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When she walked into the Seattle Bureau for the first time since being released from the hospital, Morgan swore everyone stared at her. She didn’t look too bad. There were still marks around her neck from where Lollie had tried to strangle her. She wasn’t allowed to wash her hair because of the twelve staples on the crown of her head, and she had to wear a glove over her hand any time it went near water because of the twenty-seven stitches in it.
She would no doubt have two more scars to add in to her list, but only one of them would be visible. Looking down at the ground, Morgan focused on where she was headed and went straight for Garces’ office. She’d already briefed him twice, but this was to be her full length interview about the incident in her hotel room. Her union rep was going to be on the phone the entire time, but Morgan was ready to tell all. She had done nothing wrong, except maybe miss some major signs Lollie had put up, but even then, she was pretty sure it would have been normal for someone to miss them.
The conference room was near silent when she entered. She sat down and made herself as comfortable as possible and open to the conversation. She did not in any way want to come off as defensive. With her foot tapping against the floor, Morgan waited for it all to begin.
“Why don’t you tell us, in your own words, what happened since you arrived in Seattle?” Garces’ started, his dark brown eyes locked on Morgan’s face. His look was grim, but he didn’t seem to be overly concerned. Perhaps Geraldine had filled him in some.
“Sure.” Morgan took a deep breath. “The first day I got here, I went to do some work at my favorite coffee place I frequented when I lived here. I met a woman there, Lollie, and we talked briefly before I left to meet up with my ex for dinner. I had given Lollie my personal phone number since she was new to town and I used to live here.”
“And then what happened?”
“She called me that night. We set up a date for the next day. We went on that date. It went well.”
“Where did you go?”
Morgan swallowed. “We walked the market and went down to the pier to one of the seafood restaurants there.”
“And did Lollie join you in your hotel room that night?”
“No.” Morgan let out a breath. It was officially on her record that she’d slept with a woman. There was no way around it. In Seattle that didn’t make a difference. Had she still worked in Houston, she would have likely requested an immediate transfer to somewhere else. Chicago…it was hit or miss. “Lollie didn’t come back to my room until my third night here.”
“All right, so tell us what happened yesterday.”
“Yesterday, we were supposed to meet for dinner, but I was late leaving the office, as you know. I was working the case. Lollie came up to my room, and we didn’t leave. We had sex. Fell asleep. My alarm went off in the morning, so I got up, called my sister, took a shower, and went to get ready for work. Lollie then attacked me.”
“What instigated her attack?”
Morgan’s jaw clenched. She shot Garces a glare and shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You didn’t argue?”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell her you were an FBI agent?”
“No.”
“You didn’t kick her out of the room?”
“No. Nothing happened to instigate her attack.”
“Something must have.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest and stared her down.
Morgan was unfazed by his attempt at intimidation. She knew she was right. She had done nothing, at least nothing in a normal person’s brain, that would tick Lollie off. Letting out a breath, Morgan leaned forward. “She’s a psychopath. She doesn’t think like you or I think. So no, I didn’t say or do anything that would anger a normal person. Lollie, however, is not normal. She fights for shelter and food and love. When she feels those are in jeopardy, she strikes. She knew I was staying in a hotel. I had mentioned the night before that I lived in Chicago and wasn’t going to be in Seattle for much longer. I made it very clear this was not a long term relationship. That’s what set her off, but she waited. She waited for when she had the upper hand, she waited for when I wouldn’t be paying attention, and she waited to get out of it what she wanted.”
“And what did she want?”
“Love.”
“But how did she get love if she killed you?”
“Love to her is attention. She gets attention if I am dead, or any of her lovers. She sees them in the media, on the news, she hears the rumors and the whispers within the community. She gets the attention if we fight back. She wants her name out there. She’s not afraid of being caught. She leaves DNA samples, finger prints, everything all around every single one of her crime scenes. She doesn’t care if she’s caught.”
Morgan’s heart rapped hard in her chest, beat after beat. She vaguely heard her phone buzzing in her pocket, but she ignored it. No call was going to distract her from this moment. If she didn’t get it across to them the pathology of this woman, no one would be able to catch her.
“So why did she run if she wants to be caught?”
Chuckling, Morgan shook her head. “She wasn’t expecting me.”
“What do you mean?”
“She wasn’t expecting a cop. I have training. I’ve taken defensive tactics every year since I joined the force and even before then in college and in high school. I’m fit because I work out and I keep up with my fitness evaluations. Not to mention, I had a gun. No other victim has had a gun. She didn’t expect me one to fight back but two to know how to fight back and win.”
Garces nodded. “Where’d she get the knife?”
“Not one clue. She must have brought it with her. I suspect it came from Samantha Gideon’s house, that it’s the same knife she used on her.”
“We’ll look into that.”
Morgan heard her phone go off again. “Good. Are we done here?”
“For now. We’ll need you to stick around for a few more days, but then you’ll need to report to Taylor and return home. You’ll be on leave until you pass your evaluations and until this investigation is resolved, although I don’t foresee any problems in that happening. You didn’t discharge your weapon; it was clearly self-defense. The biggest issue is that you slept with a suspect.”
