Something New

by Cameron Dane

  Looking down into the empty hallway, pieces of that day mixed in Abby’s mind with the dream she’d had last night and flooded every bit of that day over her in a torrent. “Yes.” The flash of dark blue blurred a line before her eyes right now, as it had done that day. “That was why he left,” she whispered, her voice suddenly thick. “When Mrs. Bruno called, the killer cursed and then ran out the front door. I saw an arm and part of a shoulder in a blue shirt. The arm and shoulder were thick, like a muscular man’s.”

  “The detectives on the case at the time figured the phone call scared the murderer off,” Braden answered. “Mrs. Bruno’s statement says she was coming to get you—which her recorded phone message backs up—but then one of her sons fell out of one of their orange trees. She rushed him to the emergency room instead, so she didn’t come for you right away.”

  “No, she didn’t come.” Although Abby didn’t move a muscle, she could feel her eight-year-old body push out of her adult skin and make that trek across the attic and down the rope ladder, straight into a nightmare. “She said she was going to come.” Abby’s voice sounded high and tight, and her throat hurt. “When I felt sure the man wasn’t trying to trick me, and wasn’t hiding outside waiting for me to show myself, I climbed out of the attic to wait for Mrs. Bruno.” Abby squinted as if it would help see through the blur of her memories attached to that day. “I don’t think she came for a really long time.”

  “Approximately six hours,” Braden supplied.

  “Leaving you with just your parents in that room?” Rodrigo sounded like someone had gutted him. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Mrs. Bruno admits she forgot about you.” Braden filled in some of the blanks. “When she finally got her kid home from the ER, she remembered. Then she started worrying because your mom hadn’t called to find out why you’d come home. Then she called your house again, and still nobody answered. That’s when she sent her husband over to see if everything was all right. He’s the one who found you.”

  “I don’t remember that,” Abby murmured, trying to recall short, beefy Mr. Bruno in her parents’ room with her.

  “You’d been screaming so much, honey,” Braden said, his voice so terribly gentle, as if he were handling the child she had been back then. “It’s noted in the file that the physician who looked at you said your throat was like hamburger. I’m sure you were in a severe state of shock. It makes sense that you don’t remember everything and had trouble talking about what you had seen.”

  Abby look down through the vent to the hallway, but in her head she saw herself watching an entirely different scene. “I could see my mom through the slats in the closet doors before she died. She didn’t speak, but her eyes told me to be quiet.” Abby swung her flashlight around to Braden and Rodrigo, studying their shaded, angular profiles. “So I was.”

  Braden nodded, almost imperceptibly. “For over two years.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you think that’s why the killer never went after you again?” Rodrigo asked.

  Abby started. “What do you mean?”

  She could see Rodrigo’s face turn grim. “That bastard was looking for you to kill you. Why didn’t he come after you again later? It makes me cold inside to even think about it, but you were still a witness.”

  Before Abby could say she’d never even thought about that, Braden said, “That would have been way too risky. Abby was no longer in a rural area. She was living in town, in addition to having detectives and child psychiatrists checking in on her. There’s no way the killer could have made a move for her without being caught. I’m sure he laid low in terror at first, but then days, weeks, and months go by without anything happening to him. The police are pursuing Cormack, the news is reporting the child found in the house is mute and traumatized, and I bet he just started breathing easier. When Abby doesn’t dispute Cormack as the guy, the real killer probably realized that Abby either didn’t see anything or wasn’t even there, and he’s home free.”

  Rodrigo nodded. “That makes sense,” he said, even though he still looked dark and fierce.

  “And he was right.” Abby felt sick to her stomach admitting that. “He was home free.”

  The light flashed across Rodrigo’s eyes, and they suddenly gleamed. “Until now, Bit.”

  “But not if we don’t find some new concrete evidence that I can use as leverage to keep this case open.” Braden moved the beam of light around the entire attic, momentarily lighting up every nook and cranny in the room. “Abby, why don’t you try to focus on why you wanted to get into the attic again. You said you looked for your mom in the kitchen that day”—he flashed the light on the first vent—“and you wanted to look for your dad in his den.” He swooped the band of light across and spotlighted the second. “Only, the phone rang, so you went to the hallway vent instead.” He focused the flashlight back to where Abby knelt.

