At the mention of her father, Ellie’s face went still, her gaze landing on her face before finding her mother again. “I’m sorry, mama,” she said, standing as she took the hand her mother offered her.
Sabrina followed behind, worried that Amelia would turn toward her again, like she had in the church. Expose her for who and what she really was but her worry went unrealized. Amelia did nothing but ramble on in Spanish about what she was going to make her husband for dinner and how Valerie had a history test in the morning.
Elena played along, nodding and answering while she opened the passenger-side door of her late-model compact and settling her inside. “Wait here, mama,” she said, adjusting her mother’s seatbelt before shutting the door. “I’m sorry about that,” she said, turning away from the car to look at her. “She’s gotten worse recently. It used to be she couldn’t remember what day it is or where she put her purse but now…” She shrugged. “I not how sure how long I have until I have until she’s gone completely.”
The thought of Amelia, lost, broke her heart. “You mentioned a sister—what about her? Can’t she help?”
“She keeps threatening to come out here, but…” Ellie shrugged, shaking her head. “Val’s pregnant with a cop husband and a toddler. The last thing she needs it to deal with this mess.”
Val was pregnant. Something sharp and sweet lanced through her—happiness mixed with sadness and regret. Lucy, Val’s daughter, would be nearly two years old by now. Jason and Riley—her own brother and sister—would be close to twenty. Strickland, her old partner, would have a new one.
Life had moved on without her.
She nodded like she understood even though she didn’t. “If she’s offering to help—”
“This is my responsibility, Agent Vance—” Ellie rounded the front of the car. “And my business,” she said, reminding her she overstepped her bounds. “Good night.”
Sabrina watched her leave, pulling out of the deserted dirt lot, her taillights disappearing into the dark. Ellie was right—it wasn’t her business. She got busy convincing herself of that fact while she walked to her car on the other side of the church. She had enough to worry about—finding out how and why her DNA ended up on a dead girl and hopefully catching a killer, for starters.
“Hey, Kitten.”
Sabrina head turned so fast her neck cramped up. Church was sitting cross-legged on the trunk of a car parked a few spots down from theirs, a sugary smile on her face. She recognized the car. It was Croft’s dark green Jetta.
Shit.
“How’d you find me?” she said, stopping in front of Church.
Church waggled her phone at her. “Cloned your cell.” She said it like she was admitting to eating the last doughnut from the office breakroom. “Was that the tech that took Graciella Lopez’s shoes today?”
“Where is he, Church?” Sabrina said, ignoring her question completely. Hernandez was a fairly common last name. There was no reason to tell her psychotic sidekick that the crime tech assigned to their case was actually Valerie’s little sister.
“Where’s who?” Church answered, drumming her fingers on the lid of the trunk.
Walking the perimeter of the car, she half expected to find Croft hog-tied in the backseat. Save for a pile of fast food wrappers and a few books, it was empty. “Quit dicking around—you know who,” she said, yanking the drivers’ side door open. She reached down, finding the trunk lever. “Get up.”
Church reluctantly slid off the trunk to stand next to the car, hip cocked against its fender, arms crossed over her chest. “You’re a ruiner.”
“So I’ve been told.” She popped the trunk before slamming the driver’s side door and making her way to the back of the car. “Is he alive?” she said, her hand on the lid. As many times as she’d threatened to kill him, she wasn’t sure she was prepared to see a dead Jaxon Croft.
Church gave her a sullen shrug. “I don’t know—open the trunk and find out.”
Sabrina’s fingers tightened around the lid for a few seconds before she lifted the lid, suddenly sure he wasn’t. That she’d been the cause of yet another death. That Church had killed Croft simply because she’d been late.
He was blindfolded and trussed up with a set of what looked like police issue cuffs and chains. There was a ballgag strapped around his face and a pair of earbuds stuffed into his ears.
Other than a cluster of Taser burns on his neck he looked unharmed. And alive.
“Jesus,” she said, reaching into the trunk she grabbed onto the blindfold. “How many times did you tase him?” He jerked away from her but she snagged the blindfold anyway and pulled it down. As soon as he saw her his whole body relaxed and he started yelling, his words a muffled mess behind the red rubber ball stuffed in his mouth.
Church gave her a disinterested shrug. “I don’t—it’s not like I counted,” she said before rolling her eyes at Sabrina’s expression. “Relax, Kitten. I had the juice dialed down… most of the time.”
“You’re a true humanitarian,” she said, reaching behind Croft to unbuckle the strap that secured the ballgag to his face. As soon as it was loose, he kicked his yelling into high gear. She held it gingerly, fingers pinched lightly around the strap. She didn’t even want to know how many people Church had used it on. “You own a ballgag?”
“You don’t?” Church said, leaning into the trunk to press a finger to her lips. “Shhh.” She aimed her finger at Croft and his mouth clamped shut like it was on a timer. Holding up her hands, she wiggled her fingers before reaching into the trunk to pop the buds out of his ears. “Clark Kent and I have been getting to know each other, isn’t that right, Clark?”
“Fuck you, you crazy bitch.”
Church sighed. “Name calling isn’t nice,” she said, winding the earbud cord around the iPod it was plugged into. “He told me everything. Eventually.”
