Chapter 28 Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
Adrian
Lacey Karner was waiting for me at the two-top when I walked into the bar, looking like everything her sister wasn’t.
Sweet, innocent, pure, with a wide, bright smile on her face as she chattered to a waiter.
He looked reluctant to leave, his eyes warm on hers as she charmed him without even knowing.
Everyone wanted to get as far away from Penelope as fast as possible. But Lacey, who had been through something terrible according to the case notes and pulled through it with the grace her sister hadn’t, was enigmatic.
Even from across the room, I wanted to move closer.
I’d learned of Lacey’s story through Penelope’s file, that her attack caused her sister’s first kill. Lacey’s trauma triggered her sister’s rage, and that was a glorious thing. A twisted, fucked up beautiful thing that rippled out and broke so many families.
So now it was Lacey’s turn to take on some of her sibling’s burden.
“Adrian, hi!” Lacey said, standing to give me a hug when I reached her, squeezing just the right amount to be friendly.
She was a few years younger than Penny, so around twelve younger than me.
And it showed in the freshness of her features, someone kept away from the darkness. But with a sister like Penelope…
“Hello, Lacey,” I said, formal, giving her a nod. “Thank you again for meeting with me.”
“Oh, no problem.” She waved her hand as if to pish posh. “Anything to help get her back. She’s sick, you know? I don’t want her getting into any more trouble.”
Trouble, like she wasn’t the one causing it. Like Penny wasn’t the orchestrator of her own destruction. But I nodded and slipped onto the stool opposite, picking up the drinks menu and letting my attention focus on what beer to choose.
“I didn’t order you anything, sorry,” Lacey said, her voice a little fraught. “I didn’t know what you’d like.”
Looking back up, I waved her concern away. “You should have waited for me to get you something. I invited you here.”
She smirked. “Well, you can cover the tab if you like?”
I caught her gaze again, seeing a glimpse of her sister’s cheekiness coming through. But it was different; with Lacey, it had me chuckling and teasing some more. With Penelope, it made me want to choke her. Lean in or lean out.
Chatting with Lacey was simple, and we soon fell into a rhythm of conversation.
I took notes about Penelope, a list of places that were important to her growing up, some details about her habits, just listened to Lacey yammer on like her sister wasn’t a serial killer.
It would almost be easy to forget why we were here, who we were talking about.
“Penny’s never been totally normal, you know,” Lacey was saying, her eyes a little glazed over as she told me a story about when they were in high school, about how Penny was an outcast, skipping lessons, vandalizing the property, causing low-level mischief.
She said it all with a hazy sort of forlorn look on her face, like they were bittersweet memories.
“She never did anything bad, but Mom said she had issues with authority since she was in the womb.”
I chuckled, because it felt right, and shared a warm smile with Lacey. She took a deep gulp of her wine and sighed, leaning back in her stool.
“I hate to ask, but…” I let my words fizzle off with a wince, but Lacey frowned and nodded, leaning forward again, elbows on the table.
“She was already halfway to this when it happened,” Lacey whispered. “She found uh… sorry, this is…”
I reached over and grasped her hand, giving a comforting squeeze. She squeezed back with a grateful smile. “Stop, we don’t need to do this. It was inappropriate.”
Tears heated Lacey’s eyes, and I felt like the biggest dick on the planet for even half bringing up her attack. If Penelope had stopped with him, Lacey’s rapist, then the court of public opinion would be well and truly on her side. Lacey turned her palm up and held my hand.
“I just want her safe,” she whispered, the music and chatter of the bar fading away.
“They never did listen to me when I told them how unwell she was. I’m sure…
look, before anything with me even happened, I’m sure it happened to her too.
She changed, Adrian. She changed so much, so suddenly.
And the police never wanted to hear it. Something dreadful happened to my sister. ”
“She killed three men,” I said, an image of Jake flashing through my mind. I hadn’t told Lacey how deep the connection went, but was tempted then.
Lacey nodded. “And I think with the right intervention we’d learn why.”
I so wanted to understand Lacey’s sympathy, what she thought could be achieved for her sister.
Her sister, who was now a prison fugitive, was one of the most looked for and dangerous people in the country according to every news outlet.
