Remi frowned. She knew that tone. There was something bothering Ash. “What’s going on?”
She half-expected him to shrug aside her question. Whatever was troubling him couldn’t have any connection to her. Not after five years apart.
Instead, he studied her upturned face with a brooding gaze. “I’m back because I thought you’d been hurt.”
“Me?” She frowned in confusion. “Why would you think that?”
His jaw tightened, his hands curling into fists. As if he was battling the urge to reach out and touch her. “Because there’s a woman who looks just like you in the morgue.”
Remi blinked. “Why were you in the morgue?”
“Jax came to the college and told me that you were there.”
“Oh.” She was surprised by the thought of Jax upsetting Ash before he’d double-checked to see if he’d made a mistake. Even if they were no longer together, she’d once been Ash’s fiancée. Jax had to know that his brother would be devastated by the news. “It wasn’t me.”
“Thank God. For a few hours . . .” With a fluid movement, Ash was once again bent down by her chair, reaching out to brush his fingers over her hair. “I don’t want to go through that again.”
Her heart picked up speed as the warm scent of his skin teased at her nose. A renegade pang of yearning clutched at her heart.
“I’m sorry you were worried, but as you see, I’m alive and well,” she said, forcing herself to speak in a bright voice. Having Ash so close was bringing back memories she’d put a lot of effort into burying in the back of her mind. “Just a case of mistaken identity.”
His fingers smoothed over her temple and down her cheek. “Maybe not so mistaken.”
Pleasure sizzled through her at his light caress, but Remi grimly concentrated on his strange words. Later she would lie in bed with a glass of wine and recall the feel of his gentle touch. “Excuse me?”
He paused, no doubt considering his words with care. Unlike the rest of the Marcel men, Ash preferred a slow, methodical approach rather than charging rashly into a situation.
“The medical examiner found indications that the woman had recently undergone cosmetic surgery,” he finally said.
“And?”
“It was done to make her more closely resemble you.”
Remi jerked, her heart slamming painfully against her ribs. A woman had surgery to look like her? And now she was in the morgue?
No. That was insane.
She gave a sharp shake of her head. “You can’t know that.”
“No, not for sure,” he grudgingly conceded. “But there’s no doubt she had surgery.”
She shrugged. “It was probably just a coincidence. I look like a hundred other women.”
Ash made a strangled sound, his fingers cupping her chin. “Trust me, Remi. You don’t look like any other woman. You are unique. Something I’ve tried to forget.”
She studied his pale face. There was a brittle tension in his expression that warned her he hadn’t told her everything. Not yet.
She hesitated. Did she want to know? Right now, her life might be boring, but at least it was peaceful. Something she’d worked hard to achieve. Why risk having that taken away?
The questions whispered through her mind, even as she stiffened her spine. What the hell was wrong with her? She wasn’t a coward. “What’s going on, Ash?”
His thumb rubbed up and down the line of her jaw, a muscle twitching next to his eye.
“Sorry,” he said in a rough voice. “I’m still trying to recover. My nerves are a little raw.”
She held his guarded gaze. “There’s something bothering you besides the fact that this woman looked like me.”
He slowly straightened, his expression bleak. “Yeah, there’s something else.”
Anxiety feathered through her. A depressingly familiar sensation. “Tell me.”
“Her throat was slit,” he admitted, his voice so low she could barely catch the words. “And there was a crescent-shaped wound on her breast.”
Remi’s lips parted, but no air entered her lungs. Had someone wrapped steel bands around her chest? That’s what it felt like. At the same time, her brain was churning with a thousand thoughts, all of them so tangled they didn’t make any sense.
Vivid images formed and then shattered, then formed again. A memory of her standing in the police station, laughing with her father. His gruff warning to be careful and a kiss on the cheek before she was turning to walk away. The paralyzing fear when she woke in the kitchen of her parents’ house to realize she’d been heavily drugged. The groggy night spent in the hospital, Ash pacing the floor with short, angry steps.
“The Butcher,” she managed to croak.
His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. “Or a copycat,” he suggested.
She shuddered, not believing for a second that this was some copycat. Her father had told her that they specifically withheld the information that the killer left a mark on his victims. Besides, she’d always known it was just a matter of time.
She had no idea why the Butcher had disappeared from Chicago. Or exactly when he’d be back. But his return had been as inevitable as the rising sun.
Pressing a hand to her stomach, Remi battled back the urge to throw up. “Oh God.”
Ash made a choked sound. Remi didn’t know if it was pity or frustration. Probably a combination of the two.
“I didn’t want to scare you, but you need to be careful,” he said.
“I’m always careful,” she assured him. And she was. She had moved into her grandparents’ house in a nice, quiet suburb. Plus, she never left home without a can of pepper spray tucked in her purse.
“Do you have a gun?”
She gave a sharp shake of her head. “No.”
He didn’t try to press her. Remi had never hidden her dislike for guns, despite the fact that her father was a cop.
His glance lowered to his feet, as if he didn’t want to look at her when he asked his next question. “I know it’s none of my business, but do you live alone?”
Remi felt heat creep over her face at his unexpected question. Was she embarrassed to admit that she was still single? Quite likely.
“I have Buddy,” she muttered.
Ash seemed to flinch. “Buddy?”
“My dog.”
His gaze slowly lifted. “Is he big?”
Her lips curved into a wry smile. Buddy was a rescue dog she’d chosen nearly two years ago. He was a mangy mix of breeds, with a goofy smile and mismatched eyes. He was also large and powerful and fiercely protective of her.
“Big enough.”
Ash frowned, seemingly not satisfied with her answer. “It would still be safer if you moved back home for a while.”
Remi sucked in a sharp breath. She loved her mother. She truly did. But the two of them had never managed to forge a comfortable relationship. Just a few hours together and Liza Harding-Walsh would be driving her nuts.
“I’d rather get a gun,” she told him.
Regret darkened his glorious blue eyes. A regret that was etched on her own soul. “How is your mother?”
Remi released a harsh sigh. “She acts like everything is the same. She stays busy with her charities and society events.” She gave a shake of her head. Her mother’s brittle smile couldn’t disguise the shadows that lurked just below the surface. “But I suspect she is still grieving for my father.”