Chapter 3
Brycen
Christ,this wasn’t like me at all.
Sure, I’d been attracted to other women from the get-go, but never had I felt that instant connection with anyone before. And don’t get me started on the incessant texting I’ve been doing over the last day or so. It’s been so bad I rivaled the frequency of the average social teenager.
But I knew it would come to an end all too soon.
Tonight, as a matter of fact. That’s when Jana’s work cycle began. I knew she worked as a 9-1-1 operator. She’d been out celebrating a promotion to management the night we met. I also knew her new role would have her working overnight shifts for quite some time. It’s one of those deals where she’d be on for three days, then off for three.
Aside from that, Jana never really shared much more about her life or her job, and I got it. To be honest, I doubted I could do what she did. Twelve hours of listening to folks call in for assistance on what usually was the worst day of their lives—that’s heavy shit right there.
So, despite her warnings she’d be scarce for the next little while, and the fact she’d divulged she’d never felt lighter with all the laughing I’d been providing her since we’d met, I had a plan to make sure she had a bit of light in her day—or night—as the case may be.
“Earth to Baby?—”
“Don’t even finish that sentence.” My eyes fixated on and pierced through Devolin, who was making her return to work after that nasty bout of flu her household had seemed to have succumbed to. Too bad Dalton hadn’t seemed to fare better than he had last week when I last saw him.
She had the decency to look sheepish before she asked, “What’s up with that goofy smirk on that mug of yours anyway?”
“Nothin’,” I mumbled, slamming my phone onto my workstation, albeit, a little too hard due to the annoyance I felt. I reached for the latest client file, which had been left on my desk late yesterday afternoon. I knew all too well my pretending to be engrossed in the latest client’s request for us to investigate their finances and catch who was funneling money out of the company’s accounts wasn’t going to deter the woman in the least. So I led with, “How’s the baby?”
Devolin’s brows scrunched up. “He’s back at daycare today, which is good, because Dalton isn’t doing so well. I had to take him to the ER last night because the big lug hasn’t been able to keep anything down, much less water. Three bags of fluids later, four hours surrounded by that antiseptic smell, and I was glad to be on our way home.”
Considering her health issues with lupus during most of her life, and the all-too-numerous times she’d been hospitalized before that because of leukemia, I can’t blame the way she felt about her latest foray to the hospital.
Devolin’s disgusted expression morphed into a smirk, solely aimed in my direction when I tried to resume my task. “Oh no! Don’t you think you managed to skew me away from my initial question, mister. Who is she?”
“Who? What?”
“Seriously?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Do I have to hack your phone to know what’s going on, because you know I will.” She would too. “Now out with it.”
“Is nothing sacred to you, woman?”
“If you count the mind-blowing orgasms your boss gives me on the daily, sometimes?—”
I threw the file in my hands down onto my desk and plugged my ears in that universal childish reaction people do when they really didn’t want to hear what’s coming. “La-la-la-la! Shut up, Huss! I don’t need details about D’s junk and how he uses it.”
“You’re such a child.”
My hands fell from my ears as I grinned. “And you’re not?”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because if I do, the whole band of merry men who work here, and their women, will descend on this place for the Grand Inquisition,” I told her. “I don’t know what it is, or if it’s anything at all, so I’m keeping it to myself until I’m good and fucking ready to spill the beans, all right? Besides, why would anyone like her want a workaholic like me? I’m married to my job right now, and I’m okay with that.” Sort of.
Devolin’s eyes widened while her lips formed an unmistakably surprised O. Winking at me, she turned toward her workstation and proceeded to drop her purse in one of the file cabinet drawers to her desk, firing up her systems. “Gotcha. But on a serious note,” she said, concern and honesty in her gaze, “if you ever want to talk?—”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re here, Ember’s here. The whole gang is here for me, right?”
Her, “Right,” came at the same time Rex walked into our technology hut, barking, “When did you lose your man card?”
“Shut up. What do you want? I thought you weren’t in until Thursday?” I asked him.
“Had to pick up something before I take off to hunt down a skip.”
“Be safe out there,” Devolin said.
“Ain’t no fun in that, Huss,” he returned.
“Let us know if you need anything,” I told him. The man gave me a curt nod and then turned to leave. “Later.”
“Later.” From down the hall, he added, “Find out who she is, Dev. Got a hundred for you if you get the deets before I’m back with that crazy bitch who tried to run over her husband last week.”
I turned to give Devolin the evil eye, only to find her shoulders bouncing with mirth, her back facing me.
I’m fucking screwed.
Jana
“Jana, I could use you here,” I heard as I walked toward my desk after a quick break on Tuesday night.
Those words had me freezing mid-step, the high from my quick text exchange with Brycen vanishing in that moment.
I approached Diane, one of the overnight operators. “You sure?”
She nods. “She’s asking for you specifically.”
“For me?” Snapping my fingers, I pointed to her extra headset. “Please.”
As soon as the headset was on, I nodded to Diane so I could take over as she pressed the button to unmute my headset. “9-1-1, this is Jana, how may I help?”
My skin crawled. My heart rate accelerated, and I grew dizzy as I heard the telltale sounds of someone, most likely choking on their own blood. God, this was just like last week. Raspy, fluid-filled wheezes intermingled with that similar productive, wet coughing came through.
“P-please h-help me.”
“Miss? Can you tell me where you’re hurt?” I took note that Diane was still working to triangulate the call.
