Agent Russell chuckled. “Brother, you got yourself a live one,” he murmured, and I wasn’t sure if him saying that was a compliment or not. I couldn’t tell from his tone either.
Shoot. I was making myself look like a complete dork. “Never mind. I always do this. Talk too much. Ignore me.” I waved my hand and stared out the window.
Jonah turned around, the window between us open so I could see his handsome face unimpeded by the heavy plastic partition. “No way. Don’t stop now. The story was just getting good.” He grinned. “What happened after the toilet papering and the water hose?”
I swallowed and sucked in my bottom lip. His gaze stayed on my mouth and I watched in extreme fascination as he licked his lips. My body started to heat and the space between my thighs throbbed. It felt like long minutes passed between us as we stared at one another instead of only maybe twenty seconds.
“Um, well, I didn’t know that Tabby had turned the hose on, so by the time he woke up the next day, his house had flooded. Did some pretty serious damage to his floors.”
“No shit!” he exclaimed.
“’Fraid so. The cops were called. Apparently, he had a video doorbell and caught Tabby’s face as she held the water hose and me as I papered a bush. Officers came to school and took us right out of our classes. I was so scared…”
“What happened next?”
“Mama Kerri talked to him. Explained our backgrounds, how we were both foster children trying to find our way, yada. He dropped the charges, but we had to pay for the damage and apologize in person. We spent the entire summer raking lawns, cleaning houses, babysitting…whatever it took to pay back the damage. All of our sisters helped though. It was pretty amazing. Everyone spent the summer paying off what Tabby and I’d done to get back at a teacher who was being unfair with Genesis. All for one, and one for all.” I shrugged.
“Wow, that’s something else…” Jonah’s voice was low and held a note of praise.
“The toilet papering?”
He shook his head. “Nah, the fact that your foster sisters and your foster mom all stepped up to help get you out of a bind. It’s like me and Ryan here.” He playfully punched his partner’s shoulder. “We’re brothers by choice. You are sisters by circumstance, but your love is a choice. Powerful stuff.”
I smiled wide with a sense of pride that he understood the connection I had with those women. “I think so too. Thank you.”
We stared at one another again, lost in the moment until Agent Russell announced, “We’re here.”
I dropped my head down to look at my lap and tried my darndest to hold back the outrageous smile stretching across my face.
Before long, the back door to the SUV opened and we all filed out.
The second we reached my complex, I knew something was wrong. The slider of my upstairs window was open, the billowy white curtain flapping in the wind.
“That shouldn’t be open.” I gripped onto Jonah’s forearm and stopped in my tracks, afraid to move even a single muscle.
He lifted his chin toward my apartment, which was on the second floor. “That your place?”
I nodded.
“Okay, stay here, out in the open. We’re going to go in first. “
I stood by a big tree, hiding most of my body, and watched while the two men climbed the concrete stairway up to my apartment, guns out and ready.
When they got to my door, they didn’t even need a key. Officer Russell just pushed the door with his hand and went in with his gun up. Jonah right behind him.
Please don’t let anyone be there. Please don’t let anyone be there. Pleasedon’tletanyonebethere.
I prayed over and over, my heart pounding so loud I could hear it acutely. All the rest of the sounds outside disappeared. No more cars. No more neighbors. No birds singing. Nothing. Just the sound of my own breath moving in and out of my body. My heart beating as loud as a base drum in a full marching band.
Until Jonah appeared at the front door, his face flat, his jaw tight.
Without thinking, I just ran. Flew up the stairs so fast I took them two at a time and slammed into his form when I hit the top, wrapping my arms around him. He went back a step and grunted, but held strong, bringing me close, his hand at my nape and one at my waist. I shook against him and waited until my nerves relaxed.
“It’s okay. You’re okay.” He rubbed the back of my neck.
When I could feel my heart rate going back to normal and my body no longer shaking, I pulled away. Nervously, I pushed back a long lock of hair, placing it behind my ear as I looked at the ground. “I’m sorry, I just…freaked out for a minute there.”
He grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Pretty normal response. Though I will tell you right now, it’s not pretty in there. You can’t go in.”
“What?” I hollered, pushed the door so hard it slammed back against the opposite wall, and slid by him before he could stop me.
And that was when I smelled it.
Blood.
I glanced around as Jonah tried to yank me back.
My home had been completely ransacked. The couch cushions shredded as though Freddy Krueger and Edward Scissorhands had been staying at my place and things got a little crazy. The TV was shattered, something having been thrown into it. Seemed as though it might have been one of my potted plants as the plant’s remains were in a pile of dirt mixed with leaves, glass, and other detritus from the carnage that was my living room.
The coffee table was lying on its side, a table lamp broken on the floor. The desk drawers were out, papers strewn about everywhere. I stepped farther in but when I headed toward my bedroom, the tangy, coppery smell that permeated the air got thicker, and my mouth started to water with a sour taste, my stomach clenching tightly.
Agent Russell appeared at the doorway of my bedroom and held his hands up, palms facing out like he did last night at the hospital, trying to block my way with his large body.
