Chapter 6
6
I nara
In my dream, someone is standing over me. A figure shrouded in darkness. I strain but can’t see who it is.
But then he speaks. Little bird. . . His voice is dark and lovely and tinged with amusement. I want to reach for him, but I can’t; I can’t. . . he’s tied me down. I’ll use rope. I struggle to make sure I can’t get free. I need to know that I’m tightly bound, that he won’t let me go. And once I know the ropes won’t budge, I relax so completely I could cry.
He’s here. I’m safe.
And he’s touching me. Oh gods, he’s touching me, his fingers strong and sure as they blaze a path down my skin. Leaving marks I hope last forever.
My body arches upward as my orgasm cracks me in half. I thrash upward, wrenching out of the sheets I’ve tangled myself in. There’s a scent lingering in the air—a woodsy cologne with a bitter, chemical edge.
I’m alone, but my head is groggy. I feel that presence lingering at the edge of the bed as if someone has been here, watching me sleep. Watching over me.
I reach for my gun, but it’s not there. Instead, there’s my sketchbook, open to the last page I filled.
The charcoal image of a man with a strong jaw and smoldering eyes. The subject is in Thinker’s pose, regarding the little bird perched on his fist. The dom from Club Empire sketched as I imagined him.
I find my gun on the countertop in the kitchen with my keys. Definitely not where I left it. But the door is locked with the deadbolt thrown, and the security system is still armed.
Maybe I was sleepwalking? But my limbs feel heavy like I’ve been sleeping hard for a long, long time.
The heaviness in my body lingers as I trek to work. I’m on high alert, studying stranger’s faces, wondering if the sense that someone’s stalking me is real or imagined.
As I head into the station, movement out of the corner of my eye makes me turn. A black town car pulls around the corner, and I wait until it’s out of sight before heading inside.
There’s a padded envelope waiting on my desk. Inside is an SD card in a plastic holder marked “Security footage,” along with the address of the building next door to Martin Shipping.
“Who left this?” I show Burgess the envelope in lieu of greeting him.
He clears his throat and peers at it. “Looks like the footage we wanted from the building next door.”
No shit, Sherlock. “The building manager wouldn’t release it. Threw a bunch of legalese at me.” I spent the better part of my work day trying to untangle my best clue from the red tape, and went home feeling like my investigation had stalled.
Burgess shrugs. “Someone cut it. Don’t look a gift clue in the mouth.”
“Right.” I hold the disk for a moment, feeling a sense of deja vu. For the second time in twelve hours, someone’s delivered exactly what I’ve needed to my desk or front door.
Whatever. A clue is a clue, and we need a break in this case. “Is there a place I can watch this?”
Hours later, I’m still in a dark room back at the station, staring at a screen. The video plays frame by frame, showing the far-off brick wall with the door and fire escape. A few seconds in, a huge shadow glides diagonally across the wall. The dark shape lands in front of the door, blocking it. “There.” I pause the tape.
Behind me, Burgess leans in so close I can smell the stink of cigarettes on his breath. “Where? I don’t see it?”
I replay the clip and stop it right as the dark shape is about to land on the fire escape platform.
“Keep playing it?”
“It stops soon after this.” But I hit play and let it continue until there’s nothing but static.
“Did you see it?”
“Naw. That’s nothing,” he says. “Trick of the light.”
“What’s a trick of the light?” someone in the hallway asks.
Burgess turns to the pair of detectives hovering just outside the door. “Nothing, Tony. Just something weird on a security camera.”
“A camera with a view of the Martin building.” I keep my eyes on the screen but speak loud enough for them to hear.
“Really?” a second voice says. “Show me.”
I push back my chair, and it nearly zooms out from under me. The seat is crooked from a wonky wheel.
I get myself together in time for Jim Bonds and Tony Cuccinelli, the main detectives on the case, to crowd into the room. They’re both white men around Burgess’s age, with bags under their eyes from sleepless nights and stakeouts. Bonds is short and wiry, while Cuccinelli is a little younger and broad-shouldered with a gut. There’s not enough space for all of them in the little room, so Burgess backs up to lurk in the doorway.
“Show ’em what we found,” Burgess orders me. Now that the big detectives are interested, he wants to take credit. I do what he says without comment and play the clip twice for good measure.
“That’s it?” Cuccinelli motions to the screen.
“Yep,” I say, and play the clip again, frame by frame. The image is blurry, but the movement is unmistakable.
“That’s nothing.” Cuccinelli rocks back on his heels.
