Chapter 15
Parker
After a restless night where I tossed and turned, dreaming of blood and my parents’ horrified faces, I woke up to dark circles under my eyes.
Even liberal use of concealer did a poor job of hiding the effects of my nightmares, so I resorted to wearing sunglasses as I stepped out onto the porch to meet Detective Nakamura, where he waited in the idling SUV.
I gave a terse nod of acknowledgment as I climbed inside and set my bag at my feet, ignoring his greeting. After buckling my seat belt, he began to drive down the long driveway.
After we’d driven for several miles, Ry broke the silence. “Parker,” he began quietly, “I’m sorry about last night. If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s okay. I just want you to know-”
I stopped him, holding up a hand without turning to look at his face. I refused to see his expression and the new way he’d start looking at me now that he knew my secret.
“I don’t need your pity,” I said shortly, my tone harsh. “Let’s just pretend you never saw anything at all and just go back to being temporary co-workers, okay?”
A part of me knew he didn’t deserve it, that the way my parents had treated me when they found out had broken something inside of me.
Even after the three years of counseling I’d gone through, I couldn’t stop the knee-jerk reaction I felt when I saw the look on his face.
But it was there deep inside, that broken, hurt teenager who needed her parents, but instead had been told I was a disgrace to my sister’s memory.
Maybe it was because I’d started to feel too much for the man and his friends that made it hurt so much more than it should.
Suddenly, he slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel, making my sunglasses slide off my face and causing me to gasp.
I reached for the dashboard, gripping it tightly as the car swerved off the road and came to a sudden stop on the shoulder, kicking up dust and rocks.
My head swiveled around to stare at Ry, my mouth hanging open from shock.
“What the fuck, Ry-” I started to ask, only to stop at his furious expression. Since we’d gotten to know each other, I had become used to his friendly smile. He’d never looked at me the way he did at that moment. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he snarled.
“Ry,” I whispered.
“No!” he cut me off again. “You don’t get to accuse me of that stupid shit.”
I continued to sit there with my mouth gaping open, watching this angry version of Ry as he glared daggers at me.
“You think I pity you? I don’t fucking pity you, Parker!
Everybody has scars. So you gave them to yourself.
” He threw his hands up before clenching them into fists and resting them on his thighs.
“Something happened. Something horrible, I get that. Something horrible happened to you, Parker, but you’re still fucking here, aren’t you?
” He leaned towards me with a snarl, not letting me look away even if I could.
“That tells me you’re strong. I don’t fucking pity you because you have fucking scars, Parker.
I feel sad because you went through something horrible enough that you gave yourself scars.
I’m sad that you had to go through that.
But I’m real fucking glad that you were strong enough to come out the other fucking side.
That means you’re strong. I don’t. Fucking.
Pity. You. I’ll tell you how strong you are every fucking day if I have to until you finally believe it. ”
With every word he said, a tear fell until they were streaming down my face.
I never felt strong because of what I had done to myself.
I’d always looked at it as if I were weak.
My parents had looked at me as if I were weak.
They hated me for every scar I’d given myself.
Every line I’d drawn into my flesh with a razor was something they saw as a weakness.
They had thrown it back into my face and made sure I knew that Mariposa would have been just as disappointed in me as they were.
They told me I was dishonoring her memory until I believed it.
But Ryu Nakamura was telling me that I was strong because I survived the pain.
Suddenly, I felt my seatbelt loosen, and my body was lifted from my seat. I found myself pulled over the console as Ry wrapped his arms around me. He held me in his warm embrace as he comforted me.
“Your parents were idiots,” he whispered, making me realize that I had spoken all my pain out loud. I hiccuped as I listened to him, his soothing voice healing a broken piece of my soul. “Is Mariposa your sister?” I nodded against his chest.
“She was killed,” I mumbled, my voice watery with tears.
“Is that why you became an FBI agent?” he asked.
I nodded again. “I think she’d be proud of you,” he said, resting his cheek against my hair.
I sighed, hoping that he was right. “You’re so strong, Parker.
You’re smart, and you’re brave. And you’re absolutely stunning.
Anybody would be affected by the loss of somebody they loved.
I know it hurt, and you had to let out that pain.
” I nodded my head because it did hurt. It still hurts so much, I feel like I would drown in the pain some days.
“You use that pain to do good with your life. Your sister would be proud of you,” he said again, and I started to believe him.
I pulled back, and I looked at him with watery eyes and sniffled. “Thank you.”
He kissed my forehead and looked at me, his dark eyes soft and full of tenderness. “You have nothing to thank me for.”
“I’m sorry about last night and this morning.”
“Don’t be sorry, Parker.”
I sniffed again. “I overreacted,” I admitted. “My parents used to keep-”
He placed his finger on my lips to stop me. “It’s okay, you don’t have to explain.” I gave a weak smile. He dropped his finger. “Though you did scare the shit out of us last night when you nearly drowned.”
I laughed tiredly. “I scared the shit out of myself.” I looked away, out over the road and across the field.
“We should get to work,” I said on a sigh, hating that I had to face the day instead of being able to curl up under the covers and rest after all the emotional drama of the last twelve hours.
He kissed my forehead again. “All right.”
I looked down at how we were sitting and blushed. “Thanks for calming me down again.”
He gave me a wink, causing my belly to flip. “My pleasure, pretty girl.”
