All the Pretty Girls

by Riley Edwards

  “Shhh.” I hitched her leg further up my hip and buried my face in her neck.

  Flesh on flesh, her arms squeezing me, groans mingling together, surrounded by her smell, I let myself go and loved her as hard as I’d promised her I would. When we came together, I held myself deep inside and reveled in the fact Meadow was mine.

  Later that night when she was cuddled into my side, I waited for her to drift asleep before I whispered into the dark.

  “I love you, Meadow.”

  ***

  The call came a little after 3 a.m.

  Another girl was found dead in an alley.

  Rebecca Krouse.

  I reluctantly rolled out of bed. I kissed Meadow goodbye and told her I was called out.

  The short drive from my house to the bar was spent going over everything we knew, and more importantly what we didn’t know. The beautiful night I’d spent with Meadow was washed away by one phone call. By the time I pulled up, there were a dozen or more squad cars. I took a moment before I got out of the car to flip my emotions off and turn on the autopilot. I was wondering if Mike was right, was I too close to the case now that Meadow and I were together? I would be a hindrance to the investigation and ineffective if I couldn’t separate Meadow from the offender.

  With a flash of my shield, I ducked under the crime scene tape and moved to the alley. Mike and Ben were already there, examining what was left of the poor woman.

  “Sorry to wake you, man. This one is bad. She’s escalating,” Mike greeted.

  “Escalating? How the fuck is that possible? She obliterates their faces.”

  “The overkill on this one is extreme. She’s… man, I’m warning you it’s bad.” Mike stepped aside, giving me a clear view of the victim.

  Holy mother fuck!

  She had no face, whatever the unsub had hit her with turned it to mush. There was blood everywhere. I could barely make out the…

  “Flash your light on her head,” I asked Ben. He moved his flashlight shining it back to the dead girl’s head. Fuck. “What did you say her name was?”

  “Rebecca Krouse,” Ben answered.

  Becky.

  The blueish hair was stained with blood and brain matter, but it was definitely dyed an unnatural hair color.

  “Anyone have her ID?” I asked, looking around for a purse.

  “Yeah. Lance has it.” Ben motioned to the side where Detective Lance was standing, speaking with a group of uniformed officers.

  “Sorry to interrupt. Can I see her ID please?”

  Without breaking his conversation with the other officers, Lance passed me Rebecca’s driver’s license.

  It was her.

  Sweet Becky from the coffee shop was victim number fifteen.

  Damn! Meadow was going to freak.

  Chapter 20

  For him… I’d do anything

  I tried to go back to sleep after Nick rolled out of bed, but I couldn’t. I knew what today was. I’d thought about it all day yesterday. Nick hadn’t said anything about the day, so neither had I. It was like neither of us wanted to acknowledge the date. When the middle of the night call came, I didn’t need him to tell me another person had been killed.

  I’d heard him come in a little while ago and he went straight to the shower. I decided to give him time alone and got up to start a pot of coffee. I had to go to work, but I still had a few hours. I didn’t know what the protocol for the FBI was. If he got called out in the middle of the night, was he still expected in the office at 8 a.m. or did they get to catch some sleep first? I also figured with his job and the things he saw, he probably needed a few minutes alone to scrub the images out of his mind, if that was possible.

  I was in the kitchen trying to give myself a mental pep talk when I heard him come in. He needed me to be strong; he’d had a shit night, and if he needed to talk about it, I had to pull my big girl panties on and be tough. For him, for us, I could do anything.

  He didn’t say anything when he walked up behind and pulled my back to his front and held me. Damn, I was happy he was home. He stood there for a long time, not saying anything. When he released me, I turned in his arms and threaded my fingers behind his neck, not wanting to lose the contact.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “No. Come sit with me on the couch.”

  “You’re scaring me. Did I…”

  “No, baby. Please. Let’s go sit on the couch.”

  I let go of his neck and let him move us to the couch. Instead of sitting next to him, he pulled me down into his lap.

