Child of Mine: a psychological thriller

by Chambers, V. J.

  Isaac knitted his brows together. “That’s, uh, that’s a very unique sort of modus operandi, don’t you think? I’ve never heard of such a thing. What killer would be stupid enough to partner up with someone who knows nothing about the murders? It wouldn’t take long for someone to make the kind of connection you’ve made.”

  “Not all murderers are particularly organized about these sorts of things. What about Richard Lee Morgan? He was sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. He just went to people’s houses, knocked on their doors, and when they let him in, he cut their hearts out. He wasn’t hard to catch at all.”

  “Right, but he was on sort of a spree,” said Isaac. “He had lost touch with reality. These crimes are different. They’re too far spread out to be the same kind of thing. And a disorganized killer wouldn’t partner up with someone to stalk his victims.”

  She sighed. “I guess you’re right. Regardless, we have to find out who this guy is.”

  “Definitely,” said Isaac. “We do. You’ll have to convince Simon to confide in you.”

  “He won’t,” she said. “And I may have told Jeremy about the existence of this friend. Simon is angry with me about that.”

  “This Jeremy person is going to get pulled off the case,” said Isaac. “Temperance will make it happen. We’ll get someone objective in there, and everything’s going to be okay.”

  She rubbed her forehead. She didn’t feel like everything was going to be okay.

  He reached across the table and grasped her hand.

  She tugged it away.

  “Oh, Lorelei,” he said. “I meant it to be a friendly gesture.”

  She gulped at her wine.

  “You said you weren’t interested. I’m a grown man. I can handle that.”

  “Why would you even want me, anyway, everything what I did?” she said. “I was unfaithful to you with—with…” She couldn’t even say it out loud.

  “Oh, Lorelei, it wasn’t your fault. He manipulated you. He found your weaknesses and he played on them. He was an attractive man, and we know from his confession that he used to bank on his looks and charm to lure his victims away. He knew how to make women do what he wanted them to do, at least short term. So, I don’t blame you.”

  She put her knuckles against her lips. She felt like crying.

  * * *

  When it happened, it had seemed like a normal progression, although when Lorelei looked back on it all, she could see how Crispin Edmund Barker had manipulated her from the very beginning. If she had been thinking for herself, she would never have met in person with someone involved in the case she was working up a profile for. She would have thought the idea unprofessional at the least and dangerous to her work at the worst. Not physically dangerous or anything like that, just intellectually dangerous. It would affect her objectivity.

  But Cris had somehow made it seem so normal, and had made the objections she raised seem so silly. She could still remember the way he would laugh. It was a full laugh, as if he was exploding with mirth. But the power of it was the hint of derision buried somewhere inside it. The derision wasn’t obvious, but her subconscious heard it. She picked up on it somehow, and his derision made her feel stupid for putting up any resistance to meeting him.

  “Are you kidding?” he said, laughing. “You won’t just meet me for coffee? Really? I’m not a bad guy.”

  “It’s not that,” she said. “It’s that you’re involved in this case, and I’m working on the profile. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”

  “Oh, come on.” He laughed again. “You’re an ace profiler, aren’t you? Does appropriateness really matter in this case?”

  And somehow, she was agreeing to meet him. That was how it all started. She went out to coffee with the killer, even though she didn’t know he was the killer. And he was such an attractive man. He had a rugged quality to him that came from working outdoors in landscaping. Sun-kissed brown curls, tanned skin, muscular arms. When he smiled, there was a dimple that popped out on one of his cheeks. When he shook her hand, she could feel the strength in his grip, and it…

  It turned her on.

  Something about the way he looked and the way his voice could get low and rumbling when they were huddled in a booth together over coffee, it made her panties damp. She’d sit there, chattering idly away with him about whatever he wanted to talk about, and she’d only be half listening, because she’d be looking at his bronzed thick fingers wrapped around his coffee cup, and she’d be imagining what it would be like if he rubbed that calloused thumb against her clit.

  It was embarrassing.

  She wasn’t that way. She wasn’t a… sensual person. Sure, she enjoyed sex, and she and Isaac had a healthy sex life (owing mostly to the fact that they scheduled the act, but that worked out well for both of them, considering how busy they were and how preoccupied they both tended to get). But she rarely thought about sex or daydreamed about it or… or masturbated.

  And then Cris.

  Lorelei didn’t think that Isaac had it right. She didn’t think that Cris set out to seduce her. She wasn’t exactly the kind of woman that men really thought about seducing. She hadn’t been young when she met Cris. She hadn’t been old either, but she’d been established in her career, a woman with laugh lines and spreading hips.

  Whenever she’d met with Cris, she’d worn her hair wound into a tight bun, and a no-nonsense suit in gray or navy blue or black. That was how she dressed for work, and he was always calling her away from work. He’d ask to meet for lunch or meet for a midmorning coffee or a midafternoon cocktail. She went, and she watched him, and she fantasized about seducing him.

  But.

  She supposed she could comfort herself that it was Cris who made the first move, when it came down to it.

  “The bar at The Grand Hotel,” he said. “Meet me there around three.”