Everything was a relative term when dealing with Croft but the word worried her. Especially since she had no idea what everything was. “Great,” she said, feigning disinterest. “Uncuff him so we can get out of here.”
“Don’t you want to know what he told me?” Church said, sliding along the length of the fender until she was standing next to her in front of the trunk. “I’m pretty sure you do, Kitten.”
“Now, please.” Sabrina spit the words out, still pretending to be disinterested.
“Suit yourself.” Church shrugged as she dug into the front pocket of her jeans. She produced a key and held it up, twirling it in the air like a magic wand. “Roll over, doggie.”
Croft did what she told him, his mouth running the entire time. She was sure he’d make a grab for Church as soon as the cuffs were unlocked but he didn’t. He lay there for a few moments, rubbing the feeling back into his wrists while he glared up at them.
“Come on, Clark—be a sport,” Church said, totally unaffected by the fact that he obviously wanted to kill her. “Tell her what you told me.”
“You tase me, kidnap me and torture me with Yanni and now you want to act like we’re friends?” Croft swung his legs over the side of the trunk and dropped them onto the dirt so that he was sitting on the edge of the trunk. “I liked your old partner better, Sabrina,” he said, aiming a look her way.
“Me too,” she said, looking at Church. “Yanni?”
“My patented playlist.” She smiled and held up the iPod. “Yanni. Michael Bolton. Kenny G. A little Hasselhoff—very effective.” She tucked it into her back pocket before rounding on Croft. “So, tell her what you told me or you, me and The Hoff are gonna go for another ride.”
He folded instantly, the fight going out of him before she could blink. Whatever Church had done to him, it’d involved a bit more than a Taser and an iPod full of crap music. “Okay, okay.” Croft nodded and looked at her, swallowing hard against the words that welled up in his throat. “He was here—Wade.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Croft said, each word scraping along the inside of his m
outh like he had to force them out. “He was here—in Arizona.”
She split a confused look between the two of them. “I know that—I was here too, remember?”
“No,” Croft shook his head. “He was here after you… died,” he said, struggling to find the right words to describe what’d happened to her all those years ago. “He flew into Sky Harbor under the name Wayne Conway at least three times between 2004 and 2008.” He sighed, rubbing a hand over his mouth like the words inside it tasted bad. Like he was to spit them out but he couldn’t. “The guy he was writing to—he wasn’t just some sick pen pal he exchanged torture fantasies with. He was teaching him. Showing him how to hunt. To kill.” He looked away from her for a moment, his jaw flexing with what looked like anger and more than a little self-disgust. “He was Wade’s apprentice.”
34
Berlin, Germany
“Mr. Shaw… Mr. Shaw.”
The words were delivered on an exasperated tone, followed by a sigh, the kind usually reserved for unruly toddlers and carpet-pissing puppies. He knew it well—his babysitter couldn’t go five minutes without using it on him.
Ben burrowed his head under his pillow and pretended not to hear her.
“Mr. Shaw.” This time she said it through clenched teeth, emphasizing the last word with a sharp smack to his bare ass with what felt like her day-planner wrapped in barbed wire. “You’ve missed your morning meeting. Again.”
“Oww... so?” he mumbled, taking a swipe at her, his eyes still screwed shut. “Do your job and reschedule it.”
“I did. Again…” She sounded angrier than usual so he lifted his face from the mattress and took a peek. She glared down at him with equal parts anger and affection, the hiss of the shower running in the next room filling the silence between them. “She’s still here.”
He burrowed his head under his pillow again to hide the fact that he was just as surprised as she was. “Again, I say, so?” he said, turning his head to the side so she’d hear him. All he could see were her no-nonsense, navy slacks and plump hands wrapped around the planner she used to try and dictate his life. Sometimes it worked. Most times it didn’t.
“So, have you given any thought to what will happen to that poor girl when your father finds out the two of you are carrying on?”
The shower meant Celine spent the night. She was usually gone before he woke up. Overnights were an unspoken no-no. That she felt confident enough to spend the night meant she thought she could count on him to protect her if his father found out about them.
She was wrong. He’d already picked his team and she wasn’t on it.
On the upside, it also meant that after weeks of fucking her silly, his father’s personal assistant finally trusted him. Oxytocin was a wonderful thing.
He pulled his head out from under his pillow and looked up at her. “Carrying on?” He laughed a little, the sound of it sharpening her glare. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“I don’t know about the kids,” she said, disapproval dripping from every word. “But I call it stupid and selfish.”
Instead of answering her, Ben rolled over, stacking his hands under his head, and gave her the Full Monty. “Gail, Gail, Gail…” he said, giving her a lewd grin even though she was old enough to be his mother. “Always the Grumpy Gus.”
Gail narrowed her eyes at him, completely unfazed by his behavior. “I’m being serious, Mr. Shaw,” she said, the worry in her voice overriding the disapproval. “Your father will—”
“Never find out,” he finished the sentence for her even though he was pretty sure he was lying. “Look—it’s not a big deal. I’m just blowing off steam,” he said, gingerly setting a discarded pillow over his morning wood. “God knows I can’t have any real fun with you hanging around my neck all the time.”
