The Bullet Theory

by Sonya Jesus

  I want the comfort of his arms more than I want to step foot inside this building, and he knows that. He always knows me too well, even when I think he doesn’t understand. He steps closer and wraps his strong arms around me. “It hurts me too, Ellie. Every time I drive by here, I picture the nurse telling me you were in surgery, but my son didn’t make it.”

  I’m not ready for this conversation, but I’m trapped in his arms.

  “It felt like I was alone, and all I wanted was to hold you.” His voice bears the burden of loneliness, strained and gravelly. “I didn’t know if you were going to make it. No one told me anything, just that you had been shot. I don’t even know how I got to the hospital that night.”

  I force myself to listen because that’s what a partner does. I force myself to ignore my pain because that’s what a friend does.

  “I think I started running, and the next thing I knew, I was upstairs with Cap, who was the only one making coherent sentences. It hurt so much, I couldn’t talk.”

  At recognizing the sentiment, I sigh softly, easing the pressure in my chest. “Breathing hurt?”

  “God, yes. It felt like someone filled my lungs with lighter fluid and set me on fire, burning me up inside. You were in the operating room for hours, clinging to life, and I couldn’t be there to hold your hand. People talked to me, trying to distract me, but I stared down the clock, daring it to move faster or rewind so I could save you. The seconds got louder and louder as my anxiety built … I couldn’t imagine a life without you and Tyler, but I never thought the two were separate until the nurse came out. She slit me open right there, cut me in two, and was ready to hack me into pieces. My gut thought the worst… I mourned our baby, but I clung to hope. I fucking prayed for you to survive, and I felt so damn selfish.”

  “You don’t have to tell me this.” Please, don’t tell me this.

  “You know why I felt selfish?”

  I shake my head, not because I don’t know, but because I can’t handle him being flawed. His optimism and perfection serve as the barrier, keeping me from throwing my arms around his neck and burying my face in his warmth.

  “Because I knew, given the chance, you’d leave me to be with Tyler, just like I would.” His voice dropped so low, it must have hit the pavement.

  The prickling sensation in my eyes imposes itself on my mind. All this time, I’ve been crying for my baby, not once had I cried for Kace, who holds me tighter.

  “…I prayed for God to save you—for him to bless the hands of the people who worked on you and to bring you back to me—even if it meant without Tyler. Losing both of you would have killed me.” He buries his face into the crook of my neck and whispers, “I’m sorry.”

  Out of their own accord, my hands fly to the back of his head, locking him in place. Gently running my fingers through his hair, I forgive him for wanting me to live. “It’s okay, Kace.”

  It doesn’t mean we’re good, but it means we’re communicating and revealing feelings we’ve been harboring for months.

  “I don’t hate you for loving me.” I hate that you still love me, even when I don’t deserve it. When he finds out I’m using him to get to the Bullet Man, it will be the end. I know it. And I’m not sure I want to risk it anymore.

  The heavy-set nurse, with the blue eyes and kind smile, greets us at the entrance to the hospital. We had called ahead to know if she worked the ER tonight. We exchange introductions, and to be honest, I forget her name right off the bat.

  The second she mentions my baby, I shut off.

  “Oh, my goodness. You were the couple who lost the baby. I remember your faces. How are you two doing?”

  “As best as we can, considering the circumstances,” Kace answers, brushing his shoulder against mine. He’s not wrong with his assessment.

  She cocks her head to the side and sighs softly. “You said you wanted to talk to me about the suit I dropped off?”

  “Yes,” Kace takes the lead. “It was old and faded, right?”

  “It was my grandfather’s,” she corrects after the initial shock of his directness.

  “Why did you drop it off, and why did you use a fake name?”

  To ease her hesitation and distract myself, I chime in, “We know about the apps.”

  Her shoulders slump, and she confesses, “I needed money to help a friend who was going through a hard time. I didn’t want to use my real name for this very reason.”