I faked to the left and then dashed to the right only a couple feet inside my private quarters. I was not prepared for what I saw.
On my bed was a woman, bloodshot eyes open unseeingly. Her neck was purple and twisted at a weird angle. Her brown hair was ratty and tangled all over the place, mixed with blood. Red, bloody stripes were down her back as though someone had tried to write something. My giant butcher knife appeared to have been left on the bed, blood curdling down its silver edge and wooden handle.
I covered my mouth as I noticed the woman was completely naked and worse, I knew who she was.
I backed up blindly on my tiptoes. “Oh my god, no!” I sucked in a huge breath but all I smelled was death.
My stomach churned, the cookies and tea I ate this morning swirling violently in my gut. On a full toe spin the likes you’d see from a ballerina on the stage, I pushed past both agents and flung myself bodily into the bathroom, falling to my knees and retching into the toilet. Everything came up until there was nothing more than bile, but I kept heaving.
The dead woman’s bloodshot eyes filled my vision every time I closed my lids, bringing up another round of heaving.
All of a sudden, I noticed a wet, cool cloth on the back of my neck, then at my forehead, someone holding my long hair away from the mess.
Then he was there.
Everywhere.
All around me.
Hovering around my form.
“I’m sorry you had to see that.” His words were soft and soothing.
I heaved some more, and he stayed with me, holding me, doing what he could to comfort me from behind.
“I’ve called it in to the team. The police captain is also on his way too,” Agent Russell said from somewhere farther away, maybe in the hall, but I didn’t turn my head to look.
I grabbed the washcloth Jonah held at my forehead and wiped my mouth with it, then flushed the toilet, my stomach clenching fading away slowly but surely as I breathed in and out in measured breaths.
Jonah helped me to stand and I went to the sink, rin
sing my mouth out before loading up my toothbrush with a huge application of toothpaste, shoving it in my mouth, and getting down to business. I couldn’t stop tasting blood. It was insane, and didn’t make any sense, but that was all I could taste on my tongue.
Jonah calmly rubbed my back as I finished up, rinsed my face and washed my hands before leaning both hands to the basin and holding myself up.
Agent Russell led me out into the living space, and I sat down at my small kitchenette trying to make sense of what I’d just seen.
“I, uh, know her.”
“Who?” he asked.
“The woman,” I said while tracing the patterns and knots in the wooden kitchen table with my fingertip. Over and over. Each swirl. One after another.
“Who is she?” He crouched at my side and put his hand to my knee. I flinched, curving in on myself. He removed his hand as if he’d been burned. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head but didn’t say anything for a little bit.
Then my savior was back. His hand at my shoulder, his warmth seeping straight through to my marrow. I sighed and tipped my head up toward him, wanting to be closer, not farther away.
“I knew her.” My voice cracked. “It’s the manager. Of the complex. Katrina. I don’t remember her last name, but I pay her every month, and see her at the pool in the summer. She plants flowers in the spring, and we always seem to use the small gym at the complex around the same time at least once a week. She’s really nice. Super pretty. And everyone, everyone likes her! Why is she dead in my bed?” The emotions roared through me so fast my body quaked and convulsed as I wrapped myself in my sweater, pulling my knees up into the chair and rocking back and forth.
“Who would do this to such a nice person? She never hurt anyone! And if you were late on your rent a day or two, she didn’t even charge the late fee! She was so nice. Everyone loved her!” I continued to rock my body as Jonah pushed a chair next to me and wrapped his arms around my form.
“I’m sorry about your friend. We won’t know what happened until the team has investigated, but it’s not a coincidence that she was killed here on the same night the Backseat Strangler took off in your car with your purse and contact information.”
“Oh my god! My mom! My sisters!” I screeched and stood so fast the chair slammed back behind me. I moved to go, not knowing what I was going to do, or where I was going to go. I hadn’t even driven here. I shoved my hands into my hair at the roots and looked around at the destruction. “My entire life is so messed up and someone I know is dead! I don’t know what to do!” I hiccoughed into a sob, the tears tracking down my face.
Jonah pulled me into his arms again and held me tight. “You’re going to breathe. Then we’ll go over everything you know about last night and what you know of the victim. Agent Russell and I have been tracking the Backseat Strangler all over the state. We’re going to find him. And then the FBI and the criminal justice system are going to throw everything we have at him. Which means he’s going to pay with life in prison.”
I shook my head, thoughts of what happened last night mixing with everything I’d just seen. “No, he’s going to get away with it. Just like with all those other women. He’s going to get away with it!” I screeched and cried at the same time.
Jonah cupped my cheeks and held my head still, his dark gaze tethering me to the here and now. “I swear to you, Simone, we will get this man. He will pay for what he’s done to those women, to you, and to your friend. I won’t stop looking for him until he’s found.”
“He’s going to find me and do t-th-that to m-me.” My teeth started to chatter.
