by Willow Rose
“Who’s gonna break my heart?” Alex’s small voice came from the door. My little guy had gotten himself dressed even though he had turned the shirt inside out. His hair was still messy from sleeping.
Olivia gave me a look. “Now, you have the chance to tell him, Mom.”
Alex approached the counter and crawled up on a stool. “Tell me what?”
“Tell you that we’re out of Cocoa Krispies,” I said and grabbed the box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. “So you’ll have to have these instead. I hope it’s okay.”
Alex made a funny face. “Of course, it’s okay. I love those.”
I poured him some, my heart beating fast in my chest. Olivia left, sending me a disapproving glare. I knew she was right. If Matt and Elijah weren’t coming back, I’d have to tell the kid at some point. But that meant I had to admit it to myself first, and I didn’t want to do that. To be honest, I didn’t want to deal with any of it. I didn’t know what I wanted except to find the Swatter and take him down for good.
Chapter 44
I watched the video of Officer Downey’s kid being beaten up with great horror. I followed up by listening to an interview with the crazy mother who believed she was entitled to take action against a kid because of what his father had done.
It absolutely terrified me.
The poor kid.
I couldn’t believe a mother could be so irresponsible and help her daughters attack another child by holding the kid down. What kind of a mother did something like that?
Luckily, they had all been arrested now, but it was too late for Nathan Downey. He was fighting for his life in the ICU, and his life would never be the same again, even if he did make it.
Neither would his father’s.
“It’s like the domino effect,” I said to my dad when I spoke to him later. “Like what happened to Amal Bukhari is causing ripples across the water, and it keeps affecting people. It’s like it won’t stop. The video of the attack is all over the internet, and so is the interview with the mom where she told why she did it. Because of what Amal Bukhari had said on TV. To end police brutality.”
“Fight fire with fire,” my dad said. “Unfortunately, it’s often what happens.”
“There are no winners in this,” I said. “That’s what Matt said.”
“Well, he’s right about that.”
I paused when thinking about Matt. “Do you think I’m running?”
“What do you mean?”
“Matt seems to think that’s why I’m throwing myself at this case, why I’m devoting all my time to finding this killer because I don’t want to deal with Chad’s death.”
My dad went quiet on the other end. I realized it was probably asking too much of him. We hadn’t known each other very long.
“He might have a point,” he said. “Dealing with grief is tough, and we all do it in our own way. For you, it might be digging into work and burying yourself with it for a little while.”
“So, you don’t think there’s anything wrong with me doing it?” I asked.
“That’s not for me to say,” he said. “You’ll have to listen to your own heart, sweetie. Only you know what is best for you.”
“That was very diplomatically put,” I said with a chuckle.
“Well, I like both you and Matt. I just hope you can figure things out.”
I sighed and sipped my coffee. “Yeah, me too. I also wish I could find the Swatter and stop him before he kills again. I’ve been up and working on it for most of the night, but none of the names you gave me stand out. I’ve Googled each and every one of them and matched their profiles with the earlier victims to see if there is a deeper pattern to reveal which of the twelve names you gave me will be next. But nothing has come out of it. Absolutely nothing.”
“We’ll keep working on it,” he said. “It’s all we can do.”
“I just hope we can figure it out in time. I won’t be able to live with myself if more people are killed or even hurt by this guy. It’s gotta stop. He simply has got to be stopped.”
Chapter 45
Susan fought her way through the fog and finally managed to open her eyes. She blinked a few times while reality came back to her. Her head was pounding, and everything was in a hazy light. It took a few seconds for her to remember where she was and what had happened. The last thing she remembered was going to the bathroom for the tenth time this morning, thinking that it felt like the baby was having a dance party on her bladder.
The baby. Is the baby okay?
Susan remembered coming out of the bathroom and then the taste of the nasty fingers covering her mouth. She remembered biting those fingers and someone screaming behind her. Then she remembered trying to run away, getting loose, and then…then the sound of the person behind her swinging something through the air and it hitting her in the back of her head. After that, she remembered nothing else.
Someone had been in her house. Someone had tried to kill her. Was this someone still here?
Susan felt the baby kick and sighed with relief. She was okay. Everything seemed okay. There was no unexplained pain and no bleeding. The baby was fine.
That was more than you could say for Susan’s head. It was aching painfully, and she closed her eyes for a few seconds to try and make it go away. When she opened them again, there was someone standing, hovering, and bending down above her. Seeing this, she tried to move but realized she couldn’t. Her hands were tied behind her back, and something that tasted awful had been stuffed inside her mouth. The eyes looking down at her were unknown to her, the face covered by a ski mask.
“Oh, good. You’re awake,” said the person behind the mask. The voice wasn’t one she knew or recognized either.
What do you want from me?
She wanted to scream the words, but she couldn’t. They remained muffled sounds behind the ill-tasting gag. Susan felt like she was about to choke and breathed raggedly through her nose while panic threatened to devour her.
