Private S.W.A.T. Takeover Read online

  Eyewitness.

  Almost of their own volition—maybe it was a subconscious survival streak kicking in—her eyes began to take note of the details around her.

  Black car. Big model. Missouri plate B? Or was that an 8? Oh hell. She couldn’t make out the number without moving.

  But she could see the men inside. She had a clear look at the driver, at least. He was a muscular albino man, with hair as shockingly white as the tattoos twining around his arms and neck were boldly colored. In the passenger seat beside him sat a black man. He was so tall that his face was hidden by the shadows near the roof of the car’s interior. She could tell he was built like a lineman because he was having a devil of a time finding room enough to maneuver himself into his suit jacket.

  The size of the black man was frightening enough, but the albino looked crazy scary, like he’d beat the crap out of anyone who stared crosswise at him.

  She was staring now. Stop it!

  Liza closed her eyes and turned away. She could note any damn detail she wanted, but if those crazy colorless eyes spotted her, she was certain there’d be no chance to tell anyone what she’d seen.

  The gunshots had rent the air only a couple of minutes ago, but it felt like hours had passed before she heard the next sound. The sticky, raspy grind of metal on metal as someone opened the front door of the warehouse and closed it with an ominous clank behind him. At the sharp bite of heels against the pavement, she opened her eyes again. The black man was getting out of the car with an umbrella, opening the back door.

  “No, Liza. Don’t look.” It was almost as if she could hear her mother’s voice inside her head, warning her to turn away from the eyes of a killer. “It’ll hurt too much.”

  “But I need to see,” she argued, feeling the tears welling up and clogging her sinuses again. “It’s the only way I’ll be free of this nightmare.”

  “Don’t look, sweetie. Don’t look.”

  “I have to.”

  Liza squinted hard, catching sight of the back of a pinstriped suit climbing into the backseat of the car.

  “No!” She threw her head back. She’d missed him. She hadn’t seen the man who’d fired the gunshots.

  The next several minutes passed by in a timeless blur. The car drove away. She’d seen fogged up windows, and a face through the glass. But it had been too vague. Too fast.

  She didn’t know what the third man looked like.

  As she had dreamed so many times before, what happened next was as unclear as the mist off the river that filled the air. But Liza was inside the warehouse now, cradling the weightless black and tan dog in her arms, creeping through the shadows.

  If there were gunshots, if there were killers, then there must be….

  “Oh, my God.”

  Liza had no free hand to stifle her shock or the pitying sob that followed.

  In the circle of harsh lamplight cast by the bare bulb hanging over the abandoned office door was a man. Lying in a spreading pool of blood beside an overturned chair, his broken, bruised body had been laid out in a mock expression of reverence. His twisted fingers were folded over his stomach. The jogging suit he wore had been zipped to the neck, and the sleeve had been used to wipe the blood from his face.

  “Stay with me, baby.” She set the dog on the floor, keeping one foot on the leash she’d looped around his neck in case he should find the energy to try to run from her again. Although she was in grad school learning how to treat animals, not humans, she knelt beside the man’s carefully arranged body and placed two shaking fingers to the side of his neck. She already knew he was dead.

  “Remember.” Liza heard the voice inside her head. Not her own. Not her mother’s. “Remember.”

  “I’m trying.”

  Barely able to see through her tears, Liza pulled her cell phone from her pocket and turned it on. She punched in 9-1-1. “I need to report a murder.”

  “Remember.”

  “Shut up.” She tried to silence the voice in her head. She wasn’t on the phone anymore. She was kneeling beside the body, reaching out to him.

  The dead man’s eyes popped open.

  Liza screamed. She tried to scoot away. “No!”

  His bloody hand caught hers in an ice-cold grip and he jerked his face right up to hers. “Remember!”

  “No-o-o!” Liza’s own screams woke her from her nightmare. She thrashed her way up to a sitting position. Panting hard, she was barely able to catch her breath. And though she felt the haunting chill of her cursed dreams deep in her soul, she was burning up.

