The Intended Victim Read online

  “I’m starting to reconsider my future,” he told her in soft tones.

  “You miss being a detective?”

  “I miss a lot of things.”

  She shifted in her seat, no doubt sensing he was talking about more than his job. Before she could respond, however, the GPS was telling him to turn right and they were driving into Bailey.

  There was a cluster of fading houses that marked the beginning of town. A few were decorated for Christmas, but many looked like they’d been abandoned over the past few years. Rural America was struggling to recover from the recession.

  Slowing his pace to a leisurely crawl, Ash turned on to First Street. It looked to be the main thoroughfare through town. He drove past a bank, an old movie theater with a sagging marquee, an auto shop, a hair salon, and an insurance office.

  “There,” Remi said, pointing toward the corner building.

  Not hesitating, Ash angled the car along the curb, ignoring the small parking lot across the street that was almost full. Turning off the engine, he read the gold lettering in the window of the brick building.

  Blue Moon Restaurant and Pool Hall.

  Hmm. It seemed a little late in the morning for the breakfast crowd, but it was clearly the hot spot in town.

  Crawling out of the car, he was joined by Remi, who never waited for him to open her door. She was a woman who enjoyed her independence, and if she needed help, she would ask for it. Together, they walked the short distance to enter the restaurant.

  Ash grimaced. The heat hit him first. After being in the chilled breeze, it felt like it was a hundred degrees inside the dining room. Next, he was hit by the smell. There was a strange combination of coffee, deep-fried potatoes, and the sawdust that was spread over the floor.

  Not particularly appetizing.

  He allowed his gaze to roam over the dining room that was nothing more than a few booths along one wall. Down the center of the floor was a row of wooden columns that separated the space from the five pool tables on the other side.

  There was one middle-aged man seated in a booth with an empty plate in front of him, but the majority of the customers were sitting or standing next to one of the pool tables where a game was in progress.

  At a glance, he guessed them to be in their midtwenties, although they were roughhousing and telling the sort of crude jokes that were more appropriate for teenagers than young adults.

  A middle-aged woman in a white shirt and tight slacks appeared from the back. She had a mound of suspiciously blond hair that was pulled into a knot on top of her head and bright red lipstick. She waved a hand toward empty tables.

  “Take your pick,” she told them.

  “Thanks,” Remi murmured, crossing the worn plank floor to take a seat at the nearest booth.

  Ash followed closely behind her, sliding onto the bench seat across the table from her.

  The waitress, who had the name “Joy” pinned on her ample breast, pulled out an order pad.

  “Just two black coffees, please,” he said with a smile.

  The older woman swallowed a sigh, no doubt assuming any hope of a tip was lost. Still, she turned to head toward the counter, where she grabbed a silver coffeepot and returned to fill the cups already on the wooden table. Then, with a shake of her head at a shrill laugh from the crowd on the other side of the room, she headed back to the kitchen.

  Ash barely noticed. His attention had been captured by a young man who had moved to gaze out the window. He looked younger than the others—maybe eighteen—and was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt with a Cubs baseball cap covering his head.

  After a few minutes, he turned to glance toward Ash. “Hey, man, is that your ride?”

  “Yep.”

  A hint of envy darkened the younger man’s eyes. “It’s sweet.”

  Ash slid out of his seat and leaned casually against the edge of the table. “What’s your name?”

  As Ash had hoped, the boy took a couple of steps in his direction. “Mason Curry.”

  “Do you want to take a look at the car, Mason?”

  Mason remained wary even as he shuffled closer to the table. His gaze flicked toward Remi before returning to Ash.

  “Depends.”

  “On what?” Ash demanded.

  “What you expect in return.”

  “Information.”

  The younger man released a sharp laugh. “Then you’re shit out of luck. I ain’t got none. I live in the middle of nowhere and work at the local window factory. Do you need any information about those things?”

  “You’d be surprised.” Ash deliberately paused, as if trying to decide whether to share a secret or not. At last he spoke. “I’m here to learn more about Angel Conway.”

  “You’re a cop,” Mason said in disgust, revealing that the gossip of Angel’s death had already made the rounds through town.

  “Not guilty,” Ash instantly denied.

  “Then why are you interested in Angel?”

  Ash waved a hand toward Remi, who sipped her coffee in silence. “We think her story might make a good documentary.”

  “Documentary?” Mason tested the word, his brow furrowed. “That’s one of those short movies?”

  “Exactly.”

  He looked skeptical. “You know she was murdered in Chicago, not here in Bailey?”

  “I do,” Ash assured him. “That’s what first intrigued me. The death of a small-town beauty in the big city.”

  He watched as Mason’s suspicion was forgotten as the younger man suddenly realized he might benefit from Angel’s death. “Are you going to interview me on camera?” he demanded. “Do you pay people for stuff like that?”

  Ash heard Remi make a low sound of disgust, but his attention remained on the younger man.

  “Right now we’re just trying to get a feel for her story. I need to find out if she might interest the public.”

  “Gotcha.” Mason nodded in what he no doubt hoped was a sage manner. “Angel was older than me, but Dana was friends with her.”

