In the Flesh Read online

  His eyes flickered, turned jet black. He wanted her.

  He squared his shoulders, towering over her, furious at her assault. “I do my job fine. But I can’t and won’t change my opinion about yours.”

  Her heart ached for him. “You deserve to be happy again, to move on with your life.”

  “My life ended two years ago,” he said in a tortured voice. “I only live to catch psychos like you protect. And I don’t need or want you analyzing me.”

  Emotions dried her throat. “What do you need?” she finally asked.

  He stared at her so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. The intensity of his gaze sent a shiver of heat rippling through her…. The hum of sensuality radiated off him in waves. He was undoubtedly the biggest, most masculine man she’d ever met, and he had needs, fierce needs that were driving him.

  RITA HERRON

  IN THE FLESH

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  To my sister, who is the real therapist—

  hope you find love again and your own hero.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Award-winning author Rita Herron wrote her first book when she was twelve, but didn’t think real people grew up to be writers. Now she writes so she doesn’t have to get a real job. A former kindergarten teacher and workshop leader, she traded her storytelling for kids for romance, and writes romantic comedies and romantic suspense. She lives in Georgia with her own romance hero and three kids. She loves to hear from readers so please write her at P.O. Box 921225, Norcross, GA 30092-1225, or visit her Web site at www.ritaherron.com.

  Books by Rita Herron

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  810—THE MAN FROM FALCON RIDGE

  861—MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES*

  892—VOWS OF VENGEANCE*

  918—RETURN TO FALCON RIDGE

  939—LOOK-ALIKE*

  957—FORCE OF THE FALCON

  977—JUSTICE FOR A RANGER

  1006—ANYTHING FOR HIS SON

  1029—UP IN FLAMES*

  1043—UNDER HIS SKIN*

  1063—IN THE FLESH*

  Contents

  Cast of Characters

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Detective Raul Cortez —He’s less than happy to be working with a psychiatrist. But when a serial killer targets her, he must protect her with his life.

  Dr. Jennifer Madden —Will her vow to protect her patients’ rights get her killed?

  Marilyn Madden —Jenny’s mother has been catatonic in a mental facility for years. But is she really crazy?

  Bailey Madden —Jenny’s brother fits the profile of the killer.

  Dr. Rupert Zovall —The psychiatrist who has treated Jennifer’s mother for years is upset that she’s been moved to CIRP. Is he really worried about her or is he hiding something?

  Clyde Anson —The court forced him to seek therapy through Jenny. But has he taken his sexually deviant behavior to a deeper level—murder?

  Jamal Rakely —He murdered his wife but plead out on insanity charges. Is he killing women again?

  Bobby Machete —A former patient of Jenny’s—has he resurfaced from the dead?

  Felix Brainard —He grew up in an orphanage in Savannah. Has he returned for revenge?

  Eddie Keegan —Raul’s partner at the force. This womanizer has always loved women. But when he gets rebuffed by one, does he turn into a killer?

  Ralph Martin —The quiet, nondescript carpenter is renovating Jenny’s house. Is his job a ruse to get close enough to watch her every move?

  Prologue

  South Beach, Florida

  Some men shouldn’t be allowed to have children.

  He was one of them. Detective Raul Cortez, badass cop. Lousy husband. Son of a convicted felon.

  Still, when his wife had phoned earlier to tell him she was pregnant, he’d nearly cried like a baby.

  This was his chance at redemption. To make things right. To be a better man.

  To have a future.

  He climbed into his car and laid the red roses he’d just bought at the florist on the seat, heart pumping with adrenaline. Dark storm clouds obliterated the moon, indicating a storm on the rise, but he shrugged off the bad weather, started the car and headed toward his apartment. Nothing could ruin his day. Not a downpour or the fact that his latest collar, a psycho named Louie Mulstein, had been released on bail. He was under house arrest and had to wear that ankle bracelet, but the maniac should be behind bars. Damn shrink. It was her fault he’d been released.

  Her words reverberated in his head. “He’s schizophrenic, Your Honor. He’s on medication now and not a threat to the community.”

  Raul had argued, had laid out the gruesome photos of the two women the man had bludgeoned to death for her and the court to see, but she had won in the end.

  Tamping down his fury over the judge’s and shrink’s lapse in judgment, he vowed to forget work tonight. Anita deserved it and so did his unborn child.

  As if to mock him, his cell phone rang. He checked the number—the precinct. The urge to ignore it teased him, but with two ongoing cases, there was no way.

  “Cortez.”

  “Captain Black. Listen, Cortez. I hate to tell you this but Louie escaped.”

  “What?”

  “Somehow he managed to get out of his ankle bracelet. We’ve issued an APB and my men are looking for him now.”

  Raul’s heart thundered in his chest. Louie out of jail. Louie who was dangerous. A psychotic.

  Louie who hated him. Who knew where he lived.