  And when she showed up, he wasn’t in the lobby. She called his cell phone. By then, they had each other’s numbers. They were friends, she told herself, and she was ashamed of how attracted she was to him, but there was nothing more to it. She had convinced herself the attraction was one-sided, and that it was nothing to worry about. She had convinced herself that it would pass, and that she shouldn’t feel as if she was betraying Isaac, because it was only a stupid crush, like something a school girl might get, and it didn’t mean anything.

  “Hey.” His voice was low and urgent and a little scratchy.

  At the sound of him, her clothes felt tight.

  “I’m just in my room now, sorry,” he said. “Haven’t made it down to the bar. Why don’t you meet me up here?”

  She didn’t ask why he had a room in a hotel when he lived in the area. She knew what he was up to, and she felt suddenly giddy. But then the glee faded to terror and guilt. She couldn’t go to his hotel room. But… well, she wouldn’t stay. She’d meet him there and convince him that they should go to the lobby together, have a drink in the bar. Nothing would happen. “What’s your room number?” she said.

  When she got there, he was only wearing a pair of jeans. His chest was bare, and he was rippling and chiseled like a man on the front of one of those men’s magazines. Like something unreal. Like a fantasy.

  He pulled her into the room and shut the door behind them and he placed his hands on either side of her body, so that the door was at her back, and he was in front of her, and she was trapped.

  Her pulse raced. Her body throbbed. She let out a little squeak. “We should, um, go down to the bar.”

  “That’s not what you want, though, not really, is it?” His voice was like the darkness before dawn.

  “I…” Her clothes were too binding. She couldn’t breathe. She choked.

  “I see the way you look at me, Lorelei. And you can’t tell me you haven’t noticed the way I look at you. Or the way I keep making up excuses to call you, to meet you. Every time I do, I tell myself it will be enough just to see you and talk. But every time, it’s not. I want to touch you.”

  S
he let out a little breathy sound. And she couldn’t resist anymore. She put her hand on his chest and dragged it over the smooth, hot firmness of him.

  He let out a harsh breath, and then he kissed her.

  The kissing was good.

  The sex was better.

  He fucked her against that door. He lifted her like she was nothing—and she wasn’t some kind of twig of a woman—held her up against the smooth wood and jammed his hard thickness into her again and again until she was battered into sweet oblivion.

  She’d never been with anyone like him. She’d never had anything like what they had together.

  She had always thought that passion like that was something purely fantastic, a fable made up in dime-store novels and sappy movies. But here she was, and it was real, and it was happening to her.

  Cris dazzled her.

  And after all that, it wasn’t real in the end. He wasn’t attracted to her. He was using her. He must have somehow sensed that she wanted him. Maybe he really had noticed the way she looked at him. Maybe she’d given it all away without meaning to. Anyway, once he saw that, he’d found his angle, and he’d gotten inside. Literally and figuratively.

  When they were basking in the afterglow, he could ask her anything about the case at all and she’d answer. She wasn’t even suspicious about his interest.

  But eventually, they caught him anyway, so it must not have been worth his time, seducing her. He didn’t learn anything from her that helped him evade capture. He didn’t learn the secrets to getting off for the multiple murder charges leveled against him. They caught him. They arrested him.

  And when she’d found out…

  She hadn’t believed it. She remembered going to see him in jail, and he’d been so earnest with her, assuring her it was a mistake and that the truth would come out. He’d even said that they should be together when he got free. “Leave your boyfriend,” he said. “We’ll move in together. You know we belong together.”

  She believed him, that was the hell of it.

  It took weeks, time away from him, before she finally began to see through it and to realize what he’d done. Right around the time that she realized she was pregnant, ironically enough. (If that was even what irony meant, anyway.)

  Her profile had been used to apprehend him, and she was terrified that his trial would take place while she was pregnant, and that he’d see and know about the baby. She didn’t know a lot about the real Crispin Barker, considering the man she’d made love to had only been a construct made to manipulate her. But there had been some aspects of his true nature that always seeped through, and one thing was that he was frightfully possessive.

  When they were in bed, he’d always make her say it. He liked her to say it when she was coming. “I’m Cris’s, I’m Cris’s, I’m Cris’s,” over and over as the orgasms twitched through her pelvis and thighs.

  He’d call her at work sometimes and say he wanted a status update. “Just checking on my property. Describe it to me.”

  She’d squirm at her desk, alone in her office, embarrassed and turned on at the same time. “Wet,” she’d whisper. “Your pussy is wet.”

  “Whose pussy is it again?” he’d croon.

  “Yours,” she’d breathe, half on the edge of coming right then just at the sheer kink of it all. “It’s Cris’s pussy. Cris’s.”

  “Damned right it is.” And then he’d hang up.

  And more often than not, she’d find herself surreptitiously working her fingers inside her pants to relieve the pressure. There was simply no other way to think about her work when she was so distracted.

  Anyway, she was horrified at the thought of his knowing he had a child. He’d think of the child as his property, and he’d think he had rights, and she… what if the law agreed with him? He was the baby’s father after all.

