EXTENDED RECAP FOR BOOKS ONE AND TWO IN THE LILAH LOVE SERIES
SPOILER WARNING!! This page details everything that happens in MURDER NOTES and MURDER GIRL, so it's riddled with spoilers. If you haven't read books one and two, please be sure to read them prior. This page is just for a recap leading up to book three!
Murder Notes—book one
Deep in the heart of the night, there is always murder, passion, and lies, even when we don’t see it. But FBI agent Lilah Love has seen more than most. Years ago, while at her family’s home in the Hamptons, back in the days when she loved the wrong man and trusted the wrong people, she lived a nightmare she can never forget. That horrible night, some think that she saw a little more than she should have. It was a night that changed her life forever and made her abandon the man she’s never gotten over, and a future a future in New York near her family, for a one in L.A. as an FBI profiler. But now, a series of brutal murders connect to her home, forcing her to return to the Hamptons, where her father (Grant) is the mayor, her brother (Andrew) is the police chief, and her ex is now running an empire believed to be as corrupt as he is powerful.
Soon, she is certain she’s dealing with an assassin, but more and more there seems to be a connection to a very secret part of her past, and to her ex, who is still a dominant force in the Hamptons, and it seems, her life. Alphabet letters begin appearing on her car, her door, in her house, along with clues that begin to paint a picture that has her questioning everything she knows of her past and threats to that long-kept secret. She calls them her “Murder Notes” and as they continue, they become darker, more threatening, and Lilah begins to worry that “M” is for murder. Lilah must find the sender, and the serial killer, who could be one and the same, before she’s the one who ends up dead.
In book one, you meet Lilah Love, a brash and intensely dedicated FBI agent, as she is called to a scene on the Santa Monica Pier. As she gets ready to dispatch to the scene we see a quarrel between her and her bed partner, Rich Moore, whom she works with at the FBI. This is obviously an ongoing relationship, but Lilah is trying to pull the breaks once Rich yet again mentions them moving in together. It was never that serious to Lilah and she wants to put space between them now. They leave things as Lilah says he deserves more, and him saying they’ll talk about it later.
Back to the murder case that will set into motion the case that unfolds over the first two books in this series. The case on the pier is of a naked male body on the beach much like the scene Lilah and the locals found two days prior, but what is different is the tattoo on the body. It’s harkens Lilah back to her attack two years ago in the Hamptons where she grew up. And through that flashback we learn the attack was sinister and definitely had an impact on Lilah’s future. As Lilah is consorting with the locals on this new case, her boss, Director Murphy shows up and tells her of a similar case in New York and since it spans more than one state with the body count rising Murphy wants Lilah out there. This is when she tells him she’s seen that tattoo before, but refrains from divulging in what capacity. Murphy sends Lilah to the Hamptons to get a read on the situation. But as she lands, she’s called to another crime scene. A murder identical to the two in L.A. and the one in New York. From the looks of all the murders everyone assumes a serial killer, but Lilah is convinced it’s an assassin. Someone who has a hit list they’re marking off one by one on the orders from someone else. But who is calling the shots is a mystery and what Lilah has to figure out. The case in the Hamptons has her back in the web of her ex-boyfriend, Kane Mendez, in two seconds flat. It’s his rental property the body was found at, and his employee that was murdered. Of course, this doesn’t look good for Kane, but Lilah knows him and despite the murmurings of him running the local cartel that his father once ran prior to his death, Lilah knows this isn’t Kane’s doing. Of course, that doesn’t stop Kane from showing up and taunting Lilah, trying to get her back in his bed, which fails to work…this time. Lilah refuses Kane. He’s too much of a reminder of the night she was attacked, and too much of a risk to her reputation. As Lilah deals with the locals on the Hamptons case she runs into Beth Smith, the now Medical Examiner she once knew in school, and Eddie Rivera, a smart-ass cop, now detective, who was always trying to steal her father’s affection and attention growing up.
Lilah is still going through the scenarios of the murders as she pulls up to her beach house. This is where she was attacked. But of course, being Lilah she decides to face this head on. Prior to even going inside she goes out to the beach where the attack took place, reliving those horrific moments. But as Lilah regains her composure from that memory and heads back to the beach house to get to work on the cases, there’s a message waiting for her in fake blood on the side of the house: A is for the Apple a day that keeps the doctor away. But a doctor couldn’t help him, could he? I KNOW. This is from the person Lilah begins to think of as Junior and is the first of what she calls her murder notes. And now Lilah has two mysteries to solve. Who is the assassin and who else was there the night of her attack that knows her and Kane’s secret? As Lilah sets up shop in Purgatory (the name for where she gets her cases laid out in organizational order and does her best work) she makes lists on lists of who could be responsible for any and all of this. And she reminds herself of the nickname people have for her: MURDER GIRL. It’s how she’s good at what she does. She can be more in tune with a dead body than a live one. She lives and breathes the murder scenes and gets inside the perp’s head. As she’s in Purgatory, Rich and Kane both call. Rich wanting to be the one Lilah depends on, which doesn’t work for her right then and there, and Kane trying to get under Lilah’s skin where he’s always been, but also give her a solid alibi for his alibi. He was with his friends-with-benefits buddy, Samantha, which rubs Lilah the wrong way considering they were a FWB pair prior to Lilah and Kane being together years ago. And Kane signs off with a reminder that he knows Lilah’s demons and he can help ease them if she’ll let him. Which of course she won’t.
Following that little chat, none other than the Chief of Police shows up at Lilah’s door, her brother, Andrew. There’s a lot of banter about jurisdiction, their father, whom Andrew even calls so he can talk to Lilah, a press conference coming up about the murder, and it leads into Andrew telling Lilah that he’s in a relationship with Samantha Young. The Samantha Young that just happens to be Kane’s alibi for the time of the murder…
But once Lilah is alone again and back to her drawing boards, she can’t shake one thing. She’s the common denominator in all of this. The murders. The notes. The tattoos. Samantha and her brother and Kane. New York and California. But there could be a multitude of connections that just haven’t been realized yet. And with that Lilah is making lists of things she needs looked into and people she needs to be looking at. This fades into a nightmare laden sleep with Lilah remembering more of that night. With her and Kane bloodied, her sans clothing, and an eerie feeling to the memory that is still not fully realized.
As Lilah gets started with a new day, she sends off fingerprints from her house to be tested by Tic Tac, her go-to tech guy back in California at the FBI, in hopes that the prints will match someone other than those who were supposed to be near her house. In the meantime, she pays a visit to Kane at his office to grill him about his whereabouts last night once more and about Samantha and her brother. She learns that her father is running for New York Governor, and that Andrew and Samantha aren’t necessarily as squeaky clean as they’d like everyone to believe they are. And that along with the bid for Governor her father has gotten wrapped up in favors owed to a rival of the Mendez Family/Cartel, the Romanos. As Lilah leaves in a rage over things Kane is keeping from her she finds another note on her car: T is for TRUST. You TRUSTED him. F is for FOOL. That’s YOU. And since there’s a lot of suspicion surrounding Samantha right now, Lilah heads off to question her, which ultimately amounts to nothing, but more questions, and the refusal of Samantha to backup Kane’s alibi.
Lilah needs answers so she contacts Beth, the Medical Examiner, to meet her at the local diner. Though before Beth can arrive Lilah sees her ex-best friend, Alexandra, who is now the Assistant District Attorney and married to Eddie Rivera, a now Detective who has always competed for her father’s attention and been a general asshole. Alexandra’s presence throws Lilah back into a flashback of that night, Alexandra was with her at a bar prior to her attack. They see the movie star, Jensen Michaels, and even though they’re celebrating Lilah’s birthday that is the next day, Lilah convinces Alexandra to go talk with him as she’s been lusting after him for quite a while. All through this Lilah has been texting with Kane who is in New York getting on a chopper to come back to the Hamptons. And as Lilah gets up to leave it’s very evident that she’s been drugged somehow. But by who? As Lilah comes back to the present it’s divulged that after that night she cut Alexandra out of her life for good thus the ex-best friend title. Alexandra spots Lilah and they have an almost inane conversation about the potential reasons Lilah may be in town, she sticks with it’s personal, and other cursory shoptalk. As Alexandra leaves to take a phone call Beth shows up and Lilah digs in deep about the murder last night, but before they can get any further, Eddie shows up and intervenes, trying to demand Lilah back off of the case and even says he has a suspect. Kevin Woods. Who seems to have had a violent history with the victim. As Beth is leaving she confides in Lilah that Kevin Woods shouldn’t take the hit for this. She knows he’s not a killer.
Lilah asks Tic Tac for background on Woods. The locals are just trying to get him for their one case and not the rest of the murders which is already suspicious. And Eddie seems to be very adamant that Lilah leave town and not get involved. And Kane is very adamant that Lilah leave the tattoo connection alone. So who’s playing who?
Lilah calls up Lucas Davenport, her “cousin” (really her step-cousin, his father was her father’s step-brother, but he’s family all the same to her). Her endgame is to get him to help her hook up a camera system for her house. If someone vandalizes it again or leaves her another note she needs to check the feed. There’s a brief mention of her mother’s death. Her mother was with Lucas’s father in the plane that went down, and no one knows why they were together, or what may have really happened on that flight.
Once Lilah is home, and has the cameras set up, she dials Kane to ask for video proof of his alibi since Samantha didn’t corroborate his story, but it’s also an excuse to ask for footage from his office to see if she can see who left the note. Of course, Kane calls her on her falsities but still confirms he’ll get all the information over to her the next day.
Lilah in the meantime has been invited to a family dinner at her father’s house that night. As she pulls up she notices a fancy car that doesn’t belong to either her father or brother, but learns soon enough that it belongs to Ted Pocher, the billionaire CEO of the world’s fifth largest privately held conglomerate. Pocher tried to partner with Kane in their oil businesses, but Kane refused, causing bad blood between the two. Pocher is the driving force behind Lilah’s father’s political agenda.
As Lilah walks in her father’s home, she’s greeted by her father, and as she’s led to the dining room she’s accosted with her brother, Eddie and Alexandra at the table, who seem to have become regulars in her father’s house in her absence. They fight. Lilah’s pissed about their presence, Alexandra baiting her for information at the diner earlier, Eddie in general. Eddie likewise is pissed about Lilah’s potential jurisdictional claim, and Andrew claims he will “deal with Lilah” which of course does not set well with her. Lilah challenges their supposed proof of Woods’ guilt and Alexandra claims he called her and confessed in a voice mail while rambling like a crazy person. Once Lilah commandeers a promise that she will receive a copy of the “confession” she leaves her father’s house. There is no doubt in her mind, the locals, her family at the top of the list, want this case closed immediately so as not to mar her father’s record as he bids to become the next Governor of New York.
Lilah hits up Tic Tac for more information on Woods, of which he doesn’t have much other than a few flimsy connections between Woods’ clientele and the places of the murders. Lilah then updates her boss, Murphy, on the situation, they discuss how to go about claiming jurisdiction and if they have enough evidence to do so. But they need to find Woods first.
Lilah concludes that she needs any information she doesn’t already have from Kane and has him meet her and “their spot” the Cove. It was the spot they first met, and where they would always meet thereafter. When they’re there she questions him on the cartel, and he upholds that he did not follow in his father’s footsteps and take control. Kane divulges, that he doesn’t know anything else about the murder, but he’s looking into it as well, but also that there is a singular for-hire killer who kills the way the assassin has been killing. After Kane refuses to tell her because she might drive him underground she gives him forty-eight hours to get her the name of the assassin or something else she can go off of.
Of course, Kane reviewed the tapes he promised her and noticed someone slipping the note on Lilah’s car, said someone had their face covered so there is no IDing the person, and he questions her on it, to which Lilah avoids answering and leaves him with his deadline to deliver information.
As Lilah arrives home she calls Lucas to discuss the security cameras they’ve put into place, and he informs her he needs a date on Saturday night to a charity event her father and Pocher are hosting, and she agrees so she can get an inside look at what are ending up to be some key players. Junior leaves another note for Lilah on her chair: D is for Deception.
While waiting for a few key points to manifest Lilah decides to approach the New York murder, by speaking with the detective who handled the case. Said detective, Marcus Rick, is out on leave, and now Nelson Moser has the case. An ex-colleague of Lilah’s whom she shares a bitter past with. She also tries to get in touch with her ex-partner, Greg Harrison, but he’s out as well, leaving Lilah no choice but to go for a visit to track him down and see what he knows.
