by S. T. Abby
I turn and walk away, and he lets me, because he can’t follow. He can’t make a scene.
The Boogeyman could be watching.
Let the sick bastard come.
I need something to stab.
“Stay with her. I’ll be there as soon as I can get free,” I hear Logan saying, probably to Duke as I keep walking. “And someone find me a fucking phone charger!”
The first tear falls as I step into the open elevator and stab the Lobby button fiercely. I ran up three flights of stairs, worried out of my mind that Logan was hurt when I couldn’t get him to answer my million and one calls or texts.
Turns out, I’m just someone he didn’t bother to think of when I was going out of my mind with all the worst case scenarios.
Dead phone is not a good excuse. Not when everyone on the team is here with their phones he could have used.
Duke slides into the elevators just before the doors close, and he leans against the wall.
He doesn’t say a word, and I toss him the keys the second we hit the lobby. Silently, we make it to the car, and make the long drive home. I don’t speak. The radio is silent. The only noise is the sound of my V8 Mustang vrooming down the street.
My phone lights up with a text from Logan—guess he got that charger—but I don’t bother reading it. Just like he didn’t bother with me.
When we finally reach my house, I take the keys from Duke, but I cross over to the driver’s seat.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Giving you time to get out of my house. I don’t want to be around people right now. All of you better be off my property before I return.”
His eyes widen. “Look, Lana, I get that you’re pissed right now. He’s an overbearing douchebag who just acted like a thoughtless prick, but don’t risk your own safety to punish him. Let us stay and protect you.”
I hold the door open, one foot inside the car. Duke’s a good guy, but it’s hard not to take this out on him, since he’s the only one around right now.
“You have no legal right to be here. Just as you said. I can’t stop you from loitering on the street, but you’re officially trespassing if you stay on my property. Be gone before I get back, or, ironically enough, I’ll call the cops.”
He groans and curses, running a hand through his already disheveled hair. “Where are you going?”
“Wherever the fuck I want to,” I say, flipping him off as I get into the car. “If Logan has a problem with that, remind him it’s a free country,” I add before shutting the door.
Without giving him more time to argue, I crank the car and slam it into first gear, spinning on a dime in my driveway, feeling my rear swing around as I start barreling out. I don’t glance back as I drive to the warehouse in town that Jake rented out. I also drive with my knees as I turn off my phone and pull the battery out.
When I get there, I leave my car in the warehouse before grabbing the keys to the Altima. We have several cars I use when I go to collect the debts. No cameras are out this way, meaning no one ever sees me do this.
The warehouse has the best security, and even if someone breaks in, they won’t know who it belongs to. Well, unless my pretty little Mustang is in here when they hit.
Not likely enough to be concerned.
The cars are disposed of after they serve their purpose.
I leave the warehouse, turning on a burner phone in the car, and call Jake.
“Hello?”
“It’s me. Find anything on the Boogeyman?”
“No. This guy is pissing me off,” he grumbles. “How’s Logan?”
“He’s in one piece and untouched. He’s also recently single.”
He grows quiet, and I ignore the tear that rolls down my cheek.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, since I’d feel so much better if you weren’t dating a federal agent or living with cops, but are you sure you’re not overreacting?”
“He didn’t bother to care that I was going out of my mind with worry, even though I’ve jumped through hoops to keep him updated on my safe-and-sound state.”
“Sounds…petty. Sure you’re not just looking for an excuse to get out before you get too attached?”
I’m already too fucking attached. I don’t cry.
I haven’t cried since the day the tears stopped falling.
Yet tears are breaching my eyes with a renewed vigor as I drive toward Jake’s house.
“Petty is getting pissed that he doesn’t call when he says he will. Petty is not being livid that he didn’t bother to tell me he was alive. I can’t do this, Jake. I can’t live with cops in my house. Those badges…I want to rip them off and flush them down the toilet. They wear them with pride.”
“They’re not from Delaney Grove, babe. You can’t confuse the two.”
“I’m not. They’d be dead if there was any confusion. I just feel…dirty. I don’t want them there. I don’t want him there anymore—not because he makes me feel dirty. I’m giving up too much by playing by his rules. I haven’t even started Anthony’s house yet besides the two cameras.”
“I’ve jumped a leg on that one for you, since I knew it’d be hard to go put more cameras in a house if a cop was trailing you to keep you safe. Pretty sure aiding a murderer isn’t what they had in mind.”
He’s trying to be light and funny, but I don’t have the headspace for it right now.
“Good. I need something to focus on.”
“Feeling stabby?” he muses, still trying to lighten my mood.
“Very.”
“Where are you?”
“Heading toward your house. Plotting a murder at mine isn’t going to be easy for a while.”
“Why the burner phone? And why don’t I hear your Mustang?”
“I’m in the new Altima we picked up. I’ve had a cop in my house for however long it’s been—feels like years. I don’t trust him not to call friends and put a whatever out on my ride. Also, the FBI have the ability to turn a phone on if the battery is in it, so I don’t trust the GPS to not give them my location.”
