Love, Lies, & Crime: Anthology

by Kimberly Blalock

The service lasts over an hour, but I only make it about twenty-five minutes before I start getting antsy. I don’t do well with death and funerals, but the fact that this sick bastard might be here with us doesn’t sit well with me. My foot bounces up and down constantly as I wait for this thing to wrap up so we can leave.

  Once everything is finally done, I stand, give my condolences to Ella’s parents and start heading toward the car. The hair on the back of my neck stands up and I feel someone watching me. The feeling catches me off-guard and I get my heel caught in the grass sending me stumbling. Before I have a chance to either right myself or fall, a pair of powerful arms wrap around me and straighten me out.

  “Sweetheart, sooner or later, you’ll realize that heels probably aren’t your forte.” Cooper’s deep voice washes over me, removing any signs that someone was watching me at all. His arms are still around me and I have no desire to change that just yet.

  “Mr. Hayes,” I tsk, “I’m pretty sure you were warned to stay away from me. I wouldn’t want to jeopardize your future.”

  Cooper drops his arms and I turn around. Bad idea. His eyes hold me hostage and I almost forget what I was doing. For some reason, I want his arms back around me. I want something that isn’t business and I’m not sure how to handle that.

  I snap out of my trance when he speaks again. “I’m not worried about my job.”

  “It’s not your job I was thinking about,” I brush the hair out of my face and smile. “I was thinking that you might enjoy breathing, though. And my heel got stuck in the grass. I walk perfectly well in them any other time.”

  Something catches his attention and he looks over my shoulder, narrowing his eyes. Whatever it is spikes my nerves again, but he shakes it off quickly and looks back at me.

  “So what was your excuse the first time you fell into my arms?”

  At the mention of his arms, my eyes drop to them. The muscles strain against the suit jacket and I want nothing more than to know what they look like without anything covering them. I want to feel them wrapped around me as he pins me against the — whoa! Back the hormone train up. That won’t be happening.

  “There was no falling into your arms. I was simply distracted and you just happened to be in my way.” I hold my head high and try to own what I’m saying but Cooper just laughs at me. My father glares at Cooper from where he’s standing.

  “Keep telling yourself that, beautiful.”

  I tip my head toward my father and Cooper turns to see what I’m looking at. “You might want to get back to work, Cowboy.”

  Cooper’s body racks with silent laughter and he starts walking away. I turn, make it about two steps before he calls out my name, and look over my shoulder at him.

  “Just so you know, some things feel better than breathing.” He winks and turns around without another glance.

  Yep. I’m fucking screwed.

  I curl my legs up underneath me, being careful not to spill my wine, and settle in to wait for Harper to come home. With tonight being her first official night, I wanted to be up when she got back. I wanted to make sure she was all right with everything that happened, and find out if she wants to keep going.

  I don’t know how long I sit there before she finally comes home, but it’s long enough to go through a bottle of wine and I almost fall asleep on the couch. Harper’s head hangs, almost like she’s ashamed. Ashamed of what though; that she actually did it, or that she did it and liked it?

  Does it really matter?

  The thought catches me off-guard. Of course it matters. I want to be there for all of my girls. To take care of them. That’s why they stay with me. Harper doesn’t even realize that I’m in the room with her. She kicks her heels off by the door and walks right by me without a word.

  “Harper.” The sound of my voice startles her and she jumps back. Her chest rises and falls quickly as she tries to regain control of her breathing. “How’d it go?”

  She shrugs and wraps her arms around herself. “Fine,” she whispers.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  Leave her alone or you’re going to run her off.

  I shake my head, trying to get rid of the damn voice whispering in my mind and pat the couch next to me. “Come talk to me.”

  “No,” Harper shakes her head adamantly. “I’m fine. I just need a shower and some sleep.”

  “Harper,” I whisper softly, “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me. Not everyone is cut out for this and that’s OK.”

  “Dani, I told you what I wanted that first day in your car. If this is what it takes, this is what it takes.” She takes a deep breath and straightens her shoulders. “Just get me another client.”

