by Abbie Roads
“Noooo…” Her voice soothed, and her eyes blazed. “It’s not. It sounds terrifying. Especially for a five-year-old.”
He reached up and placed his hand on Helen’s face. Thumb and first finger on her cheek. Ring finger and pinkie on her forehead. Middle finger lifted away from her eye. “And when I touch a dead body like this and place my middle finger on their closed eye…the shadow of death shares that person’s life with me.”
He started to lift his hand off her face, but she grabbed on to him, holding him there. Showing him her acceptance. “What’s my shadow of death look like?”
“You don’t have one. You’re different from every other human being I’ve ever met.”
“I wonder why.”
“I think it has something to do with this strange connection we have. I’ve felt it from the moment I saw you. You bring color to my life. Color. And I’m not just using that as a figure of speech. I mean I see all the colors when I’m near you. You have no idea what it’s like living a black-and-white existence and now seeing the vibrancy of life. It’s amazing. You’re amazing.”
Helen’s expression didn’t change. Didn’t register horror or pity. Instead, she leaned over him as if to kiss his mouth but found his cheek instead. Her lips on him were soothing and… Wait… That wasn’t her lips. Her tongue slid over the disfigurement on his face. Licking his wound the same way he’d licked hers. It was animalistic, primal, and fucking hot as all shit. His dick went hard and pulsed as if saying Put your tongue on me next.
He closed his eyes, letting himself get lost in the slip and slide of her tongue on his skin. It was like drawing out an infection. The residual bad memories all came to the surface and evaporated under her tender ministrations.
“Now, I’ll kiss it and make it all better.” She rained loud, smacking kisses all over his face.
Laughter bubbled up inside him, and pure, undiluted joy flowed through him for the first time in…well, maybe ever. It felt great. “The moment I spotted you in the cemetery, I knew my life had changed.” He stroked her golden hair. It still amazed him that her hair and her eyes were the exact same color.
“I was at the cemetery to visit Rory and my grandparents. Why were you there?”
“I was going to my mom’s memorial service.”
Her eyes widened, her mouth dropped open, and she sat up. “Thomas, why didn’t you say anything? Oh my God. I’m so sorry.” Her concern warmed his heart.
“Hey.” He reached for her to pull her back down to him, but she grabbed his hand in both of hers, cradling it to her heart. “We weren’t close. She pretty much let my stepdad do whatever he wanted to me, but that was nothing compared to what she did to my sister. That was inexcusable.”
“What she did to you was inexcusable too.” Helen’s words were don’t-argue-with-me firm.
In a way, he agreed. He’d never bought into the whole theory of forgiveness. Turn the other cheek and all that crap. He couldn’t. Some sins were simply unforgiveable—especially those perpetrated against children.
Before he realized what was coming out of his mouth, he told her about the contents of his mom’s posthumous letter. Mom’s confession to murdering his father, his stepfather’s role in covering it up, and the price he’d demanded. And then how the asshole had pulled a chickenshit move and run off. “There’s a huge investigation into all this. Every case he ever testified in is going to file an appeal.” Thomas sat up and threaded his other hand into her hair, holding on to her while he spoke his next words. “Yours included. My stepfather is Robert Malone.”
Her head jerked as if an invisible hand had slapped her. Her eyes snapped to his. “All this time you’ve been talking about Robert Malone? He’s your stepfather?” Before he could answer, she barreled on. “He lied. He told everyone he saw me get out of Rory’s car. And then he checked on Rory, and he was dead.” Her eyes blazed with such fierce intensity that if he hadn’t already known she was innocent, he would’ve believed her. “It was a lie, Thomas. I swear to you I didn’t hurt Rory.”
“I know. You don’t need to convince me. I knew you were innocent before I knew you were Helena Grayse. And you are still innocent now that I know.”
“Just because you can’t see a shadow of death around me?”
Her question surprised him. “No. Because I see you. I see all the pain, the vulnerability, the strength. I see your goodness.” He wanted to say something that would make the past decade better, but no words existed that could erase the suffering. “This is such a fucked-up situation. None of what happened was fair. None of it was right.” He pulled his gaze from hers. “I should’ve killed him when I was a kid. It wasn’t like I didn’t fantasize about it. Would’ve saved my sister and you so much hurt.” Hindsight sucked.
“Don’t say that. You were just a child.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just opened his arms to her, and she settled against him, her cheek over his heart.
She spoke against his chest. “Do you really want to be with someone like me? A felon. Convicted of murder. People will always look at me differently.” Her breath was warm against his skin.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her off his chest to stare into her eyes. He wanted her to see his truth when he spoke. “None of that—”
Bing bong bung. The doorbell went off.
“Goddamn it.” Now was not the time for visitors. They were still resolving the past and figuring out the future.
Bing bong bung.
Bing bong bung.
Who the hell was out there leaning on the damn doorbell? It wouldn’t be Dr. Stone. He was too polite to act like an asshole.
Bing bong bung.
“Let me get rid of whoever is out there. Then we need to finish this conversation.” Thomas climbed out of bed and slid on his pants.
Bing bong bung.
“I’m coming!” He yelled loud enough to be heard a mile away.
