Sharp Absence (Sharp Investigations Book 1)

by Kate Anders

  “Maybe you aren’t as stupid as I thought,” he says at the end of a laugh.

  I can feel him shift around on the bench, but the pressure on my side from the gun never lets up, if anything, it increases. After a couple of seconds of movement, I can feel him place something on my knee.

  Just before I cast my eyes down to see what he brought out; I hear her voice.

  I would know her voice anywhere.

  Even if all I can hear is a scream.

  He has the volume turned way down, so there is no way anyone would really hear it unless they walked by pretty close, but the fact is there is no one anywhere near close enough to even get a hint of the sound coming out of what I assume is his phone.

  I cast my eyes down quickly, and it’s almost a close-up shot of Clara’s face. Like a camera was only inches from her face is what it looks like. Until she reaches up to wipe the tears out of her eyes and I realize there is no way there is a camera that close to her face. It’s a zoomed-in shot.

  I can’t see anything in the background. There is nothing identifiable anywhere. I keep trying to catalog the images as quickly as possible in case there is something to go off of later. If I make it through this.

  But the fact is I can’t even see her entire face, it’s so zoomed in. There’s even a decent amount of image distortion from being zoomed in too much. He’s being careful. Too careful. He planned this whole thing out.

  Which makes me think he has an exit plan. And that my chances of getting out of this alive are decreasing.

  “Where is she! Where is Kenzie? You promised! What did you do!” Clara’s voice screams. It’s bloodcurdling. Dread fills my entire body, as well as panic. She thinks something has happened to me? I’m so confused? What is happening right now? When was this recorded?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see his finger come up to the screen and stop the video. I should have been taking the time to memorize everything about him, if his nails were well kept, his skin tone, if he had any scars, anything to identify him later.

  Instead I’m just frozen.

  The harsh reality, that whatever is happening to Clara, or whatever happened to Clara, I am being used as some kind of pawn to torture her emotionally or to get her to do what he wants.

  My stomach turns and I resist the urge to vomit, it is strong.

  I have to get to her. Nothing else matters.

  “Now then. Are you going to be a good girl or are we going to have a problem?” he asks, using that condescending tone again.

  The logical part of my brain says no. It’s screaming at me not to go anywhere this guy wants me to. To take a chance at being shot. My chances diminish the further away I get from people.

  But the rest of me. The rest of me wants to get to Clara. The rest of me is ready to put anything on the line to get to her. Even if it means I don’t make it out of this alive.

  It’s not even a choice.

  I stand up slowly, not wanting to spook him.

  “That’s a good girl.” He chuckles.

  If he keeps talking to me like a dog, I’m going to have a hard time not blowing everything and punching him in the face.

  Taking as deep a breath as I can without causing myself to double over in pain, I start moving forward. Given my injuries, I’m already walking at a pretty slow pace to begin with so I don’t even bother trying to walk any slower.

  I’m torn about whether I want to call attention to my situation. If I do, I might live through this, and the bad guy could get caught. But where would that leave Clara?

  I keep moving.

  He moves closer to me, more off to the side so it looks like we are walking side by side together. He’s trying not to call attention to us.

  The gun never leaves my side, though, and I can tell he’s having a harder time concealing it. I’m sure he had this all planned out perfectly in his head, but in reality, it might not be as easy as he anticipated.

  With only a few more steps to the parking lot, I take the chance at trying to get a look at him. I manage to get a decent glimpse of his side profile. Definitely white. No tan. No color at all. But not quite pale. He has a beauty mark on his right cheek since he’s on my left. And I can tell by his profile that his nose is either crooked or has been broken in the past. Either way, it’s a noticeable characteristic.

  I file it away in my brain.

  “I don’t know where I’m going,” I say as I stop at the edge of the parking lot.

  “Not much farther.” He pushes the gun against my side harder, like he’s trying to indicate for me to move forward. “Second row, sixth car back.”

  I sneak another look before I start moving again.

  He looks familiar.

  I know I’ve seen him before.

  I’m sure of it.

  I don’t know him though. He isn’t friends with Clara, he’s not one of the people in her core group that she collaborates with, I definitely don’t know his name. But I know his face.

  I wonder to myself how many times I have walked by this guy. How my brain must have filed away his face like some kind of facial recognition software. Even though I don’t know his name, knowing I recognize him makes me think it will be easier to identify him later if I manage to get out of this. Anything to cling to a shred of hope and positivity.

  At the second row, my body is starting to falter.

  I don’t know if it’s fear or if it’s my injuries catching up to me, but my speed has taken a dive and my vision is starting to get blurrier. I’m about positive the adrenaline is the only thing keeping me moving forward and not aware of the amount of pain I’m really in.

  I start counting the cars.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  It’s black. Of course it’s black. There’s no license plate on the back. No bumper sticker or window decal that I can see. Windows have a good tint to them, enough for me to think they are straddling the line of legal and not.