  Without another word, she turns on her heel and leaves me alone in the living room, wondering if she’s really going to be OK, and when the hell the voice in my head became such a bitch.

  ROUND THREE

  Pulling Rochelle’s chair behind me, she sobs, begging me to let her go. They always beg. Do they actually believe begging is going to get them anywhere? That if they shed a few tears and say please, I’m suddenly going to apologize and let them go. I roll my eyes as she starts into another round of pleading.

  Threading my gloved hands through bloody hair, I wrench back on her head, punching her square in the mouth. “Shut the fuck up, whore.”

  She whimpers. After a few seconds of grimacing in pain, her eyes snap open. Terror and trepidation fill her bloodshot eyes. She should know the outcome of this game by now. After all, Rochelle will make number three. Being the women that they were has gotten coverage of their death on national news. Poor, unsuspecting models; their deaths are a tragedy. Models my ass, they’re hookers. How I see it is they are getting what they deserve for spreading their legs for anyone.

  Dragging the chair a few more feet, I get as close as I can until I am able to spin her and have her knees touch the edge of the sink. Pushing the chair up on its front two legs, I rest her chest against the edge, getting her close enough to where I need her for the third part of tonight’s fun.

  I don’t say anything this time when she starts to scream. Instead I smile, grab the back of her head, and shove it into the sink. Water sloshes everywhere as she fights me, trying to pull back so she can breathe. I count to ten—my head ticking back and forth like a pendulum keeping time—and pull her head back up. She gasps and sputters, her mouth gaping as she tries to suck in as much air as she can before it happens again.

  I shove her head back into the water and resume my head bobbing to keep time. We do this six times, each one for a few seconds longer than the last. The last time, I hold her head under until she starts to fade, and stops attempting to fight back. Hauling her back, I slap my hand against her back until she coughs the water up.

  I have to give it to her. Becky and Elle never put up this much of a fight. I’ll admit, the chase and struggle has been entertaining, so much better than when they resign to their fate. Who wants to play with a quitter anyway? She knows how this is going to end, but she still fights for her life. I find it admirable, but she’s still a whore.

  ROUND FOUR

  She’s still fighting, still squirming to get free even though her legs are secured to the floor. I bend her back over a twelve inch steel pipe, kneeing her in the face when she tries to bite my leg as I attempt to hook her hands. Her screaming is beginning to get on my nerves. Why scream? Hours later and no one has come to your rescue yet, so why keep going?

  With the backs of her hands strapped together, I pull her until her body is strung tight like a string on a guitar, her back arching painfully, and hook the rope to the clip mounted by the drain in the floor. Pulling the heavy duty zip tie from between my teeth, I wrap it around her elbows, pulling them in on each other until she’s screaming in pain. Her arms are so tight against her head that she can’t move it at all.

  I push off the floor, grabbing the box cutter and bottle off my chair. The first cuts I make are to the spaces between her toes. The screams
are still there through each one, but the second I pop the top on the bottle of bleach and pour it on each cut, the hoarse screams become shrieks. I revel in the sound of her pain instead of her begging as I make my way up her legs. I make slow, shallow, precise slices across her skin, followed by pouring a little bleach on each one. As I reach her stomach, dragging the cutter around her navel, her voice gives out almost completely. Her body trembles, her mouth still open as she tries to scream.

  Her eyes are squeezed shut in pain but her mouth hangs slack as she keeps trying to beg me to stop. It gives me the perfect opportunity to tip the bleach bottle into her mouth. Her body reacts instantly as she tries to force the liquid from her mouth. Setting the bottle back down on the floor, I reach up, covering her mouth with my hand.

  “Spitters are quitters, bitch. Swallow like the whore you are,” my voice is laced with venom as I speak.