  “This is where I stayed,” Abby shared. “Watching, to make sure the killer didn’t come back. After that, I thought Mrs. Bruno was coming to help, so I never went and looked for my dad.”

  “But he wasn’t there, honey,” Braden responded. “He was in the bedroom, already dead, which you know. So why would you wake up this morning with such a need to come see the den?”

  Tension began pressing behind Abby’s eyes, pushing for the beginnings of a powerful headache. “I don’t know.” She rubbed her nape, trying to work the knots out so she could think clearly and remember. “It’s where I was in the dream when I woke up, I guess. It was on my mind, and you guys were asking me what was going on, so it’s what I said.” Folded on her knees, Abby pressed her cheek against her thighs and looked at Rodrigo and Braden over the lines of light connecting them. “Back then, where I was in my dream, I don’t think I’d wrapped my brain around the fact that my mom and dad really were dead. Especially my father, because I couldn’t see him from where I was in the closet. I heard him gurgle and try to scream, but I had no visual of him, so I guess I hoped he was still alive and would go to his favorite room to call for help.”

  With cramped legs, Abby turned herself around and started crawling back to the second vent, pushing through the places inside her mind that told her to stop. “My dad had a desk and a phone in there, and I guess I’d just twisted it in my head that he would be there if I looked.”

  Once Abby got to the metal grate in the floor, she pressed her face down into the dusty slats of metal. Like a mirage, before her very eyes, the taupe room below swirled to shades of blue and gray with accents of oak everywhere. She could see the back of her dad’s auburn head as he stood at his desk, his back to the room. Then, rough shouts in her father’s voice that didn’t make any sense to Abby sounded like they consumed the entire house. They burst up into the attic right now, making Abby jerk backward and tuck her knees against her chest, as if her father were in that room right this second and could see her watching him.

  When did I hear Daddy shouting?

  Rodrigo’s voice cut through the noise in her head. “Abby?” Concern filled his tone, and on top of him, Braden asked, “Are you okay?”

  Bits of sound and blurry, brief flashes of imagery worked in Abby’s brain in such a way that her head felt like it had a strobe light and disco ball in it. “I think my father might have had a fight with someone before he died. I don’t know when, though.” She squinted, searching for clarity. “I don’t know if the guy was on the phone or here in person. I must have gotten scared and hid from what I’d overheard.”

  “Like you did just now,” Rodrigo said.

  “I guess.” Abby created circles against her temples with her fingers, working out the beginnings of nausea. “Yes.”

  “You said guy,” Braden pointed out. “If your dad was on the phone, how would you know it was a man?”

  “I wouldn’t.” Abby sat up straight and banged her head on the low ceiling. “Ow.” She pushed her fingers through her ponytail and rubbed the pinpricks of pain radiating from the bump. “Do you think my dad knew a
bout my mom’s affair, invited the man here, and confronted him in person?”

  “It’s possible,” Braden said. “I’ll have to lay it out and see if it makes sense.”

  Abby suddenly felt dirty in a way that went beyond the dust on her face, hands, and clothes. Each clue they unearthed pushed her more and more toward the certainty that her mother had cheated on her father. And if her dad had found out about it, and obviously wasn’t happy, Abby might have been about to become a statistic of divorce. She put her hand over her mouth, stifling the sob that wanted to erupt.

  I always thought they loved each other so much.

  Suck it up, girl. You’re here to find a killer, not wallow in self-pity.

  Ignoring the pounding in her head, Abby tucked the flashlight handle in her belt and began crawling back toward Braden and Rodrigo. “I want to go talk to Mrs. Bruno. Maybe she knew something about my mom’s affair. Maybe Mr. Bruno knows if my dad suspected anything.”

  Braden craned his neck, looking up at Abby, as he backed down the ladder. “You want to go right now?”

  “It’s not that far.” As soon as Rodrigo cleared the rungs too, Abby swung her legs through the entrance and dropped down to the ladder. “I remember how to get there.”

