Leave Me Breathless: The Black Rose Collection

by Dakota Willink

  “I must’ve stared too long because he began looking at me. Before I knew it, the gun was at my head, and he was saying, ‘I recognize you.’ My father came out of the back then, saying he had called the police and telling them to leave.”

  “But you could identify him.”

  He uses his finger and places it against my chest, his forefinger mimicking a gun to my chest. “If I close my eyes, I can still see the blood everywhere. The sirens came, and the guys left. With my mother, I had blocked out the facts of the robbery because it was my fault she died, but when I saw her killer in front of me, every detail flowed back in, like I had just unlocked a box inside my own mind. Compartmentalization is a defense mechanism often used by children of traumatic experiences,” he diagnoses himself and shrugs. “Guess, even geniuses suffer psychological trauma.”

  I remember studying this in criminology. “It also makes people more resilient to trauma.” They regulate emotional reactions differently.

  “Post-traumatic adaptation,” he adds and runs his finger over the metal shavings. “Fascinating how different brains do different things, isn’t it?” He takes the frame back from me and places it on the desk.

  A picture of his handsome father stares at me. “Myelin. The brain’s white matter and speed booster.”

  “I knew I liked your brain…” Nolan grabs one of the bullets and holds it between us. “Maybe, had I done something like this as a teen, my parents would still be alive.”

  “Or maybe it would be exactly the same. All you’re doing is turning innocent victims into killers.”

  “Are you an innocent victim, Eleanor? You own a gun, you work for the police. You know bullets can take lives. So I ask you, would you own a gun if you weren’t willing to shoot to save your family?”

  “Self-defense.”

  “Circumstances are irrelevant evidence.”

  “How do you figure?” Kace will find us. I know he will. Someone must have heard the gun go off and called it in. If Nolan heard sirens, then Kace was at the house already. He’ll pull footage up from our neighbor’s security system and see the car.

  He has to.

  “You shot a woman in your own home. Do you think what she did to you is anything less than motive? No one cares about the circumstances behind the death, a murderer is a murderer no matter which degree he’s charged with.”

  “I didn’t mean to shoot her.” I mean, I did, but I didn’t want to after she told me she was pregnant.

  He leans back, eyes widen for a split second before he purses his lips and stands up. “Denial isn’t going to help you.” He bends down and opens the last drawer on the desk and pulls out a manila envelope. “This will.”

  “What is it?”

  “Your new life.” He couldn’t have a new identity for me already. “In here, you’ll find all the information and money you need to set up, away from here. Choose a different country and live on. No one will come after you.”

  All I had to do was give up Kace. “Is this another test?” I refuse to take the envelope. “You and I both know the gun went off because you tackled me to the ground.”

  “Did it?” He points to his head. “The way I remember it: your finger was on the trigger. You were aiming for her. And you wanted to shoot her. I mean, I didn’t check her pulse or anything, but there was blood, and she wasn’t moving.”

  “And you want to help me get away with shooting her, then?”

  “I don’t want you to suffer any more than you already have, so I’m offering you a trade. Your freedom, for mine.”

  “Maybe? Would it help to know there are contacts in here for people who can help you have a baby?”

  “Illegally?” My heart flutters, despite knowing it’s all wrong.

  “I’m offering you all of the things you can’t have.”

  “You’re asking me to give up Kace?”

  “No, that’s your decision. I was sincerely rooting for both of you until he called me on the phone after your fight.”

  “Why? What changed on the phone.”

  “He went to the bathroom.”

  I stare blankly at him. “With an IQ of 162, you should know people shit sometimes.”

  Nolan cracks a smile. “I mean, the voice I heard was a woman’s voice. That’s when I realized his partner was a female. It changed everything he had said in session.”

  “Since there’s only two of us, there’s no bathroom on the top floor for women. So, we always go to the men’s room… What did it change.”

  “During the times I’ve talked to Kace, he spoke fondly of his partner, except when referencing recent months. It had not dawned on me that Frank could be the last name. I’m curious, does the intimacy he had with his partner change the way you feel about your fiancé?”

  “After what I said yesterday, Kace’s never going to forgive me for shooting his kid’s mom. He’s going to think I did it on purpose to get back at her.”

  “That was the goal you were aiming for, was it not?”

  I take a seat on the dusty couch and make myself comfy. We did have a session today anyway. “It’s fucked up that Kace lied to me. I befriended this person and accepted her as part of my life, without knowing she wanted to kill me and take everything from me … but it’s so messed up, that I actually understand her. She went to great lengths to screw me over.”

  “Are you empathizing with your bullies again?”

  “I’ll never forgive her, but in her eyes, I was the bad person.”

  “But you wanted to kill her.”

  I nod. “Up until the point where she said she was pregnant. Though, I started feeling bad for her when she said Kace asked her to have an abortion.”

  “Even criminals have codes on pregnant women,” he reminds me. “Do you think she was lying?”

  “No. She told the truth. When I put the gun to her belly, she flinched.”