  “That’s kind of you, but to use an alias seems extreme. Did you suspect illegal activity?”

  She shakes her head before blurting out, “No.”

  Kace doesn’t buy it. The stiffness in his spine gives it away.

  I didn’t either. She framed her answer.

  “My friend is grieving, and she lost her job. So one of the younger nurses here told me to check out this app. I found the job: Dry clean delivery. All I had to do was supply the suit and leave a package inside.”

  “Where did you get the package?” I ask.

  “From here.” She points to the waiting room with her chin. “It was left under this chair.” She walks backward and places her hand on the row of chairs lined up against the wall. “Right around here.”

  “Did you see who placed it there?”

  “Yes, actually. A young man with an injured elbow. I thought it was strange because he placed the package under the chair with the same hurt elbow and didn’t even flinch.”

  “How old was he?” I ask, wondering what the connection is with the drugs and younger kids.

  “Couldn’t be more than eighteen. He had a baby face, and he kept acting like his mom would walk in and smack some sense into him, you know?”

  Kace checks the waiting room for cameras. “Did you find anything weird about the package.”

  “No. It was very light. I figured it had money in it. I didn’t want to dig too deep with things like this.” She clears her throat and looks over my shoulder.

  We had just caught her in a lie. Before Kace flusters her with the information, I take the opportunity to see what’s behind me. Nothing. “How much did the job pay?”

  “Not much. One fifty. But it helped her, and once I got my paycheck, I got her some more.”

  “Did anyone ever contact you again?” Kace asks.

  “No, I deleted the apps.”

  Apps. More than one. “Why?”

  “I didn’t need them anymore.”

  “Did the person who dropped off the package sign in? Do you have a name?” Kace pulls out his phone and shows an image of the kid from the hotel. “Did he look like this?”

  She leans over to check the screen, careful not to touch the phone. “No, he was a bit more muscular, like he played ball. I can see what name he signed in with … because you are family, right?” she says a little louder, eyeing me in the process.

  “Yes,” I lie.

  It takes a few minutes at the nurses’ station, but she supplies us with a name. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work. It’s never a dull day in the ER.”

  I catch a glimpse of the name on the paper, only the first two letters: t and y. My brain conjures up memories of the shooting.

  Suddenly, I’m whipped back in time and descending the staircase of the bus, holding my phone in my hand and messaging Kace, telling him I had reached the second destination. Tyler kicked me in the spleen as soon as I cleared the vehicle, and I grabbed on to the side of my stomach, letting the pain pass.

  The pain never passed. I swallow hard, my head spinning with the stress and influx of cortisol. The room circulates around me and I shut my eyes to find my center. Losing control of my balance, I nearly stumble over my feet, instinctively drawing my eyes open.

  Kace tucks the sheet of paper in his pocket and reaches for my hand. He leads me out toward the double doors, where the cool breeze hits my heated cheeks. “Are you okay, Ellie? You’re whiter than the cotton scrubs.”

  My face felt redder than the blood, hotter than fire and colder than ice at the same
time, so I’m not sure why it’s pale. “I’m sorry. You’re bringing me along to help you, and my mind drums Tyler up.”

  “It’s okay,” he says, and drops a kiss to my forehead. “It did for the both of us.”

  Despite his kindness, which is extremely hard to bear, I wag my head. However, unlike an excited puppy’s tail, I dread the situation. “No, it’s not okay. I don’t even know what I’m doing most of the time.”

  “Just being here is helping me. I’d rather have you by my side than Frank any day.”

  I smirk and rest my forehead against his chin. “Did you get the sense she was hiding something?”

  “No, but then again, I didn’t know the kid from the motel had twenty thousand dollars’ worth of drugs in his paper bag.”

  True. “She said applications. Why would she need to delete all of them if she only had one job? And why does she have them in the first place? She’s a nurse. Don’t they pay well? I’m pretty sure they get paid better than we do.”

