Secrets of Mine (Of Mine #2)

33. Jude

33

JUDE

I throw the ball against the wall, catching it when it bounces back.

Freya’s too far away and agitation lives under my skin. I could really do with my hyper focus kicking in right now but having control over that would just make me too cool, I guess. Every time I try to focus on the case I worry about Freya. I know she’s got Eli, but I don’t like not having her here.

The ball thumps the wall again but River catches it with one hand, the other holding his phone to his ear. He glares at me.

I shove up from the couch and join Oz at the breakfast bar. Normally River’s pretty good about letting me fidget but he’s spent the entire day on the phone to every senior official at the FBI there is trying to locate Farrah.

The idea that she could have been working with Maxwell this whole time is messing with our heads, but I can’t help thinking that it makes sense. Maxwell has always been one step ahead of us and Farrah was the only person who knew our every move before we took it. It’s too convenient.

River disappears inside his room, still on the phone. That’s the other thing that’s getting to me. I haven’t spent this much time at my old home since I moved out for college.

After Eli and Freya left, I moved into the pool house with River and Oz which means I’ve mostly been able to avoid my parents. Just being here though creates an undercurrent of tension. It doesn’t take a therapist to figure out that I’m struggling to work here because no matter what I did in this house, it was never good enough.

The only question my mother’s asked about the case is why I haven’t caught Maxwell yet. Her words chip at the confidence I’ve built since finding River and the guys. My IQ is in the 99 th percentile but apparently, I can’t do shit.

“Your parents are dickheads, Jude,” Oz says, not taking his eyes off his laptop.

“Am I that obvious?” I ask.

He looks up at me over his glasses. “You had that sad moping puppy look.”

“Fuck off.” I smile despite myself. “That’s Eli’s look.”

“Nope. He’s more of a growly wolf.”

“Oh yeah, what’s River?”

Oz opens his mouth.

“Don’t even think about it,” the man in question threatens as he comes back into the room.

Oz and I smirk at each other like the children we are, but it still doesn’t feel quite right without Freya here. She’d no doubt ignore River and taunt him till he threatened something that would make her blush.

“Any luck, Oz?” River asks, because unlike me he has no problem focusing.

Oz rubs the bridge of his nose and shakes his head. He’s been trying to track down Freya’s mother but it’s like she doesn’t exist. He starts to catch us up but the phone rings before he can go into detail.

“It’s Eli.” He answers and puts the phone on speaker. “You’ve got all three of us.”

The rushing of a car hums down the line. “Good. Freya’s with me. We found Josh, he’s in bad shape but alive. No sign of who took him, but Freya just had a call from Angelica. Anyone got a fucking clue who the Dying Angels are?”

My brows pinch together.

Oz taps away at his laptop. “Context?”

“Allie said our father saved our mother from the Dying Angels.”

The Dying Angels. Why does that sound familiar? I flip through my mind like a rolodex, sifting through information. There. An image of wings burned into skin. “Freya, the butterfly brand you saw on your mom’s shoulder, could it have been angel wings?”

“Yeah, I guess. It wasn’t super clear. Why?”

I spin Oz’s computer around to face me and bring up an old case from the eighties. I used to spend my free time at the academy reading through cold cases and I knew I’d heard the phrase before.

“The Dying Angels are a cult based on the edge of the Colorado desert. The FBI investigated back in 1983 because two children walked into the police station and said they were being abused. There was no evidence, nothing physical at least, and the kids retracted their statement a couple of days later.

“Their current leader is a man named Jeremiah Lock and the whole community is highly insular, it’s considered a sin to talk with non-believers, which includes everyone not initiated into the cult. The kids said they ran because they were about to be branded. With angel wings.”

I turn the screen to show Oz. “If your mom was born into the cult, that could explain why there’s no trace of her. She might not ever have been registered.”

“Like me,” Freya says quietly.

My eyes drop to the phone. “You hanging in there, babygirl?”

“I’m good,” she answers, her voice a little too bright. “So, what now?”

“Now,” River says, “we go find your mother. Take the plane to L.A. overnight. First thing in the morning, we’ll talk to the Dying Angels.”

“She’s not okay,” I say after Eli hangs up.

“Would you be?” River asks. “Freya has enough trauma without adding a bloody cult into the mix.”

“If there is abuse, which is more likely than not, then that could explain Maxwell seeing himself as some sort of savior,” Oz says.

“He saves Freya’s mom but can’t bring himself to murder her so transposes her onto other abused women so he can satiate his need to kill, all under the guise of protecting them.”

“Why wouldn’t he just kill Freya’s mom?” I ask.

Oz adjusts his glasses. “Maybe he really does love her. If the original plan was to kill her, then the frustration he’d feel at not being able to bring himself to do it would keep coming back. It could be what drives him to kill.”

