“Ok, I forgive you, but is your mom seriously letting you go with Tristan?” There’s no mistaking the disbelief in her voice, and I was sure this entire thing would come back to bite me in the ass, but it was too late now.
“Yeah, I was shocked too. But his mom called and convinced my mom. It’s some special family thing and he really wanted me to go. They all did. And I wanted to see him.” Even I could hear the longing in my voice when I said I wanted to see him. It was convincing enough for Carly, and she left off questioning me as we enjoyed our tacos and talked about school.
Chapter Seventeen
I heard the low rumble of his Camaro before I saw it, and we watched as he pulled into a space near Carly’s car. She had gotten it for her 18th birthday. It was a ten-year-old Toyota Corolla, but we both loved it. I still rode the bus occasionally, but often Carly would go out of her way to pick me up and drop me off.
Jake climbed out, and then I saw the passenger door open. There was no mistaking the angry look on Connor’s face. Obviously, Jake had left some stuff out when he said Connor would need convincing.
I walked Carly to her car and gave her a big hug. I wanted her gone before she started asking questions. I grabbed my bag before telling her, “Have fun. I love you.”
She got in her car, bemused at my rush. She finally said, “You too.” I saw her looking back at Jake and Connor before she said, “You have some explaining to do, sister.” Her look left me with no doubt that she would be demanding an explanation when she got back. I gave her a weak smile in return and waved.
“We’re gonna grab some food,” Jake said, resting his aviator sunglasses on the top of his head. I nodded and shoved my bag in the trunk he popped open for me. I couldn’t help my glance inside and wondered if he still had a gun stashed under the spare tire. Looking over at Connor, I had a feeling I might need it.
We walked back to the table I had just vacated. The miniature lights strung over the tables chose that moment to pop on. The taco shack was just that, a shack. Basically, a food truck that didn’t move anymore. They'd scattered several picnic tables around the outside and strung white lights for ambiance, but the real draw was the food.
“So what am I ordering?” Connor asked aggressively, his tone derisive. I immediately saw how this was going to go. Jake looked frustrated and apologetic at the same time. I imagined he’d been taking a lot of shit from Connor since he told him.
“Two steak tacos, two shrimp tacos, and an order of chips and salsa. While those are excellent choices, I must recommend the fish tacos,” I said casually. He blinked, surprised. I threw him a grin, “I can do this all night. In fact, I will, and you will believe me. We have a killer to catch, and your disbelief is wasting time. But we’ll do it your way. Now go get your tacos.” I tilted my head to the taco stand, my smile more shark-like than sweet at this point. Jake hid his grin and gave me a thumbs up before knocking Connor’s arm to get him moving.
We spent the entire meal with me answering Connor’s questions. I was beyond tired after about the fiftieth one.
“Now you’re just plain being a creep,” I said, after he asked me how many women he’d slept with. “Also forty-six. I can’t say if I’m impressed your number is that high or ashamed that my sisters fell for your shit that often.”
Jake choked back a laugh as Connor flushed. “Fine, maybe you are legit.”
“Finally,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We have a convert. Now, moving on to the real question at hand. Have you found Ripper?” I could tell by the looks on their faces they hadn’t.
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Jake mentioned, looking at me. I could see Connor wanted to protest the word “us” in that statement, but didn’t because he was actually beginning to believe in me now.
“Where is Ripper?” Jake asked me. The answer was immediate and I was glad I already ate.
“He’s dead,” I replied, their faces telling me my expression had already told them.
“Fuck,” Jake growled. Connor’s looking at me, “How do you know?” This time I think its honest curiosity, and not an attempt to catch me in a lie.
“When he asked where he was, I saw him. Face down on the ground. Bullet hole in the back of his head. I can help you find him. He’s in the woods, but he’s not talking.” I shook my head. “This guy is evil. The way he likes to shoot people in the back. It’s wrong.”
“He’s a coward,” Connor said harshly, anger flashing over his face. I nodded, since Connor would know. “Do we want to go get him?” he asked, looking at Jake.