“Paranoid much? They can’t do that unless you’re a suspect.”
“You’re acting like they play by the rules. Don’t forget Agent Hadley Grace hacked my hospital records. Well, Kennedy’s hospital records.”
He blows out a long breath. “I take it back. I’m very glad this relationship is over, even though I hate that you’re losing the first thing that seemed to make you smile in over ten years.”
Bitterness rises, but I swallow it down as I angrily bat away the fresh tears. I don’t have time to cry and wallow over a breakup. It was stupid to think I could ever be in a relationship.
I survive to avenge the wrongs of the past.
Falling in love? It’s the end of a girl like me.
“Speaking of Agent Hadley Grace,” Jake says, breaking me out of my concentration. “I dug up that dirt you need.”
“And?” I prompt, wondering if it even matters now.
“She was recruited by the FBI at sixteen after hacking a secure file in their network. It was jail time or FBI time. It’s a pretty common thing, especially amongst juvenile hacking offenders. She apparently became some sort of forensics prodigy though, and moved up to Logan’s team.”
“That’s not dirt,” I point out.
“No, but she was a hacker at sixteen because she was a runaway. Her dad died in Iraq shortly after she was born. Her mother remarried Kenneth Ferguson when Hadley was about ten. Hadley was sent to therapy about two years after he came into the picture. Her mother was a major bank president, which means she was barely even at home. And the therapist diagnosed Hadley as a pathological liar within three weeks.”
I slow down, processing the facts, waiting on him to go on.
“She claimed Kenneth was touching her. Said he came for her on the nights her mother worked. They found no evidence of sexual trauma, and no evidence in his past that suggested he was a pedophile.”
“So was he?�
�
“She was wetting the bed nightly. I’d say there was some merit.”
“Pathological liars believe their lies,” I remind him.
“Pathological liars don’t get recruited by the FBI. They also never really get better. She’s never had any demerits against her. Her file is pristine. And her stepdad is now a social worker with unlimited access to children, Lana. He took a job in that field after she ran away at thirteen. It makes it seem like he needed access to other little girls.”
“What about before her?”
“He was married to a woman in Texas. A woman who had a ten-year-old daughter. A daughter who frequently wet the bed and had nightmares, according to this sealed file I just opened. No accusations were ever made there.”
A knot buds in my throat. For all the bad shit that has happened to me, that’s one thing I never had to suffer.
“I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is hell no,” Jake says after a spell of silence.
“How far away is he?”
“Damn it, Lana! I just said no. We have a list—a specific one. We have a system. First we get all the sick sons of bitches who wronged you and Marcus. Then we take out the ones who wronged your dad. That’s it. We’re not some avenging angels who can go after every pervert out there.”
“He’s a social worker with unlimited access to children—dejected kids who are far more likely to keep their pain silent so as not to feel more dejected. You said it yourself. Can you sit there and tell me you’re okay with letting him continue on with what he’s doing? Can you say that you’re no different than that dirty town who knew what was happening to us and did nothing?”
He grows quiet for so long that I know I have him.
“He’s not too far away. I’ll text you the address. Don’t use your MO. This can’t be connected to the Scarlett Slayer.”
“The what?” I ask, amused.
“It’s the name I’m going to let the media give you.”
“You’re going to let the media give me a name?”
“Yes. Yes I am. Don’t get seen, and then ditch the car in the usual place. I’ll have that guy pick it up, and I’ll come pick you up—same thing as always. No mistakes. Have you got any kill supplies with you?”
“A knife in my boot. It’ll do. I’ll stick to rocks and sidewalks so as not to leave any tracks. As much as I’d like to cut his dick off, I’ll refrain.”
“If he’s innocent, you can’t kill him.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell my overly concerned friend. “They always confess their sins to me.”
Chapter 9
The cautious seldom err.
—Confucius
LOGAN
Frustrated, I try to keep my head here and not on Lana, who hasn’t answered my calls since she walked out of the hospital five hours ago. Duke isn’t answering his phone either.
Which will have serious fucking consequences.
My eyes settle on the swat team commander who is inside the interrogation room. The glass between us is a one-way glass, not that he doesn’t know that.
His hands are shaking. He keeps standing and sitting, acting as though he’s jittery and ready to get out.
“His twenty-year-old daughter hasn’t shown up for her college classes in four days,” Donny says, watching him with me. “The roommate says she had to go home because of a family loss. We’re tracking phone calls to see if Plemmons contacted her that way, maybe lied with the ruse of someone passing? The mother seemed genuinely oblivious, had no idea what we were asking so many questions about.”
“Brunette?” I ask him, still studying Lee Norris as he paces the room, then sits down, then stands again.
He’s definitely agitated.
He’s our leak.
“Yes,” Donny answers. “Plemmons taking her shows a level of organization that doesn’t fit with his background, or what little we know of it. He felt like he was fooling us all this time, but when we found him out, he took it as a personal challenge to one-up us.”