“Well, I didn’t know she was a suspect at the time. Trust me, I wish I had. Everything would have turned out differently.”
Garces grunted and shuffled his paperwork. Morgan’s phone went off a third time. This time she did grab it and look at the name that flashed across her screen. Her mother. Ignoring the call, she looked back at Garces.
“May I use a conference room for a call?”
“Be my guest.”
Morgan left the room and headed down the familiar hallway to another small conference room she knew was rarely used. It was the least updated with technology, so no one wanted to be in there if they could avoid it. Pax had checked in on her every morning and every night since he’d learned about what happened, and Pax had been the one to call Barbie, who had been up to visit twice already and was planning on taking the next day off work to stay with Morgan. Morgan had already yelled at Pax for that one.
Geraldine had informed Morgan every step of the way through the rest of their investigation. They had every cop available looking for Lollie, but she had pretty much vanished. To be fair they had all of her technology and a good chunk of money, so she would have to start from scratch.
Morgan shut the door to the conference room after flicking on the light. The other two calls hadn’t been from her mother. When she scrolled through her missed calls, she saw Fiona Wexford in stark red. With her heart in her throat, Morgan dialed the number and lifted the phone to her ear.
“Morgan! I just heard, are you okay?”
“How did you hear?”
“Grapevine.”
Morgan narrowed her eyes, truly curious how the grapevine of FBI intel ended up at Chicago PD in under seventy-two hours. “I’m fine.�
�
“Good.” Fiona let out a breath. “But really, how are you?”
“Sore. I’ve got like a constant headache from where she slammed a lamp across the back of my head.” Morgan sat down in one of the comfortable rolling chairs and watched the window next to the door to see who would walk by and find her. “But we’ve got more information now than we did before.”
“That’s good. Not the brightest way to go about getting it.” Fiona let out a wry chuckle.
Morgan licked her lips. “What exactly did you hear through the grapevine?”
A door closing sounded through the phone, and Morgan knew Fiona had found somewhere private to talk. “Just that you’d been attacked by the woman strongly suspected in my murder cases.”
“You still working those? Didn’t I take them over for you?”
“Sure, you did.” The smile was evident in her tone. “How did you find her?”
“By pure accident and coincidence. Call it a mutual love—or obsession, if you prefer—of coffee.”
“Coffee?”
“Yeah. Long story, but I found her. Her name is Lauren Jasper—she goes by Lollie. She’s young, twenty-eight. She’s definitely lived out east, but I suspect the story she shared with me is most likely a lie. I doubt she’ll ever come back to Chicago. She balked at the idea of it.”
“The idea of what?”
“Uh…also a long story.” Morgan closed her eyes, really not wanting to explain the whole story to Wexford at the moment, or ever, if she were honest. She’d much rather keep the fact that she slept with a murderer of at least five women under the radar as best she could. “I’ll be headed back to Chicago in a few days once I finish up some interviews and paperwork here.”
“Good. I’d…would I be able to meet up with you, maybe?”
Morgan’s heart was in her throat. She had been waiting for this moment, but so much had happened in between their kiss and now. Rubbing the bridge of her nose, Morgan shook her head. “For professional reasons or for personal reasons?”
There was a distinct pause before Fiona answered. “Personal. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. I promise. Just…well, I will be fine when I get these damn staples out of my head and I can wash my hair again. Then I’ll be hunky-dory and well on my way to fine.”
“Morgan…”
“I’m fine, Fiona. I’ll see you around.” Morgan hung up. No matter how much she had wanted to start a relationship with Fiona before, she could in no way contemplate it now. She needed time to process everything that had happened, find her happy place, and maybe even stand to be in her apartment alone before she dared invite someone to her bed again. God, she’d probably need ten years’ worth of therapy to get over this one.
Grunting, Morgan shoved to her feet and headed for the elevator. She was ready for some rest, for some calm, and for some updates from Geraldine. She felt so out of the loop that she couldn’t even see it. If it weren’t for Geraldine, she would be utterly lost.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lollie had managed to snag a suitcase from the hotel before she’d slipped out of the emergency exit and into the damp morning air. Her heart pounded hard as she stared at the building, her jaw set, and her eyes hard. That had been unexpected to say the least.
With the clothes wrapped around her body, even though they didn’t fit perfectly, Lollie had to make some decisions. Morgan had a gun, and she knew how to use it and well. Her aim had been confident. Lollie stopped walking as the sun blazed over the horizon. She licked her lips and leaned against the brick wall of an older run down building. She needed to breathe and to think.
She knew if she wasn’t careful, someone would find her. She could either go back and find Morgan and end their relationship once and for all, or she could move on. She wasn’t sure which she wanted. She’d never left a relationship so unfinished before, well, except her first, and in that case, she had gone back to find her lover in the arms of another. It had spurred an even bigger argument between them when Lollie had confronted her then ultimately ended their relationship.
