving.” Erin knew she sounded obstinate, but she couldn’t help it. There was no way she could leave Megan again. Not until she absolutely had to. “Where will they take her?”

“The morgue.”

“Will there be an autopsy?”

Slade hesitated, as if weighing how much more she needed to know. Then he nodded and said, “Yeah” in that same cold, expressionless tone.

Their eyes met in the dark—hers exposed, vulnerable; his hidden, masked. But Erin had no doubt that he was looking at her. She could feel the power of his gaze all the way through her, and it made her shiver all the more deeply.

The wind picked up and tossed a dead leaf across the sidewalk in front of them. Erin stared at it, saw it swirl across the yard toward her sister’s body and settle against the silent form. For just an instant, the leaf clung to Megan’s stilled body. Then, on a fresh gust of wind, it blew away, lost in the darkness like her sister’s soul.

I want to cry, Erin thought. I want to cry so that I’ll know I can still feel. But the tears wouldn’t come. The tears had all been used up long, long ago on cold, dark, terrifying nights such as this one.

She tried to tell herself that at least now Megan was finally at peace, but when Erin thought of death, she could only think of darkness, eternal night. That was what hell was, she thought. Not fire and brimstone. Just cold, mind-numbing blackness.

Detective Slade settled his long frame on the step beside her. He wore jeans, she noticed. Very faded and very tight. His dark sweater blended with the night and his black boots were trimmed with silver. The dark glasses made him appear aloof and mysterious. Dangerous.

He didn’t look like a cop at all. He looked more like a demon. A demon lover she’d conjured up from the deepest recesses of her black imagination.

Erin realized she was verging on hysteria, focusing on the man beside her so she wouldn’t have to think or feel or remember. She wanted to forget, even for just a second, that her sister was dead.

With something of a shock, Erin felt the cold moisture streaming down her face. So there were tears left, after all. She put her hands to her cheeks, trying to stem the flow, but more and more came, like backwater seeping through floodgates.

“Let’s go inside.” The deep voice spoke beside her. She felt his hand on her elbow, felt herself being propelled upward as if by sheer force of will. Suddenly she had no strength to resist. More people had arrived on the scene. They were all standing around or kneeling beside Megan’s body, and Erin couldn’t stand it. She wanted to scream at them to go away, to leave her sister alone as she had done years ago when the monsters had threatened them both.

But it was too late, she thought sadly. Too late now for anything but remorse.

Without looking back, Erin turned and allowed Detective Slade to lead her up the steps and into the gloomy hallway of her sister’s apartment building.

CHAPTER TWO

The apartment was dark. Erin reached inside the and flipped on the switch. Bright light spilled into the hallway, and she saw Detective Slade flinch.

“When did you first get here?” he asked with a grim edge to his voice.

“About two hours ago.”

He strode past her, and Erin felt the hair at the back of her neck rise as his arm brushed against hers. There was something so unsettling about his touch, something so daunting about his presence in her sister’s apartment.

He walked slowly around the room, not touching anything, but Erin had the distinct impression that nothing missed his scrutiny. He paused beside a vase of wilted roses. One fingertip stroked a shriveled petal as he frowned pensively. Then his gaze returned to her, and Erin’s heart began to thump inside her chest.

“How’d you get in?” His voice—that deep, cold, spine-tingling voice—shattered the illusion of calm in Megan’s apartment.

“I have a key,” she told him. “I let myself in. Megan wasn’t here. I thought perhaps she’d gotten bored waiting for me and gone out for a while. I was supposed to have been here hours ago, you see, but the flight was late leaving Los Angeles. It was after midnight when we landed at La Guardia. Then I had to get my luggage and find a taxi, and even at that time of night, traffic was horrendous. It took forever to get here….” She trailed off, glancing away as if realizing she’d revealed more than she’d meant to.

So the guilt had already set in. Slade pitied her for that. He’d lived with that same emotion for eight long years, knew how deadly and destructive it could be. He took her arm and steered her toward the couch.

“How did you happen to go out into the yard?” he asked her as they sat down.

“I heard voices. I think I must have dozed here on the couch for a little while. I thought I was dreaming at first. Then I opened my eyes and realized I was awake and the voices were coming from below. The window was open.”

She tilted her head toward the French doors that flanked one side of the fireplace. Her black hair, pulled smoothly back and knotted, rippled with iridescence in the light. Her skin was as pale and soft as moonlight, her features delicate, almost fragile.

But her eyes…her eyes were the contradiction. In their violet blue depths, he glimpsed the soul of a woman who could write novels so terrifying that they sent shivers along his spine.

She might be in shock now, but Slade knew she wouldn’t accept a simple explanation for her sister’s murder and then allow herself to go quietly away. Instinctively he could tell that she would want it all. Every last detail. Her guilt would demand it. He just hoped to God she’d be able to live with the facts when she learned them. If she learned them. He would do his damnedest to see that she didn’t. That was his job.

Abruptly he got up and walked over to the window. He knelt and examined the latch. “Did you leave the door open?”

“No. It must have been that way when I came in. The latch on that door sometimes sticks. You think it’s fastened, but it’s not. It’s always been that way.”

Slade glanced up. “You’ve been here before then?”

Something flickered in her eyes and then disappeared, but Slade thought again of the horrifying stories she so aptly created. “I lived here as a child,” she explained quietly. “My sister and I own this apartment. We grew up here. Megan probably didn’t get the lock fixed because…she wanted to prove she wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore.”

“Lots of things in the dark to be afraid of,” Slade murmured. He stepped out onto the balcony and looked down at the yard. The body had already been placed in a bag, but there were still several people milling around in the yard. One of the officers laughed. The sound carried easily to the balcony. Slade glanced back inside, glad suddenly that he’d persuaded Erin to leave the scene below.

“So you heard voices,” he said, walking back into the apartment and closing the door to block the sounds from the yard. “Did you recognize them?”

Erin looked up at him. “I thought I heard Megan’s voice. I thought I heard her…laughing.”

A chill seeped through Slade’s skin, accompanied by a cold, dark suspicion. “Did you recognize anyone else?”

Erin shook her head, wrapping his leather coat more tightly around her shoulders. “I think I heard a man’s voice, but I’m not sure. It was more like a…like a whisper, and yet I could hear it all the way up here. When I looked out the window, all I could see were shadows. I called to Megan, and I heard her laugh again. That’s when I went down to the yard to find her.”

“What did you see when you got there?”

She gazed at him reproachfully as if to say, the same thing you saw, Detective. But he hoped she hadn’t. He hoped to hell she hadn’t seen the same thing he had.