“Then we’ll go to them. Telling you, Sam, something in the water ain’t clean with him.”
She sighed, changing the subject. “Has the judge issued a warrant for the DNA screenings at the hospital?”
“In less than half an hour.” Linc hissed. “Fucking asshole usually takes his sweet time rejecting my requests—I had no idea he could move so fast. I guess when it isn’t a Blackwater’s head on the chopping block he suddenly remembers how to do his damn job.”
“Looks like we’re one step closer to nailing The Chopper. If those nail clippings belong to her, we might be able to close two cases before the month is out.”
“Chopper’s slipped through our fingers too many times before. I’m not gonna get excited anymore. Not until I’ve got her wrists in cuffs.”
“You still think The Chopper is Jax Murphy’s killer?”
“I’ve watched the footage from that party over and over. Jax Murphy was in the bedroom that girl got dragged into. Not only do I still think that girl was The Chopper, and that she killed Jax…” Linc paused. “I think I met her.”
Sam’s voice hitched. “The Chopper?”
He met her eyes with a sigh. “I had a dream last night, about the girl I told you about? The one I found floating in the ocean?”
“Yeah, I remember. The one who inspired you to go into SVU, right?”
He nodded. “I remember the exact night I found her because I’d just had my badge-pining ceremony earlier that day. The same day Jax’s sister told us he confessed to raping a girl at a party…”
“November 1st.” Sam nodded, recalling the conversation with Jax’s sister succinctly.
“November 1st,” Linc repeated. “Ten years ago. The first day I officially became a cop.” Linc sucked in a breath. “Sam, I found that girl in the water on the same night The Chopper was gang raped.”
“You mean the same night The alleged Chopper was allegedly gang raped?”
“Todd Lockwood dragged her into a bedroom, nine other men followed—including Jax Murphy—and they didn’t come out for over an hour, Sam, give me a break. The footage doesn’t lie.”
“So you’re saying, what? That the girl in the water was The Chopper?”
Linc thought on that, staring ahead as he brushed the tips of his fingers along his lips, muffling his words. “She had blood on her dress. She was terrified. I tried to touch her, and she gave me this…” Linc looked at her while pointing to the scar on his eyebrow. “I think those kids ran a train, took her virginity, which explains the blood on her dress, and then threw her in the water to die. Now she’s back to collect a little blood of her own.”
“Well, since you’ve apparently seen The Chopper, why haven’t you had a sketch artist make a rendering?”
He shook his head, motioning to his face with splayed fingers. “She had this… red hair, soaking wet, stuck to her skin. I couldn’t see her eyes. Couldn’t see her features. I couldn’t guide a sketch artist. I couldn’t even point her out in a line-up if she was looking me dead in the eye.”
“Great. So back to square one we go.”
He sighed.
“Look. I see what you’re saying, Linc. I do. It makes sense. But, partner to partner?” Sam said softly. “Don’t bring it up with Lieutenant Chavez until you’ve got solid proof.”
“If I’m right, our search is narrowed down to a black woman.”
“And if you’re wrong, we’ve just mistakenly cleared all the white ones. Chavez will never go for it.”
“Yeah, thanks for the vote of confidence—” Linc’s words came to a sudden stop when a U-Haul van pulled into an open parking space in front of the house they’d been staking out. An African American man stepped out, and Linc ripped his keys from the ignition. “We’ve got action.”
Sam jolted as she followed Linc’s gaze, catching sight of the man as well. They both threw open their car doors and stepped out, approaching the man with a steady pace that wouldn’t alarm him.
Unaware of the two people approaching him from behind, the man circled around to the back of the rental van, opened the doors and shuffled around. A moment later he stood tall with several collapsed moving boxes cradled under his arms.
The moment the man caught sight of Sam and Linc sauntering toward him, one with her hand on the gun holster at her hip, he hesitated—slowly pushing the back door closed using the weight of his body. His brown skin was deeply pockmarked, full lips dry and eyes red. Linc couldn’t tell if they were that red by nature.
With his bloodstained eyes dashing between Sam and Linc, the man turned and moved away, his pace just a hair below hurrying, shooting them looks over his shoulder as he went.
Sam and Linc followed.
“Morning. SRPD,” Linc said, making sure to use a conversational tone of voice even though the man was purposely walking away from him. He lifted the badge hanging around his neck, showcasing it when the man peeked over his shoulder again while nodding up at the house. “You live here?”
The man hurried up the steps that led to his front door, muttering, “Uh, yeah. Why?”
“Beatrice Sinclair,” Linc said, he and Sam lingering at the bottom of the short staircase as the man struggled with his keys, which were jingling in the morning air. “She lived here?”
The man shot him another look. “I don’t know. I just sublet the place.”
“Ah,” Linc nodded, sharing a quick look with Sam, who appeared unconvinced, before squinting up at him. “How long have you been subletting?”
The man lifted his knee to cradle the moving boxes that were trying to slide out from under his arm, and shoved the house key into the door, still sputtering, “About two months? Maybe three?”
“Maybe three,” Linc repeated, taking his first step up as the man struggled to get the door open. Sam’s boots crunched on the staircase behind him, indicating she was right there, watching his back. “Who are you subletting it from?”
