His house was just as nice.
Nicer.
Definitely warmer looking and not nearly so blatantly ostentatious.
His mouth curved as he shook his head. There was no humor in his smile, he knew. The oversize house reflected the couple who lived inside it. It all but shouted: Hey, look at me. I’m rich and you’re not.
Twenty years and nothing had changed.
He’d harbored a hope that it had. But then, he supposed that despite his vast technical background, he’d always been a dreamer. Always hoped that tomorrow would be better than today. Hoped that once they all got together, there would be apologies. That was all he’d really wanted, an apology for their treatment of him in the past. Once he heard it, he could move forward, could forgive and could attempt to forget.
But there were no apologies. Not a single one. All he saw were the same sneering, condescending looks that had haunted him all those years ago. Back then, he’d used the humiliations to fire up his determination, to do what he’d had to do to become a respected man in his field.
To open doors that hadn’t been opened before.
Ironically, the condescension he’d encountered had made him strong, made him determined to be successful and make something of himself. He wound up building the software company he now helmed. Wound up being a respected man in his field. He’d done it all in the hope that the people who had belittled him, laughed at him, shunned him would realize how wrong they’d been to treat him that way. All in the hope they would attempt to make amends.
But that dream had crashed and burned five weeks ago. Nothing had changed. If anything, it had grown more intense.
He’d told himself that they were just jealous that he had made such strides, accomplished so much while they had done nothing more than aged.
But knowing that wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
He’d have no peace until he made them pay for what they had done. That meant hitting them where they lived. That meant taking from them that which they valued the most. Their possessions and their pride.
He couldn’t go home until he had the satisfaction of knowing he’d made them pay for all the countless humiliations, large and small, he’d been forced to suffer in those four long years so long ago.
He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he allowed this last opportunity to just slip through his fingers. Those narcissistic bastards would never know what—or who—had hit them. But whether they knew or not didn’t matter. He’d know, and, in the long run, that was all that really mattered.
He’d been sitting out here since the sun had gone down. By his watch, he had another two hours to go. He wanted them asleep, too groggy to put up a fight until it was too late.
He was systematically going down the line, dealing with one jackass at a time, and he was almost finished. Just a few more pompous idiots to take down and he would be done.
Just a few more.
He glanced at his watch again and shifted in the car.
Just a few more, he silently repeated.
And that was worth waiting for.
* * *
She had always been a light sleeper. So when Kane attempted to quietly leave her bed hours later and get dressed, his effort was doomed from the start.
Kelly felt him stirring.
Opening her eyes, she saw that Kane already had managed to pull on his jeans. His shirt and shoes were in his hands and he was trying to tiptoe out of the room.
“You don’t have to go, you know.”
Turning around, he told her, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay. But I meant what I just said. You don’t have to go.”
Kelly sat up, her hair cascading down around her bare shoulders. She looked, he couldn’t help thinking as desire overtook him, like some sort of a goddess—as well as his complete undoing.
Kelly tucked the sheet around herself, but her eyes never left his.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you take me to the senior prom. And I’m not going to make an announcement to the world at large that we’re going steady. We’re both adults and we just enjoyed one another’s company. No big deal,” she told him, trying to keep her voice as light as possible because, to her, it really was a big deal.
But she intended to keep that to herself.
“Maybe it was a big deal,” he contradicted. Because she gave him so much space, he found himself wanting to decrease it.
“Maybe it was,” she agreed softly. Her eyes held his. His expression was impossible to read, but she went with her gut—and hoped ultimately she wasn’t going to regret it.
Less than a heartbeat before he leaned in to kiss her, their cell phones went off, ringing almost in harmony.
Kelly groaned. “Talk about bad timing...”
“The call—or us?” Kane asked.
The wicked look in her eyes was back. “I’ll leave that for you to figure out. Okay, okay,” she cried, addressing the last words to her phone. “I’m coming.”
It took a couple of minutes, but she managed to locate her phone beneath the pile of the clothing they’d shed much earlier. She picked it up. “Cavanaugh,” she said as she braced herself.