  “So you’re done here?” Braden asked from the door, where he grabbed the case file from the floor.

  “Yeah.” Taking another look around her parents’ bedroom, Abby rubbed goose bumps away from her arms. “I don’t want to be in this place anymore.”

  “I can understand why,” Rodrigo said. “Come on.” He tucked his arm around Abby’s waist and steered her to the door. “I have baby wipes in the truck you can use to clean up.”

  Braden stopped them with a hand to Abby’s arm. “You don’t remember anything else?”

  Rodrigo nudged Abby into the hallway. “I don’t want her to be here anymore, Crenshaw.” He sounded the way he did when he gave orders to his employees. “I think that’s enough for today. Get the ladder for me, and let’s go.”

  “I wasn’t trying to push, man,” Braden said as he jogged across the room. “Let me close the window, grab the ladder, and I’ll be right behind you.”

  Abby had entered this house without feeling any sense of bond to it or her parents. Now, as she walked out, she eerily sensed that every corner called her to look closer and see all the scars still there that spoke of her past.

  Shivering, Abby felt like ghosts floated out of this house, right at her side, talking, if she could just hear what they had to say.

  * * *

  Abby trudged up familiar blue-painted porch steps and walked right up to a matching door that took her back twenty years. The wonderful aroma of citrus permeated the air, the smell so clean and tart that Abby breathed in deeply and let it take away some of the tension still locking her tight.

  Now this hasn’t changed much at all. She smiled, feeling buoyant again.

  A gleaming new gold knocker adorned the door. Abby rapped it sharply, smiling over her shoulder at Braden and Rodrigo as she waited.

  Someone inside shouted, “Be there in a second,” and a moment later a young, dark-haired woman answered the door.

  “Hi.” Abby stuck out her hand, too anxious to wait. “My name is Abby Gaines. May I speak with Martha Bruno?”

  The woman pulled a funny face. “Sorry, but there’s no Martha Bruno living here.”

  As fast as air lifted Abby, she now felt like someone had popped a hole in her balloon. “Did she pass? Are you a relative? A granddaughter? She owned this land with her husband, Anthony Bruno.”

  “Nope.” The woman shook her head. “Never heard of either one of them. We bought the orchard a year ago from someone named Hector Gonzalez. He never mentioned any Martha or Anthony.”

  “Oh.” Abby thudded back to earth.

  “Sorry.”

  “I apologize for bothering you.”

  “No problem. You have a good night,” the woman said as she swung her front door closed.

  Braden took hold of Abby’s elbows and turned her to face him. “I’ll track Mrs. Bruno down tomorrow at work, Abby. It shouldn’t be that hard.” He slid his hand down her arm and closed it around her fingers. “We’ll just have to keep busy with something else until I do.”

  She narrowed her stare at him. “Doing what?”

  Braden smiled, oh so very wickedly. “It’s quitting time for me.”

  Rodrigo traded a glance with Braden and adopted his own naughty gleam. “For me too.”

  Mierda!

  Chapter Fourteen

  Stretched across her headboard, arms and ankles tied to the top posts and forced wide apart, Abby tried to scream around Braden’s cock stuffed in her mouth as Rodrigo shoved his long prick into her cunt.

  “Oh yeah, that’s it,” Braden said. Standing on the bed, he held Abby’s head to face him and worked his length past her lips in short, snapping bursts. “Take it all.” His pale eyes were a luminescent jade in the warm shadows of Abby’s bedroom. “You have the fucking most beautiful mouth.”

  “Fucking most amazing everything, Bit.” Rodrigo moaned and shoved his hands under Abby’s ass, clutching her cheeks to tilt her hips for a deeper thrust. Every slam of Rodrigo’s hips abraded Abby’s inner thighs and chafed at her pussy lips, but she had long ago given up caring about anything but coming and coming and coming again.

  Upon arrival at Abby’s place, though unspoken, Abby knew Braden and Rodrigo had made it their mission to eradicate any thoughts or hurts from the day. They’d stripped her naked and covered every inch of her body with licks, kisses, and love bites. Each man had made her come twice already by trading off going down on her or sucking on her breasts or kissing her to the point of exquisite, painful sensitivity.