  “Shit, I don’t know how to tell you this.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  My mind was racing a mile a minute. What could he have to tell me that was upsetting him this much.

  “This morning. We found another victim,” he started.

  “I’m sorry, Nick. That’s terrible. The same as before? It’s the twentieth, so it’s her again?”

  “We’re waiting on a few tests to come back to verify, but it looks that way. That’s not all. The victim, shit, the woman, it was Becky,” he told me.

  “Becky?” I only knew one Becky. “No! It can’t be her. Becky, from Sam’s? She was leaving to be a school teacher. There’s no way it’s that Becky. Right?”

  “I’m sorry, baby. It’s her.”

  “No,” I denied again. “We just saw her at Sam’s. She was training the new girl. She was leaving. To be a teacher. Why? Why would anyone want to hurt her?”

  Nick remained silent and let me cry on his chest, holding me tighter and tighter as the tears got worse. Why Becky? Why did she have to die, yet I lived? She was going to help kids; she was so excited to start her new job. Why was I saved? I was a nobody. I would never change someone’s life the way Becky would’ve. When I thought I’d cried all I could, I lifted off his chest, and his hand came to my scarred cheek, wiping away the last of my tears. Sometimes when I was with Nick, I forgot my face was blemished with the ugly mark. But not today. Today it was burning with the reminder of my connection to the killer, a stark memento that had someone not stopped her, she would’ve killed me.

  “I’m sorry this happened to her,” I whispered. “I liked her.”

  “I did too. Come on, let’s get you some coffee.” He stood and set me on my feet, before taking my hand and guiding us back to the kitchen. “Can you go in late today?” Nick asked.

  “No. The big boss is coming down. There’s a meeting at nine with all the account managers,” I told him. “I was planning on being in a little early to make sure I had everything ready.”

  “You sure you’ll be alright?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks for letting me use you like a Kleenex.”

  “Anytime.” Nick moved an open notebook aside and set a cup of coffee in front of me.

  “What’s this?” I asked, pointing to the paper and taking a sip of java goodness.

  “Something for work. I thought I was on to something, but it ended up being a bust.”

  “On to what?” I asked, reading over the familiar names. “Sorry. You probably can’t tell me.”

  “It’s fine. I trust you. You told me if a client erased something from their cloud it would still be on the company server. I was trying to see what companies the bars were buying the cloud storage from to see if I could find a connection. But, as you can see, none of the names are the same.”

  “Six of those companies buy space on our servers at Fusion,” I told him.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “These.” I picked up a pen. “May I?” He nodded, and I checked off the names. “They all rent space from us.

  “Explain how that works?” he asked.

  “Okay, well, let’s take Chesapeake Lock as an example. They have clients that purchase space for storage. Chesapeake grew quickly and didn’t have the infrastructure in place to service all their clients, so they purchase space from a larger company like Fusion. I’m making up a number, but Chesapeake buys one terabyte of space
for ten dollars and sells it for twenty. The smaller company still turns a profit even when they must outsource. Now, most smaller companies use the profit to reinvest purchasing larger servers themselves, so they don’t have to continue to rent space. Some don’t. Chesapeake didn’t, neither did Bay Broadband. Both are on your list, and both are being bought out by Fusion.”

  “Fuck, that’s what we missed.”

  Nick picked up the list and contemplated the names.

  “Would Fusion have access to the files?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Nick’s frown deepened as he placed the list back on the counter and studied me.

  “It kills me to ask you this. My gut is telling me to keep the woman I love far away from this investigation, but the agent in me knows better. You’re already involved and it kills me.” I’d lost track of everything he’d said after woman I love. Did Nick love me? Was that what he was saying?

  “Meadow?” he called.

  “Sorry. What?”

  “If this is too much for you, I’ll dig in when I get to work. I should do that anyway. Never mind.”

  “No. I’m fine. Explain what you need again,” I told him.

