What Burns Within

by Sandra Ruttan

  After a moment of silence Craig quietly asked, “What happened then?”

  “He was trying to twist me around. I kicked him. It must have hurt because he hit me.”

  “Is that when he…?” Craig glanced at the ban dage on her head.

  She reached up and touched it automatically, then nodded. “He, uh, he called me a bitch.”

  “He spoke?”

  Lori stared at Craig for a moment. “Shit, yeah, he did. I reached back and tried to claw him as he was pushing me down….” Her face twisted, her gaze now focused somewhere off in space.

  “It’s okay, Lori. It’s not your fault.”

  “Doesn’t make me feel much better, though.”

  “Was there anything else that was…” Craig searched for the least offensive word. “Different? He spoke, he hit you. Anything else?”

  She shook her head. “I tried to fight, but then I heard a knife click open, right beside my head. I heard that blade pop up, and I went numb…I just knew. Everything seemed so quiet, like the world had just stopped, you know, but then I heard the pitter-patter of the rain.”

  “Do you have any idea how he got in?”

  “I never heard anything, but I ran the shower after my bath. I don’t remember hearing him leave. He, uh, when he was done, he took the blindfold and gag off and told me if I said anything, he’d carve me up like a Christmas turkey. It seemed like forever, you know, lying there, and then I guess I just zoned out, waiting for him to either kill me or go. The next thing I remember is waking up this morning.”

  “Your hands were still bound?”

  She wrung her hands for a moment. “Sonofabitch really tied them good.”

  Craig nodded at the rope burns on her wrists. “You did that trying to get free?”

  “Yeah, for all the good it did me. It wasn’t until Vish came home and found me that I got untied, and even then he finally had to cut through the rope.” She swallowed. “Sorry. Tampering with evidence and such.”

  “It’s okay. We’ve seen this rope five times before. I doubt he’d leave anything on it now.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Five?” She sat up a little straighter. “What do you mean, five?”

  “You weren’t the only woman he attacked yesterday, Lori.”

  “He’s graduated to multiple assaults?”

  It was Craig’s turn to avoid her penetrating stare, and she leaned forward and twisted his face until he had to look at her.

  “What is it? What could be worse?”

  He knew he couldn’t keep the lie out of his eyes, and he watched as the unspoken truth hit home, her hand dropping from his face.

  Tain tossed a folder on his desk. “Would you sit down or go for a jog or something? I’m getting tired just watching you.”

  Ashlyn spun around. “I thought you were reading those files.”

  “I am. My awareness of your pacing is preventing me from concentrating.”

  She hopped up on his desk on the far side of the stack of case folders he was going through, her legs swinging, but she kept her feet from banging off the drawers. “Good thing animosity doesn’t hinder your work, eh?”

  Tain glanced up at her. “You know, I didn’t really enjoy having everyone hate me.”

  “And now?” She waited until his brow wrinkled and grinned. “I’m just kidding, Tain.”

  “So what’s with Greg, anyway?”

  Ashlyn felt her lip curl, despite Tain’s teasing tone. “Could he be any more obvious?”

  “Guys look at you like that all the time, Ashlyn.”

  She froze, then glanced at him as the way he’d said that started to tweak thought pro cesses in the back of her brain, hinting at things she hadn’t ever considered and wasn’t sure she wanted to think about.

  Tain had always struck her as being handsome, once she’d been able to get past his shitty disposition. Of course, she knew now that he’d been assigned to push their former supervisor to the edge and to find a leak in the department that was hindering their progress on the investigation.

  And he was tall, athletic, with dark hair and a warm smile when he finally let his guard down. She’d seen him take things to heart, knew he felt deeply and was a compassionate person underneath the indifferent exterior.

  But she’d been more than a little distracted with her partner at the time, as much as she tried to suppress it. Craig’s memory still had a pretty good grip on her, along with all the ‘what ifs.’

  Tain had turned his gaze back to the file, but she knew he wasn’t reading a word.

  “What are you so antsy about, anyway?” he asked, finally appearing to give up on the pretense of reading.

  “Just an idea.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She shot him a quick glance, then looked away. “I was hoping to talk to Daly.”

  He was studying her face. That much she was sure of. It wasn’t just because she knew him, had worked with him before, seen the layers of his personality and understood how his mind worked, that she was certain she was under scrutiny. It was the way she felt her cheeks burn and her breath stick in her throat, like her body was having an allergic reaction to his stare.

