Tag: romance

Dante was standing on her doorstep.

This was what she wanted, right?

It was certainly what she had dreamed about last night. Actually she had dreamed that he did a whole lot more than turn up on her doorstep. Her dreams were more along the lines of clothes been thrown off, a lot of kissing, and some passionate love making.

Now that he was standing here looking at him standing there with a bouquet of read roses in his hands all she could think about was how good kissing him had been in her dreams and wondering what it would be like to do it for real.

“Sydney? You’re not saying anything, given what I know about you after the last two days its that you talk. A lot,” Dante said with a small smile.

That coaxed a smile out of her. He was right it was abnormal for her not to talk. But he’s just asked her out and as much as she wanted to say yes, she was nervous. It was one thing to want to move on it was another to have fallen for someone so quickly.

And she had fallen for him already.

“I’m really glad you came here,” she started, “I was thinking about you all night, and I am happy you’re here, but I . . . I can’t because I just can’t . . . But I want to. I really want to. Its just I’m a widow, and you’re practically a widower, and I don’t know how well things will work out. And not to mention the fact that we’re both really different. You’re a cop and you work all the time, I’m a librarian who’s idea of a fun time is curling up in my favorite rocking chair, snuggled under a blanket, reading a book. I don’t know that you’d really enjoy doing that. So its not that I don’t want to, because I do, I think I said that already, its just that I’m not sure-”

Dante-having learned that she truly did not stop talking when she was nervous until someone made her-broke off her rambling my wrapping an arm around her waist, dragging her up against him and crushing his mouth to hers.

Without even thinking she curled an arm around his neck while her other hand tangled in his hair as she returned his kiss and pressed closer.

In that kiss all of her doubts melted away. It was like Mitch’s voice was in her head telling that it was okay to move on. That he wanted her to be happy and that if Dante could make her happy then she should grab hold of that and never let it go.

“Are you crying?” Dante asked, pulling back so he could see her.

“Happy tears,” she assured him. “Want to take this inside?”

“Do you really have to ask?” he winked.

“Uh uh,” she shook her head.

Dante lifted her feet off the ground and she wrapped her legs around his waist, her lips brushing against his as he carried her into her house.

There were hard parts about moving on but there were good points too, and this was definitely a good point. It had been a long time since a man had held her and kissed her like all they could think about was ripping her clothes off and making love to her.

She sighed delightedly as Dante laid her down on the couch and stretched out on top of her. There definitely were good parts about moving on and she couldn’t wait to experience all of them.

My head is spinning.

That was Dante’s first thought.

His second was that he needed his gun.

Without moving he did a mental assessment checking to see if his weapon was still on him.

It wasn’t.

Whoever had knocked him out at the library had obviously taken his gun.

The logical conclusion was to assume that the person who had attacked him was the very same killer he’d been hunting. The man who abducted librarians and ripped them to shreds. But he had learned a long time ago that the logical thing wasn’t always what happened, and that making assumptions often led to mistakes.

So instead of assuming he knew what was going on he very carefully opened his eyes and surveyed his surroundings. He was in what appeared to be a cave, there were metal bars about five feet from where he lay, running from the ground to the roof of the cave.

He hadn’t just been knocked out he’d been abducted.

The pain from being hit over the head already forgotten, he had long ago learned how to compartmentalise pain, he jumped to his feet. He turned around and was surprised when he heard a voice speak from the shadows.

“Oh, you’re hot. I mean well not hot hot, well, no, you are very sexy, you must work out a lot. I mean, I’m sorry, this is not appropriate ‘we just met’ talk, I shouldn’t have said you were hot. Not because you aren’t, because, yeah, you are, but just … okay, Syd, stop talking now,” a voice babbled.

“You’re Sydney Carriere?” he asked, confused, trying to get a better look at the woman who was still standing partially obscured behind a large rock.

“Yes, have we met?” She finally took a step towards him. “I don’t think I know you. Not that that means we haven’t met before, I don’t always have the best memory for faces. My mom says its because I spend too much time stuck in fantasy land. Because I love books and I’m always reading them. She says if I just spent as much time in the real world as I do in book worlds then . . . . Oh, I’m rambling again. You don’t care that I love books, and you’ve probably already figured out I talk way too much. I’m always being told that I talk too much. In school on all of my report cards . . . Syd, he doesn’t care about your report cards,” she shook her head at herself as she took another tentative step closer. “I’m just going to keep talking until you stop me. And I have a bad habit of taking to myself out loud. I don’t really know why I do it, and sometimes it gets embarrassing but I can’t seem to stop-”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” he asked with a small smile despite the dire situation he was in. “You’re not going to stop talking until I interrupt.”

