Melanie opened her eyes to dazzling sunlight and a shrieking telephone. Her cell was going nuts right beside her head, half hidden under the pillow.
“Hello?” she mumbled. Her brain was foggy from lack of sleep. Something terrible clawed at the edge of her consciousness, then broke over her like a wave.
Dan!
“Miss Vargas? Hello? Are you there?”
Her throat burned with tears, but she wouldn’t let herself cry. “Who’s this?” she managed, her voice barely audible.
“Peter Terrozzi from the U.S. Marshal’s Service. I’m assigned to protect you this morning. I’m standing down in the lobby, ma’am. Your doorman buzzed you several times on the intercom but got no response.”
Melanie held the cell away from her ear for a moment and looked at it. Other things were falling into place now. The e-mails from yesterday. The Butcher.
“How did you get my cell-phone number?” she asked.
“From my office, ma’am, which presumably got it from your office.”
“I need a minute, Deputy. Stay where you are, okay? I have to make a phone call.”
“Uh…okay,” he said, sounding confused.
Under present circumstances, Melanie couldn’t just let some stranger into her apartment because he claimed to be her protection detail. Mark Sonschein was the one who’d made the arrangements with the U.S. Marshal’s Service. She got out her office directory and paged him. By the time he called back, she’d made a much-needed pot of coffee, and she was standing at the kitchen counter in her nightgown, drinking some, her gun set down next to the milk carton.
“Sonschein here. Somebody page me?”
“Mark, Melanie Vargas.”
“I was just about to call you.”
“My protection detail is down in the lobby. I need to confirm his name and get a physical description before I let him in.”
“Smart move, but you’ll have to call the Marshal’s Service. They didn’t tell me who they planned to send.”
“Oh, so why were you—”
“Calling? Because I just heard from the FBI. We got a big break, and I need you to come into the office right away to follow up on it. Turns out you were on the right track, Melanie. More than anybody knew. The Bureau traced the final e-mail the Butcher sent you last night. You know, the one where he told us to pound sand, that he wasn’t falling for the ruse?”
“Yes?”
“The e-mail was sent from the office of Dr. Benedict Welch.”
Melanie grabbed her bathrobe from the bedroom and ran to answer the buzzer. She tried to put her gun into the pocket, but something was in the way. Reaching in, she pulled out a pair of lace panties. The other night, in between Dan’s birthday celebration and getting called out to the crime scene, they’d done it on Melanie’s living room couch. Somehow the panties had ended up in her bathrobe pocket. She looked down at the wispy fabric in her hand as if she was seeing an artifact from another century. Would she ever have sex with Dan again?
She shoved the panties back where she’d found them, put the gun in her other pocket, and peered through the peephole. The man she saw matched the description she’d just been given over the phone by the U.S. Marshal’s Service: short, muscular, balding. He did not match the description of the Central Park Butcher, to the extent they had one. While this should have reassured her, it didn’t. According to what David Harris had told them, the Butcher was a considerably larger man than the one who now stood outside her door.
“Deputy Terrozzi?”
“Yes, ma’am. You can call me Pete. I was starting to think I was at the wrong door.”
“No. I’m here. Can I see your shield, please?”
He held his shield up in front of the peephole. It looked official enough. She undid all three locks and opened the door. Terrozzi was no taller than Melanie and wide as he was high, with biceps and thighs thick as hams. His head was shaved, and from the pattern of the dark stubble it was plain to see this was done to camouflage encroaching baldness. His pleasant smile marked him as a nice guy who worked out a lot rather than a fearsome pit bull of a cop. If this was her protection against the psycho who’d mutilated Suzanne Shepard and shot David Harris in the back, Melanie couldn’t help worrying that he wouldn’t be equal to the task.
“Rough night?” he asked, smiling as he took in her bed head and swollen eyes.
“I was nervous. I didn’t sleep well. I don’t know whether you were briefed, but the man who threatened me is extremely dangerous.”
“Sure, but you were in good hands. The agent who just left struck me as extremely competent.”
“You met Tim Crockett outside?”
“Crockett? No. He said his name was Dan O’Reilly.”
Melanie stared at him in stunned silence.
“May I come in?” Terrozzi asked finally.
“Oh. Sure.”
Melanie held the door open. She told Terrozzi where to find the coffee, and turned away to go shower and dress.
“Uh, Miss Vargas?” he said.
“Yes?”
“What’s that in your pocket?”
She looked down. A blush started on her cheeks because she thought he was asking about the panties, but his gaze was fixed on the handle of the Beretta protruding from her bathrobe pocket.
“That’s my gun,” she said.
“Uh-uh.” He held out his hand. “Hand it over.”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you qualified with that thing?”
“I go to the range,” Melanie said indignantly.
“What, like once a month?”
She shrugged. It was less than that, actually. A lot less.
“I can’t protect you if I’m worried about you whipping out a pistol and plugging me one by mistake,” Terrozzi said.
Melanie hesitated. She believed this guy was indeed her protection detail; she just didn’t trust him to protect her. She toyed with the idea of keeping the gun and getting rid of Terrozzi instead.
“That’s not me talking,” he said, seeing her hesitation. “It’s U.S. Marshal’s Service protocol. ‘The protectee should remain unarmed unless the protectee is duly qualified and authorized to carry a firearm.’ From what my supervisor told me, which was based on what your supervisor, Mr. Sonschein, told him, you’re not authorized to carry a firearm as part of your duties. Am I right?”
The weight of all those supervisors was too much for Melanie to fight. Reluctantly, she handed Terrozzi the gun.
“But I want it back whenever you’re not with me,” she insisted.
“I’ll always be with you. From what I understand, I’m stuck to you like glue till the Butcher’s caught. We’re gonna become very good friends.”
Time to solve the damn case, Melanie thought.