Darkening Skye (Under Covers Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 The Big Apple is not supposed to bite back

  Chapter 2 Meeting Katherine

  Chapter 3 Setting the trap

  Chapter 4 Walker and Woods

  Chapter 5 Names and identities

  Chapter 6 Becoming Sophia

  Chapter 7 Daddy's girl

  Chapter 8 First evening

  Chapter 9 Meeting Leo

  Chapter 10 Life with Sophia

  Chapter 11 Hungry and horny

  Chapter 12 Meeting Anna

  Chapter 13 Dinner with Leo

  Chapter 14 Poking a sleeping dragon

  Chapter 15 Daddy

  Chapter 16 Danger

  Chapter 17 Too late

  Chapter 18 Everybody knows

  Chapter 19 Killer caught

  Chapter 20 The twist

  Chapter 21 Nick of time

  Chapter 22 Next mission

  Chapter 23 Coping with reality

  Chapter 24 Into the Woods

  Chapter 25 Darkening Skye

  Chapter 26 Bittersweet

  Chapter 27 The one

  Chapter 28 - Happily Ever After

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  Contents

  Contents

  Chapter 1The Big Apple is not supposed to bite back

  Chapter 2Meeting Katherine

  Chapter 3Setting the trap

  Chapter 4Walker and Woods

  Chapter 5Names and identities

  Chapter 6Becoming Sophia

  Chapter 7Daddy's girl

  Chapter 8First evening

  Chapter 9Meeting Leo

  Chapter 10Life with Sophia

  Chapter 11Hungry and horny

  Chapter 12Meeting Anna

  Chapter 13Dinner with Leo

  Chapter 14Poking a sleeping dragon

  Chapter 15Daddy

  Chapter 16Danger

  Chapter 17Too late

  Chapter 18Everybody knows

  Chapter 19Killer caught

  Chapter 20The twist

  Chapter 21Nick of time

  Chapter 22Next mission

  Chapter 23Coping with reality

  Chapter 24Into the Woods

  Chapter 25Darkening Skye

  Chapter 26Bittersweet

  Chapter 27The one

  Chapter 28- Happily Ever After

  Chapter 1 The Big Apple is not supposed to bite back

  Nicholas

  If there was one thing all of my colleagues agreed about me was that I got killers. Most of them would mean that I caught killers, and many. My partner would mean that I understood killers, and deeply.

  My partner had been by my side for a decade and I trusted her to a degree I never imagined possible at the beginning of my career. Everyone I ever worked with before Katherine thought I was a strange and dangerous. They resented my intuition and I couldn't blame them. They didn't know exactly what about me bothered them, but being cops, they could sense something was not quite right. Katherine never asked about my parents, or my time in Army, but in time, bit by bit, case by case, she found out about my unhappy childhood, and she figured out some of the things I'd seen and done in the Service.

  Our latest case was over, and as we always did when we had time off, we went back to the Tourist Murders. In the past year, five young women had been found dead on the streets of New York. The press didn't catch on until the fourth murder, but when the fifth body was discovered, a wave panic went through the papers and rose up all the way to the Mayor's office. The Big Apple had its tourism industry to protect, and we were pressed to find a killer who hid in the 8 million people who lived in the five boroughs. Thanks to media and political pressure, a city-wide task force was nominally in charge of the manhunt, but I was the lead detective in the case and most of the pressure came crashing on our Captain's head

  Katherine and I were alone in the case room, with maps of New York hanging on the walls and photos of the victims. Next to each dead body, we pinned a selfie from their phones. We had to ignore the clamor of journalists and politicians and focus on what mattered. We went over the evidence again, discussing the ligature marks, the bite marks, all the little details of the crime scenes. We always came back to one place.

  "They look so much alike," I said.

  "And nothing else about them overlaps," Katherine said.

  I looked at the map again. Thanks to social media and GPS tracking, we were able to tell every place they had visited the days before they were abducted. Plenty of tourist spots, but not a single place all of the five girls had visited. Everything was marked with a different color, their hotel rooms where we found all their belongings, the places they visited and the spots where their bodies were found. Suddenly my perception changed and I saw the gap in the picture. It wasn't what they had in common, as what they didn't have in common. There was an area at the center of the network where nothing happened.

  "Katherine, he's avoiding this place."

  I drew a circle around a few blocks, and suddenly the whole picture made sense. It looked like a spiral centered on...

  "Gracenote," Katherine said, looking out from the computer. "It's a gated community with luxury single-family houses."

  "Let's get a list of the residents."

  There were no photos on the girls' cameras, but all five of them talked about a charming rich man who made them feel special. He was older than them but he dressed well and didn't give a creepy vibe. They had coffee or drinks and he hadn't pushed for anything else. They all talked about meeting him in different places, and none of the witnesses we talked to was able to give us a good description.

  Katherine went to the gym and instead of doing something similarly healthy, I stayed in the case room, looking over the girls' diary entries about the mystery man. I was getting an image of him in my mind, but I left it as fluid as possible.