  “I gotta get home,” he muttered, then disconnected the call and sped up.

  He swerved to pass a truck, turned on his siren and floored the gas, racing around the curve, his tires squealing as he spun into the complex. He honked at some teens on bikes to move, careened around the first building to the second, then threw the car into a parking spot and jumped out. Sweat trickled down his face as he ran up to his door. He started to reach in his pocket for his keys, but when he touched the knob, the door squeaked open.

  Instincts honed by years on the force made him draw his gun. He held his breath as he tiptoed inside, silently telling himself he was wrong. Anita was safe. Louie hadn’t had time to get to her. He wouldn’t kill her, not the day he’d escaped.

  But the metallic stench of blood assaulted him, and he spotted his wife’s body lying on the kitchen floor face-up, her eyes wide-open in death, blood pooling around her head.

  Grief and anger slammed into him, immobilizing him for a second. Anita dead…his baby gone…

  A wail jarred him back to the truth. Louie was still here.

  The scrawny bastard was huddled in the corner, knees hugged to his chest as he stared at the bloody knife. A sick sneer pulled his thin lips back over his teeth like a rabid dog as he lunged at Raul.

  Raul didn’t hesitate. He raised his pistol and pumped a round of bullets into the man, sending his body flying backward against the wall. Blood splattered everywhere, and Louie’s choked cry echoed in the silence a
s he sank to the floor and went limp.

  Raul collapsed beside his wife and screamed his rage. Blood soaked his shirt and hands as he pulled her in his arms and rocked her back and forth.

  He’d killed the sicko. But it didn’t matter. Anita was dead and so was his child.

  And nothing could ever bring them back.

  Chapter One

  Two Years Later—Savannah, Georgia

  Detective Raul Cortez stared at the pair of black silk panties tied around the woman’s throat and cursed.

  The Savannah Strangler had struck again. The third time in three weeks.

  Another young girl dead. A blonde this time.

  And they had no clues as to the killer’s identity.

  The sicko. He’d stripped her naked, strangled her with a pair of silk underwear, then left her posed in the woods in a sexual position with hands folded at her breasts and legs spread wide as if to make a statement.

  Raul’s partner Eddie Keegan lumbered up beside him, swatting at a fly buzzing around his face. “How long do you think she’s been here?”

  Raul shrugged and stepped aside as the medical examiner stomped through the woods toward them. “At least a day, but the M.E. will have to pinpoint time of death. Have you found anything on the other girls’ computers?”

  Keegan shook his head. “Not yet. I gave them to the tech guys to look at.”

  “We need to find out where he’s buying the underwear.”

  Keegan kicked at a loose root. “The press is going to be all over us on this. Make us look bad.”

  Raul glared at him as he mentally assessed the crime scene for details. “Make us look bad? What about these poor women?”

  “Hey, I love women,” Keegan growled. “That’s why I’m here in the damn woods at 5:00 a.m.”

  “Then do your job,” Raul muttered. No wonder Keegan had had sexual harassment charges filed against him on his other job. “We have to find a connection between the vics.”

  “I told you the tech team is on it. But the guy probably just hooked up with them in a bar. Happens every night of the week. Something you’d know, Cortez, if you ever got out and had a social life.”

  “Some of us put work first,” Raul snapped.

  “Yeah, and some of us want a life, too.”

  A life to Keegan meant getting laid every night. He was competent enough, but Raul was tired of his sexist comments and disparaging attitude toward women. Keegan thought females had been put on earth for his pleasure, and that they all loved him. One day someone would put Keegan in his place. He hoped to hell he was around to see it.

  Buckner, the new assistant M.E., shuffled up and knelt to examine the body. Raul muttered a silent prayer for the girl’s soul to rest in peace, promising her in that same prayer that he would find her killer. Then he focused on the details—the way her body had been positioned, how the grass and brush looked around the scene, the type of tree that was nearby. Details that might not be important but ones that might prove helpful at some point, maybe in finding a pattern.

  So far, all three girls had been left in wooded, deserted areas. No real significance except that it meant the victims hadn’t been located immediately. Hiking vacationers or locals had discovered all three.

  The killer hadn’t sent photos or notes to anyone that they knew of. For his trophy, he took the girl’s underwear.

  The crime-scene unit was taking photographs, although Raul had snapped a few of his own when he’d arrived. He had been first on the scene, had secured the area and had searched for footprints but found nothing but some crushed dead plants and a few broken twigs. It had recently rained, which made finding evidence more difficult, but he still held out hope that the CSI team might find something. A piece of clothing, hair, a shoe print…anything they could trace.

  Captain Black approached, wearing a grim expression. “Damn. It looks like we may have to call in the feds.”

  Words Raul didn’t want to hear. “Give us another week.”

  Black shrugged. “I already talked to a friend of mine at the bureau. It’ll take that long to get someone out here. I asked for a profiler, but he suggested a local counselor that he thought could help us. A sex therapist named Jenny Madden.”