Either way, she was going to need to lay low for a bit, figure out what the cops knew, what they didn’t know, and what lies Morgan told them. Letting out a breath, Lollie stepped away from the building and sauntered toward her rental car. She could break into it easily enough and be on her way. She’d get her back up cash and wallet, grateful the one she’d left with Morgan had very little information in it, although it did have her most recent phone, one she really liked.
Pursing her lips, she stepped out into the street lights that were popping off as the sun shone brightly into the area. Perhaps she would leave Morgan alone. They hadn’t been soulmates. Lollie wanted their connection to be deeper than it was.
With a sigh, Lollie broke into her rental and sat in the driver’s seat. She’d learned this trick when she was ten. It had advanced over time, and she was far quicker at it now than she’d been eighteen years before, but it had been useful. Her brother had taught her in one of the many fits of kindness he had bestowed in her direction.
Leaning down, Lollie hot-wired the car and the engine roared to life. It would be a bit of a drive, but she could readily get her back up cash which would get her wherever she needed to go. She’d have to get her stash of knives anyway. While she lived for the thrill of a new relationship, she also wanted to be safe, and truly she wanted to settle down with someone. She wouldn’t be able to do that in Seattle with constantly worrying and looking over her shoulder.
It was a mess. It really was. She had screwed up royally, and the only way to fix it was to run or to go finish what she’d attempted to end. Sitting in the empty parking lot with her car running, Lollie was at a loss. For the first time in years, she didn’t know what to do or what decision was the right one. She’d always known, always been forward thinking and working toward her plans and her dreams of a family. The whole white-picket fence dream her parents had taught her from a young age was her role in life. She wanted that. They had wanted that for her.
Putting the car into drive, Lollie stepped on the gas. She went aimlessly through the streets and into the next town over after stopping at her storage locker and getting her cash and knives. She went south and then she went east and back north. She ended up on Interstate 90, and in the middle of Snoqualmie Pass. It wasn’t until she was coming down on the other side of it, the roads slick with ice and wet from rain that she knew she was leaving.
Morgan could go back to Chicago and live out her life. She wouldn’t bother with her, though she was pissed about the knife and she wanted it back. She could very easily get it eventually, but for now, her priority was finding the love of her life, the woman with whom she could and would start a family. Someone who knew what Lollie needed and wanted and was able to meet those without hesitation.
Eventually the mountains faded into rolling hills and flatter plains. There was snow that covered them, but the highway was clear. Lollie would make a pitstop in Spokane then keep going until she hit the next major city. There she would stake her claim, her new beginning, her clean slate.
With Morgan still heavily weighing on her mind, Lollie drove the entire day until she got to Spokane. Her first stop was for shoes and some clothes that fit, and frankly, looked better than whatever she’d found in that suitcase. She had standards, and she wanted to maintain them.
Heading downtown, Lollie walked into the first shop and slipped on a pair of flip-flops, pulling the tag and shoving it into her pocket. She wandered around for a few more minutes, pretending like she was looking at certain items, and she left with nary a thought of stealing.
She went to the next store, picked out a tight pair of designer jeans and a cute shirt that cut at an angle across her chest, wrapping around her neck. She also pulled the tags and walked right out of the store, not bothering to look back. Slipping into her rental, she went get a new car at the airport out west of town.
###
Lollie mad
e her last purchase of the day on a whim. Crawling into her new rental car, she slid behind the wheel and ripped open the plastic covering the phone with one of the knives she had stashed in her bag. With the plastic open and off, she pulled out the phone and plugged it in to charge as she drove. Lollie headed straight out of town and continued east on Interstate 90. She drove another three hours before stopping for the night in Missoula, Montana.
Pulling into the beautiful lodge-style hotel off the highway, she paid for a room in cash and slipped into her room. Her phone was charged, and as she laid down in the comfortable bed with the warm blankets, she dialed the number she had memorized. She had been wrong before. Morgan had been the most perfect woman she had found yet.
They fit together sexually; they had laughed and enjoyed each other’s time when they’d dined together. Morgan was the match she had been waiting for. She’d just have to convince her of it. With the phone pressed to her ear, Lollie listened with her breaths coming in short and fast.
“This is Morgan, leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.”
Lollie hung up. She tossed the phone to the end of the bed and relaxed into the pillows with her arms crossed over her chest. Whether it was because it was a new number or what had happened earlier that morning, Morgan hadn’t answered. Lollie bit her lip, wondering if Morgan was laying in the bed in her room and thinking about her.
No matter how hard she had tried during the eight hour drive that day, she could not get Morgan out of her head. And she had tried. She’d recalled every woman she had been with in the past year, wondering and debating their relationship, the good stuff and the bad stuff, and at long last, remembering why they had broken up in the end. Justine had a girlfriend on the side and hadn’t shared that information with Lollie until they were caught in the act. Pepper had screamed too much during sex. Katie hadn’t wanted to commit. Andrea had been too flirtatious with other women. Samantha had wanted nothing more than a good fuck. But Morgan…Morgan was different.
Stone's Mistake Page 18
