But the black ship was gone.
The harbor was empty.
She checked with the kid at the ferry office, asking when the next ferry left.
One more heading out tonight. It was going to a different island. Eyeing X’s empty car, she decided she better take it.
“Can you get me aboard? I’ll repay you later?”
He shook his head.
The Sultan was miles away by now.
She walked out to the pier, looking off into the distance for some small glimpse of the big black boat. It was long was gone.
The horizon was clear.
9
Present Day
Red Hill, Australia
Inspector Noah Harris paused in front of the small white-washed cottage on the rural lane.
He took off his hat and raised his hand to knock. Before he did, he glanced around. There were a few other houses, but they were far away. This seemed like such a lonely stretch. It wasn’t poverty-stricken, but it was a tired and worn tract of homes.
Despite himself, he looked in the glass door at his reflection and smoothed his hair back. He was going bald. His receding hairline was further back now than a month ago, he was sure of it. And years of drinking had left perpetual bags under his eyes. It didn’t matter that he’d stopped five years ago; the damage had been done. He looked like an old man. He was only thirty-eight for Christ’s sake, but he looked ancient. At least in this reflection.
He wondered why the cute forensic pathologist had even given him her number last week. She was smoking hot, smart as hell, and damn good at her job. He’d thrown away her number as a favor. She deserved much better.
Wincing at the memory, he remembered he was going to see her again soon.
With that thought, he realized he was procrastinating.
He was there to do the official death notification.
The homicide squad had voted during its briefing meeting that morning that he would be the one to call because he was the lead detective.
“Bloody hell,” he’d said, but gathered his overcoat and car keys.
One of his least favorite parts of the job. Being the bearer of the worst news someone would receive in their lifetime was horrific. And telling a parent that their child was dead, was the thing that made him lose sleep at night.
And this case was the worst of the worst.
Very few people in the department knew about his own teenage daughter. He hadn’t been there long enough for anyone to dig up his past.
Knowing that the victim was a girl about Kylie’s age was almost too much for him. At the same time, it would make him work harder than anyone else to solve the murder.
At least the press hadn’t found this family to torment them like they’d tormented him and his family.
The reporters and camera crews were barking up the wrong tree. They were staked out at the church where Maddie’s father was a pastor. They thought the family was holed up in the rectory. But this small cottage was the mother’s childhood home, and the parents and younger brother had retreated here when the body was first found. In fact, this was the home the family had been in the night Maddie May had disappeared. They liked to come here on weekends to get away from the ever-present demands of the father being a popular pastor in town. At least that’s the information he’d been supplied during the morning briefing.
Inspector Harris only hoped that their faith in God would bring them some comfort during this time.
Even though they already suspected the worst, now they would know for sure that they were, indeed, living a nightmare.
He was poised to rap on the door when it opened before him.
The mother’s face had aged overnight. And, shockingly, her hair had gone white. He’d heard of that happening, but had never believed it until now.
Her long blonde hair, golden and bouncy the day he’d taken the missing person report weeks ago, had lost its luster. Her eyes had bags under them, and her mouth was slack.
“Come in, Inspector Harris,” Mrs. Johnson said. She moved as if it took supreme effort just to lift her arm to the door handle to close it.
He followed her into the small front room, which was dark except for a lamp on a corner table. As soon as his eyes adjusted, he saw Pastor Johnson slumped in a worn arm chair. His features were in shadow, but the inspector noted that his fist clutched a wad of tissues.
The boy could be seen through a doorway sitting at the kitchen table.
Inspector Harris stood holding his hat.
“Please sit.”
He perched on the edge of the couch. The mother sat down in a chair facing him.
“Go on with it,” the father said gruffly from his dark corner.
“I’m very sorry.”
The mother flew out of the chair with a banshee wail. She was on the inspector before he could react and was flailing her fists, pummeling his chest. He stood and managed to grasp her wrists before the small boy ran into the room.
“Mama!”
She froze. And then, as if in slow motion, she meekly returned to her chair and sank into the cushions. She patted her legs.
The boy ran over and crawled into her lap.
“Mama? What is it?” the boy said, looking at the inspector with suspicion. “Did he hurt you?”
She put her mouth into his hair as she spoke so the words came out mumbled.
“No, son. The inspector here just told us your sister is in heaven, singing with the angels.”
“I don’t understand.”
The silence hung in the air until Inspector Harris stood and cleared his throat.
“I’ll leave you now. I’d like to see you down at the station when you have a few minutes.”
Nobody answered as he let himself out.
Walking back to his car, he looked around.
This cottage was closer to the beach where Maddie May’s arm was found. But it was further from the quarry where they’d found the rest of the girl’s body the day before when a man going swimming had stumbled upon it.
The logistics of the evidence had him stumped.
