Widow
Sixty-Eight
Someone was going to die a slow, painful death, and I knew I needed to clear my head before I did something stupid.
The docks were closed until further notice because of what happened the other night.
Were they so obsessed with getting Rory that they would destroy her home?
I wanted to find this person and make them pay.
Cinder would’ve wanted his death to be long and painful for hurting Rory, and we would torture him even more for killing Cin.
My phone vibrated with a message from Melisa. I was getting tired of seeing her name on my screen.
MELISA
We found the body of a young girl. Meet me at the oceanfront.
Fuck.
I grabbed my keys and told the others I would be back.
This was something I needed to look at first before I gave everyone else a report.
If this person moved to killing innocent women, we would need to protect the town and make sure Rory never found out.
If she learned someone was killing innocent girls because he couldn’t get to her, she would give herself up to this monster.
Rory was selfless, and the guilt would eat her alive.
When I arrived at the scene, there were police cars, an ambulance, and CSI.
This was about to be more complicated to have Melisa deal with.
She might've been in with the police, but not even she could protect the Vipers from something this big.
If the FBI or someone else got wind of this, we would need to do serious damage control.
Melisa met me at my bike, pulling her glasses off her face and placing them on her head. She looked exhausted, which was understandable with the shit that’d been happening in the last few weeks. “She can’t be more than fifteen.”
“Show me.”
She walked me to the body that was purposely placed on the shoreline.
The girl was bruised, cut, and looked strikingly like Rory did when she was that age.
There was a note stapled to her chest addressed to Rory, something I knew I would refuse to let her see.
Melisa handed it to me. The writing was delicate, perfected to resemble that of a fairytale.
My Princess,
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess, but she ran away from her prince. He searched far and wide, but all he found was this. She was nothing like you, but she was enough. Come to me or there will be more.
Love,
Prince Charming
“If this person keeps killing innocent girls, I can’t protect Rory or the Vipers.
I’m going to figure out who this is, but there are no reports of missing girls matching her description.
If someone starts killing girls with families, I’ll have angry parents waiting for answers.
Hell, she might be from another town, and have a concerned mom and dad waiting for her to come home.
I need you to find who this man is, Widow, and do it quickly. ”
Adding yet another new discovery to our already mounting pile of problems was not how I expected my day to go, but with this person killing innocents now, we needed to be on the lookout.
Cinder was bad enough, but a little girl had lost her life because of this man.
I needed to see if anything had happened in Crestview, but I’d worry about that after I was done with this.
If Hades or any of those sick fucks in Crestview hurt Rory, she would regret meeting her.
When everyone was paying attention to me, I started going through the information we had, knowing this would be the turning point in this situation.
“Everyone here knows what happened to Rory when she was younger with Jude Booker.” I waited for them to nod.
“Rory has a stalker, and we think he took Cinder because of what happened when she saved Rory from Jude.” I paused trying to find the best way to word what came next.
“I met Melisa at the oceanfront, earlier. There was a body of a girl, no more than fifteen.”
I gave them a moment to process. “Was there anything else found with her?” Mal asked.
“A note addressed to Rory. He wants her, and he will keep killing people to get her. No one tells Rory. We will have patrols to make sure everyone is safe, but we cannot let her know.”
“You do know if she finds out we knew and didn’t tell her, she’ll be pissed as hell,” Vesper said.
I sighed. “Do you think we should tell her?”
We were already looking for Cinder, and I didn’t want to see the turmoil in her if we found out Cinder was actually dead. Rory had hope, and hope was a dangerous thing in situations like this. She wanted to believe Cinder was alive to hide the possibility that her stalker killed her.
“I don’t know, but her reaction will be bad either way.”
“We can figure that out later, but for now I will be with Melisa to find a way out of this, how to stop him, and I will keep everyone updated.”
Vesper pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’ll go through her office and see what I can find. Do you think Blaize would know anything?”
Blaize was a lifetime ago for Cinder. I knew they still spoke and we had a trade deal with the Reapers, but we didn’t communicate more than that.
“She may. Right now we need to focus on the now. I can’t chase women from other territories over a hunch or an idea. Blaize doesn’t know what’s going on.”