Helen shrugged into the shirt he’d worn, but concern took up residence on her face. She was worried about the future. Their future. They had so much to figure out. There was the stuff between them—their connection, what it meant, how it worked. Then there was the whole wrongful-conviction suit. Because she had a case. A slam-dunk, home-run kind of case. Then there was Malone and the shit storm he’d created.
Bing bong bung.
Thomas left the room on a sprint, ready to shove the damn doorbell up someone’s ass. Halfway down the stairs, he spotted Kent looking in through the leaded-glass panel next to the door.
He unlocked the door and ripped it open. “Dude. Seriously. What the hell?”
Kent held up his hands in a gesture of innocence and smiled. “At least I didn’t bust it in this time. I call that an improvement.”
“What do you want?” Thomas knew he sounded like an asshole, but he needed to get back to Helen and finish their conversation. “I’m kinda busy.”
Kent took in Thomas’s bare chest and waggled his eyebrows. “I bet you are. Sorry for interrupting. I’ve been calling for the past hour, and you weren’t answering.”
“I don’t even know where my phone is.” Must’ve left it in the truck last night.
“You’ve got a case.”
“No thanks. Not today.” The words popped out without thought. Working was the last thing on his mind. “The investigation is going on. I can’t work.”
“You know the case you had the other night? The addict lying dead in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere?” Kent held out Thomas’s credentials. Obviously Lanning had picked them up from where Thomas had dropped them at his mother’s funeral. And now here they were, returned to him only a few days later instead of the months he’d expected.
Automatically, Thomas reached for them. “Yyyeeeaahhh.” He stretched the word out into one long, suspicious sound.
“There’s a
nother one. Exactly like it. Lanning could call in the feds, but that would take a few days and a lot of bullshit, which seems kinda stupid when you’re right here.” Kent handed him a folded sheet of paper with an address on it. “Time is of the essence, especially since it seems we might have a budding serial killer on our hands.”
Chapter 15
Outside the truck’s windows, the December night seemed ominous and oppressive. As if the sky was too low and the dark was too black. Each mile only made it worse. Didn’t help matters that they were literally driving through the middle of Nowhere, Ohio. Despite being just one county over from Sundew, the fields were flat and the roads were straight, and it seemed as though they were lost in a vast nothingness.
A bad feeling gnawed on Thomas’s gut. He glanced over at Helen asleep in the passenger seat. She seemed too far away over there, so he settled his hand on her leg. A sigh of contentment slipped from her lips, and the simple touch eased the tension brewing inside him. There really was something special about the two of them.
In the distance, faint blue and red lights strobed. Ha. The last time he’d seen the color of those lights, he’d been just a child.
He would’ve flat-out refused this job, but the prospect of the perpetrator becoming a serial killer was a game changer. Catch him early and the body count would remain low. Catch him late and the bodies would only pile up.
At least they were almost there. Communing with the shadow of death should only take a few minutes, and then they could be on their way home again.
Thomas pulled up to the scene. The flashing lights came from an unmarked police car with a magnetized strobe attached to the roof. The only car on the scene. Everyone else must’ve packed up and headed home. It wasn’t unheard of that only one deputy remained to guard the evidence, but since this might be the precursor to a serial, he’d expected some spectator officers. The kind who liked to be able to brag about being close to a big case.
He parked behind the car.
Helen didn’t wake. If things went his way, she would sleep until he got back. She needed sleep. He left the truck running and quietly got out, shutting the door gently behind him.
From outside, he looked in at her. The dashboard lights etched her in a silver glow. She leaned against the passenger door, using her coat as a pillow. Just seeing her, watching her filled him up. Filled him with love and gratitude that she was his. But riding behind those feelings was the fear of losing her. Not once in his life had he ever possessed something he couldn’t live without. Until now. Until her.
He imprinted her image in his mind to fortify himself for the pain to come, then headed toward the scene. Each step away from her was like slogging through wet cement. It felt wrong. But it also seemed wrong to wake her just so she could hold his hand while he worked.
An officer got out of the car, his shadow rising around him like the beginnings of a storm. The guy looked to be in his early fifties, hair graying and face lined with wrinkles from either job stress or bad living. With the way his shadow looked, Thomas was leaning toward bad living.
“I’m Thomas Brown from the BCI.” He waited for some reaction, but the guy said nothing and never met his gaze. “I’m supposed to connect with Ace Tetter.”
The guy gave a curt dip of his chin. That was it. Guess he was the strong silent type.
“The scene’s been cleared?”
Ace glared in his direction.
“Okay… Well, I’ll get to it.” Thomas walked by him toward the shapeless lump lying on the dark country road. No extra lights had been set up to provide illumination. None. Some counties had money for those little extras, and some didn’t. Thomas nabbed his phone out of his pocket and used the flashlight app.
The stench hit. That triple threat—vomit, piss, and shit. He started breathing through his mouth. Hopefully the stink wouldn’t cling to his clothes.