He’d be damned if he could figure out how the girl’s arm had gotten from the quarry to Portsea peninsula. From the crime scene at the quarry, it appeared she’d been killed there, and that animals had attacked the body afterward.
Looking at his watch, he realized he’d find out a lot more in a few minutes.
Jill Jones was waiting for him at the coroner’s office. She’d texted him this morning to let him know the autopsy would be this afternoon. He would just make it on time.
At the coroner’s office, he zipped into an empty spot near the brick building and hurried inside. In the outer room, he slipped on a plastic robe, a hair net, gloves, and plastic booties before he entered the autopsy room by pressing a big metal button which caused the door to swing open.
Jill stood near the gurney under the bright lights and gave him a small smile.
He was dismayed to see her cheeks turn a little pink.
He felt like an ass.
“Morning,” he said as he grew closer.
He was relieved to see she was strictly business in the autopsy room. They’d gone for a drink after an especially late autopsy the week before. Well, she’d had three vodka tonics, and he’d had four diet sodas, and that’s when she’d loosened up and slipped him her card with her personal cell on the back. He hated to admit it, but she was dangerously attractive. Just his type: wide-set brown eyes, dark auburn hair pulled back, and a slightly hooked, regal nose smattered with freckles.
He couldn’t imagine what she saw in him. The only thing he had going for him was that he made a point to stay very fit and still had nice eyes and a warm smile. At least that’s what his last girlfriend had told him.
Turning their attention to the girl’s body before them, Jill Jones didn’t seem unduly upset to be examining a teenage girl’s body that the animals had gotten to. He admired her for that. The only sign of stress was when she said in a mon
otonous voice that the body showed signs of sexual assault. And even then, it was just a slight furrowing of her smooth brow.
After the y-incision and cutting off the skull cap, Inspector Harris wished he’d sent someone else for this one. All he could see was Kylie’s face. He shook that image away. Kylie was alive and fine.
She just never wanted to have anything to do with him again.
When Jill Jones was done, Harris had some really good information.
Maddie May Johnson had died from strangulation. The tearing of her flesh was post-mortem, done by animals. It was why there hadn’t been much blood spatter around the scene, just a small pool of bodily fluids that had collected under her.
As he and Jill walked out, they discussed how the arm had somehow gotten to the beach near Portsea.
“It was chewed up, so I’m assuming an animal dragged it there,” Jill said.
He nodded, biting his lip and thinking. How in the hell had that happened? It made no sense.
Then he realized they were in front of her office door. She was waiting.
He looked up at her distractedly. For a second, a fleeting look of disappointment crossed her face and then she was gone. The door closed in his face.
“Thank you?” he said to the door.
As he drove back to the station, Inspector Harris mulled over everything he knew about the murder. The varied location of body parts was just one odd part of this whole investigation.
There were plenty of other oddities.
The way the body was found for instance.
It was splayed on a formation of rocks configured into a pentagram.
One of his men had leaked the details of how the body was displayed—on a pentagram—and that was part of what had turned the investigation into a media circus convinced that the murder had been a satanic ritual.
He didn’t believe in what science couldn’t verify, but there was something else disturbing about Maddie May’s murder, some element of darkness he’d never experienced before.
It wasn’t just the way the body was found.
It was a small crucial detail that he was holding close to the chest because only the killer would know it. Basically, only he and Jill Jones knew about it. He wanted to keep it top secret.
The tiny detail was disturbing and a major clue: Maddie May’s stomach contents had included a small bit of unidentified flesh—and at least a cup of blood. Jones had said it was animal blood. Apparently, there was a new rapid method to distinguish between the two types of blood. The pathologist apologized that, while she could tell it was animal blood, there was no test yet to determine what type of animal.
The only conclusion the two of them could come up with was that Maddie May had been forced to drink blood before her death.
Another detail he would keep close to the chest was that Maddie May had been sexually assaulted. He wasn’t sure if that was ethical or not, but if her parents asked, he would tell them. And if they looked at the autopsy report it would clearly show this. However, the fact that there was animal blood in the stomach would be redacted until after the investigation was closed.
These three details—the pentagram, the sexual abuse, and the blood in the stomach—definitely had satanic ritual elements.
Most murders he’d investigated had been bad people trying not to get caught or acting in a fit of passion. They killed during a robbery so they couldn’t be identified. They killed a lover who betrayed them. They got into a bar fight and went too far.
But this one, this was a calculated, planned murder.
The coincidence of a pastor’s daughter being found in what appeared to be a ritualistic sacrifice was about the strangest case of his forty-year career.
But part of him didn’t want to believe that people like that existed.
There had been rumors of a satanic cult in the area, but he’d dismissed it over the years.
Sure, there were people who worshipped the devil, but there was no way they could get away with sacrificing human beings without it coming to light eventually.
He’d have heard about it a long time ago.
