Chapter 27 Smoke and Trouble by. Society of Villains & Sam Tinnesz #3
“I can do whatever the fuck I want,” I growled as I stepped on his hand and began to press down. He could try and test me, but I was learning that without Jackie I was crazy on another level. He cried out in pain as I crushed his hand beneath me.
Slowly I let up. “What did you do to her?”
“It was her time.”
I stepped down again, hearing him cry out again. “Want to try again? What. Did. You. Do.”
“Nothing! I didn’t do anything!” he screamed.
God, he wasn’t going to give me anything.
I stood and dusted my coat. I looked around the room.
There was a new picture of Jackie sitting on his desk.
I picked it up to inspect it. She was sitting on a hill with someone else.
Griffin hadn’t finished drawing her companion yet.
She was wearing the shirt of mine I had put on her on our last night together.
I felt myself start to break.
My Jackie was beautiful, and she was gone.
I turned to face Griffin. I knew that he had knowledge of what happened. I turned to Kai. I could see in his eyes he felt the same. We both turned back to Griffin. Kai approached him slowly and looked down at him.
“You really are pathetic, aren’t you?” Kai asked in the most demeaning voice you could imagine.
“Excuse me? Who even are you?” Griffin asked, trying to sound strong, but still whimpering as he held his hand to his chest.
“Malachi. Malachi James,” he began in a calm voice. “Jackie? You know the woman who is gone? The woman you are obsessed with? She’s my sister.”
It was impressive to watch him work.
“You’re Malachi?” Griffin asked, growing excited.
No one responded to him, he must have taken that as an agreement.
“You're the first Advocate.”
Kai took a step back. “What?”
“It’s happening. It’s really happening. The seals are breaking,” Griffin muttered to himself. “I was right!”
Fai, Kai and I watched as Griffin laughed uncontrollably on the floor. He seemed filled with absolute joy. I didn’t even know how to continue and Kai seemed disturbed by his comment about him being an advocate. Whatever that meant.
Griffin slowly stood up, clutching his hand to his chest.
He looked at us for a moment. It was as if he was cataloging the three of us. “I can’t help you,” he said, breaking his own silence. “No one can. She’ll come back, you just have to wait.”
It was then that the orderlies finally had enough of us. We were ushered out of Griffin’s room, passing by a doctor who was presumably there to work on the hand I had most definitely shattered. He deserved it and more.
We were quickly out of the asylum and reentered the car we had arrived in and began our journey back to the airport. I had hoped that coming to New York would bring us answers about Jackie, but we left with just more questions.
I was growing hopeless. I peered out the window at the passing scene around me. She had been gone for two days and I wasn’t any closer to bringing her home.
“Do you know what he was talking about?” Fai asked, interrupting my train of thought. “The Advocate thing? Or the seals?”
I shook my head.
I had no fucking idea.
Missing for Three Days
Violet had an ambiance around her that made the pain of Jackie being gone more bearable.
She was sitting in Jackie’s office with me drawing pictures while telling me stories of her schoolmates back home.
It was incredible to see just how strong the James genes were.
I didn’t know anything about her father, but she seemed to be a replica of Theo and therefore also Kai and Jackie.
They all had their differences. Theo held a certain level of elegance in all she did, but the fire within sat close to the surface.
Kai was a strong, unbreakable force. He had carried the responsibility of his siblings from a young age, and was as protective as most fathers when it came to his sisters.
Jackie was light, beauty and joy. She was the first to smile and laugh.
But just as Theo held back her fire, Jackie held back her pain.
It was obvious she held tremendous guilt and sadness.
Her life had been tumultuous and left scars, both physical and emotional.
Yet it never held her back. She too was powerful, but in a way that drove out darkness.
I leaned back in my chair, fighting the tears that were always threatening to fall. I had barely slept in the last three days and only ate when Sarah or Theo forced me to. The only reason I wasn’t actively doing something to find Jackie was because someone needed to keep an eye on Violet.