  I glance at the papers in his hand, contemplating leaving this place. Escaping my life would be nice, but Kace … Despite everything, I still loved him. “Did you see them kissing? When you spied on Kace and Frank?”

  “No,” he confesses. “I had to come here and make your bullet, so I didn’t stay much longer.”

  “I don’t think he cheated on me,” I admit and then realized to spy on him, Nolan was probably in the car. And if he used the same car, then maybe Kace could compare it to other footage and tie him to the crime scenes. “I don’t have a car,” I say pointing to the papers.

  “You can use the extra one, in case of an emergency. It’s parked in the neighbor’s garage.” He reaches back to the windowsill and opens the window slightly, retrieving a small lockbox key and holding it up.

  “In the black journal I gave you, the second to last page is glued to the last one. Inside, there’s a sheet of paper with the address. I slid it in there today.” He slides the key into the envelope and folds it in four, and extends it to me. “If you’re worried about your morality, or whatever is left of it, let me say, no babies are being stolen, just bred and available for purchase. The underground world of NYC is quite interesting.”

  “How do you know about the criminal world?” I reach for the envelope and tuck it into my back pocket.

  “My particular position gives me access to some brilliantly sadistic minds. I’ve met some interesting criminals in my interviews.”

  A beam of red light gleams through the slightly open window, aiming for Nolan’s shoulder.

  Kace found me! But I don’t want them to shoot Nolan or me. By now, they’d no doubt have ears on us.

  “So, if I leave that door, you’re not going to kill me?”

  “I’m not a murderer. I don’t have a gun or a knife,” Nolan explains.

  “You’re unarmed?”

  “So are you,” he reminds me. “We can help each other or split our different ways here. You can go to the police and confess to shooting your fiancé’s partner and turn me in.”

  Original intent aside, “It was an accident.” I’d be disc
harged and sentenced, but so will she.

  “There was blood all over the floor. Not very becoming of a cop. I’d think about my offer.”

  I catch the flicker of red again, and so does Nolan. “I was reinstated this morning,” I mumble. Cap had given me the official news when Kace came walking in, begging for me to listen. I stole his phone instead.

  Nolan smirks at my revelation. “I know more than you think.”

  The door to the shed splinters open. Kace comes in, guns pointing at him. Kace and I share a quick glance, that makes me want to crawl under the table and hide, before Nolan stands up and holds his hands up in the air.

  The officer behind Kace, decked out in SWAT gear, pulls Nolan’s hands behind his back as he reads him his rights. The whole time Nolan’s eyes are fixed on Kace and me. Watching. Analyzing. Studying.

  “Kace…” His arms wrap around me, smashing my nose and face against his hard chest. “We have so much to talk about, but I need you to hear me out when we do.”

  “Kace…”

  “I’m sorry,” he says through gritted teeth. “I had no idea Frank … She killed our baby because of me, I’m so sorry. I saw it all.”

  Before I can ask how Stefanie is, Nolan interrupts, “Detective Dalton?”

  Kace instinctively pushes me behind him and confronts Nolan. “What?”

  “It took you long enough.”

  17

  Brilliance

  Dr. Nolan Mills

  I heard a random car drive through the backroad, on my way from getting the water bottles, and I saw the streak of red light before she did, but there was nothing I could do. Resisting would give them reason to convict, so I made sure not to say anything incriminating.

  “We have you on camera, Nolan Mills,” Dalton says after one of the officers reads me my Miranda rights. My charges are trespassing and kidnapping, but not murder. Of course not, all I did was use legal applications to deliver messages and bullets that I legally purchased. As for trespassing and kidnapping, we’ll see about that.

  The evidence in this room proves all my subjects were of sound mind and capable of making decisions. I have evidence for each of them with a short description of the study, which they all legally agreed to.

  I have nothing on me to the regard of murder; they barely have basis to have my license revoked. All my patients are fairing well, except for the ones in prison, but even they were evaluated and declared of sound mind. According to their confessions, no one was to blame but them.

  “You have me on camera saving your fiancé and your unborn child? The air freshener, right? You did mention that being a good place.” Yeah. People always forget what they say in therapy. “Was I not the one who mentioned keeping an eye on Eleanor if you feared for her well-being?”

  Detective Dalton grinds his teeth while he holds onto Eleanor. I did that too.

  I catch the smirk on Eleanor’s face, even she can attest to my brilliance.

  “You’re going to pay for this, Nolan. We know you have access to the stuff we keep in The Tank. You used it for your own benefit.”

  IQ3 clearance was on a need to know basis. I’m protected by a non-disclosure agreement with the US Government.

  “I solved over fifty unsolved cases. Lock me up today, medal tomorrow, and one day… Noble Prize.”

  “You’re pretty sure of yourself,” Dalton says as we walk through the bushes to the squad car. “They don’t give away Noble Prizes for the most delusional category.”

  I laugh softly as they put me in the squad car. “No one ever understands brilliance until they need it. What do you think, Eleanor?”

  “Me?” she asks, slightly baffled.

  “Did you shoot Stefanie on purpose?”

  “Yes,” she says, earning her a pissed-off glare from Kace.