“Then what is it?”
“A tarp, or something, blowing down from the roof.”
“A tarp,” I repeat. “A tarp that came down from the roof right after midnight. You walked the perimeter. Was there a tarp anywhere on the street?”
“Could’ve blown away,” Cuccinelli scoffs, halfway out the door. His partner is still studying the screen.
“Any guesses as to what it might be?” he asks without looking at me.
“It’s him.” My sketchbook is lying next to the keyboard. I flip it open, showing the drawings I’ve made so far, inspired by the clip caught on camera, plus my vision at the scene.
All three men stare at my charcoal drawing, and I fight the urge to squirm. It shouldn’t feel so intimate like they’re viewing my naked body.
If they delve deeper into the sketchbook, they’ll see the scenes I drew of the dom. I’ll rip the book out of their hands before I let that happen.
“You think this is him?” Cuccinelli asks, pointing to my drawing. “What the fuck is he wearing?”
The sketch shows the UNSUB as a large man in a black helmet, his broad shoulders made bulkier by thick layers of black material molded to his powerful form. “Some sort of body armor or suit. Like there.” I gesture to the screen.
“It’s not clear enough to see that. I’ve seen so-called UFO sightings clearer than this.” Cuccinelli reaches for my sketchpad, and I clench my fist, fighting the urge to slap it out of his hand. “And this shit? This is fairytale stuff outta a storybook. Some guy in a costume?” He studies my work for a second, then tosses my sketchbook back onto the desk. “How’d he fly down from the fifth story? Invisible wings?”
“Some sort of zipline,” I blurt before I think better of it. Burgess and Cuccinelli roll their eyes.
Bonds ignores them. “Do you see him coming out?”
“No.” I keep playing the clip until it goes fuzzy. “After this, the tape goes blank.”
“UFOs.” Burgess elbows Cuccinelli.
“He could’ve set off some sort of electric pulse to take out the alarm,” I say. “Which could also interrupt a recording like this.”
“Oh yeah, body armor and a fancy gadget,” Cuccinelli mutters.
“There’s stuff like that on the black market,” I say.
“Expensive,” Bonds says quietly.
“It fits the profile.” I swivel carefully to face Bonds. I might as well give him my professional opinion now. They can’t ridicule me any harder than they already are. “The vic was a rich man. His life was his work. This wasn’t a crime of passion. He was most likely killed over business.”
Cuccinelli snorts. “That doesn’t narrow it down. Tons of companies used Martin Shipping. They have contracts all over the country.”
“Whoever did this knew him.” I tick off my fingers. “Knew he’d be working there that night. Swung down somehow and entered through the emergency exit. And. . . drugged the vic?”
“The labs came back on the whiskey,” Bonds tells me. “No trace of any drug we know about.”
I lean back in my chair, careful of the wobbly wheel. “So he incapacitated him somehow, tied him up. They had a chat, and then the UNSUB slit his throat.”
“UNSUB.” Burgess nudges Cuccinelli with his elbow as if to say, “Get a load of this chick, using big FBI words. ”
“You think they knew each other?” Bonds asks, back to staring at the screen.
“Yes. They probably moved in the same wealthy upper echelons. But they weren’t friends.”
“Ya think?” Burgess mocks me again, but Cuccinelli is now listening to me with Bonds.
“The UNSUB did something to the vic to knock him out or disorient him long enough to get tied up,” I say.
“Like what?” Cuccinelli’s tone is less abrasive now that I’ve got him thinking.
I shrug. “Could be a drug we don’t know about in the whiskey. Or. . . some sort of gas? There was a chemical smell at the scene. I thought it was cleaning products.”
Bonds faces Cuccinelli. “Let’s see if we can get the air tested. Chief is fast-tracking every request for this case. It’s worth a shot.”
Cuccinelli mumbles something but stomps out to do Bonds’ bidding.
Burgess points to the shadowy blur on the screen. “If that’s a person, he’s a big guy.”
“Big and fit,” Bonds says. “And looks like he’s wearing something over his head. Like a helmet or something.”
“Yeah. And he’s wearing body armor,” Burgess says. “Something that adds bulk.”
The brainstorming behind me fades to murmurs as I imagine the crime scene. The dead body is waxy, like a mannequin staged at a desk, and the blood looks black.
When the vision takes me, everything around me falls away.