Apparently, to report someone missing, you have to be a relative. Kai and Theo were at the police station now to file a missing person’s report. I hope Officer Assface was there. Kai would shut him up, fast.
“Hey Willey?” Violet asked as she looked up at me with her round blue eyes that matched Theo’s.
“What’s up, Violet?”
“Vi.”
“What?” I asked confused.
She sighed and whispered, “You need to call me Vi. That’s what Auntie Jack calls me.”
God, this must be so confusing for her.
“Sorry about that. What’s up, Vi?”
“Auntie Jack is gonna come home, right?”
She was so innocent. She didn’t mean to break my heart, but with each word I could feel it cracking. “I hope so. I-I need her to,” I responded, my voice cracking as the tears finally fell.
Violet stood quickly and came over to me. She looked at me for a moment before crawling on my lap and hugging me around my neck where I sat on one of Jackie’s office chairs. “Don’t cry, Willey.”
“I just miss her. A lot.”
She nodded in understanding, I guess as much understanding a five year old could have when her aunt is missing. She continued to hug me, and I guess we both must have fallen asleep.
The next thing I knew was Theo nudging me awake.
I slowly opened my eyes. I still had Violet in my arms, where she was sleeping soundly. I yawned and looked around. Fai, Sarah, Goldie and Oliver were standing just outside the office doors looking in, concerned. Kai and Theo looked at me, the same look filling their eyes.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to fall asleep there.”
“It’s okay. You needed it.” Kai looked at Violet in my arms. “You both needed it.”
Theo picked up her daughter and sat in the seat next to me and Kai sat himself in Jackie’s chair behind her desk.
“How did it go at the station?” I asked the two.
“Good. The report has been filed. They have someone at her house now and someone coming here to interview all of us.” Kai hesitated for a moment. “They want to talk to you.”
He was holding something back from me.
“Okay? I assumed they would.”
“No, Will,” Theo continued. “They think you had something to do with her going missing.”
I sighed, resigned to the whole situation. “I assumed they would,” I muttered as I rubbed my face, hoping to wipe away the exhaustion. “Significant others are always the first suspects. At least once they rule me out, they can move on to actually finding her.”
“You’re taking this better than I thought you would,” said Kai as he eyed me, almost suspiciously.
I shrugged. “Honestly, I am too tired and too worn out to care about anything other than Jackie right now.”
“You really love her, don’t you?”
I nodded to Kai. “More than I have ever loved a person. She’s my everything. My world. My reason. She’s it for me. If… if she doesn’t come back I don’t think I’ll survive.”
Missing for Four Days
“I didn’t do anything to her. She left my house that afternoon, we planned to meet up that evening, when I got to her place she was gone,” I stated, again. They had been questioning me for over two hours now.
“If you tell us the truth now, the consequences won’t be as severe.”
I sighed. The officer questioning me now was, wait for it, Officer Assface. Apparently his name was actually Henderson, but the longer we talked, the more Assface suited him.
At least we weren’t at the station. They opted to question me in Oliver’s office. Henderson’s partner was currently going through Jackie’s.
“Once again, I. Didn’t. Do. Anything,” I responded, enunciating each word.
Their questioning was completely pointless. They weren’t going to learn any more information from me. I had told him everything I knew about the case, about Griffin, and the cult. He immediately dismissed it as a conspiracy. Fai and him would probably agree on that.
We were interrupted by his partner.
Good, Officer Assface was getting on my nerves.
“Let me take a turn,” she said to her partner. I hadn’t met her earlier. She was young, most likely younger than Jackie, and her hair was an untamable bun of dark curls on top of her head.
Assface glared at me for a moment before nodding and standing to leave. The woman took his empty seat and looked at me for a moment.
“I don’t think you did anything,” she finally said, breaking the momentary silence.
I rolled my eyes. This was probably some good cop bad copy kind of situation.
“Great,” I responded in a sarcastic voice.