Arriving at the train station, Lilah is bombarded by the media, and Kane shows up as a saving grace and ends up choppering her into the city for her errands. It’s here where Kane and Lilah divulge more details of what went down that night. Lilah was drugged, and whatever she did she would have lost her badge over if Kane hadn’t helped hide the body. Though, the true events are still a little hazy there are obviously long-lasting impacts from whatever happened.
As they land in the city and Lilah touches base with Tic Tac, Kane lets her know what really happened with Marcus Rick—he was at a corner store when a robbery took place and tried to help, only to end up with a bullet in his gut and on leave. Thus Nelson took over the case and word is he’s about as dirty as a snake. Lilah calls Greg after hearing this and tells him not to look into the New York case for fear he might get caught in the crosshairs.
When Lilah meets up with Greg, he’s a drunken mess and on forced leave from the department due to an Internal Affair probe. Given that Moser is his partner now, since his old one died a few weeks ago, and he’s being setup for taking bribes there is a lot that doesn’t match up right now. But Moser is giving him extra work in private security, which Greg doesn’t like but he has to pay bills. Lilah promises to help Greg and leaves, now on the hunt for more answers about the tattoo.
She’s eventually cornered in an alleyway by an old man who tells her: “It’s a blood tattoo. It bleeds because you bleed.”
With that quote ingrained in her memory, Lilah heads home. Only to be accosted by the flashbacks of her attack in more vivid details and Kane’s presence. And the truth finally comes to light. Lilah was raped two years ago on the beach, and the minute Kane showed up to save her, she grabbed a knife and murdered her attacker, shoving the knife in him again, and again, and again. Kane then buried the body. Both of them committing the perfect crime, after a heinous one had already been exacted on Lilah. Back to the present, Kane is pushing her to talk. About the past and present. And their passion explodes into a one-off sexual encounter to which Lilah brushes him off afterward and sends Kane on his way.
When Lilah wakes the next morning she catches up with Tic Tac who found a connection between Moser and the Romano Family (the rivalry cartel to the Mendez cartel). The niece of one of the big Romano players has catered three of the last six events that Blink Security worked. Blink Security happens to be the company that Moser works for in his off hours, and the one that he got Greg hours working at as well.
With that in mind, Lilah tracks down Moser, asking him for the case file on the New York murder. After Lilah catches Murphy up on the case, he mentions an Army sniper that had the signature of the assassin. They called him Ghost. This is who Kane had to be talking about so Lilah brings it up again, even threatening to go as far as to approach Romano about it.
Afterward, Lilah searches the words the old man said to her, and comes up with a quote from a movie, Take Me to Church, that starred none other than Jensen Michaels. The movie star Alexandra hooked up with the night of Lilah’s attack. This starts churning Lilah’s wheels. Did Alexandra help set up her to be attacked?
As more pieces start falling into place Lilah gets yet another note, and with each one they become less and less effective in scaring her, this one reading: B is for body. B is for buried. And I know where. Do you? She throws this note in her backseat.
As Lilah is leaving the bagel shop after having had quite the taunting conversation with Andrew, Alexandra and Eddie, she comes out to a flat tire and another note reading: W is for warning. I don’t like to be taunted. Just then, Greg shows up, he’s been called into town to work the security for the charity event Lilah is attending this evening that her father and Pocher are hosting.
As Lilah is going through all of her case files, she finds a familiar face staring back at her on the TV as she’s watching Take Me to Church. Laney Suthers a high-end call girl/actress, who had a world-class client list the NYPD and Lilah were trying to get her to give up right before Lilah’s attack two years ago. They were close to turning her when they found she had committed suicide, though Lilah never believed it was a suicide.
Lilah is now on the hunt to see if there is a connection between any of the film executives or funding companies. Tic Tac finds a Chinese operation that could be a lead as Laney did two other movies under an alias with their backing, but nothing concrete to go on before Lilah has to attend the charity event.
As Lilah is leaving the event she sees Greg getting quite close with none other than the previously mentioned niece of one of the big Romano cartel members. And as if that weren’t enough when Kane catches up with her, insisting on escorting her out, none other than Rich shows up. Lilah, afraid of how Kane will react, turns Rich away and tells to go home.
Of course nothing can be that simple, but as promised Lilah takes a break from the intensity of the investigation, and meets with Andrew at their mother’s grave in the cemetery. And as they’re discussing the likelihood of their mother having an affair with their father’s step brother (Lucas’ father) who was also aboard the plane, though no one knows why, Andrew gets a call that there’s been a decapitation murder in Manhattan. Decapitation. The calling card marker of a Mendez murder. Someone is trying to pin this on Kane. But when Lilah gets to the gruesome scene with Andrew, there’s a little-known message waiting for her. Something no one else would see as a message. The movie Take Me to Church is sticking out of the DVD player.
Lilah is convinced Kane has nothing to do with this. But as she returns to her house, orders a pizza only to have another message taped inside, this one reading: M is for Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. on one side and: K is for Kane. Kane. Kane. Kane. Kane. on the other side, Lilah rushes off to see Kane. She needs answers and now.
But when she arrives at Kane’s house and he ushers her into the garage, imagine her surprise when she finds that old man who gave her the clue bound and gagged there… And even more surprised when Kane informs her that this old man is the Patriarch of the Romano family and cartel…
Murder Girl—book two
When we meet up again with Lilah in book two, it’s right where we left her. Gun pointed at Kane in his garage as old man Romano sits bound and gagged a few feet away. Lilah has to make a split-second decision. Does she force a division between her and Kane, or does she show a united front for his rival? She opts for the latter and they take their quarrel in another room. As Lilah lashes into Kane, he has a rebuttal for everything. He’s never claimed to be a “good guy” so she shouldn’t expect that from him now. Romano came after her. Kane will not stand for that, whether Lilah lets him in or not. She is still his woman to anyone either of them can call a threat, thus he will protect her whether she approves or not. Their arguments go from what Kane’s doing with the head of a dangerous cartel in his garage, to the beheaded crime scene, Kane’s claim of innocence in said double beheaded murder, the DVD that was waiting as a message for Lilah at the crime scene, to the tattoo. The entire reason for old man Romano’s capture in the first place was because he gave Lilah that clue in the alley about the Virgin Mary tattoo that her attacker, and one of the victims on the assassination case had. Of course, Lilah wants to dig her heels in and fight his arrogant and over-the-top alpha arguments, but before she gets the chance he pulls the trump card. Plausible deniability. A favorite of his. And before Lilah can say much else he drugs her.
Lilah awakens in her bed, with her gun by her bedside and in a haze that quickly turns to rage. A rage for varying reasons. Kane drugged her. And if her shotgun is by her bedside that means Kane was up in her office and saw all of her case notes. And the notes from Junior. The notes she had failed to tell him about yet. As Lilah becomes more alert, she sees she’s missed numerous messages from her tech guy, Tic Tac and several missed calls from her boss (Director Murphy) and her chief of police brother (Andrew). Of course, she reports to her boss first, and as Murphy answers the phone he is none too happy that his agent has been MIA for hours. Lilah confesses that someone knocked her out, but refrains from telling him it had anything to do with Kane. They move on to discuss Woods’ supposed confession and suicide which leads to a very sketchy conversation in which Lilah begins to doubt that everything is on the up and up with Murphy because she feels as if he knows more than he’s letting on. Putting that errant thought aside for a moment, Lilah presses back on Woods not being the assassin and needing to claim jurisdiction before they close the case. Murphy needs something more that connects the dots than just Woods’ confession, and if the locals can’t give him that, he plans to move in and claim jurisdiction. During this talk, Murphy pushes for Rich to stay on as Lilah’s partner on the case though she says absolutely not, she eventually gives in because she needs someone she can trust on her side and at her back. But given Rich’s feelings for her she doesn’t think it’s a good idea for him to stay, Murphy disagrees and hangs up on her after declaring Rich would stay.
Given Murphy’s actions Lilah still isn’t sold 100%, so when she follows up with Tic Tac and asks him to prove her “theory” that old man Romano is the patriarch of the Romano family, she also tells him she needs Murphy looked into. Which of course goes over swimmingly with him.
Lilah’s first order of business is to take a trip to Kane’s office. Where, upon arriving and blasting in unannounced she slaps him…twice. She tries for a third, but he finally puts an end to her tirade. Post Lilah’s hello slap, she learns that Kane and old man Romano have come to an “agreement” and he has been released. This forms into a conversation about Junior and the notes they’ve been leaving for Lilah that Kane is none too pleased with. His assertion that the notes are trying to turn Lilah against him with the added convenience of one of the assassination victims being his employee and killed on his rental property and two of Romano’s people being beheaded, a marking of a Mendez killing. Though this all falls on deaf ears as Lilah claims the notes, and leads to his doorstep aren’t what is dividing them, it’s always been her badge. And what makes it different now than two years ago is that Kane inferred last night, for the first time, that he truly does run the cartel now that his father is gone.
As their conversation steers back toward the letters left by Junior, Kane and Lilah come to the conclusion that someone, and more likely multiple someone’s, know their secret, and since the silence ended when Lilah came back into town they can assume whoever ordered her attack two years ago still wants her gone now. But Kane points out that a victim with her attacker’s same tattoo showed up in her city as somewhat of a calling card home. Kane is sure, that despite their past, Romano is not responsible for the murder in L.A. or the murder of Kane’s employee. Kane also divulges that Romano tried to meet with him and Kane refused, thus leading to the old man cornering Lilah and sharing his “anonymous tip” that he’s been sitting on for years when she showed up on Romano turf asking questions that could very well get her killed which he didn’t want pointed back at him or his family and have Kane come after them.
The bleeding Virgin Mary tattoo is said to be the blood tattoo linking together a group called the Blood Assassins. Though Kane can’t prove their existence, Lilah isn’t so quick to dismiss their involvement. The “anonymous tip” old man Romano told Lilah was the “She bleeds because you bleed” quote from the movie Take Me to Church that stars Jensen Michaels, the actor that just so happened to be getting close with her best friend (at the time) Alexandra the night of Lilah’s attack, that movie has a link to the case Lilah had been working on at the time of her attack. The Laney Suthers case. Several of Laney’s B-list films were backed by the same financier for Jensen’s movie, Ying Entertainment.
Lilah requests to speak with old man Romano. She needs to know everything about this “anonymous tip” though of course Kane refuses, until Lilah pushes his hand and threatens to track him down herself. Old man Romano claims exactly what Kane has already said: He was covering his own ass by leading Lilah to the movie and closer to who attacked her. But he claims the so-called Blood Assassins are a myth, which of course Lilah again does not buy. Lilah is less than satisfied with the dead-end conversation with Romano and so she turns back to Kane reminding him of her request for an audience with Ghost, the assassin known for killing people exactly how all her victims have been killed. All Kane can tell her is that Ghost said he would “be in touch.”
As the conversation moves from Ghost to Rich, Lilah informs Kane that Rich will be staying and Kane is to be on his best behavior, of course this doesn’t set well with Kane, but even he can acquiesce when the man will be responsible for Lilah’s safety in the field. And thus is the inner workings of Lilah’s brain, that it dawns on her why the notes from Junior reminded her of the Son of Sam notes… the notes, the tattoo, the assassinations, the movie… they ring a familiarity due to the cult-ish vibe, which Lilah uses as a working theory for now.
When Lilah leaves Kane’s offices it’s to find her brother waiting on her. Seeing as the beheadings is a marking of a Mendez kill, everyone is looking to the chief of police to find Kane guilty and when Andrew says as much to Lilah, she dismisses it. Kane isn’t stupid enough to have done this when everyone is watching and when the Romano’s were the victims. More so, Andrew takes extreme exception to Lilah having Murphy come after the Woods’ case as a falsity. But Lilah could care less about the ramifications, she knows Woods’ isn’t their guy, but all Andrew seems to be concerned about is how this will look as their father, now Mayor, is being groomed to become the next Governor of New York. To which Lilah takes an even greater exception and leaves with the incredulous-lined response of: “If someone else ends up dead, you look like you’re incompetent and the only way Dad saves himself is to fire you. So what am I doing? I’m saving you from yourself and him.”