Take my computer. Take my credit cards, take anything, just leave my baby and me to live. Please, don’t hurt my baby.
Tears ran down her cheeks as she stared into those cold eyes above her. There was something about them so terrifying it made every fiber of her body want to scream. Instead, Susan cried. She cried because she was scared and because she wanted to wake up from this horrid nightmare and because she wanted her life back; she wanted to feel happy again like she had this very morning when kissing Rob goodbye and waving to him, promising him that she wouldn’t spend all day on the computer, that she’d go for a walk and smell the flowers or do something that felt good.
She hadn’t done any of that. She had been playing all day, wanting to do her best in this last tournament that was approaching, wanting to keep up with the younger generation that was surpassing her in all levels these days, refusing to admit that it was possibly over, that she was ready to retire.
Please, don’t hurt me or the child. Please. I’ll retire, God. If you spare us, I’ll retire today and never play again for other than fun.
The masked person walked to the front door and peeked out the window next to it. Susan didn’t understand what was so important out there until she heard the familiar sound of a car door slamming and footsteps approaching the front door, followed by a gentle whistling. While her eyes grew strained in terror, Susan saw the masked person get ready behind the door, lifting his gun.
Susan’s eyes grew big and wide, and soon she screamed desperately behind the gag.
Not Rob! Please. Not Rob!
Chapter 46
My mom made us some vegan dinner, and I ate fast without complaining since I was just so glad she wanted to cook for us, so I didn’t have to. As soon as I was done, I rushed back to my computer in my bedroom, continuing my research.
Later that evening, I put Alex to bed, read from his favorite book about the firetrucks, and sang a couple of songs for him—or more like twelve since he kept asking for more before I could return to my work.
I stared at the wall in front of me, where I had put pictures of all the victims, trying to connect them, comparing things they had in common. I had been at it all day and still not found anything useful. It bothered me greatly that I couldn’t figure out this killer. What was his deal? I didn’t believe anyone killed just for the fun of it. There was always a deeper meaning, always a deeper motive, even if he killed people with whom he had no immediate connection. It was all about finding that deeper purpose of his killings that would bring me to him. But I still couldn’t see it clearly enough.
I closed the lid on my computer when Christine came in and sat on my bed with a deep sigh.
“What’s going on, sweetie?” I asked, knowing my thirteen-year-old daughter wouldn’t come to my room unless there was drama in her friend group or if there was something she wanted from me.
She cleared her throat. “I was just wondering…”
“Yes?”
“Why don’t we ever go to church?”
I stared at her, quite surprised. We had gone to church back in Washington, D.C. when the kids were a lot younger and we had more time, but once I got busy with my work, it had slowly faded out of our routine. Chad had never wanted to go much, so I started to feel like I was forcing him, and I didn’t want to have to fight about it once I was finally home on a Sunday.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess we just haven’t been in the routine of going for the past few years. We haven’t even looked for a church here. Why do you ask? Do you want to go to church?”
She shrugged and looked away shyly like she was embarrassed to ask this of me. “Kind of.”
I nodded and sat next to her on the bed. I took her hands in mine, then looked into her eyes, making sure she knew it was okay.
“Because of your dad?”
She swallowed, then nodded. “I just keep thinking…wondering… Do you think he’s in Heaven?”
“Of course, he is,” I said with the most reassuring voice I could muster at this moment. I was fighting not to tear up like always when the conversation fell on Chad. “He risked his life to save someone else. If that doesn’t qualify for going up there, then nothing will. God’s totally into that stuff.”
Christine’s face lit up. “Like Jesus. He sacrificed his own life, too, right?”
A tear shaped in the corner of my eye. I nodded while moving a lock of hair from my daughter’s face. It amazed me how, at times, she seemed almost like an adult, and then at others, she was still just a young child who needed her mother’s comfort.
“Yes, just like Jesus.”
“I like that thought,” she said with half a smile. “Do you think he’ll meet Pebbles up there?”
Pebbles was a cat we had for about two months before it ran out in front of a car. I had never liked that cat much since I was more of a dog person, but the kids had begged and begged, and I had finally given in, probably mostly due to the terrible feeling of guilt I carried everywhere back then. They could probably have asked me for anything at that time, and I would have said yes; that’s how bad I felt for never being there for them. The cat had ended up scratching our couch to pieces, my favorite couch, and it peed in one of my best shoes, so it is safe to say it wasn’t exactly popular with me.
“I’m not sure he made it in, to be honest,” I said with a sly smile.
Christine laughed. “He was kind of annoying; wasn’t he? Remember how he always scratched us when we tried to pet him? I’m not sure he even liked humans very much. At least not us. Dad was the only one who could handle him. Pebbles was always nice to him for some reason. Do you remember that, Mom?”