  It’s a Ford Focus. Great. One of the most popular cars on campus.

  I hear the pop of the trunk before I see it bounce upward.

  “I think you know where this is going,” he taunts before shoving his gun in my side again. I’m going to have a barrel-sized bruise there if I live through this.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say incredulously. “There is no way my broken-ass self can climb into the back of a trunk. I can barely fucking walk. And do you honestly think no one is going to notice my battered self crawling into the back of a truck? Are you some kind of moron?”

  My head swivels to look at him straight on. Yes. I was right. I know that face. I start cataloging it more in my brain, trying to cement the image for later.

  He shoves me. Hard.

  “Bitch.” He says every man’s favorite insult.

  I feel the sharp impact of my hips hitting the back bumper of the car. I’m guessing the bruising from the seat belt in the accident didn’t help matters because I can’t keep the yelp in.

  I feel more than see the movement out of my peripheral and I know instinctively he is about to hurt me.

  I brace myself for whatever is going to happen next, knowing I just have to get through this. I just have to make it through this part before I can get to Clara.

  It never comes.

  No.

  Instead, I hear the voice of an angel.

  The man who I thought I would call dad. The man who was going to walk me down the aisle.

  “Freeze. Police.” It’s loud. And clear. No nonsense. Aggressive and sure, but not emotional.

  The man next to me does. He freezes. If only for a second.

  I’m trying to imagine the scene from above, and I realize Joe can’t see the gun. He’s coming up on my right, and Creepy is on my left where the gun is hidden by my body.

  Running through the scenarios, I realize this means Joe isn’t going to shoot right away.

  “Do exactly as I say or I swear to
you, not only will you never see Clara again, but you won’t even find the body,” he whispers menacingly.

  This is my last chance. I need to get as much information out of this guy as possible before shit hits the fan. Who knows if he will talk to the police.

  “I said freeze. Put your hands up slowly where I can see them and take two steps away from the girl.” Joe shouts instructions as he continues moving toward us. His voice getting closer and louder as he goes.

  “I can help you, I know him, he’ll listen to me,” I bargain. “Just tell me where Clara is and I swear I’ll help you.”

  He wraps his free hand around my arm, the motion being blocked by my body before he starts trying to maneuver himself and me behind the side of the car, out of the line of fire.

  “You are going to stand right there while I get in this car,” he says menacingly.

  I realize his plan. Use my body as a shield, get in the car and drive away before Joe has a chance to shoot him or backup arrives.

  This is going bad quickly.

  If he leaves the scene without me, chances are if Clara is alive, she won’t be for long. He’s going to cut his losses and run. I can feel it in my bones.

  With no other option, I decide to chance it.

  I lean back and try taking a step back.

  There’s a look of shock that quickly passes over his face, like he can’t believe I would have the audacity to challenge him.

  “Final chance, Kenzie. If you don’t do this, I promise Clara will be nothing but a sad story that follows you for the rest of your life. Nothing but a memory. You’ll always wonder what happened to her. If I don’t make it out of this, I would hate to think what my partner is going to do when I’m not keeping him in check,” he leers.

  “Stop moving now. Release the girl and step out from behind the car.” Joe is getting really close now.

  A partner. A partner. I never even considered a partner. I doubt anyone has. My mind races with all the possibilities and suddenly the outcomes aren’t looking so great. Making a choice with only a split second to decide and literally having lives on the line is a situation I would never wish on anyone. I can feel the tears start to flood my eyes as I make my choice.

  I take another step back.

  In only a few short seconds, I will be able to reach out and touch Joe. Safety is at my back but danger still lurks in front of me.

  Shock turns to rage on his face. Pure rage. I know it’s a look Clara must have seen when she was with him. Animalistic. It’s the face of a monster.

  He’s made his choice too.

  I see it flash on his face before time slows down.

  The smirk starts to take hold, even in the midst of all that rage, as he lifts the gun to point at my chest as I continue moving back.

  “Drop the gun!” I hear the sound of a bullet before the sound waves carrying Joe’s last command fully integrate into my brain.

  Time freezes.

  I don’t know who fired.

  One of us is dead.

  It’s a matter of who.

  And that’s when I feel it.

  The splash of hot liquid hitting my body.

  I look down at my hands and see the red.

  My vision blurs.

  I barely register his body crumpling in front of me or the feeling of hands gently taking hold of my arms and starting to move me.

  I lived.

  But will she?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “TRAGEDY” BY BRANDI CARLILE

  What comes next is the thought that keeps running through my head as everything around me keeps moving but I seem to be frozen in place.

  It only took Joe seconds to fully put himself between me and the body of the man who had taken my best friend.

  Seconds that seemed to be never-ending.

  Watching Joe remove the gun and check the pulse of a man who clearly was missing part of his skull was surreal at best.

  I couldn’t stop looking at my hands and the splashes of red all over them. I knew my clothes and my face were probably also covered as well.

