Twisted Surrender (The Twisted Duet #1)

Chapter 1

Annabelle

“We are very sorry for your loss…”

No.

“We found her body…”

No.

“…come down to the station…”

No.

I squeeze my eyes shut as I replay the day, three years ago and grip the phone tighter. “Detective Inspector Bennett. You are giving me the runaround again. It’s been three years. Surely you have something.”

“I’m afraid this case has hit a dead end—”

“A dead end,” I scoff. “Really?”

“I apologise—”

“Save it. You told me three years ago you would find the man who did this to avenge my mother and the other victims. Now you can’t even be bothered to mind your words with me. I want the man who did this found.”

My hand shakes. My stomach twists into a knot. I feel sick.

“With all due respect, Miss Harrison, we have nothing to go on. All the leads went cold.”

My laugh comes out thin and ugly. “Then do your job and warm them back up.”

Silence hums down the line for a beat, then his voice returns, careful now. Too careful. “I understand your frustration.”

“No, you don’t.” I clench my fist on the table to forcefully stop myself from throwing up over this confrontation. “If you understood, you would not be trying to shut this down. Women are dead. My mother is dead. You told me you had patterns, forensic evidence. What happened to all of that?”

“We still have the files.”

“The files. That is what you have to say to me?”

“Miss Harrison…” A pause. Paper rustles in the background. He is probably sitting at a desk, reading from notes, trying to sound humane while he buries her all over again. “I know this is difficult.”

My throat burns. “Do not say that to me.”

“I am trying to be honest with you.”

“Honest would have been telling me three years ago that you were never going to catch him.”

“That is not what I said.”

“It is what you meant.” I unclench my fist, drag my hand through my hair, and then bunch it up to stare at the long, blonde strands. “I want him found,” I say and hang up.

The phone drops from my hand and clatters against the table. The sun is beating down, streaming in through the window. Summer. I hate summer. I used to love it until my world ended during summer.

My stomach clenches, and I walk stiffly up the stairs, through my bedroom to the small en-suite of this two-bedroom cottage where I have lived my entire life.

Twenty-eight years of good times and the worst times.

Opening the cabinet, which is drilled slightly skew into the wall above the sink, I bite back the tears. Mum insisted it was straight.

It was never straight.

With a shaking hand, I pick up the box of anti-depressants which have become my lifeline and pop one out and swallow it dry.

I hate them. I hate the way they make me feel. I don’t want to take them, but I’m lost without them. I’m lost without her.

She was my everything. Dad bailed before I was old enough to remember him, and it was just the two of us. She was happy. She loved her job. She loved her life. She loved me.

Wrong place, wrong time.

That’s what they said. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He took her and killed her.

I don’t believe it for a second. They said she wasn’t the only one. Not directly, they wouldn’t do that, but they weren’t always so careful with their words.

Shuffling over to the window, I stare out over the street. Normal day, normal neighbourhood, normal sunshine. Normal cat walking along the pavement.

There is nothing normal about my life.

A car turns the corner and travels slowly down the road. I watch it for nothing better to do. It doesn’t stop. It drives past and keeps going until I can’t see it anymore.

“Normal people with normal white hatchbacks.” I step back from the window, feeling dizzy.

I need to lie down.

The stress of the phone call has taken its toll.

I barely make it to the bed before my knees give out.

The mattress dips under me, and I curl onto my side with one hand pressed hard against my stomach. The room is too bright. The walls feel too close. My pulse hammers behind my eyes in a brutal, steady beat that makes me want to claw my own skin off.

I drag in a breath that catches halfway down.

Dead end.

The words keep scraping through me.

Dead end means paperwork shoved in a drawer. It means tea going cold in some interview room while men in cheap ties move on to the next tragedy. It means my mother becomes a photograph in a file. A body. A case number.

My chest tightens until I sit up too fast and regret it instantly.

“Fuck.”

The word comes out hoarse. I plant my feet on the carpet and wait for the dizziness to settle. The cottage creaks around me, familiar and tired. This house knows every version of me. Child. Daughter. Happy. Wrecked.

Curling up on the bed again, I close my eyes.

Sleep doesn’t come. It hardly ever does.

I drift in and out of that awful place between waking and collapse where every thought is too loud and every memory comes with teeth. My mother’s laugh. The police officer at the door. The mortuary. The silence after everyone stops calling because grief makes them uncomfortable.

I hate this day. This anniversary. I just want to get through it and have it be tomorrow.

Tomorrow is where I function as a semi-normal human being, with my job, my trip to the supermarket.

Of being out in society as Annabelle Harrison and not the daughter of the woman who was brutally murdered, and they never found her killer.

Maybe one year, this day will be different. Maybe one year, I won’t fall apart.

This year is not that year.