Mortal Scream (Harbingers of Death Book 1)

by LeAnn Mason

  I paused before extracting myself from the car, not that I could put off what was coming by staying there. I’d just get manhandled if I didn’t voluntarily cooperate. “Processed? What does that entail?” More intimate time with the lady cop?

  His brow rose. “Well, for you, it’ll mean swabbing the blood on your hands and sending your clothes and shoes for analysis.”

  My eyes widened, and I had to physically clamp down on my tongue lest I protest. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction, but damn, was I going to miss these boots.

  3

  You are your own worst enemy.

  That “lesson” was more of a saying; definitely not something my parents came up with on their own. But it was true.

  I was literally shackled to a table at the mercy of the police accusing me of wrongdoing. Falsely, I might add. And not just any old wrongdoing but one of the ultimate crimes: murder. I hadn’t actually been charged yet. I’d just been dumped in a tiny, windowless room. Alone. Except for the video camera staring at me from a corner of the ceiling. It would record my “interview.”

  Evading the unblinking stare of the lens, I scowled morosely at the wavy reflection in the brushed metal table. As promised, they swabbed some of the blood and then stripped me, bagging my clothes. The jumpsuit they’d provided made me feel like I was already incarcerated. I certainly looked as terrible as I felt. Orange was not my color.

  My hair was stringy and limp, matted with gods-knew-what, hanging in such a way that it thinned my face even further. Rolling in garbage turned the silvery mass a darker, dingier gray that lacks its normal luster. My skin appeared almost corpse-like, and teal lipstick smeared across my upper lip and cheek. They washed the blood off me at least, but they wouldn’t let me scrub my face. The piercing in my nostril glinted in the reflected metal as I sniffled back snot, and tears reddened the hollows around my ice-blue eyes.

  It wasn’t sorrow but anger that made my chin wobble, self-oriented frustration. How did I get here? The thought was stuck on a loop. I didn’t understand why my luck had tanked so hard, putting me in the wrong place at the wrong time with increasing frequency and risk. This wasn’t the first time my mind, and mouth, had run away without permission.

  Yet, I’d been an idiot and listened to that freakish pull in my gut. I put myself in here, whether I understood it or not. I should have resisted the impulse to go into the alley. I should have holed up after the last death, stayed off the grid as I’d been taught. I barely got away the last time. It had been so close I’d needed a good half-hour with my head between my knees to recover… once I was far enough away.

  I’d failed my parents. And now I felt lost. It wasn’t the first time I’d lamented their loss. But it was the first time I really needed them. Their lessons weren’t enough anymore.

  Never rely on anyone else. You can only trust yourself. Even those who have been loyal to you before can be bought.

  The lessons would have to be enough.

  “Suck it up, Aria,” I said aloud and bared my teeth, shaking my hair out of my eyes and pulling my eyebrows down in a fierce snarl that pushed away the pity and fear. Confidence. That was key.

  I recalled the rest of that lesson:

  Betrayal and arrogance are the two most common reasons for getting caught. Never believe yourself infallible.

  Clearly, I wasn’t infallible. The arrogance part meant that I needed to expect the worst. Well, this was pretty much the worst. And to avoid betrayal, I needed to be a step ahead of everyone. I had some time to get a step ahead before the interrogation began.

  The door slammed shut behind the officer as he strode in, scrutinizing me. His arms posed on either side of his utility belt almost as if they rested on the arms of a chair. One hand sat on the butt of his gun and the other across the bright handle of a taser. The underlying threat of his authority to use those weapons made me narrow my eyes.

  Never give them the reaction they crave.

  “Well, Miss Aria Grey,” the cop sneered, using the pseudonym I’d chosen for this city. “We’ll see what the system pulls from your fingerprints about your identity. Want to tell me what happened?” He sat in the chair across from me, bringing himself to my level. Good cop. “You’re not in any trouble.” The ‘yet’ was inferred. “I just need you to tell me what happened. A man died. It’s my job to find out how and why. To get him the justice he deserves.” The effect of his actions and words was designed for coercion.

