The day he saw her story in the newspaper was etched into his memory like acid. He’d been at breakfast, bowl of oatmeal and glass of orange juice at his elbow. Picking up the paper, he flipped to the front page and there she was. It was that very day the Fates had brought her to him in the flesh.
His muse. His Calliope.
In an instant, he understood what he was meant to do, what all those months and years of waiting quietly had prepared him for. What he was destined to become and how he would achieve it.
Thinking of that day, the way the Fates had brought her to him, caused the pen to shake in his grasp. He took a few calming breaths, did his best to still his hand. Finished, he closed the notebook and set it aside to watch his Clio disappear into the building. He glanced down at the bouquet of roses on the bench seat beside him. They were a bright, vibrant pink—her favorite color. Next to them sat a small aerosol canister, no bigger than a tube of Binaca.
It was just after one o’clock. She would come out of that very same door in two and a half hours, on her way to the library to meet with her four o’clock study group. He’d wait, all but invisible, for her to make her way across campus.
And then he’d make his move.
SIX
Sabrina made piles. Note cards with things like watercolor landscapes or cartoon puppies on them went in a pile to the left. She didn’t even have to read them anymore. She could tell by the look of them that the people who sent them were sane. She flipped them open anyway, scanned the handwriting inside of each. Neat, well-spaced letters. Medium pressure on the page. That’s how normal people wrote.
She reached into the bag and pulled another envelope. It was legal-sized and bore the postal code for San Quentin. It was thick, the lettering on the front small and cramped together, pushed deep into the paper. She tapped the side of the envelope against her desk before using a pair of scissors to cut a thin strip along it. Slipping the carefully folded pages through the hole, she opened them up. More cramped, heavy writing, creating a solid block of text. She scanned for key words.
Kidnap. Rape. Stab.
They jumped out at her from the page, each one like a physical assault. She had to stiffen her neck to keep from recoiling in disgust. For some reason, the wingnuts all wanted to confess their crimes to her. Even the ones no one knew about. She refolded the papers together as they had come and placed them into an evidence bag. She wrote the sender’s name and the number 273. That’s how many letters she’d opened so far.
And the bag was still half full.
Something moved in her peripheral vision and she looked up. “Hey, Henley.” She smiled at him, flattening her hand against the evidence bag she’d just written on. The letters and packages were just evidence, nothing to be ashamed of. That’s what she tried to tell herself anyway. She glanced at the vase on her desk. “Your turn, huh?”
Henley cracked a dry grin. “I jumped the line—got caught up in a triple last night and didn’t even get home to shower. The wife is less than pleased.” He picked up the flowers and tucked them under his arm, his smile turning awkward. None of them knew what to say to her anymore. It was like she’d come back a complete stranger.
And she guessed she had.
She forced herself to pick up the evidence bag and drop it into the file box on the floor next to her chair. His eyes followed its progress, landing in the pile along with the rest of them.
“Well, if I were you, I’d stop at the market across the street and grab a bottle of wine to go with the flowers,” she said, deliberately reaching into the bag and pulling out her next contestant. A thin, white square with loopy, feminine handwriting. Postmarked Oklahoma.
She placed it on her desk and looked up. Henley was still standing there, looking at her. The expression on his face said he was about to offer to stay and help her.
Oh, hell no.
“And make sure the wine has an actual cork, not a screw top, or she’s likely to brain you with the bottle,” she said, the cheerful chirp of her voice hit her ears like fingernails on a chalkboard, but she couldn’t stop—not until he was sufficiently shut down. “See you later. Tell Deb I said hi.” She looked down at the envelope in her hand, concentrating on the contrast of her yellowed latex gloves against the snow white paper.
“I will … thanks.” He jostled the vase in his arms, letting her know he was thanking her for the flowers before turning and making his way toward the elevator. She didn’t watch him walk away. Instead she performed what had become a sort of ritual over the last few hours.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Snip. Snip. Snip. She pulled out the card and flipped it open. Words jumped out at her.
Boyfriend. Beat. Saved me. Hero.
She instantly rejected every single one of them. She wasn’t saving these women. She wasn’t a hero. She’d barely managed to save herself. Phantom fingers slipped around her thigh and squeezed, reminding her just how close she’d come to dying. Wade’s face flashed in front of her, that boyish grin of his. His eyes alight with joy. Not insanity—joy. Whatever anyone said about Wade in the months following what had happened between them in the woods, she knew the truth: he’d been completely and utterly sane.
Look at me, Melissa. Look. At. Me …
Tossing the card into the non-crazy pile, she reached into the bag for another one. The second her fingers closed around it, Sabrina knew the envelope was different than the rest. Pulling it out, she caught a faint floral scent, like the rose sachets Val kept sticking in her sock drawer. It was red, handmade from heavy, expensive cardstock. No postmark. In fact, it wasn’t made out to her at all. The name Calliope was written across the front, each letter perfectly formed in rich, dark ink. She’d bet money whoever’d written it had used an honest-to-God fountain pen.
