Chapter 12
The bullpen buzzed the way it always did.
The phones rang, and the damn printers whined as loud as rookies bitched.
Nobody noticed I was one bad question away from putting my fist through another wall.
I spotted Ryan slumped behind his desk with a coffee the size of his head. His black hair stuck out in three different directions, and he looked about as miserable as I fucking felt.
Good, Asshole.
I stopped in front of his desk. “What do you remember from last night?”
He looked up slowly, blinking at me like he was trying to put three floating images into one.
“Morning to you, too, Sarge.”
“What do you remember?”
Ryan frowned and leaned back in his chair, hiding behind his coffee. “We went to O’Malley’s?”
“I know where we went, dumbass. What else?”
“You bought the first round.”
“I know that.”
Ryan frowned and stared into his coffee like he was searching for answers in there. “You started talking shit to somebody.”
That caught my attention.
“Who?”
He squinted, thinking harder.
“I don’t know, boss, a scrawny-ish dude.”
My jaw tightened, and realization flashed. “Are you talking about Jailbait?”
His eyebrows pulled together. “The blond guy, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“I remember seeing him. Yeah. You guys hate each other. I can’t tell if you wanna fight or fuck.”
“You walked off with him,” I said quickly, trying to deter any more of that line of conversation.
Ryan stared at me for a long second and shook his head. “Did I?”
“You don’t remember?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and nursed his coffee. “Nope. It’s all very fuzzy…”
“Try.”
“I am trying!”
His eyes drifted toward the ceiling, and he squinted at the light up there. “I remember going outside for a smoke?”
“You don’t even smoke, Ryan.”
“Right.” He let out a frustrated breath and cursed. “Jesus. That’s weird. I could’ve sworn I was smokin’ with the blond and his creepy gothic cheerleader girlfriend, or whatever she is.”
“Did he give you anything? Why can’t you remember anything?”
Ryan laughed, but it was forced and awkward. “What? Like drugs? Nah, man…”
Even he didn’t sound convinced.
“I’m serious.”
“I would’ve remembered that.”
“You don’t remember walking off with him.”
That shut him up, and he looked genuinely unsettled now.
“I woke up in my truck this morning…my head hurt, and I was off toward I-90.”
“What time?”
“Six-ish, maybe seven.”
“How’d you get there? Why’d you drive out to I-90? Do you remember the mansion?”
“I…” he frowned harder. “I don’t know.”
Neither of us spoke for a minute, and then Ryan finally looked at me. “What happened to me?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. How the hell was I supposed to answer that?
I didn’t fucking know any more than I remembered what had happened to me.
Not really.
I only knew there were holes in my memory that shouldn’t be there.
And Jailbait had been standing in the middle of every one of them.
Jailbait and his fucking smile.
“I think he’s connected,” I said quietly, rubbing my jaw absentmindedly. It hurt like hell today.
“To what?”
I glanced toward the evidence board on the far wall and yanked Ryan’s head toward it. “The missing men.”
Ryan furrowed his brow and laughed bitterly. “You’ve been on that for years, boss. We literally exhausted every single avenue, and it’s been proven that no trails are leading anywhere. Sometimes missing is just missing, ya know?”
“I know.”
“You got anything besides a gut feeling? I mean, why do you think it’s connected with the bar guy? You have always hated him…”
I hated Ryan more than I hated Jailbait in that moment for questioning my authority.
The answer is no.
No fingerprints.
No DNA.
No witnesses.
Nothing that would survive five minutes in front of a judge.
It was all just a fucking growing pile of missing men over the years, and now a very spotty memory that didn’t bode well.
“I’ll get something soon.”
Ryan studied me for another moment before nodding.
“You usually do, boss.”
Usually.
The word echoed in my head long after I walked away.
Usually, I was the one asking the questions.
Usually, I was the one in control.
Jailbait had managed to take both away from me in a single night, and I had every intention of making him regret it.
By the time I clocked out, the sun hung low enough to throw long shadows across the parking lot.
I drove home on autopilot. The radio stayed off. The silence was loud enough to get itchy, and my jaw ached.
Allen’s truck wasn’t in the driveway, which left too many questions I couldn’t handle, most of them about why I hadn’t come home the night before.
I wasn’t in the mood to explain the hole I’d punched in motel drywall, or why I’d barely texted him since Friday night.
The house greeted me with the same stillness it always had, and the comfort of the silence made me feel a bit more at ease.
I dropped my keys in the fish bowl by the door, and they clattered against the wood, echoing through the empty house.
“Home sweet fucking home.”
No answer, which made me weirdly manic.
It was the hum of the refrigerator that greeted me, along with the unread message from Allen on my cell.
I shrugged off my jacket and wandered into the spare bedroom that I’d claimed years before.
Most people would’ve called it an office, maybe, and Allen called it my war room.
The walls had disappeared beneath photographs.
Maps.
Timelines.
Victim profiles.
Missing persons flyers.
Red string.
Sticky notes.
Too many goddamn faces.
Twenty-three men.
Twenty-three families were still waiting for a phone call that never came.
My eyes drifted from picture to picture before landing where they always did.
My brother.
My fraternal twin.
The oldest photograph on the board was not officially part of the investigation because it occurred years before the investigation began.
Now it was just a faded school picture I’d pinned there myself.
My brother smiled back at me, missing his front tooth, freckles scattered across his nose like somebody had flicked paint at him.
He’d been eight fucking years old.
I had been born first by all of three minutes—the oldest by those precious seconds.
That was all that separated us.
Three minutes.