Kane already had found his cell phone and was talking to the person who had called him at what some might have considered an ungodly hour. But then, criminals didn’t keep regular hours.
For purposes of mental clarity, Kane knew he should have looked away from Kelly, who was on her cell talking to someone while she climbed back into bed, completely and unselfconsciously nude.
He felt his palms grow itchy, felt desire well up within him with a vengeance. He wanted her—and that was a bad sign.
Almost in self-defense, he turned away so that he actually could concentrate on what the person on the other end of the call was telling him.
Turning back around, he saw that Kelly’s call had already terminated and she was standing, dressed and ready to go. The woman was a regular whirlwind.
“That was fast,” he commented.
Her grin was almost impish, giving him a glimpse of what she must have been like as a girl. “I was one of seven and I grew up in a house with two bathrooms. Eventually, Dad had a third one put in, but because there were only two to begin with, I learned how to get ready really, really fast or risk having one of my brothers come barging in on me if I took too long.” She nodded at the cell he was still holding. “I take it that you got the same call I did.”
It seemed a safe enough assumption. “There’s been another identical home invasion.”
“Not so identical,” she contradicted as they went down the stairs and to the front door. “This time one of the home owners fought back and wound up having to be taken to the hospital.”
“Sounds like the thief is upping his game,” Kane commented.
“Or had it upped for him,” she suggested. After swiftly arming her security system, she closed the front door and hurried to Kane’s car.
“How do you mean?” Kane asked.
“Sounds like the home owner either rushed our guy, or the home owner got loose and decided to fight back. Either way, there was a physical altercation. I have a feeling that the thief might have panicked.”
“Sounds like a possibility,” Kane agreed. “With luck we’ll know more once we question the home owners.”
“If we can question them,” she qualified.
Driving to one of the main thoroughfares, Kane gave her a quizzical look. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t we be able to question them?”
“According to dispatch, when the owner fought back, the thief just started swinging, wound up shoving the owner. The guy stumbled backward, fell and hit his head on his marble coffee table. When the EMTs arrived, they found the victim unconscious and unresponsive.”
Kane’s frown deepened as he shook his head. “This is just sounding better and better,” he murmured under his breath.
Pressing down on the accelerator, he picked up speed. With little traffic at that time of night—or morning, depending on one’s point of view—they managed to make excellent time.
They arrived at the hospital within a few minutes. Because he was still unconscious when he had been brought in, the latest home invasion victim, Matthew Wallace, had been admitted to the hospital proper for extended observation.
Starting at the ER, Kane and she located the nurse who had ministered to Wallace’s wounds. “You just missed him,” the nurse told them. “They took him up to room 512. Take the tower elevators. They’ll get you there quickly.”
They followed the signs on wall. After a couple of twists and turns, Kane found the tower elevators.
“Maybe I should be dropping bread crumbs,” Kelly said.
“I’ve got a pretty decent sense of direction,” Kane told her. “I’ll get us back.”
She grinned as they got on the elevator. “Knew you were good for something,” she teased.
Kane merely smiled that half smile of his.
They were communicating, Kelly thought, pleased at the way things were going.
When the elevator doors opened again, they stepped out on the fifth floor. Wallace’s room was directly across from the nurse’s station.
The unconscious man’s wife was with him. Looking quite the worse for wear, Jill Wallace was pacing the room, wringing her hands and obviously having a very difficult time calming down her nerves. She stifled a scream when he and Kelly entered the room.
“Mrs. Wallace?” Kane asked politely.
“And if I am?” Jill Wallace’s hazel eyes darted back and forth between them as if she was afraid if she looked away, one of them might try to harm her.
“We’re with the Aurora PD. Detectives Cavanaugh,” he nodded toward Kelly, “and Durant.” They held out their respective IDs. Jill Wallace took an extra long time staring at them. “Would you mind telling us exactly what happened?”
“That—that nerd,” Mrs. Wallace uttered the word as if it was a curse, “tried to rob us. He came into our bedroom and had the nerve to wake us up. He held a gun on us and made me tie Matthew up. Then he tied my hands together really tightly.”