“I rent the place from her son.” The man jingled the key furiously in the door, his narrowed eyes peeking over his shoulder every other second, the moving boxes seconds from falling out of the unsteady arms he had glued to his sides. “What do you want?”
My hands around your neck. Linc bit back those words. “A red cab registered to this address was involved in a pretty serious accident the other night.”
“I—I don’t know anything about that. Like I said, I just sublet the place…” The man finally got his keys in the door, even though his hand shook so badly the tip of the key missed the locks several times before it hit.
Linc watched that unsteady hand, feeling every inch of his body catching fire, then moved his gaze to the boxes under the man’s arms.
“Going somewhere?” Sam asked, reading Linc’s mind. “You got your boxes. You got your van. You’re all set up to get the hell outta here.”
The man scoffed but didn’t respond.
“Where can we find the person who sublets to you?” Linc asked doing everything he could to keep the furious growl he could feel tickling his throat under control.
The man sighed as if deeply bothered, turning the key and stumbling into the open door of the house.
Linc and Sam took another step up as he stumbled into the door, which he’d opened just wide enough to squeeze his body inside.
“I have his information inside,” the man said, peeking through the small opening. “Just give me a minute to grab it for you.”
Linc and Sam both nodded, but froze in the midst of climbing the steps when the man slammed the door in their faces. Alone on the staircase, they shared a look, eyebrows raised high, before moving their expectant gazes back to the closed door.
Silence. Nothing but the soft hum of the morning breeze to keep them company.
Then, the click of the lock.
Their heads flew towards each other, wide eyes meeting once more.
“Did he just lock the door?” Sam breathed.
Linc was already moving past her in the midst of her qu
estion, jiggling the handle of the door.
Locked.
Linc rolled his eyes with a look of disgust. “For fuck’s sake… Sir.” He banged his fist on the door, his voice going authoritative. “Open the door, now—”
In the next instant, a deafening crack rang out, cutting his demand short. Linc and Sam gasped in unison at the unmistakable sound, leaping to opposite sides of the door just as three tiny holes blasted through it. Wood chips splattered and flew as each bullet pierced the door, one shot after the other, blazing by so violently it made the hair on Linc and Sam’s heads sway as they zoomed by. Dodging the flying bullets in the nick of time, Linc didn’t even take a moment to recover the breath he’d lost, seizing the gun from his holster and readying it in front of his body, elbows locked while Sam went for the radio on her hip.
The radio’s antenna vibrated under Sam’s hold, shaking almost as much as her voice as she brought it to her lips, speaking as quickly and calmly as she could. “Gellar to Central, 1312—shots fired! Requesting back up at 5586 Row Street.”
A grainy male voice immediately responded, fluttering through the radio’s speaker and into the air. Linc stepped away from his safe huddle against the wall and faced the door. Keeping his body at an angle—out of range of more gunfire—he lifted his pistol and aimed it at the handle of the door. A cloud of white smoke exploded from the barrel as he fired one shot.
The bullet spluttered the wood around the handle, weakening the lock so that when Linc lifted his leg high and rammed his foot into the door, it flew open with ease.
They were greeted by a house that was nearly empty. The brown moving boxes that had been under the man’s arms a moment earlier laid abandoned on the floor, scattered everywhere.
Linc stepped on one as he entered the house, catching Sam’s gaze over his shoulder long enough for them to make a silent agreement that Linc search the ground floor while Sam went upstairs.
Without a word, Linc turned and moved through the living room of the house, hearing Sam’s stomps as she jetted up the staircase shouting, “Police!”
But as he perused the living area, gun pointed and ready to shoot, Linc found nothing but the sound of his own shattered breathing to keep him company.
The house clearly belonged to an older woman, and not the young black man who’d just shot at them. Almost everything in the home had been removed save for a few pieces of floral furniture, all covered in plastic, and the black and white photos that hung from the walls. Photos that had taken on a beige hue that could only occur when they’d been aging for decades.
Through the sparse living area, the empty guest bathroom, and empty closets, his breathing grew more labored. He flew through each room as quickly as his legs would allow and down a long narrow hall that led to the kitchen at the rear. Sam’s stomps shook the ceiling as she navigated the second level with just as much ferocity, but the sound was reduced to nothing but a dull hum in Linc’s ears when he caught sight of the back door hanging open, sending sunlight blazing across the kitchen’s checkered tile floors.
Giving a sharp gasp, Linc broke into a run, jetting out of the open door and into the backyard. Once outside, in the middle of the yard, he swirled on his heels, desperate eyes drinking in the neglected grass and tattered fencing. Nothing. He zoomed across the yard to a door that had been built into the fence, throwing it open. The alley at the back of a run down strip mall greeted him on the other side—nothing but overflowing trash cans, rodents, and fire escapes sitting on the exposed brick on the back of the buildings. His eyes soared high, ears open, waiting for the jangle of the fire escapes to alert him to a runner. But once again, the only sound he heard was his own frenzied breath. As his eyes ran the exposed brick of the building, covered almost completely in unreadable graffiti, a frustrated scream took up residence the tip of his tongue.
