Allison Brennan - The Prey

The man selling flowers had dark skin, but not black, small brown eyes, and a really nice smile that made Adam feel less nervous. After all, he’d never bought flowers for a girl before.

A dark car pulled up behind Adam’s truck, but Adam barely noticed. He pointed to the roses. “Those are roses, right?” he asked.

“Yessir,” the man said. “Roses. Dollar each or dozen for ten.”

A dozen, a dozen. “That’s twelve roses for ten dollars?”

“Yessir.”

Adam had ten dollars. He had a twenty and a ten and three ones in his wallet. “O-kay,” he said slowly, wanting to make sure he was making the right decision. He really liked the roses, but would Rowan like them? They were so pretty. White or red, red or white. Maybe six of each. “Can I have some white ones and some red ones?”

“Yessir.”

The man from the dark car walked up to them. “Buying flowers for your lady?”

Adam glanced at the man, who looked vaguely familiar but he didn’t know why. He had dark blond hair, a little long, and wore sunglasses. He was nice-looking and his clothes matched. Adam sometimes had a problem with his colors. He thought orange and brown went together, but Marcy always teased him about the way he dressed. Retro gone bad, she called it and laughed.

“N-no,” Adam said, looking down and shuffling his feet. By the way he dressed, this man had money, and men with money didn’t like to talk to prop boys. A lot of the men who came by the studio had money, and none of them talked to him, and if he talked to them they got mad.

“A friend?”

“Yeah.” His voice was quiet and he glanced at the proprietor, who watched them.

“What were you thinking of buying?”

“The roses.”

“Ah, roses. Roses are lovely.”

Adam perked up. “Really? You think so?”

He nodded. Adam tilted his head, wondering how he knew this man, but he couldn’t remember where he’d seen him. He frowned. He hated being dumb. That’s what his mama called him. Dumb and stupid.

“Yes, I think roses are very pretty,” the man said.

“I want a dozen roses,” Adam said confidently to the brown-skinned man.

“But,” the money man said, “I know the perfect flower for friendship.”

Adam frowned. Hadn’t he just said that roses were lovely? “Better than roses?”

“Oh, yes.” He reached over and pulled out a stalk of a large, pretty white flower that looked almost like a cup. “Smell this.”

Adam breathed in. He couldn’t smell anything. But the flower was pretty. Just as pretty as Rowan.

“What’s this?”

“A calla lily. And I think your lady friend will love it.”

“Better than roses?”

“Oh, yes.”

The man with money seemed to know what he was talking about, and Adam didn’t know anything about flowers. “All right,” he said slowly. “A dozen calla lilies.”

“Good choice,” the man said.

The brown-skinned man wrapped the flowers in paper and Adam paid him, fifteen dollars instead of the ten for the roses. But that was okay because Adam knew how to count change and took five ones from the man, carefully placing them back in his wallet before picking up the flowers.

As he started back to the truck he remembered his manners. He turned back and waved at the nice man. “Thanks, sir,” he called.

The man raised his arm. “Glad to help.”

Adam bounded back to the truck he’d borrowed, tickled that he’d bought the perfect flowers for friendship. Calla lilies.

Carefully, he laid them on the seat and admired them. They smelled so beautiful, and they were white, just like Rowan’s hair. Yes, she was going to like them.

He started the truck and carefully pulled into traffic, unmindful that the man watched him drive away.

John stood outside Rowan’s office door, staring at the knob. Guilt nudged his conscience. He knew he shouldn’t invade her space. But he’d already been in her bedroom, and there was nothing of interest there except two loaded clips for her Glock in her bedside drawer and a shotgun under her bed.

What did she fear?

She spent a lot of time in the den. Her computer was there. When she wanted to be alone, she went to the den. Why?

And why did he feel guilty? He’d done far worse in his life than rifling through the personal property of a woman he was responsible for protecting. Of course, it wasn’t his case; it was Michael’s. But she was hiding something, something important, even if she didn’t know it. And Michael might be the one to pay for her omission.

Or possibly Rowan herself.

John wouldn’t allow that to happen.

He opened the door before he could change his mind and closed it behind him, his heart pounding. He simply didn’t want to pry into Rowan’s life. Not without her invitation.

The den differed from the white starkness of the rest of the house. Dark cherry paneling, built-in bookshelves, and a large corner desk unit dominated the small room. Two white leather love seats faced each other in the middle; a reading chair, table, and lamp were grouped in the corner. The tile from the hall extended into the den, but was mostly covered by a thick off-white shag rug.

Classic, cozy, and definitely more suited to Rowan than the bright, empty void of the immaculate Malibu beach house.

Clutter on the desk, stacks of books on the reading table, and a coffee mug with an inch of cold, congealed coffee told John this room was Rowan’s home. He felt worse invading this space than her bedroom upstairs.

The books were mostly true crime, crime fiction, and literary classics. A worn copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest sat on her desk. Other well-read classics littered the shelves. She may have been leasing the place, but evidently she’d brought boxes of books with her. Somehow, John didn’t think the owner of this sterile abode read Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath or Capote’s In Cold Blood .

John focused on the desk. He flicked on the computer. While waiting for it to finish booting, he searched for anything to give him more insight into Rowan and her past.

The papers on top of the stack closest to the computer were printouts from online newspapers all discussing the recent crime. Denver. Los Angeles. Portland. He’d already read them. The police had managed to keep the detail of the books being left at the crime scene to themselves, but the press had made the connection between the victims and Rowan’s books.

The connection must be killing her. Spending six years fighting serial killers and mass murderers, only to end up being connected to one.

John knew how she felt. He’d lost count of the years he’d been fighting the endless War on Drugs, and sometimes he lost track of where the bad guys ended and the good guys began. But it was a battle he vowed to keep fighting until the one bastard who kept slipping through the cracks was dead and burning in hell.

The other stacks of papers appeared to be copies of bills, notes for her books, printouts of chapters. Michael had said she was working on another book, as well as the screenplay for the movie being filmed now. He’d mentioned something about how her first movie had been trashed and she wasn’t about to let anyone rewrite her books into something they weren’t.

John understood that as well. In fact, he found he had deep insight into Rowan that he couldn’t explain. It was as if he knew how she would react, what she would think in any given situation, how these murders were eating her up inside. She was angry and rigid on the surface, but when he looked into her eyes, he saw in them so much she didn’t say.

Rowan Smith kept her emotions close to the vest. Just like him.