From the moment of conception, we were always so close, yet so far away.
I reached out and straightened the corner of the photograph, even though it wasn’t crooked.
“I’ll find them,” I muttered. “I will find them all.”
The words came automatically now, like a prayer I recited every night, or maybe my own penance.
My fingers rested against the edge of the picture, and the room around me faded.
The smell of old paper became cut grass, and the hum of the refrigerator became the hum of cicadas.
And suddenly, I wasn’t standing in my office anymore.
I was eight years old, barefoot in the backyard, listening to my brother laugh at the lady who was so nice and always giving us ice cream. She was standing so close to him. Holden always held my hand, but that day she had pulled him from my grip.
I hadn’t known that hearing him laugh that day was the last time I would ever hear it. My phone shattered the silence of my thoughts and memories.
The shrill ringtone ripped me out of the memory before it could drag me any deeper, and I blinked, staring at the screen.
Ryan.
I answered without taking my eyes off my brother’s picture.
“What?”
“Hollis.”
Something in his voice made my stomach tighten.
It wasn’t panic.
It was worse.
Professional.
Flat.
“We’ve got a body.”
Every muscle in my body went rigid.
“Where?”
Ryan rattled off an address just outside city limits.
“Patrol found him about twenty minutes ago. ME’s on the way.”
“I’ll be there in ten.”
I hung up before he could say anything else.
When I arrived, the blue and red lights painted the trees in uneven flashes.
Half a dozen patrol cars blocked the dirt access road leading into an abandoned gravel lot, and crime scene tape fluttered lazily in the evening breeze, while uniforms kept curious neighbors back.
I ducked beneath the tape, flashing my badge more out of habit than necessity, really. Ryan met me halfway, but he didn’t say hello. He just looked at me cautiously.
“They found him behind the tree line, Sarge.”
I searched his face, trying to understand the careful tone.
“Do we know who he is?”
He hesitated.
“I think you might.”
The words hit harder than they should have. He turned without another word, and I followed with a feeling of lead growing in my stomach.
Every step felt heavier than the last, and the image of Allen’s unread texts flashed in my mind.
The woods swallowed the noise from the road until all I could hear were boots crunching over dry leaves and distant insects humming somewhere overhead. Then I saw the forensic markers.
One.
Two.
Three.
My pulse slowed because my body always did this.
Everything narrowed.
Every detail sharpened.
I became the scene.
No longer myself, but the SWAT officer.
Ryan stopped, and he pointed.
“He was left here.”
I stepped around him, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe.
A man lay on the forest floor, completely exposed to the evening sky. His skin was ghostly pale beneath the flashing lights. Someone had carefully placed him on his back, his arms resting at his sides with a precision that made my stomach churn.
There was no attempt to hide him.
No attempt to bury him.
He’d been displayed.
Deliberately.
My eyes climbed to his face, and recognition landed like a punch to the ribs.
“Jesus.”
It was not Allen. It was not Allen. It was not Allen…
Ryan watched me.
“You know him?”
I swallowed.
“I interviewed his mother. His name was Caleb.”
The words barely came out as I tried to wash away the relief I felt.
Three months before, this man’s mother had sat across from me, clutching a coffee she’d never taken a sip from.
She’d told me her son never missed Sunday dinner or ignored her calls.
He never disappeared on her without a word.
I’d promised her we’d bring him home…now it would be in a body bag.
I had hoped, for the nerd, that he would be found alive, just avoiding women, hiding in his notebooks.
One of the crime scene photographers stepped aside, giving me a clearer view, and that’s when I saw it.
Across nerdy little Caleb’s chest, there was a mark that looked like it was made by dragging a finger through blood...
A frown.
Two small dots and a curved line pulled downward.
A child’s sad face.
I stared. “What the fuck…”
Ryan followed my eyes.
“You think it means something?”
“It means the killer wanted us to see it.”
Is this a signature? Or a message...
I forced my attention away from the body and began scanning the surrounding ground.
Leaves.
Broken twigs.
Boot impressions.
A crushed cigarette.
Nothing jumped out until something caught the light near the edge of a moss-covered root.
Silver.
Tiny.
I reached for an evidence glove from my pocket before kneeling beside it.
An earring.
A thin silver hoop with a small black dagger charm hanging from it.
My pulse stumbled.
No…
It couldn’t be.
I turned it over in my palm.
The tiny nick near the clasp.
The scratch running down one side.
I’d seen it before.
Jailbait.
He’d worn it the night at the bar.
I’d noticed it because it looked out of place against that innocent face he liked to wear.
Nobody else had seen me pick it up.
I looked over my shoulder.
The photographer was busy.
Ryan was talking quietly with the medical examiner.
No one was watching.
Every instinct I had screamed to drop it into an evidence bag.
Log it.
Do it by the book.
Instead…
My fingers closed around it. The cool metal disappeared into my pocket, a knot settling in my stomach.
I hated myself for it.
I also knew exactly why I’d done it. If Jailbait had left this behind, I didn’t want it buried in property intake for the next week while paperwork crawled through the system.
I wanted to look him in the eye first.
I wanted to see if he reached for the ear that was suddenly bare.
I rose slowly, slipping my hands into my pockets before anyone could notice. Ryan walked over.
“You find something?”
I met his eyes.
“No.”
The lie came easier than it should have.
Behind us, another camera shutter clicked.
I looked back at the body one last time.
The blood-smeared frown seemed to stare right through me, tickling memories that angered and disgusted me. For the first time since this case had landed on my desk…
It felt like someone was there, and that fucking someone was watching me.