3. The Death of Todd
The Death of Todd
I endure delivery food and binge-watching shows for the entirety of my two-week punishment. And I spend every moment fighting the itch to message my soulmate.
James stops by a few days into my sentence to take my official statement. They already had whatever proof they needed to rule me out as a suspect, but someone from the club mentioned the disagreement.
I didn’t think I made that much of a scene, but whatever.
James also “accidentally” gives me a peek at Alexander’s crime scene photos.
The top half of Alexander’s body lies on the hotel bed. His eyes bulge from their sockets and point at the ceiling. Even in the photo, I could see his face is purple, and his fingertips are stained red with blood. He had fought and clawed to breathe while someone strangled him with the bed sheets.
My stomach heaves, and James’ eyes widen.
I’m not usually squeamish, but he had no way of knowing that the monster responsible for this is the other half of my soul.
Guilt eats away at me, but when my mouth opens, no words come out.
Standing in front of James, a fellow member of the force and another mateless, I should tell him. But what do I say?
I don’t even know my soulmate’s name.
I decide not to tell James, or Cathy, for that matter. Instead of getting involved in their investigation, I opt to conduct my own. Once I know who my soulmate is, I will have something to say. Until then, I plan to keep my head down.
Walking back into the station after my leave of absence, I feel the eyes of all the other officers. The moment shatters when Cathy catches my gaze.
“Thank fuck your back. Things have been boring.” Cathy heads my way, Rex by her side. “Sorry your ex died, or whatever I’m supposed to say. Shots on me Friday night?” She looks confused, entirely out of her realm regarding social expectations.
“Can I take a shot off you?” James asks from his desk, his eyes roaming over Cathy. The tension between them is thick enough for them to fuck on top of.
The phone on Cathy’s desk rings, and mine does as well, meaning we have a call from dispatch.
“See?” Cathy points at me with an excited smile. “Captain knows you need a little therapy.” She winks before hurrying to pick up the phone. The moment she does, the one at my desk stops ringing.
Rex doesn’t follow Cathy, choosing instead to sit on the floor before me, panting. He has chocolate brown eyes, just like mine. More than once, I have seen a greater natural intelligence in them than some humans have been capable of.
“Guy lost his soulmate. Now, he’s lost his mind. Holding another person’s mate hostage. My specialty,” Cathy says, putting down the phone.
She grabs her gear, and I do the same. Rex gets up to follow Cathy’s erratic steps around her desk while she ensures she has everything.
“We’re running backup,” James says, getting his things, and I know Tommy will pull their cruiser around.
“I’m driving.” I dangle the keys in the air, heading for the door, knowing Cathy will be hot on my heels.
“You never let me drive.”
I laugh. She’s right.
“I’m the one grieving, remember? I get everything I want because you want me to feel better.” I look back to see Cathy grinning. Part of me feels guilty for not telling her about my soulmate. If it wasn’t for the psychopath part, I would.
We make it to the parking lot, and a black Mustang pulls up beside us, engine revving. Tommy lowers the window, his shaggy dark hair falling over his sunglasses. His teeth are perfectly straight, and he beams them in a wide smile.
“Wanna race?”
I smile. Today feels like a day when everything will go my way. “You want to take on my Hellcat? Again? Didn’t you learn anything from the last two times you tried?”
James passes me, going around the front of the cruiser to get in the passenger side.
“I didn’t have a head start then.” Tommy flips on the sirens and his tires squeal as he pulls away.
“Fuck no,” I breathe, taking off in a sprint for my cruiser. “Get in!” I yell to Cathy as I yank the door open.
She runs around, opening the back door for Rex before jumping into the passenger seat. I already have the sirens blaring when her ass hits the leather. We squeal out of the parking lot as she struggles to get her seatbelt on. I can see the Mustang ahead and press the gas pedal to the floor.
The engine roars beneath my feet, sending vibrations through my body.
I feel alive.
I swerve around James and Tommy, not needing to worry about the self-driving electric cars that have cleared the path for our drag race. Cathy pulls up the directions on the car’s screen, and I shift gears, leaving the Mustang in our wake.
We arrive at the scene in the middle of the mated corporate complex.