With his biceps clenching and relaxing over and over, sending sharp lines down his pulsating arms, Linc began back toward the row house, his eyes dashing in every direction, ears primed for any sign of the man who’d slipped through his fingers.
But he was met with nothing. Just moments after his boots had crunched across the dead grass of the backyard once more, Sam’s head popped out from the row house’s second-story window. Her long hair blew with the breeze as she shook her head down at Linc, her own face tight with fury.
Linc clenched his teeth, shoving both his free and his gun clad hand into his hair. When that simple movement caused a sharp zap of pain to race through his body, his eyes widened, and he looked down, lifting the flap of his jacket, where the pain had originated. At the sight of a blood stain growing in the shoulder of his white t-shirt, he sucked in a breath that seared his lungs, threw his head back, looked towards the sky, and screamed with all his might, cursing the God’s who, for the last five years, seemed hell-bent on ignoring his pleas.
13
“I love that you order take-out just so you can put it onto real plates and pretend you made it. I love how soft you are, even though you want so badly to be hard...”
Veda slammed her eyes closed.
She’d told herself not to open her voicemail.
Why oh why hadn’t she listened to the wiser part of her mind? Now that she had her phone on her ear, with Gage’s buttery voice floating through the receiver, she found herself melting into another world. So far away from the one she was currently in, that the food frying on the stovetop before her was in very real danger of burning, proving once and for all that she was the worst cook in history.
“I love your laugh and the way you make me laugh. You’re the funniest person I know. You make me happier than anyone else ever has…”
She drew in a shaking breath when a long silence came through the phone trembling against her ear. A tear threatened to spill over her eyelashes. She clenched her teeth for control when her heart began waging war on her body, making every breath difficult to take, and making a muddled mess of her mind.
His voice came back, and she held her breath.
“I love the person I am when I’m with you. How you gave me the strength to stand up against my parents for the first time in my life. I love—”
She gasped when the message cut off, and the first tear raced down her cheek. She brought the phone away from her face and stared at the screen, her thumb lingering over the ‘call back’ button.
She jolted when the intercom in Linc’s apartment beeped, pulling her back to the present seconds before she pushed that button. Abandoning the food she was frying on the stove and her phone on the island, she hurried into the foyer and answered the intercom.
“Just checking in, doll.” Jerome’s voice was laced with a smile as it floated through the speaker.
Veda responded with the words she’d finally accepted were going to be a permanent part of her vocabulary. “I’m fine, Jerome.”
She thanked him, and they said goodbye. She returned to the kitchen with a shake of her head. How had she somehow gotten saddled with a third man in her life who was treating her like fine China? How many times did a woman have to say she was okay? Why were men so desperate to be saviors? Why couldn’t she say she was fine and have them believe it the first time?
Before she could entertain the questions flying through her mind, the handle on the front door jiggled. Her eyes flew toward the door with a gasp, the hairs on her arms standing on end. She pushed her body back against the stove while clutching the oven handle with clammy hands. For the first time that morning her heart, which was now pummeling in her chest, ached for Jerome’s friendly voice. Her conscience yearned to apologize to him for being so snappy about his and Linc’s overprotectiveness. Because, as the handle jiggled, all she could do was pray that one man, and only one man, was on the other side.
The lock clicked, the door creaked opened, and thankfully, that man was. Linc stepped in wearing the same sweatpants and t-shirt he’d gone to bed in the night before, topped with a leather jacket, his eyes immediately flying to her.
&nbs
p; They both exhaled, but Veda’s came heaviest. She covered her heart with her hand as he swung the door closed and locked it, keys jingling from where they hung from his fingers.
Her lips jutted out as she blew out another heaving breath. “Didn’t realize how scared I was without you here until this very second.”
Linc met her eyes across the entryway but didn’t smile. The sight of him not smiling wasn’t alarming. Sometimes she wondered if he genuinely forgot how. No, it was the fact that he was sweating profusely, shivering, and clenching his teeth—making the veins on either side of his neck protrude.
Her wide eyes ran his body, and she found herself asking the very question she’d grown to hate. “Are you okay?”
He swallowed thickly. “Had to leave for a few hours. Work. Sorry you had to wake up alone.”
“Wasn’t all bad.” She shrugged. “Jerome checked in obsessively. Plus, it gave me plenty of time to snoop through all your stuff.” She tried to smile but felt it ringing false, so she looked away to turn off the crackling pan behind her. “Turns out you actually had some food in the freezer. I got bored enough to attempt to cook it, but the look on your face isn’t exactly screaming: ‘Honey I’m home, what’s for dinner…?’” She frowned softly when a bead of sweat raced down the side of his face. “You’re literally sweating. Is the idea of eating my cooking that terrifying? Does it smell that bad?”
Linc’s nostrils flared, so strongly a part of her was waiting for fire to come blazing through them. “Still wanna stop by your place for some more clothes?”
She lifted one eyebrow high and looked down at her body. After only a moment of drinking in the black lace teddy hugging her curves, she looked back up at him with eyes that screamed, ‘do you even have to ask?’
Pulse (Revenge Book 5) Page 11
