Chapter 17 Violet #2
“Agreed,” Levi answered from the other end of the echoing space. His voice bounced off each corrugated metal wall. “There’s scrap metal and some other junk back here. If this stuff isn’t leftovers from a business, someone has used it as a dumping ground.”
I moved slowly to where Levi stood, remembering the same area but dark with shadows. I remembered looking over it that night and dismissing everything there as junk and nothing that could help us.
My heart rate picked up, and I studied it again in the light now. Had I been wrong? Should I have paid more attention? What if there had been something there that could have saved us?
I almost didn’t want to look.
But there was nothing.
Just junk like Levi had said. Piles of metal. Some discarded, ripped shirts. Trash.
Relief flushed through me.
X wandered over and kicked at the pile. “Seems like the cops went through it but didn’t care enough to take any of it with them.
Can’t blame them. Look at all this shit.
” He kicked at a broken crate and then crouched to pick up a grubby teddy bear.
“Hi, Violet!” he said, putting on a voice that was supposed to belong to the bear.
“I’m Whip’s emotional support bear. He cries into my matted fur at night. ”
Levi snorted on a laugh and swatted it out of his hand. “Don’t touch that. It probably has lice.”
It landed at my feet, and I jumped out of the way, sure he was probably right. The thing was ugly as hell.
A sudden jolt of recognition splintered through me.
I’d seen a bear that ugly somewhere else.
My stomach twisted. I couldn’t stop staring at it. My brain flashing up memories I would have rather forgotten for many reasons except I couldn’t, because it had also been the day I’d met X.
“Vi?” Levi asked. “You good?”
X cringed. “Is it another round of the shits? Oh God, not more vomiting! I’ve done my time, Lord! Have you not punished me enough?”
The rest of us ignored his theatrics.
I slowly raised my head. “I’ve seen that bear before.”
“In a horror movie?” X asked.
I shook my head. “On Paul Jeddersen’s bookshelf the day he attacked me. The same day you…” I stared at X. “You know.” I ran my finger across my neck.
A dreamy expression spread across X’s handsome features. “Ah, yes. Paul Jeddersen on Olympic Drive. Lactose intolerant and wouldn’t offer me cheese. Stabbed multiple times until he was barely more than soup.” He grinned, focusing on me again. “And you in nothing but your underwear. What a day.”
His eyes darkened suddenly, like he’d remembered the rest of the details of that afternoon, the way I’d been in my underwear because Paul Jeddersen had drugged me, cut off my clothes, and was well on his way to raping and killing me when X and Scythe had randomly knocked on his door.
“I’d kill him all over again if I could.”
I knew he would, and I would have let him. But it wasn’t the point right now. I picked up the ratty teddy bear and held it out to X. “Do you remember this? It’s the same one, right? It was on that bookshelf you were hiding behind.”
X took it from my fingers but shrugged. “I honestly don’t remember. All I saw that day was you.”
He said it so seriously and earnestly that if I hadn’t been focused on racking my memories for that bear, I might have swooned.
I held it toward Levi and Whip. “I’m one-hundred-percent sure this bear was on Paul Jeddersen’s bookshelf.”
Levi squinted at it again, though was clearly uninterested in touching it. “Those toys are mass manufactured. There are probably millions of them out there.”
He had a point. “I guess so. But what if it’s not a coincidence? What if it is his? What does that mean?”
“Definitely not that old farty, rapey, Pauly-boy was here,” X piped up. “I killed him good. There was no zombie-style resurrection for him, I promise you that.”
Whip reached for the bear. “No, Paul Jeddersen is definitely chopped up into little pieces and disposed of. That was easy enough to do after X went all chop suey on him.” He turned the stuffed toy over in his hands and wrinkled his nose.
“But it’s something.” He squeezed the bear, then paused. “Well, fuck me. Anyone got a knife?”
We all looked at X.
He rolled his eyes. “Why would you assume I have one! Geez!” He patted himself down. “Switchblade? Hunting knife? Serrated or just nice smooth steel? Oooh, pocket knife?” He started pulling weapons from various places on his body.
I gaped at him. “How many knives, exactly, do you carry at any one time?”
“On a weekday? Not many. Seven?”
“Only you would think seven knives is not many,” Levi muttered, but his gaze was firmly fixed on Whip as he took a blade from X and sliced it through the seams of the bear.
Whip yanked out fluffy bits of stuffing, then a small bundle of wires.
“What’s that?” I whispered.
Whip fished around in the bear’s belly some more, following the cords, seeing what else was in there.
Eventually, his gaze met mine. “It’s a nanny cam.
I should have realized. We had one when…
” He swallowed thickly but then forced himself to continue.
“We had one when my daughter was little and my wife went back to work. We were new parents, super overprotective and didn’t fully trust anyone. ”
X squinted at him. “So what? You stuck a bear with a camera in your home and spied on your babysitter?”
Whip lifted one shoulder. “Well, yeah. Essentially.”
“Paranoid much?”
Whip glared at him. “When you have a tiny baby who is fully dependent on you to keep them safe, that you love with a depth you’ve never felt before, come talk to me.”
“I love Reginald like that.”
Levi sighed. “You do not love your wild park duck like Whip loved his baby, X.”
“You don’t know the depth of a father’s love, Levi!”
Whip rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers between the two of them. “You’re missing the point.”
X side-eyed him. “The point being Paul Jeddersen’s gross nanny cam bear somehow moved from his bookshelf to this creepy warehouse?”
Whip’s lips pulled into a thin line. “The point being someone filmed what happened here the night Toby died.” He swallowed thickly, eyeing me. “And that if this bear was also on Paul Jeddersen’s bookshelf, someone probably filmed everything that happened that day on Olympic Drive too.”
My blood ran cold. Him drugging me. Stripping me down to my underwear while I was unconscious. X saving me. Whip cleaning it up.
Someone had seen it all through the glassy eyes of a ratty bear.