In the white light created by his phone, the remnants of the guy’s shadow fluttered and flittered like wispy tendrils of fog. Careful to stay out of the shadow’s range, Thomas walked around the body. It had been arranged in the same position as the one from the other night—in a slightly elongated version of the fetal position. The white globes of his ass like glow-in-the-dark balloons. A lot of details could be coincidental, but not that one.
This guy’s clothing wasn’t quite as filthy as the last guy’s. Matted and greasy blond hair stuck to his head, and his eyes were half open, half rolled up in his head, giving him a decidedly demonic look.
No denying it now—they had the makings of a serial killer on their hands. Now Thomas just needed to do his job. Provide as much information as he could, and maybe they could stop the killer before the body count went any higher.
He inhaled and knelt next to the dead guy’s face. Waves of warmth washed over him from the shadow. It always seemed weird that shadows looked so cold but were so very warm.
Gently, he brushed the guy’s eyelids down.
Thomas’s heart started vibrating, his insides trembled, and the air around him seemed oxygen-deprived. Instinct told him to run. And he wanted to. Wanted to sprint back to the truck and drive off into the night and pretend he’d never heard about this case. Pretend that this wasn’t his job. That he was just some guy who worked in a factory or something. But he’d never run from the pain before, and he wasn’t about to now.
His mind flashed back to only hours ago and touching Helen to demonstrate how the process worked. How painless that had been. How easy.
His hand shook as he reached out to place thumb and forefinger on the guy’s cold cheek, ring and pinkie fingers on his forehead, and pressed his middle finger over the guy’s closed eye. Heat blazed through his fingertips and up his arm, exploding in his own eye. Even though it was a familiar pain, a grunt slipped from between his lips.
Color burst to life behind his eyes, and this time, instead of desperately clinging to it, he let the colors slide by and watched as the shadow of death showed him this man’s life. The man’s experiences became Thomas’s.
He time-warped through the guy’s shitty childhood with his even-shittier parents—all those terrible experiences priming the guy for the escape heroin offered. Once addiction had him in a choke hold, he was like every other addict. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for his drug.
The guy’s story ended the same as the last body on the road. He had gone with a man who kept his identity in shadow. A man who forced him to overdose.
Everything went dark.
Thomas yanked his hand off the dead guy’s face.
The terrible pain in his eye eased, but the shadow’s heat didn’t let go of him. It was inside him, burning him from the inside out. What was it about the last case and this one that made these men’s shadows particularly awful?
He crawled away from the body, sweat soaking his skin. Everything inside him weak and wrong. Even blinking took too much effort. He planted his hands firmly on the pavement, waiting to feel the coolness seep into him, but he could feel nothing except the interminable heat and a terrible foreboding.
A large hand landed on his shoulder. He tensed. All muscles on high alert. He wanted to believe it was Helen behind him. But it wasn’t. Her touch soothed. This touch felt malevolent and male. And Ace Tetter hadn’t seemed like the touchy-feely, caring type.
“Tommy, what’s wrong?” The words were daggers in the dark, each one finding a home in Thomas’s gut. His blood congealed.
Tommy. Only one person ever called him Tommy.
He whipped around, expecting to see Malone, but his gaze landed on Helen. She stood, hands behind her back, duct tape over her mouth. Fucking duct tape. The expression on her face… Devastated. Destroyed. Demolished. He looked inside her. Saw the terror in her soul. Not for herself. No. She was scared for him. For him. She was his whole world, yet she stood before him with a pain he swore she’d never feel again on her face because she w
as worried about him.
A terrible realization slammed into him. He should’ve woken her up. Should’ve asked her to be with him while he worked. Never should’ve left her alone in the truck. Lathan’s words echoed in his mind. You want your woman safe? You want her unharmed and healthy? You don’t fucking leave her side. You keep touching her at all times. Touching. That’s the only way you are both protected. Nothing—I mean nothing—can hurt either of you when you’re touching.
This was all his fault. He should’ve listened. He knew they were special when together, and yet his own damn foolishness had caused this.
Like an afterthought, Thomas noticed Malone. Motherfucking Malone. His shadow dark and roiling like a pot of evil ready to boil over. Then he spotted the gun Malone aimed at him. Seeing the weapon didn’t faze him. If anything, he expected it. The great equalizer. Malone was smart enough to realize Thomas could take him in a physical confrontation.
“H—” Thomas barely managed to stop himself from saying her name. Malone might not realize who she was—it had been ten years—and Thomas wanted to keep it that way until he figured out why Malone would go as far as he had to frame her. “Hey, are you okay?”
The unmarked car with Ace Tetter in it—if that was even the guy’s real name—pulled away from the scene. Fucking shit… This had all been a setup. Thomas saw that now as all the pieces slid into place. Malone had called him out to that last scene. Malone was here at this scene. Malone had killed those men.
He’d killed to get Thomas to the previous scene and out here. But why? The man’d had unlimited access to Thomas as a child. Why wait until now to carry out some awful plan?
“What do you want?” Thomas’s voice sounded stronger than he felt inside. His body was still locked in recovery mode, a sensation he’d only experienced with the last two cases. The ones Malone murdered. Was that why these men’s shadows felt so awful to him? Because they’d also been Malone’s victims?
“We don’t need to talk about that now. I just want to make sure you’re all right.”
