Chapter 7
LOCKE
“Jordan?”
I stared at the small kitchen as I sprawled on the bench with a beer in hand.
Maybe if I ignored Stone, I could untie the ropes that held me in the slip and coast right into the harbor. I didn’t need to stick my nose into this clusterfuck.
I could be in Maine before lunch, a buttery lobster roll and a lager sounded a helluva lot better than babysitting a woman who probably didn’t want me to get involved in her business. A woman who had no business depending on me.
My boat rocked and footsteps sounded on the hull before Stone came into view. “You letting me on board, or what?”
I sighed. “Can I stick with or what?”
“No.”
“Yeah, permission to come aboard.”
“Gee thanks. How the hell do I get on this thing?”
“You’re on it.”
“You’re a smartass, you know that?”
“I’m farther back.”
“How the hell is this thing a square?”
“Never seen a catamaran?”
Stone’s voice got closer. “Evidently not. It’s got feet.”
“Hulls,” I muttered.
“Whatever. It’s—oh.” He hopped down to the main space where I hung out on nice nights. “Not what I expected.”
One of the reasons I’d bought the ship was the maximized living space between the hulls.
It wasn’t nearly as cramped as most ships were.
I had more storage and sleeping space and I could max out my solar panels since I had more flat surfaces to soak up the sun’s rays.
More often than not, I simply dropped anchor instead of dealing with the cost of a marina, but I’d wanted some land time in Salem.
I needed to see if I could handle being moored again.
I’d been drifting since Milligan died. Literally. I wasn’t entirely sure I could return to the real world.
Now I was in the middle of a goddamn mess.
“The double hulls give me more living space and stability.”
“Now I feel even better asking.”
I took a long pull from my bottle. “Why is that?”
“You won’t be on top of one another.” He turned around to take in the space. “Pretty sure this is bigger than my living room.”
“Shitbox apartment?”
Stone shrugged. “I just need a place to crash.”
“All work and no play is what makes you cranky.” I reached into the fridge. “Want a beer?”
“Yeah. I’m off.”
“I figured. Those clothes actually fit you.”
Stone set a bulging messenger bag on the floor then dipped his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, well I haven’t been in my uniform in five years. I’m lucky it still fits.”
I tossed him a bottle of Heineken. Surprised, he snatched it out of the air. He shook his head as he popped the top. “So you live on this thing full time?”
“For the last ten or so months.”
“Not sure how you do it.”
“Easier than you think.” I walked to the edge of the hangout space and looked out on the harbor. There were a number of boats in the marina but even more anchored in the water. “The water up here is choppy and a helluva lot colder, but less hurricanes to deal with.”
“I guess. I’d be bored in a week.” He stumbled a bit as the boat naturally rocked. He reached out for one of the railings and sat down on the bench seat. “Maybe a month.”
I’d been bored as fuck for months, but he didn’t need to know that.
Every time I thought about heading back to Boston, I’d broken out in a cold sweat.
Then I’d get drunk for three days and wallow before I dove into research for whatever next island or town I wanted to visit.
It kept my mind engaged, but instead of going to all the coastal cities, I ended up staying off shore.
Never even going to do the things I’d researched.
Instead, I stayed on the boat like it was my own self-imposed jail—watching life go by ten or so miles away from me. I ignored texts and emails from everyone checking in on me.
Instead, I’d just rocked and drank, fished and drank.
I raked my fingers through my overlong hair. “I’m not sure this is a good plan, Stone.”
“Don’t back out on me now.”
“Have you talked to Diaz? Does she know about this?”
“Not yet.” He bent down and flipped the messenger bag open. “How about you look at this and then you’ll have a better idea of what you’re getting into.”
I sighed. “Fine.” I cleared off the table, tossing the take-out cartons into the garbage beside the sliding door into the kitchen and living room.
I twisted my ball cap around to get it out of the way and when he pulled out a file folder three inches thick, I swore.
“I thought you only had a handful of girls.”
“Oh, I have more than that, but I can’t prove all of these. Some probably are just similar attacks, but I’ve pulled over twenty-seven cases spanning seven years.”
I sat down and pulled the thickest file toward me and opened it.
A pretty blond was clipped to the thin packet of papers.
She looked barely twenty with eyes slightly too big for her face.