  “What the hell? What…”

  She became aware of wiping her hands frantically, and then she stilled.

  On the very next breath she snatched up the pen and notepad from her bedside table, just as she had been trained to do. Write down every detail she remembered from her dream before the memories eluded her. Dead body. Cold hand.

  “Remember,” she pleaded aloud. Before the body. There were gunshots. She put pen to paper. “Dead man. Two shots.” And…and…

  Blank.

  “Damn it!” Liza hurled the pen and pad across the room into a darkness as lonely and pervasive as the shadows locked up inside her mind.

  A low-pitched woof and a damp nuzzle against her hand reminded her she wasn’t alone. She was home. She was safe. She flipped on the lamp beside her bed and with the light, her senses returned.

  Three sets of eyes stared at her.

  She could almost smile. Almost. “Sorry, gang.”

  The warm, wet touch on her fingers was a dog’s nose. She quickly scooped the black and tan terrier mix into her lap and hugged him, scratching his flanks as she rocked back and forth. Liza couldn’t feel a single rib on him now. “Good boy, Bruiser. Thanks for taking care of Mama. I’m sorry she scared you.”

  Not for the first time Liza wondered if the scrappy little survivor remembered that night more clearly than her own fog of a memory allowed her to. She traced the soft white stripe at the top of his head. “I wish you could tell me what we saw. Then we could make this all go away.”

  But she and her little guardian weren’t alone. The nightmare might have chilled her on the inside, but her legs were toasty warm, caught beneath a couple of quilts and the lazy sprawl of her fawn-colored greyhound, Cruiser. “So I woke you, too, huh?”

  Cruiser outweighed Bruiser by a good sixty pounds, and could easily outrun him, but a guard dog she was not. She was the cuddler, the comforter, the pretty princess who preferred to offer the warmth of her body rather than her concern. Liza reached down and stroked the dog’s sleek, muscular belly as she rolled onto her back. “I know you’re worried, too, deep down inside. I wish I could be as serene and content as you.”

  And then, of course, there was the furry monster by the door. Yukon’s dark eyes reflected the light with something like contempt at the disruption of his sleep. Despite weeks of training and all the patience she could muster, the silvery gray malamute had yet to warm up to her. No amount of coaxing, not even a treat, could lure him to join her in bed with the other dogs. He didn’t even mooch when she cooked in the kitchen. Yukon tolerated the rest of the household. He accepted the food and shelter she offered and ran or roller-bladed with her anytime she asked. She always got the feeling that he was looking for a chance to escape—to run and keep on running away from the prison he temporarily called home. No way was Yukon ever going to thank her for rescuing him from being euthanized by an owner who couldn’t handle such a big, athletic dog. No way did he care that she’d been scared, trapped in a nightmare she’d relived time and again these past six months. No way was he going to offer one bit of his strength to make her feel any better. She spotted the crumpled notepad lying just a few feet away from him against the wall. “Nothing personal, big guy,” she said. “Sorry I woke you.”

  Liza checked the clock. Four a.m. She’d worked the late shift at the vet clinic and had her applied microbiology review in another four hours. She should try to get some more sleep.
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  But she was wide awake in the middle of the night. She had no family to call, no arms to turn to for comfort. She was isolated by the very nightmare she desperately needed to share with someone who could help her complete the memories and then get them out of her head. But the KCPD and a restraining order from the D.A.’s office—to keep her identity out of the press—prevented her from talking to anyone but the police and her therapist about the gruesome crime she’d witnessed. She was alone, with no one but her three dogs for company.

  She glanced over at Yukon, who was resting his muzzle on his outstretched paws again. He understood isolation. “But you like it better than I do, big guy.”

  With sleep out of the question and class still hours away, Liza shoved Cruiser aside and kicked off the covers. “Move it, princess.”

  Knowing she’d have extra fur and body heat to keep her warm, Liza kept the house cool at night. The October chill that hung in the air shivered across her skin as her bare feet touched the wood floor beside her bed. Instead of complaining, she let the coolness rouse her even further. After a few deep breaths, she stepped into her slippers and pulled on her robe as she walked past Yukon and headed for the kitchen.

