Chapter 4 – Corvus
CORVUS
B ecca’s arms squeezed tight around my waist as I drove us to Julia’s. I removed a hand from the handlebars to lift her arms higher, away from the bullet wound.
“Sorry!” I heard her muffled voice through the glass fronted helmet on her head and the wind rushing over us, followed by a squeal as I took the next turn too sharply for her liking.
I’d wanted to be back for the meet with Maverick, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen anymore.
We had to stop for food. If seeing Becca’s pale complexion in the sunlight wasn’t enough, the fact that she could barely stand on her own two feet cemented it. She needed food and water or she was going to pass the fuck out.
And I supposed I needed to eat, too.
We couldn’t go get breakfast with blood and gore all over us, which meant we needed to shower.
Standing in Ava Jade’s shower at Briar Hall, the safest place we could think to go, was harder than I’d thought it’d be.
Her room smelled of her, even after all the time she’d spent with us at the Crow’s Nest. Her cheap shampoo, near empty conditioner, and bar soap scattered on the shower floor were so her .
And all right, if I was being honest, the only reason I thought to put off checking on Julia and risk being late to the meet was because there was a chance she might’ve been here.
Alone. Waiting for us to come and find her.
Walking in to absolute silence was like being shot all over again.
Where are you, Sparrow?
My Ducati’s engine revved as I pulled us up alongside Julia’s place, and Becca couldn’t climb off fast enough.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated as she pulled the oversized helmet off, letting her still damp dark hair fall down her back. “I didn’t mean to hurt?—”
“You’re good,” I interrupted her, trying and failing not to be agitated with her presence.
Ava Jade would be glad I’d taken her with me. That I’d fed her and saw that she got herself cleaned up.
It was one small step toward my redemption.
One of many.
My phone vibrated in my pocket and I took it out, jaw clenching at the screen. The missed call from Dies and the text message.
DIESEL
Get your ass back here. Now.
I tucked the phone back in my pocket without replying. “Come on,” I told Becca. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Um, do I, like, need a weapon… or…?”
I stopped, turning back to face her, quirking a brow.
“Okay. Gotcha. I’ll just follow.”
My nostrils flared.
I bent to pull the blade I kept at my ankle out of its sheath and handed it to her.
“I didn’t know blades were your thing,” she said, taking it carefully at first, like it might bite her, before she got the tang properly placed and held it with confidence.
“They’re not,” I replied. “You know how to use that?”
“Stick ’em with the pointy end,” she said, a small smile on her lips.
If there was trouble up there, we were dead.
“Yeah. You do that.”
Her smile faltered, and she fell into step behind me.
“Keep that thing pointed down if you aren’t using it.”
“Oh. Right. So, um, who lives here exactly?”
We walked up the drive to the small two story house set apart from the others farther up the street. Julia rented the upstairs apartment, despite our offer to put her up somewhere far nicer. She insisted she loved the view of the dense redwoods in the backyard and didn’t need any more space.
Before I could take the first step, the bang of a screen door around the house stopped me, startling Becca into a little chirp of surprise.
My gun was out in an instant, but when the small stout woman who lived downstairs came stomping around the edge of the house in a huff, I hurriedly put it behind my back.
“ Oh ,” she exclaimed, seeing me and Becca on the stairs. “I thought you were Julia,” she said, her face pinching, looking irritated and disappointed all at once.
“Have you seen her recently?” I asked.
The woman gave me another look, scrutinizing more closely. She was suspicious.
I put on my smooth voice and forced a worried expression of my own. “I’m her cousin. The family’s been trying to reach her, but she hasn’t been taking anyone’s calls. We’re starting to worry.”
The woman’s gaze slid to Becca.
“We were hoping to check on her,” Becca lied smoothly. “You know, make sure she’s okay.”
This time, the woman’s flustered demeanor melted, and she nodded sadly at Becca. “I’m sorry, dear, but I haven’t seen her in weeks. She’s past due with her rent and there’s an awful stink coming from up there. I think she might’ve gone someplace and forgot to take out her trash.”
“You haven’t seen her in weeks?” I repeated. “And you didn’t think to call the police?”
The woman looked taken aback at the question. “Well, no. Julia keeps to herself. She’s gone out of town for a couple weeks before without telling me. And you know her, with that landline ringing all hours of the day and night. I don’t think she had a cell phone.”
She did.
But clearly she never thought to share the number with her landlady.
