Leave Me Breathless: The Black Rose Collection

by Dakota Willink

  Another album was of the Pregnancy Center. Of the rooms and women. She had obviously taken them without anyone knowing. There are no dates, so I can’t be sure of when they were taken, but I recognized the shoes she had on. I bought those for her birthday a little over a year ago.

  I close the app and search through her phone log and messages. Secret messages pop up with a little lock. One of them to Kace. Clicking it revealed over one-hundred unanswered messages from her to him. Nude pictures, sexts, random questions referring to a time seven years ago and an anniversary.

  A date that corresponds to the numbers on her tattoo.

  I had been wrong. Maybe Kace wasn’t cheating on me. He’s been ignoring these messages for months, but why?

  I check the normal messages, and a few nearly pop off the screen.

  Kace: Fuck, Frank, respect the shit I’m going through right now. I already told you to stop sending me those things.

  Frank: You see them. Your body responds, even if you don’t.

  Frank: Is it the pictures you don’t like, or the temptation? I know you’re lonely

  “You’re a real fucking bitch, you know that?” I growl at the knocked-out woman in front of me and scroll until something else catches my attention.

  Frank: I can help you. I’ve always been here for you, listening to you and helping you see she’s not the right person for your life.

  Kace: You mean, waiting for things to blow up?

  Frank: They already blew up. You got blinded in the process and can’t see it’s over. She’s ghosting you, and she lives with you!

  Kace: I love her, Stef. I can’t leave her. Why can’t you understand that? Maybe we shouldn’t be partners anymore.

  “You shouldn’t have been partners in the first damn place,” I shout, squeezing the phone between my hands. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t talked about her much, or why she hasn’t come over lately.

  Kace: No.

  Kace: No

  Kace: No.

  Kace: How many more times do you need to hear it?

  Frank: I’m not like her. I don’t give up on us.

  Months of conversations like these, mixed with banal work stuff. At least this is all about him telling Stefanie to back down, except the last one from yesterday.

  Kace: I think it’s over. I just left the fucking house.

  Kace: I want to go back inside, but it hurts so fucking much to see her and not recognize her. I reached my breaking point. I can watch over her and make sure she’s okay, but I need time to think. Maybe I should call Dr. Mills.

  Frank: Stay at my place, distance yourself from her a while.

  Frank: I have a guest room on a whole different floor than mine.

  Kace: I’ve been an asshole to you. Putting in for a partner change, being a dick anytime you come near me, threatening you—why are you still being nice to me?

  Frank: Because I don’t need sticky notes to remind me what I love about you, or a log to remember that you always made me smile, or a therapist to convince me back into loving you. I’ve loved you for a lot longer than she has.

  Frank: I love you even after all the times you told me you don’t, and despite the insults. In my head, there’s always a you and me.

  Frank: And I love you enough to be your shoulder to cry on. I’ll be anything you need me to be.

  Kace: This doesn’t change anything. There’s no us. I’m not interested in a relationship with you, or a one-night stand. Maybe I should stay at a hotel or in the office.

  Frank: We can work on the case. Only. Then if you want to leave, I won’t stop you.

  “Because that’s not crazy at all,” I huff out, wondering exactly what happened. Kace swore they didn’t sleep together, but what guy willingly admits to cheating on his girlfriend? For what it’s worth, he didn’t do his tell when he said it—not the first time, or the second, or the third—but he went over to her house, at night, knowing she wanted to be with him. Doesn’t that mean something?

  Where did the figurative line of “cheating” cross? Is it once it becomes physical? Or did it start with him occulting the truth? He worked with her despite their history and chose not to tell me. He had to have known she loved him, or maybe she was just that good at hiding it, and until she started sending him these messages, he didn’t know.

  I never suspected her. Fuck, I thought she was a lesbian. I’d catch her looking at me a little too long, and I thought she was eyeing me up but turns out, she was plotting my demise.

