Natalie Charles - When No One Is Watching

Gray halted and sighed heavily, as if he were dealing with a tedious child. “Mia. Would I like to have your insight on the case? Yes. But you have too many other things to sort out. Let the police take care of this one.” He didn’t bother waiting for a response before turning and continuing on his way.

Mia stood frozen in place between a crosswalk and a traffic island decorated with stumps of peonies and a small tree. She couldn’t be so pathetic as to run after him and demand that he allow her to tag along on his investigation. Except Gray Bartlett was her only remaining connection to her sister, and that meant he was going to be as stuck with her as she was with him until this case was closed. This was about finding answers for Lena.

She took a deep breath. “You need me, Lieutenant.” She practically had to shout it. He was nearly twenty yards away.

Mia’s heart skipped with a twinge of hopefulness when she saw him halt again and slowly turn. She couldn’t read the expression in his eyes, concealed as they were by mirrored sunglasses, but she could tell from the set of his jaw and the angle of his broad shoulders that he was going to hear her out. She walked toward him, attempting to look more confident than she felt at that moment and trying not to catch the thin tips of her heels in one of the many cracks in the pavement.

“You know it’s true. Valentine’s a ghost. He walks through walls, abducts women without leaving a clue and brazenly dumps their bodies for the police to find. If this woman is another victim, that makes five.” She stepped forward, closing in on his personal space. “Five victims. You’re going to have a hard time convincing anyone that you don’t have a serial killer on the loose in Boston.”

“Who says I care about declaring Valentine to be a serial killer?”

He was lying. She saw it in the twitch of his mouth. “Do you want the publicity that goes along with a serial killer, Lieutenant? The frenzy? Do you want to be the one responsible for fixing that problem?” She said it gently, folding her arms across her chest. “You know as well as I that if this is Valentine, the clock is ticking.”

Now she had his full attention. “Explain.”

“Valentine follows a pattern. He abducts his victims and holds them for between three days and a week. We don’t know what he does with them during that time, but we know they are kept alive somewhere. If this girl was recently abducted, you can try to find her before she winds up like the others. You can try to stop him.” She took one more step forward, coming close enough to catch the smell of his cologne on a passing breeze. “But time is of the essence, and no one knows those files better than I do. That’s why you need me.”

Even through the mirrored glasses, his gaze penetrated to her core. This time she didn’t flush or look away but held that hidden gaze with an intensity of her own. Being accepted into this investigation was about more than finding Valentine or the person who’d attacked her. It was about Lena.

“All right,” he finally said, his lips barely moving. “You can look at the scene and give me your thoughts, but I can’t promise you any additional access.”

Mia nodded. “I understand that.”

“And even if—when—we catch Valentine, I can’t promise we’ll ever recover your sister or find out who attacked you.”

Recover your sister. The police didn’t recover living people. She swallowed. “Got it.”

He lifted the handle to his car and swung the door halfway open, pausing. “I’m heading to the scene. I can show you around later tonight. Say, eleven?”

He was giving her time to accept her award. Mia had ascribed to him all the charm of a roadside motel, but this simple gesture challenged her impression. “Eleven works. Just send me the address.”

“I’ll text it.” He began to climb into the car. “And I’ll be expecting you to blend in with the other cops and not call attention to yourself, so you’ll want to change first. In fact, if you show up in that gown and heels, I’ll send you home and pretend this conversation never happened.”

Mia’s mouth tensed. Had she just reconsidered Gray’s manners? Whenever would she learn to trust first impressions? “Of course I’ll change first,” she said. “But you should know, if you want my help, that I don’t work well with being ordered around. Either you trust me to do what I do and to do it well, or you don’t trust me at all, in which case this arrangement isn’t going to work.”

He paused, and for a moment Mia thought he was going to call the entire thing off. To her surprise, he issued a tense “Fine.”

“Fine,” she echoed, stunned. He’d actually agreed. “Fine. Good. I’ll see you later, then.”

He looked as if he was on the verge of saying something. Instead he closed his door, backed the car away and left Mia standing alone in the middle of the parking lot.

Chapter 3

Mia took the T to Kenmore Square and walked the rest of the way to the address Gray had texted. Peterborough Street was only a ten-minute walk from the train stop, but she regretted not calling a cab as soon as she neared the footbridge to cross the Fens. Down below her, in that night-blackened, marshy valley, was the perfect hiding place for criminals. Or corpses.

Mia clutched a small can of pepper spray under white knuckles. She’d lived in Boston for twelve years now. She knew how to maneuver a city, and until her attack, she’d felt safe in this one. It’s still safe. She passed the Fens and the rows of gardens planted by city residents, crossed the road and breathed easier. Here the walk was better lit, and she’d have more warning if someone approached her.

She was in the Fenway Park area now, but the Sox were in Baltimore, so the streets were less rowdy, and she missed the smells of hot-dog carts and roasting chestnuts. When she’d first arrived in Boston, this had been a neighborhood for young professionals and college students, but apartment buildings had since been leveled and luxury condos had been constructed in their place. A resident of the Back Bay for years, Mia had observed the gentrification with sadness. She’d always been charmed by the area, and part of that charm had come from the well-worn buildings. But tonight she didn’t lament the fact that so many neighborhood restaurants had given way to noisy bars. Bars meant people, and it was almost eleven o’clock at night.

She didn’t need to check the address again once she turned onto Peterborough. Three squad cars and a CSU van were parked outside a brick building with white marble steps flanked by matching lions. The missing woman’s name was Katherine Haley, but when Mia checked the list of names beside the buzzers, the name next to 3A, her apartment, was blank. She pressed it and waited. After a few moments, she heard a buzz and the click of the front door unlocking. Mia stepped inside to a modest lobby where white marble steps with gray veins were littered with discarded flyers for groceries, postcards for nightclubs and free weekly papers. To the right was a large wooden staircase in good repair, and to the left were a series of small brass combination mailboxes. “You’re five minutes early,” boomed a voice from a few floors above.

She tried to suppress a smile as she mounted the stairs and looked up to see Gray looking down the stairwell. The walk from Kenmore had left her more jittery than she’d anticipated, and it was nice to see a familiar face, even if that face was currently glowering at her. “Is that a problem?”

It was more like a challenge than a question, and predictably, Gray chose to ignore it. “You left your ball gown at home, I see.”

She’d changed into jeans and a plain black T-shirt that emphasized her coppery hair, which fell in tousled waves around her shoulders. She’d even washed off her makeup, leaving her olive skin looking softer, her features muted. Smoky eyes and blush seemed out of place at a crime scene. “Just following orders, Lieutenant,” she replied as she reached the third-story landing.