“Yeah, but now he’s devolving, any love he feels for her will be lost under his need to kill. The rate at which his last three kills have accelerated suggest they’re not satiating him. The replicas aren’t doing it anymore, so he’ll go back to the original target.”

River’s face hardens. “Only this time we’ll be right there, waiting for him.”

If we can find her, that is. For once I choose not to share that particular thought and a knock at the door halts any further discussion.

I stroll over to answer it and am greeted by my mother’s latest maid.

“Master Elroy, Mrs. Elroy requests your presence on the patio,” the young, skittish woman announces.

“Sorry, I’m busy at the moment.”

I go to close the door, but the maid stops fidgeting and holds the door. “Please. She insists.”

I tilt my head back and sigh. Talking to my mother is the last thing I want to do right now, hell it’s pretty much the last thing I ever want to do, but I don’t want the poor maid getting in trouble for failing to deliver me.

“Okay, let’s go.” I tell the others I’ll be back in a bit and if not, to send a rescue party. Then I follow the maid, Lisa I think, around the back of the main house.

My feet slow to a stop at the scene that meets me. My mother is hosting tea on her garden patio. About a dozen middle-aged women sit in the white wicker chairs, gossiping over teacups. Dressed in designer clothes, with hair so neatly styled they could be an advertisement for cotillion. I recognize a few of them from when I was young and my mother forced me onto the beautillion ball circuit.

“Oh Jude, my darling,” my mother exclaims when she spots me. She stands from her chair and ushers me over to the women. “We were just talking about that dastardly serial killer and that poor woman they found.” She lowers her voice when she says serial killer, like saying the term might summon him.

I jolt as she links her arm through mine. Other than the required kiss on the cheek I’m not sure my mother has touched me since I left home.

“I was telling them that my son knows all about the case,” she goes on.

I shuffle my feet and her grip on my arm tightens.

“So, what can you tell us?”

A dozen sets of hungry eyes land on me, and I don’t know why it surprises me that such a cutthroat group of women would be interested in the morbid details of a murder. These ladies thrive on gossip.

“I’m afraid I can’t share details while the investigation is on-going,” I say, my voice flat.

My mom brushes back my curls, trying to tuck my afro behind my ear. “Oh, of course, but surely there’s a little something you can share just for us, I’m your mother,” she says the word on a grin, like she couldn’t be prouder and the little boy in me wants to please her. To give her friends their gossip fodder so she gets the clout she’s desperate for.

But this is just a mask. She doesn’t care about my job, she despises it and the only reason she summoned me here is to be her little party trick. Like when I was little, and she’d dress me up in a suit so her friends would ‘oo’ and ‘ah’ over how adorable I was.

I pull my arm from hers. “Mom, I have to get back to work.”

“Jude.” She smiles but her teeth are gritted.

One of the pampered elite leans forward and picks up a finger sandwich. “I heard the woman was pregnant with another man’s baby.”

“Oh, Lord, aren’t affairs just ghastly,” another says.

“That’s probably what got her killed. Young women these days just don’t understand commitment.”

“Do you think he’ll strike again in L.A.?”

“My Arthur’s sleeping with his gun near our bed.”

The women turn to me.

“Should we be getting bodyguards?”

“Did the killer leave a message? They do that sometimes you know.”

“I wonder what will happen to the children. Imagine having a stain like that for your whole life.”

“Enough!”

The woman jerk at my raised voice. I shake my head, letting my long curls fall free. “A woman has lost her life and you gossiping about it over morning tea is disrespectful and cruel.” Mouths drop open.

“Jude Elroy you will not?—”

I spin to face my mother. “And you. You have never shown anything but scorn for the career I’ve built so don’t go parading me around like you’re proud of me because suddenly it’s convenient to you.” I wave an arm at the stunned women. “We’re going to catch the man who did this so you and all your pretentious friends can sleep soundly at night and if that doesn’t make you proud of me, then that’s your own damn problem.”

My mom’s cream skin turns a ferocious pink and her eyes narrow to vicious slits. “Get. Out.”

My hand shakes. “What?”

“You heard me. Get out of my house you ungrateful child and take your friends and that whore of a girl with you.”

A gasp sounds from the group of women and my mother’s eyes widen when she realizes she’s broken her pristine mask.

Serves her right. The shaking disappears as rage and surety strengthens me. I’m not a kid anymore, I can choose my family, and it’s time I choose the people who love and respect me for who I am, not what I can provide them.

Freya’s offer to go all stabby on my parents comes back to me and I don’t even try to hold back my grin.

“Gladly,” I say.

I don’t need my mother’s approval. I know my worth and when I forget, Freya and my brothers will remind me. Because that’s what family does.