  My gloves smear the blood across her stomach with one hand, while I slice a little deeper into her flesh with the other. I mark her tainted body in the same spots as the other two. Each cut is two finger widths apart, each roughly two inches long. First horizontally, then I move over and do them vertically, alternating with each strip. Stopping between rows to use the bleach. She finally succumbs to the pain, passing out. Her shallow breathing tells me she is still alive as I attempt to cleanse the sins from her body.

  I finish up with Rochelle’s torso and straddle her chest. I grip her chin, wiping away the vomit that she choked up a few minutes ago. As carefully as I can, I drag the cutter across her skin until she matches the other two girls. With the word ‘whore’ etched into her forehead, I slap her until she comes back around. I want her here, present, and I want her to know that this is far from over.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The door slams, jolting me out of my daze. Harper goes screaming by me like a bat out of hell, shaking her head and muttering to herself. I guess that’s better than the numb look she has worn for the past few weeks.

  “You could have warned me!” she screeches from her room. Her voice echoes off the high ceilings and I can’t help but laugh. I’m not sure how she expected me to warn her when I don’t even know who she was with tonight.

  “What are you bitching about?” I yell back.

  Harper rushes back out into the living room, her feet skidding across the wood floor. She slips and falls on her ass but instead of standing back up, she flops down on her back.

  “He had a foot fetish. He put my toes. In. His. Mouth. And SUCKED!” Her entire body shudders and she starts to gag.

  Oh, for Christ’s sake, that’s disgusting, but suck it up. You wanted to be a whore.

  “Why didn’t you warn me? At least then I could have prepared myself!”

  “Harper,” I chuckle, “I don’t even know who you were with.”

  She stills on the floor and begins pushing herself up. “You texted me yesterday after you left and asked me to take him for you! You were gone all night. I figured you just took on another client.” What the hell is she talking about? I just saw her a little while ago. “Was this some sort of test or something? What the hell happened to your mouth?”

  I wipe my hand across my mouth thinking I might have something on it. The pressure hurts when I reach the corner of my mouth, and when I look at my fingers they’re covered in flakes of dried blood.

  You fell asleep on the couch, rolled off, and hit your mouth on the coffee table.

  “What happened? Are you all right?”

  “I, uh…” I dart my tongue out over the broken skin, “fell asleep on the couch and rolled off. Knocked my mouth on the table. I guess I didn’t realize I was still bleeding.”

  I shrug it off and make my way to the bathroom to clean my face off. The dried blood covers part of my chin and cheek. I can see why Harper was startled by it. I press a washcloth to my face and flinch back. My entire jaw aches but I push through the pain and clean my face off. It doesn’t do much because under the blood is a huge bruise.

  Shit, that hit must have been harder than I thought.

  I can’t fucking work looking like I took the night off to go to Fight Club.

  First rule of Fight Club is…

  The thought is cut off by Harper knocking on the door. I pull it back, irritated that she couldn’t wait ten more seconds for me to come out.

  “What?” I bite out.

  Harper fumbles over her words. I can’t really blame her; even I am surprised by the harsh tone in my voice.

  “There’s some smokin’ hot cowboy here to see you. Says his name is Detective Hayes and you’re lucky the Foot Man is still flashing though my mind, because I would so climb him like a tree.”

  Shit.

  “Thanks,” I whisper and push my way past her as she walks to her room. I try to smile when I walk into the living room, but it hurts so I’m sure it looks more like a grimace. “Detective. Still breathing, I see.”

  God, he’s beautiful. I swear every time I see him he looks better and better. However, the look on his face is anything but promising. All I want to do is turn and run away. I’m so tired of bad news.

  “Danielle,” he starts but I cut him off.

  “Dani, please. Only my parents call me Danielle anymore.”

  Cooper nods and removes his hat. Who the hell wears a cowboy hat in Baltimore? “Dani, we have to talk.” His eyes drop to my chin and he lifts his hand, letting his fingers draw gently over the bruise. The tender way he touches me and the tough-as-steel look he has is a total contradiction. I have to force myself not to lean into his hand. “What the hell happened to your face?”