She turned the envelope over. It was held closed with a seal—the impression of a rose stamped into black wax. She glanced at the empty space on her desk where the vase full of roses had been only minutes before. Something cold and slow crawled along her spine, snatching her lungs and holding them tight, making it impossible to draw a deep breath.
“Hey.”
She dropped the card back into the bag, her head snapping up so fast she felt her brain bounce against her skull. Nickels stood over her, two cups of coffee balanced on top of a pizza box.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” Looking around the squad room, she saw that while it’d thinned out a bit, most desks were still occupied and more than a few were very interested in what was going on between her and Nickels.
“You said don’t be a stranger.” He held out a cup to her and grinned, purposely keeping his gaze locked on her face instead of on the bag that stood between them.
Sabrina took the cup and smiled back. “Nothing better to do?” she said before taking a sip.
Nickels shrugged, sliding the pizza box onto Strickland’s desk. “A guy can only rearrange his sock drawer so many times,” he said, pulling a pair of gloves from the cargo pocket of his pants and snapping them on. He pulled a chair around, positioning it across from hers. “What’s the system—what’re we doing?”
She just stared at him. When she didn’t answer, he just shrugged and reached for the bag. She slapped her hand over the top of it, barring him from reaching inside.
“Nick—”
“I’m helping you. The only way you’re going to be able to stop me is to start screaming like a banshee or pull your gun on me. Both of which will draw attention,” he said, uncapping a Sharpie and smiling at her. “So do us both a favor and hand me an empty box and some evidence bags.”
Exasperated, she smiled in spite of herself and fetched an empty box. “Fine.” She dropped the box next to the bag and reached in, pulling out a handful of letters, making sure the red envelope wasn’t among them before she tossed them into the box.
“Start with these.” She explained her system before opening another l
etter. This one from a man in Ohio, begging her to help him find his missing fourteen-year-old daughter. This letter went in a third, sparsely populated box: no-man’s land. It wouldn’t be considered evidence in a potential case, but she couldn’t bring herself to dismiss it either.
She reached into the bag again and again, each time careful to leave the red envelope in the rapidly dwindling pile. She and Nickels exchanged small talk. The weather. The Giants. The twins applying for college. Nickels polished off half the pizza, while she picked at her slice, forcing herself to eat just enough of it to pass inspection.
“Last one,” she said a few hours later, pulling a long white envelope from the bag. It was well past six o’clock, edging toward seven. She held it out to him. “Want it?”
He took it from her and tapped it against the edge of Strickland’s desk. As soon as he was distracted, she pulled the red envelope from the bag. It weighed heavy in her hands, the color of blood.
SEVEN
Technically, the envelope belonged to her. They all did. Legally, she could’ve thrown the whole bag in the dumpster without opening a single one of them and Mathews couldn’t have done anything to stop her. This wasn’t an official investigation—just his way of yanking her chain. That’s what Sabrina kept telling herself.
She didn’t have to open it if she didn’t want to.
Chewing on her lower lip, studying the envelope in her hand, Sabrina was unable to understand why something like a few pieces of red paper and a blob of wax freaked her out so bad. But it wasn’t just the envelope. It was all of it. The roses. The phone call.
Red is your favorite color, isn’t it?
She didn’t open it. Couldn’t. Instead, she bagged it and dropped it into her bottom desk drawer, closing it quietly before locking it.
She stood up, avoiding Nickels and the way he just sat there, looking at her. “Thanks for the help—I’d have been here all night if you hadn’t shown up,” she said, pulling on her jacket. She flashed a quick smile in his general direction, still unable to bring herself to look at him.
He’d seen what she’d done but instead of asking her about it, Nickels just stretched his legs out in front of him and said nothing. Leaning over her desk, she swiped her mouse across its pad. Clicking the cursor on the screen here and there, she printed out her report for Mathews before putting her computer to bed for the night. She straightened, shooting him a quick glance.
He just sat there. Waiting.
Nickels wasn’t like Strickland. Where her partner would badger and bark at her until she caved, Nickels would simply wait her out. The funny thing was, she wanted to tell him about the envelope. She just didn’t know how.
She leaned forward, perching herself on the edge of her chair. “You aren’t going to ask me what it is, are you?”
Nickels lifted his shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I know what it is. It’s an envelope. What I don’t know is why you hid it in your desk drawer instead of tossing it on top of this pile o’ crazy we’ve got going here.”
“I don’t know why either,” she said. It was the truth. There was no real reason why the envelope bothered her. Because it smelled like roses? Because it was red? Saying it out loud would make her sound even crazier than she felt. “It just felt … different.” Right. Great, because saying that instead made her sound completely sane. She shook her head and stood. “Forget it. I’m gonna go home.”
He let it go. “Okay. Can I interest you in an armed escort to your car?”
She looked around the squad room. It was practically deserted, most of the other inspectors long gone, but there were a few diehards still hanging on. The two of them sitting at her desk working together was bad enough. If they were seen leaving together … she shook her head again. “No,” she said, softening her rejection with a smile. Michael wouldn’t have asked. He would’ve just fallen into step with her as she headed for the elevator and ignored every protest she threw his way.
