The moment my feet hit the driveway, I stopped and studied the front yard with curious eyes, taking in the manicured lawn, the well-tamed flower bed, and the lilies that were planted around the mailbox.
Either a woman lived here, or a woman had done the gardening and the upkeep.
As much as I would like my place to have flowers and shit, they were too much upkeep, meaning I didn’t have them.
“Taos.”
I looked up to find Chief Wilkerson heading toward me.
I gave him a chin jerk and canvassed the neighborhood next.
The chief gave me a grimace.
“What’s wrong?” I wondered.
“It’s bad.”
I had no doubt it was if he was calling me.
It wasn’t like they needed me. They’d replaced me easily enough.
Sure, the solve rate on the crimes wasn’t as good now that I wasn’t around, but they were still getting through.
But this…
“Let’s get it over with,” I grumbled. “I have to be at the gym to teach a class by six a.m.”
The chief nodded his head and led me inside, looking like he’d rather pluck off his testicle hair than go back inside.
Yet he went anyway, and his face was blank the entire way inside.
“Tell me what happened, and the events leading up to finding the body,” I asked as we walked.
The chief held open the heavy oak door and waited for me to get inside before he closed it behind us.
The house still smelled new, too. As if there was still the scent of pine and fresh paint that was clinging to the walls.
“Call came through about nine last night,” he said, sounding tired. “Officers came and knocked on the door, but no one answered. The neighbor said that the guy who lives here hasn’t been home in at least a week. Left on a business trip the middle of last week they think. The only reason they knew was that they were heading to work when the guy was heading out with his suitcases. He said that as far as he knows, the guy is the only one that lives here.”
“Okay.” I paused. “Was it the guy who died?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
Then he walked me into the living room, right into a nightmare.
At first, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.
I mean, obviously there was blood. A lot of it.
And the really bad thing was that the couches were white, so the blood showed up really well on all of them.
And I do mean all of them.
Every single couch—there were three of them in the room set up as a sectional type thing—was saturated in it.
Whomever it was that died here had to have been killed here.
That, or there were multiple victims.
“Shit,” I breathed.
“Big shit,” Chief Wilkerson agreed.
I shook my head and walked farther into the room, coming to a stop right where the blood was slowly coming out in an ever-widening pool.
That’s when I saw the vic.
“Woman,” I mused, still not quite processing what I was seeing.
The victim was a female with blonde hair that was very long.
That’s when my brain finally comprehended what it was seeing.
The woman was on her stomach, face down in the puddle of blood. But there wasn’t a single thing wrong with her—at least from the back.
“Did the crime scene technicians get in here yet?” I asked, my belly rolling now at the sight before me.
“Yes,” he answered. “Other than removing the body, we’re done with it.”
I grabbed a pair of the boot covers that the chief was holding out to me, slipped them on over my feet, and then made my way through the blood.
“Did you flip her over yet?” I asked.
The chief nodded. “Flipped her back over so that you could see what she looked like when we arrived.”
The chief knew how I liked to work.
The details of how the victim was found were always important.
“Okay,” I murmured as I slowly moved the victim onto her back.
Rigor mortis had already set in, meaning that she stayed exactly where she was when she was on her stomach, even though I’d rolled her onto her back.
That’s when I saw the wound.
One single solitary wound.
In the upper thigh on the inside.
“Severed her femoral artery,” I observed woodenly. “Knew exactly where to cut and how deep.”
“Yes,” the chief agreed.
“Shit,” I grumbled. “Was the victim identified?”
While the chief spoke about what was found—which wasn’t much—I stood up from my crouch and walked around the room, being careful to stay in only the bloodied areas so I wouldn’t track blood any farther into the house.
“So we don’t know who she is, why she’s here, or how she’s related to the man that owns this house,” I surmised. “There was almost zero evidence to be found, and the house was locked up tight on top of all that. Am I correct?”
Chief Wilkerson nodded his head. “About sums up what we know.”
I scratched my head, likely getting blood in my hair. “And the other murders. Are they all similar?”
“Other than the first was a redhead, the second a brunette, the third a black-haired one, and then this blonde.” He nodded.
I tilted my head. “All curly-haired?”
The chief blanched. “Yes.”
Had he not picked up on that?
I had.
But, granted, I did have a bit of insider knowledge on serial killers.
I mean, it’d been a long time since I’d had to deal with working on a case for one. Way longer than when the chief had started at the department.
“That’s all I have for you,” Chief groaned.
I nodded and moved to the edge of the saturation of blood on the carpet before pulling my booties off and tossing them into the trash that’d been erected in the middle of the room for the same exact thing I’d just used it for.
Then I went to the bathroom and washed my hands, my eyes taking in the bright blue towels that had likely just been bought as well.
Brand-new house. Brand-new towels.
Brand new dead girl.