Lilah is off to find donuts, of course, when she spots a car following her. She assumes he’s Kane’s man, but when she calls to accuse him of hiring horrible security he denies that the man is his. She tries to lose her tail she thinks back to Kane’s question regarding the possibility of Alexandra being involved in her attack somehow given her closeness with Jensen the night of Lilah’s attack. Lilah needs to see Alexandra in person and see her reaction. So, she heads over to Alexandra’s office, just bursting in yet again without an invite and taking Alexandra off guard. Lilah likes to keep people on their toes so when she sits down to talk with Alexandra she jumps from how long her and Eddie have been together, why they’re together, why Woods’ called Alexandra to make his initial confession. Of course nothing Alexandra says is of any real earth-shattering news to Lilah. Though Lilah does learn that Alexandra is helping consult on her father’s campaign, which also means getting close with Pocher. And while Alexandra didn’t cut her gaze when talking about Pocher, she did when Lilah asked about Jensen Michaels…
When Lilah leaves Alexandra, she’s off to deal with a complicated part of her present: Rich. Murphy wants him to stay, he wants to stay, but Kane (and she) want him gone. Rich isn’t objective when it comes to Kane because he’s threatened and jealous, and Kane is just straight up jealous when it comes to Rich. The two do not mix well while she’s trying to hunt down an assassin. But the meeting offers nothing more than a futile attempt by Lilah to convince Rich to leave, or at least let the vendetta against Kane go. And as they go yet another round in the same inane argument, Tic Tac calls Lilah… Well it was Tic Tac’s number and while Tic Tac is on the line it’s Director Murphy who is really calling. After having caught Tic Tac looking into his past. Murphy sets the record straight: He to be trusted and clued in at all times. He did have Tic Tac tell Lilah about his New York counterpart, James Carter, who came up in ranks with him, and who was involved in an investigation with at least three high-powered political figures who were funded by Pocher, and Carter made those investigations go away in Pocher’s favor. Murphy then reprimands Lilah about not telling him about the beheadings and Kane which coupled with Kane’s employee being one of the assassination victims and Kane’s family having a long running history of crime means the local bureau could claim jurisdiction over their cases. They can’t let the locals close the case so while Lilah goes and does her Lilah things she needs Rich to go convince Eddie and her brother that he can sway Lilah to back away from this to distract them.
She and Rich part, and Lilah is drug back to the old man’s clue that led her to the movie, Jensen and Laney. Thus it leads her to another person who has her and Laney in common. Her ex-partner, Greg Harrison. A quick interlude phone call with her brother ends in a stalemate—him wanting her to drop everything about this case and calling out her poor daughterly attitude when she grilled Alexandra who is helping their father’s campaign, while she says her hands are tied on the case until he gets Murphy the requested documents and rebutting that his call out was a low blow and that he’s being short-sighted in these matters.
Lilah finally hears back from Greg and asks to meet since it seems he’s still in East Hampton doing private security for Blink. When Lilah corners him about cozying up to the niece of one of the head Romano members and asks if he’s dirty he replies the step-niece is clean because he knows dirty, he denies it. And she throws it in his face that he’s working at Blink thanks to Nelson Moser, the dirty cop that he was partnered with prior to being suspended due to the Internal Affairs probe, which was partially set off by Moser in the first place. To which he replies, he recognizes it could be a set up but he has to pay the bills and he’s making money hand over fist which is also why he quit the force that morning, that and the IA probe just pushed him over the edge. Underpaid, underappreciated, he couldn’t fight it anymore. Lilah brings up Laney, as one of the reasons she left for L.A. and the fact that they had more unsolved cases than normal around the time she left and she felt stale and in need of a change. Greg doesn’t have much of a reply on Laney, other than the fact that the evidence said suicide, though Laney’s little black book would have opened an entire can of worms for a whole lot of powerful people. As Lilah is leaving the diner, she’s intercepted by Samantha, Kane’s ex-lover and her brother’s current girlfriend. She spouts something about getting the Strawberry pie for Andrew, who doesn’t even like strawberries, and corners Lilah saying that this thing with her and Andrew is real, a meaningful hat tip to ignore the fact that Samantha is Kane’s alibi for the night of his employee’s murder. Lending Lilah to later wonder if Samantha could be Junior or hired someone to do her dirty work possibly. Lilah brushes off the encounter and leaves, and she finds a note on her window… Junior… But no, it turns out it’s Greg writing her a note querying what was up with Samantha’s weird behavior.
Unable to shake Laney from her mind, Lilah goes on a hunt to visit Laney’s brother. But the car that was following her is still there, and since he’s not Kane’s man, she needs a diversion. So she calls up Beth, the Medical Examiner, and says she’s coming for a visit. Before arriving Andrew calls with news that the New York FBI and Detective Moser are on their way to Kane’s office to talk to him. Lilah laughs it off. They’ve tried and fail before, there’s no way they’re going to get Kane for the beheadings or the murder. But Andrew is concerned about them claiming jurisdiction. Again, Lilah dismisses his concern and calls Murphy to apprise him of the situation. He asks her assumption on what will happen with Kane and her response is they won’t be able to pin anything on him, and their circus will only cause his anger and insurance to not allow the New York division to claim jurisdiction. Murphy tells her if she’s right, then they should expect to be able to claim jurisdiction on the cases tomorrow.
Lilah heads into the Medical Examiner’s office, where she tells Beth she has to take a conference call, but promises yoga and pizza soon. She calls Tic Tac who is still a little bitter from the Murphy incident earlier and tells him she needs a list of all personnel who touched any part of all of the cases, and when she calls him back to ask him about Laney, she backtracks because she doesn’t need him connecting the dots to her attack. From there she takes three Ubers to get to Rick’s house and also makes a call to her brother in which he informs her that Rich went with the FBI to visit Kane, and while she’s about to start meddling, Rich calls her back and tells her he has everything under control, and is playing the proper role to get inside information and then disconnects the call. Upon arrival, Rick doesn’t answer the door, so Lilah does what Lilah does and breaks in, only to find Rick in the same position she found his sister in two years ago. Hanging from a bed sheet in his closet. Set up to be a suicide, but if Laney’s wasn’t a suicide as Lilah suspects, Rick’s surely isn’t either. That assumption is solidified when Lilah looks at the stack of books he supposedly used to step up on to hang himself and not only are they not askew in the slightest, but the last book in the stack is an unauthorized biography on her mother. And even more so, when Lilah is searching around she finds a Virgin Mary necklace in the coat pocket of the suit Rick wore to Laney’s funeral. This is a message plain and simple. Lilah knows the autopsy won’t show anything, so she doesn’t bother waiting while Beth examines the body back in her lab. Instead she leaves questioning the options, needing to talk to both Rich and Kane, and wondering on Junior’s silence.
Andrew still doesn’t know where Kane or Rich are, and neither does Murphy, but Murphy does find out that there’s a conference tomorrow to discuss jurisdiction which is what this façade meeting was all about. Rich shows up at the police station to meet with Lilah and Andrew and confirms their thoughts. The FBI showing up at Kane’s office was just laying the groundwork to pin the murder and beheadings on him and claim jurisdiction. When Rich says they should let them take it and take Kane down, Lilah leaves, having no time for this crap once again.
At home, Lilah orders pizza and asks for the same delivery guy as the night before to find out if he knows anything about how the note wound up in her pizza box, of course when the guy shows up he has no clue what she’s talking about, but Lilah sees his passenger door is open so she assumes he made a delivery prior to hers and when he was delivering it Junior snuck in the car with the note. As if Lilah had been through the ringer that day, Rich then shows up at her doorstep. Wanting to discuss everything… and of course pushing for more as Rich does. But he does shed some interesting light that he didn’t want to divulge in front of her brother: The New York agents had a long dinner with Pocher, which would obviously lend itself to Pocher trying to clean up this mess so her father doesn’t face the backlash as he winds up to launch his campaign for Governor. Rich pushes to stay longer, and Lilah declines, as he’s leaving he tells her he’ll be the one to catch when she falls when she realizes the truth about Kane. As she turns around after shutting the door, Kane is there.
Their conversation spans everything: Her notes, if she’s heard from Junior again, Junior possibly taunting her only to eventually kill her. Kane of course doesn’t like the sounds of the latter, of Junior and the assassin possibly being the same person and much like the assassin humiliated the victims by making them disrobe, this notes game could be their way of humiliating Lilah and she may be next on the list. Kane tells her she should consult for the FBI. She could still do what she wants and be with him. She refuses. Of course. They talk through Rick Suthers suicide/murder. He asks who knew about her going to Suthers’ and she said no one, except for Beth knowing she was in Long Island, and Greg, possibly, because she did bring up Laney. When Kane pounces on the mention of Greg, Lilah dismisses it, but Kane reminds her that everyone has a price. When she asks what his price is, he simply says: You. Causing Lilah to sink back into the feeling that she caused Laney and Rick’s deaths, and prompting her to tell Kane: “I don’t want to be a weapon that can be used against you.” To which he replies as if he knows her inner thoughts that she is not responsible for Rick’s murder. And with a few more well-placed words that send Lilah’s mind spinning between him, Rich, and the body count rising, he leaves.
As Lilah settles into Purgatory to make sense of this mess, she dozes and has a memory of meeting Kane for the first time at The Cove after her mother had died. The end of the memory jars her. There is always a deeper meaning, intended or unintended. This causes her to go on a deep search of her mother’s IMDB profile, the financier of Laney’s movie, Take Me to Church, also starring Jensen Michaels, also funded two of her mother’s movies. Prompting Lilah to tell Kane she might need him to bury another body before this is all over.
Lilah is convinced her mother was murdered. She forces herself into her Otherworld, and digs in deep again in Purgatory. Are Junior and the assassin the same person? Was the murder in her district meant to lure her back home or was she just a bonus by-product that whoever is after her is now taking advantage of to try to take her out again or see if she’s still going to be a problem? After all, she was getting too close to the Laney case, which she assumes is why she was attacked in the first place, she left and was no longer a problem, so if she gets too close again will they come after her and end her for good?
After Lilah shares her findings with Kane, she calls on Rich. When they meet she convinces him to return to L.A. It’s not simple, but she tells him her family may be deeply entrenched in this, and she needs him to go look for one of the actresses that worked on a few of the financier’s other projects. Of course, he doesn’t go quietly. Voicing that he doesn’t like this, but will do it for her, and that Kane is still dangerous and she should stay away from him. But Lilah finds contentment in his agreeing to leave. She doesn’t need the pressure of being good.
Lilah stops by her father’s house, but before going in gets a call from Murphy. They’re claiming jurisdiction…today. Lilah needs more time, but Murphy doesn’t allow it. She then enters her father’s house and goes through his files and steals a bottle of forty-year scotch. She doesn’t have time to meander through each file, because his little chippy of a house manager is hovering and whining, but she does take quite a few pictures in order to go through them later. As she moves to leave, Pocher shows up. He throws out jabs in regards to Kane and her mother, and questions her presence there. She brushes him off and steals the forty-year as she breezes out the door, claiming her father owed it to her for putting up with Pocher.
Lilah then proceeds to Lucas’ house, her cousin for all intents and purposes. She needs him to hack. Something that he is incredibly skilled at, but also got him in a terrible situation years ago that Lilah had to save him from. Hacking is his drug of choice, and he’s a recovering addict. So for Lilah to ask this of him is quite a big deal. After some coaxing and the offer of her father’s forty-year scotch he agrees. While on their way to his hacking room, they discuss their parents. His father (her father’s step-brother) was on the same small plane with her mother when it crashed. No one knew why they were together. And while Lilah and Andrew spoke once about the possibility of them having an affair, Lucas confirms it without a shadow of a doubt. They had been having an affair for at least a year, but most likely longer. Lilah’s mind starts reeling. If her mother was murdered, as she now suspects, the spouse is the first one looked at when cheating is involved… and that means her father. And while she doesn’t believe it could be her father, Pocher’s comments about her mother rush back to her while she is sure her father may not have done the murdering, she’s not so sure that Pocher didn’t have anything to do with it.
Back to the hacking, Lilah needs a few things from Lucas: Case notes for each murder, inclusive of everything he can get his hands on, the purchase history of her mother’s book at the B&N in Long Island, and the security feed from the past twenty-four hours for the same store. Then her brother texts her, and asks if she knew about the lawsuit Kane filed against the NYPD and the NYC Bureau, but of course isn’t satisfied by her simple answer of “yes,” but she’s not in the mood to be pushed and has other priorities so she disconnects and gets back to work looking at the images of her father’s files that she took. Lucas delivers on the camera feed. And she finds Rick’s killer, the assassin. But now that Lucas is wrapped up in this, she calls Kane and has him put a man on Lucas to ensure he’s protected. Kane then informs her that Ying Entertainment, the financier of the movies she’s looking into, is tied back to Wilkens Capital, a hedge fund group in NYC with deep pockets and even deeper corruption tied to it. And Lucas is on their client list, which of course Kane jumps on, but Lilah dismisses as Lucas is the most well-known investment banker in the Hamptons. Lilah plans to ask Lucas about the hedge fund’s connection with Ying Entertainment, but Kane wants her to hold off until he can do more digging, and see if Pocher is directly related to them in some way as well.
