They were almost at the minivan now.
“You like books?”
“Oh, I love them,” the woman said cheerily. She moved the bag to her other hand, flexing her sore fingers.
“Let me ask you something: do you ever leave reviews for the books you read?”
The woman hesitated before replying.
“Reviews? S-s-sure, every once in a while. Why do you ask?”
Her pace slowed slightly as she neared her minivan, and the hand no longer gripping the plastic bag clenched. It was only a subtle gesture, but it didn’t go unnoticed by either party.
Something doesn’t feel right.
“I can take it from here,” she said quickly, abandoning her previous line of questioning.
A strange, tuneless whistle suddenly filled the air.
“Oh no, allow me. Here, I’ll grab your keys.”
SECOND ACT
~
CHAPTER 23
“IS HE COMING BACK, YOU think?” the woman with the piercings in her face asked.
Colin shrugged.
He was still so furious about Ryanne that he could barely believe that he had actually made it to the writer’s group.
There were six of them again, and ten minutes into the class, there was still no sign of the douchebag Dwight Jurgens.
“Can someone email the guy? Cuz if he ain’t coming, I want my money back,” a young man with a toothpick dangling from between his lips asked from the back of the room.
“Already did. No answer. And the class was free,” a plump woman who had introduced herself as Missy P—why only use a pen name for your books? Why not have one in real life?—replied. “Tried calling him, too, but went straight to voice mail.”
“Whatever,” toothpick boy said as he started to pack up his things.
“Why doesn’t Colin teach again?” the girl with the piercings offered.
Colin’s ears perked, drawing himself out of the scene that replayed over and over in his mind of his wife with the landlord.
“What? No I don’t—”
Missy P interrupted him.
“I thought what you said yesterday was interesting,” she offered with a shrug that sent her entire body quivering. “I’d stick around if you want to teach again. I mean, you don’t have to.”
“Me too,” someone else chimed in.
Toothpick boy strode toward the door.
“No offense, buddy, but I’m out.”
Colin watched him go. The last thing he wanted was to teach these people about something he himself had limited knowledge of.
What had Ryanne said?
If you didn’t write your shitty books… If you got a real job.
Or something like that.
And as much as he hated to admit it, Colin was beginning to think that she was right.
Irrespective of his new life experiences.
“I don’t think I can teach you anything. I don’t—” he felt his voice hitch and fought back tears. The woman beside him with the piercings lay a comforting hand on his back. Colin regained control just in time. “I—I don’t know any more than you do. I self-published three books, but they don’t sell. Anybody can do what I did. I’m working on something new, something written to market that I think will do better, something dark, more visceral, but really guys, I’m nothing special.”
The hand on his back squeezed gently, and he turned to look directly at the woman. Her eyes were small and dark, and while he sought comfort and compassion in her expression, he didn’t find any.
But after a moment of contemplation, he thought that maybe this is what he needed all along.
“What you told us yesterday—about writing what we know, about our experiences—I tried that last night,” an older gentleman to Colin’s left said in a dry voice. “It was my best writing session in years.”
Colin raised an eyebrow.
“Come on, impart us with your knowledge, oh wise one,” Piercings joked.
Colin sighed, and reluctantly stood and made his way to the front of the class.
“To write about experiences, the first thing you need to do is to really experience something. Something that affects you so deeply that it changes who you are.”
~
Colin was still out of breath even after all the other members of the writer’s group had left the classroom. He had been up there for nearly an hour talking about…
What the hell was I talking about?
It had all been such a flurry that he couldn’t remember. At one point, he thought he had mentioned Ryanne and his landlord, but couldn’t be certain.
What the hell does it matter, anyway?
He was in the process of shoving his notepad into his messenger bag, when someone approached.
“You really have no idea what you’re doing up there, do you?”
Colin turned in the direction of the voice, and was surprised to see the woman with the undercut and tattoos standing in the classroom doorway.
Despite her condescending words, he was surprised to see that she was smiling.
“I thought everyone was gone… was it really that bad?”
Taking several steps forward, the woman said, “Naw, I’m just fucking with you. It wasn’t that bad at all. Better than anything that prick Dwight could do, I bet.”
Colin took her words as a compliment, although he wasn’t sure that this had been her intention.
“Like that shit about, ‘write what you know’?”
“What about it?”
“Sage advice. But makes me wonder… what have you experienced?” she asked, moving closer to him.
Colin’s eyes narrowed and he felt his heart thud loudly in his chest.
“What do you mean?”
She moved closer still, until she was within several feet of him, and for some reason Colin started to get nervous.
“I mean, we all have our dark side, you know? What’s that pen name you were telling us about? I am really, really interested in reading your work.”
Colin felt uncomfortable, and was about to say as much when the woman suddenly sidled right up next to him. Before he had an idea of what was happening, her hand was already at the front of his jeans.
