Mine's to Kill Read online

  Chapter Two

  Autumn realized the Special Conditions unit was casual, but at the same time she was their new superior and she had to balance being one of them with being the person over them, monitoring their work and trying to find out which one of them was betraying the unit. Instead of slipping into tennis shoes, which she wasn’t a fan of anyway unless she was working out, Autumn put on her dark blue skinny jeans, an ivory v-neck knitted sweater with a cable pattern down the front hugging her curves in all the right places. She chose to wear her low heeled brown boots with the studs on the buckle. The boots came up to her low thigh in the front and dipped down to the bed of her knee in the back. She figured they were a cross between a riding boot and a country-western look, but they worked well with almost any outfit and were perfect for dressing up the jeans she wore. She figured the outfit made her professional looking enough to be the boss, but not so business only that she stuck out like the cliché sore thumb in the building. She couldn’t be “one of the guys,” but she didn’t have to be the boss that everybody hated either. She had a job to do and part of figuring out who was behind several leaks in the unit would take finesse, not brawn, which is most likely why they sent her inside.

  “They would have come out better sending somebody else,” she mumbled as she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Nobody was going to see her as a threat and she knew that worked to her advantage, but there were hundreds of other female agents in the area that would have gladly taken this assignment.

  “The Hillside Rapist has struck again,” the monotone voice coming from the television broke Autumn’s wandering thoughts. “The victim was found sodomized, castrated and bludgeoned to death. The victim’s name is being withheld until his family can be notified. One can only wonder what is taking the local authorities and the FBI so long to catch this guy.” The bleached blond reporter with crow’s feet and dead looking blue eyes reported in a matter of fact tone as if she were reading off a grocery list.

  Autumn knew the drill, blame the cops for every ill. The reality was sometimes they mucked things up, but this wasn’t a television show where things were wrapped up at the end of an hour; this was real life and real life crimes didn’t always get solved so quickly.

  “I understand the frustration,” her male cohort said as he looked into the camera. “Men everywhere in this city are afraid.” He appeared younger with black hair and deep brown eyes. Only a smidge of gray in his sideburns hinted at an over thirty age.

  Autumn snorted. “Now you know how women feel every day of their life.” She understood their fear, but there was still this part of her that was amazed that men seemed to care more about the story now that men were the victims. So far, twelve men had been raped and murdered, no women.

  “I mean he’s even leaving notes.”

  “Are you sure it’s a he?” Autumn found herself talking to the male anchor on the television as if he could answer her.

  “Your mission’s to save lives, mine’s to kill. That’s what he leaves written every time. Why can’t these cops find him?”

  “I don’t know, Dan,” the bleached blond sitting next to him said.

  Autumn shook her head. “The notes are typed,” she said. She knew they were typed because some idiot in the police department let that information slip to a reporter when the investigators had wanted to keep that part quiet. There always needed to be some detail left out otherwise every crazy person in the area could start claiming ownership of the crime and they would have enough detail to be credible if police told every detail of their investigation. She didn’t even want to imagine the mess the investigators would have to do if ten people showed up on Prime Time for their fifteen minutes of fame. They would have to take them in, question, investigate, and while they were doing that the real killer would still be out there.

  “Well let’s just hope somebody can do something soon,” Dan said. “Men don’t deserve this.”

  “Oh, and women do?” Autumn snorted again. “There wasn’t any victim blaming simply because it’s a man. Had it been a woman they would be all over the victim blaming talking about why she was where she was or wearing what she was wearing.” Autumn shook her head. “Nobody deserves it ever,” she snapped out her words. “Male or female doesn’t matter because nobody deserves to be raped or murdered…” She shook her head at herself for ranting to an empty room as if she were going to prove a point and it would soon agree with her.

  She turned the television off, grabbed her black wool hip length coat and put it on before grabbing her identification and shoving it in an inside pocket that she could zip before buttoning the coat. She was always one for safety. Walking down the street with her identification in her back pocket would be a pickpocket’s heaven. When she saw this coat in a local boutique she knew exactly what she could do with it. The sales clerk had said she could put her lipstick and blush in there, but Autumn was more interested in using the inside zip pocket to store her wallet and ID. She wasn’t the makeup kind of woman anyway and even if she were she would still care more about her identification than a tube of lipstick. With keys in hand she locked the front door and went for her little black VW Bug. The city had put down salt on the street already so she knew there shouldn’t be any ice on the roads, and the light dusting of snow they had received wasn’t enough to coat much more than a few stems of grass so she wasn’t worried about weather delayed travel time. Still, she left early because being fashionably late on her first day in a new position wasn’t in her game plan.

