Chapter 1 #2
Thirty minutes later, Ned told the soldiers to stand down.
Violet’s hair stuck to her forehead and the nape of her neck, drenched in her sweat.
Her eyes were sullen, and her hands were clenched into tight little fists.
The moment Ned told the men to be at ease through their earpieces, and they took a step back, Violet’s shoulders slumped and her legs gave out as she collapsed to a sitting position on the mat that she’d been standing on for the last half hour.
She had performed every exercise perfectly, and was clearly exhausted.
With the usual grim look on his face, Echo lifted Violet into his arms, and carried her out of the room as April rushed to follow him.
They went down another hallway and took an express elevator to the twenty fourth floor, where Violet’s quarters were.
As soon as Echo deposited her on a chaise lounge in her large, marble bathroom next to an oversized jacuzzi tub, April moved to be at her side.
She gently brushed all the wet, stray hairs out of Violet’s face, waiting for her niece’s tell-tale weak smile that let April know she was okay.
When Violet didn’t move or make eye contact, April sat beside her, taking Violet’s hand in hers.
“Bubbles or extra bubbles?” She asked, trying to keep a light tone to her voice.
“Extra bubbles,” Violet mumbled.
April nodded. Bubbles meant just bubble bath bubbles, extra bubbles meant bubble bath bubbles and jacuzzi jet bubbles. Violet had so little control over her life that April tried to give her as much control over the little things as possible, including how she wanted to take her bath.
As April filled the tub with lots of bubble bath solution, she kept an eye on Violet who was slowly coming out of her dazed exhaustion. “How are you doing, Sweetie?” She asked.
Violet shrugged. “I was just thinking, one day when I can run a marathon with you, maybe I won’t have to do these stupid exercises anymore.”
The knot in April’s stomach twisted to an almost unbearable pain.
April would do anything to get her niece away from the clutches of Ned Dynam, but he was a billionaire, who had legally adopted Violet when she was just two years old.
No one else even knew about Violet’s abilities except for April and Echo, and Ned had made sure that April would never be a problem.
It was likely that Echo was in a similar position.
But the more time April spent with Violet, the less she cared about all those threats Ned had made when he first hired her.
If it took the rest of her life, she’d find a way to save her sister’s little girl from the monster who was hell bent on using her as a lab rat for his own personal and financial gains.
***
Homicide Detective Tanner Rhodes had been awake going on twenty-six hours since receiving news that the President of the Deathly Hollow Motorcycle Club, road name Arlo J, was found brutally killed just three blocks from his club’s headquarters.
He stood over the dead body, now lying on a metal slab in the morgue, as the newly appointed medical examiner was completing his report.
“Detective,” Dr. Thomas Huxley said, barely giving Tanner a glance before returning his attention to the body. “Our victim has ligature strangulation marks around his neck and two stab wounds to the torso, the second one went through the heart, splicing the aorta. He bled out within minutes.”
Tanner nodded, and pulled out his notebook.
This guy was so different from the last M.E.
who actually looked at people and wasn’t afraid to smile or make polite small talk.
But she moved to Austin last month, and this guy was competent, just a little rough around the edges.
“Seems this was personal. Anything else?”
Dr. Huxley looked down at the body, then back at his notes. “He was drugged with Fentanyl, and he has some old bruising on his chest and abdomen, but it looks to be about a week old.”
“Drugged. So, whoever did this likely didn’t think they could take him at full strength.
But then they also strangled him? Did the Fentanyl not work fast enough for them?
Or did they not give him a large enough dose?
He’s a pretty big guy.” Tanner was thinking out loud as he tried to stifle a yawn, but despite the no sleep he’d been working with, he thought he was actually doing pretty well.
“What about the knife found at the scene?”
“Not a match for the wounds.” Dr. Huxley picked up the said knife with his gloved hand.
“See how the blade is thin and smooth?” At Tanner’s nod, he went on.
“These wounds are consistent with a serrated blade that’s got a chip near the hilt.
Probably a hunting knife is my best guess.
There’s something else. I didn’t find any defensive wounds on him. ”
“So, he either knew his killer or his reflexes were dulled from the drug.” Still, Tanner’s suspect pool had just exponentially increased.
Living in Texas, he could literally point to anyone on the street and they would likely own a hunting knife.
“Could you narrow down the specific make and model of the knife?”
The medical examiner looked at him like he was full of shit. “I’ll see what I can do. Also -” He reached over to a small table and handed him a baggy with a smudged receipt inside. “Looks like our victim met someone for coffee the morning he was killed.”
Tanner took the baggie and glanced at the receipt. Maybe that was how the killer introduced Fentanyl into his system. Tanner snapped a photo of the receipt with his phone and handed it back to Dr. Huxley. “Do you have an approximate time of death?”
Everyone working this case was tired and overworked, and Tanner sensed Dr. Huxley’s exhaustion.
He’d already spent the better part of twelve hours in the lab with this body, and if Tanner had to guess, his work here wasn’t even close to being done yet.
The murder of Arlo J was hitting law enforcement officials hard.
Not because they gave a shit about him personally, but because solving this case and arresting the killer was priority number one at the moment.
Dr. Huxley sighed as he considered Tanner’s last question.
“Twelve hours before I first saw him. So, I’d say around nine in the morning on Saturday.
” Arlo J’s body had been stuffed into a dumpster behind a restaurant that didn’t have any cameras in the back, and didn’t open until dinnertime that day, so no one had even found him until well into the evening hours.
“Thank you.” Tanner was about to step out of the room, eager to get back to his desk where he’d left a steaming cup of coffee that was probably lukewarm by now, when Dr. Huxley cleared his throat.
“One more thing,” he said. “I found a hair on the back of his neck that wasn’t his.
I’m going to put a rush on it to run it through the system.
” At the raise of Tanner’s eyebrow, he continued.
“Hopefully we’ll get a DNA match and be able to put this case to rest before an all-out war breaks out on the streets over this asshole. ”
Tanner swallowed, hard. He’d never heard a medical examiner call a victim an asshole, but aside from that, this was the kind of information Tanner expected him to lead with, not filter through as an afterthought.
“Let me know as soon as you get the results,” Tanner said, then proceeded out of the room before he said something that would get him in trouble.
He was tired, on edge, and more than annoyed that he was still no closer to solving this murder case than he’d been when the captain had first called him about it.
Tanner’s cell phone screen lit up with a text message from Martin just as he returned to his desk.
Martin: Skyla and Blake went home today. Should we do something for them?
Tanner collapsed into his chair with a heavy sigh. He’d had a hell of a weekend, but he wouldn’t wish what his good friend and FBI Agent Blake O’Connell and his girlfriend, Skyla Madigan, had just gone through on his worst enemies.
He and his friends always threw a welcome home party for each other after they’d been hurt or hospitalized for some job-related injury. But this was different. Skyla hadn’t been shot or injured. She’d had a miscarriage.
Tanner had stopped by the hospital that morning, and the look on Blake’s face had told him everything he needed to know. Utter despair and sadness unlike anything he’d ever seen weighed on his friend’s features like a ton of bricks.
Knowing that nothing he said would change what happened or even remotely make Blake feel better, Tanner had chosen to simply sit with him in the small waiting room while a nurse tended to Skyla.
Tanner had no idea how long he sat there.
He’d just offered Blake what he could. A shared silence.
Saying “I’m sorry” was on the tip of his tongue, but it felt so cheap and wrong.
Sorry didn’t even begin to describe how Tanner felt.
Blake and Skyla had been happy. The baby hadn’t been planned, but it had instantly been wanted and loved.