  “Where’d you go?” I bit my lip trying to play it cool like he hadn’t just rocked my world. I was afraid I’d misunderstood what he had said and didn’t want to make a fool of myself if I had. “Red?”

  “It’s just you said the woman I love,” I blurted out.

  “And that bothers you because?”

  Bothers me? Shit, I wasn’t making any sense. I knew I should’ve kept my mouth shut.

  “You love me?” There, I’d said it. My lungs started to burn the longer Nick stared at me in silence. I couldn’t find my breath as I waited for him to answer.

  “Yes, Red. I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now. I wanted to, but last night after we made love didn’t seem like the right time. I didn’t want you to think I was only saying it because you were in my bed. I love you so damn much, I can’t tell you when or how it happened so fast, but I can tell you I never want to picture a future where you’re not standing beside me.”

  I finally exhaled.

  Oh. My. God.

  “Are you going to say something?” He smiled.

  “I love you, too. I didn’t want to tell you and scare you away. I knew when you kissed me in the elevator. I told my friend Veronica Venus I thought I was in love with you. But I lied, I didn’t think I was, I knew I was.”

  “Come here.” He didn’t wait for me to come to him, he rounded the counter and came to my side, pulling me in for a tight hug. “I love you Meadow Holiday.”

  I didn’t get a chance to tell him back because his mouth was on mine and I’d lost my breath again. By the time he pulled away and kissed my forehead, my legs were jello.

  “I love you, too.”

  “Who’s your friend, Veronica Venus?” he asked.

  Over coffee, I explained how I’d met Veronica Venus on a message board for survivors of violent crimes and how over the last five years she’d been my only real friend. My safe place. As I lost my in real life friends, she’d stood by me, cheering me on. I left out the part where she’d told me she thought Nick was using me, and basically warned me off him. I didn’t think he’d appreciate that part any more than I did.

  After that, we’d both gone back to his room and gotten dressed for the day together. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any sexy time, but we both had to get to work. When he pulled off his sweats and t-shirt and walked into his closet to pick out a suit to wear I did sneak a peek at his firm ass and muscular back. Damn, he was sexy! I didn’t know how I’d gotten so lucky, but for once I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I was going to grab on with both hands and say fuck the world.

  At the door, Nick handed me a to-go cup full of steaming hot vanilla flavored coffee. I loved that he had my brand of coffee in his cabinet and my flavored creamer in his fridge. It was funny how something so small made my belly flutter. It’d been doing that a lot lately, and for the first time in years, the butterflies were from anticipation of the future and not dread of the past.

  “Why was Sally pacing around whining?” I asked when we got outside.

  “I don’t know, antsy I guess. Sally, come.”

  Sally finished her business on the grass and bounced over to us and sat at my feet.

  “Be a good girl today.” I rubbed the soft fur behind her ears. “I’ll see you tonight.” Crap. That was rather presumptuous of me. We didn’t have any plans. “Or… umm… later… tomorrow.”

  Nick didn’t skip a beat and tugged my hand for me to follow him to my car. He took my keys, beeped the lock, and opened the door. “You’ll be seeing both of us tonight. Your place or mine?” he asked.

  “Yours. I like your kitchen better, and Sally has a backyard when she needs to go out,” I told him.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key, offering it to me. “I was hoping you’d say that. I may have to work a little late tonight. I’ll let you know as the day goes on. But if I do, you’ll need this.”

  “A key?”

  I was so stupid stating the obvious. I was expecting him to reply with no shit Sherlock, or maybe a good catch Captain Obvious.

  “Are you okay with that? Having a key to my house?”

  “Yeah, of course. I’ll make sure I give it back when you get home.”

  “No, Red. It’s yours. I want you to keep it,” he told me.

  “Holy shit!”

  “Too soon?” he chuckled.

