Beautifully Damaged (Contemporary Romantic Suspense)

by Faye, Amy

  She canceled her tickets for Saturday morning. They didn't promise a refund but then they said that if they issued one, it wouldn't be for another day or two. Either way, she wasn't going to be on that airplane.

  Tomorrow morning, six A.M. flight. She'd have to get up a little early, but that didn't matter. Five was sleeping in for her, anyways. She had to go back to sleep after she woke up a sweaty mess about every night. There was a time, before she joined the force, where it would keep her awake all night. No matter what time she went to bed, three or four in the morning she would be wide awake, images flashing in her head that she would never be able to get out.

  She shook her head and pulled a water bottle out of the fridge, took a sip and used it to down her pills. Then she took a deep breath and laid back on the bed. She could go to sleep in a couple of hours, set an alarm for three-thirty. She would probably turn it off again before it went off, but the security would be nice to have until she knew she was up.

  How in the hell was she supposed to pass the time, though? She took a deep breath. The only thing to do, then, was to find something else to do. She'd take a walk, maybe. There probably wasn't much to see. Families on vacation at the off-brand 'great spot' who had just as little to do as she did.

  Well, either way, she could at least get something to eat. That would give her something to do, even if it didn't keep her busy for the three hours she had to kill before she could justify sleeping. She put on the work suit, already getting back into that mindset. It wasn't as if she had to worry about the impression she'd make on Roy.

  He wasn't going to think she was a hard ass when he didn't see her. And she wasn't going up the mountain, either, because the blizzard had closed the way for emergency vehicles and it would be unsafe to wind down the mountain at twenty miles over the speed limit or something. She rolled her eyes.

  It was their mountain, they could do whatever they wanted with it. But that was absurd. There were still cars pulling into the parking lot, even now. Obviously someone could get up the mountain. Were ambulance drivers prone to driving like madmen all of a sudden? If a dozen or more people a day could safely make it, with no wild stories of armies of people who hadn't, then every ambulance driver that Erin had ever known could make it.

  She settled herself into the restaurant. She thought about sitting up at the bar, but it would have sent the wrong message. She wanted to take up as little space as possible, not get picked up one last time for the night. That thing with Roy had been a mistake. She pulled out her phone and scrolled down to his entry in her contacts list.

  Her thumb hovered over it for a minute, hesitating for a moment. Then she long-pressed on it and hit 'delete.' A message asked her if she was sure, and she said she was. She would love to see him again. He was a great guy and she'd had a great time. But that wasn't the same thing as being a real relationship and it sure enough wasn't enough for her to keep a number in her phone in the hope that one of them moved across the country to have a repeat performance.

  Six

  Who the hell was awake at this hour?

  Erin looked up at the corner of her phone screen to check the time before she answered the call. It was earlier than she thought. Only midnight. She was awake at this hour, when she wasn't on vacation. The number wasn't one she recognized, but there were precious few that she would. Dad's ringer said "Dad," but he wasn't going to call.

  Becca's said her name as well, but it obviously wasn't either of them. And it wasn't Roy because it was a 213 number, and that meant L.A.

  Finally she picked up the phone on the fourth ring.

  "Erin Russo speaking."

  "Erin, I know we told you that you need a vacation."

  The captain, then. Okay.

  "And I'm taking one, just like you said. I might not have wanted to, but I can take orders, at least. Sir."

  "That's not why I'm calling Erin. There's been… something happened. You should come in as soon as you get the chance."

  "I'll be in town tomorrow morning."

  "You're serious. Erin, where did you go for your vacation, your neighbor's house?"

  "I'll see you in the morning, Captain."

  "Erin, I just want to say, before you have to get into all this shit… I'm sorry."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "You'll know what I mean when it's important. Now get to sleep, if you're really going to be back by morning you need it. You need to sleep more."

  Erin was wide awake now. Four hours was plenty, and she still had to get to the airport. Three hours was enough time to get a cup of coffee, take a ride through town and maybe get breakfast before they went up. Plenty of time to wonder what the hell the Captain was sorry about.

  No, not wonder. She was worried. That old son of a gun wasn't the kind of person to be sorry for calling her in early. They understood each other, and he understood that getting called in would probably be a godsend for her. Work was all Erin had, outside of Becca, and even then they hadn't spoken in a few years.

  Not since Becca had gone to live with their father, and that was just how it would have to be.

  Well, maybe things would be fine. Maybe she was overthinking it. But she didn't think so. She didn't think so one damn bit. Whatever had Captain Blunt calling at midnight to tell her to get her ass back in town at first convenience, it was something big. If he was apologizing, then she was right to worry.

  Had something happened to her father? That was a best-case scenario, but her relationship with dear old dad wasn't something that she wore on her sleeve. So Captain would have been worried about how she'd take it. He would probably worry more when she took it about as well as being told that they'd had to buy a different brand of coffee this week.

  Most people who reacted that way, they reacted that way because they were so upset that they weren't registering what had happened. Shock, they called it. Erin had seen people in shock, and it was disturbing to say the least. People get hurt, then they think that they're immortal because they're so high on an absurd cocktail of chemicals that they don't realize what the hell they're doing.