As Lucas continues to hack for the case files she needs, Lilah calls the list of numbers she found on one of her father’s files. One of the numbers is Sue Becker, a Senator’s daughter, and then the next call floors her. The person who picks up is Greg. Lilah is furious, wanting to know why a number she didn’t even know Greg had is in her father’s files. He claims it’s his work number for Blink now and her father asked him about possibly setting up private security for a political fundraiser. Greg has just left for the book tour that he was contracted to help with security for and asks Lilah if she’ll be there when he gets back, circumventing that question because she doesn’t fully trust him she tells him to call her when he’s back and hangs up.
Lilah leaves Lucas to head to the police station at her brother’s request, though what she has to say is far from his liking. She’s claiming jurisdiction over the cases. This fuels the fire for Eddie, who is also there, and he rages at her, and when she refuses to back down she simply walks away, he comes after her again. Clearly emoting that he’s scared of something that this will lead to, but Lilah throws the gauntlet down at her brother too. Is he going to try to force her hand as well or is he going to uphold his office?
Lilah goes to Kane’s rental house where the Hamptons murder took place, she needs to know if she missed anything. And sure enough on a lamp there’s a Virgin Mary necklace dangling from it. Just as she discovers this, her brother calls demanding that their father needs to see her immediately. At their mother’s grave.
As soon as Lilah arrives her father speaks about her mother, how she supported him, and his ambitions and how she would tell Lilah to do the same. He says this is bigger than her job and a few murders. Lilah doubles down on the assassinations and lives taken, unable to comprehend what her father is saying. He says there’s a bigger picture. The Deep State, The Society. They rule the world. A massive conglomerate governmental power. He’s part of their inner circle, but refuses to expose any of the leaders because you do not expose them and live to tell about it. Andrew knows enough about it to not cross them, but is not part of The Society. Her mother knew about it, as they are deeply rooted in Hollywood. Lilah confesses they had her attacked, raped. Her father does not outwardly emote anything except the barest of flickers. And then says she can’t know for sure it was them and even if it was, rape doesn’t kill. Aghast, Lilah throws her mother’s supposed murder in her father’s face, to which he denies, and tells her to go back to L.A. and replace his forty-year, and then leaves. As Lilah turns to leave she sees the assassin across the road and he waits for her to almost catch up to him before he gets in his truck and leaves.
Lilah goes to Kane’s house. Right now, he’s her only safe haven in this storm, but she also demands to know if he knew about The Society, about all of it. He knew about them, and assumed their role in her attack, but hadn’t traced it back to them successfully yet. And even if he had, he wouldn’t have let her go after them. He’s not even strong enough to take them down. But when she tells him what her father said to her, he breaks down both of their defenses. And after a heated, passionate sexual encounter, they hash everything out.
Pocher is part of The Society. They’ve tried to recruit Kane, which he has declined. And he tells Lilah he would have told her when she trusted him enough again to listen and not get killed. How Kane explains it is that the Romano’s have been in bed with The Society, but when they started threatening to take over their operations the nephew of old man Romano went head to head with one of the Blood Assassins, the assassin was cornered and killed himself. Later the nephew was found dead. Shortly after that, the tip about the tattoo and movie came to old man Romano and he knew it was sure to be a setup for Kane to rage war on the Romano’s if anything happened to Lilah which is why old man Romano went after Lilah to tell her about it. The Blood Assassins are the assassins of The Society.
Kane gets a call from Ghost, the renowned assassin, to meet on the terms that Lilah not arrest him or kill him. Lilah begrudgingly agrees to the terms this time.
As they’re getting ready to go meet Ghost, Kane makes it clear to Lilah that your enemy’s enemies are your friends and he won’t apologize for that. He and Ghost have a mutual respect for one another, part of that being their mutual dislike of The Society. Kane also tells Lilah if she’d just stop judging him it’d be a heck of a lot easier on them both, she replies with the statement that her badge judges them. To which Kane’s only reply is that she can ditch the badge anytime, but she shouldn’t wait too long because even though he’ll be here The Society will too.
They’re dressing and arming themselves when Kane hands her a knife and makes a quip about being confident that she knows how to use it, a hat tip to her killing her attacker. But when Lilah doesn’t react as expected the jab, Kane tells her it’s okay to have enjoyed killing him. He deserved it. And that he himself has enjoyed killing someone as well because they deserved it. His only regret about her attacker’s death is that it was over too quickly. He gives her a Ruger that he confirms won’t trace back to her or him, and her reaction is to reply that while she’d like to refuse, she understands that she’s in his world tonight.
On their way to the chopper Lilah calls Lucas to ask him what he found on Greg, but his file was blank. There’s no documentation of a resignation or termination. Kane comments that it looks like Greg made some sort of deal.
At the meeting with Ghost he promises to help Lilah get her assassin, and says it would be doing him a favor. Ghost was the original assassin for this list of victims, but The Society wanted him to sign on as an exclusive agent to kill the members of The Society that were planning a coup of the leadership. He refused the exclusivity deal, but took the contract. But word got around that he took the exclusivity which intimidated The Society members, as Ghost killed one of their key leaders years ago, and survived after they sent half a dozen Blood Assassins after him, so them hiring him made it look like they ordered the death of their own people. When Ghost dropped the job, another assassin took his place and copied his kill method. Ghost’s main contact was always Pocher at The Society, he’s said to be the guard dog of the US division. In the original instructions Ghost was told to kill the two hits in L.A. outside of Lilah’s reach completely, because Pocher believed she would identify the Blood Assassin and become a problem. The assassin who ended up killing both victims in her territory screwed up, but got Lilah back to the Hamptons and now The Society is waiting to see if she’s going to be the threat she was two years ago.
The assassin copying Ghost’s technique is called The Gamer. Ghost confirms that Rick Suthers’ murder wasn’t on the list, but Lilah’s return triggered his death, but when Lilah asks if he killed Laney, Ghost gives a cagey answer that Lilah takes as a confession. But since she promised not to kill or arrest him tonight and Laney is already dead, Lilah lets him move on to the last name on the list…It’s Eddie Rivera. Eddie was one of the main players in creating the coup, and also explains why Eddie was pushing so hard for Woods to be the fall guy to cover up his plan. Ghost lays out the chain of events that should happen next: They wait for The Gamer to come after Eddie then grab him. He won’t flip on The Society, he’ll claim the killings were a personal vendetta, and then he’ll be killed in custody. Cases closed. Imposter and assassin dead. Lilah tells Ghost he’ll owe her, but that she won’t want a favor, she’ll want him. Dead. He reminds her that she’s Kane’s woman, he won’t come after her, but if she comes for him first, he has no qualms about taking her out. Of course, that doesn’t sway Lilah. She’ll get The Gamer and Ghost eventually to avenge Laney’s death.
Kane and Lilah go to find Eddie, but they can’t reach anyone, her brother and father. No one. They eventually get one of Kane’s guys to go to Alexandra’s house and hand her the phone, but she tells Lilah he’s at the campaign meeting with her father and brother. They stop by Lucas’ house so he can get a tracker on Eddie’s phone, and he pinpoints it at Halsey’s Marina, where Eddie owns a boat.
Lilah has an instinct that this might be a diversion and that Ghost could be going after her father and brother, but Kane makes her see reason and they go to the marina. Lilah finally gets in touch with her brother and tells him what’s going on, he says he’ll meet them at the marina, despite Lilah’s best efforts at trying to keep him out of harm’s way.
Kane and Lilah find Eddie dead on his boat, but they hear a scuffling on the boardwalk and Kane goes after The Gamer while Lilah protects herself and the crime scene, examining the body and the room around her, looking for anything that might help her. The Gamer corners Lilah alone on the boat, saying he plans to kill her and make it look like she killed Eddie, and that he paid off a guy to say he heard them fighting. Lilah spouts back that Kane is here and he’ll know what really happened. The Gamer says he killed Kane. In a moment of shock The Gamer gets the jump on Lilah but she shoots him in the shoulder, but when he launches himself at her she knees him and he lands on her, pained. Lilah hears her brother’s voice and then someone is pulling The Gamer off of her, but he catches a second wind and grabs Lilah using her as a shield, until she grabs her knife and drives it into his chest killing him.
Kane appears, very much alive. Then teams are moving in and Lilah is telling everyone The Gamer confessed to Eddie’s murder. Beth shows up and Lilah mentally questions the possibility of her being part of The Society. But that’s a problem for another day. Lilah goes to call Murphy, but Rich calls her first. The actress she wanted him to question committed suicide, and Lilah tells him it’s over now anyways and that Eddie and the assassin are dead. Lilah finally gets her call into Murphy and tells him everything, she says she knows too much to go back to L.A. and when he asks if she’s keeping the case open she says no. The Gamer confessed to all of the murders as a personal vendetta and he’s dead, so they won’t know who hired him. He tells her if she’s staying in New York because she suspects her family is corrupt working for the NYC Bureau may be a problem for her and that he won’t approve her transfer request. She says she has to quit then, which he won’t accept. He hangs up on her. Lilah grabs her badge, pulls her count list that’s on the backside of a picture of her and Kane from it, and then tosses her badge in the ocean.
Andrew shows up beside Lilah. Tells her he doesn’t want to fight. That this was a big win for everyone. Almost seeming as a veiled threat to leave it alone. Lilah and Kane go back to his house. She tells him she threw out her badge and killed for him. That’s what made her drive that knife in the assassin’s chest, the fact that he said he had killed Kane.
Kane says she’s not really rid of her badge. Not for the reasons she’s choosing to be rid of it right now. Because the reason they work is that she pulls him a little toward her side, and he pulls her a little to his. He says if she leaves in her present state of mind it will change her, and she won’t be able to live with it.
The next morning Lilah asks Kane what keeps The Society from sending someone, even Ghost, after her. He says Pocher and himself. He says he’s securing her safety with Pocher and he’ll come to her for a favor soon and that she’ll know what to do when he does.
Murphy calls. He’s in town. He tells Lilah to meet him at her mother’s grave. Upon arrival, she swiftly reminds him she quit, but he shuts her up with the confession that he knew and was once romantically involved with her mother. Lilah reacts as brash as ever. And asks if he hadn’t told her until now, why tell her at all. He says he doesn’t like lies and secrets, and while it was once necessary, her actions to quit yesterday and even coming back to the Hamptons made it a lie and secret he could no longer afford to keep. He wanted to meet at her mother’s grave to remind her that people die when they go off the deep end, just like her mother did. He says he wants what she wants. The wrong people out of power. And that he can help her achieve that by assigning her to a special task force. She’ll be stationed in Manhattan, but still be under his purview. She’ll consult locally, but also aid other regions when her skills are needed. And for now she’ll remain under his protection and keep her badge. Murphy reminds her to keep her enemies close, and Kane even closer. And while they agree it will take time to trust and divulge all, they also agree communication is key. They leave off with an ambiguous exchange about whether or not her mother was murdered, and Murphy also informs her Rich has been sent to Paris on another task force and will be radio silent. Lilah leaves the graveyard after promising her mother she’ll find out her story.
Lilah fills Kane in and he offers for her to stay with him, but she refuses. She can tell Kane is relieved she’s staying even if her badge is once again between them. Pocher shows up at Lilah’s and needs her help, or rather Kane’s help. His brother has been abducted by a rival cartel in Mexico. This is what Kane had been talking about. And with a quick call to him, and a promise from Lilah to not be trouble for The Society, Pocher calls a truce on Lilah and offers her his protection. Kane promises this is just the beginning of how Pocher will pay for her attack.
Lilah moves to New York to an apartment on the edge of Central Park. When she arrives Murphy has delivered a case file on The Gamer for her to look over, and a cold case of a serial murderer who goes after call girls. Which makes Lilah question whether Ghost really killed Laney or not. When she steps out for pizza Ghost waylays her. Seemingly enamored by the fact that she was able to do what he was not, kill The Gamer. He says she intrigues him and he owes her one.
As she arrives back home she finds a note. A note from Junior: M is for Miss me? I missed you. D is for Disappointed. He’s not for you. This city is not for you. S is for sorry. You are going to be so so so so so so so sorry. W is for warning. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But before she can dig deeper, Murphy calls. The locals need her help. They have three dead women and an active serial killer. She reminds him that they have one of the best profilers in the world, her old mentor. Murphy replies that he knows, because that’s who requested her presence on the case. And so Lilah gets ready to be faced with one of the only people in the world, other than Kane, that she can’t hide from. Only this man has yet to see the monster Lilah fears lives inside her.