This type of street features buildings that stretch high into the sky.
Each wealthy business owner trying to compete in their own phallic competition.
It isn’t like they can show off trophy wives or mistresses, like the heathens before us who were cut off from their soulmates.
A man stands in front of one of the tall buildings, using a hysterical woman as a shield while pointing a gun at her head. A man in a tailored suit, his face etched with fear pleads with the gunman, his voice cracking in desperation.
It isn’t hard to figure out who is who in this situation.
“I’m going to talk to him,” Cathy says, opening the door and exiting the cruiser.
I grab my handle, hurrying after her while looking down the street. The sound of approaching sirens pierce the air, though they are still several minutes away.
“Want to wait for backup?” I call after her, but she’s already striding toward the man with a gun.
“What’s going on?” Cathy shouts as she approaches, sounding more curious than accusing.
“He killed her,” the man holding the gun growls, gesturing toward the man in the suit, using the barrel as a pointer.
Being part of the club, Cathy is one of the best officers to handle dead-mate disturbances. She knows their pain in a way I can’t understand. She needs to get him to focus on her, and she can talk him into surrender. I have seen her handle these types of situations a handful of times. She’s good.
I couldn’t stop the man in the suit from opening his mouth and cutting off Cathy.
“It was an accident. We already held a trial and I’ve been pardoned.
” The man looks at Cathy as if explaining himself before turning back to the man holding a gun to his soulmate’s head.
“I’m so sorry. I know you must be hurting. ”
The man presses the gun against the woman’s temple again, making her screech and cry out.
“You don’t. But you will.”
Dread settles in my heart as I watch the gunman’s upper lip curl.
Cathy draws her gun from her holster, and I reach for mine.
Cathy yells, “Stop.”
Two shots ring out.
The formerly hysterical woman is silenced as her head jerks back, a hole appearing in the middle of her forehead. The man using her as a shield holds his gun straight out, and smoke leaks from the end of the barrel.
Cathy falls to her knees.
I aim at the middle of the man’s chest and fire every shot in my magazine. He falls to the ground. The sound of sirens blare behind me. Looking over at Cathy, I see her slumped to her side, and I move toward her. My mouth opens as I try to yell her name, but all I can hear are the sirens.
Cathy is lying on the ground, her hand pressed against her chest. Red blossoms between her fingers and a trickle of blood trails down one side of her mouth. Her eyes are open, but she can’t see me.
She’s with her soulmate now.
Hands land on me, and I watch James rush past. He falls to his knees beside Cathy before grabbing his radio. I watch him but can’t hear anything other than the sirens.
“Are you injured?” Tommy’s face swims into view, blocking the sight of James moving Cathy.
“I don’t think so.” The words come out automatically.
“He’s alive.” James’ voice snaps my muscles into action, and I push Tommy to the side to look around him.
Cathy is still lying motionless on the grass. Her eyes are closed now, and her hands rest peacefully by her sides. James is crouching beside the man lying in the grass. The one I shot.
Tommy gets up, leaving me to head for the dead woman in the arms of her distraught soulmate.
An ambulance arrives. Great, more sirens .
Thankfully, they cut off when it parks, leaving just the flashing lights to bounce off the buildings. More people rush past me, crowding around Cathy and the shooter. The people work frantically for him, but the ones near Cathy move slower.
Because there’s nothing they can do.
The shooter is loaded into the ambulance while my partner is pronounced dead, along with the other woman. I look at the back of my cruiser and see Rex barking in the back seat. The window is covered in spit from his snarling, snapping jaws.
“Looks like you need to go pet shopping,” Tommy says, putting his hand on my shoulder.
Dark humor and violence, that’s how we cope.
“I’m not keeping the fucking dog.”
He moves on, laughing at me, but the sound is drowned out by the scream of the sirens when the ambulance peels away.
I hope he fucking dies on the trip to the hospital.
“Hey, Tommy,” I call out, making him stop and turn to face me. “Can you make sure I get his name?”
“It’s Todd Angler,” Tommy calls back.
I nod, feeling the familiar craving that comes from my kit. Looking at the growling shepherd in my backseat, I know I’ll have to stop at the store for a few things.