  The usual parade followed, with Bruiser right on her heels and Cruiser padding behind at a more leisurely pace. Yukon deigned to rise and come out of the bedroom, only to lie down outside the kitchen doorway. Liza brewed a pot of green tea, ignored her fatigue and pulled out her pharmacology text. She read her next assignment until the first rays of sunlight peeked through the curtains above the kitchen sink.

  It was 7 a.m. Late enough to politely make the call she’d been ready to make since the nightmare woke her.

  The male voice on the other end of the line cleared the sleep from his throat before answering. “This is Dr. Jameson.”

  Great. She’d still gotten him out of bed. Now her therapist would think she’d had some kind of breakthrough. But all she had was the same familiar nightmare she wished would go away.

  Combing her fingers through the boyish wisps of her copper-red hair, Liza apologized. “I’m sorry to wake you, Doctor. This is Liza Parrish. I think I’m…” She swallowed the hesitation. There was no thinking about this. Just say it and get on with it, already. “I want to try the hypnotherapy you suggested. I need to get the memory of that cop’s murder out of my head.”

  “CAN SHE TELL ME ANYTHING NEW or not?” The burly blond detective named Kevin Grove addressed the question across his desk to Dr. Trent Jameson rather than to her.

  The gray-haired psychologist answered for her as well. “Possibly. Though she seems to be juxtaposing her parents’ deaths with your crime scene, there were certainly a few more details in the account she shared with me this morning. She’s certain there were two gunshots now. And that the victim’s body had been arranged in a way that indicates the killer—or someone who was on the scene with the killer—cared about him.”

  “Uh-huh.” Grove frowned, looking as skeptical as Liza felt.

  Dr. Jameson continued. “I realize those are clues your forensic team can piece together as well. But I tell you, the clarity of her memory is improving. I believe we’ve reached the point where I can put her under and guide her memories toward a particular fact.”

  “You can do that? You can pick a specific memory out of her head?” Grove asked.

  “It’s a new technique I’ve been working on for several months with some success.” Jameson blew out a long sigh, as though defending his expertise was a tedious subject. “I believe questioning Liza while she’s in a suggestive state could tap into those memories she’s either blocked or forgotten.”

  “You want to hypnotize her here.” Detective Grove still wasn’t up to speed on the idea of hypnotherapy. Or else, that doubt in his tone meant he understood just fine what Dr. Jameson was proposing—he just didn’t think it was a worthwhile idea.

  Liza squirmed in her chair. Surrendering her thoughts and memories to a professional therapist was risky enough. To do it in front of an audience felt a whole lot like standing up on a firing range and letting the entire world take a potshot at her.

  But she had to try. This was about more than clearing her head of the nightmares that plagued what little sleep she did get and left her exhausted. She owed something to John Kincaid, the dead man she’d found in the warehouse. Six years ago, witnesses had come forward to help convict the thieves who’d murdered her family in a home invasion. Liza had been away at college, working on her undergraduate degree, the night her parents and pet were murdered. She hadn’t been there to fight to protect her family. Or to see anything useful she could testify to at their killers’ trial.

  But she could testify for John Kincaid. If she could remember.

  Helping another victim find justice was the only way she could help her late parents.

  Twisting her gloves in her hands, Liza distracted herself from the uneasy task that lay ahead of her by counting the dog hairs clinging to the sleeves of her blue fleece jacket.

  “The setting isn’t ideal.” Dr. Jameson gestured around the busy precinct office with an artistic swirl of his fingers. “But I’m skilled enough to perform my work anywhere I’m needed. A little privacy would be nice, though.”

  Detective Grove pushed his chair back and stood. “A little privacy sounds good. We can use one of the interview rooms.”