  “But all of this for what?” I ask the unresponsive killer and grab my purse from the living room, taking the pictures and the sticky notes out. I leave the gun and place the bag on the chair, farthest away from her. “Jealousy?”

  On the floor, the pan I hit her with tempts me for another blow, but I resist the urge and relocate the pan to the sink, away from swinging distance. I open the junk drawer in the kitchen, grab the tape and zip ties, and drop the packet near her head. Blood trickles onto the manila file, tainting the blank page with blood.

  A proud sense of accomplishment fills my lungs as I pull the zip ties from the packet. Stefanie’s feet had been up against the legs of the chair. I slip the tie around her ankle and the wood and repeat the action twice. Once the legs are secure, I remove her gun and the badge she doesn’t deserve, and place them on the kitchen island.

  I wind the tape around her ribs and the back of the chair, securing her, before tying her arms together at her back and using her handcuffs to bind her wrists.

  Her head dangles and flops down. Latching on to her ponytail, I yank her head back, pinching her nose until her reflexes kick in, and she gasps for air.

  When she comes to, she’s livid and wincing from the pain in her head.

  “What are you doing, Eleanor?” She struggles against her restraints. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Yes,” I answer, “and my heart, and my life, and my badge.”

  She cuts her gaze to me, picking up on the accusatory tone.

  I nod, answering her unspoken question. “I have a distinct feeling, I’m looking at the person who helped empty me.”

  Her head whirls around to me as I grab her gun from the island behind her. “What are you doing?” she asks again and then goes into defense. “I haven’t done anything. Why are you tying me up?”

  “Because you’re not innocent.”

  “What are you accusing me of?” she asks, her eyes narrow on me.

  I take a seat on the edge of the table in front of her, sliding her phone toward her.

  She throws her head back as if repulsed by the evidence: a picture of Kace and her, hugging each other. With a pinch and release of my thumbs, I expand the image, so they’re faces encompass the screen. “When was this?”

  “First day of police academy,” she answers. “Why are you looking through my phone?”

  Even killers and liars can tell the truth sometimes, I just need to pry it out of her. “Everyone has something they want to hide on their phones,” I remind her. “It’s one of the things all cops are trained to look for.”

  “I’ve been a cop longer than you have,” she spits out. “Don’t you tell me how things go down.”

  “Maybe I know how to do my job better than you do,” I goad her into anger, so her reactions are natural and instinctive. The reptile brain doesn’t lie.

  “Please, just because you’re good at interrogations?” She laughs and arches her brows. “I mean, used to be good. You’re worthless now.”

  “Think so?” I fiddle with my phone, thumb centered on the screen and bouncing the corners off my thigh.

  “Oh, you want to lie detect me?”

  “No. I already did that,” I say nonchalantly and pull up another photograph.

  She slants her eyes and flattens her lips, an expression of anger I happily respond to with a shit-eating smile.

  “When was this?” This photo is of the two of them dressed up and acting like was prom.

  She smiles, and her expression softens
at the sight of it. “Police Ball. After graduation.”

  I flip to the next one.

  She spits out, “At my birthday.”

  And the next.

  “Halloween.”

  Another picture. Another announcement. It doesn’t matter where the photos were taken or what memory it immortalized. Motive. That’s what I held in my hand. “Were you sleeping with Kace the whole time?”

  “Not lately.” She chooses her words wisely. Vagueness offers a lot of room for interpretation.

  “Not for a very long time,” I correct because all these pictures had one thing in common, age. “The police ball for you, was what? Six-seven years ago?”

  Her upper lip tenses and coils back before her lips smash against each other.

  “Ah, so want to clarify how long you’ve been sleeping with Kace?” I offer no room for lies. “Because there’s a whole lot of “no responses” here. Both of us know you haven’t slept with him in a long time.” I didn’t know, but pretending like I do helps get my answer.

  “We almost did this morning!” She throws it out there to shock me, which it does. It also hurts a lot. “We were both naked and ready.”