Might as well add vodka to the list.
I stand apart from the group of mourners dressed in black. The only thing I own in the color is my little black dress, which I wore along with the thigh-high black boots. Cathy wouldn’t have wanted me any other way.
Rex sits beside me, his ass half leaning against my calf while he endures the service better than I do. The three empty mini-bottles of vodka in my purse are proof enough.
Several other mourners stand around the rectangular hole Cathy’s casket has been lowered into. Tommy and James are huddled together with the other officers from our precinct. Captain stands stoically in his freshly ironed suit, which will soon be drenched by the impending storm.
I can’t help my gaze from wandering toward the front of the large cemetery. A large group of black stands in rows of pairs. That is the funeral of Todd Angler. Of course, they had to plan his service for the same time as the woman he killed.
Todd had arrived at the hospital in critical condition and was stabilized by the next day. His sudden and complete turn for the worse is still a mystery to the doctors.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter that he had jumped off the deep end and killed a police officer. All that was swept under the rug of ‘pain caused by the loss of his soulmate.’ Yet, the police officer, the hero he killed, is lowered into the ground with hardly a dozen to mourn the loss.
It isn’t fucking right.
This is how the mateless mourn. With a slap to the face in death, just in case we thought that was the end of our torment.
The first drops of rain fall. A heavy one lands on my shoulder, and I imagine the sky is crying just for Cathy. At least the world knows what it lost.
I look at the other congregation, and a lone patch of darkness catches my attention. While everyone else stands in pairs, a person dressed in black sits atop a matching electric motorcycle. A helmet blocks the face, but the build suggests it’s a man.
He’s looking our way.
I stare back, feeling his gaze directly on me even though he’s at least a hundred yards away. He wouldn’t be able to make out my features from that distance.
“May she find peace reunited with her soulmate,” Captain says, the send-off for every funeral, and I look back at Cathy’s casket.
I’m being paranoid. It’s probably one of Cathy’s one-night stands coming to pay his respects. She was known for her blowjobs, which is undoubtedly something to mourn.
I glance back and the motorcycle and the driver are gone.
As if it had all been a figment of my imagination from the start.
I am fucking paranoid. Guess that’s what I get for standing in the same cemetery as the man I killed.
Writing his name on my arm in blood had been easy.
My bullets should have done the job the first time.
A self-driving cab takes me home while rain pounds against the wide glass windshield.
I sit in the backseat, putting my life in the hands of computer programming.
It’s not like I could drive any better with the last two bottles of vodka added to the empties in my purse.
Rex sits on the seat next to me, panting and fogging up the windows.
“Can you not?”
I raise an eyebrow at Rex; he looks my way and seems to mirror the expression before shutting his mouth.
“Thank you,” I huff, turning back to look out the window.
As soon as I unlock the front door, Rex rushes past me. He heads straight for his bowl and sits down, looking back over his shoulder with his mouth hanging open again.
“It’s not time for dinner,” I say, heading into the kitchen to grab another bottle of vodka from the shelf. “But it’s five o’clock somewhere,” I mutter, unscrewing the cap.
Rex whines. It sounds more like an accusation. To avoid further guilt trips, I give in and serve him an early dinner.
“I’m mourning,” I add defensively as I head for my bedroom with a glass of vodka and cranberry.
With the door shut and locked, Rex is free to roam the other side of my house. Going over to his side when I need company feels a little less strange. That side is also a mess now from his constant shedding.
I need to grab a brush the next time I go to the store.
My kit sits on the table beside the bed, and I pull my boots from my feet as I make my way over. I’m pretty sure I was just being paranoid at the funeral, but I can’t shake the feeling that something was off about the man on the motorcycle. Something in my gut tells me he wasn’t there to mourn.
Only one way to find out.
I saw you
The words sink into my skin, and I hope they come across as accusing as they’re meant to be. A reply comes back a moment later. The marks are as black as my soul is turning.
I saw you.
I note the period, the only noticeable change other than the color. The handwriting is nearly identical to mine, and I can’t help but stare at it. More black lines form on top of the message.
My phone rings, vibrating against the top of the table beside the bed. I make out the new message layered on top of the old one.
Pick up the phone.