  Divided up into a maze of desks and cubicle walls, the detectives’ division of the Fourth Precinct building was buzzing with indecipherable conversations among uniformed and plain-clothes investigators and the technicians and support staff who worked with them. Liza felt a bit like a rat in a maze herself as she got up and followed Dr. Jameson’s fatherly figure and Grove—the bulldog-faced detective who’d interviewed her before in conjunction with the Kincaid murder case.

  Liza tucked her gloves into her pockets as they zigzagged between desks. While Dr. Jameson discussed their late morning session with the detective, she couldn’t help but compare the two men. Both were eager to tap into the secrets locked inside her brain. But while Detective Grove wasn’t concerned with how her memories got tangled up, her therapist seemed to think he could use the painful experience of her parents’ deaths to tap into her hazy memory of John Kincaid’s murder, and draw out the information that he believed was hiding in a well-protected corner of her mind.

  It felt odd to be discussed as though she were a walking, talking clinical experiment instead of a human being with ears and feelings.

  About as odd as it felt to be watched by the tall, tawny-haired hotshot standing beside a black-haired man with glasses at the farthest desk.

  Liza’s first instinct was to politely look away. The two men were obviously sharing a conversation, and the parade through the desks had probably just caught his attention for a moment. But the moment passed and she could feel him still watching her. Liza turned his way again, then nearly tripped over her own feet as she stuttered to a halt. “Impossible,” she gasped.

  Remember. An imaginary hand from her nightmare grabbed hers and she flinched.

  She was being watched by a ghost.

  Closing her eyes and shaking the imagined sensation from her fingers, she purged the foolish notion from her head. Her brain was tired and playing tricks on her. Ghosts, shmosts. They weren’t real. Taking a deep breath, her streak of self-preservation that had seen her through the most difficult times of her life kicked in, giving her the impetus to mask her shock before opening her eyes and moving on.

  Man. Ghost.

  Reality. Memory.

  She snuck another peek as the man lowered his head to resume his conversation. See? You twit. Get a grip.

  The similarities were there, yes. But that honey-brown hair wasn’t streaked with gray.

  The square jaw was whole. Not bruised and broken.

  The eyes were blue as cobalt. Piercing. Very much alive.

  Liza circled behind a carpeted cubicle wall. No way could Captain Hotshot be the same man she’d found murdered o
n that warehouse floor. She was going nuts, plain and simple. Agreeing to interrogation under hypnosis was a very bad idea. She should go home. Go back to work. Go for a run with her dogs. Anything normal. Anything physical. Anything that would stop the fear and confusion, and get her life back to its fast-paced, sleep-deprived, business-as-usual state.

  But when she cleared the wall, Liza was forced to pause again as a pair of uniformed officers escorted a young man wearing baggy pants to a desk and handcuffed him to a chair. Determined to convince her brain that she’d only imagined Kincaid’s ghost across the room, Liza used those few camouflaged seconds to study the man who’d spooked her.

  The badge hanging from a chain around his neck marked him as a police officer. Yet, unlike the detectives wearing suits and ties or the patrol officers wearing their standard blue uniforms, this man was dressed in black from neck to toe. Black turtleneck. Black gun and holster at his hip. Black pants tucked into what looked like black army boots. And a black flak vest that bore two rows of white letters—KCPD and S.W.A.T.

  Mask the spiky crop of hair with a knit cap and add stripes of eye black beneath his eyes, and she’d think he was ready to launch some kind of covert attack.

  Against her, judging by the way his gaze darted back to her the instant her path cleared and she took a step.

  That nosy son of a… Red-haired temper flamed through her veins, and Liza tilted her chin and hurried after Jameson and Grove.

  So Captain Hotshot was a tough guy. One of those S.W.A.T. cops who defused bombs and calmed riots and shot rifles at bad guys from a mile away. He probably hunted for fun—had trophies of innocent deer and hapless pheasants mounted on his walls at home.

  Tough guys didn’t scare her.

  The detective with glasses standing beside him kept talking, but the man in black continued to watch her. Suspecting her own scrutiny might have intensified his, Liza resolutely focused her gaze on the back of Jameson’s silvery head and wished the path from Grove’s desk to the interview room was straighter and shorter.