She pressed her lips together to keep from giving way to tears. “I was afraid he was going to—you know—assault me. But all he wanted to do was make us watch as he slashed that awful painting Matthew insisted on buying when we were in Holland.”
Something had caught Kelly’s attention right from the start. “You called the thief a nerd,” Kelly said.
Mrs. Wallace blinked, as if she couldn’t understand why that would bother the detective. “What about it?”
“Why would you do that?” Kelly asked, slowly working her way to her real question.
“Because he was,” the woman insisted angrily. “He was one then, and he’s still one now.”
Kane exchanged a pointed look with her. Could they have finally caught a break? “You recognized him?” he asked the older woman.
“Well, yes, of course I did.” She said it as if she was talking to mentally impaired people.
“How?” Kelly asked. “Was it something about his voice or the way he was standing or—”
“It was his face,” Mrs. Wallace’s tone was condescending. “His face was what gave him away.” She rolled her eyes impatiently, as if applying to a higher power for patience.
“You actually saw his face?” Kane asked.
The woman’s impatience grew. “Of course I saw his face. Aren’t you people listening? No wonder we’re at the mercy of larcenous nerds if you’re the best that—”
Kane pushed aside the flash of temper he felt over the woman’s condescending attitude toward Kelly. He needed to be perfectly clear about what the woman was telling him. “Wait. He wasn’t wearing a mask?” That didn’t make any sense, Kane thought. In all the other home invasions the thief had been dressed in black and worn a ski mask over his face. Why would the MO change now?
Mrs. Wallace sighed dramatically. She looked around as if addressing some invisible audience of onlookers. “Why can’t they let you smoke in their lousy hospital rooms?” She turned again to face both of them. “Yes, he was wearing a mask, but when Matthew got loose he pulled Howard’s mask off, exposing him.”
“Howard,” Kane repeated, waiting for the woman to give him a last name.
“Yes. Howard Anderson. What’s wrong with you? Can’t you people keep up?” she demanded impatiently.
The name the woman mentioned was familiar to Kelly only because she had gone over the high school yearbook. “Howard Anderson was one of the names I saw listed under the school yearbook staff. He went to school with you,” she said to Jill.
“Oh, please, don’t get me started.” Jill rolled her eyes again. “That loser was pathetic then and he’s just as pathetic now.”
The woman seemed to have a great deal of contempt for a man who had been clever enough to bypass a variety of different security systems and catch all his victims off guard.
“What can you tell us about Howard?” Kelly asked the woman, wanting to get a more complete picture of the man who had just become their lead suspect. “What was he like in high school?”
The woman sneered haughtily. “I told you. Pathetic. He used to follow us around like some kind of a lost puppy dog. The guys used to make him run errands and give him things to do just to see how far they could push him.” Her laugh was cruel, Kelly couldn’t help thinking.
“It was all pretty funny. Howard was so eager to please, so desperate to be accepted,” Jill Wallace said, her voice dripping with scorn. “As if he was ever going to be equal to any of us.” Jill shook her head as memories apparently came back to her. “They gave him outlandish things to do—and the jerk always did them.”
“Did this go on all through high school?” Kelly asked. Always on the side of the underdog, she felt her heart go out to Howard Anderson. He must have gone through a hellish four years.
“Yes.” And then Jill reconsidered. “Well, until Matthew and some of the other guys decided to steal Howard’s clothes while he was in the shower after gym class. They ran his clothes up a flagpole and he had no choice but to climb up there, naked.” She paused to shiver. “He had such a pathetically thin body,” she recalled with utter disdain. “And he got his clothes.”
“Where were the teachers?” Kelly demanded, sickened by what the woman was saying. Even more sickened by the fact that the woman seemed to regard the awful incident as humorous rather than utterly offensive.
Jill’s shoulders rose and fell indifferently. “I don’t know. Watching from the sidelines, probably. Howard stopped following the guys around after that. He finally learned his place. We didn’t see him until the reunion.”
“The reunion?” Kane questioned.