  The ensuing silence hung empty, an invitation for my reply.

  My shoulders lowered, and my fists uncurled in my lap. I’d had time to prepare myself once I’d gotten over my pity party. I merely blinked at the cop, keeping my expression bland and unreadable.

  Okay, maybe it did say something: Nice try.

  He smiled gently and placed his folded fingers on the table, literally twiddling his thumbs. Then he sighed and dropped his hands open, staring at them like the lifelines on his palms had the answers. “I can’t help you unless you help me.”

  Help with what? I thought I wasn’t in trouble. My chin lifted.

  He shrugged, refolding his fingers. “Fine. You prefer silence? We can sit in silence. I got until the end of my shift. Do you also want to remain in here—” He gestured at the room. “—all night?”

  It was better than jail.

  He nodded at me. “Okay. I’ll wait.” He zipped his lips and sat back like the chairs were actually comfortable.

  The silence didn’t bother me. In fact, I rather enjoyed the break after screeching literal bloody-murder.

  The strongest weapon anyone can use against you is information.

  But I’d already told them what I knew. I couldn’t even tell him my real last name if I wanted to. We’d had a new one in each city. I didn’t know that I’d ever been told my true surname. I was as curious as he was about what the system had to offer from my fingerprints.

  “Don’t you know it all already?” I snapped. “From the witness statements?”

  His smile was pleased, possibly because I lost the silence contest. “I know their version. I’d like to hear yours.”

  “Why? You’re going to trust those witnesses regardless of what I say. Majority rules, right? Not the truth. What kind of justice is that?” I tilted my head, narrowing my gaze.

  His brows tilted in mock sympathy. “We compile all relevant stories. What were you doing in that alley if you weren’t committing a crime?”

  The truth is always easy to recount, and you won’t forget to whom you’ve told what. But be prepared to twist it to your benefit.

  He was right. Sitting in judged silence wasn’t going to help my sour mood. First, I’d struck out at the clubs then failed to save someone’s life. Now this inconvenience. “I saw something.”

  The officer raised a brow. “Something?”

  “An argument.”

  “And you decided to intervene? Why didn’t you call the police?”

  I was incensed despite my best intentions. “I saw a man in a black ski mask stab another man, steal his wallet, and run off. I can give you a description if you’d like. It happened too fast to call for help.” That was the truth. Also, I didn’t own a cell phone. There was no one to call.

  The cop didn’t ask for the description. Instead, he inquired, “What about the knife? The witnesses corroborate the fact that you were seen holding the murder weapon—covered in blood. They saw you discard it. An attempt to hide it beneath a dumpster?”

  That one was a trap. The evidence was stacked against me. No matter what I said, I was toast. I glared back without answering. That particular lesson could be attributed to Miranda.

  Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law.

  He smiled. I didn’t like it. Was he impressed with my ability to stay quiet, or did he have a secret reason of his own to be happy? I didn’t like that either. “Do you have anything else you want to add? The more I know, the more I can help.”

  The only things that came
to mind were swears, so I held my tongue. Less is more when it comes to information, and I didn’t believe he could actually help me. Laws were unbending.

  The detective shrugged as though helpless, but his words confirmed what I already knew. “We’ll see what comes back from the lab. Those results, along with the statements from the witnesses and your own—” He pointed at the camera. “—will be filed. For now—” He stood and sighed. “—you are a suspect in the murder of John Doe.”

  And that was exactly why I wasn’t supposed to get caught.

  I wasn’t an angel. I hadn’t volunteered at homeless shelters or hospitals, but my parents had always taught me how precious life was. And how terrible it was when it was taken from someone.

  When the lab results came back with that man’s blood on my clothes and my prints on the handle of the knife, I would be screwed. I’d be officially accused of taking another’s life, of destroying a family.

