“Sabrina.”
She looked back to see his face had gone serious. “Hmm?”
“Take the dog.”
“Like she’d let me leave without her.”
“And your backup piece.”
“And I’m the hoverer?” she said and rolled her eyes. “Hello pot, meet kettle.”
“I’m just—” He looked down at the baby zoning out in his arms, her lips slack around the bottle in her mouth, soft black curls framing her face. He looked back up at her but didn’t finish what he was going to say. Didn’t have to. He worried about her. They all did—Val, the twins, Strickland. Their worry was like the aftershocks of an earthquake, rippling out to touch her when she least expected it, tipping her off balance. Shaking her with its reminder of everything that had happened over the past two years. Wade. David.
They worried because they loved her. Because, as her family, it was their job.
“Okay, okay,” she said with a nod and lifted her pant leg to show him the .380 LCP strapped to her ankle. “Never leave home without it.”
“Thank you.” Nickels pulled the bottle from the baby’s mouth and placed her gently on his shoulder. He began to rub and pat her back. “You know, if you want to skip the run altogether and make me pancakes, I wouldn’t mind in the slightest.”
She laughed. “That’s what I love about you, Nick—forever the optimist,” she said before turning to make her way back to her room.
By the time she tied her shoes and tossed her hair into a ponytail, Avasa was up and waiting at the door, ready to go.
They ran the trail. Her feet pounded down the dirt, even and steady despite the twinge that shot through her thigh every time her foot made contact with the ground. It would always hurt. Would always remind her of what had happened to her, how close she’d come to dying. That it had been her half-brother who’d been the one to hurt her. The tight, puckered flesh that marred her leg had finally healed. She’d finally let it. She’d battled her way through rehab—and this time she hadn’t stopped until it was done.
These days the agonizing pain had faded to nothing more than a dull ache. But she welcomed the discomfort—relished it in a strange way. The pain in her thigh reminded her that she’d made it through. It was the fact that she still suffered, just a little, that proved to her it was real.
She’d survived.
Without even thinking, her feet and legs began to slow until she was walking along the trail. She was close. The dog, used to it by now, trotted the few remaining yards and sat in the dirt to wait.
Stopping, Sabrina faced the woods where she’d found a dead girl two years before. She stared into the trees. It was like staring into the face of a monster.
What’s wrong, Melissa … miss me?
Wade’s voice echoed in her head, little more than a whisper. He’d crept up on her over the past few days, growing louder and louder. Soon the faint murmur in her head would become a howling scream. She’d put it off too long, managed to fool herself into believing that this time Wade was gone for good.
Gone for good? Ain’t no such thing, darlin’ …
She’d have to go see Phillip later. It was the only way, the only thing she’d found that could quiet the voice in her head, but for now she did the only thing she could—she ignored him. Focused on the space between the trees where she’d found the girl. It was hard but she made herself do it. Instead of listening, she forced herself to remember the way the girl looked. The empty sockets where her eyes should’ve been. The lime-green polish on her toes. The red ribbon tied around her wrist. The word stabbed into her stomach.
R U N
You keep bringing us back to this place, darlin’. You even understand why?
He’d asked her that once, staring down at her, a sickening grin stretched across his ruined face. Yeah, she understood why. She felt the calm steady beat of her heart. Reminded herself that not only had she survived, she’d won.
Are you sure about that, darlin’?
Her cell let out a chirp, and she plucked it off her hip.
“Vaughn.”
“Hey, Little Miss Sunshine, I hear you’re my new partner.” It was Christopher Strickland. Hearing his voice made her smile. Made it easier to push Wade’s relentless whisper from her mind.
“That’s what they told me,” she said, her smile turning to a full-fledged grin. Yeah, she’d miss SWAT, but this is where she belonged.
He laughed. “Well then, you better get your ass in gear—we caught a case.”
She turned away from the clearing and snapped her fingers. Avasa’s ears picked up and she trotted over to where Sabrina stood, looking up at her expectantly. “Text me the address. I’ll meet you there in an hour,” she said before closing her phone and heading for home, her dog at her side.
Twelve
Sabrina crossed the street, approaching the cluster of badges that milled around the front yard belonging to the address Strickland had sent her. The uniform stationed at the perimeter gave her a head nod but not much more. No smile. No black-humored commentary on what was going on inside. He barely looked at her as she ducked under the tape. She straightened and looked around. More of the same. Somber faces and hushed voices. It was like someone had turned the volume down on the entire crime scene. Only one thing could do that. Turn a crew of hardened cops into a bunch of dour-faced librarians.
The murder victim was a child.
She made her way up the front walk, forcing her feet to move faster than they wanted to go. No one wanted to work a child murder. Those were the ones you couldn’t shake loose. They stuck with you. Haunted you. She pushed her way inside and found another uniform standing just inside the door. She gave him a questioning glance, and he tipped his head in the direction of the hallway.
The house was empty, the floor littered with fast-food wrappers and old newspapers. Windows were painted over so the morning sun was defused down to little more than a reddish glow as it struggled to push its way through the glass. Another pale-faced uniform was stationed just outside one of the rooms off the hallway.
