“Months.”
Sam just managed to contain a roar. Months? She’d been getting threatening mail for months and had never said a word to anyone. He ran a private security firm, her sister Clara’s fiancé was a cop, her other sister Aggie’s boyfriend was an ex-cop, her best friend was a cop. She had plenty of options to seek help from someone. Why did she have to try and do everything herself all the time?
“I'm sorry,” she said, her voice wobbling.
“Stop apologizing,” he snapped, more harshly than he’d intended, but he wasn't comfortable with her rapidly escalating emotions. “You don’t go anywhere alone from now on,” he ordered. He was comfortable issuing orders. “I'm going to stay here until this is resolved.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard,” she protested as he had known she would. “Iama bodyguard. I went through the police academy. I have a black belt in Taekwondo. I’m a perfect shot. I know how to take care of myself.”
“You have a head injury. You can't walk. You can't stand up without throwing up. You can't even move without getting dizzy,” he countered. “How exactly will you take care of yourself if that man comes after you?”
That took some of the wind out of her sails. Vulnerability bloomed in her face, and she suddenly looked small and scared, making him feel desperate to take away all her troubles and extremely inadequate that he couldn’t. “Okay,” she whispered. “I don’t like it, but you're right. I can't take care of myself with a concussion.”
“Good.” Sam stood and began to close the room’s blinds. “You should rest. Your sisters are probably on their way here by now, and you need some sleep before you deal with them. I'm going to be waking you at regular intervals to check on you, and I'm warning you, Naomi, if you get worse, or if you throw up again, then I am taking you straight back to the hospital.”
Naomi drifted off to sleep the moment her eyes closed, and Sam took a page out of her book and decided that the best way to make himself feel not entirely useless was to keep busy, so he headed to her kitchen and got busy cooking.
* * * * *
6:07 P.M.
“How’s Naomi?” Captain Heidi Kramer asked them as they entered the conference room.
“She’s at home. Sam Zeeke is with her, he’ll keep her safe while we figure this out,” Allina replied. She hoped it was true. She liked Naomi Candella, the woman was strong and determined and a tornado of energy. She’d seen her fight back from two life-threatening situations in the year since they’d met. She and Jonathon would do whatever it took to find the man who wanted her dead. And while they looked for him, she had no doubt that Naomi was safe with Sam. The man was like a machine, he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
“Well, let’s figure this out quickly because I don’t like his threat to keep killing until he gets Naomi. Okay, who’s going to start?” Their boss surveyed the small gathering. Heidi was in her fifties, tall and stick-thin. At work her angular face was always stern but get her out of the office and she had a surprisingly good sense of humor.
“I don’t really have anything new to add,” Tracey said. “I haven’t done a complete autopsy, but I’m still confident the cause of death is blunt force trauma to her head. I did do a rape kit, and there were no signs of sexual assault.”
“That fits with the letter,” Jonathon noted. “Nicole was simply a tool he used to get to Naomi.”
“Did he know that though?” Allina wondered aloud. “Did he just randomly pick an easy mark, or did he know that Nicole and Naomi knew each other so he deliberately chose her because it would hurt Naomi worse?”
“If he knew that was Naomi’s favorite café then that means he’s been stalking her.” Jonathon looked extremely uneasy with that prospect.
“You can't go getting all protective,” Allina warned.
“She’s Clara’s sister,” Jonathon said.
“I know. And I know you don’t want anything to happen to her, but Sam is looking after her, you need to focus on this.”
“Clara freaked when she found out what happened, and she doesn’t know about the body and the photo.”
“And she’ll feel better when she sees for herself that Naomi is okay. I can't think of a more qualified person to keep her safe than Samuel Zeeke. Now what do we think? Did the killer target Nicole Carmichael specifically?”
Her partner took a long, deep breath, then said, “He targeted Nicole specifically. If he wants Naomi badly enough to kill to get to her, he would want to make sure he gave her suitable motivation to give herself up. Killing people she knows would be more likely to make her do that.”
“Anything on the note?”
“No fingerprints,” Kane replied. “If you find your guy, we could do a handwriting comparison to prove he wrote it, but that’s about it.”
“Sam called earlier, he said that Naomi has been getting threatening letters for months but never said anything to anyone.” Jonathon’s tone made it clear he was extremely displeased about that. Allina suspected that had Naomi not been presently suffering from a concussion that he would have reamed her out about it. “She thought she had thrown them all out, but apparently one was left. I’m going to pick it up later, at least then we can confirm the same guy wrote the letters and killed Nicole.”
“The killer knows Naomi,” Allina said. “He chose that picture of her as a child for a reason. It’s not what you would typically expect a stalker to choose. I would have thought he would go with a recent picture, maybe one that he took of her without her knowledge. But he didn’t. He chose that one.”
“Any forensics from Nicole’s murder scene?” Heidi directed the question to Kane.
“Nothing. No fingerprints on the rock or anything else helpful in IDing the killer. I may be able to get you an approximate height based on Nicole’s wounds, but that’s not going to be all that helpful in finding your guy.”