  Her face cooled, and she snuck a glance at Tain. He’d turned back to the folder, his eyes moving across the pages with the appearance of actually pro cessing the material, his jaw set in a hard line, his skin a tinge darker than before.

  Damn him. He knew she could counter the banter but hardly stand the silence. “What, no lecture?”

  Tain didn’t look up this time. “I can’t make you talk if you don’t want to.”

  She leaned forward, gripping the edge of the desk with her hands. “I never took you for a quitter.”

  “When it comes to women I prefer pragmatist.”

  “Is that why you’re single?”

  He did look up then, and what she thought she read loud and clear in his eyes made her regret her words.

  “If you want to tell me about your idea, you will. I’m not going to play games with you. It’s always nice to think your partner won’t keep you in the dark. Something I’d think you’d know a bit about after working with Craig.” He shrugged.

  “You’re a fine one to talk about that, Tain.”

  “Every time I say something, that case gets thrown back in my face. You know—”

  “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about Tim Winters.”

  His cheeks paled. “What’s Tim got to do with this?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  They sat staring at each other, Tain titting back in his chair looking up at her, Ashlyn perched on his desk. When he didn’t speak, she slid off his desk, leaning against it but breaking away from the relentless gaze she’d been matching.

  Her hand bunched into a fist, and she tapped the files beside her absently. “I know you called Tim and talked to him about this case. And I haven’t bugged you about it. All I have is an idea, something I want to try, and Daly might veto it automatically. It isn’t like I know something and I’m holding it back from you.”

  “Look, your idea, if it’s risky enough that you think Daly won’t hear you out, don’t you think it makes sense to have me back you up?”

  “Is that your way of evading the issue?”

  She watched his jaw jut out, a sight she’d grown accustomed to whenever he was thinking about something, usually something he was conflicted over. His lips settled into a slight frown.

  “If I tell you, will you feel obligated to share with Burnaby?”

  “Tain, we have two girls who’ve been murdered and two more missing. I can’t believe that the Tain I know—” she leaned forward and poked him on the chest—“the Tain who has a heart of gold he tries hard to keep people from seeing, would put this investigation and the lives of a couple of girls second to a pissing contest.”

  “It’s not about territory and credit.” He grabbed her arm, holding it firmly so she couldn’t pull back, and stared her right in the eyes. “Let
me ask you something. Do you think these cases are linked?”

  She felt her forehead wrinkle, her face flushed with her awareness of his proximity and his relentless gaze. “How can you even ask that?” She tried to pull back, but he wasn’t letting go. “Of course I believe they’re connected.”

  “So what would happen if the original investigating team got wind of a potential lead, something that would blow that theory apart? Something that could absolutely prove the cases weren’t linked?”

  Ashlyn swallowed, her arm going limp as she stopped pulling against him. “It would be an excuse. It wouldn’t be their fault that more girls went missing. Just random, a fluke that so many abductions happened…” She felt her eyes narrow as she stared back at him. “How can you even think these cases aren’t connected?”

  “I don’t. But this tip, the reason I called Tim—” he glanced away, his jaw twisting again before he drew a deep breath and met her gaze—“it could prove one of the cases isn’t connected.”

  “And you think if we prove that, it will blow the whole investigation apart.”

  “Even if they continue to look at the other three cases together, that would give Burnaby two and us one.”

  “So they would take the investigation back, even though both of their girls were found on our patch.”

  “Tell me something honestly, Ashlyn,” he said, his grip loosening as he moved his hand down to grasp hers instead of holding her arm. “Do you think that Mullins and Urquhart are the best investigators for this case?”

  She drew a deep breath of her own. “No. You know I don’t.”

  “Then you know why I haven’t said anything.” He released her hand.

  Ashlyn lifted her limp appendage to her forehead, rubbing the skin as the tingling sensation in her hand subsided. Tain had turned back to the file, and she noticed he was even redder than before, though she wasn’t sure at what point that had happened in their exchange.

  She thought back to the obstinate, insubordinate officer she’d first met less than a year earlier, sentenced to find the leak in the department after getting into hot water at his old detachment and finding his name on his supervisor’s shit list, for reasons not that different than the ones he was using to justify his actions now.

  He tossed the folder down on a pile and reached for another one. She set her hand over his.

  “You don’t have to protect me, Tain. I’ll back you up.”

  “How can you promise that without knowing what this is about?”

  “I don’t need to know the details. I trust you.”

  She stood up and walked away before he had a chance to respond.