Even behind the bar, a news report flashed with her mug shot, with reports of the riot and her escape on a loop.
They hadn’t figured it out yet, but they would soon.
For a few moments, Penelope stared down at me from that screen, her hair in disarray, eyes wide, manic, a smear of blood hastily wiped from her chin. I’d spent so long staring at her mug shot before her trial, and often since, I knew every shadow and imperfection.
She was under my thumb now, locked up where only I knew, but still, the mug shot haunted me. I might have missed a detail, a clue. With a frown, I turned back to Lacey, who was waiting with a patient smile.
I couldn’t forget who Lacey was to her, why I’d met her in the first place. She was this innocent, easy to hurt and manipulate extension of her evil sister. I squeezed Lacey’s hand a little tighter, and her eyes widened a fraction before she smiled, misunderstanding my intention.
“I’m finding it hard to be here,” I said then, gesturing around, hoping she thought it was because it was loud, busy. “Did you want to go for a walk?”
Lacey tilted her head but nodded. “Sure,” she replied, picking up her wine to finish it off. “I can show you one of the places Penny used to work.”
I gave a smile and tipped my head, like I didn’t already know everything I needed to. But it would get us alone. Away from prying eyes and stifling voices.
Alone with the other, nicer Karner sister was an exciting prospect.
When I walked through the back door of the theater, I half-expected to discover it ransacked, to find Penelope vanished into thin air or brandishing some weapon at me in anger, having freed herself from her bindings and gone rampaging while she waited for my return.
But it was silent. Everything was as I had left it.
The front of the theater was boarded up tight, with bolts across the heavy wooden doors and bars on the inside. No one could see what a fortress it was from the street, and no one could leave without my say so if they happened to be stuck in here.
It was that extra touch of security I needed, though I knew the leather strap around Karner’s body was tight enough, and the drugs in her system kept her lucid but sloppy.
But I’d been gone a few hours, and if anyone had the ingenuity to get herself free, it was my little killer.
Lacey took me to the old diner where Penelope worked before her first killing.
It was a real dive, filled only with truckers and drug-dealers, the kind of place the police only went in when there was a problem.
It wasn’t far from here, in the shitty part of town, with tired waitresses and minimal security.
The place suited Penny, dirty, low-rent, unsafe.
I offered to buy Lacey a coffee there, but she shook her head, and we carried on our impromptu tour through the town. Their upbringing wasn’t a terrible one, so why Penny had chosen to work in such a hole I didn’t know.
“Penny!” I called, teasing, energy thrumming through my veins after my evening with her sister. My little killer could hear me, I was sure.
And she was mine. However little she wanted to be.
My phone buzzing in my pocket pulled me from my plans, and I frowned as I yanked it out, confused at who the hell would be calling me. My mother? But it was my old partner. Shit.
I should have ignored it; there was nothing good that could come from taking her call. But curiosity won out. No one knew I was here, and I hadn’t spoken to Phoebe in years. Not since about six months after Jake’s funeral when she gave up on me for good.
“Phoebe,” I said, answering before it timed out.
A sigh came down the line, one of surprise. “I didn’t expect you to answer,” Detective Handler said, a voice familiar but distant. We’d only been partnered a few months when everything went to shit, but we’d been growing close.
In no small part because of Jake’s infatuation with her.
“What’s up?” I asked, leaning against the wall, letting my head slam onto the creaking wood.
“I think you can take a good guess, Adrian.”
I sighed. She always saw right through my bullshit. “Why don’t you tell me and we’ll see.”
“Penelope Karner.” Phoebe’s tone was biting, no pretense. That was part of what Jake liked about her. She didn’t mess about.
“I saw she escaped,” I said, not lying. I did see her escape.
“Mm,” Phoebe continued. “And I saw you worked at the prison and kept that fact from everyone. Do you have her, Adrian? Is she dead in a ditch somewhere because of you?” Her words were strained, teasing but biting.
“No.” I slipped down the wall, landing on my ass. “She’s not, Phoebe. Don’t be ridiculous.”
There was a pause down the line. “Adrian Darling, don’t think I won’t come after you. She deserves the full force of the law, of her punishment, you can’t—”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. We’re not partners anymore,” I spat back.
“And whose fault is that?” came her response, a minute later. A minute of heaviness on the line, no words, just our presence.
