Frustrated and tired as hell, Damien walked into the ADA's office, hoping Jaci would be in a good mood and willing to go to bat for him. His luck fell short as of late but hopefully with another name to add to the ever-expanding list, she'd finally be able to pull a damn rabbit out of her hat. Everyone called Jaci a magician in the courtroom after all.
"Jaci!" He exclaimed with exaggerated enthusiasm.
Jaci, however, wasn't buying it. She'd barely glanced in his direction, taking a sip of her coffee and flipping the next page of whatever magazine she pretended to be reading. Things looked pretty slow these days, besides arraigning that psycho child killer this morning, Jaci didn't get much action.
A shame, especially since Jaci had always been particularly nice to look at with her long legs and creamy mocha colored skin, but she acted like a real she-wolf in the courtroom. She tore the defense and their witnesses to pieces faster than a Tasmanian Devil. You never wanted to get on Jaci's bad side.
"What can I do for you, Crow?" She asked absently, flipping another page.
"Oh, nothing much. Just wondering if you might be able to get me a warrant, that's all."
He piqued her interest. Glancing up, her hazel eyes flickered with mischief. "Oh?" She asked. "And what might you need a warrant for?"
Damien grimaced, as fast as he'd gotten her attention, he would likely lose it. "The Melton place."
With a sigh, Jaci dropped her head, her eyes landing back on the magazine.
"Oh, come on, Jaci, I only need a warrant, that's it. There's been another victim, you can't keep ignoring this!"
"Another victim you say?" Her tone flat, disinterested, she didn't even bother looking at him. "If this victim is anything like the last three, I'm sorry Damien, I can't help you."
Damien wanted to pound his head against a wall, he kept getting nowhere with this case, and the one thing that might help him tie Keith to it all, a warrant to search the property, seemed no closer to being signed.
"Four victims! Four!" He shouted at Jaci, who, while appearing bored, at least looked at him this time. It annoyed the hell out of him, trying to talk to her when she ignored him. "Four women, Jaci, and all four say they'd been out on a date with this Walker guy before waking up two days later with no memory of the past forty-eight hours. That can't be a coincidence!"
"I agree with you Damien, but it doesn't change the fact that I can't get you a warrant for the Melton place. We've been through this more times than I'd care to count, there are five sitting judges at the courthouse, and they all happened to be besties with Robert Melton. Is your memory so short that you don't remember what happened the first time I tried this?"
Damien grumbled, no, he had a perfectly good memory. It simply pissed him off that women continued to be attacked and he'd been helpless to stop it, especially considering Keith Walker remained virtually untouchable barring some major piece of evidence linking him to one of the women.
At first glance, it looked like your typical date rape case, but the deeper he dug, the weirder things got.
Because they didn't have any evidence. They dusted each woman's house for fingerprints, but never found Keith's among them. They found no DNA, no fluids, no hairs, no fibers, hell, even without getting the test results back for the last two rape kits, preliminary tests showed no signs of sexual assault at all. Virtually nothing to go on!
No drugs or alcohol in their systems, though, to be fair, forty-eight hours provided more than enough time for whatever, if anything, in their systems to disappear, but it didn't make it any less strange. These women all reported two days of lost time after going on a date with Keith. Two days where they remembered nothing before waking up in their own beds, in their own clothes.
And weirder still had to be how none of the women remembered eating, drinking or having gone to the bathroom at any point while still managing not to relieve themselves or defecate in their beds. It ultimately suggested they'd been mobile at some point, so why didn't they have any memories of it?
And of course, Keith had come up with an ironclad alibi for all of the times and days in question.
Keith insisted he met each woman in public, fairly close to where they lived, and according to his own admission, spent two to three hours with all of them. He never saw them a second time or spoke to them afterward, and unfortunately for Damien, no less than three people at the ranch, each time, reportedly saw him there throughout the day, during the two days following his date. He'd also, much to Damien's dismay, already offered up, even at the reluctance of Robert, his DNA for testing if they wanted it.
Of course, since they didn't have anything to match it to, he saw no point in getting a sample. It frustrated the hell out of him. Furthermore, when Jaci attempted to get him a warrant after the first attack, hoping they might find something in his home, or at the clinic, Robert Melton and his lawyer tore the ADA's office to shreds.
Robert Melton was not only the trusted golf buddy of every single justice on the bench but also became a major benefactor come election time. Even with his death, Damien wasn't foolish enough to hope a judge would be willing to suddenly turn on him.
They'd already warned Damien and Jaci to stay away from Robert Melton and Keith Walker, and without some kind of definitive proof, he'd likely never get a warrant to search the property.
Madison decided against helping Keith feed the wolves, she worked with Nicole that night instead, while pumping her about information on Keith's social life. To which Nicole proved to be quite informative.