  She pushed herself out of bed and dressed. She tried to take it slowly but she was out the door in ten minutes anyways. She'd packed the night before, and now it was just a matter of getting her suit on, shoes on, tied, and out.

  She checked out and fit herself into the comfortably small seat of the compact rental she'd gotten. It was just as nice as she remembered it being. It still ran better, quieter, and cheaper than the Jeep, but it still didn't have the character. In other words, just the way she'd left it.

  The way down the mountain wasn't as bad as they made it sound. Sure, a couple of corners made her a little nervous, but they'd made her nervous on the way up the mountain too, and that was when they were still relying on artificial snow because the first snowfall hadn't hit yet for the year.

  Now there were high berms of snow on the low side of the road and it created a strange claustrophobia as every curve became blind, and she had no way of knowing whether or not there was a car about to come blazing around the next corner until she made the turn.

  Okay, maybe that wasn't super safe for ambulance drivers, after all. They made risky choices when they thought they could afford it. For speed. Passing folks, stuff like that, and with all these blind corners that turned into a logistical and safety nightmare.

  Still, for someone taking it slow, it didn't present a problem. Not even at one in the morning. She hit the city by two, and was sitting down in a twenty-four hour nationwide diner chain that claimed their eggs couldn't be beaten. How someone could make that claim, she would never know, because as far as Elle was aware everyone could at least sort-of cook eggs, and they mostly tasted about the same.

  She got waffles instead, and asked for extra butter, because she didn't have the type of body that tended to need to worry about her arteries, and with the way that she often lost herself in her work she wasn't about to get that kind of body, either.

 
The waitress walked away still writing on her order pad and came back a few seconds later with Erin's water. She took a deep drink. She'd never been to Wyoming, but she could see the charm. The mountain was beautiful, and the view of the town down below was a sight to behold, when she could see it after the rain cleared.

  This had all the makings of a great trip. She met a guy who happened to live on the wrong coast, but a guy nonetheless. More than she could say for the past ten years in L.A. The skiing, for the amount she'd been able to do, had been great. The views—gorgeous.

  Then it turned out that she couldn't bear to be away from work for more than three fucking days and back on the plane she was already going. The fact that the captain had called her specifically to tell her to get her ass back into town, well that was just icing on the cake, after all. She was going to be there anyways, now she just had more motivation.

  Erin put her earphones in and turned her music back on. The interplay of the instruments was why she listened to jazz. Kept her mind moving. Now more than ever, she just needed to keep moving, long enough to get back into town and find out what the hell the Captain had been so worried about.

  Maybe he'd let her work on something again. Not necessarily likely, she knew. There was a reason she'd been told to take a vacation, and whether she agreed with it or not, she doubted that Captain Blunt would change his mind just because she'd gotten a little bored out there.

  But that didn't mean that a girl didn't have the right to dream, and vacations didn't stop bad guys.

  Seven

  Erin felt strangely numb. She hadn't realized that she could feel this way, but it was how she felt and it wasn't going to go away no matter what she did. So she might as well get used to the idea that she was going to be numb for a while. Shock might have been the right word.

  It wasn't her first time seeing a body. She saw them all the time, and most of the time they looked much worse than this. With her eyes taped shut, Becca looked as if she was sleeping lying there on that slab.

  Erin turned to ask the Captain what had happened, what the scene looked like, but he had left. A minute to grieve by herself. She leaned on her arms, her hands bearing the weight of a body that didn't know exactly how to hold itself up any more.

  "What were you doing in California?" Erin could feel the anger building inside her, the anger that would prop her up. It would be the thing that kept her moving in the days to come. Anger at herself. At her sister. But most of all, anger at the son of a bitch who had done this.

  Rebecca wasn't going to answer her, but Erin gave her time regardless. She had always been the good sister. The good daughter. It was no trouble for her to drop everything for Dad. If it would help, of course she would go. It was no trouble, after all.

  It didn't matter that she would have to give up her silicon valley internship, the one that she had been working for since practically the day they had come out to California.

  More upsetting, though, was seeing herself lying there on the slab. Identical twins. Which also, Erin thought with a sour sarcasm, meant that now her boss knew what her tits looked like. The thought hit a darkly humorous funny bone, but her frustration and anger deadened it. She took comfort in the fact that at least he was old enough to be her grandfather, so hopefully he hadn't thought too much about it.

  Erin wanted to kiss her sister goodnight, one last time. Press her lips against the forehead that so perfectly matched her own, and send her sister off with good wishes.

  But there was nowhere to send her sister off to. She was dead, she hadn't just gone to sleep for a while. Erin grit her teeth and walked out.

  "Erin, if you need more time—"

  "I was tearing my hair out, Captain. If you take me off the active roster, I don't know what I'd do."

  "Watch some daytime television, maybe," he suggested, but there was no heart in the joke.

  "Something like that, yeah."