She was wearing a hoodie and jeans in the shot, but the next one made the beer in my stomach pitch.
She was wearing a club dress pushed up her thighs, sitting up with bags of garbage around her in an alley, her neck at an unnatural angle.
I thumbed through the next five, recognizing the names Stone had mentioned before.
The girls were all around twenty, some younger, some a little older—but they all seemed impossibly young in the living shots Stone had used first. As if to maybe remind himself of what they’d been before.
It just made the crime scene photos all the more jarring.
Some were discarded like the first, but others were found in hotel rooms and even one in a drug den of some sort. I dug deeper into his stack and saw similarities to the first six, but there were more inconsistencies. The older ones were more violent. As if the killer had been less controlled.
I pulled out the photo of the crime scene and body of each of the victims and lined them up oldest to newest on the table.
Stone stood and watched over my shoulder.
I had a feeling he had them on a murder board in his damn apartment, but the reports distracted. They were important, but I wanted to see all the women in a single space.
Once all twenty-seven were lined up, I took three out of the mix and set them aside.
“I don’t think this is all of them,” I said quietly.
“Why?”
I pointed at the scarf in one of the earlier photos.
It was a simple silk one that you could buy in any clothing store.
It was loosely tied around the wrists of a blond, almost like an afterthought.
However, two photos in our chronological order later the the silk knots became more refined.
Then suddenly it changed over to white rope with intricate knots that dug into the skin.
“Feels like there’s a step missing. I could be wrong. ”
My instincts said I was right, but I hadn’t trusted them in so long.
I pushed away from the table and went to the mini-fridge for another beer. I paused over the bottle of bourbon, but took the safer green bottle of beer and popped the top off with the edge of the counter. I took a long pull, waiting for Stone to reply.
Maybe I was reaching.
Instead, he dug into his messenger bag and took out another thicker file.
I slowly walked back to him.
“These were cases I pulled that had too many differences from the others.”
He flipped through the packets until he added another three while he fished through the rest. I picked up one and felt the zing.
Ropes. Knots. They climbed the girl’s wrists in a complex pattern.
“This was labeled sexual assault. The woman lived, but she disappeared so I couldn’t talk to her.
” Stone set more beside my bottle that I hadn’t even realized I put down.
“These two were found in the harbor near the lighthouse. No ropes found at the scene, but...” He tapped the photos.
“Those marks look a helluva lot like the ones on Priscilla Barlow.”
My throat burned. The stacked red marks, these with postmortem bruising. “She struggled.”
“Yeah.” Stone’s voice was tight. “I can’t fucking prove that they overlap. They are a mix of runaways, prostitutes, and Jane Does.”
“Have you called the FBI?”
“I had to go through channels and my captain vetoed me.”
I frowned at him. “Why?” At Stone’s direct stare, I sighed.
Because no one cared enough about these girls.
The first stirring of something dented the numbness I’d been living in. This wasn’t my problem, but I found myself sitting down and pulling one of the folders forward. “You got somewhere to be?”
Stone sat on the other side of the booth. “Nope.”
“Good.”
A few hours later we had a more cohesive timeline. Some of the extra files he had in the maybe pile stayed there. They were sad cases, but a lot of them were overdoses or domestic violence. I wasn’t a cop, but I was trained to pick up details. I itched to take this to Nyx.
She could comb through the details with one of her programs a helluva lot faster than we did and find things that overlapped, but I’d lost out on using her as a resource.
Nyx—aka Nina Kendrick—was a genius-level software engineer.
She was the head of cybersecurity at The Kendrick Group and an alpha level white hat hacker.
This project would be exactly one she’d help on.
I cracked my knuckles and stood. “You want a pizza or something?”
Stone looked up, his eyes unfocused. Then he rubbed his hand over his middle. “I forgot to eat. That sounds good.”
“Don’t get too excited. It’s basic, but I do have a pizza stone.”
“Better than the bag of pretzels I had with my coffee this morning.”
I disappeared into the main living space of my boat.
The one nice thing about a catamaran was the wider space.
Since I didn’t need much on my own—and I preferred most of the amenities to be on the top level where I steered, I’d gone for a decent kitchen.
I tossed some poppers into my air fryer and a pepperoni pizza in my convection oven.