Chapter 24

To Michelle, morning had seemed hours ago. Her eyes burned and her head ached but she kept at it, sitting in front of a computer at the task force headquarters. She was inputting what new information they had on the victims, cross referencing for any similarities that might come up, a job Nick had asked her to do. So far they had nothing, but part of police work was getting into the little details. Sometimes the biggest clue they could have would come out of the littlest of details.

So she kept going, even though her head was pounding from being under lighting that wasn't strong enough, staring at a white screen. She was stiff and sore, and hungry, she realized. She cursed Nick for wanting to keep her locked inside this hot stuffy warehouse and coming up with this job for her to do, flaunting his authority when she had crossed him about it. The ass. She tried to stretch some of the tension out of her shoulders.

The sound of the phones was amazingly annoying.

She didn't know what had happened to Nick. They had arrived here together and she had sat down at the computer. The last time she had seen him, he had been on the phone, yelling at someone.

But that had been over an hour ago.

Stephanie was taking some time on one of the phones. The beautiful brunette seemed to thrive on her job, she sparkled when she was in the middle of something, even the mundane paperwork that every cop groused about couldn't get her down.

And Michelle had noticed that Special Agent Knight wasn't immune to that sparkle. She had seen him looking, had almost laughed at him at the goofy expression he got on his face. The man was a hopeless romantic hidden behind a federal badge.

But Roger wasn't in the room either.

"Chelle!"

Michelle looked up at the sound of her name, Stephanie had her hand over a phone receiver. "This guy wants to talk to you."

She picked up one of the banks of phones next to the computer she had been chained to for most of the day, "Parsons."

The creepy giggle told her who she was talking to. She felt a fist of fear clutch her heart. Before she could signal to Stephanie or anyone else in the building, his words caught her attention.

"I have another girl, deputy. If you don't want to find her body tonight, I'd suggest you keep this phone call between the two of us."

Michelle glanced around the warehouse, her expression torn. Even if they did trace the call, it was probably another public phone.

"What do you want?" She tried to keep her voice down, calm and low keyed so not to rile him. She'd seen his rage in all it's obscenity.

"To talk to you. You fascinate me, Michelle. It is okay to call you Michelle, isn't it?" He giggled.

"Sure, I guess. What should I call you?" First middle and last name would be nice, along with an address where we can nail your ass to the wall.

"Ah, I hadn't thought of that." There was a pause where she could almost hear him thinking. "Well, I suppose you could call me M."

"So, M, what did you want to talk to me about?" she looked up and caught Stephanie staring at her. Michelle tried to smile at the woman before turning and facing the computer screen.

"What did you think of the present I left for you?" His breathing was getting faster.

She wanted to rage at him, but if he really did have another hostage already, that could get her killed. Keep the deviant nice and calm. Wasn't that in one of her college school books? "I'd prefer flowers actually, M. Dead bodies don't do it for me."

He chuckled. "Hmm, and with your chosen profession, I thought you would enjoy her." He paused, his voice becoming deeper. "I thought you liked being on the task force, being the personal assistant to Detective Nicholas Saint. I thought you'd like the little touches I added."

"What little touches would those be, M?" God, where was Nick? She was way out of her element here.

"The uniform, that took some work you know. It's hard to get all that detail in a hurry. The pictures I took looked good, how did she look to you? Did I miss anything?"

Before she could answer, his voice snapped over the phone lines. "Shut up!" Michelle gasped. "Oh, no," his voice returned to its deep rumble. "Not you dear. It's just time that some people learn. They don't realize that what I did and who I was, who I am, and who I will be, all of that was only to further my purpose." He chuckled good naturedly. "Now, I am really enjoying out talk, Chelle. That is what the good detective calls you isn't it? But I really do have to go, I have a lot of work to do tonight before we talk again."

The click as he hung up was loud, she kept the receiver off the phone base, just staring at it. It was taken out of her hand and she looked up at the person standing over her.

"It was him, wasn't it?" Stephanie held the phone away from her, looking at it like it was a snake.

"Yeah." Michelle put her head down, trying to control her breathing. "He wants to talk to me, he has another girl." She sat up, tenaciously finding some strength. "He said that Dana Ridge was a present for me."

"Oh, God. Sick fuck." Her voice was laced with disgust.

Michelle laughed despite the disgust churning in her stomach. "I couldn't have said it better myself. And the worst thing about this, I think we could stop him by using me as bait. But Nick won't even hear of it."

"You know why, don't you?" Stephanie sank down in the chair next to Michelle.

"His over developed sense of male dominance?" she joked. She had a feeling she knew what Stephanie was going to say and didn't want to hear it. It wasn't true, it couldn't be true.

Stephanie sighed. "You know, if I had a man like him in love with me, I think I'd be happy about it." She gave Michelle a look and then smiled slyly. "Of course, if you don't want him, you wouldn't mind if I made a play would you?"

Michelle growled.

Stephanie laughed.

"So," she said conspiratorially. "What are we going to do about this?"

"About what?" Michelle was confused, the woman jumped topics like they were stepping stones.

"Well, if we let the big bad men in law enforcement decide what the plays should be all the time, they'll never see the brains behind the boobs." She tilted her head, her dark hair hanging over one shoulder. "Even that good looking fed you guys brought in seems to think that the big bad women in law enforcement need protecting instead of us being the protectors. You should have seen them last night when you called. I've never seen a man so frantic to get to his woman. I mean Nick, not the fed." She shook her head ruefully. "They took off like the cavalry."

"They were the cavalry," Michelle said absently as thoughts raced through her head. "We'd need back up. A lot of it. I really don't want to be exposed to any of the sick fuck's bedside manners." She pursed her lips, whistling softly. "He's calling me back later, tonight he said. Maybe..." she stopped talking, frowning.

"Maybe?" Stephanie prompted, leaning forward.

Michelle shook her head. "It's nuts."

"And the problem with that is?"

"If we could talk him into meeting me to talk?" A plan was forming in her mind. It was dangerous and would piss Nick off. And could get her killed if things didn't go just right.