I nodded, caressing her hair, then pulling her head close so I could kiss the top of it. The talk about Chad made my stomach churn, and I felt the tears well up in my eyes. I didn’t want them to do that. I didn’t want to feel them or the grief nagging inside me. I just wanted it to go away. Just like I wanted my children never to feel this way again. I wished so terribly that I could go back in time and stop what had happened to their father.
But then Matt would have died, and I hated that outcome just as much. So many times, I had gone through that event, and so many times, I had thought that if only Matt had never gone there, then it wouldn’t have happened. But then again, Matt had saved my life and my grandmother’s as well, and naturally, I was thankful for that. I just wished that it hadn’t ended the way it did.
If only…
“So, will you go to church with me this Sunday?” Christine asked. “And say hi to Dad?”
I stared at my daughter’s adorable face. She still had a little baby fat around her cheeks that she would lose within the next year or so, but it made her look so incredibly cute, and I felt like kissing her small cheeks the way I used to when she was younger.
I nodded. “Sure. Let’s all go this Sunday.”
Christine smiled widely, then got up and pecked me on the cheek. “Yay.”
She left, almost skipping out the door and closed it behind her. I sat on the bed for a few seconds as a thought popped into my mind. It was one of those thoughts that wouldn’t let you go again until you finally realized its importance.
Then I gasped and stared up at the wall in front of me, wondering why I hadn’t seen this before now.
Chapter 47
“Drone camera caught eyes on two people inside the house.”
Deputy Gailor, or GayLord as he was lovingly called among peers, approached Sheriff Howard. He looked at him nervously. He hadn’t been in uniform long, only a few months, and this was his first real situation. The sheriff was standing behind his car, gun directed at the house.
The call had come in just before nine o’clock: an active shooting situation, a domestic dispute. A man threatened to shoot his wife and their unborn child. Howard had seen his share of husbands killing their wives in anger and even the children too. Just a few weeks ago, they had recovered the bodies of three children that the father had admitted to killing with a baseball bat. The wife, he had stabbed to death, he said, and she had been thrown in the river. There was also a guy six months ago who drove around with his wife’s dead body in the car for weeks before he was caught when he crashed the car, and the arriving police smelled a foul odor.
It wasn’t uncommon, and Howard hated it.
“One man and a woman,” Gailor continued. “The light coming from the living room made it easy for the drone to take a picture.”
He showed the picture that the drone had taken to Howard. It was hard to see what they were doing, but there was a woman on the floor kneeling, holding her hands above her head while a man hovered above her, holding something in his hand. There was no doubt about it in Howard’s mind. It was a gun.
“So, we’ve got a hostage situation on our hands,” he said. “We need to get the SWAT team.”
“I’m on it,” Gailor said and walked away.
Howard felt his pulse quicken when thinking about the poor woman in there. Howard had lost his own sister to an abusive husband who ended up beating her with a hammer in a fit of rage. There was nothing that angered him more than when men misused their physical superiority and took it out on poor defenseless women and children. He had seen so many of them in his time as sheriff in Indian River County. Those poor women even made excuses for their men’s bad behavior.
It was disgusting.
“I am not losing one today. Not on my watch,” the sheriff mumbled to himself and pointed the gun at the door in case the man decided to come out. Last time Howard had been through a hostage situation, it had ended in a nine-hour standoff. In the end, the guy had gotten himself killed, and the child he was holding hostage had been saved and returned to her mother. But Howard had also had a deputy get hurt, and he wasn’t seeing that again today either. Deputy Towers never returned to active duty and was now retired and on a disability check at the age of only thirty-two.
“SWAT team is en route,” Gailor said as he returned. “Two minutes out.”
Howard felt his Kevlar v
est and nodded. His deputies had surrounded the house and were covering all exits. Howard felt sweat prickle on his forehead and wiped it off with the back of his hand while wondering if they had minutes to spare…if the woman inside had that long. He wasn’t losing her and her unborn child.
Not today.
Chapter 48
“They do all have one thing in common,” I said, almost yelling it into the phone.
Liam paused on the other end.
“I’m waiting,” he said, “for what it is.”
“They’re all outspoken atheists.”
He went quiet for a few seconds, then said: “Atheists, you say? You think it’s a religious thing?”
“I don’t know. It kind of surprised me too. But it’s the only thing I’ve been able to find that they all have in common. Well, all except for Peter James, victim zero. I haven’t been able to find out anything about his religious beliefs, but the rest of them, all of them have clearly stated that they are atheists on their online social profile or even publicly in interviews, like Amal Bukhari. She has been very outspoken about denouncing her family’s Islamic religion and told the world how her parents had turned their backs on her because of it and because of what she does for a living. And you have been very clear about this in the past too, right?”
Liam exhaled into the phone. I could almost sense his deep feeling of guilt and how he blamed himself for his son’s death through the phone. He already did, after I warned him and he didn’t take it seriously. Now, I had added another dimension to it, another thing he could blame himself for.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to…”
“No, it’s okay. I asked you to keep me updated,” Liam said. “I’m a big boy, as you might know. I can take it.”
