Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Rue
My heels click on the oak floorboards as I walk through the townhome’s main floor one final time.
“Well?” the listing agent says brightly. “Shall we start your application? This one’s going to get snapped up fast.”
I turn in a slow circle and take in the crisp white walls, the high ceilings, the crown molding.
“Amazing light in the mornings.” She gestures at the large windows. “Imagine starting every Sunday curled up with your coffee right here in the parlor, overlooking the adorable yard.”
Yes. I can easily imagine living in this beautiful place.
“Maybe,” I say instead.
The agent’s smile wilts when I take her card and promise to get in touch once I’ve made up my mind. But I’ve already made up my mind.
“It’s not for me,” I tell Felicity when I’m back in my car.
“Oh, come on,” she moans. “I vetted everything.”
“Sorry.”
When my search for a new place entered double-digit days, Fi took things into her own hands and set up a program to scrape new real estate listings for rentals, condos, and subleases that meet my list of requirements. It’s turned up several strong contenders. I’ve turned them all down.
“What’s wrong with this one?” she demands.
“It’s too sunny.”
“Too sunny,” she says slowly. “We hate the sun now?”
“I guess so.” I slip on my oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses as if that’ll prove my point.
“And remind me what was wrong with the four thousand other places rejected?”
“Only eleven,” I mutter.
“Mmmhmm. One was too big. One was too small. Four were too far from work.”
“They were!”
“Another one was too close to work.”
“I could see my office parking lot from the bedroom window. That’s not healthy, Fi,” I say as I enter the medical district, where my office is located.
She ignores me. “Two were too expensive. Then there was the one that smelled like… what was it, again?”
I sigh. “It smelled like soup.”
“And not any particular flavor, either. Just soup.” She makes a thoughtful noise. “So this last one… was it really too sunny, or are you too in love with your neighbor to pick one of these very nice places?”
“No. God. I just want to find the perfect place before I pack up all my stuff again.”
Also, the thought of leaving the duplex for good makes it hard for me to breathe sometimes. But I’m not dwelling on that.
Thankfully, she shows mercy and turns to other topics: Thanksgiving plans, where we might go on vacation next year, which of Dietrich Porter’s ugly ceramic vases she’s thinking of giving me for Christmas this year.
My mood is definitely not improved when I make it back to the office and find a stranger poking around my desk.
Not a stranger. Officer Lester Timms himself, out of uniform and holding my favorite coffee mug.
“Can I help you?” I ask, striding forward with suspicion simmering in my voice and nerves bubbling in my guts.
“Well, hey there.” He flashes me a shit-eating grin, not at all bothered that I’ve just caught him touching things that don’t belong to him. “Rue Bellamy, right?”
“Yes.” I take the “Cup of Nope” mug from his hand. “And you are?”
I ask it as if I haven’t seen him yukking it up with his cop buddies at dozens of death scenes. Oh, also, I know he’s a murderer.
“I’m Officer Les Timms,” he says. He fixes his eyes below my chin and takes his time dragging them down my body, spending an inordinate amount of time leering at my peep-toe heels before finally lifting his gaze to my face. “I’ve seen you around.”
Naturally, today’s the day I’m due in court to testify in a wrongful death civil suit, so I’m in a pantsuit instead of my usual business casual—or even better, the biggest Tyvek coveralls known to man. His greasy little smirk makes me feel naked.
I step forward and insert myself between him and my desk, arms crossed, using my body to make the point that this is my space and I won’t be intimidated.
“Can I help you with something?” I ask, my tone curt.
He takes an epically slow step back, making the counterpoint that he’s only moving because he wants to.
“I sure hope you can,” he says, rocking back on his booted heels and tucking his hands into the wide pockets of his tactical jeans, where he’s likely stashed a gun he treats better than his mother.
“Is it about a case?” I look at him pointedly, making it clear that I can’t think of any other reason for him to be here, off duty, while inside, my pulse skitters away from me. There are some very good reasons for him to be here, and all I can do is pray it’s none of them.
Timms smooths a thumb along his thick ginger mustache.
“Nah. I’m here about my stepbrother, Danny Vartan.
” His smarm levels recede a bit, but my alarm ratchets up just from hearing Hawaiian Shirt’s name spoken by someone other than me, Hugo, or Pell.
“He disappeared on Halloween weekend. No word to anybody.”