His face turned to stone and he gritted through a snarl. “No man will ever fucking touch you. Not even one finger to your beautiful hair.” He wiped my tears with his thumbs. “That’s a promise you can bet I’ll be keeping, sweet girl.”
I stared into his eyes and watched the brown and gold flecks swirl. This was a good man. An honest man. A hero. Someone I knew with my whole heart I could trust.
It took all my will power, but I whispered, “I believe you.”
And I did. As long as my savior was near, I knew I’d be safe.
But what would happen when I was alone?
I’d been sitting at my kitchen table with a dead woman in my bedroom for well over an hour. I’d given Captain Mandle and the guys everything I knew about Katrina and the last time I was home. Yesterday, before the diner shift. Then I’d been pulled over by Agent Fontaine and the shootout occurred where we were both injured, and the perpetrator took off in my car. He already knew everything that had happened at that scene, but together, Jonah and I pieced together the accounts of what we experienced as it occurred, detailing anything that we may have remembered since last night.
The police captain stepped outside to discuss the information with others while Jonah secured approval to remove some of my clothing and Agent Russell checked in with their Director. Everything was placed outside of the apartment ready to be taken with me.
I didn’t dare go back into the bedroom, but every so often I’d hear a buzzing sound like something was charging up and then a clicking from what I assumed was one of those big cameras with the giant flashes you saw on television.
I was never coming back to this apartment. Not ever. I’d get some friends or someone to come in and salvage what they could. Or maybe I’d start new. I didn’t care. There was no way I’d be able to unsee Katrina’s dead and bloodied body lying in my bed.
As I sipped on my lukewarm coffee the Captain entered the front door, maneuvered my way, and stood a few feet from me. He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth from heel to toe as though he was working through something in his head.
Eventually he spoke. Direct and to the point. “Victim is Katrina Dushay, manager of the Valley Oak Apartments. Worked here for six years. After talking to the boyfriend, we believe Katrina left her apartment last night at midnight because she’d received noise complaints from a couple neighbors. We’ve interviewed them and all they could tell us is that they heard glass breaking and loud thumps coming from your apartment as though someone was trashing the place. At approximately twelve-thirty the neighbors said the noises stopped. That’s the last anyone heard or saw anything. The boyfriend fell asleep and didn’t even know she was missing when we showed up. He’s contacting her parents.”
Katrina was killed in my apartment between midnight and twelve-thirty. Thirty minutes and then a vibrant and beautiful young woman was taken out of this world. And no one was the wiser.
“How could something like this happen? There was so much blood…” My hands shook so I put down the mug. “She had to have screamed.”
“Look, Ms. Wright-Kerrighan, I can’t get into particulars, but I will say the killer left a message.” Captain Mandle frowned deeply and rubbed at the back of his hairy neck.
“A message?” I reached out and Jonah took my hand under the table.
Just having his presence there to lock onto kept me from passing out cold.
“Hide and seek,” the Captain said.
I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
He closed his eyes. “I really didn’t want to share this, but he carved the words into her back using a knife he found in your kitchen. Killed her on your bed. We believe he’s escalated from his activities as the Backseat Strangler. She was definitely strangled, but the added violence wasn’t there before in any of the other cases. He wrote those words for a reason and I think they’re a message for us, or perhaps for you. We need to proceed with extreme caution. This man has your phone, ID, your car, and knows where you live.” He lifted his hands around the room. “I need you to look around the room and see if there is anything you can tell may be missing.”
I blinked as though he’d asked me to search a beach for a long-lost diamond. This was needle in a haystack territory, not to mention my nerves were so far gone I wasn’t in the realm of reality let alone capable of truly seeing anything through the mess.
“I, I, d-don’t know. There’s so much…”
Jonah squeezed my hand. “We’ll do it together. Just try, yeah?”
I nodded and he helped me to stand. My arm was throbbing, and I needed a pain pill, but I had to get this over with and get back to the safety and comfort of my mother’s home. Bury my head straight under a stack of blankets and make all of this disappear.
Jonah held my hand and led me over to the center of the living room. “Start with the couch, tables, anything on them that’s not on the ground now.”
I scanned the space seeing my candle holder, coasters, magazines all spread out on the floor. I shook my head.
“Bookcase.” He brought me to the bookcase. All the books were on the floor. I used my foot to move them around. It was nothing but books and CDs.
“It looks like it could all be there, but I’m not sure. It held mostly books and CDs I’d collected over time.”
He nodded. “Okay, good. Now the entertainment center.”
I noticed the broken TV, the mangled plant and dirt, some other knickknacks, and just as I was about to move on to the next space, I crouched down and pushed the items around. Then became frantic in my pursuit as I shoved things in different directions.
It wasn’t here. I surveyed the rest of the room, my gaze jumping from point to point. “It’s not here.”
“What isn’t?”
“A picture. A framed picture of me, Sonia, my six foster sisters, and our foster mom. We had one taken in front of the house a few years ago. It was a gift for Mother’s Day, but Liliana made one for all of us. It’s gone.”
Wild Child (A Soul Sister Novel Book 1) Page 5