  “No. I may need to pinch myself again. I’m afraid this last month has been a great freaking dream. No. Wait. Don’t pinch me. I don’t want to wake up if it is. I want to stay asleep forever in a place where a beautiful, strong, sweet, and sexy man picked me. If this is a dream and I wake up alone in my bed, scared and broken with no hope of a future, I’d never survive. Not knowing what I know now. You better be real, Special Agent Nick Clark, because if you’re not, my life is one big nightmare.”

  Nick moved, and Sally jumped out of the way when he pulled me into his arms and whispered, “You will never wake up alone again. Whether I’m lying there next to you or not, you are never alone. We are real, Red, and the future is in front of us to make of it what we want. What exactly that looks I don’t know, but what I do know as fact is - you are mine.” His voice was low and husky reminding me of what he sounded like when he was moving inside of me.

  “I wish we could go back in the house and spend the day in bed,” I told him.

  “Trust me, I do too.” He pushed his erection into my belly, and I contemplated quitting my job. A day rolling around in bed with him would be worth it. “But you have a meeting, and I have a deranged psychopath to catch.”

  “Damn,” I whispered.

  “See you tonight, Red. Have a good day at work.”

  He gave me a brief kiss, put me in my car, and waited for me to drive away before he got in his. I loved that too, Nick taking care of me, even if it was to watch me safely drive away.

  When I pulled into the parking lot at work, I was ready to turn around and crawl back into bed. Beth was getting out of her car, and the way she slammed her door told me she was going to be on the warpath today. Geez, I hated that woman.

  My phone beeped in my purse, a brand-new Michael Kors number I’d splurged on; it might not have been a Coach, but it was a step up from the cheap off brands I normally bought. I pulled my phone out and saw I had two missed texts from Veronica Venus and one from Nick.

  Nick: I love you, Red. Have a good day and remember do not take shit from Beth. Tell her to shove it where the sun don’t shine.

  I snorted a laugh as if I’d actually tell her that. She’d probably tattle, and I’d get fired. It was amazing how my boss couldn’t see through her shit. If she kissed his ass any more, she’d be milking his prostate. Hell, maybe that’s what she was doing.

  Me: I love you. Thanks for last night. xoxoxo

 
I held my breath when I scrolled to VV21. I used to look forward to Veronica Mar’s messages, but these days I never knew what I would find.

  VV21: I hope your sleep over went well. ??

  VV21: Please let me know you’re safe. Haven’t heard from you. Hope Mr. FBI man doesn’t have you tied up in his basement. By the way, how is the search going? Any new leads on who attacked you? You’re not going to let them try and hypnotize you again, right? I mean, it’s been so long, no use in trying to remember now.

  I read and reread the message a few times trying to figure out if she was trying to be protective or backhanded by bringing up my attacker. Did she not want me to remember? I decided I didn’t have time to decipher what she meant, besides I had to deal with a bitchy Beth this morning.

  Me: All is well. The sleepover was AMAZING. I’ll fill you in later - meeting in ten minutes. Thanks for checking in.

  Chapter 21

  I love you, Meadow

  “Now that’s a look of a satisfied man,” Mike laughed, coming to sit next to my desk, petting Sally when he did.

  “Really?” I looked up from the list of storage providers that Meadow had checked off.

  “You’re too easy. What’s wrong with Sally?” he asked.

  “Man, she’s been on edge since I left the house last night. When I got home, she was sleeping in front of the bedroom door. After Meadow got up, Sally was pacing the kitchen, following everywhere she went. Meadow didn’t notice until we got outside, and Sally was still sticking close. I think she’s bonded with Meadow which is going to make the exchange with Gabe difficult.”

  “Let me understand. You got a call out at 3 a.m. and left Meadow in your bed.” Nosy bastard. I’d played right into his hand. “When Meadow climbed out of your bed this morning Sally was acting weird.”

  “Yep.”

  “How many women have you had spend the night since you got Sally?” Mike’s smile couldn’t be any more smug.

  “None.”

  I hadn’t had a woman in my bed ever. Not that I was a monk, but I was careful who I allowed to know where I lived. Occupational hazard.

  “You think Sally’s jealous?” he asked.