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I tried to keep my breathing steady as he leaned in close to me, his scent filling my nostrils. He smelled like pine and mint. He had long arms, long fingers, manicured fingernails. He typed quickly, loudly, with only two fingers. ”Maybe pull up a chair,” he said.
I did as he told me. The barstools were tall and I was sore everywhere, so it was difficult for me to climb onto one. He offered me his hand. I held back the urge to sigh but I took it.
”If you’d waited for me, we could’ve done this in the living room,” he said as I scooted forward on the narrow barstool.
”Done what in the living room?” I asked softly.
He smiled, shaking his head. ”Does that work?” he asked. ”I don’t buy that you didn’t know what you were doing for a second.”
I straightened my body as I looked at him. ”Fine,” I said. ”I wanted to know what I’m dealing with. Teo said you have information about the strangler and I want to know everything that there is to know. The police are fucking useless and it sounds like this person is trying to frame your organization. The more information that I have, the better. If you share everything you have with me, I might be able to help.”
He nodded. ”And Teo said it was okay?”
I narrowed my eyes. ”I probably wouldn’t be allowed free roam of the apartment if Teo didn’t think it was okay, right?”
Jace shrugged. ”I don’t know. He doesn’t really like…”
He trailed off and I bit down on my lower lip, wondering what the heck it was that Teo didn’t really like. He waved me off, as if he knew exactly what I was about to ask him before I did.
”I guess we’ll find out soon enough if you’re lying,” he said. ”So the…what are you calling him? The strangler? He’s been targeting our people for a while.”
”Orchid Strangler,” I replied. ”I think he stuffed a white orchid into one of the victim’s mouths. One of the earlier ones. But that’s just a rumor, I don’t know if it’s true.”
”It’s true,” he said immediately. ”He’s still doing it.”
I felt the blood rush away from my face. I grabbed the corner of the kitchen island to make sure I wouldn’t faint. For a second, I wondered if the faint smell coming from the person who’d broken into my house was the scent of flowers, and I got dizzy at the thought.
Jace stretched out his hands, held my elbows. ”Easy there. You okay?”
I nodded, trying to ignore the taste of ash in my mouth.
He looked me up and down for a second, then brought up a recording application on his computer. ”I can send this to you when you’re working on your article,” he said as he pressed the button to start it up. ”It might not be super clear but you might need to reference it when you’re taking notes and working on it.”
I nodded. ”Thank you,” I said, searching his face for any reason why he might be helping me. ”Are you just doing this because Teo said I could have access?”
”Sure. And because I’m bored of this. I like solving problems, and this one just…keeps happening, and then it keeps happening, and then it happens again. It’s infuriating.”
The way he was speaking about the loss of human life made my blood run cold, but I supposed that in his weird, fucked up brain, it made perfect sense.
His nostrils flared as he threw his head back. ”And I fucking despise men who target women,” he said. ”Didn’t they ever hear about picking on someone their own size? If I find the person who did this to you…”
”You don’t know me,” I said, swallowing. ”You said so yourself.”
”Right. And?”
I shook my head. Who knew this psychopath could be so chivalrous? And what difference did it make? I needed to find out what he knew about the killings, not sit here and talk about how much he cared about protecting women. ”So what do you know about the killings?”
”Right,” he said. He brought up a document and, just from a quick glance, I could tell it was meticulously done. ”So we’re not sure when the killings started, but we’re relatively certain that we’ve been targeted for approximately six months. It started late June.”
”What happened in late June?”
”That was when we found our first body,” he said. ”The killer had left it overnight for us to find. Victor was on a jog and found him when he went to the back alley to go into the club in the morning.”
”Do you know his name?”
”Yes,” Jace said, tilting his chin toward the screen, a long list on the page he was pointing to. ”We know everyone’s name. This guy was a Robert Martinez. Victor knew him, he’d worked alongside him for a few years when he was first coming up. Their paths diverged and Martinez stayed a small-time dealer since he liked to sample his own supply. Victor, well, you know what happened to him.”
I shook my head. ”I haven’t heard of him,” I said. ”He wasn’t in my notes.”