“No,” I answered quickly, shaking my head. “It’s a trap. He wants to know how we found Samuel Phillips and Connor. Ripper was a pawn.” I was positive about this and now I felt like the mouse. The mood quickly transformed with my revelations, as our sense of security was destroyed. We were the hunted now, and someone had already died to flush us out.
Jake’s face changed at my words. He had been upset about Ripper’s death, but this was different. Our killer was playing us now.
“We have to find the needle and quickly. He obviously knows more than we thought,” Jake said, scanning the tables and surrounding area. With the lights above us, the darkness was that much more complete outside the circle of light. “We need to go. We’re exposed here.” We got up quickly, Connor and Jake flanking me. They shifted slightly, guarding my back and my front. Their choice of positions was petrifying, knowing one of them could get hurt protecting me.
“Is our dirty needle anywhere around?” Connor whispered behind me. He was fully on board with my gifts now. I thought about it before shaking my head. “If he is I don’t know,” I finally answered. At the car, Connor lifted the seat so I could slide in. The feeling of having a target on our backs had enveloped all of us. I wanted to rub the itch forming between my shoulder blades. I knew it was nothing more than paranoid fear, but that knowledge did nothing to soothe the realization that we were being hunted.
Chapter Eighteen
We got to Jake’s apartment and spent the rest of our evening playing several rounds of twenty questions. We determined that Ripper did know the needle when Jake was undercover. Jake hadn’t earned his trust enough to meet him though. We suspected our dirty cop was controlling the drug flow in the area. This also meant our dirty cop had found out or suspected the drug dealer, Tristan, had something to do with the rescue of Connor.
“Why did you refer to the dirty cop as the dirty needle?” I asked Connor, a question I’d wondered about.
“It was the quickest thing I could come up with. Drugs use needles and you don’t want to use a dirty needle. Same as you don’t want to deal with a dirty cop,” he answered with a shrug.
“That makes me feel slightly less ridiculous referring to him as a needle,” I said with a smile, and he nodded in agreement before asking me a question.
“I’m curious. Is this ability of yours inherited? Or did you get struck by lightning or something?”
I choked on a laugh at the last question, but I could see Jake was curious about my answer too. “I don’t know. Pretty sure it isn’t inherited. Best I’ve been able to figure it’s a talent, like singing or dancing, playing an instrument, being great at a sport, you know?”
“Seriously, you’re equating the ability to know the answer to any question to singing?” Connor shook his head in disappointed disbelief at my apparent naiveté. “This is way beyond that. I can play a guitar. Anybody can learn to play, but what you can do? No, that’s something else. A gift from God maybe.”
“I don’t know the answer to every question, otherwise we’d have found our guy,” I retorted, revealing my lingering disappointment that l hadn’t been able to discover any more information on him. “And I’m sure there are those who would say my ability could have come from the devil instead.” I rubbed my hands on my knees, a nervous habit I’d developed lately, as I told them the conclusion I’d come to years ago. “I figure its evolution. Like, I don’t have any wisdom teeth, but I have this abi
lity to know the truth. You lose what you don’t need and start to gain other things.”
“So you're saying that you’re more evolved than us?” Connor frowned, as Jake gave a slow smile.
“I think that’s a given.” I shook my head in mock disappointment at how easy he made it.
A question that had puzzled me popped out of my mouth. “Did he use the same gun in each murder?” I asked, diverting their attention.
“We’re not sure,” Jake replied slowly. “The ballistics on the bullet that killed Samuel Phillips didn’t match any in our database, but it was an unusual gun; an older Colt .44. The gun that killed Larry the snitch was different than the gun that shot Connor. He must have had two guns, because the one that killed Larry was a semi-automatic Glock. Again, ballistics didn’t match anything in the database. The bullet they pulled out of Connor was probably from the same Colt that killed the Phillips kid, but they couldn’t recover definitive ballistics from the round. We won’t know about Ripper, unless we find him.”