  When Abby swore she was about to turn into a puddle of goo, Braden had dipped into her toy drawer—which he must have discovered on his own in the last few days—and produced silk ropes. Braden had Rodrigo arrange pillows behind Abby while he lifted her legs up and wide open, putting her ankles almost on level with her wrists. He’d then created two slipknots into each rope and pinned Abby to the bed. By that point, Rodrigo already had his wonderful fingers halfway up her pussy and his incredible tongue working her clit like a professional, and Abby had been too far gone to share that she’d never actually used the ropes before.

  Now Abby alternated between hanging limp when her muscles couldn’t take the strain and yanking against the ropes every time Rodrigo grazed her sweet spot with his driving thrusts.

  Scorching-hot, wet cock pushed past Abby’s lips again, taking her almost to the throat, and the raw nature of the act helped pump her cunt with more liquid heat. Abby loved having a man in her mouth, and she couldn’t help creaming and moaning each time Braden filled her full. When Braden withdrew, leaving Abby nearly in a state of tears for more, Rodrigo sank his iron-hard dick into her sheath and stretched her open with shivery depth again.

  As soon as Abby’s mouth was free of Braden’s cock, Rodrigo surged forward and covered her, taking her with a voracious kiss. He slowed everything down and moved his hips in rolling waves, stroking Abby’s throbbing, wet walls with massaging full pumps. Abby kissed Rodrigo back with messy licks and bites; she struggled against the rope binding in her efforts to work her body into Rodrigo’s mating, desperately wishing to rub herself more completely against every inch of Rodrigo’s solid, muscular body. She arched her back, straining for Rodrigo with a whimper, and Rodrigo pressed his weight into her, giving her that rougher grind against her breasts, belly, and sex Abby so desperately needed.

  Her pussy flooded with proof of her arousal, making her buck her hips in a shuddering display. Above her, Braden moaned, watching as Rodrigo claimed Abby so completely. He shuttled his tightly closed fist up and down his rearing erection, thumbing the head each time he reached the leaking tip, and then coated his red length with the sheen of precum.

  Rodrigo rubbed his chest and stomach all up and down Abby’s front. Abby jerked and ke
ened as Rodrigo abraded her pebble-tight nipples with every move, and Braden picked up the pace of his handjob as his leaking slit became a stream of early seed.

  “You both like this, huh?” Rodrigo’s dark hot gaze passed between Abby and Braden.

  Abby answered by pulling against the ropes. She failed to move much but managed to grab Rodrigo’s mouth with a quick, licking kiss. Braden nodded while groaning and reaching between his legs to pull on his balls.

  Rodrigo’s eyes darkened to pitch. “Bring that cock back in here, Crenshaw.” His voice sounded like secretive, dirty sex in the back of a truck on a steamy summer afternoon. “I want a taste too.”

  At Rodrigo’s words, Abby’s cunt throbbed all around his embedded prick. Oh good God, yes. Do it. Braden jerked in response and grabbed on to the headboard, his legs clearly going a little bit wobbly.

  Rodrigo already had his mouth almost touching Abby’s, and they both struggled with their breath as Braden stepped in closer. Braden closed his hand around the base of his cock and pushed his dick into the space between their mouths. The thick, stiff shaft grazed both sets of lips, snagging skin against skin, and all three of them gasped at the light contact. Then, like starving animals pouncing on one morsel of food, Abby and Rodrigo opened their mouths around each side of Braden’s dick and licked up, down, and over each centimeter of flesh. They used their tongues to follow the lines of ridged veins and often met around the top or underside to tangle with each other before separating to lick all over Braden’s slick, rigid cock again.

  “More.” Braden buried his fingers in both Abby’s and Rodrigo’s hair, pulling hard enough to sting as he bowed his spine and thrust his hips in a furious rhythm, his face a stark, ruddy mask of unforgiving lines and angles. “Oh fuck, more.”

  Abby absorbed Braden’s desperation and knew exactly what he needed.