My stomach turned with unease.
“Would you happen to have a key?” Becca asked the woman, moving toward her. “Maybe we could find some clue to where she’s gone.”
The woman frowned. “I… well, yes. I do keep a spare, but I couldn’t possibly?—”
“Please,” Becca pleaded. “We’ll be in and out.”
Becca paused.
“And maybe we could arrange for the payment of the rent she owed you in the meantime?”
This seemed to spark something in the woman’s eyes, and her pursed lips slackened.
“It’s twelve hundred,” she said. “And I’ll take next month’s too in case she doesn’t show.”
Becca turned to look at me for confirmation.
Greedy old cunt.
I nodded.
“We can do that,” Becca said.
The woman made a show of thinking it through before vanishing to find the key. She was back in less than five minutes, holding the key just out of Becca’s reach.
I strode up to them, reaching into the inside pocket of my leather jacket for the short stack of bills there.
I counted out twelve hundred, packing the other four or five hundred back into the pocket.
“That’s only one month,” the woman protested.
“And you’ll get the other month’s rent when it’s due,” I told her. “And only if our being here today stays between us.”
Her lips parted, perhaps finally recognizing me for who I was.
Maybe not my face or my name, but I needed neither to pull weight in Thorn Valley. My face screamed Saint, and if she knew what was good for her, she wouldn’t refuse me.
She was lucky I played along at all instead of turning over her entire house to find the key myself.
“A-all right. That seems fair.”
She backed away. “I’ll just be inside if there’s anything else you need. Just… just slip the key back through the mail slot when you’re finished, will you?”
She didn’t wait for a reply before taking off back the way she’d come.
“See,” Becca said, lifting the key to dangle it in my direction. “I can be useful.”
She dropped the key into my hand and took the blade back out from where she’d hidden it in her tits. How she’d managed to not slice one off was beyond me.
“Let’s go, Hart. I’m already late getting back.”
She hurried to keep up as I took the stairs two at a time, the feeling of unease only growing in the pit of my stomach the nearer we got to Julia’s door.
Something was definitely wrong.
Julia knew the risks when she agreed to take this job.
Even with her identity concealed from the kids who called in for help, there was a possibility someone could figure out who she was. All it would take was one guilty child admitting who they called for help. One angry parent with a cop friend to trace the call back to her.
These were violent, sadistic pieces of abusive trash.
But having been abused herself as a teen, Julia knew the risks and didn’t give two fucks about them. The way she saw it, if she could even help one of them out of a bad situation, it was worth it.
The smell hit us before I could finish feeding the key into the slot and I cursed, my nose wrinkling as I flicked the safety off my gun and pushed inside.
“Don’t touch anything,” I growled to Becca behind me.
“Oh god,” she croaked, her voice nasally. No doubt plugging her nose. “What is that?”
I would know that smell anywhere. Flashes of time-tainted memory of my parents dead on the floor, their blood soaking into the carpets assaulted my mind.
I pushed through them, lifting the neckline of my t-shirt to cover my mouth and nose with my gun hand extended.
My eyes watered from the force of the odor, and I kicked past mail piled on the floor in front of her door and into the dusty apartment.
“ Christ, Julia ,” I hissed, knowing what I would find as I cautiously stepped through the kitchen, noting the upturned retro chair and the molding coffee in the antique mug on the table.
Everything in here was so outdated. Julia wasn’t fucking around when she said she didn’t need much. Everything in the whole place appeared to be thrifted if not dived for out of dumpsters. What the fuck did she do with all the money we paid her?
“Corvus,” Becca said in a quiet voice behind me. “I-I don’t think I can go in there.”
“You wanted to come with me,” I reminded her in a hushed tone. “Get over here. Stay close or I won’t be able to protect you.”
Her light feet rushed over, sticking to my ass like she was told.
“What is that?” she whined, choking on the smell no doubt coating her throat like it was coating mine.
There was only one thing it could be.
I peered through to the left and right, toward the open living room and bedroom, but nothing seemed amiss in either. Just more old furniture. Several stacks of yellowing paperbacks towering around her bed and filling the side tables.
In front of us were two doors. One no doubt led to a bathroom, but the other… the other would be her office. It was a stipulation of the job offer. She needed to have a separate office. One that could be locked. With a safe to keep her notes in and the ability to connect a landline phone.
I opened the door on the left.
Bathroom. Untouched.