CHAPTER SIX
I don’t like the nickname Murder Girl, but standing here, staring at it now, written in my messy script on the whiteboard, I do not find rejection on my behalf.
In fact, unlike this place, the title fits me.
Irritated by this conclusion, I set the marker down, step off the ladder, and walk to my desk.
Claiming my chair, I twist around, stare at my written words again: BECAUSE I AM MURDER GIRL.
Murder-fucking-Girl. My fists ball on my jean-clad knees, tension knotting my shoulders.
It fits. It’s me. It’s right even when I’m wrong.
I blame my parents.
That sounds cliché, of course, but in my case, it really is true.
They forced me into acting classes in an effort to stir my desire for the spotlight.
They wanted me to learn and understand characters.
To get into their heads. I did learn. I know the murderers I hunt well.
Too well. I’d never tell them that. They couldn’t handle it.
Rich couldn’t handle it, which is why I should have told him already.
Kane. Well, Kane would understand, and that makes him dangerous.
Very, very dangerous. Death simply becomes me.
In fact, some might say I’m so fucked up that I do death better than I do life.
And while death is attracted to me, my own is not appealing.
I mean, when does my note writer, who I think I’ll call “Stephen King Junior” for his or her creepy use of words, go from wanting to freak me out to wanting to bury me and be rid of me?
Maybe tomorrow morning when I’m still here?
And I’m not going anywhere until I finish the job I was sent here to do.
Nor am I stupid enough to leave Junior alone and expect the same favor in return.
Which means I need to focus on catching me an assassin and a King Junior before they catch me.
And under tonight’s fucked-up circumstances, I’m going to need backup to allow me to focus.
This goal in mind, I roll my chair around and scoot to a second chest made of heavy black steel positioned under the wooden-shuttered window.
Bending over, I grip the lock attached and guide it through a combination of numbers until it pops open.
I open the lid and smile when I find my old friend just where I left him.
Reaching inside to give him a friendly hello, I pick up Cujo, my version of a guard dog, a double-barreled shotgun that was once my father’s, but came with the house.
I stroke it, my baby. My protection. Short, loud, and big, he only needs to be fed bullets.
After a quick inspection, I confirm that he’s locked and loaded.
Ready to intimidate and ensure an attacker backs the fuck off.
My service weapon is another story. It’s small, silent, quick, and lethal, and I don’t pull it to intimidate or make noise.
I’ve trained long and hard, and to the point of near obsession, to ensure that if I pull it, you’re dead.
Lowering the lid to the chest, I set the lock on top and turn in my chair again, rolling to the desk, where I set Cujo to my left, my cell phone to my right.
With my phone and my guard dog a reach away, I’m feeling much more at home now than minutes before.
This might not be one of my preferred Otherworlds, but I’m starting to get back to embracing it.
In fact, I was wrong when I said I don’t belong here.
Damn it, this is my world. The younger, less-confident me forgot that, and I was reverting back to her by assuming her attitude.
She ran. She let someone else take her home, this home and place, from her.
Whoever left me that note tonight knows that, too.
But that person knows the woman that I was, not the woman that I am.
I was Lilah Love then, but now, damn it, I am Murder Girl.
I’m her because dead bodies have a way of talking to me, and if they didn’t, there would be more dead bodies, more murders I didn’t stop.
So yes. I’m Murder-fucking-Girl. I can hunt a killer and catch them.
I can find a way out of this. My way out of this.
It’s at that moment that my phone rings, and I look down to find the expected number that belongs to Rich. Inhaling, I grab it and decline the call, texting him before he can call back with one word: Tomorrow.
He replies instantly: Now Lilah.
My jaw sets hard and I type: Please Rich. Tomorrow.
My phone rings again instantly, and I cave to the inescapable need to just get this conversation the hell over with. I hit the button and slide the cell to my ear. “Rich, damn it. What part of please did you not understand?”
“You never say please, Lilah. What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
I frown. I never say please? “I say please.”
“No. You don’t. What’s wrong?”
My defenses bristle. “I do say please.”
“No. You don’t. And it’s okay. It’s how you are.”
“How I am?”