  “Did I tell you to do it?”

  “No. It was an accident.”

  “Stop talking,” Kace orders both of us.

  But I’m not done. “Now you two have a baby you can raise, a relationship with minor hiccups, and closure. Seems to me Eleanor’s motive is much higher than mine, yet I’m the one being taken back in cuffs, and she’s being given special privileges.”

  “He’s right,” Elle says and turns to Kace. “Arrest me.”

  “What?” He rubs his brow and looks over his shoulder at the other officers. “I’ll talk to Frank. She won’t press charges. When we got the call about a gunshot, and our address came through the radio, I thought…”

  “That I killed myself?”

  “The neighbor was home sick with the stomach virus. She said she heard noise and then a shot, and my head automatically went someplace dark. I swear, I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if anything happened to you. I rushed home and when I saw Frank, I was relieved it was her and not you.”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “I know, I checked the camera to see what happened. You shot her in the thigh, she hit her head and lost a lot of blood, but she’ll be fine. There’s nothing incriminating on the video. I mean, nothing we can’t fix.”

  I made sure the camera got a clear shot of my face. “It took us awhile to get footage from the home security company. We knew you didn’t leave through the front, so we searched and found footage of you being kidnapped. I’m just glad we found you before something happened to you.”

  “He wasn’t going to hurt me,” she says.

  “I wouldn’t,” I chime in. “For the record.”

  Kace growls at me. “Shut up!” He focuses back on Elle. “You don’t know what his plan was with you.”

  “But he’s right, Kace. The reason all of this started for him is because people get away with things. You should arrest me, and if she doesn’t press charges, we’ll see, but I shot her. Accident or not.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Eleanor.” Kace puffs air out through his mouth. “Turn around. Put your hands up against the car and spread your legs.”

  She does as she says, eyeing me the whole time.

  “Eleanor Devero, you have the right to remain silent…”

  As Kace reads his fiancé her Miranda rights, I glance over at the cops carrying boxes full of my mother’s things. My skin bubbles at the careless way they tossed her books into a box, priceless relics toppled on each other without even a plastic to cover them from the soft drips of lingering rain in the air.

  The jar with the bullets is carried separately in an evidence bag, which will probably never be returned to me. Her inspiration jar—sticky notes full of possibilities—are in another evidence bag. The top had popped off, and the bottom of the bag had different colored sticky notes, many faded with age.

  Mom loved sticky notes.

  Each one of them is going to be read by people who didn’t know her, maybe even lost or thrown in the trash. Mom only ever wrote on yellow sticky notes. There are sixty-seven yellow ones. The ones I added were in blue and white so that when I popped the jar open, it reminded me of sunshine in the morning sky.

  The door swings open, and Eleanor Devero sits beside me. But we’ve already established confidence, and I know she still has the envelope I gave her tucked inside the cuff of her socks. We both knew Kace wouldn’t search her. None of them will. She’s one of them.

  The car pulls down the long narrow backroad onto the main road. Kace and the officer in front call their Captain and convey the information back to him, while Eleanor glances at me.

  She mouths the words, “Thank you.”

  I return the sentiment. “You’re welcome.”

  18

  Five Months Later

  Kace Dalton

  Stefanie Frank gave birth to my daughter an hour ago. Seven pounds, blonde, perfect, and tiny. Isla Dalton.

  Stefanie cut a deal with the DEA and went into witness protection to help take down the doctor from the Pregnancy Center. She should’ve rotted in jail for all the shit she did, but Nolan was right about one thing: forgiveness.

  Dwelling on the past will only hurt my relationship with El
le, and it hasn’t been easy redeeming myself in her eyes. Stefanie told her we almost slept together, and that we were naked. Which had been, but I was in the shower when Stefanie walked in on me, trying to turn me on. It worked.

  Then she kissed me, and I almost threw-up in my mouth.

  It felt wrong, and I high-tailed it out of her place, half-naked and wet. I nearly drove home, but I wanted to give Elle space and to give myself space to think. Love isn’t fickle, but the brain is. Every time my heart pinged with the urge to call her, my brain talked me out of it. Had I gone over, maybe all of this could have been avoided.

  When Elle came to the precinct with the bullet, I should have known something was off. Even hurt, she never talked to me like that. After arresting Nolan, it took me a week to convince Eleanor I didn’t know Stefanie was pregnant, nor did I know that I played right into her baby trap.

  It took another two weeks of graveling for her to let me back in the house. It got weird before it got better. Without Nolan to help her, she retreated inward and left the force. She didn’t want to see me every day, all day. But she opened up her own consulting agency, and we bring her in from time to time to help in interrogations.

  Elle and I have had our ups and downs. She forgave me for almost cheating on her, and I forgave her for not pressing kidnapping charges against Nolan Mills. It’s the first time we agreed to disagree on something, and we took a picture of the first time I put her in cuffs.

  Not exactly how I pictured that particular first going down, but it was also the first time I understood Elle—really understood where she was coming from. If every day, she felt what I felt when I thought she killed herself because I left her, I get why she pushed me away.