Page 39 of The Agent
“You don’t want to see that,” he said. “I’ve sent it to Leland, but it will probably be another dead end.”
She wasn’t sure how she felt about him deciding what she should or shouldn’t see. “Did you delete it?”
“Not yet. That has to be your decision.” The taut angles of his face softened as he moved into persuasion mode. “Nat, it will upset you and I hate for that to happen.”
At least he understood that she had to decide. “So it’s not just a quotation?”
He shook his head. “It’s an image. One that pops up the moment you open the email. Which means he coded it to get through any photo blockers.”
“A photo?”
“A disturbing one. Let me describe it to you instead. Then you won’t have the actual picture smeared across your brain.” His voice held a note of entreaty that she’d never heard from him before.
“I know you’re trying to protect me but I think I need to see it.” She’d worked too hard to build herself back up again. She couldn’t let a man make her decisions for her, even with the best of intentions.
He put his hand on the computer just as she reached for it. She was about to snap at him when he said, “Let me prepare you first. It’s a photo of you. It looks like a professional headshot, but your hair was longer. The photo is pinned to a wall ... by knives. They’re positioned on the eyes, the mouth, and the throat. Streaks of red paint run down from the knives.”
Natalie fought the urge to cup her hands over her eyes to protect them. She noticed how Tully had described the picture in the most objective terms he could in an attempt to undercut the horror of it. She swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay. Let me see it.”
He blew out a breath and slowly rotated the computer toward her, his reluctance clear. For a moment she was tempted to let him carry the burden of the image, to keep the ugliness out of her brain, as he had advised. But she straightened her spine and shifted her gaze to the screen.
Horror sucked her breath out of her lungs. Tully was right. It was much worse to see it in high-resolution color on her computer screen. The knives were large, vicious-looking hunting implements with nasty serrations along one side of the black blades. The paint Tully had described as red was blood colored and had been gobbed onto the picture so it dripped like blood as well. Even worse, each of her eyes had been entirely cut out before the knife was plunged through it. A dripping red line was drawn across her throat beside the impaling knife.
She suddenly realized that one of her hands had drifted up to touch her throat exactly where the red line would be. She dropped it abruptly, and then her knees gave way so she had to sink into her chair.
“That is ... a definite escalation,” she finally said, her voice coming out with a quaver.
“That’s a threat,” he said. “We’re taking all the evidence to the police.”
She dragged her gaze away from the vile email to look at him. “But they can’t do anything if we don’t know who sent it.”
“We’re getting it all on official record so that when we catch this son of a bitch, he’ll be locked away forever.” His voice held an icy determination. “From now on, you do not spend one second alone. Not one single second.”
“Yes ... no. I mean, I agree.” She didn’t want to be alone with the terror that snarled through her chest and her gut and her mind.
Whatever the expression on her face was, it must have been bad, because Tully knelt in front of her chair and wrapped her hands in his warm, strong grasp. “Nat, we’ll get him. Don’t worry.” His eyes were lit with a gentle concern. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“I just—” She had to stop and clear the tightness in her throat. “I just don’t understand what I’ve done to make someone hate me that much.”
He lifted one hand to cup her cheek, his calloused fingers tender. “Sweetheart, you haven’t done anything. We’re dealing with a psychopath. He doesn’t need a reason to hate you. Somehow you happened to get in his path, so he picked you as a target.”
Tully was so big and so close and so comforting. She echoed his gesture and laid her palm against his cheek. His skin was smooth from his morning shave. She could see the crinkle of lines at the corner of each eye and the way the scar twisted a few hairs of his eyebrow. His brown hair caught flecks of gold from the sunlight coming through her window. If only she could wrap herself in him until the stalker was captured, she would feel no fear.
She leaned forward, shifting her hand to the back of his neck and finding his mouth with hers. His grip moved to her waist and he eased her off the chair so she was on her knees and crushed against him while his lips slanted across hers. Then his hands were in her hair, tilting her head so he could kiss her more deeply. All the horror that had twisted through her body transformed to a desperate yearning to meld herself with Tully, to let physical pleasure blast away the clench of panic.
She yanked open the buttons and slipped her hands under his jacket, stroking over the fine cotton of his shirt so she could feel the dense muscle underneath. When she encountered the body-warmed metal of his gun, the brutal rigidity of it shocked her out of her mindless seeking.
Leaning back, she withdrew her hands and laid them against his lapels. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Using you for comfort.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled and stroked the pad of his thumb along her jaw. “You can use me anytime, sweetheart.”
She shook her head. It was too tempting to let him carry the whole burden of her stalker. She lifted herself back onto her chair. “Okay, what do I tell the police?”
Tully searched her face, the small crease between his eyebrows evident. “You wait until I can go with you. We need to take all the evidence to them—emails, letters, mirror. I’ll have them messengered here.” He pushed up from the floor to lean his hip against her desk and glanced at his stainless steel watch. “I already called Pam, so she’ll be arriving soon. I have to get back to the city for a couple of meetings I can’t cancel, but I’ll return as soon as those are finished.”
