18. Char
CHAR
Exhaustion flooded my body as my eyes drooped closed.
Just a few minutes. That can’t hurt, right?
My adrenal glands must’ve run out of shit to pump through my system, because the crash that wafted its way over my bones weighed me down.
Every time I closed my eyes for a bit of rest, my body would slump forward.
And every time it slumped forward, I’d jerk right back up.
I wasn’t about to lay down on the disgusting floors of my holding cell just to catch some sleep.
I didn’t want to sleep. In some ways, I knew even if I tried that I wouldn’t be successful.
I mean, there was still so much to do. So much to hold back.
So much to keep track of in my mind if I was going to get out of there.
So much to keep in line if my men were going to make it out of this alive.
I wonder what they’re up to.
To keep my mind occupied and not focused on how exhausted I felt, I thought about them.
I wondered if they missed me like I missed them.
I wondered if Rat was still holding up okay with things, or if the stress finally got to them.
But in the end, all I hoped was that they weren’t freaking out and doing something stupid.
I was liable to kill them myself if I got out of here only to find them locked up elsewhere.
I wasn’t sure how many times my head bobbed that night.
The last time I saw the clock was four in the morning before I decided to lean my head back against the metal bars.
It wasn’t comfortable. It hurt my back something fierce.
But it gave me the ability to close my eyes and not feel like I was going to fall forward and break my fucking nose.
However, the holding cell area door popped open, and it woke me right up.
The uneven cadence of the footsteps told me that it was Nielson, and adrenaline shot back through my body.
My heart slammed against my chest. My body came alive as I lifted my head and spun around on the bench so that I faced the metal bars.
I watched him like a hawk as he fiddled with his keys.
His face was completely blank, devoid of any emotion as he unlocked the door.
It swung open with a thud before bouncing off the wall, and Nielson had to jut his arm out in order to keep it from locking closed again.
“Come with me,” was all he said.
I did as he asked.
I kept my disposition the same, though. That same blank stare with those same dead eyes and that same crooked position my body seemed to mold to in order to make me look like a maniacal nightmare.
With my hair knotted up and my skirt still smelling faintly of piss, Nielson ushered me back into the interrogation room where I spent the majority of my day ignoring food that I now wished I ate.
And the entire time, I kept my stare locked with the ground.
“Miss Char,” Abbie said as she stood when I entered the room.
I heard the door whip closed behind me before Abbie held her arm out to my chair.
“Please, come have a seat. I also have another skirt for you to change into if you’d like.”
I nodded softly as I took a step toward the chair.
She sat down before she heaved her brown leather briefcase onto the table in front of us.
I eased onto the edge of the seat, watching as she popped the top of it open.
And when she closed it, she handed me a clean pair of underwear and a black, full length cotton skirt.
“It’s not much, but it’ll get you out of those. I’ll close my eyes, okay?” she asked.
I looked around the room before I took the clothes from her.
I didn’t stay seated, though. I walked into a corner, away from the door and from any windows peeking in, and quickly changed out my clothes.
I needed a shower. A long, hot shower where I scrubbed every inch of my skin at least three times.
One for every day I was locked away in that fucking cell.
“What are you talking about?” I heard Marcie ask.
“Hey! I need someone down here now!” Commander Hadley barked.
“What the fuck did you just say?” Marcie growled.
I slowly turned my head toward the closed door, but before I knew it, Abbie slipped her arm through mine. She smiled at me as I looked over at her with wide eyes, and she ushered me back to my chair.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
But all she did was smile and sit me back down.
“Abbie?” I asked.
She took her place in front of me and placed her briefcase back down onto the floor.
“Why aren’t you answering me?” I asked.
“Because,” she said as she crossed her leg over her knee, “I’m waiting for someone.”
“No. That’s not right. Get down there now. Knight! Get over here!”
“No, take Torres, too. Something is off about this. Something isn’t right.”
“Where the hell is the morgue again?”
“Doctor Who?”
My eyes grew even bigger as the commotion grew outside. Footsteps sprinted up and down the hallway while Marcie barked orders and growled beneath her breath. The morgue? Were they talking about Dr. Agemon?
Holy hell, did something happen to Dr. Agemon?
“Just breathe,” Abbie whispered as she reached out and patted the top of my hand.