My stomach flipped over but I held my cool, offering chief a jerk of my head to let him know that I was ready to leave as I headed to the front door.
When we got outside, he said, “I’ll have the other files sent over to your place.”
“I’m at the gym all day until around seven tonight. Madden’s working,” I explained.
Madden also worked at the police department. He was leader of the SWAT team and they had some training to get done. Training that had kept him from dealing with his six o’clock class for the next week, forcing me to teach that one today, too.
Which pissed me off thoroughly. I didn’t teach classes.
However, Jasper and Sophia both had something going on today, too, as well as our regular coach who taught mostly everything at normal hours—he was a single dad and had a young boy that was now six months old.
Which all meant that the only other person that could take over was little old me.
“I’ll send them to the gym, then,” Chief offered.
I felt my throat constrict.
The chief’s phone rang and I jerked my chin at him. “See you later.”
He jerked his own chin in response and placed his phone to his ear.
I walked away from the house and didn’t look back, my mind spinning with possibilities.
CHAPTER 4
Thighs before pies.
-Coffee Cup
FRAN
I was sore.
Sore wasn’t actually descriptive enough for how I felt.
Handicapped maybe.
I wasn’t sure.
What I was sure about was that I was going back to that class.
Though, I was sort of bummed out this morning.
I had to go to the
six o’clock in the morning class instead of the six o’clock in the evening. And from what Mavis had told me, Taos didn’t teach any other classes but the one in the evening, meaning I wouldn’t be seeing him today.
“Stupid job,” I mumbled as I wobbled on shaky legs to my bathroom.
I looked around at my brand-new rented townhouse.
I was the first person to move into the townhomes, and the one I was in was so new that you could still smell the fresh paint.
I’d put my stamp on the house, though, by adding flowers to the front flowerbeds and the small area right around the mailbox. I’d gotten a couple of lawn chairs from Lowe’s, too, allowing me to be able to utilize the front porch.
My alarm went off and I groaned, looking back at the bedroom over my shoulder and decided that it could just continue to go off.
I was too sore to turn around and walk back for it.
Which caused me to have to listen to my alarm going off, louder and louder, until I’d finished in the bathroom.
Waddling to the bed, I leaned over it and snatched my phone out of the middle before turning the alarm off.
That’s when I smiled at my background photo.
My sister had taken one of herself, which happened to be a very unflattering selfie of all the rolls that she could manage under her chin.
Swiping it open, I sent her a text that said one word.
Me: Dead
She replied within ten seconds.
Mavis: It’s called the CrossFit walk for a reason.
Rolling my eyes, I shoved the phone down into the front of my underwear—seriously, I wasn’t wearing a bra so where was I supposed to put it?—then headed to my closet.
My eyes landed on all my old workout gear.
All the old workout gear that wasn’t nearly as flattering now as it had been once upon a time.
Seriously, I knew that because I’d tried on nearly every single piece I owned to find something to wear to the gym yesterday. But now, there I was having the same dilemma.
In the end, I chose to wear the booty shorts. They stretched, had a wide waistband that seemed to hold in the pooch the best, and looked good with a crop top. That, and the shorts were a little more forgiving around my thighs. Or maybe it was because the shorts came up to almost where a pair of underwear would sit.
“I should change,” I said, looking down at my shorts.
They were tight.
They were short.
They were… indecent.
“I should change,” I repeated as I started to head back into the closet.
However, just as I was about to change—or at least look for something else to wear because again, I didn’t have much that fit anymore—my alarm went off indicating that if I didn’t leave now, I’d be late.
Sighing and taking one last look at my underwear shorts, I snatched my tennis shoes, a pair of no-show socks, and headed for the front room.
The living room/kitchen area was great.
Great as in, really pretty, had great color on the walls—beige—had exposed wood and beautiful, warm looking wood floors.
But that really was it.
I didn’t have any furniture yet because I didn’t know anyone with a truck, and I refused to pay the ridiculous prices of having a couch delivered from the store in town.
Meaning, there I was without a couch.
But it worked out well because I had a bed in the middle of the living room for when people came over and wanted to sit.
I got that from my friend Jacob. Well, actually, Jacob was a friend of Mavis’s, who then happened to become a friend of mine out of association.
He had a truck—I didn’t ask Jacob for the use of his truck because he always tried to barter for more. More as in a date. Which I did not want to give him.
Jacob was a nice guy, but I wasn’t ready for anyone that looked like Jacob.
Jacob was pretty. He was a chiropractor. Had soft, supple hands that had never seen anything rough in their life. They were so soft, in fact, that I was fairly sure he got manicures on a weekly basis.
Speaking of Jacob, I had a missed text from him from last night.
I’d gone to bed around nine seeing as I couldn’t physically scrounge up the energy to do much more of anything but sleeping. I’d even forgotten to dry my hair before bed, and now it was a wild nest of corkscrews.