  I’m certain that things moved fast after that, Joe moving me off to the side out of view of his body, sirens being heard in the background, Will running toward me, once more sitting in the back of an ambulance, the crowd that comes with a crime scene. It all happened in flashes. Like miniature snapshots in my mind.

  The thing I remember the most is not speaking. My brain was working, albeit more than a little confused, but no matter how much people were talking to me and asking me questions, I couldn’t seem to respond out loud.

  Will never left my side, just kept reassuring me everything was going to be okay, that I was in shock but that we were going to figure everything out when I was ready.

  I don’t know how much time passed between the shooting and when I finally found myself sitting next to Will in an interview room with the police. It was a much friendlier room than the last one. No metal ring on the table to attach to prisoners.

  The involuntary shaking had just subsided, but I want to get it over with. All the questions. Questions I’m sure are going to be asked a million different ways over a long period of time.

  Thankfully, Joe is in the room, even if he isn’t the one asking the questions.

  Detective Jones walks into the room, looking every bit as haggard as I feel. Either he isn’t getting a lot of sleep or his stress level is at an all-time high.

  “Miss Sharp.” His voice is more on the kind and cautious side.

  “Jones,” I whisper back.

  “I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions before you head home, while everything is still fresh in your mind,” he explains.

  I shrug, and Will squeezes my hand. The hand I am currently holding his with in a death grip. The same death grip I’ve kept since he sat next to me in the back of the ambulance. It is my anchor helping to keep me together.

  “Can you tell me what happened in your own words?” he asks softly with his notepad out and ready to write down anything I say.

  This will be the first time. The first time I will say anything about what happened.

  It pours out of me slowly. Every once in a while, a tear slowly trails down my cheek. No one interrupts me or asks any questions. They all just let me get everything out first.

  When I am done, it is my turn for questions.

  “Who is he?” I ask.

  “A graduate student, he was a teaching assistant for the computer science department. We’ve already been able to find some links with some of the missing women, so we are pretty positive at this point this is the man we were looking for in regards to all the other missing women,” he tells me.

  “His name?” I ask.

  Jones hesitates. I don’t understand why. I’m sure his name will be plastered all over the news, there was certainly more than enough camera crews at the scene.

  “Jonathan. Jonathan Nash.”

  I run the name through my brain, trying to remember every conversation I ever had with Clara about people she interacted with, I try and remember every random person who introduced themselves to me when I was visiting her while she was working on projects for hours on end. I come up short.

  “I don’t know him,” I say. “Well, I know his face. I recognize his face, but not the name.”

  “That’s not out of the norm, a lot of times the perpetrators of these kinds of crimes fit in, they don’t raise any alarm bells,” I can tell he’s trying to make me feel like this isn’t my fault, like there is no way I could have known.

  I don’t blame myself. Not for him, at least.

  There is no way I could have known that this guy would have turned out to be a lunatic and that he would go after women on campus. There was no way Clara could have known, and chances are she did know his name. Chances are she spoke to him, smiled at him, maybe collaborated with him in a lab.

  No, the blame I hold for myself is that he’s dead, and she’s missing.

  “Did you watch
the video?” I ask.

  Jones looks over at Will and they have some sort of silent conversation between them.

  “Yes,” he finally answers.

  “I only saw a few seconds of it. Was there more?”

  “It was a ten-second clip on a burner phone. Our techs aren’t optimistic about tracing the origin.”

  My heart sinks. I was counting on an IP address or metadata to show where it was taken. Anything to show where Clara was when the video was taken, or at least where he was when he put the video on the phone.

  “So she’s still missing? There’s nothing to go on?” I ask.

  He hesitates.

  “What about the partner? Did you find anything on him or his car or phone, anything, anything at all about the partner?” I continue pushing forward for information.

  “Kenzie,” he starts slowly, and immediately I know I’m not going to like what comes next. “There wasn’t a partner.”

  And if my life wasn’t already a shit show, this is when it officially becomes the twilight zone.

  “Yes, there was, he said so, he told me. I was there. I heard him.”

  He keeps looking over at Will.

  “Don’t look at him. Talk to me,” I declare, still not letting go of Will’s hand.

  “Kenzie, he would have said anything to make sure you cooperated with him. Our techs have looked at the phone, checked out the car, we’ve even had someone at his residence and as of right now there is nothing to even suggest the slightest hint of a partner.” He sounds so sure of everything he is saying.

  But I know he’s wrong. I know in my gut he wasn’t lying. I don’t know how I know, but I do.

  There were moments in our interaction where he didn’t seem as sure of himself, especially when we were more out in the open.

  But when he brought up the partner, there was conviction in his voice. There is no doubt for me. There is a partner. I knew it as much then as I know it now.

  “Then where is she? Where is Clara?” I demand as my voice starts to grow louder.

  “We don’t know.”