  From the time she walked into the bland as death office she could feel the hostility as if it were embed in the gray windowless walls with the overhead track lighting. At least the lighting was nice, a bit more warming, but not exactly her ideal office setting either. Coming from the Homeland Security special team where the office was basic, but at least it had small five by five windows about an inch from the ceiling, this place felt like a morgue.

  On top of the bland décor were the attitudes coming off the current inhabitants. She knew this was change and change was not always welcome, but she also knew they—most of them anyway—were professionals. They would work through whatever bug they had up their butt, but that didn’t mean they would give her a warm welcoming.

  She looked at the desk setup and all the equipment. At least the equipment was state of the art, and the chairs looked comfortable. She had already seen the second office, where she would be, and the lockup where all the files were, and a very nice young woman named Betsy who happened to be in charge of keeping the database secure. At least somebody had a smile on their face.

  “All right, listen up guys, this here is our new boss,” Huck pointed to her before taking a seat on one of the desks. She figured that was his way of telling her she was on her own now. Talk about warm welcomes, she thought.

  Keeping sarcasm out of her tone she simply started with the facts. “I know change isn’t easy. You don’t have to like me, but you do have to respect me, just as I will respect you. I would prefer if we kept this place like family because a strong family will watch each other’s back and that makes for smoother assignments. We all have to be able to work together. Just like you all, I will be in the field. Huck is amazing at what he does and I want you all to still feel comfortable going to him. He’s going to be working very closely with me…”

  “I am?” Huck’s eyebrow rose. She laughed.

  “You didn’t think just because they brought me from Homeland to here that it meant you would get to rest on your laurels all day did you?”

  He laughed hard and the other guys joined in. “I um…well I didn’t think I was of use with my leg and all.”

  “Trust me, you’re of use. You’re a valuable member to this family and I will not lose you.” She trusted him. There were a few in the unit she trusted, York being one of them because she knew his record and she knew the kind of man he was. She knew he wouldn’t betray his position by selling witnesses to the highest bidder. Huck actually had strong re
commendations too. While she wouldn’t tell either man what her mission was, she would give them a little breathing room. The others…not so much.

  “Huck, I’m expecting you to carry on like before, but just realize that certain things will have to come to me for approval. We have talked a little about what my bosses expect of me here,” minus the part about spying on the unit to find a traitor. “We’ll talk a bit more about what I hope you’ll continue to bring to this team. You’re doing great with assignments. I would like you to keep that up, but I want you to take on the role of primary contact.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a new, required,” she stressed the word required; “setup sent down from the higher ups. They want one man each team can contact. I want you to be that man. I think you have a great rapport with everybody and you’ll be the best man to pretty much police everybody—you’ll need to know who needs assistance, removal from a situation and placement elsewhere. We’ll talk more about it in my office later.”

  “Thanks.” She could tell he really meant that. It then occurred to her that he assumed a new person coming in to take over his spot meant somebody was pushing him out—slowly and methodically, but that wasn’t the case. She needed him to know that and it would seem once he figured out that she expected him to stay he, and the others, seemed to warm up a bit more than before.

  Her tone went from “you will respect this boss,” to just being one of the team in a higher position that needed respect, but wouldn’t beat them with the rule book to get it.

  “So, are you caught up on who is assigned where?”

  “Yes,” She smiled at York. “And I have all the new assignments. I only made two changes. York is needed elsewhere now, so York you’ll need to see me before lunch, okay?”

  “Okay,” he shuffled some papers on his desk. His dark, close-cut hair accented his striking blue eyes. He was definitely a handsome man; she could say that without hesitation. The only other set of blue eyes in the office was currently on assignment in New Mexico—Special Agent and former Navy SEAL Marcus Devonshire, Marc to the guys. She moderately trusted him, but she wouldn’t stake her life on it just yet. The man of mystery was too much of a mystery in her book. He was the only military—former military—member of the unit. From what Autumn had heard he was brought on for special skills that they thought would be an asset to protecting a witness—basically, he was lethal and they wanted lethal for the big cases. She couldn’t pull him off his assignment, but she needed York locally and then in Alaska so the only other option was to put Dustin Jackson on the case formerly assigned to York—New Jersey wasn’t ideal, but Dustin would just have to deal with it.

  The case in Alaska was set to be a big one and York was the man for the job, at least that’s what her hiring boss told her. He wouldn’t be set to leave for six more months because they needed him to serve as replacement to the current handler. Currently the witness was in Florida, but Autumn had already found out that a change of location would be given once one person left the team and that change was Alaska. That information was need to know and apparently she needed to know and so did York, but the buck stopped there. Not even Huck would be privy to the change in assignment. But maybe the real reason she was happy with keeping York home based for now was that he was the only guy who came as highly recommended, not just from a run of the mill government paper pusher, but from somebody she actually trusted. York would be the guy she would confide in—but only if it came down to that. Right now she was still going to keep her cards close to her vest.

