He shrugged easily. “If I’m wrong, tell me. I don’t mean to insult you. Perhaps violence isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s strength, or passion.”
She didn’t bother to tell him that he’d been right the first time. Nor did she need a diagram to understand his interest in her. “I don’t want to be your next challenge, Ben. Like some big wave for you to conquer. Another cheap thrill.”
He was silent for a moment, weighing her words. “I didn’t think you knew-”
“Who you were? Why, because I didn’t fall all over myself to go out with you? Not every girl is impressed by the size of your wallet, or your stick, surfer boy.” She poked at his chest, and was rewarded when annoyance flashed across his face. “By the way, you’re wrong. I didn’t fight. I was promiscuous.”
There. Let him chew on that.
“I don’t believe you,” he said after a pause. “Tell me some dirty stories, to prove it.” He tried for a sly smile, but his eyes were heavy and intense.
She looked away. “I’m sure yours would put mine to shame.”
He only nodded, guilty as charged. “Carly always rakes me over the coals for getting her mother pregnant when we were seventeen. I can’t believe she’ll be that age soon. God forbid she follows in my footsteps. Or attempts to outdo me in debauchery, which would be a challenge.”
Sonny took pity on him. “She told me she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend.”
He brightened. “Really? That may be true, for now. But she does flirt with my friends.”
She shook her head, not envying his position. “Maybe you should lock her away until she’s thirty.”
“I know I’ve indulged her too often,” he said with a sigh. “She’s always been difficult, and I’ve usually been…gone.”
Sonny looked out at the dark, stormy Pacific. The evening had turned blustery, and it was time for her to go. “I told her I would leave you alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s not ready to share you.”
“Let me worry about Carly. She’s important to me-hell, she’s everything to me, but I can’t let her dictate my life forever. I’ll take you out again, just us.”
“No.”
“Fuck.”
His frustration was matched by her own. She’d never felt this drawn to someone. They had nothing in common, besides an obvious mutual attraction and a history of youthful indiscretions, which had most certainly taken a greater toll on her than him. It had been her experience that a man could engage in any number of illicit encounters and walk away with a clear conscience and a spring in his step.
Even if she could pursue an emotional relationship with him, professional ethics decreed that she maintain a physical distance. Getting close to a subject was one thing, hopping into bed with him another.
She cursed Grant for putting her in this precarious situation. “Ben, it’s not Carly. I can’t get involved with anyone right now.”
He looked perturbed, and impatient. “Is it because of that guy on the phone? Your boss?”
“Kind of.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you in love with him?”
“Of course not,” she said with a scowl. Grant was like family to her, and there had never been anything romantic between them.
He smiled, more confident now that he would have her. “If you aren’t involved with him, why’s he calling you at midnight?”
Like Carly, he had a habit of asking impertinent questions. Sonny wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the chill. “I work with search-and-rescue squads. Troubleshooting, helping teams work together efficiently. Sometimes he needs to reach me at odd hours.”
“Search and rescue?” He sounded impressed. “No wonder you went in after Carly.”
“I’ve had some pretty extensive water training,” she said. That, at least, was true.
“You’re a good woman to have around,” he said.
“I won’t be here long.”
Sonny knew by his reaction that she’d said the wrong thing. She’d meant the words as a polite brush-off, but he wasn’t the least bit deterred. Instead of defusing the tension, her vague time line had ratcheted it up.
Now he wanted her immediately.
Oops.
She knew it was time to walk away, but when Ben pulled her against him, he was so deliciously warm she almost wept. Letting the full length of her body press into his, she turned her head, resting it against his chest. She felt the cotton of his sweatshirt across her face, the tattoo of his heartbeat beneath her cheek. As she inhaled the scent of his soap, and the sexy, masculine smell of him, her hands snuck under his T-shirt, by their own volition, and splayed over his smooth, sleekly muscled back.
He sucked in a tortured breath.
She dug her nails into his skin, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a moan. If she got this hot from a simple touch, how could she keep her professional objective in sight?
“Summer-”
It was the name that brought her to her senses. The wrong name.
She jerked her hands away, pushing at his chest. His fingers were linked together across the small of her back, holding her in place. As she felt his response to her touch, an old familiar panic welled within her. That, as much as duty, made her say “I have to go.”
“Stay.”
“Don’t make me struggle,” she whispered.
He let her go, clenching his hands into fists as she slipped away.
CHAPTER 4
As soon as she returned to her apartment, still reeling from her date with Ben, Sonny went straight to the bedroom and took the case files out of the closet.
She needed to be reminded that Ben Fortune was a suspect, no matter what her instincts-or her body-told her. So what if he was ridiculously handsome? Serial killers were often charming, intelligent, and attractive. Some were accomplished liars, and experts at putting their victims at ease. On the surface they looked like anyone else, the average Joe or the boy next door, with no hint of the beast beneath.
Sonny spread the crime scene photos out on the surface of the bed, thinking that Ben was no more a killer than she was. Even so, she allowed for the remote possibility that her attraction to him was interfering with her professional objectivity. What an inopportune time to find out she wasn’t immune to lust.
The images of death weren’t any easier to look at the tenth, or even the hundredth, time around, but she forced herself to do another close examination.
Victim one, April Ramirez, was a brown-eyed brunette, very young, and very pretty. Daughter of cruise ship mogul Juan “Bailamos” Ramirez, she was found in Torrey Harbor at the base of Sunset Cliffs. She’d been raped and brutalized, her clothes torn from her body, and her wrists tied with her own bra. The marks on her neck, and the whites of her sightless eyes, spotted with aneurysms, told a terrifying tale.
The second victim was Sarah Knox, a free-loving, earth-saving blonde. She’d been a dedicated student and amateur drug dealer, cultivating hydroponic marijuana and a 4.0 GPA at SDSU. She was found nude, facedown on the beach near La Jolla Cove. Like April Ramirez, she’d been raped, and strangled with some type of cord.
Their killer knew better than to leave behind DNA, but there had been enough trace evidence at both scenes, namely wetsuit fibers, to link the murders together.
Was there also a connection to Olivia Fortune’s death?
Sonny had obtained a copy of Olivia’s file from the local police department, and there were many dissimilarities between Olivia’s murder and the more recent attacks. Ben’s wife had been killed in her own home, and this scenario suggested some degree of forethought or familiarity. There was also no indication of rape; the only genetic material present belonged to Ben.
There were more discrepancies in execution. Olivia had been strangled by a length of electrical cord, of the same size and circumference as the implement used in the later murders, but the marks on her neck looked very different from the marks on the other victims. They were multiple, for one, and tentative, for another. They were the kind of marks a fledgling killer would make, as though he wasn’t sure how much pressure to apply.