  Ash arched a brow. “Dana?”

  “My sister.” Mason turned his head to bellow across the room. “Hey, Dana.”

  A woman in her midtwenties turned to glare at Mason. She had the prettiness that came with youth, but her features were too sharp, her eyes set too close together for true beauty. Her hair was a light brown shade that hung limply down her back and her skinny body was covered by a pair of faded jeans and a furry sweater.

  “What the hell do you want?” she yelled back.

  “Come here.”

  She stepped closer to a man who was older than the others and drinking a beer despite the early hour.

  “No . . .” Her words trailed away as her gaze moved from her brother to Ash. Her eyes widened, her annoyance fading as she forgot the local bad boy. With a sway in her hips, she sauntered across the floor, halting next to her brother while she kept her attention locked on Ash. “What’s going on?”

  “They’re here to make a movie about Angel,” Mason explained.

  “Angel?” Dana frowned. “She’s dead.”

  “They know that, stupid.” Mason rolled his eyes. “That’s why they want to make the movie.”

  Dana elbowed her brother in the side even as she pasted a smile to her lips.

  “Really?” she asked Ash.

  Ash shrugged. “We’re just gathering information right now.”

  “She was my best friend.”

  Mason snorted, but no one paid him any attention.

  “Can you tell me about Angel?” Ash asked in soft tones.

  “Sure.” Dana stepped toward him, any grief at the loss of her best friend hidden beneath the excitement that simmered in her blue eyes. “What’d you want to know?”

  Ash took a second to consider his words. He didn’t want to sound like a cop interrogating a witness. Still, there was information he needed.

  “Did she have a happy childhood?” he finally asked.

  “She wasn’t abused, but
I don’t know if it was happy,” Dana said with a shrug. “Her dad took off when she was in grade school. Angel never talked about him, but someone told me that he ran off with another woman.”

  Ash made a mental note to do a check on the missing Mr. Conway. If he had moved to Chicago, that might have been a reason for Angel to travel there.

  “What about her mother?”

  “During the day she works at the convenience store near the interstate and at night she cleans the bank. I don’t think she was home very much when Angel was growing up.”

  Ash felt a pang of pity for Ms. Conway. It sounded like she’d done her best as a single mother to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Now her daughter was dead. It didn’t seem fair.

  “Did Angel have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No.” Dana lifted a hand to her lips to smother a sudden giggle. “Well, everyone said her father got half the women in town pregnant before he took off, but none of them admits to having his kid.”

  Ash grimaced. He definitely needed to check out Mr. Conway.

  “Was Angel a good student?” he asked.

  Dana released a sharp crack of laughter. “She didn’t give a shit about school. She was planning to haul ass to Hollywood as soon as she turned eighteen.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yep. She went to California for a year. She thought that she was going to be a big star just because everyone was telling her how pretty she was.” There was a hint of bitterness in Dana’s voice. Ash suspected she’d been unfavorably compared to her supposed best friend since they were in kindergarten.

  “I assume it didn’t work out?”

  “Naw.” Dana tried to hide her hint of satisfaction. “She came back and started working at the store with her mom.”

  Ash was beginning to get a sense of Angel Conway. A girl who’d been raised by a distracted mother and an absent father who had been desperate to escape her small-town life. “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  “Lots of them, but none were serious.” It was Mason who answered, a hint of bitterness in his voice. Had he nurtured a crush on his sister’s friend? Probably. “She thought she was too good for the local guys.”

  Ash nodded, turning the conversation in the direction that most interested him. “Did she ever have any trouble with the law?”

  Dana’s brows snapped together with genuine outrage. “Angel was poor, but she wasn’t trash.”

  He offered an apologetic smile. “I never thought she was. Believe me, the last thing I would ever want to do is tarnish Angel’s memory, but a multidimensional person is more interesting than a saint, don’t you think?”

  There was a long silence as Dana battled between her loyalty to her dead friend and the opportunity to grab her fifteen minutes of fame.

  Fame won out.

  “I suppose,” she agreed, leaning forward. “Angel liked pills.”

  He guessed the most likely drug of choice. “Painkillers?”

  Dana nodded. “She started them when she was out west. She said they helped her nerves when she was auditioning.”

  “And continued the habit when she came home?” Ash asked.

  Dana hesitated, sending a quick glance over her shoulder. Ash suspected the local dealer was standing in the crowd across the room.

  “When she could get the money,” she finally muttered.

  Ash didn’t press. He could sense that Dana would clam up if she thought she might get one of her friends in trouble. Especially if it happened to be the beer-drinking man who was sending suspicious frowns in their direction.

  He turned the questions to a less-sensitive topic. “Did she spend a lot of time in Chicago?”

  Dana released a small breath of relief. “No. The bank repossessed her car last year. Even if she had the money to go to the city, she didn’t have any wheels to get there.”

  “How did she get to the city?”

  The young woman shrugged. “I’m not sure. I just know that a couple of months ago she told me that she had a fabulous opportunity in Chicago and she’d be gone for a while. That’s why I didn’t worry when she just disappeared.”