  When she got back, we got started on the tedious task of looking through property records and lease contracts, and by the end of the day we had a complete list of the people who lived there. I liked figuring out patterns in chaos almost as much as I liked the chess game in the interrogation room when I made them reveal their deepest secrets. Empathy was a double edged blade.

  At the end of the day, we were looking at the names in our top five candidates. One of them ticked all the boxes of the killer's profile.

  Before we got the chance to present our theory to the Captain, the sixth murder happened.

  Chapter 2 Meeting Katherine

  Skye

  The long days in the Evidence dungeon of the New York Police Department started to fly by since I discovered the recorded interrogations conducted by detective Nicholas Woods. As a teenager, I was used to enjoying obscure TV shows that none of my friends ever heard of, and now I had that feeling of excited discovery all over again. Woods and Robinson were legendary for their arrest record and the staggering amount of difficult cases they closed, so I decided to make lemonade with the sour lemons of being stuck behind a desk in Evidence and a lingering pain from my gunshot wound. I didn’t have to see archiving as a curse. It was more like having at my disposal the NYPD’s equivalent of a library of rare books. So, I started reading. Well, watching.

  I was a play by the rules kind of cop, trying to offset my hippy upbringing by following every rule and regulation I ever read. Five years after graduating from Police Academy and two months after my first undercover mission, I was still the most tightly wound and rule following cop I knew. Watching Woods’ interrogatories kept me in a constant state of shock. The man followed all the rules but he did it in such outlandish m
anner he seemed insane. He switched between seeming intimidating, caring, threatening, vulgar, empathetic, weak, dominating, stupid, brilliant, careless, careful, unprofessional, rude, polite, single minded, open minded, forgetful, insightful with such ease it left me gasping. I had never seen or heard of anyone who tailored their interrogation technique so profoundly to each subject.

  The first interrogation I watched was one of their most high profile cases, a cop killer they arrested. I watched mesmerized how they got him to confess just by talking to him. On the screen there were four people sitting at a table in an empty room. Woods, Robinson, the killer and his lawyer. The recording was twenty-three minutes long and I kept staring at the screen once it faded to black. I decided to watch them chronologically so I started digging for the earliest cases I could find.

  Woods and Robinson seemed to be a few years older than me in the oldest recording I found. They looked like early thirties, so considering the date of that case, they’d be in their mid-forties now. That meant I had over ten years worth of material to get me through my dreary days.

  Sometimes I went back and reviewed earlier interrogations to compare the subtle changes in technique. The evolution was so gradual I could barely see the changes. Nicholas Woods was a superstar. If he was this crazy brilliant in his thirties, I eagerly anticipated to see how awesome he got to be in later years. There was no way I’d be disappointed because I already knew that the team’s reputation increased to mythical proportion in the present day.

  I was still in their first three "seasons" when I met Katherine Robinson at the gym. I dropped the gym bag on my foot to see her there, dressed in training gear, like she was a regular person and not half of the most kick ass team of cops ever. She caught me staring at her.

  "You're Detective Robinson," I said.

  She raised an eyebrow as she measured me up and down. She was a good five inches shorter than me, but she carried herself with such poise I was left feeling like a child.

  "I haven't seen you before," she said.

  "I transferred from LAPD. Detective Walker." I offered her my hand and she shook it briefly as if she expected me to fangirl some more.

  "Do you have a sparring partner yet?"

  My face fell a little. I didn't even have a favorite coffee place let alone a sparring partner. I tried not to sound as pathetic as I felt.

  "I mostly do cardio."

  Her eyebrow shot up again. She looked pointedly at my gym bag. When it fell on my foot it had overturned and my hand wraps were half unrolled on the floor.

  "Oh," I said and knelt to pick them up. "No, I don't have a partner."

  "Come on, spar with me," she started to wrap her hands.

  For the first time in five months, I went through the ritual of wrapping my hands for a fight. I used the time to think of a game plan. I respected her and I wanted her to like me and to keep talking to me. That was hardly going to happen if I used my height and reach advantage to defeat her to fast.

  "What do you practice?" I asked.

  "Krav Maga. You?"

  "Mixed. I started with Tai Chi, some basic wrestling, but I mostly train in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai."

  "Sounds like fun," she said.

  An hour later I was limping back to the locker room. I hadn't realized just how much the break in training and my injury limited my range of movements. I hadn't been able to use my striking properly and all my takedown attempts failed, so I didn't even get a chance to brush up my BJJ skills. She was nice enough not to try to break any of my limbs although I gave her plenty of chances.

  "You were rusty, and it didn't feel like it was just the lack of practicing."

  I shrugged, not volunteering any information if she didn't ask a question. It turned out that Katherine Robinson liked clarity and didn't like mind games.

  "If you want us to do this again, tell me what's wrong with you."

  I sighed. I did want to keep sparring with her. I'd want that even if I had anyone else to train with because she was freaking Katherine Robinson, but telling her the truth might mean she might take back her offer. There was no point in lying to her.

