Chapter 2 #2
“I don’t know anything about whatever the fuck this was, but it didn’t feel like this was his first time.
The knots were too...” I trailed off, the memory of her trussed up made my chest tighten.
“The knots were intricate. The way her hands above her head seemed to be attached to the rope at her neck maximized the way it cinched tighter.” I shrugged.
“Not sure how else to put it. When I tried to cut her free it tightened the rope on her throat. I didn’t notice she was bleeding at first. I was mostly worried that she’d been assaulted.
Her dress was flipped up enough that her stomach was bare.
When I knelt next to her...” My gaze locked on the blood.
Like all the blood under Milligan. Bigger pool.
I stared at my stained hands.
Just like that day.
Only it had been darker.
Heart blood.
Pumping out of his chest and squelching around my fingers.
“Do you need a minute?”
I gritted my teeth and pushed out of the fog of memory.
Facts.
Only facts.
Not my fucked-up mind.
My voice was glass over gravel. “Her underwear was intact, but then I felt the blood pooling around her. She’d been stabbed in the thigh.
I didn’t worry about anything else but getting her free.
The rope dug into her neck.” The angry red and pink abrasions shimmered in my mind to match up to Milligan’s unseeing eyes.
My fingers shook and I tightened them into fists at my sides.
“Were her legs tied as well?”
I nodded. “More of those knots around her ankles, tied around the piles to—” Now it was anger.
The purest, hottest kind. No woman should be treated like that.
The way he pinned her to the dock—immobilized as much as she was tortured trying to save herself.
I swallowed hard. “To widen them,” I finished on a near growl.
“Any other details on the man who did this?”
“Tall, lean, athletic body. Wore all black including shoes. Hoodie, I guess or zip jacket—not sure. Either way he’d pulled the hood up when I flashed my light.
He wasn’t wearing a mask from what I could tell.
Sharp nose and chin. Not sure on a beard.
It happened fast. Sorry it wasn’t a better look. ”
“No, that’s great. Okay, that’s all.” He turned his phone off and handed me his card.
Beat cops did not have card as far as I was aware.
I glanced down at it. “Detective Edward Stone.” I met his gaze. “Didn’t know detectives had to wear a uniform.”
His lips flattened. “Temporary situation.”
“This isn’t the first for this guy.” It wasn’t a question. The ritual flavor of this was messed up. It couldn’t be the first time.
“No comment.”
I shrugged. “Not my business.”
The cop looked around. “No purse.”
I followed his gaze, mine zeroing in on the smear of rusty darkness on my slip. So much blood. How the hell was she going to make it? But I scanned over the rest of the area and no purse. “Maybe left it behind when he took her.”
Stone narrowed his eyes at me. “Oh really?”
I held up my hands. “Not my business.”
“Seem to have a lot of details Mr. Jordan.”
“I am not like that fucker.”
Worse.
I simply murdered my best friend.
My gut churned and sweat slicked my back. “Look, I work personal security for The Kendrick Group. Well, I used to.”
Until I left to make sure I didn’t kill someone else.
“The Kendrick Group?” Demoted Stone looked up from his phone.
“Yeah. Dominic Kendrick will vouch for me.”
At least as far as telling Stone I wasn’t this kind of a killer.
“What are you doing here if you live in Boston?”
“Just a pit stop on my way up the coast.” If I kept moving, the memories and guilt stayed in its box for a while.
It was actually Milligan who’d shown me Salem. He’d been the one to encourage me to stick around and join The Kendrick Group. Maybe if I’d never come, he’d still be around.
Jesus.
I needed to get a grip. I knew it would be heavy to stop here, but now this?
I should have just kept moving.
A flash of the blond pinned to the dock dented the guilt.
Save her, fuckface.
Milligan’s voice floated up like seaweed in my brain—sticky and annoying.
Not my problem. I did what I could. I gave her a fighting chance.
Don’t be a pussy.
Annoyed, I huffed out a sigh. “How about I get a shirt and help you look?”
“That’s not necessary, Mr. Jordan.”
“Locke,” I corrected. “Mr. Jordan is definitely more my brother.”
“Not your father?”
I shrugged. “Don’t have one of those. I’ll be right back.” I stepped onto my catamaran, annoyance riding me. I should just get behind the wheel and head out. The skies were clear.
She needs help.
Maybe I was officially having a mental break.
I did not fucking need Milligan in my head now.
I hopped into the space between the twin hulls and hurried into my living quarters.
Since my pants were just as bloody, I quickly swapped out for cargo pants and a long sleeved shirt, conscious of her blood on my skin.
I scrubbed until the blood ran pink in my tiny sink. By the time I hopped back on the dock and secured my boat more thoroughly, the detective finished taking photos of the crime scene.
Reinforcements had arrived and I noted Stone’s stiff posture as a woman reamed him out.
I loped after him as he was walking toward the dry-docked boats. “Stone, wait up.”
“Look, Locke, it’s not my crime scene anymore. There’s nothing more you can do anyway.”
Right. It wasn’t my problem, see?
Pussy.
Fuck me. “You’re still looking for her purse right?”
He sighed, then glanced over at the busy techs and cops below. “Yeah.”
“Then let me help.”
“Why?”
Because my dead best friend told me to. Right. I was officially losing it. “Why not?” At his tight face, I shrugged. “Might as well take the help, I’m just going to follow you.”
“I could arrest you.”
“Yeah, you could. But I saw you get your ass chewed. Probably easier to just let me help.”
“I don’t need another fight with—I just don’t.”
I smelled history. I cracked my knuckles. “Then two of us are faster than one.”