  “So why not?” I pop my shoulder while stifling the pain. “I mean, if you were both naked and ready to fuck, why not get it over with?”

  “Because people started calling into the information line about receiving bullets, and Kace left the bathroom before I could even put my shirt on.”

  “I bet you didn’t know he stayed the night. At my house. All night. With me.”

  I’m better at this game.

  “And you didn’t have sex?” I prod further. “Damn…” I won’t stop until her eyes bulge and there is more white than blue. “He must really not be attracted to you.” I curl my lip in disgust. “Makes sense, you’re not exactly girly.”

  “I’m more woman than you.”

  “Maybe, but have you ever wondered why all the guys call you Frank?”

  “Everyone’s called by their last name.”

  “No… they’ve never called me Devero or Eleanor. I’ve always been Elle or Ellie. Not that it matters, anyway.” I grab the envelope the Bullet Man sent me with the bullet. I hold one of the pictures up to her. “I know Kace was with you,” I point out. “The Bullet Man told me.”

  Her face blanches as I hold the bullet in my hand, careful to hide the engraved name.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  “Evidence,” she deflects. “Which you’re tainting, and if you’re working with him, you’re going to go to jail.”

  “Kace told you I wanted to find him?”

  “Of course, he did.”

  I smile and shrug my shoulder, clamping my fist around the bullet and pointing at her. “But the Bullet Man found me.”

  “What?”

  I get up, and with my other hand, hold the bullet to her belly. “Right around here,” I say, trying to position it right about the same place the bullet pierced my son’s stomach. “You killed my son.”

  Her eyes widen with shock, and she swallows down her words. She leans back, trying to topple herself over. With the force of my foot, I drag her chair against the island. The back of her neck hits the granite countertop.

  She winces. “The Bullet Man’s fooling you, Devero.”

  I smile, not even she called me that.

  “He knows we’re close, and he’s manipulating you. He’s probably getting away as we speak.”

  “No,” I stretch out the word while I grab her gun. “He’s not manipulating me. I know you shot me, and I know it had something to do with Kace, but I don’t understand why not just split us up? Why not sleep with him and show me pictures? Like normal, sane, manipulative bitches.”

  Her eyes narrow on me and the phone. She thinks she’s being recorded, but she’s not. I was smarter than that.

  I dig the barrel of the gun deeper into her chest. “Because he didn’t want you?” I ask as I grab the phone and show her the pictures of her nude body. Using the one of her unshaved cooch, spread wide to the camera. I expand and carelessly tilt the phone to the side, to see her face clearly. “Kace isn’t a jungle lover, in case you didn’t know.”

  The whites of her teeth flash between the gnarl and the growl. “Eleanor!”

  With a click of my tongue, I scroll up to find one of her topless and in purple-lace panties. “These are nice,” I point out, then scroll up to the other one of her sprawled out on the bed, ass in the air. “But I like the black ones better. They match your black heart.”

  “Stop. Looking. At. Those!” she punctuates every word.

  To annoy her, I don’t even acknowledge her by looking up. “Says the woman who watched Kace fuck me on the floor of her office … Don’t bother denying it, I saw the pictures on your album.”

  “I didn’t take those.”

  “Were they magically delivered by the Leprechaun?” I flip my hand in the air, displaying indifference. “Come on, Frank. I think we’re passed being shy.” Now, I glance up at her, the cheeks of her face are splotched with red, and there’s a whole lot more white in her rounded eyes.

  Nearly there.

  “Did you use a timer for these photos sessions? It must’ve taken a long time to figure out how to get it just right. How many shots does it take to get you looking decent?”

  “Kace took them,” she fires back a lie, in a scathing tone.

  “No, he didn’t.”

  She knows it’s true. “Untie me, and I don’t tell him you lost your mind.”