Murder Notes—book one
Deep in the heart of the night, there is always murder, passion, and lies, even when we don’t see it. But FBI agent Lilah Love has seen more than most. Years ago, while at her family’s home in the Hamptons, back in the days when she loved the wrong man and trusted the wrong people, she lived a nightmare she can never forget. That horrible night, some think that she saw a little more than she should have. It was a night that changed her life forever and made her abandon the man she’s never gotten over, and a future a future in New York near her family, for a one in L.A. as an FBI profiler. But now, a series of brutal murders connect to her home, forcing her to return to the Hamptons, where her father (Grant) is the mayor, her brother (Andrew) is the police chief, and her ex is now running an empire believed to be as corrupt as he is powerful.
Soon, she is certain she’s dealing with an assassin, but more and more there seems to be a connection to a very secret part of her past, and to her ex, who is still a dominant force in the Hamptons, and it seems, her life. Alphabet letters begin appearing on her car, her door, in her house, along with clues that begin to paint a picture that has her questioning everything she knows of her past and threats to that long-kept secret. She calls them her “Murder Notes” and as they continue, they become darker, more threatening, and Lilah begins to worry that “M” is for murder. Lilah must find the sender, and the serial killer, who could be one and the same, before she’s the one who ends up dead.
In book one, you meet Lilah Love, a brash and intensely dedicated FBI agent, as she is called to a scene on the Santa Monica Pier. As she gets ready to dispatch to the scene we see a quarrel between her and her bed partner, Rich Moore, whom she works with at the FBI. This is obviously an ongoing relationship, but Lilah is trying to pull the breaks once Rich yet again mentions them moving in together. It was never that serious to Lilah and she wants to put space between them now. They leave things as Lilah says he deserves more, and him saying they’ll talk about it later.
Back to the murder case that will set into motion the case that unfolds over the first two books in this series. The case on the pier is of a naked male body on the beach much like the scene Lilah and the locals found two days prior, but what is different is the tattoo on the body. It’s harkens Lilah back to her attack two years ago in the Hamptons where she grew up. And through that flashback we learn the attack was sinister and definitely had an impact on Lilah’s future. As Lilah is consorting with the locals on this new case, her boss, Director Murphy shows up and tells her of a similar case in New York and since it spans more than one state with the body count rising Murphy wants Lilah out there. This is when she tells him she’s seen that tattoo before, but refrains from divulging in what capacity. Murphy sends Lilah to the Hamptons to get a read on the situation. But as she lands, she’s called to another crime scene. A murder identical to the two in L.A. and the one in New York. From the looks of all the murders everyone assumes a serial killer, but Lilah is convinced it’s an assassin. Someone who has a hit list they’re marking off one by one on the orders from someone else. But who is calling the shots is a mystery and what Lilah has to figure out. The case in the Hamptons has her back in the web of her ex-boyfriend, Kane Mendez, in two seconds flat. It’s his rental property the body was found at, and his employee that was murdered. Of course, this doesn’t look good for Kane, but Lilah knows him and despite the murmurings of him running the local cartel that his father once ran prior to his death, Lilah knows this isn’t Kane’s doing. Of course, that doesn’t stop Kane from showing up and taunting Lilah, trying to get her back in his bed, which fails to work…this time. Lilah refuses Kane. He’s too much of a reminder of the night she was attacked, and too much of a risk to her reputation. As Lilah deals with the locals on the Hamptons case she runs into Beth Smith, the now Medical Examiner she once knew in school, and Eddie Rivera, a smart-ass cop, now detective, who was always trying to steal her father’s affection and attention growing up.
Lilah is still going through the scenarios of the murders as she pulls up to her beach house. This is where she was attacked. But of course, being Lilah she decides to face this head on. Prior to even going inside she goes out to the beach where the attack took place, reliving those horrific moments. But as Lilah regains her composure from that memory and heads back to the beach house to get to work on the cases, there’s a message waiting for her in fake blood on the side of the house: A is for the Apple a day that keeps the doctor away. But a doctor couldn’t help him, could he? I KNOW. This is from the person Lilah begins to think of as Junior and is the first of what she calls her murder notes. And now Lilah has two mysteries to solve. Who is the assassin and who else was there the night of her attack that knows her and Kane’s secret? As Lilah sets up shop in Purgatory (the name for where she gets her cases laid out in organizational order and does her best work) she makes lists on lists of who could be responsible for any and all of this. And she reminds herself of the nickname people have for her: MURDER GIRL. It’s how she’s good at what she does. She can be more in tune with a dead body than a live one. She lives and breathes the murder scenes and gets inside the perp’s head. As she’s in Purgatory, Rich and Kane both call. Rich wanting to be the one Lilah depends on, which doesn’t work for her right then and there, and Kane trying to get under Lilah’s skin where he’s always been, but also give her a solid alibi for his alibi. He was with his friends-with-benefits buddy, Samantha, which rubs Lilah the wrong way considering they were a FWB pair prior to Lilah and Kane being together years ago. And Kane signs off with a reminder that he knows Lilah’s demons and he can help ease them if she’ll let him. Which of course she won’t.
Following that little chat, none other than the Chief of Police shows up at Lilah’s door, her brother, Andrew. There’s a lot of banter about jurisdiction, their father, whom Andrew even calls so he can talk to Lilah, a press conference coming up about the murder, and it leads into Andrew telling Lilah that he’s in a relationship with Samantha Young. The Samantha Young that just happens to be Kane’s alibi for the time of the murder…
But once Lilah is alone again and back to her drawing boards, she can’t shake one thing. She’s the common denominator in all of this. The murders. The notes. The tattoos. Samantha and her brother and Kane. New York and California. But there could be a multitude of connections that just haven’t been realized yet. And with that Lilah is making lists of things she needs looked into and people she needs to be looking at. This fades into a nightmare laden sleep with Lilah remembering more of that night. With her and Kane bloodied, her sans clothing, and an eerie feeling to the memory that is still not fully realized.
As Lilah gets started with a new day, she sends off fingerprints from her house to be tested by Tic Tac, her go-to tech guy back in California at the FBI, in hopes that the prints will match someone other than those who were supposed to be near her house. In the meantime, she pays a visit to Kane at his office to grill him about his whereabouts last night once more and about Samantha and her brother. She learns that her father is running for New York Governor, and that Andrew and Samantha aren’t necessarily as squeaky clean as they’d like everyone to believe they are. And that along with the bid for Governor her father has gotten wrapped up in favors owed to a rival of the Mendez Family/Cartel, the Romanos. As Lilah leaves in a rage over things Kane is keeping from her she finds another note on her car: T is for TRUST. You TRUSTED him. F is for FOOL. That’s YOU. And since there’s a lot of suspicion surrounding Samantha right now, Lilah heads off to question her, which ultimately amounts to nothing, but more questions, and the refusal of Samantha to backup Kane’s alibi.
Lilah needs answers so she contacts Beth, the Medical Examiner, to meet her at the local diner. Though before Beth can arrive Lilah sees her ex-best friend, Alexandra, who is now the Assistant District Attorney and married to Eddie Rivera, a now Detective who has always competed for her father’s attention and been a general asshole. Alexandra’s presence throws Lilah back into a flashback of that night, Alexandra was with her at a bar prior to her attack. They see the movie star, Jensen Michaels, and even though they’re celebrating Lilah’s birthday that is the next day, Lilah convinces Alexandra to go talk with him as she’s been lusting after him for quite a while. All through this Lilah has been texting with Kane who is in New York getting on a chopper to come back to the Hamptons. And as Lilah gets up to leave it’s very evident that she’s been drugged somehow. But by who? As Lilah comes back to the present it’s divulged that after that night she cut Alexandra out of her life for good thus the ex-best friend title. Alexandra spots Lilah and they have an almost inane conversation about the potential reasons Lilah may be in town, she sticks with it’s personal, and other cursory shoptalk. As Alexandra leaves to take a phone call Beth shows up and Lilah digs in deep about the murder last night, but before they can get any further, Eddie shows up and intervenes, trying to demand Lilah back off of the case and even says he has a suspect. Kevin Woods. Who seems to have had a violent history with the victim. As Beth is leaving she confides in Lilah that Kevin Woods shouldn’t take the hit for this. She knows he’s not a killer.
Lilah asks Tic Tac for background on Woods. The locals are just trying to get him for their one case and not the rest of the murders which is already suspicious. And Eddie seems to be very adamant that Lilah leave town and not get involved. And Kane is very adamant that Lilah leave the tattoo connection alone. So who’s playing who?
Lilah calls up Lucas Davenport, her “cousin” (really her step-cousin, his father was her father’s step-brother, but he’s family all the same to her). Her endgame is to get him to help her hook up a camera system for her house. If someone vandalizes it again or leaves her another note she needs to check the feed. There’s a brief mention of her mother’s death. Her mother was with Lucas’s father in the plane that went down, and no one knows why they were together, or what may have really happened on that flight.
Once Lilah is home, and has the cameras set up, she dials Kane to ask for video proof of his alibi since Samantha didn’t corroborate his story, but it’s also an excuse to ask for footage from his office to see if she can see who left the note. Of course, Kane calls her on her falsities but still confirms he’ll get all the information over to her the next day.
Lilah in the meantime has been invited to a family dinner at her father’s house that night. As she pulls up she notices a fancy car that doesn’t belong to either her father or brother, but learns soon enough that it belongs to Ted Pocher, the billionaire CEO of the world’s fifth largest privately held conglomerate. Pocher tried to partner with Kane in their oil businesses, but Kane refused, causing bad blood between the two. Pocher is the driving force behind Lilah’s father’s political agenda.
As Lilah walks in her father’s home, she’s greeted by her father, and as she’s led to the dining room she’s accosted with her brother, Eddie and Alexandra at the table, who seem to have become regulars in her father’s house in her absence. They fight. Lilah’s pissed about their presence, Alexandra baiting her for information at the diner earlier, Eddie in general. Eddie likewise is pissed about Lilah’s potential jurisdictional claim, and Andrew claims he will “deal with Lilah” which of course does not set well with her. Lilah challenges their supposed proof of Woods’ guilt and Alexandra claims he called her and confessed in a voice mail while rambling like a crazy person. Once Lilah commandeers a promise that she will receive a copy of the “confession” she leaves her father’s house. There is no doubt in her mind, the locals, her family at the top of the list, want this case closed immediately so as not to mar her father’s record as he bids to become the next Governor of New York.
Lilah hits up Tic Tac for more information on Woods, of which he doesn’t have much other than a few flimsy connections between Woods’ clientele and the places of the murders. Lilah then updates her boss, Murphy, on the situation, they discuss how to go about claiming jurisdiction and if they have enough evidence to do so. But they need to find Woods first.
Lilah concludes that she needs any information she doesn’t already have from Kane and has him meet her and “their spot” the Cove. It was the spot they first met, and where they would always meet thereafter. When they’re there she questions him on the cartel, and he upholds that he did not follow in his father’s footsteps and take control. Kane divulges, that he doesn’t know anything else about the murder, but he’s looking into it as well, but also that there is a singular for-hire killer who kills the way the assassin has been killing. After Kane refuses to tell her because she might drive him underground she gives him forty-eight hours to get her the name of the assassin or something else she can go off of.
Of course, Kane reviewed the tapes he promised her and noticed someone slipping the note on Lilah’s car, said someone had their face covered so there is no IDing the person, and he questions her on it, to which Lilah avoids answering and leaves him with his deadline to deliver information.
As Lilah arrives home she calls Lucas to discuss the security cameras they’ve put into place, and he informs her he needs a date on Saturday night to a charity event her father and Pocher are hosting, and she agrees so she can get an inside look at what are ending up to be some key players. Junior leaves another note for Lilah on her chair: D is for Deception.
While waiting for a few key points to manifest Lilah decides to approach the New York murder, by speaking with the detective who handled the case. Said detective, Marcus Rick, is out on leave, and now Nelson Moser has the case. An ex-colleague of Lilah’s whom she shares a bitter past with. She also tries to get in touch with her ex-partner, Greg Harrison, but he’s out as well, leaving Lilah no choice but to go for a visit to track him down and see what he knows.
Arriving at the train station, Lilah is bombarded by the media, and Kane shows up as a saving grace and ends up choppering her into the city for her errands. It’s here where Kane and Lilah divulge more details of what went down that night. Lilah was drugged, and whatever she did she would have lost her badge over if Kane hadn’t helped hide the body. Though, the true events are still a little hazy there are obviously long-lasting impacts from whatever happened.