“Sorry,” she said with a sheepish smile. “How did you know my name?”

“I’m a cop, the one who was working this case, looking for the man who brought us both here. Do you know who he is?”

Before Sydney could reply a figure on the other side of the metal bars stepped forward. “Oh she knows who I am, just like she knows that its her own fault she’s here.”

At the sound of the voice Sydney moved closer to him, standing behind him. That she was afraid of this man was plain to see. Given what he knew about the killer she had good reason to be. But why did the killer believe that Sydney deserved to be here? He couldn’t imagine Sydney doing anything deserving of being abducted by a serial killer, he’d known her all of two minutes and he already knew she was a sweet woman, albeit a little quirky. Was he wrong about her? Or was she just another innocent victim of a vicious psychopath?

“Tell him, Syd.” The killer walked up and wrapped his hands around the bars. “Tell him why you’re here. Tell him why this is all your fault.”

“We got another one.”

“Yay, yay, yay,” Detective Dante Delamarre dry panned. This was not how he wanted to start his day.

“That makes five now,” his partner said.

“Is that why you’re here? To state the obvious?” he snapped. Why did Milla always have to be so cheerful? Why couldn’t she be like a normal cop and let the job break down her spirit piece by piece until it was only by strength of will that he didn’t end up like one of the people he hunted on a daily basis as a homicide detective.

“Nope, I’m here to help you,” Milla answered cheerfully. “You’d miss me if I wasn’t around.”

“As if,” he muttered under his breath as he stalked through the library. As his partner had so uselessly pointed out this was the fifth librarian to go missing in the last month. All had been women, although this current one was the youngest-and if her picture was anything to go by the prettiest-all had been working late and been alone, all had disappeared without a trace, all had turned up the following day horrible mauled to death. And all of the abduction scenes had been set up as though there was to be a party.

This crime scene appeared to be no different.

Which meant that at any minute now he could expect to receive a phone call saying that Sydney Carriere’s body had been discovered.

“We’ve already notified all libraries in the area not to leave staff here alone in the evenings, why do you think she was here by herself last night?” Milla asked.

“We’ll never know,” Dante said. He was under no illusion that anyone was ever going to see Sydney alive again. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, if there was a way to save her life he would do it in a heartbeat, but he was resigned to the facts, and the facts in this case were the woman would soon be dead if she wasn’t already.

“Why do you think he does this?” Milla waved her hand at the party scene before them.

“If we knew that we’d probably know who he is and why he’s killing these women.”

“How do you think he does it? Don’t they see him? Or hear him? Do you think he breaks in after everyone else leaves, or was he in here at some point during the day and hid, waiting until everyone left before sneaking out and setting this up? I don’t get how the women don’t know he’s here until he’s ready for them,” Milla said.

Dante didn’t have answers to any of those questions.

Which drove him crazy.

He had become a cop because he wanted to save people. Every person he couldn’t save was like another weight added around his neck. Too many unsaved people over too many years left him with too much weight to carry around. His job was slowly but surely killing him and yet he could never give it up. It was all he had in his life.

Milla’s phone buzzed, and she answered it while he did a slow walk around the kitchen that served as the break room for the library staff. A plate of cookies, two glasses of champagne, balloons, what was important enough about these items that he set this up at each of the crime scenes. When the first woman had gone missing they had assumed she’d had a date here and that something had gone wrong. They’d wasted over a week working that angle, and it wasn’t until the second woman went missing that they realised they were looking for a serial killer.

Serial killers were kind of his area of expertise. Usually he could figure them out, what was their motivation, what had set them on this path, what was their end game, when he got those answers it led him to the man he was looking for.

But this time?

Nothing.

He couldn’t get a read on this guy.

“Dante, that was a call about a body that could be Sydney Carriere, we should go check it out,” Milla said, coming over to him.

“Why don’t you go, I want to spend a bit more time here, try to get a read on this guy.” The library was empty, it would remain closed for the rest of the day, crime scene would be here soon, but right now he needed some time along so he could think.

“Okay, I’ll call you when I get there, let you know what I find.”

He nodded absently, his attention focused on the room. There were two glasses of champagne, and two chairs had been decorated with balloons. Was the killer recreating a date that had gone bad?

If that was the case how did it factor in with the libraries? Had the date been at a library? Had the woman he’d been on the date with been a librarian? Had his mother been a librarian and this was something to do with her? Or perhaps a sister, or an aunt, or niece, or some other relative?

Dante was so preoccupied he didn’t notice the man behind him until it was too late.

A brick connected with his skull and he dropped.