Ignoring Jacob’s text, as well as the mess in the kitchen from last night, I ran out the door with my keys in my hand and my phone now behind my pair of shorts, but still practically in my underwear.
By the time that I got to the car—I always, always ran when it was dark, or if I was by myself—my phone had slid down to uncomfortable levels.
Fishing it out of the front of my pants as I got in the car, locked the door, turned the key in the ignition, and then reached for a sanitizing wipe on the seat next to me.
After cleaning my phone off, I threw it on the passenger seat and then backed out of the driveway.
My eyes lit on a disturbance down the street with police cars in front of it, but I didn’t slow or check it out.
Mostly because I knew how it felt to be the center of attention, and I didn’t much like that feeling. So I tried not to put anyone else in that situation if I could help it.
I arrived at the gym with about two minutes to spare until class started.
I was all but dragging my ass inside the doors when I heard his voice.
“I want everyone to head out for a four-hundred-meter run.” Taos headed for a big bay door at the back of the gym. “You run out until you see the four-hundred-meter sign and turn back.”
I froze in the entrance, unable to make myself go. The darkness was heavy this morning. What little light that there was cast shadows everywhere. Anyone could be hiding in them…
Memories of my assault peppered my poor little brain, and I couldn’t make my feet move.
Recalls of a time when things were really bad for me practically hit me over the head.
It was dark. Really dark. I knew that I shouldn’t be running in the dark on this particular trail, but I had somewhere to be at nine in the morning, and if I didn’t get the run in, I wouldn’t get my long run of the week in, and that would just throw my entire week off…
A strong arm gripped my hand, and I blinked, looking up right into the face of the man that had saved me.
My mouth fell open, and I stared at those eyes that had held such kindness and compassion that night that had changed my life.
How had I not noticed it until now? Those eyes have been my saving grace.
Granted, a lot had happened that night, my brain was confused. But I dreamed about those eyes every single night.
The face was a bit harder to see that night—my vision had been fuzzy—but not that fuzzy.
“You want me to run with you?” he asked.
He didn’t remember me.
Then again, I’d been a swollen, bloody, and bruised mess when he’d seen me.
The only thing that’d been the ‘same’ had been my eyes and my hair.
“I don’t do so well running in the darkness.” I swallowed hard. “Something happened in the dark… I just can’t do it anymore.”
“I’ll run with you,” he promised. “I’ll stay right by your side. Okay?”
I nodded mutely.
Then together we set out.
But outside wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
It was later in the morning than it had been the night I was attacked. There were also lights that illuminated the area, making it almost impossible not to see.
There were shadows, yes, but they weren’t shadowy enough to cause me to think that something might pop out of them.
Like he’d done.
“I didn’t expect to see you here so early,” he mused as he ran, sounding like he was running at a very light pace.
I, on the other hand, was too busy huffing and puffing to answer him clearly.
“Have to,” I
panted. “Work.”
He grunted. “What do you do for a living?”
I grimaced, frowning at the ground. “I used to be a nurse. I used to work twelve-hour shifts at the hospital. But I… quit.”
I could practically feel his gaze on me as he said, “Why?”
I considered whether or not to answer him but decided to just be open about it.
“I administered a wrong dose of medication, medication that had been given to me by a fellow nurse and I stupidly didn’t think to check it. And instead of the nurse owning up to her giving that medication dose to me, she started rumors about me at the hospital. And I didn’t like looking like a complete dumbass. So I… quit. Now I do odds and ends. Run errands for people and stuff like that,” I explained.
He tilted his head. “Did you report the other nurse who gave you the medication?”
I nodded, even though I was panting heavily now, I continued to speak. “She fucked up a few months later by administering her own wrong dose of medication, although hers was lethal. She killed the guy, then admitted that she’d screwed up before with me. Said that she was having trouble seeing, and that she was going blind. Then admitted that she started rumors about me to keep the heat off of her while she was going blind. They tried to call me back, to get me to come back, but I refused. The damage was done.”
“Wow,” Taos said as he passed the others in our class who’d already turned around. “It sounds like she needed to get fired. Then they needed to do something to entice you to come back.”
“They’ve tried.” I shrugged. “But it works out well this way. I make more money doing what I’m doing. I have the freedom to do what I want, when I want. And if I don’t want to do something, I don’t.”
Taos laughed as we turned around. “That would be very nice.”
I looked over at him. “What do you do for a living?”
Then I nearly slapped myself in the face. What the fuck was I thinking?
I knew what he did for a living! He owned a gym for Christ’s sake!
Seriously, Fran. What the ever-lovin’ fuck?
He seemed like he didn’t want to answer at first, but then said, “I used to be a police officer. I retired a few years ago after a particularly brutal case and decided to try out a different career path. The gym.”
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