Chapter 24
Piper
Present Day
“Psst! Piper!”
I blink and train my gaze stiffly toward the window.
I’m stiff because I’m still firmly trussed up like a fucking Thanksgiving turkey, tape pressed to my mouth, my wrists bound together by duct tape, my ankles too.
God fucking dammit. Nancy Drew would never be so helpless.
But if I had any doubts before, they’ve vanished by now. I most definitely am not Nancy Drew.
“Piper!”
I blink again, and focus back on the window, where a head has just popped into view.
Josh.
The sudden apparition startles me enough that I manage to push all my overwhelming thoughts aside. I start to speak to him before remembering I’m gagged.
I can’t believe it. He really is alive, he’s fine, and he’s… dangling out of a… tenth-floor window, I realize, as I remember the button Quill pushed in the elevator.
“What the fuck, Josh!” I try to say, but all I manage to make are some very weird sounds.
“Hold on, I’m coming,” he huffs, and then, grunting with effort, he manages to hook a leg over the windowsill and pull himself into the room.
Then he rushes over to me while I stare at him, trying to wrap my head around how the hell he managed to climb up to a tenth-floor window. How he even managed to find where I’d been taken. Why he cared enough to look for me to begin with.
He grimaces as he takes in my gagged and bound state, then says, “This is going to hurt.”
With that, he rips off the duct tape from my mouth, and I bite down on a scream before choking out the handkerchief.
“Holy crap, Piper,” he whistles. “Look at us, living every detective’s dream. You’ve been kidnapped by a villain, and I’m freeing you!”
I repress the urge to roll my eyes, first because if there’s one thing I’m not feeling right now, it’s snarky. Second, because Josh did just somehow climb up ten floors to come rescue me, and that definitely doesn’t deserve an eye roll.
Instead, I gasp, “How did you know where to find me? How did you even climb up? Are you insane?!”
His face splits into a goofy grin as he works on freeing my wrists and ankles.
“Wasn’t that badass? Well, thinking back to your reaction at the name Quill Nelson, I suspected he was the one who kidnapped you.
So the first thing I did when I…” He interrupts himself with a grimace.
“... uhm, walked away, was to call 911, obviously. Weirdly, though, when the lady at the other end heard I was calling about you and that I thought you’d been taken by Quill Nelson, she hung up on me. Not very professional, was it?”
I shrug my very stiff shoulders. It doesn’t surprise me, but Josh isn’t waiting for my reaction anyway as he continues excitedly, “So then, I looked up his address. I wish I could say I had to interview a ton of witnesses and work my way to him by hunting for clues, but the truth is, I just Googled.”
This time, it’s a smile I’m repressing as he concludes, “Then, well, I’m sorry to say I didn’t use high tech equipment or anything like that to climb up.
I just asked the downstairs neighbor if I could use her balcony, and then I hopped up to this one.
It was actually very easy.” He makes a wry face. “But maybe we can pretend that…”
I don’t let him finish. I lunge at him and give him a big bear hug.
He gives me a big grin, looking very pleased with himself. “C’mon, Nancy Drew. Let’s go!”
I hesitate as he nods at the open window. I am legitimately insane, because the one thing holding me back is knowing how angry the guy who bound and gagged me then left me here would be.
Not because I’m scared of his anger. But because I don’t want him to be angry.
I’m nuts.
“Come on,” insists Josh, and the realization that I’m crazy forces me to action.
Quill isn’t here, and the mere memory of him isn’t quite powerful enough for me to fall under its spell. I need to take advantage of his absence to actually follow through on the promise I made to myself.
Find the fucker who killed my parents. Destroy him.
Without Quill’s physical presence crushing down on me, I’m not even sure he didn’t do it, after all.
Everything’s possible, and the first thing we need to do is…
“Let’s go pay Officer Jones a visit,” says Josh, and I stare at him, surprised, because that’s exactly what was on my mind.
Josh really isn’t that stupid after all.
In fact, I realize I’m the one who’s been drawing stupid conclusions.
Harsh, cruel, stupid conclusions. But when you’ve spent your life on the outside looking in, you don’t have much else to do.
Even the nicest person can quickly become judgmental.
And I’m not sure I was all that nice to begin with.
No, Josh isn’t stupid at all. In fact, he might just help me hunt down my parents’ killer.
“Let’s go, Ned Nickerson,” I say, and he gives me the world’s biggest grin.
__
“What the fuck?”
We’ve just reached the police station, and it feels like we’ve walked in on the scene of a crime.