“Oh no, I’m sorry.” I turn my crossed-arm posture into something that reads as concern by lifting my right hand and pressing it gently against my heart. Unfortunately, that just directs his attention to the exposed skin above my neckline, and he sucks on his lower teeth. Gross.
“Thanks,” he says. “His car turned up in the park-and-ride lot at the end of the Blue Line, and nobody’s seen him since, him or his dog. So I stopped by to see if you’d picked up any cases with an unidentified body or maybe processed a scene showing a struggle or abduction, anything like that.”
Maybe try looking around your own living room, dude.
He picks up his phone in its scratched-to-hell Otterbox case and pulls up a photo of him and his stepbrother, back when they both had intact skulls.
They are, of course, standing on a dock, holding up fish.
To hide any microexpression that might flit across my face, I grab the stack of case notes on my desk, murmuring, “Let me review my notes.” I flip through them like I’m refreshing my memory on recent investigations, when in fact I’m remembering the feel of his stepbrother’s gun digging into my temple.
“Oh gosh, it’s what I thought,” I say, oozing sympathy. “We haven’t had anyone with that name come through, and I haven’t heard about any John Does, either. Sorry.”
His eyes narrow on me, the speculation in them making me want to squirm. But Timms is a member of the Philosopher Kings, so I know what he thinks of me. Might as well use that to my advantage.
“Then again, I sometimes forget little details.” I give a giggle and a helpless shrug, watching as Timms lowers my IQ by ten points. “I’ll have to check with my partner. He’s been here forever and knows everything.”
I catch Bart’s eye from across the open office and give a tiny jerk of my head, encouraging him to make his candy selection quickly and get over here. Bart bobs his head and drops his change into the vending machine faster.
“I’d appreciate that.” Timms reaches into his back pocket, causing his polo to stretch across his cop belly, and hands me a business card. “Call me, day or night, if he knows anything.”
I will not be doing that, but I pinch the card by the edge to avoid brushing his fingers and drop it onto the desk behind me.
But Timms doesn’t leave.
“You used to date Greg Whitfield.”
His abrupt subject change isn’t presented as a question.
“Yes,” I say shortly, even more nervous now.
“Funny.” The overhead lights catch on the sheen of sweat covering his shaved head. “He disappeared not long ago, too.”
I let the corners of my mouth droop. “I don’t think that’s funny at all. He and I hadn’t kept in touch since the breakup, but I hope he’s okay.”
Timms does his mustache-smoothing again, likely to show off whatever idiotic saying he has tattooed on his fingers, and props a hip against my desk like he owns it.
“Thing is, he was supposed to meet up with an ex the last night he was seen.”
“He was?” Shit, that came out high and breathy because—what the fuck do you mean, Greg told someone he was meeting me? I called him on a burner. I left no trail. But now my flustered response has Lester Timms really looking at me.
“That’s what he told a buddy.” He tilts his head and waits for my reaction like the veteran cop he is.
Every instinct has me shifting into fight-or-flight mode. I’ve never been confronted directly about any of my victims, and panic rises to choke me.
Keep it together. You led your sister through a fully engulfed house fire.
You held a burning door open with your body to make sure she made it to safety before you crawled out after her.
You can win a staring contest with one little prick of a man, even if you are guilty as hell of the things he’s asking about.
In the end, Timms blinks first.
“Whitfield didn’t actually name any names,” Timms says. “Just that he’d be meeting up with a girl who used to keep his dick wet.”
“Lovely.” I don’t hide my disgust at his turn of phrase. “But I’m a little more than that. We were together for two years.”
In fact, I recently learned that Greg did think of me as just a girl who used to keep his dick wet, but Timms doesn’t need to know that. So I arrange my face into a mournful expression. Just a woman who still misses that man of hers.
Timms takes one look at my sad expression and laughs.
“What’s funny?” My growl’s probably too aggressive for the worried-ex act.
“It’s just”—Timms looks me up and down and bursts into another guffaw—“I’m picturing a girl like you getting the drop on a big guy like Greg.”
He hoots and slaps his knee. I cross my arms and don’t join him.
“God, I needed that,” he says, wiping tears from his eyes before turning serious again.
“If you hear anything about Danny or Greg in your investigations, you come to me first.” He leans forward, pinning me against the desk as he reaches behind me to tap his card, the smell of cigarettes and mouthwash wrapping around me.
Before he leaves, he tosses me a knowing smile.
“See ya ’round, firebird.”
