Fuck this guy. “He had kids,” I say through gritted teeth. “People who loved him.”
“Just another rich fuck,” Burgess mutters, and I round on him.
“He mattered to someone. Rich or poor, we die all the same. But everyone matters.”
Burgess lifts his eyebrows at my passionate defense. I’ve said too much.
“Scene’s ready for you,” the head tech, Diego Silva, calls to us, and I thank the gods for the interruption.
The plastic covering on my boots crackles as I pace forward. For a moment, the room darkens, like I’ve walked through a cloud of black smoke. It’s not real; it’s just my extra sense kicking in. After a moment, it clears, and I lean in to examine the body slumped in the leather chair.
“Time of death is sometime after midnight,” Diego tells us. “But before five a.m. That’s when the custodian came in. He cleaned the floor below this and was going to end his shift with this one. He’s one of only a few staff allowed in here.”
The dead man has his elbows propped on the chair, his forearms in his lap. Under the blood-spattered cuffs are red marks on his wrists. No bruising, more like a braided pattern.
It looks strangely familiar. I squat for a closer look.
“Diego, did you see this? The pattern on his forearms?” The crisp white shirt is crushed where a rope might have pressed into it.
“Yeah, the lead detectives clocked it. I got pictures.”
I pull out my cell and snap a picture of my own, zooming in. “Rope marks,” I murmur. “He was tied to the chair.”
In an instant, I’m back at Club Empire with the mystery dom saying,If we scene again, I’ll use rope to tie you.
What sort of ties would he use?
Dammit, I have to stop thinking of him.
“So, what, the vic just sat there and let someone tie him up?” Burgess asks.
“He could’ve been drugged,” I say. There’s a snifter on the dead man’s desk with a few drops of amber liquid left in the bottom of the glass and a fully stocked bar across the room. “Could be the whiskey.”
Burgess must have already thought of this, and now he’s testing me. I’m new to the city and the force, so I expect a bit of hazing.
“They’ve already sent samples to the lab,” Burgess says. Yep, definitely testing me.
I’m still studying the red marks. “If it’s not a drug. . . it could’ve been consensual. Rope play.”
“Like some kink shit?”
I don’t say more. The last thing I need to do is out myself as a kinkster in front of my judgmental new coworker. As I move around the vic, I’m extra aware of the flogger marks on my back hidden under my sweater and leather jacket. The pain steadies me, centers me. It’s a surrogate to touch, the next best thing to having the dom here and holding me. . .
I close my eyes. It’s not the same as being blindfolded, but sometimes it heightens my other senses.
I sense the darkness in this room, the weight of death and violence, and I see a large, dark shape looming over the dead man.
I want to reach for my sketchbook and draw what I’m imagining, but Burgess’s heavy tread tells me he’s breathing down my neck.
“So what’s your deal?” he asks. “You think you’re psychic?”
And here we go.“The brain processes a trillion points of data a millisecond. What most think is instinct or psychic ability is simply the subconscious delivering that data.”
I straighten to see his blank expression. Like most men his age, he hides his confusion behind a stone wall.
“I’m just looking at the scene details and making guesses. Connections. Just like you or any other detective.”
Burgess’s eyes narrow. “Last case you were on, the detective told me you knew stuff. Stuff no one could possibly know unless they watched the killer. Freaky.”