Gail wasn’t buying it. “Fun?” she said, shaking her head. “There are a dozen women working for FSS who are under the age of fifty and relatively attractive—eleven of them are not your father’s personal assistant.”
He shrugged. “I have a thing for blondes.”
“What you have is a thing for is driving your father crazy,” she said, taking a step away from the bed. “It’s as immature as it is dangerous.”
“Why, Gail…” he said, shooting her a lopsided grin. “Are you worried about me?”
“You?” She huffed the word while reaching over and lifting his robe off the chair to toss it at him. It was game they played. She tried to get him to wear it and he refused. “Hardly,” she said, marching toward the door. “Who do you think is next after your father kills the two of you? Me, that’s who.” Even though she denied it, he knew she was concerned and not only for herself. That for some reason, she cared about what happened to him. It made him feel bad—mainly because she was right. Gail’s job was to make sure he kept his dick in his pants and his tie was on straight. One task was proving infinitely more difficult than the other.
“Am I still on for that thing today?” he called after her, trying to make up for the fact that he made her job categorically impossible, just by being him.
Gail stopped in the doorway. “Yes, Mr. Shaw—you’re still on for that thing,” she said, her back still turned, shoulders squared. “Your plane leaves in three hour.”
“I’ll be there in two.”
She mumbled something as she walked out the door that sounded like bullshit.
As soon as he heard the door click closed, he tossed the pillow off his johnson and stood up, scanning the room, hoping she hadn’t taken it into the bathroom with her.
Nope, it was exactly where she’d left it. Pausing for a moment to make sure the shower was still running, he reached for it, rifling through its contents until he found what he was looking for.
Celine’s key card.
As his father’s personal assistant, Celine went where he went. Her keycard wasn’t just good for his Berlin office—her card was the equivalent to keys to the kingdom. A master card that opened every door and private elevator, in every office his father kept across the world. No one beside his father had that kind of unrestricted access to FSS. Not even him.
Using the scanning app on his phone, Ben scanned the coded strip on the back of it before punching out a quick text.
Thirty minutes or less.
He attached the scan to the message and hit send, receiving an answer in less than a minute.
Seriously? Do I look like the pizza guy?
Ben smirk at the screen, tapping out a response before tossing Celine’s purse back on the chair where she’d dropped it.
No. You look like my bitch. Get it done.
In the next room, the shower shut off. He imagined Celine, wet and naked, drying herself off with one of his ridiculously huge towels. Without bothering to wait for a text back, he locked his phone down and tossed it onto the bed on his way into the bathroom. He wasn’t worried.
It didn’t matter who or what it was. He was his father’s son and that meant he always got what he wanted.
35
January, 17th, 1998
I saw you.
You carried her into the churchyard, wrapped in a blanket, and placed her on the bench just before dawn. You knelt over her and did something to her eyes.
Touched her. Touched yourself.
I knew she was dead and that you’d killed her.
I could have gone to Father Francisco, woken him. Called the police but I didn’t. Instead, I watched you. Waited until you left before I went outside. I saw what you did to her. The word you carved into her stomach.
Mine.
It didn’t scare me or make me angry. It made me feel… understood. Like there is someone in the world who wants and feels the same things I do.
You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to tell anyone what you did or who you are. I just wanted you to know that your secret is safe with me.
Nulo
Sabrina dropped the piece of paper into her lap. She’d been sitting here for
hours, reading the letters and journals that Croft had given her. He’d organized them all in chronological order. The letters according to the date they were written. The journals according to victim. She glanced at the stack of composition books on the nightstand next to the bed. Each of them had the date—OCT 1st—printed across the front, followed by the year. Under the date was a name. Vicki. Susan. Taylor. Olivia…
Hers was not the first in the pile.
Jealous that you weren’t my first, darlin? Don’t worry, I thought about you the whole time.
There’d been a girl—a waitress—in Oklahoma. Wade met her by chance and taken her to Big Thicket National Park. He’d chased her through the woods. Terrorized and tortured her for hours before stabbing her to death. Afterward, he carved the word LIAR into her stomach and set her body on fire.
Because she was a liar. They all were.
Afterward, he’d gone home and calmly written down every detail of it. The way the blade of his knife slid into her soft folds of flesh. The sweet, meaty stink of that flesh when it burned. The murder had never been linked to him. She’d been an accident. An impulse brought on by unspent rage and frustration. Eighteen years ago, Jenny Parsons had been brutally murdered and no one knew why or who. Until now.
She sat, surrounded by answers to the hundreds of questions that haunted her. But for all her searching, she couldn’t find the answer to the one question that needed answering now.
Who was Nulo?
He’s ours, Darlin’. Yours and mine—born the moment he watched me stretch you out on that bench and saw what I’d done to you.
Sabrina imagined him, standing in the shadows, watching Wade through the cold glass of the window. Waiting until he left before allowing his curiosity to get the best of him and lead him outside. Had he touched her? Had he known she was still alive? That she’d survived? If he had, why hadn’t he told Wade?
“What’s a Nulo?”
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2 Page 48