As they land in the city and Lilah touches base with Tic Tac, Kane lets her know what really happened with Marcus Rick—he was at a corner store when a robbery took place and tried to help, only to end up with a bullet in his gut and on leave. Thus Nelson took over the case and word is he’s about as dirty as a snake. Lilah calls Greg after hearing this and tells him not to look into the New York case for fear he might get caught in the crosshairs.
When Lilah meets up with Greg, he’s a drunken mess and on forced leave from the department due to an Internal Affair probe. Given that Moser is his partner now, since his old one died a few weeks ago, and he’s being setup for taking bribes there is a lot that doesn’t match up right now. But Moser is giving him extra work in private security, which Greg doesn’t like but he has to pay bills. Lilah promises to help Greg and leaves, now on the hunt for more answers about the tattoo.
She’s eventually cornered in an alleyway by an old man who tells her: “It’s a blood tattoo. It bleeds because you bleed.”
With that quote ingrained in her memory, Lilah heads home. Only to be accosted by the flashbacks of her attack in more vivid details and Kane’s presence. And the truth finally comes to light. Lilah was raped two years ago on the beach, and the minute Kane showed up to save her, she grabbed a knife and murdered her attacker, shoving the knife in him again, and again, and again. Kane then buried the body. Both of them committing the perfect crime, after a heinous one had already been exacted on Lilah. Back to the present, Kane is pushing her to talk. About the past and present. And their passion explodes into a one-off sexual encounter to which Lilah brushes him off afterward and sends Kane on his way.
When Lilah wakes the next morning she catches up with Tic Tac who found a connection between Moser and the Romano Family (the rivalry cartel to the Mendez cartel). The niece of one of the big Romano players has catered three of the last six events that Blink Security worked. Blink Security happens to be the company that Moser works for in his off hours, and the one that he got Greg hours working at as well.
With that in mind, Lilah tracks down Moser, asking him for the case file on the New York murder. After Lilah catches Murphy up on the case, he mentions an Army sniper that had the signature of the assassin. They called him Ghost. This is who Kane had to be talking about so Lilah brings it up again, even threatening to go as far as to approach Romano about it.
Afterward, Lilah searches the words the old man said to her, and comes up with a quote from a movie, Take Me to Church, that starred none other than Jensen Michaels. The movie star Alexandra hooked up with the night of Lilah’s attack. This starts churning Lilah’s wheels. Did Alexandra help set up her to be attacked?
As more pieces start falling into place Lilah gets yet another note, and with each one they become less and less effective in scaring her, this one reading: B is for body. B is for buried. And I know where. Do you? She throws this note in her backseat.
As Lilah is leaving the bagel shop after having had quite the taunting conversation with Andrew, Alexandra and Eddie, she comes out to a flat tire and another note reading: W is for warning. I don’t like to be taunted. Just then, Greg shows up, he’s been called into town to work the security for the charity event Lilah is attending this evening that her father and Pocher are hosting.
As Lilah is going through all of her case files, she finds a familiar face staring back at her on the TV as she’s watching Take Me to Church. Laney Suthers a high-end call girl/actress, who had a world-class client list the NYPD and Lilah were trying to get her to give up right before Lilah’s attack two years ago. They were close to turning her when they found she had committed suicide, though Lilah never believed it was a suicide.
Lilah is now on the hunt to see if there is a connection between any of the film executives or funding companies. Tic Tac finds a Chinese operation that could be a lead as Laney did two other movies under an alias with their backing, but nothing concrete to go on before Lilah has to attend the charity event.
As Lilah is leaving the event she sees Greg getting quite close with none other than the previously mentioned niece of one of the big Romano cartel members. And as if that weren’t enough when Kane catches up with her, insisting on escorting her out, none other than Rich shows up. Lilah, afraid of how Kane will react, turns Rich away and tells to go home.
Of course nothing can be that simple, but as promised Lilah takes a break from the intensity of the investigation, and meets with Andrew at their mother’s grave in the cemetery. And as they’re discussing the likelihood of their mother having an affair with their father’s step brother (Lucas’ father) who was also aboard the plane, though no one knows why, Andrew gets a call that there’s been a decapitation murder in Manhattan. Decapitation. The calling card marker of a Mendez murder. Someone is trying to pin this on Kane. But when Lilah gets to the gruesome scene with Andrew, there’s a little-known message waiting for her. Something no one else would see as a message. The movie Take Me to Church is sticking out of the DVD player.
Lilah is convinced Kane has nothing to do with this. But as she returns to her house, orders a pizza only to have another message taped inside, this one reading: M is for Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. on one side and: K is for Kane. Kane. Kane. Kane. Kane. on the other side, Lilah rushes off to see Kane. She needs answers and now.
But when she arrives at Kane’s house and he ushers her into the garage, imagine her surprise when she finds that old man who gave her the clue bound and gagged there… And even more surprised when Kane informs her that this old man is the Patriarch of the Romano family and cartel…
Murder Girl—book two
When we meet up again with Lilah in book two, it’s right where we left her. Gun pointed at Kane in his garage as old man Romano sits bound and gagged a few feet away. Lilah has to make a split-second decision. Does she force a division between her and Kane, or does she show a united front for his rival? She opts for the latter and they take their quarrel in another room. As Lilah lashes into Kane, he has a rebuttal for everything. He’s never claimed to be a “good guy” so she shouldn’t expect that from him now. Romano came after her. Kane will not stand for that, whether Lilah lets him in or not. She is still his woman to anyone either of them can call a threat, thus he will protect her whether she approves or not. Their arguments go from what Kane’s doing with the head of a dangerous cartel in his garage, to the beheaded crime scene, Kane’s claim of innocence in said double beheaded murder, the DVD that was waiting as a message for Lilah at the crime scene, to the tattoo. The entire reason for old man Romano’s capture in the first place was because he gave Lilah that clue in the alley about the Virgin Mary tattoo that her attacker, and one of the victims on the assassination case had. Of course, Lilah wants to dig her heels in and fight his arrogant and over-the-top alpha arguments, but before she gets the chance he pulls the trump card. Plausible deniability. A favorite of his. And before Lilah can say much else he drugs her.
Lilah awakens in her bed, with her gun by her bedside and in a haze that quickly turns to rage. A rage for varying reasons. Kane drugged her. And if her shotgun is by her bedside that means Kane was up in her office and saw all of her case notes. And the notes from Junior. The notes she had failed to tell him about yet. As Lilah becomes more alert, she sees she’s missed numerous messages from her tech guy, Tic Tac and several missed calls from her boss (Director Murphy) and her chief of police brother (Andrew). Of course, she reports to her boss first, and as Murphy answers the phone he is none too happy that his agent has been MIA for hours. Lilah confesses that someone knocked her out, but refrains from telling him it had anything to do with Kane. They move on to discuss Woods’ supposed confession and suicide which leads to a very sketchy conversation in which Lilah begins to doubt that everything is on the up and up with Murphy because she feels as if he knows more than he’s letting on. Putting that errant thought aside for a moment, Lilah presses back on Woods not being the assassin and needing to claim jurisdiction before they close the case. Murphy needs something more that connects the dots than just Woods’ confession, and if the locals can’t give him that, he plans to move in and claim jurisdiction. During this talk, Murphy pushes for Rich to stay on as Lilah’s partner on the case though she says absolutely not, she eventually gives in because she needs someone she can trust on her side and at her back. But given Rich’s feelings for her she doesn’t think it’s a good idea for him to stay, Murphy disagrees and hangs up on her after declaring Rich would stay.
Given Murphy’s actions Lilah still isn’t sold 100%, so when she follows up with Tic Tac and asks him to prove her “theory” that old man Romano is the patriarch of the Romano family, she also tells him she needs Murphy looked into. Which of course goes over swimmingly with him.
Lilah’s first order of business is to take a trip to Kane’s office. Where, upon arriving and blasting in unannounced she slaps him…twice. She tries for a third, but he finally puts an end to her tirade. Post Lilah’s hello slap, she learns that Kane and old man Romano have come to an “agreement” and he has been released. This forms into a conversation about Junior and the notes they’ve been leaving for Lilah that Kane is none too pleased with. His assertion that the notes are trying to turn Lilah against him with the added convenience of one of the assassination victims being his employee and killed on his rental property and two of Romano’s people being beheaded, a marking of a Mendez killing. Though this all falls on deaf ears as Lilah claims the notes, and leads to his doorstep aren’t what is dividing them, it’s always been her badge. And what makes it different now than two years ago is that Kane inferred last night, for the first time, that he truly does run the cartel now that his father is gone.
As their conversation steers back toward the letters left by Junior, Kane and Lilah come to the conclusion that someone, and more likely multiple someone’s, know their secret, and since the silence ended when Lilah came back into town they can assume whoever ordered her attack two years ago still wants her gone now. But Kane points out that a victim with her attacker’s same tattoo showed up in her city as somewhat of a calling card home. Kane is sure, that despite their past, Romano is not responsible for the murder in L.A. or the murder of Kane’s employee. Kane also divulges that Romano tried to meet with him and Kane refused, thus leading to the old man cornering Lilah and sharing his “anonymous tip” that he’s been sitting on for years when she showed up on Romano turf asking questions that could very well get her killed which he didn’t want pointed back at him or his family and have Kane come after them.
The bleeding Virgin Mary tattoo is said to be the blood tattoo linking together a group called the Blood Assassins. Though Kane can’t prove their existence, Lilah isn’t so quick to dismiss their involvement. The “anonymous tip” old man Romano told Lilah was the “She bleeds because you bleed” quote from the movie Take Me to Church that stars Jensen Michaels, the actor that just so happened to be getting close with her best friend (at the time) Alexandra the night of Lilah’s attack, that movie has a link to the case Lilah had been working on at the time of her attack. The Laney Suthers case. Several of Laney’s B-list films were backed by the same financier for Jensen’s movie, Ying Entertainment.
Lilah requests to speak with old man Romano. She needs to know everything about this “anonymous tip” though of course Kane refuses, until Lilah pushes his hand and threatens to track him down herself. Old man Romano claims exactly what Kane has already said: He was covering his own ass by leading Lilah to the movie and closer to who attacked her. But he claims the so-called Blood Assassins are a myth, which of course Lilah again does not buy. Lilah is less than satisfied with the dead-end conversation with Romano and so she turns back to Kane reminding him of her request for an audience with Ghost, the assassin known for killing people exactly how all her victims have been killed. All Kane can tell her is that Ghost said he would “be in touch.”
As the conversation moves from Ghost to Rich, Lilah informs Kane that Rich will be staying and Kane is to be on his best behavior, of course this doesn’t set well with Kane, but even he can acquiesce when the man will be responsible for Lilah’s safety in the field. And thus is the inner workings of Lilah’s brain, that it dawns on her why the notes from Junior reminded her of the Son of Sam notes… the notes, the tattoo, the assassinations, the movie… they ring a familiarity due to the cult-ish vibe, which Lilah uses as a working theory for now.
When Lilah leaves Kane’s offices it’s to find her brother waiting on her. Seeing as the beheadings is a marking of a Mendez kill, everyone is looking to the chief of police to find Kane guilty and when Andrew says as much to Lilah, she dismisses it. Kane isn’t stupid enough to have done this when everyone is watching and when the Romano’s were the victims. More so, Andrew takes extreme exception to Lilah having Murphy come after the Woods’ case as a falsity. But Lilah could care less about the ramifications, she knows Woods’ isn’t their guy, but all Andrew seems to be concerned about is how this will look as their father, now Mayor, is being groomed to become the next Governor of New York. To which Lilah takes an even greater exception and leaves with the incredulous-lined response of: “If someone else ends up dead, you look like you’re incompetent and the only way Dad saves himself is to fire you. So what am I doing? I’m saving you from yourself and him.”