She sighed in response. “I know our questions may seem counterproductive, but we are only a few of the people working on Ophelia’s disappearance. We have people at her house, people calling Joey and Griffin for information. We are checking on every possibility. You just happen to be one of them.”
I knew she was right.
I had no reason to be so annoyed by everyone around me, but I was. I was so angry, mad, scared, annoyed. You name it, I probably felt that.
I couldn’t help but think about what Jackie was going through. Was she hurt? Injured? Scared? Was she even alive?
I shook my head, trying to stop the spiraling of my thoughts. “I know. I do… I just…” I began, but didn’t even know how to answer.
“You just want to find her,” the officer responded. It wasn't a question, but a statement.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“I do, too.” Officer Guerrero said, I finally looked at her nametag. “I did make some calls about Griffin.”
This caught my attention. I wasn’t sure how, but I was sure he had something to do with her disappearance.
“He was in lockdown at the time of her disappearance, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t involved.
His sketches of her indicate a clear obsession with Miss James.
” She paused for a moment before continuing, “I was able to make some connections between him and a few religious organizations. One of which may be associated with the Cult you have been investigating.”
“Wait, seriously?” I asked, excited about an actual lead.
She nodded. “Their beliefs and practices closely align with what you have ascertained from the Cult of Creatio. We still have people we need to question about this, but it seems like a viable lead.”
“Do you think it was the cult who took her?” I asked, hopeful.
“I can’t answer that. I don’t have enough evidence to make a clear judgment.”
“Officer Guerrero…”
“Scarlett, call me Scarlett,” she interrupted.
“Scarlett,” I continued, “Completely off the record, in your opinion. Do you think it was them?”
Scarlett hesitated for a moment before answering my question.
“Yes.”
Missing for Five Days
I walked into the Fibonacci Files office to find everyone sitting around the conference table.
I had gone home to change and shower because Sarah dropped enough hints that I smelled like, and I quote, ‘a public restroom’.
They hadn’t seen me yet and I took the opportunity to listen to their heated discussion.
It seemed as if it was Sarah, Kai, and Theo against Fai, Goldie, and Oliver.
“We can’t just assume it’s the cult,” Fai said to the group.
“No, but we can’t assume that it’s not,” Kai argued. “By immediately disregarding that possibility, you are disregarding a legitimate explanation for what’s happened.”
“We don’t even know if the cult itself is legitimate,” Goldie said to Kai.
“Maybe, but there is more pointing to it being real than it not,” Theo responded.
I started to chuckle at the scene in front of me, drawing the attention of the group. Jackie really brought the most diverse group of opinions together. Hell, Fai didn’t even know Kai existed until last week. Yet, here we were fighting.
Fighting for Jackie.
“What’s so funny?” Sarah asked me.
“Nothing. This, us,” I responded, gesturing to everyone. “Jackie would love this. All of her favorite people in the same room.”
I watched as everyone smiled, obviously agreeing. I walked around the table and took a seat at the end. I took one more moment to look at all of us.
We had journalists, a photographer, a psychiatrist, an analyst, a professor, and an Army Ranger. None of us were qualified to be heading a search for Jackie, yet here we were. For the first time since I walked into that empty apartment, I felt hope we would pull this off.
“It’s been five days,” Oliver said quietly.
We all knew that.
Griffin and Joey were both gone for five days. If the pattern remained the same, she would be home today. I had to hope the pattern would remain the same.
Sarah nodded. “What do we do now? Just wait?”
“No. We can’t sit around doing nothing. We have to search for her in some way,” Kai argued.
“I agree. We don’t stop looking, researching, questioning, until we find her. Until we know she’s safe,” I responded in earnest and with confidence.
“What if we don’t?” Fai asked.
I tilted my head, urging him to continue.
“What if we don’t find her? What if she isn’t safe? What if she doesn’t come home?” he asked in nearly a whisper.
It was a possibility none of us wanted to entertain. I just looked at him. I had no response.
Luckily, Kai did. “I won’t lose another sibling. We’ll find her. We have to.”