I said nothing.
“Adrian. I’m going to find you,” she promised. “I’m looking into you right now. Wherever you’ve gone with her, I’m at your back.”
“I don’t have her,” I lied. “They’ve asked me to work the case too, do you really think I’d—”
“Stop,” Phoebe hissed into my ear. “I’m not stupid. I saw the look in your eyes when you left.” Her voice rose, then just above a whisper, “Jake would be so disappointed if you’ve done this.”
We listened to each other breathe, the words hanging like daggers driven deep into their target.
There was nothing else to say.
Teeth creaking, I hung up the phone, debated smashing it to shit. But if she was going to trace me with it, she would have already. That meant she was keeping it out of work, away from anything official. At least for now, because she had no real evidence, just a hunch.
Still, it made me uneasy. A ticking clock.
I climbed off the floor and straightened myself out, shook out my shoulders and focused back on the task at hand.
Phoebe may be on her way to finding me, but she hadn’t yet. Which meant I still had time, work to do.
I smirked, letting myself sink, and called Penelope’s name again, moving through the halls. When I found her still on the table, her eyes closed and her mouth slack, I was ready. To hurt her. To avenge my brother, even when those closest to him wanted nothing to do with it.
My stomach clenched, my balls tingled in depraved enjoyment. She looked so much like her sister when her features were softer with sleep or lack of consciousness. Like her cognition is what made her hard, harsh.
And what I’d learned of her… it should have lessened my need to hurt her, to make her scared for her life before I took it. But it only spurred me on.
As I walked home, debating what to do, letting my emotions and thoughts wash over me, it had settled.
Penelope Karner was a sickness on this world that needed to go. But I was too. I was sick in the head for what I almost did to Lacey, an innocent, and I was done fighting it. I didn’t kill her sister, did not harm her in any way.
Despite what Penny was doing to me, I was still striving to be a good man. I still believed in the law and the protection of innocence. And that’s what Lacey was: an innocent. She was unworthy of my unkind hands on her.
But Penny…
I climbed onto the table with Penny, pushing her legs apart to settle between them. She was worthy of it all.
“What are you doing?” she asked, coming out of her sleep haze with thick words.
She looked so beautiful, wickedly so, tied down, injured, deprived. Then she jolted, memories rushing back with a gasp. “Lacey? Is she—?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” I interrupted. “But for now...” Time to play the game. “I almost… but I thought it would be much more fun to dangle her innocence for a little longer. But Penny… it left me wanting.”
“Wanting what?” For once, she seemed docile, switched off. How long had she laid here? Scared, begging? Imagining every scenario in her head of what I might do? Kill Lacey? Rape her? Ruin her?
I grabbed Penny’s pussy, this time not as harsh, pushing my fingers into her dry hole. I made myself sick, thinking of Lacey, what I could have done switching it up onto her sister instead. “You’re like a damn desert,” I admonished.
“Sorry for not being turned on by a cold table and an asshole kidnapper,” she spat, but didn’t try to squirm away.
“And you stink.” I turned my nose up at her.
She opened her mouth to retort, but I put my hand over it. “Smell your disgusting pussy, little killer, and tell me you’d happily fuck such a foul hole.”
Her eyes widened in anger, but she didn’t say anything until a few seconds passed, and she darted her tongue out to lick my palm. In surprise, I moved it away a fraction, and that was enough for her to lunge forward and sink her teeth into my wrist.
Pain shot up my arm, made me grunt.
She bit down hard, and I knew she wouldn’t stop. I’d seen what she could do with her teeth. We glared at each other, heat and tension and hatred passing between us as she gnawed on me, as I let her even when it felt like she was about to rip through sinew and bone.
I had a feeling this was our life now. What we had left of it.
Hatred, burning and painful. Because really, Penny had been protecting the innocent too.
When she murdered that first man, if what Lacey said was to be believed, that Penelope was convinced the men she killed planned to kill and rape her, she was just protecting innocence too. Herself included.
But no. We were too toxic. She was too fucking sick. There was no returning from this.
“Let go, little killer, and I’ll let you shower.”
I wanted her scrubbed up, because I was going to fuck her. Ruin her. It was time to play with our life and death.