Lilah is off to find donuts, of course, when she spots a car following her. She assumes he’s Kane’s man, but when she calls to accuse him of hiring horrible security he denies that the man is his. She tries to lose her tail she thinks back to Kane’s question regarding the possibility of Alexandra being involved in her attack somehow given her closeness with Jensen the night of Lilah’s attack. Lilah needs to see Alexandra in person and see her reaction. So, she heads over to Alexandra’s office, just bursting in yet again without an invite and taking Alexandra off guard. Lilah likes to keep people on their toes so when she sits down to talk with Alexandra she jumps from how long her and Eddie have been together, why they’re together, why Woods’ called Alexandra to make his initial confession. Of course nothing Alexandra says is of any real earth-shattering news to Lilah. Though Lilah does learn that Alexandra is helping consult on her father’s campaign, which also means getting close with Pocher. And while Alexandra didn’t cut her gaze when talking about Pocher, she did when Lilah asked about Jensen Michaels…
When Lilah leaves Alexandra, she’s off to deal with a complicated part of her present: Rich. Murphy wants him to stay, he wants to stay, but Kane (and she) want him gone. Rich isn’t objective when it comes to Kane because he’s threatened and jealous, and Kane is just straight up jealous when it comes to Rich. The two do not mix well while she’s trying to hunt down an assassin. But the meeting offers nothing more than a futile attempt by Lilah to convince Rich to leave, or at least let the vendetta against Kane go. And as they go yet another round in the same inane argument, Tic Tac calls Lilah… Well it was Tic Tac’s number and while Tic Tac is on the line it’s Director Murphy who is really calling. After having caught Tic Tac looking into his past. Murphy sets the record straight: He to be trusted and clued in at all times. He did have Tic Tac tell Lilah about his New York counterpart, James Carter, who came up in ranks with him, and who was involved in an investigation with at least three high-powered political figures who were funded by Pocher, and Carter made those investigations go away in Pocher’s favor. Murphy then reprimands Lilah about not telling him about the beheadings and Kane which coupled with Kane’s employee being one of the assassination victims and Kane’s family having a long running history of crime means the local bureau could claim jurisdiction over their cases. They can’t let the locals close the case so while Lilah goes and does her Lilah things she needs Rich to go convince Eddie and her brother that he can sway Lilah to back away from this to distract them.
She and Rich part, and Lilah is drug back to the old man’s clue that led her to the movie, Jensen and Laney. Thus it leads her to another person who has her and Laney in common. Her ex-partner, Greg Harrison. A quick interlude phone call with her brother ends in a stalemate—him wanting her to drop everything about this case and calling out her poor daughterly attitude when she grilled Alexandra who is helping their father’s campaign, while she says her hands are tied on the case until he gets Murphy the requested documents and rebutting that his call out was a low blow and that he’s being short-sighted in these matters.
Lilah finally hears back from Greg and asks to meet since it seems he’s still in East Hampton doing private security for Blink. When Lilah corners him about cozying up to the niece of one of the head Romano members and asks if he’s dirty he replies the step-niece is clean because he knows dirty, he denies it. And she throws it in his face that he’s working at Blink thanks to Nelson Moser, the dirty cop that he was partnered with prior to being suspended due to the Internal Affairs probe, which was partially set off by Moser in the first place. To which he replies, he recognizes it could be a set up but he has to pay the bills and he’s making money hand over fist which is also why he quit the force that morning, that and the IA probe just pushed him over the edge. Underpaid, underappreciated, he couldn’t fight it anymore. Lilah brings up Laney, as one of the reasons she left for L.A. and the fact that they had more unsolved cases than normal around the time she left and she felt stale and in need of a change. Greg doesn’t have much of a reply on Laney, other than the fact that the evidence said suicide, though Laney’s little black book would have opened an entire can of worms for a whole lot of powerful people. As Lilah is leaving the diner, she’s intercepted by Samantha, Kane’s ex-lover and her brother’s current girlfriend. She spouts something about getting the Strawberry pie for Andrew, who doesn’t even like strawberries, and corners Lilah saying that this thing with her and Andrew is real, a meaningful hat tip to ignore the fact that Samantha is Kane’s alibi for the night of his employee’s murder. Lending Lilah to later wonder if Samantha could be Junior or hired someone to do her dirty work possibly. Lilah brushes off the encounter and leaves, and she finds a note on her window… Junior… But no, it turns out it’s Greg writing her a note querying what was up with Samantha’s weird behavior.
Unable to shake Laney from her mind, Lilah goes on a hunt to visit Laney’s brother. But the car that was following her is still there, and since he’s not Kane’s man, she needs a diversion. So she calls up Beth, the Medical Examiner, and says she’s coming for a visit. Before arriving Andrew calls with news that the New York FBI and Detective Moser are on their way to Kane’s office to talk to him. Lilah laughs it off. They’ve tried and fail before, there’s no way they’re going to get Kane for the beheadings or the murder. But Andrew is concerned about them claiming jurisdiction. Again, Lilah dismisses his concern and calls Murphy to apprise him of the situation. He asks her assumption on what will happen with Kane and her response is they won’t be able to pin anything on him, and their circus will only cause his anger and insurance to not allow the New York division to claim jurisdiction. Murphy tells her if she’s right, then they should expect to be able to claim jurisdiction on the cases tomorrow.
Lilah heads into the Medical Examiner’s office, where she tells Beth she has to take a conference call, but promises yoga and pizza soon. She calls Tic Tac who is still a little bitter from the Murphy incident earlier and tells him she needs a list of all personnel who touched any part of all of the cases, and when she calls him back to ask him about Laney, she backtracks because she doesn’t need him connecting the dots to her attack. From there she takes three Ubers to get to Rick’s house and also makes a call to her brother in which he informs her that Rich went with the FBI to visit Kane, and while she’s about to start meddling, Rich calls her back and tells her he has everything under control, and is playing the proper role to get inside information and then disconnects the call. Upon arrival, Rick doesn’t answer the door, so Lilah does what Lilah does and breaks in, only to find Rick in the same position she found his sister in two years ago. Hanging from a bed sheet in his closet. Set up to be a suicide, but if Laney’s wasn’t a suicide as Lilah suspects, Rick’s surely isn’t either. That assumption is solidified when Lilah looks at the stack of books he supposedly used to step up on to hang himself and not only are they not askew in the slightest, but the last book in the stack is an unauthorized biography on her mother. And even more so, when Lilah is searching around she finds a Virgin Mary necklace in the coat pocket of the suit Rick wore to Laney’s funeral. This is a message plain and simple. Lilah knows the autopsy won’t show anything, so she doesn’t bother waiting while Beth examines the body back in her lab. Instead she leaves questioning the options, needing to talk to both Rich and Kane, and wondering on Junior’s silence.
Andrew still doesn’t know where Kane or Rich are, and neither does Murphy, but Murphy does find out that there’s a conference tomorrow to discuss jurisdiction which is what this façade meeting was all about. Rich shows up at the police station to meet with Lilah and Andrew and confirms their thoughts. The FBI showing up at Kane’s office was just laying the groundwork to pin the murder and beheadings on him and claim jurisdiction. When Rich says they should let them take it and take Kane down, Lilah leaves, having no time for this crap once again.
At home, Lilah orders pizza and asks for the same delivery guy as the night before to find out if he knows anything about how the note wound up in her pizza box, of course when the guy shows up he has no clue what she’s talking about, but Lilah sees his passenger door is open so she assumes he made a delivery prior to hers and when he was delivering it Junior snuck in the car with the note. As if Lilah had been through the ringer that day, Rich then shows up at her doorstep. Wanting to discuss everything… and of course pushing for more as Rich does. But he does shed some interesting light that he didn’t want to divulge in front of her brother: The New York agents had a long dinner with Pocher, which would obviously lend itself to Pocher trying to clean up this mess so her father doesn’t face the backlash as he winds up to launch his campaign for Governor. Rich pushes to stay longer, and Lilah declines, as he’s leaving he tells her he’ll be the one to catch when she falls when she realizes the truth about Kane. As she turns around after shutting the door, Kane is there.
Their conversation spans everything: Her notes, if she’s heard from Junior again, Junior possibly taunting her only to eventually kill her. Kane of course doesn’t like the sounds of the latter, of Junior and the assassin possibly being the same person and much like the assassin humiliated the victims by making them disrobe, this notes game could be their way of humiliating Lilah and she may be next on the list. Kane tells her she should consult for the FBI. She could still do what she wants and be with him. She refuses. Of course. They talk through Rick Suthers suicide/murder. He asks who knew about her going to Suthers’ and she said no one, except for Beth knowing she was in Long Island, and Greg, possibly, because she did bring up Laney. When Kane pounces on the mention of Greg, Lilah dismisses it, but Kane reminds her that everyone has a price. When she asks what his price is, he simply says: You. Causing Lilah to sink back into the feeling that she caused Laney and Rick’s deaths, and prompting her to tell Kane: “I don’t want to be a weapon that can be used against you.” To which he replies as if he knows her inner thoughts that she is not responsible for Rick’s murder. And with a few more well-placed words that send Lilah’s mind spinning between him, Rich, and the body count rising, he leaves.
As Lilah settles into Purgatory to make sense of this mess, she dozes and has a memory of meeting Kane for the first time at The Cove after her mother had died. The end of the memory jars her. There is always a deeper meaning, intended or unintended. This causes her to go on a deep search of her mother’s IMDB profile, the financier of Laney’s movie, Take Me to Church, also starring Jensen Michaels, also funded two of her mother’s movies. Prompting Lilah to tell Kane she might need him to bury another body before this is all over.
Lilah is convinced her mother was murdered. She forces herself into her Otherworld, and digs in deep again in Purgatory. Are Junior and the assassin the same person? Was the murder in her district meant to lure her back home or was she just a bonus by-product that whoever is after her is now taking advantage of to try to take her out again or see if she’s still going to be a problem? After all, she was getting too close to the Laney case, which she assumes is why she was attacked in the first place, she left and was no longer a problem, so if she gets too close again will they come after her and end her for good?
After Lilah shares her findings with Kane, she calls on Rich. When they meet she convinces him to return to L.A. It’s not simple, but she tells him her family may be deeply entrenched in this, and she needs him to go look for one of the actresses that worked on a few of the financier’s other projects. Of course, he doesn’t go quietly. Voicing that he doesn’t like this, but will do it for her, and that Kane is still dangerous and she should stay away from him. But Lilah finds contentment in his agreeing to leave. She doesn’t need the pressure of being good.
Lilah stops by her father’s house, but before going in gets a call from Murphy. They’re claiming jurisdiction…today. Lilah needs more time, but Murphy doesn’t allow it. She then enters her father’s house and goes through his files and steals a bottle of forty-year scotch. She doesn’t have time to meander through each file, because his little chippy of a house manager is hovering and whining, but she does take quite a few pictures in order to go through them later. As she moves to leave, Pocher shows up. He throws out jabs in regards to Kane and her mother, and questions her presence there. She brushes him off and steals the forty-year as she breezes out the door, claiming her father owed it to her for putting up with Pocher.
Lilah then proceeds to Lucas’ house, her cousin for all intents and purposes. She needs him to hack. Something that he is incredibly skilled at, but also got him in a terrible situation years ago that Lilah had to save him from. Hacking is his drug of choice, and he’s a recovering addict. So for Lilah to ask this of him is quite a big deal. After some coaxing and the offer of her father’s forty-year scotch he agrees. While on their way to his hacking room, they discuss their parents. His father (her father’s step-brother) was on the same small plane with her mother when it crashed. No one knew why they were together. And while Lilah and Andrew spoke once about the possibility of them having an affair, Lucas confirms it without a shadow of a doubt. They had been having an affair for at least a year, but most likely longer. Lilah’s mind starts reeling. If her mother was murdered, as she now suspects, the spouse is the first one looked at when cheating is involved… and that means her father. And while she doesn’t believe it could be her father, Pocher’s comments about her mother rush back to her while she is sure her father may not have done the murdering, she’s not so sure that Pocher didn’t have anything to do with it.
Back to the hacking, Lilah needs a few things from Lucas: Case notes for each murder, inclusive of everything he can get his hands on, the purchase history of her mother’s book at the B&N in Long Island, and the security feed from the past twenty-four hours for the same store. Then her brother texts her, and asks if she knew about the lawsuit Kane filed against the NYPD and the NYC Bureau, but of course isn’t satisfied by her simple answer of “yes,” but she’s not in the mood to be pushed and has other priorities so she disconnects and gets back to work looking at the images of her father’s files that she took. Lucas delivers on the camera feed. And she finds Rick’s killer, the assassin. But now that Lucas is wrapped up in this, she calls Kane and has him put a man on Lucas to ensure he’s protected. Kane then informs her that Ying Entertainment, the financier of the movies she’s looking into, is tied back to Wilkens Capital, a hedge fund group in NYC with deep pockets and even deeper corruption tied to it. And Lucas is on their client list, which of course Kane jumps on, but Lilah dismisses as Lucas is the most well-known investment banker in the Hamptons. Lilah plans to ask Lucas about the hedge fund’s connection with Ying Entertainment, but Kane wants her to hold off until he can do more digging, and see if Pocher is directly related to them in some way as well.