According to Nicole, before it became apparent that Robert's health might be failing, Keith would frequently take time off, disappearing for days at a time. That all stopped after what she referred to as the 'incident,' though.
A woman they all assumed Keith had been seeing for some time, showed up at the ranch one afternoon, and while Madison didn't find that odd, she began to understand why things around the ranch were the way they are as Nicole continued with the story.
Keith apparently, never brought girls back to the ranch, being as he and Robert liked their privacy, he also made it a point not to tell the women he dated what he did for a living or where he worked. Which seemed a bit paranoid to Madison. But this one girl probably followed him for months as he'd said he'd long since broken things off with her.
She'd come to the ranch spouting nonsense about Keith being responsible for her addiction and how he abandoned her, since Madison couldn't imagine Keith as some sort of low life drug dealer, especially considering the money he made working for Robert, she, like everyone else, assumed the woman dealt with mental health issues. Nicole said her father forcefully removed her from the property and threatened to call the police if she came back.
A warning she clearly dismissed because Nicole said the girl came back that night and ended up getting attacked and mauled to death by a mixed breed they recently rescued at the time from a fighting ring. The safety measures currently in place hadn't been implemented yet, and the dog somehow got loose.
Nicole admitted, that while she suspected Keith did go out from time to time, he didn't, at least not in the last six months, stray too far away from the ranch for more than a few hours, and she doubted he did much dating anymore.
It became clear to Madison that he blamed himself for the girl getting killed.
Having learned more about Keith in one conversation with Nicole than in the fours days that she'd known him, Madison saw a clearer picture of him as a person, and perhaps now understood what he needed to tell her. Armed with that knowledge, she decided they would have a nice long chat over dinner.
Only, he didn't show up.
Pissed that her pot roast would go to waste, Madison threw some leftover food into a container and marched over to Keith's cottage, not even bothering to knock, but rather charging right in.
"Keith!" She yelled, scaring Jewel who started to bark, her puppies whining as their nursing session was interrupted. Madison bit her lip, whispering an apology to the dog in an attempt to calm her down, before going in search of Keith.
And she found him. Boy did she ever.
Keith appeared a moment later in the living room, his head wet, a towel wrapped low around his lean waist and droplets of water dripping down his chest, sliding over his chiseled abs and disappearing beneath the towel. Mouth gaping open, Madison did her best to stop herself from drooling.
There wasn't one inch of Keith's body that she could see, not covered in lean muscle. Like some sort of alabaster statue carved by a master sculptor. Other than celebrity athletes, Madison didn't think she'd ever seen a body so immaculate before. And when she finally began to gather her wits about her, Madison found herself moving towards him.
Or rather, they were moving towards each other. Her brain tried to break through the fog surrounding them, but the miscues became debilitating. Every time her mind said stop, she took another step forward. The intense look on his face called to her, pulling her in. He didn't say a word, and yet volumes were spoken between them.
Madison imagined what it would be like to run her fingers along his body, she saw herself tracing the outline of each muscle, she tasted the little drops of water on her lips as she kissed him. And she smelled the musky scent of his cologne as he engulfed her in his embrace.
Like looking through a kaleidoscope, a million different images of the two of them ran through her head, but not a single one of them made sense. His clothes, his hair, their surroundings, everything looked different.
Not until Keith forced her away from him, and their lips broke contact did Madison realize she hadn't been imagining anything. Everything she'd seen, everything she'd done, it all happened. She'd run her hands along his naked chest, she'd kissed him, and he'd kissed her back.
"You should go," Keith whispered harshly.
Madison nodded. With no idea what had come over her, she wondered if she'd been possessed, but either way, Keith was right, she needed to leave. Because all she thought about, was doing it again.
After tearing out of Keith's cottage, Madison ran home as quickly as possible, not catching her breath until she got inside, her back leaning up against the door. With no idea why this happened, or more accurately, how it happened, she became flustered by what she'd done.
She'd kissed Keith.
She'd touched Keith, and she'd kissed him, intimately. And it felt, amazing. Despite not understanding the why or the how of things, pressing her lips to Keith's seemed natural and simply beyond amazing. He gave her a sense of homecoming, a degree of familiarity even, but that didn't make any sense considering she'd never met Keith before coming to the ranch.
Hell, nothing about the past four days made any sense to her, and every time she tried to understand it, she became gripped in the throes of some mystical occurrence. That's the only way she'd been able to describe it. Supernatural.
Perhaps her father hadn't been crazy at all. Werewolves and witches, vampires and ghosts, maybe everything her father spent years researching actually existed. Why else did he have such a keen interest?