I’m back in a world with no light and a huge and hovering presence behind me. A dark shape made of shadow takes the form of a man. The UNSUB? I smell whiskey, then that chemical scent that might be traces of knockout gas, and then nothing but a rich, subtle cologne.
* * *
I should feel triumphant. I got the first big break on the case. But the moment I set foot in my townhouse, loneliness sets in.
What does it matter that I’m using my abilities to solve the murder of a rich man? There will only be another murder to solve tomorrow and another after that. And my time is running out. I’ve had visions of my death, and since moving to New Rome, I have the sense it’ll be soon.
I thought I’d resigned myself to it, but right now, the bleakness of my life rises up and threatens to rip me in half.
My place still smells like Italian food. The scent mocks me with memories of dinners around the family table.
I haven’t eaten anything since lunch, which consisted of a limp chicken sandwich I scarfed while reviewing every second of the security tapes, but I’m not hungry.
I’m not tired, either. I’m in the zone I enter when hunting a murderer. Wired, alert.
I pace the rooms. I’ll never be able to sleep like this.
There’s a sound, and I freeze. It’s muffled but close. Has my neighbor returned? I put my ear to the wall, and when that gives me nothing, I head outside to scope out their door. The same pieces of junk mail are still sticking out of the mailbox. My senses tell me no one is home.
I’m about to go back into my side of the duplex when an explosion of fluttering sounds has me stick my head around the corner. Someone’s installed a bird feeder outside my kitchen window. Or maybe it’s been there all along, and I’ve never noticed it. It’s topped up with bird seed, and a pair of chickadees are gorging themselves, taking turns with a few drab little sparrows. In the tree beyond, I see a flash of red—a cardinal.
It’s so charming. I sit for a bit and sketch them. The pages fill with birds in flight, birds on a telephone wire, and finally, a tiny bird nestled in the powerful hand of a faceless man.
I force myself to put the book away. All I want to draw is him. More than that, I want to lose myself in a dom who will tie me up and put all my racing thoughts to rest.
But I have to forget him. My scene with him was a one-off. It’s over and done.
Right?
The temperature has dropped, so I change into flannel pajamas, the kind you need to survive a brutal Midwest winter night.
I do my nightly routine and make sure my gun is on my bedside table. I crawl into bed and try to get comfortable, but my pillows are too flat, my sheets too scratchy.
But the real problem is my overactive brain.
Images roll through my head—the murder scene, the scene at the club, the clip of the UNSUB jumping onto the fire escape—until they’re all jumbled, and I fall into the space between sleep and wakefulness.
In a half-dream, I’m the victim tied to the chair, inhaling the killer’s cologne as the bitter traces of the gas fade away. He’s cloaked in darkness, towering over me with a knife in his hand. Instead of slitting my throat, he uses the weapon to slit open my shirt. No touch? he asks, and his voice is dark and lovely. He uses a crop to prod my bra-covered breasts. A pity.
I open my eyes with a gasp. My sex is swollen and slick, my breasts so sensitive the flannel chafes them unbearably. I tear off the shirt so quickly that a button pops off.
Topless, I sit panting as heat blooms through me before I kick off my pajama bottoms and slide my fingers between my folds.
My clit only needs a few strokes before my climax sparks and fizzles. I shove a few fingers inside me, needing more stimulation to drive the orgasm on. Make it more satisfying. The pressure on my inner walls feels so good I clamp my legs together for more.
All too soon, the orgasm fades.
I wait for a wave of shame to come, but it doesn’t. Instead, more heat, more need. My clit is itchy, needy.
An orgasm isn’t enough. I need a scene.
It’s too soon. My marks are still there. But unless I go to the club tonight, I won’t be able to rest.
I scissor out of bed and grab my phone. I log on to the kink app and put in a request for a scene. It’s a Wednesday night, so the place will be quiet. I don’t expect my request to be filled, but by the time I’ve changed into clothes for going out, the app chimes. A notification. My request was accepted, and the scene will start in an hour.
I splurge on a taxi so I can get to the club in time. My hair is still damp, so I use the time in the cab to pull it back into a ballerina bun. I’m in a little black dress and black heels, the sexiest pair of shoes I own.
I keep checking the app and the confirmation of the scene. Because I’ve requested anonymity, I can’t see the top’s profile. Usually when I make my request, I also ask that I get a different top from before.
I didn’t request that. And even though the odds are against it. . . I hope it’s him . I’ve never had the same top twice, never wanted to scene with the same partner, but this time, I’m breaking all my careful rules. I can’t fight my desires.
I need to scene with him again.