I nod, agreeing.
“I’ll go in. See if you can get ahold of Detective Duke. What did the patrols say?”
He tightens his lips, and I study him.
“What?” I prompt.
“The guys said Lana kicked them off her property. I didn’t want to tell you with so much else going on. She drove off and basically told everyone to fuck themselves. You included.”
I slam my fist against the wall, the sheetrock crumbling around it.
“I’ve never seen you lose your cool like you’re losing it now, Logan. Maybe you should take—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” I bite out, rubbing my bloody knuckles on my pants, ignoring the burn. “Everyone is emotionally invested in this. Not just me. Send Leonard in with us. Norris will want to attack me within the first few minutes.”
“You sure you got the head for this?”
“He’ll spill immediately. He’ll blame us for getting his daughter killed. But he may also be the lead to catching this sick son of a bitch. My head is working just fucking fine. Find Lana. Call me if you do.”
I turn and walk out of the room, and head straight into the interrogation room, where Norris jumps up from his seat, glaring at me the second I step inside.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing locking me in here?! Do you have any idea what kind of sub-committee reports I could—”
“Erica Norris is your daughter, and she’s been missing from her college classes for four days due to a death in your family. There’s been no death in your family,” I say, shutting him up.
He turns a scary shade of white, and his entire body goes lax as he falls into the chair, losing the ability to stand.
“You just got her killed,” he says in a rasp whisper. Then his eyes turn lethal as he slams his fist against the table, fury rushing in to renew his energy. “You son of a bitch! You got her killed!”
He lunges, but Leonard shows up just in time, grabbing him by the collar, as I continue to lean against the wall, keeping my expression blank.
“You leaked the raid to him,” I go on. “What phone did you use? Did he give you one?”
“You bastard!” he spits out, choking back a sob as Leonard restrains him. “You knew he had her and still brought me in?! You cold murderer!”
I push off from the wall, moving to the table separating us, and prop my hands on it, leaning over until his eyes connect with mine.
“We had him. You tipped him off. What did you think he’d do with her once she was no longer of any use to him?”
He sobs, breaking in front of me. “He swore he wouldn’t hurt her if I alerted him to any threat. He swore I’d get her back. As long as I kept my mouth shut…he swore. Now you’ve pulled me in here and there’s no chance of that!”
“You’re the reason he’s out there. You’re the reason we don’t have him in custody right now,” I remind him, an icy edge to my tone as I shut off all emotions for what he’s going through as a father.
“He wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you and your fucking team! You set a killer loose in our state, and now he has my daughter!”
“He’d be in Boston,” Leonard says calmly, “killing someone else’s wife, daughter, sister… We didn’t make the killer, Commander. We’re trying to stop him. You took our best chance away. We finally had him.”
Norris loses it, sobbing so hard he becomes incoherent. His head drops to his arms, and he cries into the crook of his elbow.
It’s possible his daughter is still alive, but unlikely. I have to detach myself from the guilt that tries to wiggle its way in. Casualties are never easy to accept. But in this line of work, they’re always there. If you don’t desensitize yourself from it, you don’t make it two months in this field.
What he doesn’t know, is that the best chance of his daughter surviving would have been for us to raid that warehouse. He’d have run. He’d have tried to get away. Bringing her along would have been too risky then.
She’d most likely still be breathing, and we’d more than likely have him in custody.
I don’t tell him that. It’s better for him to blame us than bear the responsibility of his own daughter’s death. I can at least offer him that much mercy.
Weakly, he tosses a phone out of his pocket, and Leonard picks it up. “He sent that,” Norris whispers hoarsely. “Said he’d let me hear her voice twice a day.”
“Did he?” Leonard asks.
Norris wipes his eyes, nodding grimly. “Five seconds at a time. Just long enough for her to beg me to save her.”
He breaks again, and Leonard walks out with the phone. By now, Erica Norris is either dead or wishing she was. She may have been wishing it for the past four days.
Sometimes, the homeless turn a blind eye to anything going on around them. It’s their survival mechanism kicking in, not their inhumanity. It’s street-survival. They’ve suffered for so long, that suffering more would be too much. But with enough incentive, they’ll spill every word you need.
Right now, the ones living in that warehouse are telling what they know in exchange for cash—unethical, but not illegal. But the info isn’t much.
Plemmons claimed a backroom and kept the girl chained there. He locked it with a padlock when he was gone. Took her with him at other times.
Blood was found in that room. He’s already had his way with her, possibly even sliced her a few times to get what he needed, but not enough to kill her. A couple of suture kits were found in there, meaning he most likely repaired the damage he did with crude methods, just to keep her from bleeding too much.
For four days, she’s endured him. For four days, she’s likely prayed for death.
For four days, her father kept his mouth shut and played a dangerous game he had no right playing.
He should have come to us immediately, and Plemmons would already be in custody. His daughter would be in her own bed instead of wherever she is right now.