  Oh. We’ve got to the bargaining stage. “I could do that … but I don’t really fucking care what Kace thinks. Right now, I’m interested in your porn-star poses.” I flash her another one. “Really, with a dildo? He hates shit like this. You know him, right? I mean, you say you do, so you know he loves live-action, rather than screenplays.

  More than my words, it’s my tone of voice. The pity used to dress up an insult. Bless-your-fucking-wicked-heart style.

  I finally give up on the phone, and blankly stare at her. With a flat voice, I ask, “He’s a voracious kind of guy… so he really didn’t have sex with you?” I bite on my teeth and turtle my neck. “Not boding well for you.”

  “This is pathetic.” She curls her lips at me, flipping the conversation to me.

  She’s good, but I’m better.

  “You’re pathetic. Weak. Thousands of women lose their children every day—stillbirths, miscarriages, abortions—yet it takes you three months and therapy to get over it?”

  It’s going to take me a lifetime, and even then, I don’t know. “You have no idea what it’s like to lose a child!”

  “YES. I. DO!” she shouts back at me.

  Whoa. For a second, I’m caught off guard.

  “Guess, you don’t know everything, huh?” The wicked grin cautions me to tread lightly. She likes the upper hand, and if it facilitates a confession, I pretend to be shaken while she rattles her chair back and forth. “Tyler wasn’t Kace’s first child,” she enunciates.

  I snap my head toward her. “WHAT?”

  “I was pregnant, right out of the police academy. I found out a couple of months later while we were both working with other partners.”

  “You lost the baby?”

  “Kace asked me to have an abortion.”

  My heart nearly explodes. My rational brain tells me she’s lying, but nothing about her body tells me otherwise.

  She stops rattling to deliver the blow with clarity. “We were twenty-two, just starting our lives together. He said we’d have all the time in the world to have kids. So he made me kill my own baby. But with you, he asked you to marry him.”

  I shake my head. “All of this because of Kace? Because you wanted him back?”

  “He’s not yours! We had something.” She adjusts her tone and rubs her chin against the material of her shirt. “It was something special.”

  “Something that lasted six months isn’t special.” I scoff. “It’s temporary. Negligen
t. That’s why he never mentioned you.”

  “He didn’t tell you because he wanted to keep being my partner. He trusts me with his life. We were friends, capable of turning a one-night stand into passion. We would’ve been lovers again,” she screams, “if you hadn’t come along.”

  “No.” I shake my head, ruining her dream the way she ruined mine. “Kace would never be with you. You’re not his type. He had girlfriends before me and after you, but he never went back to you.”

  Months of looking into everyone, and I overlooked the person with the most motive. She had only been with him a few months in the past, and years later, she’s targeting me. “You could’ve told on him. Uncovered a lie. Taken your relationship public.”

  “Oh, I wanted to! He threatened to stop being my partner if I told you.” She topples herself over, and I contemplate leaving her on the floor, but help her back up.

  “Reach into my front pocket.” I do. “Kace left it at my place.”

  I glance down at a wide-sized stack of sticky-notes, each numbered like mine. But his handwriting was on about twenty different ones. Looks like Nolan had given him homework too.

  “Number fifty, the way she clutches my heart when she looks at me. Number forty-nine, she never sleeps with pants on. Number forty-eight, she snores like a baby bear. Number forty-seven—”

  “You memorized these?” I realize she’s saying them verbatim. The back of the sticky pack reads ‘Reasons why I love.’

  “Not one time did he say he loved me when we were together, but I knew he loved me. I felt it in my bones.”

  “Yeah? Did you feel crazy in your bones too?”

  “He was meant to be with me! He would’ve come back if you didn’t interfere. Sleeping with him at the precinct, threatening his job by spreading your legs where you both work!” She curls her lip in disgust.

  “You’re the one sending naked photos to your partner, so I wouldn’t be so quick to judge.”

  “Why you?” She shakes her head, not expecting an actual answer. “You have nothing on me. I’d help him forget you in a heartbeat.”