Julie Miller - Tactical Advantage

He cleaned up after himself, retreating until he reached the van. The watcher waited for the man to toss the brush and the cover into the back, then quietly shut the doors before hurrying around to climb in behind the wheel and drive away.

A few numbers off the van’s license plate were visible through the falling snow. But there was scarcely enough time to write anything down as it turned at the stoplight on the next corner and sped away into the night.

Once the street was quiet again, once the watcher was certain it was safe to move, a cell phone appeared, in case someone needed help. It was clutched tightly in hand as the watcher slowly opened the door. This might not be the smartest thing the watcher had done, but it was by far the bravest.

The winter wind was damp and bitter, biting through wool caps and exposed skin. Big, fluffy flakes of snow clung to the watcher’s eyelashes and had to be blinked away. The watcher looked up and down the street, just as the man had done. This particular block was deserted tonight. The interior of every storefront, café and coffee shop was dark. Although, with a tilt of the head, one could see the lights in apartment windows high above, where several end-of-the-year parties or lonely vigils must be happening.

A keening moan rose from the alleyway, snapping the watcher’s attention back to the mysterious disposal of trash the curious driver had just witnessed. It was a body. Steeling both shoulders and resolve, the watcher hurried across the street.

“Hello?”

A woman staggered out of the alley, clinging to the brick wall for support. Her mouth was bruised and swollen, her lips scrubbed pink. Her hair was a snarled mess, her eyes were glazed. She clasped something sticklike in her fist. “Help me. Please help.”

Her words slurred together as if she was high on some drug. When she reached out, the injured woman tripped over her spiky heels and began to fall. But the person who’d followed the van snapped out of shocked immobility and hurried forward to catch her.

“Easy there. Are you all right?” The woman stumbled, knocking the watcher back a step, as well. Hugging arms around the woman to steady her, the would-be rescuer turned her toward the light from the closest streetlamp. There was another cut in the woman’s scalp and a puffy red mark beneath one eye. She’d clearly put up a struggle with someone. “I saw that van speeding away. What happened?”

The woman’s coat had been buttoned crookedly over her dress. A party dress. Had she been hurt on her way to one of those parties in one of the newly remodeled loft apartments upstairs?

“I’ve been raped. That man...” Now she could see the slender object clutched in the woman’s hand. It was the stem of a blood-red rose. “Oh, my God.”

She tossed the flower into the snow and turned away to throw up into the bags of trash from which she’d just crawled.

“Was it the Rose Red Rapist?” the driver from the car asked.

The terror the serial rapist had struck into the minds and spirits of women across the city was evident in the injured woman’s wild eyes as she wiped her lips on the sleeve of her coat. “I was on my way to a friend’s party...above the florist shop there. They must be so worried. He hit me from behind and...I thought I was being mugged. I’ve been to one of those women’s self-defense courses at KCPD and I...” Tears welled in her eyes, and she pushed her fingers into her hair to brush the scattered tendrils off her face. That’s when the driver from the car saw the scrapes on the victim’s knuckles from where she’d tried to fight off her attacker. But the wounds had been doctored. In fact, the woman’s hands and fingernails had been scrubbed clean. “What did he do to me?” The battered woman saw her sterilized hands and sobbed. “Will you help me?”

“Of course.” The driver who’d followed the van wound a supportive arm around the shaken victim to help her walk.

“Are you a cop?”

The watcher guided her back into the alley, farther in than the bags of trash. “Did you see his face?”

The woman’s blank eyes suddenly focused. “Yes. I grabbed his mask. That’s when he hit me again and I didn’t remember anything until I came back here.” She grabbed hold of her rescuer and begged. “I need to call 9-1-1. Or there’s a bar near here—The Shamrock—but you probably know that.”

“Yes. There’s a shortcut through here.”

“If we turn left...or is it right... Where’s my purse? My phone?” She rubbed at the pain that must be throbbing through her temple. The light from the street was fading. The falling snowflakes were barely visible now in the shadows. “It’s so hard to think... Wait.” She tried to stop and pull away. The watcher from the car let her. The watcher had found what was needed and stooped to pick it up. “What did you say? You’re not a cop?”

“I said I’m here to help.” The woman’s terrified gaze dropped to the brick in the watcher’s hand, understanding coming far too late. “Just not you.”

The watcher swung before the woman could scream, and kept swinging until she would never scream again.

Chapter One

“Happy New Year!”

The shouts and whistles and horn blasts from the apartment across the hall drowned out the television program KCPD criminologist Annie Hermann was watching.

As the party from her neighbor’s gathering cranked up several more decibels, she twirled her finger in a sarcastic whoop-dee-do and watched the lighted ball drop above Times Square. The music leading up to the countdown to the New Year had been entertaining enough, and the pomp and pageantry half a country away had always been a celebration she’d like to see in person one day. But not on her own. And right now, on her own seemed like the only option available.

Nothing said “Here’s to the promise of a new year” like a twenty-eight-year-old woman sitting at home by herself watching television with her cats while the rest of Kansas City—while the rest of the world—partied together.

She scratched behind the velvety ears of the Siamese cat nestled in her lap. Her gaze settled on the bare space on the third finger of her left hand. Had it already been two years since the New Year’s Eve when Adam had proposed to her? That had been a celebration for the ages. Then she’d spent last year’s holiday crying her eyes out because Adam had dumped her. He’d needed to move on, he said—to a new job in a private law firm instead of the public defender’s office, to a new life that was more practical and less idealistic than the one they’d envisioned together. He’d claimed he was doing her a favor by leaving her and not forcing her to change into some sort of party-planning, connection-making trophy wife who could be a helpmate for his new ambitions.

Some favor. So what if ending the engagement wasn’t her fault? Dumped was dumped.

Feverish tears burned in the corners of her eyes. But she suspected they were more about the sting on her ego than any lingering heartbreak at this point. Or, perhaps, she was indulging in a little pity party because she’d grown far too used to being alone on holidays like this one. And even being part of a mismatch like she and Adam had been was better than a solo celebration of these landmark events.

She stroked the Siamese’s warm, seal-brown ears again. At least cats stayed.

“Happy New Year, Reitzie.” Blinking away her tears, Annie tucked a curly tendril of chin-length hair that was equally dark behind her own ear and called out through her empty apartment. “Happy New Year to you, too, G.B.” But there was no answering meow or rustle of movement. She petted the cat in her lap again and let her gaze wander to all of G.B.’s usual hangouts—the snow boots by the front door, behind the drapes in the second-story bay window, on top of the armoire that housed the TV. “So where is your brother hiding this time?”