“You’re guarded, Lilah. You don’t show emotions. You have stuff you’re dealing with, and one day maybe you’ll—”
“Rich, I’m not—”
“I repeat. What’s wrong?”
“I arrived to a dead body and I’m now in self-exiled purgatory.”
“Okay then. That explains you not wanting to talk, but not the use of the word please.”
“I said please, Rich,” I snap. “Please can we talk in the morning times one thousand. See? Now I’ve said please at least one thousand and one times to you since I texted you a minute ago. Please can we talk in the morning? One thousand and two.”
Heavy silence fills the line. One beat. Three. Four. “I know you well enough to know that means you’re in your zone and I won’t get answers. But I don’t like it.”
And yet we’re still talking. Which, actually, is the definition of me being so bad at relationships I can’t even save the guy and end this one. “Tomorrow,” I repeat, because never wouldn’t end this call.
“If you need—”
“I told you—”
“I get it,” he supplies as if he senses where I’m headed, and just that quickly, he ends the call. “Purgatory. But we’re talking tomorrow if I have to come there to see you to do it.”
My eyes go wide. “Rich, I—”
“Good night, Lilah.”
He ends the call and I huff out a frustrated breath before setting the phone on the desk opposite Cujo.
He can’t come here. I can’t let that happen.
“And I say please,” I grumble, grabbing a wooden box on the desk in front of me and sliding it to me.
And I don’t show emotions because I don’t feel them anymore.
Not since I left this place, which I don’t intend to explain to him or anyone.
Furthermore, and considering the damn burn in my chest that tells me the sooner I leave, the better, I need to get to work.
I lift the lid of the box and remove a stack of index cards from inside, and thanks to having the weekly maid service exclude this room from their duties, the dust clinging to them becomes a cloud in my face and open mouth.
Because why wouldn’t my mouth be hanging open?
I suck in dust that hits my throat, and it triggers a tickle that becomes a burn.
My best attempt at hacking up a lung follows, a skill my mentor back in my NYPD days had mastered almost as well as his job.
Roger Griffin was—is—my idol. He’s also a hard-ass old man and a chain-fucking-smoker who seemed determined to give me black lung via secondhand smoke.
Recovering from my dust-induced near death, I think of him now and how much I’d like to see him.
But I won’t call him. I can’t call him. Not when I’ve avoided him for years, and in fact, he was one of the reasons I left New York.
He was good at his job. So damn good that I didn’t want his sights turned on me should the unfortunate circumstances present themselves.
He might love me like a daughter, but he’d hate me like a monster if he saw beneath my skin.
Really. Truly. I’m not sure how he didn’t see who I really am, but maybe I needed to see it for him to see it. Which is just another reason I will never let myself look in that man’s eyes again.
That said, if I did, and if Mr. Too Intuitive for His Own Good were here right now, he’d tell me to document what I know about my perp, of which I now have two.
Perp Number One is my assassin, or rather the serial killer, if I listen to everyone else rather than my instincts, which has never worked for me.
Perp Number One is an assassin. And Perp Number Two is King Junior.
Unless, of course, Perp One and Two are the same person.
A far-fetched thought, but then the tattoo is a common denominator, and I’ve seen crazier things since I started profiling.
I need to treat them as two people until I know otherwise, and right now, the one who left me the note on the door is the direct threat that could stop me from doing anything else, including solving the assassinations.
Perp Number Two is now my new King, until I dethrone him, which I will, and officially gets the starring role for now.
But I’m not sure that’s what King Junior wanted or thought would be the outcome of tonight.
And since I hate giving assholes what they want, I really hope it’s not.
I grab a pen from the silver holder to my left and start writing single words on note cards, one per card:
—EDUCATED
—DEVIOUS
I tap the pen on the desk and think about my mother and every movie-star friend she subjected me to, thinking of all the egos they represent, before snatching up another card and writing EGOTISTICAL on it.
And because no one, not even my mother, is that ego driven unless they’re covering up the truth of their insecurity, I grab another card and write INSECURE.
I tap my pen again. This was someone who was there the night of the attack, who could be someone connected to me, to Kane, or to both of us.
I need a list. I need a list, which means a new stack of cards.