“H-hel?—”
Just as Diane dispatched the first responders, I heard what sounded like a blunt thud, not quite like hitting, but similar, then the woman heaved, and the line went dead.
By eight the following morning, I could barely think straight. I was dealing with my normal level of exhaustion but add to that a visit from a Detective Peters, one of Jacksonville PD’s finest, and despite how tired I felt, I was afraid I’d never sleep again.
The good detective had come to take my statement. Much like I had last week at Steve’s instruction, I’d located the call’s recording on our servers and provided Detective Peters with a copy. It was now up to him and his FBI counterpart to make the decision on if these two cases were related. In my personal opinion, and because I’d witnessed both calls audibly, I’d say the MO—or modus operandi—looked far too eerily similar.
What I wanted to know was, if these cases were linked somehow, why was I at the center of it all? And how had this latest victim known my name? Detective Shane Peters didn’t have any plausible hypotheses for me but assured me that he’d be getting on it and would keep me updated.
Leaving me with his business card, he’d instructed me to give him a ring if any more calls of a similar nature—meaning ones with personal requests for me as their operator—came through or if anything that seemed or felt hinky happened.
Unfortunately, later that day, after I’d just started my next shift, is when that something came my way.
Brycen
“Incoming!” Dalton announced as he walked into the tech hub Devolin and I seldom left, unless we were called into a meeting or on our way home at the end of our workday. It was Thursday, and the boss was showing no sign that he felt like he was knocking on death’s door less than a week ago. “I need you both in the conference room. Give me ten to rally up the rest of the troops.”
Devolin turned to face me once her husband disappeared around the corner, and I recognized the look on her face. It was probably the same one that was currently strewn across my own mug. It’s the one that boasted excitement because meetings like this were infrequent and normally meant a case had surfaced which would require a significant amount of our expertise.
“I should have known something was up when Kip told me Shane was coming in at lunch,” she said.
“Oh, fuck. How much you want to bet we’re being brought into those bank robbery cases that’ve been in the papers for the last month?” I rubbed my hands together. “Or maybe it’s that?—”
“Matthews, Shane doesn’t do white collar crime.” Devolin’s face was pale, her eyes as big as saucers at her own realization.
She was right.
The man worked homicide.
Then the image of the story on the front page of the Jacksonville Times yesterday morning floated to the forefront of my mind. Murdered women. Two to be exact. Same MO, same everything as far as the media had reported.
“Let’s go.” Devolin hopped to her feet, stretched her back out, then headed out of our nook. I followed suit a minute later.
A possible serial murder case.
A homicide detective and his FBI liaison.
A 9-1-1 operator in potential danger.
What a fucking clusterfuck.
All of this had me thinking of Jana. I wondered if she knew who this Janice Elway woman at the heart of this sick fuck’s obsession might be. I’d make a point to ask her next time I texted her—or better yet, when I saw her next—because this whole case had me feeling antsy.
While I was put in charge of monitoring the dispatch phone systems, Devolin was running a trace on the 9-1-1 call recordings. Unfortunately, they were the victims’ which meant that Dev’s job would be next to impossible. Both calls had originated from isolated locations around the city, and each had come from a different device, with no discernible pattern for location. The dispatch center’s triangulating software was good, but only gave a general direction. The victims had never mentioned their exact location, and by the time EMTs had gotten to them, they’d already expired.
“This guy’s totally sick,” Devolin announced.
“Any headway on anything?” I asked.
“Not much right now. I don’t know who this chick is, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she decided to move to some remote location or holed up somewhere. I wouldn’t wish being on the receiving end of any of these calls.”
I agreed and added what I’d discovered, “What’s interesting is that she’s not like any typical woman. Her personal information is unlisted. She’s got no social media accounts. No listed phone numbers, emails, or address. Nothing.”
“Shit, she’s good at keeping a low profile, so that’s not how this monster’s gotten her name. Did you look at DMV records, other government organizations? Hell, what about banking?” Devolin suggested.
Looking at the clock, I knew if I started that part of my research now, there’d be no way I’d be out of here before nine tonight, so I adopted the “it’s a tomorrow problem” adage. “First thing tomorrow,” I said, as I proceeded to dump all the information I had managed to get into the virtual file folder everyone working this case would be sharing. Noticing Devolin still looked pale, I added, “You okay with working on this?”
Next thing I knew, something slammed into the back of my head before finding itself thudding onto the carpeted floor. “Son of a bitch!” Looking down, I rubbed at the back of my head, finding a half-eaten apple.
“Serves you right for thinking I’m some delicate flower who can’t handle this shit, Baby?—”
“All right! I get it. Still, I just figured I’d ask,” I said, then smirked, nodding to the discarded food. “Now pick up your trash, you litterbug.”
“You deserved it.”
“Fine. I deserved it, okay. Forgive me?”
“Only if you tell me who the hot number is that you’ve been talking with over the last week.”
“No dice.” I got up, headed toward the door to our hub. “Want a coffee before I take off for the day?”
“Get me a Barq’s from the fridge instead. With a glass of ice.”
“It’s barely six and you’re going on your third can of that shit. You sure you’re not knocked up again?” I managed, then made myself scarce by rushing for the hallway before she chucked one of her keyboards at me next.
“Fucker better not have,” I heard her mumble as I walked away, only to stop dead in my tracks once I turned the corner to the reception area.