  But the reality was that I’d destroyed mine.

  As I would have said in a much more favorable light if this night had gone how I’d hoped originally: Fuck me.

  4

  And just like that, all my bravado washed away, swirling down the dank, dark drain at the center of the iron-barred cell they’d march me to. The time to try and talk myself out of my predicament had passed.

  The only thing left for me to do now was to not incriminate myself further. “I want a lawyer.”

  The guilty try to talk themselves out of a hole but will usually only succeed in shoveling deeper. It takes a very skilled liar to keep from getting caught in a verbal trap.

  That was the only reassuring thought passing through my muddled mind as the cell door clanged closed, the sound reverberating through my skull like a never-ending echo, a repeating reminder of how badly I’d screwed up my life.

  Things had never been peachy, really. I hadn’t had the All-American Apple-Pie childhood that so many others had and took for granted. No, while I was lucky enough to have my parents—for a while—our cautious, nomadic lifestyle made things like school and friends nearly impossible for the long-term. Instead, I’d been taught at home in a range of subjects that spanned more than the typical math, science, history, and language. These street-smart lessons were the ones that constantly peppered my thoughts, especially in adverse situations.

  So… a lot lately.

  With the time being oh-dark-thirty, I was more than sure that the cops weren’t in a rush to call that lawyer for me. They were most likely either heading home to sleep, patting themselves on the back, or sitting around, discussing just how to “prove” my guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

  Could I do that? Prove my innocence beyond reasonable doubt?

  Most people were inclined to believe what they were told. Maybe it was just laziness on their part? Or trust? Naïveté, for sure. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting out of here. I didn’t belong locked up with rapists and murderers. Never mind that they thought I was also a murderer; I wasn’t.

  Sleep first. No one thought well when deprived of rest. In fact, it was a well-documented form of torture and often proved very effective. The delirious captive, more often than not, spilled the proverbial beans about whatever nefarious plot they’d been hatching prior to their incarceration.

  Truth? Maybe. Used against them? Absolutely.

  My eyelids were as heavy as my mind as I sat on the only piece of furniture in the cement room: a metal-framed cot that hung from the wall like some broken version of a Murphy bed. A gray and white striped mattress and matching scrap of rectangle masquerading as a pillow were unadorned by even the most basic of sheets.

  Couldn’t have me offing myself before they got their confession. I really hoped they’d sanitized the thing since its last visitor. The thought of some microscopic creepy-crawlies finding their way to my tender flesh gave me the heebie-jeebies, causing a shiver to skitter down my spine.

  Apparently, being tossed in jail gave a girl a rather dark sense of humor. Though, to be fair, I’d never been one for sunshine and rainbows. Those seemed much more fantasy than the stories of blood-sucking vampires or hordes of post-apocalyptic zombies. Either of those scenarios described things I knew to be true of humans: One, we were all about ourselves and would stomp on our neighbor if it meant we got the goods. And two, once we found a taste for something we craved, we were insatiable, not abating until the supply was depleted to the point of destruction… or death.

  Take the mugging for example.

  Giving in to my body’s need for rest, I laid down along the lumpy mattress, using my long silver hair as a supplemental pillow and a bit of barrier between my face and the scratchy fabric. The coarse jumpsuit rubbed my skin and pulled along my shoulders, straining at my chest and riding up to give me a very uncomfortable wedgie if I dared to draw my knees upward. So, curling into a ball and crying myself to sleep would be a no-go tonight.

  Not that it was on the table anyway.

  I had never really been one to freak out, probably because of my constant “lessons”. I’d learned that taking situations in stride, analyzing, and preparing to create the best possible outcome for myself, was a better solution.

  This fucked-up situation was just the type that I’d been training for all my life. The problem I encountered was that I was alone. That meant the fewer who knew me, the fewer were involved in my affairs. But if there was someone I could call on when things went sideways, the police wouldn’t have shit on me, and I’d be out by breakfast. Hell, I’d never have been caught in the first place. Someone could have smacked some sense into me when I started screaming and dragged my ass away.