As she grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and began to wonder if insanity ran in the family, Keith walked through the front door. At least he was fully clothed this time. Madison flushed with color when he came into the kitchen, still thoroughly embarrassed by her wanton behavior. She'd never thrown herself at a man before, especially without even realizing it!
"About what happened back there..." Keith began after the silence became uncomfortable.
"I'm sorry!" Madison blurted, cutting him off. "I honestly have no idea what came over me, Keith, I'm so sorry."
Keith smiled though, shaking his head. "It's okay, Madison, really. You don't have to apologize to me. There's a perfectly good explanation for what happened."
"Is there? Is there really a good explanation as to why I attacked you with my mouth? Because I sure as hell can't come up with one."
Laughing, Keith rounded the kitchen island and sat down at the breakfast bar. Madison certainly had a way with words, he found himself really starting to like her.
"If I give you the shorthand version of what I believe happened, can you be satisfied with that for now? There's a lot I'm still not sure about, some things I need to figure out, people I need to talk to, but I think I've got a slight handle on it."
Madison leaned over on the counter, deciding to keep some distance between them should her inner slut get out again, not that she thought it would. Her mind seemed rather clear at the moment. Thank God for that.
"Alright, go ahead and tell me I'm crazy," she joked, trying to cut the tension between them.
Keith gave her a skeptical look, "You're not crazy, Madison." He assured her. Right before blowing her mind. "You're haunted."
"Excuse me, what?"
Madison swore she'd heard him wrong. Haunted? Isn't that what he said? And that was supposed to put her at ease and assure her that she wasn't crazy? Suddenly it hit her though, she'd never told Keith about the ghost in the bathroom, or the strange sense of urgency she'd noticed every time she got near that painting!
She'd chosen instead, to say nothing to Keith at all.
Laughing, Madison wondered if he read minds or something because damn it if nothing else made sense.
"What's so funny?" Keith asked, surprised by her reaction. He didn't really know what to expect when they finally had this conversation, when he confessed his concerns to her regarding the painting and her ancestry, but insane laughter didn't seem right.
"I'm not sure," Madison chortled. "For some reason, you telling me what I've already been thinking for the past few days, somehow it just seems funny to me."
And because he couldn't help himself, Keith laughed too. She might've been right, perhaps it was a little funny. After all, who ever heard of being haunted by a ghost into voyeurism?
"This might sound a little strange," Madison chimed in a few minutes later after their laughter subsided into fits and giggles. "But when we kissed earlier, it seemed almost like, like I knew you. Is that weird?"
Keith shook his head. "No. It's not strange at all. I felt it too. Kind of like, well, almost like seeing pictures from a previous life or something, one where we'd been lovers."
"And that doesn't seem weird to you?"
"Madison, there's so much I need to tell you, things that you probably won't believe, trust me, I didn't at first myself, and I'm not really what you would call, 'normal' to begin with."
"I dunno, you seem pretty normal to me, but then again, I don't really know you, do I?" Madison reasoned, coming around the counter and pulling out the seat next to him. "When were you going to tell me about Danielle?" She asked, changing tacts, she'd had enough talk about ghosts for the night, all things considered.
Keith sighed, heavily. "Okay, wow, Danielle. So Nicole told you about Danielle?"
"I asked her about your social life."
"Why were you curious about my social life?"
Madison shrugged. "After that little run-in with the cops this afternoon, and the fact that you were literally only out on your date the other night for like two hours, let's just say I found it a little interesting, and I didn't think you'd come right out and tell me the truth. So I asked Nicole, and she told me about Danielle."
"What exactly did she tell you?"
"She told me that before my father got sick, you dated often, usually leaving for days at a time and that about a year ago, one of your girlfriends stalked you, followed you home, and got attacked by a loose dog and died."
Keith grimaced, he still remembered the night all too well. Danielle had been a mistake, but of course, he didn't realize that until it was too late. She'd been unstable, to begin with, and he only made it worse. She became addicted to him, to what he did to her, unable to handle life without him. Or the fact that he'd rejected her at all.
Robert had been the one to find her.
The dog, ironically named Mercy, attacked her outside the barn, she'd probably been on her way to Keith's house at the time, and after Mercy showed her anything but what his name implied, he'd lain by her corpse, protecting her dead body fiercely.
Fearful that he would attack again after tasting human blood, Robert made the fateful decision to put him down. Nobody questioned Keith at the time, he hadn't been home anyway, but rather in New York, with Hayley. He'd needed comfort, and a release of sorts after Danielle showed up the first time, so he'd sought out Hayley, another one of his "regulars" as he called them. Though, after Robert told him what had transpired, he'd broken things off with Hayley as well.
And he decided from that point on that he would never mix business with pleasure again.