As Lucas continues to hack for the case files she needs, Lilah calls the list of numbers she found on one of her father’s files. One of the numbers is Sue Becker, a Senator’s daughter, and then the next call floors her. The person who picks up is Greg. Lilah is furious, wanting to know why a number she didn’t even know Greg had is in her father’s files. He claims it’s his work number for Blink now and her father asked him about possibly setting up private security for a political fundraiser. Greg has just left for the book tour that he was contracted to help with security for and asks Lilah if she’ll be there when he gets back, circumventing that question because she doesn’t fully trust him she tells him to call her when he’s back and hangs up.
Lilah leaves Lucas to head to the police station at her brother’s request, though what she has to say is far from his liking. She’s claiming jurisdiction over the cases. This fuels the fire for Eddie, who is also there, and he rages at her, and when she refuses to back down she simply walks away, he comes after her again. Clearly emoting that he’s scared of something that this will lead to, but Lilah throws the gauntlet down at her brother too. Is he going to try to force her hand as well or is he going to uphold his office?
Lilah goes to Kane’s rental house where the Hamptons murder took place, she needs to know if she missed anything. And sure enough on a lamp there’s a Virgin Mary necklace dangling from it. Just as she discovers this, her brother calls demanding that their father needs to see her immediately. At their mother’s grave.
As soon as Lilah arrives her father speaks about her mother, how she supported him, and his ambitions and how she would tell Lilah to do the same. He says this is bigger than her job and a few murders. Lilah doubles down on the assassinations and lives taken, unable to comprehend what her father is saying. He says there’s a bigger picture. The Deep State, The Society. They rule the world. A massive conglomerate governmental power. He’s part of their inner circle, but refuses to expose any of the leaders because you do not expose them and live to tell about it. Andrew knows enough about it to not cross them, but is not part of The Society. Her mother knew about it, as they are deeply rooted in Hollywood. Lilah confesses they had her attacked, raped. Her father does not outwardly emote anything except the barest of flickers. And then says she can’t know for sure it was them and even if it was, rape doesn’t kill. Aghast, Lilah throws her mother’s supposed murder in her father’s face, to which he denies, and tells her to go back to L.A. and replace his forty-year, and then leaves. As Lilah turns to leave she sees the assassin across the road and he waits for her to almost catch up to him before he gets in his truck and leaves.
Lilah goes to Kane’s house. Right now, he’s her only safe haven in this storm, but she also demands to know if he knew about The Society, about all of it. He knew about them, and assumed their role in her attack, but hadn’t traced it back to them successfully yet. And even if he had, he wouldn’t have let her go after them. He’s not even strong enough to take them down. But when she tells him what her father said to her, he breaks down both of their defenses. And after a heated, passionate sexual encounter, they hash everything out.
Pocher is part of The Society. They’ve tried to recruit Kane, which he has declined. And he tells Lilah he would have told her when she trusted him enough again to listen and not get killed. How Kane explains it is that the Romano’s have been in bed with The Society, but when they started threatening to take over their operations the nephew of old man Romano went head to head with one of the Blood Assassins, the assassin was cornered and killed himself. Later the nephew was found dead. Shortly after that, the tip about the tattoo and movie came to old man Romano and he knew it was sure to be a setup for Kane to rage war on the Romano’s if anything happened to Lilah which is why old man Romano went after Lilah to tell her about it. The Blood Assassins are the assassins of The Society.
Kane gets a call from Ghost, the renowned assassin, to meet on the terms that Lilah not arrest him or kill him. Lilah begrudgingly agrees to the terms this time.
As they’re getting ready to go meet Ghost, Kane makes it clear to Lilah that your enemy’s enemies are your friends and he won’t apologize for that. He and Ghost have a mutual respect for one another, part of that being their mutual dislike of The Society. Kane also tells Lilah if she’d just stop judging him it’d be a heck of a lot easier on them both, she replies with the statement that her badge judges them. To which Kane’s only reply is that she can ditch the badge anytime, but she shouldn’t wait too long because even though he’ll be here The Society will too.
They’re dressing and arming themselves when Kane hands her a knife and makes a quip about being confident that she knows how to use it, a hat tip to her killing her attacker. But when Lilah doesn’t react as expected the jab, Kane tells her it’s okay to have enjoyed killing him. He deserved it. And that he himself has enjoyed killing someone as well because they deserved it. His only regret about her attacker’s death is that it was over too quickly. He gives her a Ruger that he confirms won’t trace back to her or him, and her reaction is to reply that while she’d like to refuse, she understands that she’s in his world tonight.
On their way to the chopper Lilah calls Lucas to ask him what he found on Greg, but his file was blank. There’s no documentation of a resignation or termination. Kane comments that it looks like Greg made some sort of deal.
At the meeting with Ghost he promises to help Lilah get her assassin, and says it would be doing him a favor. Ghost was the original assassin for this list of victims, but The Society wanted him to sign on as an exclusive agent to kill the members of The Society that were planning a coup of the leadership. He refused the exclusivity deal, but took the contract. But word got around that he took the exclusivity which intimidated The Society members, as Ghost killed one of their key leaders years ago, and survived after they sent half a dozen Blood Assassins after him, so them hiring him made it look like they ordered the death of their own people. When Ghost dropped the job, another assassin took his place and copied his kill method. Ghost’s main contact was always Pocher at The Society, he’s said to be the guard dog of the US division. In the original instructions Ghost was told to kill the two hits in L.A. outside of Lilah’s reach completely, because Pocher believed she would identify the Blood Assassin and become a problem. The assassin who ended up killing both victims in her territory screwed up, but got Lilah back to the Hamptons and now The Society is waiting to see if she’s going to be the threat she was two years ago.
The assassin copying Ghost’s technique is called The Gamer. Ghost confirms that Rick Suthers’ murder wasn’t on the list, but Lilah’s return triggered his death, but when Lilah asks if he killed Laney, Ghost gives a cagey answer that Lilah takes as a confession. But since she promised not to kill or arrest him tonight and Laney is already dead, Lilah lets him move on to the last name on the list…It’s Eddie Rivera. Eddie was one of the main players in creating the coup, and also explains why Eddie was pushing so hard for Woods to be the fall guy to cover up his plan. Ghost lays out the chain of events that should happen next: They wait for The Gamer to come after Eddie then grab him. He won’t flip on The Society, he’ll claim the killings were a personal vendetta, and then he’ll be killed in custody. Cases closed. Imposter and assassin dead. Lilah tells Ghost he’ll owe her, but that she won’t want a favor, she’ll want him. Dead. He reminds her that she’s Kane’s woman, he won’t come after her, but if she comes for him first, he has no qualms about taking her out. Of course, that doesn’t sway Lilah. She’ll get The Gamer and Ghost eventually to avenge Laney’s death.
Kane and Lilah go to find Eddie, but they can’t reach anyone, her brother and father. No one. They eventually get one of Kane’s guys to go to Alexandra’s house and hand her the phone, but she tells Lilah he’s at the campaign meeting with her father and brother. They stop by Lucas’ house so he can get a tracker on Eddie’s phone, and he pinpoints it at Halsey’s Marina, where Eddie owns a boat.
Lilah has an instinct that this might be a diversion and that Ghost could be going after her father and brother, but Kane makes her see reason and they go to the marina. Lilah finally gets in touch with her brother and tells him what’s going on, he says he’ll meet them at the marina, despite Lilah’s best efforts at trying to keep him out of harm’s way.
Kane and Lilah find Eddie dead on his boat, but they hear a scuffling on the boardwalk and Kane goes after The Gamer while Lilah protects herself and the crime scene, examining the body and the room around her, looking for anything that might help her. The Gamer corners Lilah alone on the boat, saying he plans to kill her and make it look like she killed Eddie, and that he paid off a guy to say he heard them fighting. Lilah spouts back that Kane is here and he’ll know what really happened. The Gamer says he killed Kane. In a moment of shock The Gamer gets the jump on Lilah but she shoots him in the shoulder, but when he launches himself at her she knees him and he lands on her, pained. Lilah hears her brother’s voice and then someone is pulling The Gamer off of her, but he catches a second wind and grabs Lilah using her as a shield, until she grabs her knife and drives it into his chest killing him.
Kane appears, very much alive. Then teams are moving in and Lilah is telling everyone The Gamer confessed to Eddie’s murder. Beth shows up and Lilah mentally questions the possibility of her being part of The Society. But that’s a problem for another day. Lilah goes to call Murphy, but Rich calls her first. The actress she wanted him to question committed suicide, and Lilah tells him it’s over now anyways and that Eddie and the assassin are dead. Lilah finally gets her call into Murphy and tells him everything, she says she knows too much to go back to L.A. and when he asks if she’s keeping the case open she says no. The Gamer confessed to all of the murders as a personal vendetta and he’s dead, so they won’t know who hired him. He tells her if she’s staying in New York because she suspects her family is corrupt working for the NYC Bureau may be a problem for her and that he won’t approve her transfer request. She says she has to quit then, which he won’t accept. He hangs up on her. Lilah grabs her badge, pulls her count list that’s on the backside of a picture of her and Kane from it, and then tosses her badge in the ocean.
Andrew shows up beside Lilah. Tells her he doesn’t want to fight. That this was a big win for everyone. Almost seeming as a veiled threat to leave it alone. Lilah and Kane go back to his house. She tells him she threw out her badge and killed for him. That’s what made her drive that knife in the assassin’s chest, the fact that he said he had killed Kane.
Kane says she’s not really rid of her badge. Not for the reasons she’s choosing to be rid of it right now. Because the reason they work is that she pulls him a little toward her side, and he pulls her a little to his. He says if she leaves in her present state of mind it will change her, and she won’t be able to live with it.
The next morning Lilah asks Kane what keeps The Society from sending someone, even Ghost, after her. He says Pocher and himself. He says he’s securing her safety with Pocher and he’ll come to her for a favor soon and that she’ll know what to do when he does.
Murphy calls. He’s in town. He tells Lilah to meet him at her mother’s grave. Upon arrival, she swiftly reminds him she quit, but he shuts her up with the confession that he knew and was once romantically involved with her mother. Lilah reacts as brash as ever. And asks if he hadn’t told her until now, why tell her at all. He says he doesn’t like lies and secrets, and while it was once necessary, her actions to quit yesterday and even coming back to the Hamptons made it a lie and secret he could no longer afford to keep. He wanted to meet at her mother’s grave to remind her that people die when they go off the deep end, just like her mother did. He says he wants what she wants. The wrong people out of power. And that he can help her achieve that by assigning her to a special task force. She’ll be stationed in Manhattan, but still be under his purview. She’ll consult locally, but also aid other regions when her skills are needed. And for now she’ll remain under his protection and keep her badge. Murphy reminds her to keep her enemies close, and Kane even closer. And while they agree it will take time to trust and divulge all, they also agree communication is key. They leave off with an ambiguous exchange about whether or not her mother was murdered, and Murphy also informs her Rich has been sent to Paris on another task force and will be radio silent. Lilah leaves the graveyard after promising her mother she’ll find out her story.
Lilah fills Kane in and he offers for her to stay with him, but she refuses. She can tell Kane is relieved she’s staying even if her badge is once again between them. Pocher shows up at Lilah’s and needs her help, or rather Kane’s help. His brother has been abducted by a rival cartel in Mexico. This is what Kane had been talking about. And with a quick call to him, and a promise from Lilah to not be trouble for The Society, Pocher calls a truce on Lilah and offers her his protection. Kane promises this is just the beginning of how Pocher will pay for her attack.
Lilah moves to New York to an apartment on the edge of Central Park. When she arrives Murphy has delivered a case file on The Gamer for her to look over, and a cold case of a serial murderer who goes after call girls. Which makes Lilah question whether Ghost really killed Laney or not. When she steps out for pizza Ghost waylays her. Seemingly enamored by the fact that she was able to do what he was not, kill The Gamer. He says she intrigues him and he owes her one.
As she arrives back home she finds a note. A note from Junior: M is for Miss me? I missed you. D is for Disappointed. He’s not for you. This city is not for you. S is for sorry. You are going to be so so so so so so so sorry. W is for warning. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But before she can dig deeper, Murphy calls. The locals need her help. They have three dead women and an active serial killer. She reminds him that they have one of the best profilers in the world, her old mentor. Murphy replies that he knows, because that’s who requested her presence on the case. And so Lilah gets ready to be faced with one of the only people in the world, other than Kane, that she can’t hide from. Only this man has yet to see the monster Lilah fears lives inside her.