His eyes bulged and he tried to swipe her hand away. Her grip, however, had a hold of him, and it was firm.
“I’m… I’m—” married, he wanted to say, but an image of his wife smoking a cigarette, her sagging breasts pushing up against the cheap t-shirt, Gary or Gerald or Glenn the landlord standing behind her in his stained tighty-whities came to mind and he stopped himself.
The woman, sensing his apprehension, smirked and leaned in close. She snaked her tongue over her lips, which, with a flash of excitement, he realized was pierced.
Fuck Ryanne, he thought suddenly, and this time when she squeezed the front of his pants, he pushed against her hand encouragingly.
Their sex was sloppy and uncoordinated, but it thankfully only lasted a few minutes. Sweating, his breath coming in short bursts, Colin turned away from the woman whom he had propped up on the desk, and pulled up his pants.
He could feel his face flush from his embarrassing performance.
It had been a long, long time since he had had sex.
Ryanne, on the other hand…
When he turned around, he saw that the woman, whose name he still didn’t know, had hopped off the desk and was in the process of pulling up her own pants.
“I’m sorry…” he began, but stopped himself when she chuckled.
Without comment, the woman buttoned her jeans and then quickly grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from the desk and started to write.
“Wh—what are you doing?”
Again, no answer.
Colin repeated the question, and this time the woman looked up at him.
“I’m doing what you said. I’m writing down what I know, my experience, so that I can recreate it later.”
CHAPTER 24
Drake awoke feeling more refreshed
than he had in months. Slightly disoriented, certainly, but his head felt clear and his thoughts were crystal.
And when he leaned over and saw Jasmine’s face pressed against the pillow, her caramel-colored skin a stark contrast to the crisp white pillow, he felt his heart drop.
What have I done?
He slid out of bed, and then moved toward his clothes that had been thrown on the chair the night prior. Walking as quietly as possible, trying to overcome his typical elephant-like grace, he somehow managed to put his pants and shirt on without waking Jasmine.
After a final glance at her peaceful face, accompanied by a well-deserved pang of guilt, Drake left the room.
Despite everything that had happened, he was beginning to think that perhaps his luck was changing. He managed to make it down stairs and slip on his boots in near silence, and he was within seconds of heading outside and forgetting all about the horrible mistake that he—that they—had made when the door suddenly flung open.
Suzan stood in the entrance, a bookbag dangling from one hand.
Their eyes met, and it was as if time itself had stopped.
For twenty seconds neither of them so much as breathed. It was only when Suzan’s bag fell to the ground, did either of them react. Drake poised himself, ready to run by her if she started to scream again.
But to his surprise, she didn’t scream. Instead, she simply nodded at him, then slipped by without a word.
Drake followed her with his eyes. She knew what had happened, knew the only logical reason why he was here so early in the morning.
She was bright and intuitive.
And yet Suzan didn’t seem angered by this fact.
Drake was happy to see that most of her burns had healed, and aside from a slightly rosy complexion and a small patch of missing hair near her temple, she looked pretty good given what she had been through.
As if reading his thoughts, Suzan turned from the first step.
“Is my mom still asleep?” she asked in a soft voice.
Drake gaped, and couldn’t bring himself to answer. It was probably for the best; he didn’t want to risk breaking the unusual calm by speaking. Besides, the question was likely rhetorical, because Suzan didn’t wait for an answer.
She started up the stairs, with Drake watching on.
“Mom?” she hollered. “You awake, Ma?”
Just before he turned and pulled the door wide, Drake spied something peeking out from the pocket of Suzan’s jeans. It was only the tip, and he couldn’t be positive, but he thought it was the same yellow as the envelope he had placed in the mailbox last night.
Outside, he noted that the little red flag on the side of the black mailbox was down again.
~
Drake entered Triple D and immediately reached for the light switch, only to realize that the lights were already on.
“Screech?”
The man popped out from behind his desk.
“Wassup?”
The man’s goatee looked more like a beard these days, and his hair, normally short on the sides, long and curly on top, was beginning to form a tennis ball shape.
“You ever go home?” Drake asked, unable to help the smile that crept onto his lips. It faded when he remembered that the last time he had been here without Screech, Raul had been present.
“Nope. Never. I’m that dedicated to our noble cause, sire,” Screech said with a mock bow.
“Speaking of which, did you ever talk to the guy about the yacht?”
“Mr. Bumacher? Meeting with him today. Speaking of which, I think it would be best for you to be there. Says it was your name who brought him to Triple D.”
Drake removed his hat and coat and put them on the rack by the door.
“You can handle it, pardner,” he offered.
Screech opened his mouth to say something, but then his eyes narrowed and a smirk crossed his lips.
“You’re being unusually cordial this morning. Maybe even polite. I’ve only seen you like this once before, when—”
Drake’s expression suddenly soured.
“Drop it, Screech.”