No, not feels like. This is definitely a crime scene.
There’s yellow tape stretching around the block, and a bunch of police officers milling around on the outside of the building.
“What the fuck?” echoes Josh. “What happened here? Hey! Where are you going?”
I don’t stand with the rest of the Astley crowd, gawking while hanging back on the large sidewalk. Fisting my hands in determination, I stalk straight over to one of the policemen.
“I need to speak to Officer Jones,” I say. “My name is Piper Day.”
The police officer looks down at me, and I see my face reflected in the sunglasses he really has no business wearing on a winter day on the East Coast. I realize I’ve still got red marks left by the tape on my skin, and my hair is absolutely haywire.
My glasses are awry, too, and I hastily adjust them.
“I know who you are,” he snaps. “No one goes in. This is a crime scene.”
I feel Josh’s presence besides me as I insist, “But my parents were murdered, and—”
“Don’t care. No one goes in.”
I hiss in anger, about to lash out a string of curse words that would definitely earn a lot more than a mild admonishment from Quill if he were here, when Josh’s polite voice cuts in.
“Excuse me, sir. What do you mean, you don’t care? This young woman’s parents have died, and Officer Jones is heading the case. We really need to speak to him.”
Sunglasses turns slowly to face him. “Well, you can’t very well speak to him, since he’s dead.”
I stare at him in absolute shock. Jones is… dead? What the hell?
“What happened?” I ask in a strangled tone.
Before he can answer, I see a woman and a little girl leave the building, accompanied by another officer. The tears on her face tell me she’s Jones’ wife. But as she draws closer, I see her looking furtively around. She seems more… scared than sad.
“Take the tape down,” the officer who just walked out tells his colleague.
“The tape… down?” questions the other guy in surprise.
“Yeah. Not a crime scene anymore. Suicide.”
I inch toward them, trying to pick up on what they’re saying. The officer giving orders intercepts my curious glance with a glare. But the other guy doesn’t notice me.
“Whaddya mean, a suicide? There was a fucking bullet in the front of his skull. Clean, straight entry wound. I’ve never heard of a guy shooting himself in the middle of the forehead. How does your hand even do that?”
Sunglasses contorts his hand to show his commanding officer how impossible it would be to shoot a gun in that position. But the latter’s glare merely deepens.
“Don’t stand there like a fucking idiot. Come inside. I’ll tell you.”
My curiosity deepens as the older guy tugs on Sunglasses’ arm to pull him into the station. But he won’t get away from me so easily. I haven’t mastered the art of being annoying and angry for nothing.
I duck under the crime scene tape and follow them in, feeling Josh right behind me.
“Hey!” cries out the commanding officer. “Get away from here, Piper. You can’t—”
“Thought this wasn’t a crime scene anymore,” I say boldly.
I can tell he really wants to curse me out, but he bites down on his insults, giving me the world’s biggest glare instead. “What do you want?”
“In case you didn’t know, my parents are dead,” I snap. “Murdered. I want answers, that’s what I want.”
No matter how unfeeling Jones was, at least he pretended to care. This guy’s looking at me like I’m a cockroach infesting his apartment.
“They found out it was a suicide. Case closed. Go home, Piper.”
It’s my turn to bite down on an insult, but Josh has my back. “What the hell, man? Why are you being so rude to someone who just lost her parents? Why is everyone here such an asshole to you, Piper?”
How do I even start to explain? Come to think of it, I barely know myself. I only shrug as the officer scowls at both of us.
“Guess we’re at the start of an epidemic, huh?” I mock him. “Didn’t know suicide was contagious.”
He looks like he wants to punch me, but he restrains himself as another officer comes over and speaks in a low voice that I strain to pick up on.
“Head back in, Sam. Tell anyone who tries to come in that the police station is closed today. You can say it’s out of respect for Jones. We still have to tell the rest of his family. Come on, we have a lot of clean-up to do.”
I’m more pissed off than I can put into words. High school Pissed-off Piper has nothing on me right now as I watch them head back into the station, followed by all the others, actually locking the door to prevent anyone from going inside.
Clean-up. Yeah, I bet they do have a fuckload of clean-up to do. Beyond scrubbing the walls and floor of the blood spatter caused by Officer Jones apparently pointing his own gun straight into the middle of his forehead, it takes a whole lot of cleaning to cover up a murder.
But why the hell would they cover up the murder of their own chief of police? Who could possibly be more important than Jones? Who could they all be loyal to, even more loyal to than their own boss?