4. Colin
Colin
“You sure you’re okay to drive?” Alex gives me one last once over as he stands in the open door of his car. I continue past him toward my truck, mumbling a “fine” and quickly settling myself in the driver’s seat.
I didn’t drink other than the shot Chloe ordered us, which I only took because I thought it would cool my blood after I realized I was in the same building as Chloe fucking Stark.
God, it’s like the universe is rewarding me for coming back.
Like it’s sending me a sign that I’m doing the right thing, pursuing her.
Alex didn’t drink much more, either, too focused on beating his high score from the last time we’d come to Mickey’s.
And Micah is still inside, said something along the lines of wanting to see how the end of the league games were going to hash out.
I stared at him for a long second before I realized he was serious, and then I gave him a sad clap on the back because who the fuck wants to see how a bowling league match is going to end?
I wait for Alex to drive off until I get back out of my truck. I begin clicking the foreign key fob in my hand until the lights blink on Chloe’s ridiculous fucking Volkswagen Bug parked a few rows over from mine.
Crossing the parking lot with my head swinging in both directions to ensure there is no one else out here, I crouch to lean inside the driver’s side of the vehicle and slap the magnetic GPS tracker under the seat.
I press what I assume is her house key into the clay mold Micah said I’d need to make a copy, before tossing the keys to the ground and returning to my truck.
I’d heard some guy who is obviously not familiar with The Terror Trio talking to the girls before I headed out, and I used that moment of them being distracted to dip my fingers into Chloe’s purse and snatch her keys.
Most of the time men try to talk to any of them they’re all eye rolls and crossed arms—but not this time. He and his friends challenged them to a match, and they took them up on it, so I know I have at least thirty minutes to get in and out of her house before she returns.
Chloe seemed especially interested in one of the guys, and the thought winds an unfamiliar feeling through my body, leaving my stomach feeling fluttery and empty and my muscles tense. As I pull out of the parking lot, I convince myself it’s fear I’m feeling. Fear for that man’s life.
Maybe I won’t leave her house at all. Maybe I’ll hide inside in case that man needs my help later.
I drive the familiar route to her house, parking at the curb and pretending I’m here on official business when the reporter in the only vehicle parked out front gets out of his car, approaching me.
“Detective Mills. Good to see you again.” The lean reporter makes his way to my vehicle as I step out, reaching an arm in my direction. I grip his lanky hand in mine and give him a nod.
“Barry.”
I should be nicer to him considering he’s the one who wrote the gleaming article about me in the paper.
I am Murders Most Eligible Bachelor, apparently.
But reporters piss me off, and he just had to include a couple sentences on my mother in there.
How I was here while she was a town over withering away.
“You here about those missing persons?”
“You know we can’t talk active cases, Barry.” I lean a hand against the warm steel of the hood of my truck, trying to appear relaxed when I’m actually itching to get him out of here so I can get inside.
He smirks, lips parting to show one half of his smile, and I want to break his tortoiseshell glasses in half. He nods toward Chloe’s house, lowering his voice and leaning in close enough I can smell the sour lemon on his breath from the candies he’s always sucking on.
“Think she had something to do with it?”
I give him a rough clap on the shoulder. “Time to go, Barry. And pick up that trash.”
I wave a hand in the direction of the cellophane wrappers piling up on the street outside his car window before turning away to open the back door of my truck. Fucking litter bug.
“We’re allowed to be out here,” he argues.
He’s not wrong, but goddamn, do they ever leave?
Doesn’t he have a family that misses him at dinner time?
A game to watch? I cringe, wondering if he has piled up bottles of piss in his back seat.
“What if she comes back with the next missing-person-to-be? Don’t you want me to get something like that on camera? ”
Oh, I plan to.
He sucks his teeth obnoxiously and gazes up Chloe’s driveway.
I peek out from behind my car door, giving him the first excuse that comes to mind to get him the fuck out of here. “She left town for the weekend. There won’t be anything to see here until Monday.”
He gives me a dejected look, but reluctantly retreats to his vehicle and starts readying to leave.