  "I'm recovering from a wound. My doctor sort of threatened me that if I go back to my training regimen too soon he won't clear me for active duty."

  "Then it was very stupid of you to spar today."

  Her tone was even and lacking condescension. She hadn't meant it as an insult.

  "Oh, come on," I protested. "For one thing, he's still in LA and the doctor here didn't say anything about not sparring. For another, it was you offering to spar with me. I mean come on! You're Robinson of Robinson and Woods."

  "Of Robinson and Woods?"

  I couldn't quite read her tone. Was she amused? Offended? Flattered? I looked around to make sure no one was listening and I leaned in to tell her about my new found secret hobby.

  "I've been looking over your old cases. Don't freak out, but I'm a huge fan of your work. You guys rock! I'd do anything to be around you."

  I heard how it sounded as soon as it came out and I blushed.

  "I didn't mean it to sound so creepy," I said, flustered.

  "And yet it did." The smile that played on her lips put me at ease. Sort of. "Let's get changed. I have to get back to work."

  That had been three weeks earlier. She probably didn't find me all that creepy because our sparring sessions became a regular thing and our casual acquaintance turned into a tentative friendship. She asked about my career in LA and how I dealt with my current position. I asked her about old cases and what was it like to work with Nicholas Woods.

  Chapter 3 Setting the trap

  Nicholas

  The Captain leaned back on his chair. At least he didn't look at me like I was nuts this time. To give the man his due, it only took a couple of times to be right with my wild theories to gain his confidence. He'd been my Captain for almost three years and I still had to justify my intuition to him, but it wasn't such an uphill battle any more. I went back to the map.

  "The geographical profile puts him right in the middle of this area. We looked at hundreds of people, Leonard Dvorak ticks all the boxes. He is Caucasian, middle class, in his forties, with a technical degree and a controlled gambling problem. He has an apparently normal family life after he suffered a personal tragedy. His wife died five years ago, her murder is still unsolved. The car that was seen at the scene of the second murder fits the one he drives. We have to keep our eyes on him and in that neighborhood any police surveillance would be noticed."

  He looked at my partner. "What do you think, Robinson?"

  "He's the guy, Captain," Katherine said. "We have to be on him because he's not going to stop."

  Actually, the killer was on a downward spiral. The time between the first two murders, the first two as far as we knew of anyway, was six months. Between the fifth and the sixth - less than a month. If we didn't do something about it, he was going to go on a spree. I didn't need to say that out loud. They both knew it and the only reason we weren't in the District Attorney's office was that we had no damn proof against Dvorak.

  I had the urge to pace and fidget, but that would not help my case. Captain Jackson looked at the file again, and I knew that he was weighing options. He had to put aside the pressure from the media and the calls from the Mayor and the Governor to judge our proposal objectively.

  I hated undercover work but every operation I ever touched finished with arrests and convictions so I must have done it right. Even with my pedigree in undercover work, pacing around the room wouldn't fill the Captain with confidence that I could live across the street from a murderer and keep my cool. I looked at Katherine to calm down. How she put up with my weirdness I would never know. In all the years we worked together, we got through a lot of bad situations. She was always the cool headed one, always the one to bail me out. Without me, her record would be a lot cleaner. With me, she might never make captain. I didn't like to dwell on that, so I just allowed her presence to calm me
down.

  "Ok. I'll call the DA's office to get clearance."

  "Thank you, Captain. Robinson and I are good to go."

  "Woods," he interrupted me. "You can't take Robinson. You said it yourself, he won't identify with a married couple. He's a widower who lives with his grown-up daughter. Sorry, Katherine, but you can't pass as his daughter."

  What was he talking about? Katherine didn't look a day older than her Academy photo. I opened my mouth to argue, but Katherine was faster.

  "Don't worry, Captain," she said. "I tried telling him, but sometimes he just doesn't hear me."

  Had she tried to tell me? All I remembered was her agreeing with me that we needed to move into the neighborhood.

  "I think I know someone who is a good fit," Captain Jackson said.

  He picked up the phone and dialed a number. "Dave, send Walker over here."

  Who the hell was Walker? Katherine must have sensed I was getting edgy because she stood up and came next to me.

  "I'll call you after I talk to her," the Captain said as a dismissal.

  We nodded and I followed Katherine back to our desks.

  "Am I getting that old? " I asked looking around the squad room at the familiar faces. I could name everyone there. "Who is Walker?"

  "She transferred from LA about a month ago. She's in Evidence."

  "Are you serious? Jackson wants me to go undercover with a desk jockey?"

  She shook her head with an expression I used to think meant - how are you a detective? She could pass for my daughter, I told myself. She was petite and naturally beautiful. She never wore any makeup, and her caramel hair hadn't changed color in decade I knew her. The short haircut made her look very young. In the same ten years, I had put on some twenty-five pounds, my hair was grey around the temples and the circles under my eyes were probably beyond the help of any makeup artist. So maybe she didn't look under thirty but when I looked in the mirror I saw a fifty-year old man looking back.

  "She's recovering from a gunshot, that's why she's not up here."