She stepped into the room to find Strickland crouched over a body so little all she could see was the top of a blond head and small bare feet. She dug a pair of latex gloves out of her jacket pocket and pulled them on. “Hey.”
He looked over his shoulder and jerked his chin at her. “Hey. Hell of a welcome back, huh?” he said, watching her circle around the body to stand opposite him. She looked down, steeling herself for what waited at her feet. It was a boy. No obvious cause of death, his body pale and still. Naked.
She blew out a sigh and hunkered down to get a better look. She glanced at her partner. Strickland rubbed his hand across his mouth and shook his head. “He can’t be more than six or seven.”
He was small. She’d have guessed younger, but she didn’t say anything. “Any witnesses?”
“No.” Strickland dropped his gloved hand and brushed his fingers along the ligature marks that marred the boy’s wrist. “Anonymous 911 call from a burner cell. I got a couple of uniforms doing a walk-through, but so far—”
“Hey, you guys are gonna want to see this.” She and Strickland looked up to see a uniformed officer. His head poked into the room, like the rest of his body had refused to make the trip. His gaze drifted down to the body stretched out on the floor between them before bouncing back up. “Some pretty weird shit in the basement,” he said before retreating back down the hall.
She tried not to let her frustration get the best of her. But it was hard—really hard—to let Strickland take the lead. Especially when he led like an old lady.
“You want to move a little faster, Grandma?” she said from where she was, stuck behind him on the basement stairs.
“Your leg must be better, huh? A year and some change on SWAT and you’re ready to kick down doors,” he said. He clicked his flashlight on
and swept it across the interior before taking a few more steps into the gloom. “Not sure if you remember, but we take a more civilized approach here in the land of suits and ties.”
“More like the land of dentures and bingo,” Sabrina said under her breath as she followed, moving farther down the stairs. That’s when the smell hit her.
“Busted sewer line,” Strickland said, but he was wrong. She knew that smell. Had been trapped in the dark with it for eighty-three days. The smell told her that this is where the boy had been kept. That he’d been held against his will, confined somewhere that didn’t offer the luxury of a toilet.
The single bare bulb that hung in the middle of the room did little except create a small circle of watery light; the rest of the room was dark. Strickland shuffled forward a few more steps, doing his best to keep her on the stairs until he knew it was completely safe. She could already see a habit forming, an irritating one that annoyed her. “Strickland, I swear to God … ”
He shot her a look over his shoulder. “Better safe than—”
“You’re being ridiculous.” She shouldered her way past him, pulling her Mini-Mag from her pocket. She clicked it on. “I think I’ve proved it takes a lot more than a dark basement to kill me.”
Liar, liar …
“Nice, Vaughn—real nice.” Strickland shook his head. He hated being reminded of what’d happened to her. That he hadn’t been there to help her.
“You been doing those deep-breathing exercises I taught you?” She was teasing him now, making light of a situation neither one of them could change. And even if she could, she wouldn’t.
He aimed his light in the opposite direction. “Fuck you, Vaughn,” he said with no real heat behind it.
She scanned the opposite side of the room, her beam passing over a large wrought-iron cage. Then another. And another. And another. Whatever she’d been about to say died in her throat. “Oh … ” She let the word out on an expulsion of breath, too soft to sound like anything but a sigh. There were leashes clipped to the outside of each of them. Buckets full of shit and piss next to bowls that’d probably held food and water. There were four of them, which meant that the dead boy upstairs wasn’t the only one who’d been held here. So where were the rest of them? It wasn’t something she wanted to consider, but the body upstairs might not be the only one they found.
Home sweet home …
“Take a look over here,” Strickland said.
She turned in the direction of his voice, and her flashlight found the back of his head. His was pointed at a video camera set on a tripod. “This just keeps getting better by the second,” he said in a disgusted mutter.
She aimed her light at the ground and crossed the room to the camera. “No tape. But we’ll get CSU down here, have them dust every square inch. No way this freak wore gloves the whole time. We’ll catch him,” she said, sounding more sure than she actually felt. She knew better than anyone that monsters weren’t always that easy to catch. Sometimes they were more than just dumb animals; sometimes they roamed free.
She ran her flashlight along the floor, looking for something, anything that might point her in the direction of the sick bastard who thought keeping little kids in cages was an okay thing to do. Her light caught the edge of a curtain. She watched it flutter as if touched by a breeze. But there was no breeze. Not down here. It fluttered again.
She motioned for Strickland to be quiet and aimed her light at the edge of the curtain. She saw movement, something shifting slowly along the floor.
There was someone there.
thirteen
Sabrina’s heart slammed into her throat. She unsnapped her holster as quietly as she could and shot a look over her shoulder. Strickland had seen it too. He drew his weapon and nodded. She lifted her SIG P220 off her hip and took aim at the curtain.
“SFPD. I know you’re back there. Come out with your hands where I can see them,” she said in a tone that gave little doubt as to her intent if her command wasn’t followed.
No response, just the slight flutter of the curtain that told her that who or whatever was behind it was still there.