  “We can look into her a little more. She may know more than she’s letting on.”

  “What about the kid she talked about? Do you want to follow him?”

  “I don’t think following the couriers is going to get us anywhere, but we’ll work on finding this kid before chasing down some leads with the CCTV and footage we recovered from the sites. Frank’s working on cross-referencing them to see if any license plates overlap. It’s a lot to sift through, and there is a long list already. Too many couriers and too much footage; we’re going on speculation that the Bullet Man is actually at any of these sightings.”

  “Or that he’s in a car.”

  Kace sends the nurse’s information to Frank. “Let’s head home and see if we can go find something we missed in the crime scene photos. Or maybe we can do dinner? It’s almost five.”

  That’s completely random but my stomach’s not one to silence its protests. “Dinner sounds good. Bag of chips and coffee wasn’t much of a lunch.”

  Kace stores his phone in his pocket. “I remember the days where that’s about all you ate for lunch. You never wanted to leave the precinct.”

  I wasn’t a victim then. “That was two years ago.”

  “I still remember the first day we met.” He leads me toward the car, where he opens the door for me. “Cap brought Frank and me into his office and a couple guys from The Tank, then he took me aside and told me to lie about my family. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I followed orders, and you picked me right out.” Kace’s goofy grin floods me with memories. “That was the first time I ever lied to you.”

  The same feelings, as the ones from our first encounter, return and mix with the longing accrued within the past week.

  That day, the second I had walked in through the door of Cap’s office, my eyes zoned in on Kace. He held my gaze, clearly stating his intent. He didn’t have to say much, but the way his eyes narrowed and curved upward at the ends, and how he shifted in his chair to take up more space and be the alpha in the room, gave it all away.

  I had to pry my eyes off him to gauge the others in the room. Every chance they could, my pupils landed on him. I had never been so attracted to someone in my life, but I had a job to do. Cap told me my job position would be a bit unconventional, and he wanted me to do a small demonstration to get the detectives on board.

  Desire aside, I greeted each of them and established a basal line—things they seemed to do naturally—and then I started my questioning. Not only did I find out when Kace lied, but his partner also lied based on him, and one of the two guys followed his lead.

  “You lie and get everyone else covering for you.”

  “I’m magic like that.” He closes the door and comes around to the other side.

  I clutch the seat belt like it’s some kind of barrier capable of protecting my heart from him. “You have a tell when you lie. Like this.” I mimic the expression. He inconspicuously pinches the inside of his bottom lip in his teeth. It’s quick and usually camouflaged by some movement around his mouth.

  He swivels his upper body toward me. “I don’t see anything.”

  I repeat it and hide it with a smile.

  “The smile?” Of course, he’d pick that out. He’s been extremely in tune with my lip movements this week.

  “No.” I point to my lips.

  He leans closer and zooms in.

  I repeat it again, but he doesn’t catch it. I swipe my hand over my face and become stoic. “Observe my mouth carefully.”

  “Okay,” he grunts, catching me by surprise when he leans in closer.

  “Watch the corners, more specifically, and the way my chin moves.” I repeat the tell three or four times.

  His eyes land on mine. “If I keep looking at your lips, Elle, the only tell I’ll be concerned with is…” He cups my cheek in his hand, and his thumb softly slides over my bottom lip, parting my mouth a bit.

  Breath escapes me before lips land on mine.

  No resistance, because all of that fades away. Moving lips silence thoughts, and gravity—the invisible force pulling between our hearts—doesn’t care for resistance. With distance, the pull had weakened, but here, in the confines of his car with only inches between us, what had once pulled us closer to one another, yanks us even closer.

  One of his arms curls around my waist and the other threads through my hair at the base of my head, cradling my neck as he drags me closer. Locked in each other’s orbit, words come undone.

  I fall apart at his touch. The woman carved out of pain, collapses into the moment, longing to start over—to cling and try to be the perfect girl in his eyes.