“Our twenty-year high school reunion,” Jill stressed haughtily, as if any idiot with even a double digit IQ would know that. “Howard had the nerve to show up and try to impress us with some stupid computer software he developed. Once a nerd, always a nerd,” she said dismissively. “Matthew shot him down pretty fast, asking when he intended to stop playing games and get a real job.”
She paused to look over toward her unconscious husband. “Howard should be put away for life for hurting Matthew the way he did.”
Kane didn’t bother to point out that the penalty was too great to fit the crime—and that Matthew apparently provoked the suspect, perhaps even reverting back to his high school big-man-on-campus persona, jeering at the man he perceived to be beneath him.
“Out of sheer curiosity, Mrs. Wallace, who took the first swing tonight?” Kelly asked.
The woman lifted her head proudly. “Why, Matthew did. The second we saw who it was. Of course, I helped,” she added quickly. “If it wasn’t for me, Matthew wouldn’t have been able to get free. I didn’t tie his wrists up tightly the way Anderson wanted me to.” She tossed her hair. “I wanted Matthew to get loose and rescue me.” She pursed her lips together in a reproving frown. “If the idiot hadn’t tripped backward and hit that thick skull of his, he would have pulverized Howard.” Her eyes were blazing now as she looked from Kane to his partner. “Are you going to go get him?” she demanded again. “Or do you get paid just to stand around?”
Kelly banked down the strong urge to strangle the woman. “We’re definitely going to look for him. You wouldn’t know where he lived, would you?” Kelly asked her.
“Why would I know something like that?” Mrs. Wallace asked haughtily. But the next moment she shrugged indifferently and said, “It’s Seattle, I think. I think I overheard Anderson saying that he only came back to Aurora for the reunion.”
“And when, exactly, did that reunion take place?” Kelly asked.
Mrs. Wallace thought for a minute. “It was almost five weeks ago. Why?” she asked. “Is that important?”
“It might be,” Kane replied in a tone that clearly stated the time for talk was over.
* * *
“Five weeks,” Kelly said later as they left the hospital. There was excitement in her voice as she reminded her partner, “That’s when the home invasions started.” Her smile could have melted a ten-foot snowdrift, its wattage was that intense. “That’s our connection.”
Kane nodded. “When Anderson saw that he was still the odd man out no matter what his accomplishments, that most likely was the trigger that set him off, and he decided to get revenge on these people who made him such a laughingstock.”
They were driving back to the precinct to do a little research before hitting the streets again. It was still dark outside and the moonlight created rainbows in the occasional oil slick on the ground.
Kelly took it all in, thinking. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for the man they were pursuing.
“I know he broke the law and all,” she began, “but to be honest, after dealing with these vapid, self-involved narcissists, I can’t blame him for what he did. As a matter of fact, I applaud him for his restraint. I would have been tempted to pound on each of them.”
“Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you?” Kane laughed. “Anderson got even with them by hitting them where it hurt. In their pockets. I agree with you that they had it coming, but, justified or not, that’s not our decision to make. We’re still going to have to bring Anderson in for questioning if nothing else.”
Kelly nodded, resigned. “I know, I know. But I don’t have to like it.”
After stopping at a red light, he looked at her for a long moment. “You know, I never suspected that you were a pushover.” What he didn’t say was that he found this side of her incredibly appealing.
Kelly frowned at his assessment. “I’m not a pushover. I just sympathize with the underdog, that’s all.” She redirected the conversation. “Mrs. Wallace said that Anderson lived in Seattle now. We could start looking for him there.”
Kane shook his head. “I doubt that he’s commuting from Seattle just to pull off these home invasions. The reunion was five weeks ago. He probably rented a hotel room when he first came out. What if when he decided to make these people pay for their horrible treatment of him, he just extended his stay? That seems like a simple way to go from where I’m sitting.”
“Sounds like a definite possibility,” Kelly agreed. This was nice, she thought. They were operating like a team rather than sparring over every little thing. She liked this approach a great deal more than the way things had previously been between them. “Why don’t I have my sister pull up Anderson’s credit cards and see if there’s been any recent activity and, if so, where. That’ll narrow down the playing field for us.”