  The whole experience was the most embarrassing, shameful thing she could possibly think of. To be taken in by a killer, by the very sort of man that she was supposed to understand from the inside out, and to be seduced by him, to have had such wanton sexual experiences with him, she… she wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

  She expected that Crispin would somehow let on that they’d been intimate, and she lived in utter dread of that happening. But the one silver lining was that it would mean that she wouldn’t be allowed to testify, being too close to the case to possibly be objective, and then he’d never know she was pregnant.

  In the end, his trial didn’t happen until years later. Simon was nearly two by that point and she was no longer working for the FBI, so she didn’t have to testify. She could keep tabs on the trial from the safety of her locked apartment. She could watch the coverage and see that he was convicted of thirty counts of premeditated murder and that he was sentenced to life sentence after life sentence.

  She would never see him again. And her secret was safe. No one would know that she’d slept with a serial murderer or that her son was the child of a killer.

  Except that Isaac did know now. And even though it should have made him hate her, he didn’t. Which was funny, because she still hated herself.

  * * *

  Lorelei shook her head. “You don’t know what happened, Isaac. You don’t know what I did.”

  He sipped at his wine. “So, tell me. What horrible things did you do?”

  She hung her head. “I can’t talk about it. You don’t really want to know, anyway, about what it was like between Cris and me.”

  Isaac sat back in his chair. “That’s how you think of him still, huh? With a nickname? Cris?”

  “No.” She shook her head violently. “No, of course not. I understand who he is and what he did. The person that I thought I knew never existed.” Even though sometimes she wished he did. Sometimes she missed him.

  “You’re a victim, Lorelei,” he said. “He victimized you.”

  She drained her glass for the second time and set about refilling it right away. “No, I don’t know that he did. I should have known better. I should never have been unfaithful to you. I—”

  “Maybe you should go easy on the wine.”

  She glared at him. Right after all of it had happened, she’d tried for a while. Tried to stay with Isaac. Before she knew about the pregnancy, she drank so heavily, and they’d argued about it. She could still remember the arguments, remember that she’d dashed a crystal wine glass against the wall and the way it had shattered all over the carpet and the way the wine had dribbled down the wall like blood.

  Isaac had told her to get out after that, said he couldn’t handle living with an alcoholic. Later, he said he only wanted her to get help, but she remembered the way he’d looked at her. He’d been livid.

  He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, it’s only that you don’t need this crutch, Lor. You’re strong. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met.”

  She took a defiant drink of wine. “Why aren’t you angry with me for cheating on you?”

  He let out a funny little laugh and looked away.

  She drank more wine.

  He scratched the back of his neck. “I was. Right when you told me, when you showed me that picture at the park, I was angry. But, hell, I don’t know, Lor. It’s been so long. It doesn’t matter anymore. Anyway, you’ve made it clear that you only want to interact with me as a friend. And as a friend, I don’t have the right to be angry, because I don’t have any claim on you.”

  She didn’t say anything. He was too decent, Isaac. After the thing with Cris, she couldn’t bear how decent Isaac was. His decency made her feel guilty. She had behaved abominably. She had no excuse for going to bed with another man, none at all. She’d done it because it had been exciting. She’d done it because it had been arousing. She’d done it for pure sexual release, and that was inexcusable. She deserved everything she got from now on. She shook her head. “Maybe you should go.”

  “I thought you wanted my help,” he said. “I thought I’d stay in town here for a bit, just until we get things
cleared up, find the real killer and make sure no one suspects Simon anymore.”

  “I do want your help, but maybe it would be better if you helped from afar,” she said. “You can go back to your office and make some calls. That’s really all I need right now.”

  He sighed heavily. “What did I say? I said something wrong. Tell me what it was.”

  She licked her lips. “I’m a mess, Isaac. My life is too complicated right now.”

  “So what? So why do I have to leave?”

  “Because…” She shrugged and wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Because I want you to go.” She knew he was too nice of a guy to insist on staying.

  “Damn it, Lorelei. Why’d you ever call me in the first place if all you were going to do was push me away?”

  And she was crying. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Where’s Isaac?” said Simon at breakfast the next day.

  “He went home,” she said, stabbing at her eggs. She had a killer hangover and the ibuprofen she’d taken wasn’t even touching it.

  “I thought he was going to stay here,” said Simon. “I thought the two of you were sort of…” He made a perplexed face. “Like together.”

  “Simon.” She shot him a look that said to drop the subject.

  But Simon didn’t really understand looks like that. “You were, weren’t you? Before I was born? Before you met my dad?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But that was a long time ago, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, I think he still likes you.”

  “Simon, for God’s sake, can we drop this?”

  He shrugged. He pushed his own eggs around on his plate.

  “How are you doing today?” she said. “Do you want to stay home from school? After everything that happened yesterday, it would be absolutely understandable if—”

  “No way,” said Simon. “I hate missing school. Then I have to get all the makeup work, and I have to find people’s notes to copy, and it’s very stressful.”

  She sighed. She should have known he’d say that. “Simon, people probably heard that you were taken down to the station for questioning yesterday. They might say something to you about it today, or you might even notice them talking behind your back.”