  He shared a quick glance with Remi before returning his attention to Dana. They both had the same thought. This was how the killer lured Angel to Chicago. Or maybe he came and picked her up in his own car.

  He needed to find out. Even in this small town there were plenty of security cameras. It was possible one of them had caught an image of the Butcher’s vehicle.

  “What was the fabulous opportunity?” he asked Dana.

  “She couldn’t say. She had to sign some piece of paper that said she wouldn’t tell anyone about it.”

  “A nondisclosure agreement?” he suggested.

  “I guess that’s what it’s called.” Dana grimaced, clearly uninterested in legal documents. “I thought at first that Angel was making up shit. She did that when she was feeling depressed about being a nobody stuck in this god-awful town. But one day she came by the hair salon—” She paused to send Ash a flirtatious smile. “I’m a fully trained manicurist if you happen to be in the mood for a pedicure. I give the best foot rubs in town.”

  She waited for Ash to respond. When he refused to be lured by the promise of—actually, he wasn’t sure what he was being offered—she continued with a shrug. “Angel was there to show off a stack of money she got in the mail. She said it was a down payment.”

  “Someone sent her cash?” he demanded in confusion.

  A few serial killers created elaborate games to toy with their prey, but during the investigation five years ago they’d never had any indication that the Butcher did more than select his victim and slit their throat.

  Was the killer evolving? Or were they completely off base in trying to pin this latest murder on him?

  “That’s what Angel told me,” Dana said, her tone puzzled.

  Ash gave a small shake of his head. He was losing focus. He’d sort through the variations in the murders once he returned to Chicago. Right now, he needed to finish his questioning and get out of town. Eventually, someone was going to walk into the restaurant who wasn’t so easily convinced that he was there about a documentary.

  “You didn’t hear from Angel after she left town?” he asked.

  “No. I sent her a couple of texts, but she ignored them. I assumed she thought she was too big a deal to waste her time with me.”

  Ash glanced toward the crowd that was starting to file out a side door. It was obviously time to move on to the next hot spot. “Is there anyone else in town she might have contacted?”

  Dana considered before giving a slow shake of her head. “She didn’t have a lot of friends. She might have called her mom, I guess.”

  Sensing he’d pressed his luck far enough, Ash nodded toward Remi, who promptly slid out of the booth to head for the door. Ash dropped a five-dollar bill on the table and sent Dana and Mason a professional smile.

  “Thanks for taking time to talk to me. You’ve both been a lot of help.”

  “Hey, when will we know about the movie?” Mason called out as Ash headed toward the exit.

  He pushed open the door before looking over his shoulder. “We’re still in research mode. But I’ll let you know if I have any more questions.”

  Chapter Six

  Remi climbed into the expensive car, barely pulling on her seat belt before Ash was settled behind the steering wheel and starting the engine.

  She hadn’t minded remaining in the background as he’d questioned Angel’s friends. Ash was a trained detective. He knew exactly what questions to ask and how to ask them. Plus, it’d been obvious that the young Dana had been eager to impress Ash.

  She cast a covert glance at Ash’s perfectly chiseled profile, suppressing a sigh. He wasn’t exactly handsome. None of the Marcel boys were. But there was a compelling strength in their features and an irresistible charm in their smiles. Women had been tripping over their feet to capture their attention as long as she’d known them.


  It had been inevitable that she would be attracted to Ash. But it wasn’t until she’d actually gotten to know him that she tumbled head over heels in love. It was his heart and soul that made him special.

  Aching regret clenched her heart as they pulled away from the curb and headed out of town. If only things had been different . . .

  Remi clenched her teeth, forcing away her futile thoughts. There was no way to change the past. All she could do was make certain that she didn’t allow Ash’s return to Chicago to create even more pain.

  “So what’s our next step?” he said as they pulled onto the interstate. His voice was low, and she suspected he was speaking more to himself than her.

  “You sound just like my dad,” she told him, her lips curving into a wistful smile. “He’d sit next to me while I was doing my homework and say ‘Well, Remi girl, what’s the next step?’”

  “Everything I know as a cop I learned from Gage Walsh,” he admitted. “I couldn’t have had a better teacher.”

  Remi forced herself to concentrate on the happy times with her father. It was too easy to fall into the vast grief that lurked in every memory.

  “He said you were the most stubborn, relentless, brilliant detective he’d ever met,” she told Ash. “He was certain you were going to end up as a Chief of Detectives one day.”

  “I wanted him to be proud of me.”

  “Me too.”

  Ash’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel, his gaze locked on the road. “We need to do better,” he breathed.

  Remi winced. She knew exactly what Ash meant. Her father had expected great things from both of them. He would be deeply disappointed to know that his death had caused Ash to walk away from the force, and that she had lost the glorious confidence that she was going to change the world.

  “Yeah, we do.” They shared a sad smile, then Remi gave a shake of her head. Enough of the past. They needed to concentrate on tracking down the killer. “Okay. What’s the next step?”

  “We need to know who offered Angel her fabulous opportunity in Chicago, and how they found her,” Ash said. “It doesn’t sound like she’d recently traveled to the city.”

  “Maybe she met him when she was living in Los Angeles.”