Keith remained only too grateful that Damien didn't connect the death of Danielle to him. He kept waiting for the day when he did, or when he expanded his search and found half a dozen more cases like the ones he currently invested himself in figuring out.
Keith hoped that wouldn't happen, that the women he'd 'dated' in Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland hadn't sought medical care or talked to the police, but he didn't fool himself into thinking it couldn't become a possibility. At least he took comfort in knowing Damien didn't tie those cases, if they existed, directly to him. He'd been too paranoid, so he stopped using his real name, and he usually wore a baseball cap, and contact lenses.
If only he'd continued to be so careful. Well, next time he would. He'd stop being so naive and go back to 'dating' away from home, and using an alias. With Madison here now, he'd be able to go out for longer periods of time, get back to doing things in a way that wouldn't land him in the path of the police.
"Keith?" Madison called. "Earth to Keith, where are you?"
With a shake of his head, Keith brought himself out of the past, realizing he must have spaced out on her. "Sorry? What?"
"I asked you about Danielle, and that Detective here earlier, what did you say his name is? Damien?"
"Yeah, Damien, what about him?"
Madison noticed that at the mere mention of the cop's name, Keith's mood seemed to sour. Okay, definitely some bad blood there.
"This Damien guy, is he saying you have something to do with Danielle's death?"
"I doubt it," Keith admitted, and for once, he gave her the whole truth, no evasion. "I'm not sure what Damien assumes I did, but I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with Danielle."
"Hmm," Madison mused, her thoughts running away with her. "I bet if you took away whatever leverage this Damien guy thinks he has over you, he'd probably go away."
Keith laughed, "You underestimate Damien, the guy is like a dog with a bone. Not even Robert and the threat of a lawsuit could make that man disappear. And now that Robert's gone, well, he'll eventually come after me that much harder."
"What is it that he wants from you? Like, what are you not giving him?"
"Your father liked his privacy, Madison, so it's not what I won't give him, it's what Robert didn't want to give him. I didn't have the right to do it, and Robert flat out refused. He wanted to protect me I guess."
"A search warrant? Is that what you're evasively talking about right now?" Madison demanded, "And by the way, I find that quality in you highly annoying."
Keith laughed, "Noted. And yes, Damien has been chomping at the bit trying to get a search warrant. But Robert seemed pretty chummy with every judge in the county, hell, probably every judge in the state, it would be like one of them signing a death warrant for themselves as far as their careers were concerned, nobody is stupid enough to cross Robert."
For some reason, Madison enjoyed hearing that. Knowing her father had been not only well-liked and incredibly powerful in his own right, but that he remained fiercely loyal and dead set in his convictions. That he trusted Keith so implicitly made her realize that she should too.
"Is there anything on this property that you or my father wouldn't want the police to see?" Madison asked, though she figured the answer would be no, she wanted to be sure. What she considered doing sounded crazy, and her father, God rest his soul, would probably be rolling over in his grave if he knew.
"Of course not," Keith answered without hesitation. "Why?"
Madison held up a hand, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket and asking Siri to dial the Lancaster Police Department.
"What are you doing Madison?" he asked, his voice slightly shaky.
Madison didn't respond. She waited for someone to answer on the other end. "Yes, hi," She said as a female voice came on the line. "I'm looking for a Detective Crowley. Okay, thanks, yes, I'll hold."
Keith looked at her as if she'd grown a second head, unsure of what game she was playing at, but he didn't like it.
"Hi, Detective Crowley, this is Madison Adams, we met earlier this afternoon? Yes, the Melton place. Look, this has all been one big misunderstanding, and I wanted to go ahead and give you and your department permission to search the property. Provided of course, that you leave everything the way you found it, and are as discreet as possible, I wouldn't want to upset any of the staff here."
Keith felt his stomach sink, his heart nearly giving out on him. Did she really just give them permission to search the property? Was she nuts? God, he started to wonder about her sanity, either that or she was freaking brilliant! She might be right, let them poke around a bit and perhaps they'd leave him alone. Because they would never find anything amiss.
There was nothing to find after all.
He listened as she finished up the conversation, wishing he'd been able to hear what Damien said on the other end, but she moved too far away from him, and the volume on her phone remained low enough that, while he heard Damien's voice, he could only make out every other word. Damien thanked her, and they set up a time, all and all he seemed surprised by Madison's call.
Damn, Keith wished he could be a fly on that wall, what he wouldn't give to see the expression on the bastard's face!
"Alright," Madison said with a look of pure feminine delight. "We're all set, Damien and his technicians will be here tomorrow morning, and we're going to tell everyone it's an inspection by the state."
"And you're sure this is a good idea?"
"Of course," she replied confidently. "What have we got to hide?"
More than you know, Keith said to himself. More than you know.