The cultists had lived in the area for twenty years. At least. They called themselves The Family.
So far, they’d just been odd. Nothing dangerous. They lived their life without breaking any laws, and the police left them alone.
But maybe they had been breaking laws. For a long time.
If they’d been sacrificing young girls for that long, he’d have gotten wind of it.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to look at all the other missing child cases with girls about that age and become familiar with them. Because as they worked the quarry crime scene, one thing had cropped up that made him extremely worried: a small purse with identification belonging to another girl. The purse was fine leather so might have withstood the elements for some time. It was hard to say how long it might have been out there.
They were bringing in cadaver dogs that afternoon to search the area more thoroughly.
Meanwhile, he was running the DNA he’d found on a hairbrush in the bag through several crime databases. But deep inside he knew what he’d find—that she’d been reported missing.
Whether it was recently or twenty years ago would be telling.
10
Present Day
Sumatra
It was inconceivable that the Sultan had gotten away.
Rose closed her eyes and tried to regulate her breathing and heart rate. She was beside herself.
Why had she played it safe? She should’ve just got out of X’s car and charged the black boat, taking her chances going up against the Sultan and his men. She was a trained assassin for God’s sake.
But part of being smart, part of being successful in operations was weighing risks. She’d evaluated the risk of trying to take on the Sultan at that moment and knew it was a losing proposition. So, she’d made other plans.
Even if now she was doubting them and kicking herself, deep down, Rose knew she’d made the right decision.
Her leads on the Sultan had grown cold.
Still, she knew that would change. Sadly, girls went missing around the world every single day. She’d built a database that identified locations of missing girls and teens. During her last few months in Sumatra, she’d refined the program. Now she could search in areas where clusters of disappearances had occurred.
One by one, she’d investigate and narrow down the possibilities.
There was one place now on her radar: Australia.
It was very convenient that her surf gang had included two Australians. But they hadn’t lived there in more than a decade. They had last lived in the U.K.
Just then, behind her on the pier, she heard young voices speaking English with an Australian accent!
She whirled and plastered a smile on her face.
Within the hour, she was onboard a small boat heading to a nearby island with a group of Australians who had just arrived on a month-long surf vacation. They readily paid her way when she explained she’d just escaped from a dangerous situation with only the clothes on her back.
They’d assumed it was an abusive boyfriend.
Maybe the Sultan had escaped her for now, but her luck had just turned.
She’d wait a while and then ask them what they knew about the disappearances.
It killed her to not rush back to the island to see how Dylan was—or if he was even alive—but she knew that with Gia around, he would receive the best care possible.
After a few days, Rose had become friends with two of the Australians—Danny and his girlfriend, Josie.
They loaned her an extra board to surf on.
When they saw her prowess on the big waves, she was in.
There was a lot of respect for girls who could slay the waves.
Rose wasn’t as good as Josie, but she could hold her own.
It made the other surfers instantly accept her into the fold. She slept on a blanket on the floor of Josie and Danny’s hut.<
br />
She’d worried about putting a crimp in their sex life, but it had turned out a lot different than she’d expected.
The first night, she heard the couple kissing in the dark. Rose sat up. She began to gather her blankets to take them outside and give the couple privacy, but as she brushed by them, she felt a hand reach out and clasp her fingers.
She allowed herself to be gently tugged down to the mattress and was lost in the crush of warm bodies.
In the dark, she couldn’t tell whose mouth was whose, and although other women weren’t normally her thing, she allowed herself to be caught up in the moment.
Her need was fierce. Much stronger than she would have ever guessed.
She’d considered Amsterdam a fluke.
Having sex with Liam had been fun, but she didn’t think it was an important part of her life. She didn’t think she actually needed sex.
Letting herself go physically and emotionally in the dark proved to her that it was as necessary as sleeping and eating and drinking.
A few of the guys at Makeda’s surf camp had made moves on her, but she’d brushed them off.
It wasn’t until she woke in the morning between Danny and Josie, a tangle of limbs entwining them, that she realized how much it had helped her to let go of the pent-up sexual frustration that she hadn’t even realized she’d had.
It had harmed her. It had hurt her drive. It had weakened her.
As she stretched, she told herself she would never go very long without sex because it took away her laser-like focus. If done right, it was part of staying healthy.
“There are a few Aussie’s over on the other island,” Rose said that night as the other surfers sat on the beach passing around a joint. Rose declined. Like having sex regularly to keep her body healthy, she couldn’t afford to do anything that would dim her edge.
“Oh yeah?” Danny said.
Rose told him about the two Australian surfers she’d met.
That part was true, but then she lied.
“I think they’re from near Melbourne.” It was the area where the girls were missing.
Josie shot a look at Danny. Rose watched her carefully.
Blood & Fire (Vigilante Crime Series Book 2) Page 5