His jaw tightened and I was pretty sure he was going to pop a seam on his uniform shirt with how wound up he was. Finally, he went over to his cruiser and popped the trunk before coming back with paper bags and latex black gloves. “If you find something don’t fucking touch it.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“Just call me over.”
“Got it.”
I pulled out my mini flashlight and swept the area in a grid pattern.
Five years in personal security had trained me to miss nothing, and I easily slipped back into old rhythms as we searched the pier toward the hotel then back.
I tried to put myself in her shoes. Had she wandered off with alcohol swimming in her veins?
Had the guy picked her up at the hotel and lured her out here?
Or had it been more opportunistic?
We doubled back to where the boats were dry docked off the main walkways. I was about to give up on the red boat when something glinted near the back of a boat.
I called for Stone and sidestepped a pail of varnish as I stepped deeper into the darkness. My light flashed over a canister jammed tight between two planks. A small purse with a chain strap lay open a foot away.
“Where are you?”
“Behind the red boat,” I called out.
Stone flashed his light, and I held up my hand. “Really?”
“Sorry.” He pointed it down and rushed forward. “Don’t touch anything!”
I held my hands up and took a step back.
Considering the other crime scene had been fucked, I wasn’t touching anything.
While I was used to security jobs—leaning heavily into the personal security end—I was around law enforcement enough to know the rules and regulations were paramount to getting a case to trial.
And this guy needed to go down or to be put down, I wasn’t particular about which way it went.
Stone seemed intense and again the ill-fitting uniform left me wondering what the hell happened to get him demoted.
Stone used a pen to shuffle through the spilled contents of the bag. There didn’t look to be much left behind, but he used his flashlight to look inside the bag. “She’s from New York.”
“Maybe here on holiday.”
Stone glanced up at me, his dark eyes shiny and unreadable in the dim light.
“Maybe.” He glanced around. “I’d say she was hiding over here.
” He shuffled forward and dug a glove out of his pocket and snapped them on before he took photos, then tugged on the canister I’d spotted before.
It took some working to get it free. “Maybe tripped over that pail of paint.”
“Varnish.” Stone gave me a hard look. I shrugged. “I can see it. Maybe she wandered too far away from the hotel and this piece of shit followed her.”
“Yeah.” Still crouched, Stone’s flash went off a few more times.
“Keys?”
He nodded. “With a small canister of Mace on it.”
“Not that it would have helped her.”
He sighed. “No. Not really.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Maybe I’m out of line, but feels like you know something about this.” I rocked back on my heels. “Maybe not this prick’s first time?”
His eyes went flat as he stood. He quickly took photos on his phone then gathered the distinctly female paraphernalia and set it in the paper bag. He sealed it and used the pen to scribble something before tucking it under his arm.
“I know how to play with law enforcement. You don’t have to worry about me talking to the press.”
“Who needs press anymore when anyone and their fucking mother has TikTok?”
“Fair. You don’t know me, but do I look like the kind of guy who uses social media?”
“Not with that beard and hair.”
“I’ve been on a boat.”
“For a year?”
I huffed out a harsh laugh. “Thereabouts.”
“Oh.” Stone cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
I shrugged. “You try shaving on a boat and see how it goes.” I stripped my gloves off and raked my fingers through my beard.
It was a bit unruly. I hacked at it when it got too long and itchy, but other than that I didn’t really give a fuck.
It wasn’t like I’d been cruising around looking for dates.
“I don’t do boats.”
I crossed my arms. “You have the ocean and the harbor at your fingertips, and you don’t do boats?”
“I prefer my feet on land. None of this is your concern.”
“You’re right.”
I waited a beat, but Milligan kept quiet this time.
Maybe I really was cracking up if that pissed me off too. I backed up and stepped around the boat toward the pier where my boat was tied.
I heard Stone curse then his regulation shoes squeak on the wet boards behind me. Instead of following me to where the bustling crime scene crew was, he paused in the shadows.
Yeah, there was definitely something up with former Detective Stone, but he was right this wasn’t my fucking problem. I planned on another week in Salem, but this was a neon sign telling me to get the fuck out of Dodge.
I’d bummed around the Bahamas and Havana through the winter then landed in the Keys for a few months before heading up the eastern shoreline. I’d been avoiding Dom’s calls whenever I neared a port. I couldn’t keep running indefinitely.
The Knot was a gorgeous double hull catamaran with plenty of room, but even she was starting to feel like a jail.
I gave the crime scene a wide berth, but it literally was taking over my slip. There was a team taking photos and video of the aftermath even if the scene had been outrageously compromised to save Miss New York.
The flash of her bruised and abraded neck flashed into my brain. I hope to hell she survived. That simple slash on her thigh had been far too accurate to be a mistake.
All that blood.
The rust colored splash on the wood catapulted me back to another night. The night I’d been trying to forget for a damn year. I pushed it away and shoved it back in the box at the back of my twisted brain. At least I’d saved this one.
Maybe.
“Locke!”
I turned to the voice. Stone was on the edge of the crime scene tape. With a sigh, I walked back to him. “Thought you were done with me.”
His jaw flexed and in the bright lights of the tech unit’s equipment I got a better sense of Stone.
Mixed race and fit, I’d already picked up on.
I couldn’t gauge age, but based on his former detective status I figured thirty or so.
His fingers tightened at his side. “Do you want to go to the hospital or not?”
I dipped my hands in my pockets. “You driving?”
“Yeah. Might even let you sit in the front.” He started up to the parking lot above the marina, not looking to see if I followed.
I glanced over my shoulder at the dark pool of blood then quickly caught up with him.
It would be nice to know if she made it.