He’s just disappeared from our open-plan office when Bart finally ambles over with a package of peanut butter cups in one hand and a diet soda in the other. He hands the soda to me.
“You okay, kid?”
“Nope,” I tell him.
He passes me the Reese’s too.
See ya ’round, firebird.
Panicky, impotent rage burns inside me all afternoon, from the courthouse, then back to the office, and finally into my quiet residential neighborhood.
It burns even hotter when I pull into my driveway, retrieve my mail in silence, and walk into the duplex that’s no longer my home, my fear and fury blazing so hot that I might erupt into flames and finally become the phoenix tattooed around my scars.
Timms has seen it. That means Timms watched Greg’s videos.
Too bad I can’t kill him twice.
I walk through my house to the back deck, grabbing Hugo’s red blanket as I pass by. My shoulder throbs and pulls as I suck in huge lungfuls of late-November air, the phantom pain reminding me of the night that changed my life. Changed Fi’s life.
As cathartic as it would’ve been to track down the man who set the fire, he died alongside Mom when he got too overzealous splashing kerosene on her bed and wasn’t able to escape once he lit the match.
Sometimes the universe delivers exactly what a person deserves.
And what do I deserve? A sister I adore but keep at arm’s length. A job I love and loathe in equal measure. A set of skills I have to keep hidden from the world. A kill list longer than Mom’s. And a… a Hugo.
I pull the blanket around me as a tear tracks down my cheek.
Is the universe telling me I deserve a man who gives me sweet smiles on my driveway and violates my privacy once I’m alone in my bedroom? A man who kisses me like I’m his oxygen and kills for me like I’m his mission, then accuses me of the worst things someone could do to a person like him?
Sobs start to roll through me, and I drop my head to my clasped hands and hope the onslaught will extinguish the fire Timms ignited.
But it’s not the tears that bring me back to myself. It’s a cold, wet nose nuzzling my hand and a warm velvet tongue licking my fingers.
“Cosmo?” I rub my puffy eyes. “Where’d you come from?” He’s standing on his hind legs, his white front paws resting on my thigh and his lopsided doggy smile in full effect.
I snatch him up and stand to scan my backyard, but Hugo’s not there. It’s me and the dog.
He gives a sharp yip and wiggles, so I set him down, then brush away my tears and sit on the step next to him. He immediately climbs into my lap, licks my chin, and snuggles against my stomach with a contented huff.
“Okay,” I say softly as I rewrap the blanket to cover both of us. Hopefully his doggo nose can’t tell I’ve been sleeping with it since I carried it out of Hugo’s house the night of his concussion. “How’ve you been, boy? Is your new dad treating you like the little prince you are?”
He doesn’t so much as crack an eyelid, but his tail thumps once.
“That’s good.” I run my fingers down one soft ear. “And how’s Hugo? Are his headaches better?”
Cosmo’s only answer is a wheezy snore that makes me laugh softly.
“Let’s assume that’s a yes. Is he getting enough sleep?”
Is he lonely? Is he sad? Is he drinking the tea I gave him? Can he rewind time and undo all of this? And if none of that’s possible, can I please just fill out the application for that beautiful brick townhome and move on with my life?
My hands curl around Cosmo’s little body as he twitches in his sleep, and I wonder if he has any bad memories he might associate with me.
“Hey, so your owner was horrible,” I remind him. “He was so mean to you. And to me. And to Hugo. We didn’t have any other choice.”
Unlike me, Cosmo’s unbothered. I take his lead and let myself drift into my new favorite pastime: thinking about Hugo and every unexplained thing that’s happened since I moved in.
Tonight, I remember the birdseed in the feeder outside my kitchen window that never runs out as quickly as it should and the guy who used to hassle me at my favorite after-work bar but now keeps his head down and his comments to himself.
That’s two more entries in the running tally of things Hugo may have done for me without my knowledge or consent—although I’m still not sure if confirming my suspicions will make any of this easier or harder.
By the time my visitor yawns himself awake, I’m ready to face reality again. There’s no way to rewind time. I can only move forward.
As if he senses my need to move, Cosmo stretches and hops off my lap, trotting down the steps with his collar jingling cheerfully.
I watch him make a beeline to a spot halfway along the fence separating my property from Hugo’s, and with a few wiggles of his compact little body, he slips through a small crack between the boards.
“Thanks for everything,” I say too quietly for Cosmo or anyone else to hear. “Tell your dad I miss him.”