  Lori stood, but her shoulders sagged. “You know the MO as well as I do. He doesn’t leave evidence.”

  “And you know there’s always a chance. We have to try.”

  “There’s no ‘we’ in this. I have to do this. You don’t have to do anything.”

  Craig put his hand on her arm lightly. “We may not always get along, and we might not always see eye to eye about how to approach every aspect of a case. But we have never disagreed about asking our victims to go through the exam.”

  Her shoulders sagged even further, and she moved back, out of his grasp. Vish entered the room then and put an arm around her. Craig noticed she didn’t draw closer to him for support.

  “Craig’s right,” Vish said. “You aren’t going to tell me that someone who catches these monsters for a living is going to let the guy who attacked her go free.”

  He shepherded her out the door then, not giving her another chance to protest.

  Craig resisted the urge to step outside after them and draw a breath of fresh air, to get out of the cloud of tension that had been building in the house since his arrival. Instead, he turned and went down the hall until he found Daly.

  Inside what he assumed was the master bedroom, Hawkins was barking orders and double checking everything everyone was doing. FIS officers gritted their teeth and Craig suspected they were biting back comments running through their minds.

  “Damn it, I said to put it there.” Hawkins spun on his heel, and Craig was pretty certain he missed the searing glare the officer shot him.

  Daly glanced at Craig, barely raising an eyebrow. “How is she?”

  Craig shook his head. “One minute she’s pulling it together and the next she’s falling to pieces. Not that I expect more from her than anyone else—”

  “But?”

  “She was reluctant to do the rape kit. Her boyfriend had to drag her out of here.”

  “I doubt it’s something many women want to do. Just because she’s a cop, it doesn’t make her invincible.”

  Despite their hushed words, Hawkins’s head snapped up then, and he marched toward them.

  “Where’s Lori?”

  “She’s gone to the hospital.”

  Hawkins’s whole face wrinkled. “What for?”

  “The rape kit.”

  Hawkins put his hand over his mouth and slowly pulled it down to his chin. “Is that really necessary?”

  From the corner of his eye Craig saw Daly lower his gaze. He felt his shoulders stiffen. “You know it is, sir.”

  “I know no such thing,” Hawkins snapped. “One of the officers who’s had to comfort and support several women who’ve been raped is now caught up in this nightmare as a victim. We already know this guy doesn’t leave DNA, so what the hell is the point of putting her through more trauma?”

  “If this rape victim had another name, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, and you know it.”

  Hawkins’s cheeks puffed out, flaming red, and his nostrils flared slightly. “Are you suggesting that—”

  Daly interrupted him. “Dennis, I think we’re all a little upset. Lori’s one of ours. But Craig is right. If this victim were anyone else, we’d all try to persuade her to go to the hospital. This guy has raped several women, and now he’s killed one of them. If there’s even the smallest chance that we can find some evidence, we have to take it.”

  The cheeks deflated and cooled visibly. Hawkins turned on his heel and walked away.

  “Forget Lori being able to handle this. Is he going to be able to cope?” Craig asked Daly as they retreated down the hall.

  Daly shook his head. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

  The man lit the candles and gestured for Taylor to come. She hesitated for less than a second this time, and through the flicker of light she could just make out his smile.

  “Well done, my child.”

  His face turned toward the other bed, and he reached out his hand.

  “Come. Join us.”

  Taylor dared to sneak a glance in the direction of the bed, willing the girl to do as she was told. Please, please, please. Just listen this time. She held her breath.

  At last, the springs squeaked and the girl crawled across the floor, sitting farther back than Taylor did.

  “That is better,” he said, only his unsmiling mouth really visible in the dim, orange glow. “We don’t have much time. I have to prepare you.”

  “For what?” Taylor had asked him on her first day. He had struck her face hard.

  “Thou shalt not speak unless permitted. These are The Rules. You must obey The Rules to show God you are ready to go home.”

  The new girl didn’t ask and spared herself the smack, though Taylor consoled herself with the fact that the girl had already been lashed twice.

  “Now, I expect you to echo what I say. Do you understand?”

  Taylor nodded. From the corner of her eye she could see the other girl looking at her, trying to figure out what to do. Taylor kept nodding until the new girl’s head bobbed up and down.

  “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

  “You are the way, the truth and the life.”

  “No one comes to the Father except by me.”

  “No one comes to the Father except by you.”

  “I am the Lamb of God.”

  “Yo
u are the Lamb of God.”

  “Appointed to go before the last days of fire.”