The thought came out of nowhere. The moment she touched on it, Sabrina pushed it away. Michael couldn’t walk her anywhere because he was gone. He was gone and Nickels was here, sitting right in front of her. She deepened the smile on her face, forced it into her eyes. “But I’ll call you when I get home.”
Nickels smiled back before he stood. “Alright then,” he said, reaching over to fit the lid onto the last box of letters. The gesture brought him a little too close, his fingertips brushing the back of her hand. “Talk to you later,” he said before walking away.
She watched him leave, quelling the impulse to call after to him, to tell him that she’d changed her mind about the armed escort.
She stacked the boxes on top of each other, using evidence tabs to seal them shut, initialing and dating each one before calling down to the evidence locker for a pickup. While she waited for the uniform to make his way up to Homicide, she collected her report and signed it before dropping it in the file holder mounted on the wall outside Mathews’s office.
She realized that Mathews had never done that before. Made her actually open and catalog the letters she received at the station. Usually, making her lug the bag down to Evidence herself was enough to pacify his need to humiliate her. What made today so different?
“This all you got, Inspector?”
She turned to see a uniform standing next to her desk, a hand truck stacked with the three boxes she and Nickels had filled to the top. The red envelope flashed in her mind. The smell of it seemed to fill her nose. The black wax seal on one side, elegant lettering on the other in rich, velvety ink.
Calliope
She nodded. “Yes.” She crossed the room, accepting and signing the chain of custody form he offered to her on a clipboard. His signature followed hers and then he was gone, taking the boxes with him.
She waited for the elevator door to close before she moved. A quick glance around the room told her no one was paying any attention to her. With Nickels gone, the rumor mill was no longer interested in what she did. Crouching down beside her desk, she used the small brass key on her ring to unlock her bottom drawer. There, on top of her active case files, was the evidence bag holding the red envelope.
Without giving herself time to think about why, she took it out of the drawer and slipped it into her bag before she stood. She put on her jacket and gathered her bag before switching off her desk lamp.
“You leavin’?”
Sabrina looked up to see Evans watching her from his desk a few yards away. Looking around, she saw they were the only two left in the room. If he’d seen her take the card, he didn’t seem to care. Or maybe he was waiting for her to leave so he could call Mathews. “Yeah, listen—thanks for helping Strickland today,” she said, feeling like a bug trapped between two pieces of glass. Like maybe Mathews had asked Evans to stick around to keep tabs on her.
“Just following orders,” he said, shrugging his shoulder beneath the rumpled brown tweed of his coat.
“Well, thanks all the same.” She resettled her bag on her shoulder, ready for the conversation to be over.
Evans just snorted and went back to whatever he was doing on his computer.
She walked away, pushed the call button. The elevator doors slid open immediately and she stepped inside. She glanced up as they slid closed. Evans was watching her again, and she smiled awkwardly until his face disappeared behind the brushed metal door.
As soon as she was alone, she pulled the card from its plastic bag and lifted the wax seal from the paper, careful to keep it intact. Written in the same dark ink with the same elegant hand was one word, followed by a symbol.
Sabrina didn’t know what the word meant—didn’t even know what language it was in, but the symbol was something she was familiar with. It meant infinity. Boundless. Without end.
Forever.
EIGHT
Before she had long enough to think about what it could mean, the
elevator doors slid back open. Sabrina stepped out without even looking and collided with a very broad, very solid chest.
“Sorry,” she said, looking up to excuse herself. And she caught sight of Liam standing over her. When it rains …
“What are you doing here?” she said, wincing a bit at her brusque tone, but Liam just smiled, the light of it reaching his deep brown eyes.
“I called your cell a half dozen times before I moved on to calling your house. Your roommate said you were working late so … ” He zeroed in on the note card in her hand. “What’s that? A love letter?” The smile held. “Do I have competition?”
You have no idea. She looked down at the note card and opened her mouth, not sure what was about to come tumbling out but the elevator doors began to slide closed, giving her time to think. Liam stuck a hand out to stop it and she squeezed past him into the lobby. Somewhere in the catacombs beyond the lobby, she could hear a desk phone ringing and the grumble that answered it—Central station, how can I help you?
Turning back toward the elevator, she found Liam standing there, hands shoved awkwardly into the pockets of his jeans. He was already regretting the question.
She smiled at him. “This?” She held up the card. “It’s nothing, I get about a thousand of them a day—one of the perks of being famous,” she said, tucking it back in its sleeve and sticking it in her pocket. “What are you doing here?” she said again, starting to walk toward the parking lot, forcing him to follow.
“I haven’t heard from you in a few days,” Liam said, running a hand over his dark blond hair, still damp from the shower he must’ve taken. He wore it a bit long. She liked the way it curled over the collar of his cable-knit sweater. It was about as un-Michael as you could get. “I was able to slide out of the hospital early, so I thought maybe if you aren’t busy, we could grab a bite.” He gave her a sidelong glance as they walked side by side, the corner of his mouth lifted in a wicked grin she assumed he’d perfected on med-school coeds. “I know ambush dinner dates aren’t your thing, but I’m hoping I get points for spontaneity and overall cuteness.”
Sacrificial Muse (A Sabrina Vaughn Novel) Page 3
