Chapter 20 Beckett #2
“Do you need anything? I can get a heating pad, something sweet, or salty. Whatever you need, baby. You name it, and I can get it for you,” I say, sitting up. She laces our hands together and stares at me for a few moments.
“I don’t need anything,” she whispers, and I can’t quite tell if she’s lying or not.
“Are you sure? I can go get the heating pad or rub your belly. I really don’t mind. Whatever I can do to make you more comfortable.”
She looks at me and pulls her bottom lip into her teeth.
“Hey, it’s ok. You don’t have to cry, baby. You’re allowed to ask for anything you want this whole week.”
I cup her cheek with my hand. Making sure she’s happy, fed, and comfortable is what anyone should be offering her, especially after the day that she had yesterday.
“Can you get me the heating pad, please? That sounds great,” she asks, and I nod. I bring her hand up to my lips and press a kiss to her knuckles.
“I’ll be right back. Do you want some popcorn, a snack tray, or anything to drink?”
“Surprise me.”
I nod and let go of her hand. Mocha jumps up and curls around her. His body is on her belly, and his head rests on her shoulder. That seems to be his favorite place to lie.
She takes the remote in one hand and browses through one of the seven streaming services she pays for, while the other hand pets Mocha.
I leave the two of them and go on a quest to make the ultimate movie snack board.
It’s only eleven, and I know that she doesn’t normally eat junk food, but she deserves to have something sweet in her life, considering the emotional few days that she’s had.
I grab the heating pad first and take it to her, plugging it in before lifting Mocha and setting it under the blanket on her lower belly. I fix the blanket and set Mocha back down on top of her.
I’m sure that he will love it just as much as she will. I kiss her forehead and go back into the kitchen. I begin by grabbing some of her favorite snacks. I pop popcorn, make her some tea, and pour her a glass of pineapple juice since I read that it’s supposed to help.
“Here you go,” I say, setting it on the coffee table and pulling it closer to her so that she doesn’t have to move to get anything.
“Thanks,” she says with a smile.
“Of course. I’ll be right back, I’m going to change.” She nods, focusing back on the show she picked.
I go upstairs and change out of my jeans and into some gym shorts. When I get back to them, Mocha is already fast asleep and snoring lightly with his face still buried in her neck.
I gently lift her legs and sit down, placing them on top of my lap, and focus on rubbing her feet and her calves.
She lets out little hums of pleasure as her attention bounces from her phone to the TV.
I’m not sure what she is doing, but I don’t mind. I just enjoy being in her presence.
“Mmm, you should get Snapchat,” she hums. She’s sitting in my lap, messing with the filters on the stupid app.
“Why would I do that?”
She scrunches her brows at me as if I were crazy. “So I can see pictures of your face, duh.”
“You want to see pictures of my face?” I ask.
She nods, putting her phone down and turning so that she’s straddling my hips. She squints her eyes as she looks over my face. “Yes, I rather like your face.” She cups my cheeks, and her eyes scan over all of it. “Please,” she pouts.
I raise an amused eyebrow at her as she gives me puppy dog eyes. I roll my eyes at her and shake my head in amusement.
“Fine,” I say, unlocking my phone and handing it to her. She smiles triumphantly and downloads the stupid app, and spends the next half hour getting me an account and teaching me how to use it.
While she naps, I manage to slip away to my office for a little bit.
As I sit at my desk, I absentmindedly tap a pencil against my notebook as I scroll through some police reports on my computer. I’ve looked at these so many times that I feel like I have each one memorized. None of them makes sense. I feel like I’m missing something.
I pull out the profile that we created for the last Ghost Killer and look at the one we’ve created for this one.
Looking at them side by side, you’d think that they are the same person.
But the longer I look at the paperwork and the patterns, the more I start to think that we are dealing with a copycat.
There have been just a few inconsistencies that I’ve noticed that bug me.
The first is the frequency at which this killer strikes.
Last time, it was maybe a couple of victims a year.
This time, they’ve taken a victim every two to three months.
That’s a huge jump; most killers might get more frequent when they think they can get away with more, but not that large of a jump.
Second, we believe that the last killer loved stalking his victims, which is why he’d wait so long in between kills.
He’d get to know them, learn every single pattern, and get as close to them as he could before striking.
Whereas this one, they go missing for a week or two before they are found.
Sometimes it was months of these girls being missing before we ever found anything.
Third, the biggest thing that is tipping me off is the girls themselves.
He had a very specific profile in how he picked his targets last time.
Brown hair, blue eyes, white, single, female, very athletic, aged twenty-five to twenty-seven, enjoyed being up in the mountains, build around 5’3 or 5’4, and weighing between one hundred and thirty to one hundred and thirty-five pounds.
Very specific. Every single target was almost identical.
This new person doesn’t have that. They are athletic, aged twenty to thirty, and female.
That’s it. Nothing else about the victims is the same.
Some are tall, some blonde, some with green eyes, all different races. He picks attractive women, that’s it.
My head hurts by the time I’m done looking through my notes. When I get back to the living room, Sloane’s sitting at her laptop, scrolling through emails. She gives me a smile as she catches my eye.
I cook us dinner, and we spend the rest of the evening cuddled up on the couch, watching shows and sending Snapchats back and forth to each other.