  But no.

  A person you could trust, someone who would create a new situation to get you out of a sticky one… those people were gold and more than hard to find. With the loss of my parents and being continually on the move, I hadn’t made any lasting connections. I’d satisfied myself with fleeting sensual encounters that sated a bodily craving. Those lasted one night and were not about building any kind of relationship.

  Though not tonight.

  Since I had no identification and no money to get false information, my jobs had been under-the-table gigs and hadn’t nurtured a hearty comradery among their dodgy employees. I couldn’t trust those bitches as far as I could throw them.

  Not for the first time, I lamented my lifestyle, my lack of social network, of stability.

  Feeling the heavy weight of exhaustion pull at my limbs and my mind—punctuated by the stark fact that I slept in a jail cell with almost zero chance of being released—I resigned myself to a fitful night. Or morning.

  The truth is subjective. What you find to be fact, others might see as conjecture and vice versa. Always try to control the narrative.

  Well, I’d failed royally in that regard. I failed, Dad.

  “Rise and shine, Miss Grey. Your lawyer’s here.” A new cop ordered, opening my cell door with an obnoxious clanging I was pretty sure was unnecessary.

  It did the trick though, startling me awake with a jolt.

  “Can a girl clean up a little?” My hair felt crispy, clumped together in unsightly mats around my head, one of which had plastered itself to my cheek, most likely glued there with dried saliva. I wiped a hand across my mouth, confirming that yes, I had in fact drooled in my sleep.

  Awesome.

  I yanked the adhered mass from my face and straightened, attempting some semblance of the dignity that, in less than six hours, had been stripped from me.

  “If you don’t want to see the lawyer, I’d be happy to get a female officer to escort you to a shower.”

  Probably shouldn’t forgo the legal counsel while it was available. I hurried to my feet. “Lead the way.”

  I was led into a room much like what I’d been questioned in the night before with the exception of two things: the cop and the camera. Since conversations between the accused and the lawyer were considered privileged, the police couldn’t listen in and use my words against
me. Not that I would say anything to incriminate myself… because I wasn’t guilty.

  The man in the room couldn’t have been much older than me with slicked dark hair and an ill-fitting gray suit. I was pretty sure I saw a pimple or two on his clean-shaven face.

  I am so screwed. And not in the good way.

  5

  Yep, I’m screwed six ways from Sunday.

  I was in that room with the stuttering lawyer for even less time than I’d spent one-on-one with the cop. I had no idea how he was going to make my case with what little information he’d gleaned from me. He hadn’t even asked me much; mostly, I’d just rambled through the occurrence of events, pausing when he dropped his pen and shuffled papers.

  I was convincing myself not to worry, that he must simply have the memory of an elephant and would remember my exact phrasings later as he built my defense. That, or he’d just passed the BAR yesterday, so it was fresh in his mind. The court wouldn’t appoint me a lawyer that hadn’t actually passed all necessary exams.

  Right?

  If I had any hope of evading the charges brought against me, I’d have to trust someone. As a friendless and family-less loner, the lawyer was my only hope. And I couldn’t be picky; he was court-appointed. He mentioned enough legal jargon to assure me that he knew the laws, which was all I really needed. That said, if I’d had any money to my name after using up the dregs of my parents’ accounts, I’d have hired a private attorney. But alas, I’d been working minimum-wage jobs that kept me just shy of homelessness. I had no money to hire some stellar, unbeatable champion of the courtroom.

  I banished my mistrust by banging my head against the metal of the ancient, smelly transport van. There were even metal rings bolted into the floor at regular intervals, to which my leg chains, thankfully, were not currently secured. Probably because when traveling alone, there was no one to assault. At least there were seatbelts, so if the schmuck driving this decrepit vehicle was to get into an accident, my arms and legs wouldn’t be ripped from my body.