  “Not a shrink,” Raul mumbled.

  Black arched a brow. “I know your history, Cortez, but we have to use every available resource. If it means bringing in a counselor or psychiatrist, then we’ll do it.”

  Raul grimaced. Black could do what he wanted. But no way in hell was he ever going to trust a shrink again or take her word on anything.

  He’d solve the damn case without her.

  DR. JENNY MADDEN took a deep breath before entering her mother’s hospital room at CIRP, the Coastal Island Research Park mental facility. She reserved Sunday mornings to visit—not that her mother displayed signs of being aware of her presence—but Jenny’s conscience and her heart wouldn’t allow her to be anywhere else.

  After all, Sundays had been about family when they were growing up: a big breakfast of pancakes or homemade cinnamon rolls; hurriedly dressing for church, putting on the Sunday dress her mother had made, her lacy Sunday socks and patent leather shoes; Bailey, her little brother, grumbling and complaining but her mother dragging him along anyway, saying his protests meant that he needed it.

  Emotions crowded her chest. Her parents had been such a handsome couple. At least for the first six years of her life. Then one day everything had fallen apart.

  Pain sucked the air from her lungs as she remembered hearing her mother’s screams the night he’d walked out. The terrible fight, her mother chasing after him. Her father’s car spewing dust as he drove away and never came back.

  She brushed at a tear, wishing for once that she could think of that day or visit her mother without her heart breaking, but twenty years later the memory was fresh and raw like an open wound that wouldn’t heal.

  Forcing herself to regain control, she inhaled the scent of the daffodils she held in one hand along with the fresh cinnamon rolls from the bakery, hoping they would evoke fond memories for her mother and miraculously open the doors of communication. Although hope was fledgling these days. After all, years of silence would probably not be broken by cinnamon rolls or flowers.

  Determined to present a cheery picture, she pasted on a smile, pushed open the door and waved as she entered the room. “Hi, Mom. I brought flowers and those cinnamon rolls you like so much.”

  Her mother lay propped against the bed pillows, her now-graying brown hair tangled, her mouth drooping slightly to the left as she stared into space.

  “I’ll just put these in fresh water,” Jenny said. “Then we’ll get you a bath and I’ll brush your hair before we have breakfast.”

  Her mother said nothing, but Jenny tacked a smile on her face, put the flowers in water, then placed them on the small table across from her mother so she could see them.

  “Which gown would you like to wear today?” She plucked a lavender one from the drawer, along with its matching bed jacket. “How about this one? Lavender looks so pretty on you, Mom. Remember that lavender dress you wore to church on Easter when I was ten?” She filled the basin with water, poured in scented bath gel and gave her mother a sponge bath. Her mother made a soft whispery sound as if she enjoyed the process. “What is it, Mom? You want to talk to me. I know you do.”

  Then the second passed, and that empty gray look returned to her eyes. Jenny willed the lump in her throat to dissipate, and turned away to gather her composure. She emptied the bathwater, then returned with the brush, sat down beside her mother and began to slowly work the tangles from her hair. Her mother sighed contentedly. Twice during this ritual she’d reached out and touched Jenny’s hand and squeezed it.

  At that moment she’d known her mother was still inside the shell of her body. That she wanted to talk but something was holding her back.

  Jenny had become a doctor to find the answer.

  Unfortunately, her education and experien
ce had yet to yield results. The very reason she’d moved her mother to CIRP. Hopefully, the psychiatrists at the center would find a treatment for her that would prove successful.

  Dr. Zovall hadn’t been happy about the move. He’d been treating her mother for years, and had been a friend to her parents before the breakdown. A bigger friend since. He mourned her mother’s loss almost as much as Jenny and her brother, Bailey, did.

  Yet he hadn’t been able to help her….

  She counted the strokes as she glided the brush through her mother’s hair, a hundred strokes just as her mother used to do for her when she was little, sweeping her hair down over her shoulders until it lay in soft folds. “There, you look lovely now, Mom.”

  She helped her mother settle back, inserted a jazz CD in the portable player, then set out their breakfast. Coffee for her, juice for her mother. Her mother nibbled at the food with no reaction, but ate the cinnamon roll and even licked her fingers when she finished. Jenny chatted about her week, telling her about the small house she’d bought in downtown Savannah, about the renovations, all mundane details, but if her mother could hear, she wanted to include her in her life.

  Her cell phone vibrated against her belt, and she frowned and checked the number. The hospital. Darn it, there must be an emergency.

  “Mom, I have to take this,” Jenny said, then she kissed her cheek and stepped into the hallway.

  “Dr. Madden, this is the emergency service. Captain Black with the Savannah Police Department needs to speak with you as soon as possible.”

  Jenny clenched the phone with sweaty fingers. Was one of her patients in trouble? Had one of them been hurt or committed a crime? “Did he say what it was about?”