  I reluctantly shrug out of his touch and force a laugh out. “Coffee table attacked me in my sleep. No big deal.”

  He doesn’t look like he believes me, but he drops it and moves on to the reason he’s here. “Dani, does Rochelle DeAngelo work for you?”

  I fall back against the counter and cover my mouth. I already know where this is going. Tears well up in my eyes and I shake my head back and forth, ignoring the pain it causes in my face. “Not again,” I cry. He nods once, confirming that Rochelle is gone. Rochelle is dead. My knees go weak and I feel myself starting to fall. Cooper wraps his arm around me and walks me over to the couch, helping me until I’m sitting down. He takes a seat on the edge of the coffee table and watches me carefully.

  “You know I have to ask you questions. I don’t want to, but you’re one of the only common links between all three of the girls. The ones we can find anyway.”

  “Cooper,” I sigh, wiping the tears from my eyes, “it’s fine. I grew up with a cop. I know how all this works. Just ask me your questions so I can let the rest of the girls know.”

  He drops his eyes down to his hands for a second, then back up to my face. “Where were you between seven last night and three this morning?”

  I open my mouth to tell him I don’t know—because I don’t remember—but the voice in the back of my head tells me to shut the hell up and lie. So I do, repeating the same thing that’s in my head. “Photo shoot in New York. I just got home a little while ago.”

  “Do you have anything saying you were there?”

  Your purse.

  I nod and stand up, grabbing my bag and start shuffling through it. I don’t find anything, and am about to give up looking when I notice the envelope where my bag just was. My heart races; the same handwriting is sprawled across the front, just like the other two. The only difference is, this one has a smaller envelope clipped to the big one. I don’t know why but I open the small one. A boarding pass to New York and a note are the only thing inside.

  I pull them out and set my bag back down on top of the envelopes. After separating the ticket and the note, I hand the ticket to Cooper. My eyes flick down to the note, reading it as fast as I can before stuffing it into my bag.

  I’m doing this for you; for us.

  I don’t understand what it means. I don’t even begin to think I can ever understand why someone is doing this to the people in my li
fe and making it seem like they’re doing it for me.

  Cooper asks me a few more questions and hands me his card with instructions to call if I need anything before leaving. I’m only alone for a second before Harper comes back out of her room and I break the news to her. Tears leak down her face by the time I’m through talking. She may be new, but she’s bonded with all the girls quickly and she’s probably hurting as much as the rest of us. If telling Harper hurt this much, telling the rest of the girls will probably kill me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “You’re done!” my father yells from across his office, his hands firmly resting on his hips. “No more!”

  “Excuse me?” I stand and rest the palms of my hands against his desk, glaring at him. I knew coming down to see him was a bad idea today.

  “Done.” He nods as if his word is final. I guess he doesn’t know me all that well after all these years.

  Standing to my full height, plus the four extra inches from my heels, I rest my hands on my hips and glare at my father. “Just when the hell did you become a deciding factor in my business? Because the last time I checked, your title was Father, not CEO of Sinners and Saints.”

  “My title right now, Danielle, is Police Chief and you happen to be part of our biggest open case. I can’t just ignore that!”

  My fingers creep up into my hair and I’m pulling at it before I even notice. My nose tingles and I know I’m on the verge crying. I hate crying. “I’m not asking you to ignore that, Dad. I’m telling you that I’m not going to give up my business and my life because there is some crazy person on the loose. That’s asking way too much of me.” I take a deep breath and try to calm myself back down. “I’ve doubled security. I’ve knocked back jobs. The girls are losing more money than any of us are all right with. I can’t cut them off completely. I won’t.”

  “You’d rather put everyone in danger than lose money?” A familiar voice rumbles from the doorway behind me.

  I turn, my eyes connecting with the Police Commissioner’s and make sure he knows that I mean what I’m saying. “All the girls know about the danger. They all know that they can walk away any time. In fact, some already have until everything settles down. Everyone that is still here, wants to be here. I don’t choose for them so neither do you.”