“I said, SFPD. Come out—”
A pair of feet appeared, nothing more than the tops and toes. They were small and pale in the steady beam of her flashlight.
Holy shit. It was a kid.
She changed tactics, softening her tone but still holding firm. “It’s okay, you’re safe. I’m a police officer. It’s okay to come out now,” she said but didn’t lower her gun. There was a chance the child behind the curtain wasn’t alone.
Small feet shuffled closer and a hand peeked out from the split between the curtains. The opening was pulled wider to reveal dark vacant eyes and a sharp nose set in a face that was painfully thin. Equally thin shoulders and torso appeared as the kid moved forward slowly. Just like the dead boy upstairs, he was naked.
“Are you alone back there?” she said. The kid didn’t answer, just stared at her with those empty eyes. She motioned the child closer. “Come here, it’s okay.” She looked at Strickland and tipped her head in the direction of the curtain. He nodded and moved forward, gun raised.
Sabrina reached out and latched onto the boy’s arm, pulling him toward her. The second her fingers made contact, he went crazy, swinging and shouting in a language she didn’t understand.
She dragged the boy clear of the curtain. He fought against her grip, screaming and flailing, while Strickland did a sweep of the room behind it. He came out a few seconds later. “Nothing. Just a mattress, a TV, and another camcorder,” he said over the din of the boy’s screaming. “What the hell is he saying?”
She shook her head and looked at the boy, saw his face, white and stretched thin with terror. He wasn’t speaking English, but his fear was obvious. “Shhh, shhh—it’s okay. We’re here to help,” she said, hoping her tone would convey the message her words couldn’t.
The boy darted away from her, nothing but a pale blur as he bolted toward freedom. She started after him, pounding up the steps, Strickland two strides behind her. She reached the top of the stairs and saw him running down the darkened hallway, darting this way and that.
“Stop him,” she shouted, hoping the uniform at the front door would be quick enough to catch him.
The boy cut to the left, and she followed through the living room doorway. He saw the uniformed figure blocking his way out and darted to the left again, cutting across the room to the other side of the house—toward the room where the dead boy probably still lay stretched out on the floor.
“Don’t go in there!” she shouted, even though he didn’t understand her. He disappeared through the doorway seconds before she reached it. She skidded to a stop. Coroner Mandy Black was hunkered down next to the body on the floor, but the whole of her attention was concentrated on the boy who’d just burst into the room. He was crouching in the corner farthest away from the doorway, knees drawn tight against his chest by arms so thin and pale they looked like twigs, bleached white by the sun.
He started rambling again, eyes, like miniature black holes aimed at the body on the floor. She started to cross the threshold, but Mandy threw up a hand and shook her head. Sabrina stalled out mid-stride and watched as Mandy stood, crossing the room on slow and steady feet. She said something in what sounded like the same language the boy was speaking and as if Mandy had thrown a switch, he stopped talking.
Sabrina watched and listened. Mandy got closer and closer, still speaking the strange language in a low easy tone that seemed to sooth the boy. It sounded Slavic, maybe Russian. Strange coming from the woman crouched on the floor. She must’ve asked him a question because the boy nodded, eyes suddenly flooded with tears. He started to speak again, but his speech had lost its hysterical edge. Mandy got close enough to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t. She kept her hands at her sides, shaking her head as she crouched low and slow in fr
ont of him. She kept talking. The boy kept listening.
“What. The. Fuck,” Strickland said behind her. “Coroner Barbie speaks gibberish.”
“It’s not gibberish, dickhead. It’s Russian,” Mandy said without looking up.
Sabrina felt a prickle, like electricity dancing along her skin. What was a Russian boy doing in an abandoned house in San Francisco?
She looked away from the boy crouched in the corner to the one dead on the floor.
“Ask him if he knows the victim,” Sabrina said.
Mandy spoke quietly and the boy answered, shaking his head. “No. He said he’s never seen him before.”
Sabrina studied the boy on the floor. He was small and blond. She entered the room and squatted down next to the body. She peeled back a lid and looked at his eyes. They were milky, but she could see enough of the iris to know they were hazel.
She stood. “I need some air,” she said, brushing past Strickland on her way out the door. She could feel him watching her, and she silently urged him not to follow.
She didn’t need air; she needed to call Ben Shaw, because there was a very real chance that she’d just found Leo Maddox.
fourteen
Ben met him on the tarmac a few hours later. “What part of clean sweep did you not understand?”
The part where it entailed shooting an unarmed woman. “Relax. It’s gonna be fine,” he said, dropping his duffle at his feet. “The gun used to do the guards has her prints all over it, and I used different calibers and kill methods. Once you plant the evidence in her computer that points the way to her hiring a hit squad, no one is gonna believe her lone-gunman theory.”
“She saw you.” Ben shook his head. “What if she recognized you from the club?”
“Please. The last time she saw me, she was blitzed out on booze and roofies,” he said, despite the doubt that nagged him. “That whole night is a big black hole as far as she’s concerned.”
Promises to Keep Page 5