“That’s odd,” I said, looking at them. I watched, as they came to the realization that he was using a specific gun to kill certain people. “He would have had to have a gun in each hand the night he shot Connor. There’s no other way he could have shot so quickly,” I muttered, thinking out loud.
“Unless there were two gunmen,” Connor said. “Were there two gunmen the night I was shot?” he asked, looking right at me.
I nodded slowly, able to picture the two men now. Our dirty cop, eyes cold, and another man off to the side, his face in shadow. “Who’s the second man?”
I frowned as I recognized his face.
“Ripper.”
“Now we know why Ripper came after Addie. There’s a chance he was still around when you showed up at the scene.”
“But why wait so long to make a move?” I asked. “You were shot months ago. In fact, if Ripper hadn’t approached me, we wouldn’t know what we know now.”
“Maybe Ripper didn’t know it was important to our dirty needle?” Jake speculated. Connor shook his head. “There’s no way Ripper wouldn’t have told his main guy if a new dealer was at the scene of a crime he committed.”
“Then maybe we’re looking at this wrong,” Jake said, his eyes narrowed, a frown on his lips. “Maybe he didn’t see me. Maybe he saw Addie.”
“He wouldn’t have been as likely to mention that to our guy, since he’d already crossed you once where Addie was concerned. Then you disappear immediately after that. You never got a chance to move up the dealer ladder and meet our dirty cop. Ripper’s not the smartest bulb, and I doubt he connected the dots,” Connor said.
“But our dirty cop would have been highly suspicious of this information. So what caused Ripper to tip him off?” Jake asked.
A picture formed of Ripper being held down by two guys, because he didn’t have the money he owed our guy. Desperation led him to mention he saw me the night Connor was shot. Ripper had no idea of the knowledge he held.
I described what I saw to the guys. “So our needle doesn’t know about Jake?” Connor asked.
I shook my head as I said, “He knows. Ripper sang like a canary. Our cop has to suspect. He might even know who Jake is.” I reached over to grip Jake’s hand, worried. They both shook their heads no. “Only me and our captain knew Jake was undercover. It was kept quiet because Daniel Phillips was our source of information. He knew there was a supplier that could get around the cops in the area. He assumed there might be dirty cops on the payroll, looking the other way. We never thought a cop was running it all,” Connor explained, looking shaken.
“That explains why our dirty cop killed Samuel Phillips. He would have killed anyone that could have recognized him,” I said. I knew this guy was a monster, but now the monster knew more about us then we knew about him. When I mentioned this, Jake squeezed my hand, “That’s not true. You know what the monster looks like. He has no idea about that. He also doesn’t know we’re onto him. He’s curious is all. Maybe he suspects we know about him. But he hasn’t put it together.”
“That’s right,” Connor agreed reassuringly.
I couldn’t help thinking it’d be nice if I wasn’t the only one who knew what the face of our monster looked like, because even with the artist sketch it still felt like I held the key to our killer’s identity.
After a few more hours, I was exhausted and half asleep leaning against Jake. He shook me lightly, “Go to bed. We’ll be here.” I blinked at him, bleary-eyed. I wanted to protest, but I didn’t have the energy. I stumbled to the bedroom and kicked off my shoes before burrowing into the sheets. I had the brief thought that they smelled like Jake before I was out.
Chapter Nineteen
The next morning, I woke refreshed, my stomach rumbling. I took a shower to get the grimy feel off of me before I walked into the kitchen. I heard Jake talking and assumed it was Connor, so I said, ‘Hello’ before making a beeline to the coffee maker.
“Um, it’s no one, Mom,” Jake said, making silencing motions at me. My eyes widened in horror at the thought that his mother heard me.
“No, really. She’s not no one, obviously, but not any one important. She’s a friend of Connor’s,” Jake said, exasperated. “No, I don’t think she wants to come to Sunday dinner. Mom, that’s what I’m trying to say. I can’t come either. I’ve got work and company.”