Kane nodded as they drew closer to the precinct. “Good idea.”
Kelly inclined her head and pretended to be like some of the home invasion victims they had previously interviewed. “Yes, I know,” she said with an affected haughtiness.
“Your cleverness is only exceeded by your modesty,” Kane observed, playing along.
“I know that, too.” And then Kelly dropped the attitude. “While Valri is researching his card activity, we could try showing Anderson’s picture to our other home invasion victims, see if they remember him with the fondness that Mrs. Wallace does.”
“Looks like, with any luck, we’re finally going to be wrapping this one up,” Kane told her, allowing just a sliver of optimism to rise to the surface.
Kelly nodded. But even so, she couldn’t help wondering if by wrapping up this case, they would be wrapping up whatever it was that was going on between them, as well.
That she didn’t want happening, she realized with the suddenness of an awakening. Whatever was going on between them, she wanted it to continue, to take root and assume some sort of recognizable, permanent shape. Then they could decide whether or not they were in for the long haul.
Although, she suspected she already knew what her own answer to that would be.
* * *
It turned out to be a relatively easy matter for Valri to track down Howard Anderson’s recent credit card activity. The gaming genius—as Valri referred to Anderson—had made no effort to hide anything. It seemed, Valri told her sister, that Anderson either didn’t care if he was discovered or he was that contemptuous of the authorities’ ability to track him down.
“Looks like you were right,” Kelly told Kane. “Anderson is still staying in the same hotel suite he reserved when he attended the reunion.”
This was almost too easy, Kelly thought as she and Kane drove to the Ambassador Hotel to take Anderson into custody for questioning.
“He wants to be found,” she told Kane.
Was that it? Did the man want what he probably regarded as long overdue recognition of his mental superiority over the people who had undoubtedly made his life a living hell in high school? It had a fatalistic ring to it, she couldn’t help thinking. There had to be another answer.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Kane told her.
“I would,” Kelly countered, pushing the envelope a little further. “Anderson knows that what he did was wrong, no matter how provoked he was. Someone as smart as he is would have tried to hide his trail. Yet, he didn’t. Why not? Why didn’t he try to hide his trail?”
“If he’s as big a deal as your sister seems to think he is, then what those self-absorbed people said or did should have just rolled off Anderson’s back.”
Kelly had a different opinion on that score. “Should have,” she allowed. “But didn’t. Inside, we’re all just the same vulnerable, insecure kids we were when we were growing up.”
Something in Kelly’s voice caught his attention. Was she talking about herself, he wondered, or was she saying something entirely different?
He looked at her intently as he asked, “Speaking from experience?”
“Speaking from empathy,” Kelly corrected. And then she let the subject drop. “Which room number did they say that Anderson was in?”
“Suite 1018,” Kane answered.
* * *
They made their way to the tenth floor.
There was no response when they knocked on the hotel suite door, nor did anyone answer when Kane called out to Anderson through the door.
“We should have brought the hotel manager with us to unlock the door.” That had been an oversight on his part, Kane upbraided himself.
Turning on his heel, Kane began to head back to the elevator. But he stopped when he realized that Kelly wasn’t right beside him or even behind him. He turned around to find that she hadn’t budged from the suite’s door.
“Kelly?”
“Hang on.” Kelly tossed the words over her shoulder as she focused on the business at hand.
Kane retraced his steps back to her.
Kelly was working the lock, he realized. She had two thin metal tools in her hands, both of which were inserted into the lock.
Burglar tools? Kane wondered. There had to be another explanation.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Putting some of my unorthodox education to use,” she replied. Then she explained, “Brennan taught me this. It’s a little trick he picked up while undercover with the DEA.” And then her look of deep concentration vanished. “Ah,” she grunted triumphantly. “Voilà.”
After slowly turning the knob, she opened the door.
The exclamation “ta-da!” froze on her tongue.
It froze because the first thing she saw was Howard Anderson, hanging from a chandelier.