  But I’m so imperfect it’s considered damaged.

  My lips tremble at the realization, and he steadies them between his before he releases them, ever-so-gently, and touches his forehead to mine.

  He pauses and risks it. “Let me spell it out for you. Elle—Oh—Vee—E.”

  I sniffle and chuckle at one of the first corniest things he’s ever told me, and grudgingly answer, the same way I always had: a roll of my eyes followed by, “Oh—Kay.”

  He holds his breath and releases it in a long exhale. “You haven’t called me Kay in three months.”

  My response is lost on his lips again, and even breathless, I can breathe again.

  7

  Coralee

  Dr. Nolan Mills

  The application on my phone is up, and I’m sitting in my car, watching the courier pick up my package at the third drop. The bellhop of the five-star hotel opens the door for the petite girl with pixie hair, eyeing her super short skirt suspiciously.

  High-class escorts always take the five-star hotel gigs because they think it’s for sex, and this hotel, in particular, attracts girls in need of fast cash.

  The courier’s instructions are to wait at the bar for someone wearing a pink tie. Orchestrating these relays is kind of fun, considering how easy it is. Most of the people who pick up these sketchier ads think it’s either drugs or prostitution, or something illegal, so they never open the package or try to take it. It’s dangerous to mess with the underworld of this city, but there is a profit to be made if people know where to look.

  Four hundred dollars for wearing a pink tie and delivering the package to someone is worth it. Some of the couriers don’t even make that amount in a week. After the app takes its cut, they still get eighty percent. That’s good money. I’ve seen drug postings up to a couple thousand dollars, but they’re for deliveries or pickup in sketchy parts of the neighborhood, not all people are willing to take that much risk.

  Plausible deniability would be put into jeopardy. Treading the border of dangerous and naïve seems to be the sweet spot for getting away with criminal activity.

  This morning at the coffee shop, I used the bathroom and left a small package in the trash bin. According to the log hanging on the bathroom door, the janitor usually empties the trashes between eleven and eleven-thirty. I scheduled the pickup from the trash behind the coffee
shop at noon.

  For six hundred bucks, dumpster diving doesn’t sound so bad.

  As told, the courier left the package on booth number three in the coffee shop and left. Another courier, Mr. Pink Tie, was to dress up nice, pick up the box, and deliver it to the hotel by precisely one o’clock.

  At three minutes to, he shows up in a taxi. His black suit looks new, but it does the trick. The bellhop even smiles as he lets him in. Through the large mirrors in the restaurant area, I watch him weave between the tables, headed in the direction of the bar at the end. There, a girl with short pink hair waits with a drink in her hand, suspiciously eyeing the crowd.

  Her face perks up when she spots him, and she elegantly slides off the stool to saunter over, swaying her hips in the process. Words are exchanged, as is the small pink package, which belongs to Coralee Mitchell, the rich woman whose daughter was murdered in this very hotel.

  Bet a lot of people don’t know the hotel owners paid a lot of money to keep the death out of the papers because of the scandal it would bring. I happen to know, for a fact, the lower level of this hotel is a high-society elite club that willingly provides escorts to their more notorious members. Of course, Coralee doesn’t know her twenty-one-year-old daughter was involved, nor does she know the bellhop, who so courteously smiles at the women and lets them in, was the one who penetrated her daughter with the barrel of his gun, and it accidentally went off.

  Accidentally. I scoff at the despicable man before me. Maybe I’ll accidentally kill him myself. I’ve seen horrible cases, but this one made my blood boil.

  After sustaining massive internal injuries, which did not kill her immediately, he dropped his victim down the laundry shoot and exported her out of the building via a truck, where he then discarded her naked body into the ocean.

  The hotel covered it up, never expecting the body to surface. Whoever said crime pays, got it right. The bellhop kept his job with a substantial pay rise. News reports speculated she got picked up in a human trafficking ring.