Screech laughed.
“It’s true, isn’t it? You—”
“I said, drop it!”
The smile fell off the man’s face and he dropped back down behind his computer screen.
“Sorry.”
Drake marched past him.
“Did you find out anything about the e-book thingy? Where it came from?”
Screech shook his head and when he spoke, his tone had become serious. Drake immediately regretted snapping at him as he had.
“No idea who it came from. Couldn’t link the registration number to anyone, and when I asked around the building, no one saw anyone deliver it. You think it’s important?”
Drake hesitated, his hand on the handle to his office.
“I think it is,” he said more to himself than to Screech.
“I’ll keep digging then. But I looked into the book that was loaded on there—Red Lips or whatever?”
“Red Smile,” Drake corrected.
“Yeah, sure. Anyway, it looks like it’s published online, but hasn’t sold much. I tried to find out about the author, L. Wiley, but it’s clearly a fake name. L. Wiley doesn’t seem to exist.”
Drake frowned. It wasn’t just the similarities between the book and the murders that bothered him, but also the fact that while it was undoubtedly an important piece of the puzzle, it had taken him so long to look into it.
With Dr. Kildare, Chase, Ken, the man with the missing yacht, and now Jasmine of all people occupying his thoughts, his life had suddenly gone from simple to impossibly complicated seemingly over night.
I wish Clay was here… he would know what to say, what to do.
An image of Jasmine on top of him, her head thrown back in ecstasy, her hard nipples pointed toward the ceiling suddenly flashed in his mind. Only as the scene played out, her pretty features slowly morphed into Ken Smith’s, and he shuddered.
Except despite the vision, he couldn’t fight the creeping sensation that he was the one getting fucked by Ken and not the other way around.
With a sigh, he turned back to Screech for a final time.
“Can you do me a favor?” he asked.
“Sure. What is it?”
“I need a couple of those cameras,” he chewed his lip for a moment. “And set one up by the front door in case any more packages arrive.”
Screech stared at him and Drake was certain that he was going to say something about home videos or offer some other lewd comment, but thankfully his partner bit his tongue.
“No problem. I’ll have them on your desk by noon.”
Drake closed the door to his office harder than he had intended and then slumped down in his chair.
A second later, he pulled the e-reader from his pocket and started to read.
CHAPTER 25
Chase stepped out of the shower and dried her hair. With the fan above her head sucking out the moist air, she started to apply her makeup, trying her best to cover the dark circles beneath her eyes.
It had been a long, long night, one that had consisted mostly of Internet poker. She had done well, raking in well over three grand, but it hadn’t helped distract her the way she thought it would.
And she had had only an hour of sleep, maybe two.
After Chase had done her best to make her face look halfway presentable, she dabbed concealer on the pale pink scars on the inside of her elbows.
She did this without thinking, the habit so ingrained that it no longer even registered in her brain.
That part of her life was behind her, long gone. And yet she doubted that the scars would ever heal completely.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door.
“Chase? You almost done in there? I have to piss!”
Chase made a face, and after quickly making sure that the track marks on her arms were barely visible, she tucked the towel up under her armpits.
&nbs
p; “All done,” she replied, pulling the door wide.
Brad was standing in the doorway, his eyes wide, clutching the crotch of his blue and white pin-stripe pajamas like a child.
“Gotta go!” he said as he hurried past.
Chase chuckled and started toward the bedroom, only to stop when Brad’s voice drew her back.
“You still taking Felix in today, right?”
Chase frowned. She had forgotten all about her promise that she would take Felix to school today.
“Yeah, shouldn’t be a problem,” she replied. Her meeting with Drake and Agent Stitts to discuss the book lead that she had come up with wasn’t scheduled until ten.
“Great,” Brad said with a sigh as pee started to splash loudly in the bowl.
“Gross,” Chase muttered. “I hope you put the seat up.”
After dressing, she was surprised to see that not only was Felix already wearing his uniform, but he had poured himself a bowl of cereal and was sitting at the kitchen table, munching away.
All grown up already… nine going on twenty-two.
“Morning,” she said.
Felix looked up at her, milk dripping from his lower lip.
“Good morning, mom!”
Chase smiled and kissed her son on the forehead. As she did, she smoothed a cowlick on the top of his head.
It stood straight up again the second she pulled her hand away.
“Let me get some water for that,” she said as she made her way to the sink. “Looks like I’m taking you in today.”
Chase put her hand under the tap and wet it, then made it back to her son and smoothed his hair again.
“Wanna stop for a donut before school?” she asked in a quiet voice.
Felix stopped slurping the milk in his bowl and looked up at her grinning.
“You sure? Daddy says I can’t—”
Chase raised one eyebrow.
“Well daddy isn’t taking you in today, is he? And when you’re with—”
Her phone buzzed on her hip and she glanced down at it. A frown formed on her lips.
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