She traced my jaw with her elegant fingers. “I love this defined jaw. So rugged. So sexy.” She flashed a seductive smile while moving her fingers down my neck. “And these tattoos fascinate me too.”
“You like men with tats?”
“Never been with one until now.”
“You won’t go back.”
She laughed and shook her head.
“Ready for Friday’s date?” Then sirens blared outside the building.I walked over to the window, looking out. Four police cars blocked an area in Etched Square. A crowd had formed near it. “Something’s going on outside. I need to check it out.”
Eva followed me onto the sidewalk. We walked by a distraught woman in athletic clothing, leaning against a parked car.
“Are you okay?” Eva asked.
“I’ve never seen a dead body before.” She shivered. “That poor woman . . . Her family will be devastated.”
“I’ll be right back,” I told Eva. “You stay with her.”
I had a feeling about what I was about to see. As I approached, someone called me from behind. “Kain!”
I turned to see Godfrey. “I went to your office, but they told me you were out here.”
“What happened?”
“Another Bleeding Hearts murder.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, looking over at Eva consoling the woman who seemed calmer now.
“Did you get a package today?”
“Yeah. But I haven’t opened it,” I said.
“Open it.” Godfrey eyed me. “The other boys each got a package too.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Kain
After driving Eva home and calling Detective McNally, I returned to my office where Godfrey, Timber, and Hudson had gathered around the conference table with their boxes.
I took a box cutter and opened my package, pulling out a rectangular metal box. I lifted the lid, and my stomach lurched at the sight of human skin with a tattoo of a cross made by two single rose stems, one vertical and one horizontal—Hawthorne’s logo.
Was this what Eva saw on the man at the hotel?
“What’s in your boxes?” I asked the boys.
“A heart.” Godfrey tapped his box.
“A liver,” Hudson said.
“A kidney.” Timber stared at his box. “What the fuck is going on?”
“He’s escalating,” Godfrey said. “Aside from these organs, abody was dropped off in Etched Square—our property. That’s a message to us.” He clenched his fists. “The fucker knows us.”
“I spoke to Detective McNally, and he said the body that was dropped off was not a real corpse. The fake corpse held a note with the name Malory Evans. He received an anonymous tip telling him to go to Mass General Hospital where her actual corpse would be.”
“That doesn’t seem like the MO of the Bleeding Hearts Killer or the Black Rose Killer,” Hudson said. “None of them used a dummy.”