I pulled my hands back into my lap. I cast my wide stare down to the black skirt covering my legs. I had no idea what was going on, but with Marcie so close, I knew I had to stay in character. That woman was as ruthless as they came, and I couldn’t let her catch me slipping.
Not even with how exhausted I was.
“Miss Abbie, please,” I whispered.
“Just a little bit longer, I promise,” she whispered back.
Then a recognizable cadence started down the hallway toward us. That uneven lumbering that refused to move any faster than he deemed necessary. The pitter pattering of anxious deputies and special agents swirled around the steady beat as the door behind me swung open.
The door closed and that familiar cadence came toward me.
“Hey there, Char,” Nielson said as he pulled up a chair beside my lawyer.
What in the hell was going on?
“Okay, Char. We’re ready,” Abbie said.
“You can look up at us now. Everyone else is preoccupied,” Nielson said.
I peeked out from beneath my eyelashes and saw their smiling faces, and it gave me the strength to pick my head up and drop the fa?ade. If only for a second.
“What’s going on?” I asked lowly.
The commotion died down as he spoke. “So a couple of bodies seemed to have popped up in the morgue yesterday.”
Abbie jotted down notes in her notebook like always as I held the sheriff’s gaze.
“They did?” I asked.
Nielson nodded. “They did, yes. One of the bodies is still intact, though it’s a good enough time along in its decomposition for rigor mortis to have set in.”
“Yikes,” Abbie murmured.
“But,” Nielson said as he nodded his head to punctuate his words, “the other body is pretty mutilated.”
Bait.
He had to be talking about Bait.
Wait, they found Bait’s body?
Oh my fucking God. What the hell did my boys do?
Nielson leaned even closer to me. “We’re not being recorded right now, Char. This is a private meeting. Ask the questions.”
I slowly panned my gaze toward Abbie, who simply cocked her head. “If it makes you feel any better, I told Dr. Agemon I’d let you know that he’s taking very good care of them both.”
I couldn’t help the tears that fell down my cheeks. “What the hell did they do?”
I refused to speak above a whisper. I refused to blow all of my hard work just because we finally turned a corner in all of this. I needed to know that my guys were all right. Did they do something stupid? Were they arrested? Were they all right?
Why didn’t anyone say anything!?
“Nielson,” I hissed. “What the hell did they do?”
Abbie reached over and placed her hand on the table, palm side up.
She wiggled her fingers, much like Commander Hadley did before, and I wondered if that was part of some sort of training they received when dealing with shit like this.
I took her hand, though. As much as I wanted to take the commander’s hand before, I didn’t resist the urge with Abbie.
And as she wrapped her fingers around my hand, she squeezed softly.
“I believe you,” she said.
I searched her gaze. “What?”
She squeezed my hand again. “I believe you. I believe what Sheriff Nielson told me, too. I believe Special Agent Marcie Dickerson is using you as a pawn in her sick games. I believe she’s gotten much too big for her britches, and she needs to be taken down a peg.”
More tears. More wide eyes. Jesus, they’d pop out of my fucking head if they got any wider.
“You believe me?” I asked, barely above a whisper.
Abbie nodded. “I see the way she looks at you. The way she smiles at you. Even Dr. Johnston, the psychiatrist, had something to say about it. All of us are starting to see that something is off.”
“Help us help you now,” Nielson said. “We aren’t playing the same game any longer. We’ve got those bodies. We’ve got labs that we’re running. It’s only a matter of time before something pops up that isn’t good. So let us help you now.”
Tears drowned my neck as I cleared my throat.
I slowly panned my gaze over my shoulder, wondering if anyone watched us from the interrogation room window.
These rooms weren’t like most rooms. It didn’t have a false mirror, or window, or anything like that.
It was just four plain walls, with the door housing a window and there being slits for windows on either side of it.
And when I found that no one was watching us, I turned back toward Abbie and Nielson.
“Have you seen the footage yet?” I asked as I looked over at my lawyer.
“She’s your lawyer,” Nielson said as he leaned back in his chair, “we made sure she looked at everything.”
“That’s my privilege as your lawyer,” she said. “I’m the only one who gets to know exactly what’s happening while battling something else out in court.”
“So what now?” I asked mindlessly.
“You keep doing what you’re doing, just in case,” Abbie said as she finally released my hand, “and let me do what I do best.”