The hunter glanced back at him, eyes narrowed.
Asshole.
With a curt nod, he hurried into room 407. The patient, an elderly man with a white mane of hair, glanced up at his approach. “Fuck. Another one of you ass**les?”
Really, it was the wrong thing to say. Because his day was already pretty shitty.
“I’m tired of you pricks coming in here! I’m tired of everybody poking and prodding me. I’m eighty-seven. You can’t fix me. I’m just gonna die.”
Sooner than the jerk realized. He shoved his hand into his pocket. Felt the capped syringe he’d prepared especially for Givens. No sense in letting all that preparation go to waste. He’d known he wouldn’t be able to attack with claws and teeth on this one. Though he sure did prefer to kill that way.
So he’d bribed a nurse. Gotten exactly what he needed for a fast, clean kill.
“Why don’t you just take your overpaid, arrogant ass right back out of my room!”
He smiled and headed toward his patient. Some people really didn’t do much for the world. He stopped at the foot of the bed and glanced at the patient’s chart. “Tell me, Mr. Pope, have you had a good life?”
“What the hell kind of question is that? No, ass**le, I haven’t. I got my knee blasted in the war, stupid bitch of a wife sent me to jail for ten years, the cancer f**king ate me up when I got out, and now I have to look at your sorry ass!”
No, some people really didn’t do much for the world. “Don’t worry, sir, you’ll be leaving the hospital soon.”
“The hell I will! I heard them other ass**les! I’ll only be leaving in a body bag!”
True enough.
He uncapped the syringe. This wouldn’t hurt. That was the only downside. He rather liked to watch pain and blood.
Hmmm…no blood. Another downside. But it would be fast. And the doctors and nurses would run in, so worried about this patient that they wouldn’t even notice him slipping out.
And a kill would really improve his day.
Not one for Erin this time. Just for him.
It had been so long since the kills had been for him alone.
He rounded the bed. “Just relax, Mr. Pope, this will only take a few seconds of your time.”
The old man gave a grim nod. “Fine, just hurry the hell up.”
They reached Lillian just after lunch. Jude didn’t drive to a motel first, good thing that because she probably would have jumped him. Instead, he took them straight to the police station.
Erin licked her lips as she stared up at the gleaming doors of the Lillian PD. The place was less than half the size of Baton Rouge’s department. It was a fat, square building, one surrounded by police cruisers and motorcycles.
She’d spent hours there before, grilling cops, talking to suspects and perps.
Coming back was bittersweet.
Erin climbed the steps with her head up.
Jude shadowed her. “We need to find out if there were any more attacks after you left town.”
“I didn’t tell a lot of folks I was leaving,” she said, as the doors drew closer. “I didn’t want everyone to know—”
“Because you didn’t trust them.”
She didn’t trust anyone. “I still don’t.” Her clothes were wrinkled, courtesy of the long ride and she hadn’t bothered with makeup that morning—there hadn’t been time—so Erin knew she probably looked like hell.
Not the perfectly pressed ADA image she’d worked so hard to maintain.
Her shoulders straightened. “Only one person knew I was up for the job in Baton Rouge. I wanted to keep it as quiet as possible. The bastard after me seemed to know too much.”
“He still does.” Jude reached for the door and closed his tanned fingers over the gleaming handle. “We’re gonna be seeing the one who knew about your transfer after we leave the station.”
Yeah, they were. Seeing the DA again was one of the reasons she’d wanted to come along. She’d worked hard to disappear. The stalker shouldn’t have found her. Unless someone had told him about her plans.
“Hey, Jerome!” A bellow loud enough to shake her bones. A cop, a tall, skeletally thin black man with faint gray in his hair, jumped up from behind the check-in desk. “You finally brought your butt back home!”
She smiled at him. “Hi, Pat.” Patrick Ramsey. Patrick one-more-year-til-I’m-out-give-me-a-desk Ramsey. The guy had taken four bullets in his career. Tossed hundreds of perps into the pen, and he’d once told her he couldn’t wait for the day he got to kiss the badge good-bye and go lay on a Mexican beach.
He shot around the desk. Pretty fast for a guy whose knee had been blasted two years ago. He wrapped her in a hug that squeezed her bones. He’d always been so much stronger than he looked. “What the hell? You didn’t even tell old Pat good-bye!
That tightass DA had to give me the news.”
She tried to breathe. Quick, shallow breaths. That was all she could manage right then.
He dropped his hold.
She sucked in a deep gulp of air. “Sorry, Pat, I-I had some personal things I had to—”
“Personal, huh?” He fired an assessing glance back at Jude. “Guess he’s to blame?”
Her jaw dropped.
But Jude gave a nod. “Guess I am.”
Pat sized him up. “You look like a cop.”
“I’m not.”
Pat’s raised brows called him a liar.
“Bounty hunter.” Jude pulled out his ID. Pat never glanced at it. “Erin’s helping me on a case.”
“You?” He stared down at her and then gave a nod. “Always said the law was too tame for you.”
Too tame. Pat had always been good at seeing below the surface. That was one of the reasons he’d done such good undercover work back in the day. She smiled but the motion of her lips felt too fake. “I need a favor.”
A shrug. “Figure I owe you a few of those.”
Yeah, he did. And she was sure glad he’d been the first cop she saw. Maybe fate was trying to throw her a bone.
But, ah, now for the delicate part. “I need to check some case files. We’re after a guy, a real bad ass**le, and I need to see if his MO matches up with any unsolved crimes here.”
Pat scratched his chin. “That’s a bit dicey.”
She stared up at him. “I need this. You know me, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
His gaze held hers. Then he smiled and looked ten years younger. “What the hell. I’m down to days here now and it’s not like the bastards are gonna fire me for letting the ex-ADA review some of her old files, right? Besides, Ben isn’t here now. Gone on vacation. So it’ll be all right with the other guys in the—”