This goes on for several minutes, as I sipped my coffee watching him pace. I wondered why he hadn’t given in yet. Stubborn man wasn’t going to win this round, not with his mom.
“Yes, fine, Mom. We’ll come to dinner.” I could see the muscle working in his jaw, and I strove to cover my smile with a yawn. It doesn’t seem to work, because Jake frowned at me anyway.
He hung up the phone and looked at me, “We’re going to Sunday dinner at my parents’. I’m going to take a shower.” He dropped his phone on the table before walking off. He was wearing the same clothes from yesterday, and I felt bad. I had obviously taken his bed last night.
I watched him pull his shirt over his head, as he headed toward the hall, back muscles flexing. I gave a low hum of appreciation, as he walked through the door. He stepped back out and gave me a quick look, so I waved and smiled innocently. Maybe it wasn’t so low.
“Connor is meeting us at my parents’. I told my mom you’re friends with him,” Jake said, fingers thrumming on the steering wheel, as we drove to their house. I couldn’t help but be amused by the turn of events. Jake had me stay with him to protect me and meeting his family was so removed from that goal, it hadn’t even been a possibility. From the tension emanating from Jake, I didn’t think amused was the emotion he was feeling though.
“Okay. Anything I need to know before we get there?” I asked, curious if he had said anything about me.
He gave me a startled look and threw the question back at me, “I don’t know. Is there anything you need to know?”
A quick image of a beautiful blonde woman formed in my mind standing next to a man that could be her brother. The knowledge of who she was caught me off guard.
“Well, this will only be slightly awkward,” I said, my amusement gone. “Your girlfriend will be there,” I told him, looking out the window.
“Great,” he said tightly, his hand clenched around the gearshift. His reaction seemed a bit extreme to me.
“You know I won’t say anything about your time undercover, right?” I told him, thinking that was his issue. I had no desire to destroy his relationship. That had never been my style.
He looked surprised and then chagrined. “No. That’s not it. I know you wouldn’t say anything.” I knew my look was questioning, and I saw his reluctance to talk about it. I shrugged it off, figuring I wasn’t getting an answer.
Seconds later, he burst out, “We’re not doing well.”
I looked back over at him, stress drawn clearly on his face. I bit my lip as he looked over at me, and I caught his quick glance at my mouth. He shook his head slightly and explained, �
��We’ve been off and on. Our relationship has been rocky ever since my undercover assignment. It’s my fault.” He paused before he said, “It’s both of our faults. I don’t think we want the same things.” He gave me a quick look when he said this, and I said, “Or the same people?” I remembered the man his girlfriend was standing next to and had the feeling he was important to her.
He gave me a rueful nod. “That too.”
“I’m guessing you never mentioned me or what happened while you were undercover?”
“No. I should have. I could have told her some of it. But I didn’t want to.” He looked at me, but his thoughts were firmly in the past. “I didn’t want to share you. Or admit that something changed when I met you.”
My breath stuttered at his words. Excitement raced through me before I remembered I was about to meet his girlfriend at his parent’s house. Reality reared her ugly little head, because it didn’t matter if there was a chance he returned my feelings. Our circumstances dictated we ignore our connection.
I admitted to myself there was more between us than casual chemistry. I had trusted him with my deepest secret, remembered his arms around me when I woke up in tears. He had created a place for himself inside of my soul, and I was afraid I would never be the same.
When we pulled up at his parent's house, I was shaky from the emotions rolling through me. I took a deep breath as I looked over at the older ranch home. It was a nice brick house with a gorgeous garden blooming in front. We were walking up the path when Connor pulled up, so we paused and waited for him to catch up.
“So we’re friends now?” Connor asked me with a smirk.
“You apparently think so,” I replied, with a twitch of my nose and a smile.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that. I don’t really know if you actually know, because I asked you a question or you’re bluffing,” he said, disgruntled. I smiled mysteriously, or at least what I hoped was mysteriously, and turned toward my doom.
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