  She had her work cut out for her, she could admit that, but she was never one to run from an assignment so she wouldn’t start now—not that she had the choice even if she wanted to hit the ground running.

  Autumn finished the morning meeting and headed to her office where she conducted more meetings before even settling in to her new surroundings. The work she put in that day was probably the hardest she had done in years—it wasn’t that she did more work than ever, it was just the situation in itself. She wasn’t the youngest person there, but she wasn’t the eldest either. She had to really put her best foot forward while not coming off as a world class witch. Half the men in this unit were older than she was. She had to let them know from the start why she deserved to be the head of the unit. She didn’t doubt her qualifications, but she was sure, if the men were trusted as a whole, any one of the older guys could have done the job. Huck was fifty and still going strong like an ox; he could have kept his position and would have proudly done it too. Kevin was slightly younger, but still capable and then there was York. York could have handled this unit. Although from what she heard York was an active duty type of guy and sitting behind a desk pushing papers wasn’t his ideal assignment. He still would have been out in the field, but not as frequently as he could be now. As it stood, she would only rarely have to take on a protection case, and even when she did have to it was understood that she wouldn’t be working it full time on her own. She would be more likely to do the local assignments with a half day there, quarter day at the office and a quarter of the day left to sleep. Somebody else would come to relieve her of her duty at the pre-set times and she would move on. York and the other guys had a tendency to be full time, live-in agents. In this special unit, however, normal was not an option and even those men accustomed with immersing themselves in the assignment had to be flexible when a change came.

  Autumn went home that night and prepared for her next day’s work before going to bed. This was going to be one tough assignment, not just the work and fitting in completely, but the part about uncovering a traitor—she wasn’t sure how she was going to do that because right now she wasn’t sure exactly who she could trust. York came with high recommendations so she wouldn’t watch him as closely as some of the others. She didn’t want to have to watch him at all because the recommendation that meant the most to her had come from somebody on the outside of the government game, but Candice had told her, “don’t trust anybody. Make them all politicians in your mind and you’ll remember to tread carefully.” She had to pay some attention to what the woman on the inside of this mess was telling her. Treading carefully didn’t make for the friendliest settings. She was used to the family feel of her old team and now, here she was, going in as the head of the family without completely trusting anybody on the team.

  “Fun,” she mumbled as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow was another day, one she needed to be well rested before attacking.

  Chapter Three

  Three Months Later

  Colt Grayson took a look at the officers trying to figure out how to communicate with him. He had been deaf since he was twenty-one so he knew by now that people just didn’t get the idea of communicating via a translator. Of course it would help if the translator was actually here by now.

  God, he wished he hadn’t gone for that run in the park. He was working on a new painting, and had been the entire day. He was stuck. He had painted the same woman far too many times. Sure she had different hair, and he had tried to give her different facial features, but in the end she always seemed the same. She had big breasts, big hips, and a bigger waist. She was voluptuous, as some would call it. He always said she was more like the Marilyn Monroe shape meets Betty Boop in the boobs department. No matter how much he tweaked a little here and a little there she always seemed the same. He needed something else, somebody else. He needed a beautiful woman to inspire him. God knows he hadn’t had one of those come around in a while. Sure, a few women wanted him for his money. The art world could be generous at time and even though he was growing tired of his work, his benefactors had not. Each piece sold. They always sold for good money too. But he didn’t want just anybody hanging on to him because of his money, but cringing behind his back because he was deaf.

  He wanted somebody who could understand him, have compassion, communicate with him, or at least try to. He wanted companionship, not sympathy. He was thirty-eight years old and while it took a
lot for him to get used to never hearing a symphony again, or the birds chirping, people laughing—all the things hearing people took for granted each day—he had grown accustomed to the silence. He had learned to embrace his silent world and to work though the things he missed. Painting had helped him with that. In his art he didn’t need to hear to create beauty. In his art, he could let the picture be his ears, his connection to the sounds around him. He knew that didn’t make sense to most people, but it was what helped him heal, and move onward. He still had his voice. He knew how to talk. He knew how to read lips, he learned that when they invented the walkman, but he rarely used his voice to speak unless he was around people who knew he could do it. He had learned to temper his tone—his mother had helped him with that before she died. He still had the occasional slip where he would start speaking far too loudly, but those slips were very few and very far in between. He wished tonight it had been one of those times when his voice had stayed silent, or at least nearly silent.