  "I don't know that we exactly needed you to identify the body—she had her I.D. and, I mean…"

  "I know exactly what you mean. But legalities are legalities."

  "Do you have a way to contact your father? He'll want to know."

  She tried to keep herself from blurting out that there was no reason to assume that. He hadn't cared when Mom died, why would Becca be any different? That wasn't a conversation she wanted to have with her boss, though.

  "Who's on the case?"

  "Assanti's lead, but—"

  "Assanti? You've got to be kidding me. Vic, please, just—"

  The Captain's thick eyebrows tightened. "Russo, you know I cannot. I know how you're feeling, alright?"

  "He has a, what, seven in ten record?"

  "He's the next best behind yours, and you know that."

  "Compared to five in six. And the other one, he always comes in on something else sooner or later."

  "I know, Erin, but I just can't give you the case. I know you want it, and I know you'll show it every bit of your considerable talent. But I can't, not even if I wanted to. It's a conflict of interests, and everyone knows it. I'd be in the shit before you could say 'you're fired.' "

  Erin let out a breath. "Then I'll just look into it on my own."

  "Russo, you know I can't let you do that. I don't want to, but I will suspend you if I have to."

  "Then at least let me consult. Keep me in the loop."

  "You shouldn't even be in the office again until Monday morning."

  "Well, I've got nothing else to do. Get Assanti to print me off the files he's got now, I'll look over them, and on Monday I'll have something for him. You know I'm good for it, and you know the first week is the most important time to get leads going. Two heads are better than one, right? And Assanti can take lead. Just let me on the case."

  "Erin, are you sure that you're going to be able to work under him?" The Captain put extra emphasis on sure.

  "I'll do what I have to do to see my sister's killer put away, sir."

  He looked at her a long moment. "Do not make me regret this, Russo. I'll put in a call, we'll have files ready for you by noon. But you take your box, you go home, and if you want my advice, I suggest you get good and comfortable with daytime talk shows until Sunday night, and then bring your box of files back unopened on Monday."

  "Thank you, sir. You won't regret it."

  She practically skipped out of the room. She might be furious over Becca's death, and she knew some of that anger was pointed right back at her.

  But at least now she had someplace to spend it. She had something that she could do to keep herself sane, at least. That much was enough, for now.

  She slipped into the Jeep and pulled her phone out of her pocket. This was the part she wasn't looking forward to. She opened up her contacts list. It was down to just one, now, after she deleted Becca's number, but she couldn't make herself do it. Not right now.

  She pressed on 'Dad' and then clicked 'call.' The phone rang until she went to voicemail. She hung up without leaving a message and called again. He never answered the first time, because if it was important, he figured, they'd call back. Well, it was important.

  He picked up on the last ring, and from his voice he might not have realized that Becca was gone yet. After all, he still must have had Bud Lights in the fridge.

  "Who's this?"

  Erin forced herself to sound as pleasant as she could, which was only a simmering rage.

  "Dad? It's Erin."

  "Oh."

  Oh? Was that it? After seven years, all he had to say was 'oh.' Oh.

  "It's about Rebecca."

  "One second," he said into the phone. He sounded like he could almost stand up if he had to, from his voice over the phone. Some things never changed. She heard him shout into the phone. "REBECCA!"

  A moment later he put the phone back to his ear. "She's not here, Erin. I'll have her call you when she gets back. Thanks for calling. Now, if you don't mind, I was watching—"

  "Dad, you need to listen to me. Rebecca came to Los Angele
s."

  "What? Why would she go to Los Angeles?"

  Maybe to see her sister, who was off getting fucked like some floozy, Erin thought to herself. She didn't say that.

  "Dad, stop it. Stop talking and listen."

  "Okay, gosh."

  "Dad, Becca is dead. She was stabbed—"

  "Well—what the hell? How am I supposed to—"

  Erin clicked the phone off before he had a chance to finish the thought. Classic Dad.

  How fucking typical. She took a deep breath and tried to keep herself calm. It wasn't that he didn't care. It was that he couldn't care. She reminded herself of that.

  Maybe there was a time that he was capable of it. However Mom had managed to get along with him all that time, there must have been something to him before he became… what he was. But now, he was like a child. Incapable of thinking of others.

  It didn't help her feel better as much as she had hoped.

  Eight

  The box was lighter than it looked, but it tired Erin out anyways. It shouldn't have, but that didn't change the fact that it did. Maybe the Captain was right. Maybe she should take the next few days and try to get her head straightened out. But she couldn't afford that kind of luxury, not when her sister, the only person in the world who had ever cared about her, was lying there on a slab in the coroner's office with a half-dozen stab wounds to the abdomen.

  She opened the box up. A handful of photographs, printed on large paper, and a file with the basic paperwork. Erin laid out the photos on her coffee table.

  She'd already seen the body, so that part wasn't nearly as upsetting as it could have been. What she was looking for now was anything she could get from the scene. It would have been better to be there, to see it. But with how queasy the photos were making her, there was a real question how well she would have handled it. She forced herself to keep looking.