I carefully maneuvered my way back into my own seat while trying to ignore what felt suspiciously like his stiffening dick under my ass. I reminded myself that he was a man and was likely only getting hard because of the friction. It had nothing to do with me. Though I desperately wished it did.
As Ry and I walked into the conference room, I noticed right away how SSA Walker turned to glare in our direction.
I frowned at his expression, wondering why he looked so angry.
We were late but only by a few minutes. Surely, that couldn’t have been enough to set him off.
Then, I noticed the direction of his stare and felt Ry’s hand resting on the small of my back.
He had been guiding me through the police station.
It was almost strange how comfortable I had grown with him in such a short amount of time.
I’d never been comfortable around men before.
I could honestly say that I had never had a friend who was the opposite sex.
Though I wasn’t certain if I could describe our relationship as friendship, it had been so effortlessly comfortable and easy to be around him right from the start.
The fact that I was attracted to not only Ry but Gage as well, and could secretly admit to being attracted to their friend Dante, was definitely out of the ordinary for me.
I stepped sideways, away from Ry, trying to make it appear as casual as possible.
I didn’t want to make it seem as if I was catering to my supervisor.
Still, I also didn’t want to make it appear as if I was welcoming Detective Nakamura’s attention, either.
The situation was already frustrating, but I would be seriously glad when I no longer had to be concerned with protecting SSA Walker’s feelings just to protect my career.
I took a seat next to Monique and gave her a smile as I placed down my satchel and pulled out the laptop.
I glanced up at the murder board, taking note of the additional victim who had been added yesterday.
She almost seemed out of place amongst the others.
Her gruesome death was an obvious sign of the killer’s escalation in violence.
SSA Walker passed around individual copies of the latest victim’s information.
“Victim has been identified as Carrie Mason, age 23. Recently divorced. One child, aged 13 months. The babysitter said that she was out on a date night with a man she described as,” he glanced down at his copy and read it with a frown.
“Handsome, cocky, and somebody she just wanted to have a fun one-night stand with. The babysitter, nineteen-year-old Julie Carmichael, said that our victim met the unsub at the grocery store. They made plans for a date, but she wasn’t serious about getting into a new relationship after her recent divorce.
She wanted to let her hair down— the babysitter’s words. ”
I snatched the paper up and pulled it to me, reading over it furiously. It was our first real break. All the previous victims had been single with no children.
“Why did he go after a mother this time?” SA Thomas asked, confused.
“He didn’t know,” I said.
SA Thomas raised their eyebrows at my words, so I explained.
“Why would a young mother tell a total stranger that she had a one-year-old child? They met at a grocery store. She isn’t going to tell strangers that information.
She thought he was cocky. She just wanted to have a little bit of fun.
She wasn’t going to bring him into her life.
It was supposed to be a ‘hit it and quit it,’ as the guys like to say. ”
“That explains the violence,” Monique pointed out.
I nodded. “The longer he held her captive, the more she would’ve begged. She would have told him that she had a child. It would have made him furious.”
“Because she was a lying whore,” Detective Morris said, and I glared at him.
“That’s what the serial killer would say.”
“And he’d be right,” he shot back with a glare of his own. “Women should be honest when trying to jump on a man’s dick.”
“And I bet you think that women are asking for it if they wear a short skirt or no bra. No is a complete sentence, asshole!” Monique fumed beside me.
“All right! Enough!” SSA Walker demanded. “This isn’t helping.”
SA Garcia spoke up, helping to break some of the tension. “Phone records came back. Three of the other victim’s last phone pings before being shut down permanently came from the tower out on Highway 82.”
“The only thing out there that three different women would have in common is the Lazy 8 bar.” Detective Nakamura looked at Detective Morris. “Isn’t that the bar that you go to to pick up women?”
The guy scoffed. “Me and half the other horny single people in the county.”
I hated the man the more he opened his mouth. No, I detested him. He was the worst sort of scumbag. How any woman could ever find him attractive, I couldn’t imagine.
“So it’s possible our killer picks women up at the bar. They leave thinking they would have a one-night stand, and instead, they get a week-long torture session while the killer lives out his fantasies of raping and killing his mother,” Ry says.
“Right,” I agreed. “Or his sister,” I pointed out, feeling disgust roiling in my stomach. “Though the killing of his mother part might not necessarily be the goal. It’s more likely, each time they disappoint him, he loses control.”
“How do they disappoint, Special Agent?” Detective Morris asked with a smirk as he sat back with his arms crossed over his chest. It felt as if he were baiting me, testing to see if I knew the correct answer. I studied him as I thought about it.
“The man wants what he lost. The female family member who started all this.”
Morris dropped his arms and sneered. “Is that so? And why is that? Why is he supposedly obsessed with her?”
I shook my head. “I’m not a psychologist, Detective Morris.
I wouldn’t be able to tell you why a young man developed an unhealthy attachment to a family member.
The profile just spells out the clues. At some point in his life, the unsub became sexually attracted to a woman in his immediate family.
When she rejected him, he would have reacted badly.
She was likely his first kill.” I glanced at the wall where several women’s pictures hung.
“Ever since then, he has been trying to find his first obsession in the bodies of her replacements. Since that’s impossible, he gets frustrated, taking his rage out on those he deems unworthy or a failure, either on his part or theirs. ”