I glance up and down the empty cul-de-sac once he’s gone, making sure there aren’t any lingering fans. I grab the bag in the backseat of my truck, hustling up the driveway and around the back of her house.
I’ve snooped around her place enough that I know she doesn’t appear to have cameras, so I don’t risk alerting her to my presence at all.
At the back of her house, I turn my back on the eerie, turquoise glow of the lit-up pool and face the French doors. The reflection of the water shimmers against her house and through the windows that stretch toward the roof.
I shove the lock-pick into the deadbolt and jimmy it just the way Micah told me to. I fuck with the sharp, pointy piece of metal as I try to keep myself from thinking about why Micah knows so much about illegal, inconspicuous surveillance. And lock picks. And key molds.
I trust him, and he works for the department, so I’m sure it’s all just knowledge he’s gathered along the way.
When I feel a catch inside the tiny hole, I slide the deadbolt out of place, slipping into the house and clicking it closed behind me.
It didn’t occur to me until just now that I’ve never actually been inside Chloe’s house.
I’ve followed her to every coffee shop and running track in a twenty-mile radius of this town. Her poisonous lips have been within mere centimeters of mine, yet I’ve never been in this mysterious sanctuary of hers.
I wasn’t a detective yet when Caroline’s first two husbands died.
While I led the investigation on the third one, there wasn’t much of a crime scene.
By the time the ME alerted our unit to the suspicious nature of his death, the Starks had already lawyered up and a judge wouldn’t sign off on a search warrant.
Lack of sufficient evidence was the judge’s reasoning, which frustrated the hell out of me because sufficient evidence is exactly what I’d been hoping to find after Caroline’s canned confession.
My dress shoes move silently across the tiled floors, my shadow slinking slowly around me as I move through the dark house lit only by the full moon and the pool light outside the paneled windows that travel all the way up the vaulted ceilings.
From the outside, the home she once shared with her mother looks like a massive, modern mausoleum. That’s the only word I’ve ever been able to use to describe it, especially knowing the lives that have been taken by the people residing inside these stiff walls.
Her home feels surprisingly more lived in—by an actual human and not a psychopathic murderer from hell, though I don’t let that distract from the fact that that’s exactly who she is.
I head left into the kitchen, noting the seasoning containers scattered on the granite countertops and the stainless-steel pans in the sink from what must have been last night’s dinner.
I lift a container labeled garlic powder to my nose, sniffing it on the off chance I’d be able to detect some sort of poison she might have sprinkled over a dinner guest’s meal.
I set my bag down on the kitchen floor, looking around for the perfect spot for the first camera.
I spot one in the fake bushes perched on top of the cabinets, and I pull one out from the bag, reaching up toward the bushes and setting the tiny black square in between a couple of leaves.
Taking a step back, I check the visibility of the camera from multiple angles, ensuring no one will spot it.
I pull my phone out and the camera monitoring app up, waving at the camera a few times and watching myself on the receiver. Perfect. Not fuzzy at all.
I tuck my phone into my pocket and lift my bag from the ground, continuing through the house.
Stepping into the living room, I pause, studying the expanse for the next spot.
A white, fluffy sectional sits in a conversation pit facing a big screen TV mounted to the wall.
On the entertainment center below the TV is a gaming system.
I take the two steps into the pit and walk toward the system.
Crouching in front of it, I notice the thick layer of dust on the controller sitting next to it.
I never pictured Chloe as a gamer. To be honest, I never picture Chloe doing anything a normal person would do, because all I see when I look at her is a dangerous criminal.
Well, that’s mostly all I see. That’s what I force myself to focus on, at least. It’s hard to when she looks so goddamn good all the time.
Uninvited images of her lips on mine filter through my brain, stealing my attention for far too long.
I shake the phantom sensation free from my mind, refocusing on the system in front of me.
If she’s not a gamer, maybe she’ll never notice the little black camera in its vicinity.
Then again, if she’s not a gamer, why does she have this expensive ass console in her living room?
I remove the little black square from my bag and attach an adhesive that Micah sent me with, ‘just in case.’ I stick the peeping eye to the back of the entertainment center.