I sniffed again. “I overreacted,” I admitted. “My parents used to keep-”
He placed his finger on my lips to stop me. “It’s okay, you don’t have to explain.” I gave a weak smile. He dropped his finger. “Though you did scare the shit out of us last night when you nearly drowned.”
I laughed tiredly. “I scared the shit out of myself.” I looked away, out over the road and across the field. “We should get to work,” I said on a sigh, hating that I had to face the day instead of being able to curl up under the covers and rest after all the emotional drama of the last twelve hours.
He kissed my forehead again. “All right.”
I looked down at how we were sitting and blushed. “Thanks for calming me down again.”
He gave me a wink, causing my belly to flip. “My pleasure, pretty girl.”
I carefully maneuvered my way back into my own seat while trying to ignore what felt suspiciously like his stiffening dick under my ass. I reminded myself that he was a man and was likely only getting hard because of the friction. It had nothing to do with me. Though I desperately wished it did.
As Ryand I walked into the conference room, I noticed right away how SSA Walker turned to glare in our direction. I frowned at his expression, wondering why he looked so angry. We were late but only by a few minutes. Surely, that couldn’t have been enough to set him off. Then, I noticed the direction of his stare and felt Ry’s hand resting on the small of my back. He had been guiding me through the police station.
It was almost strange how comfortable I had grown with him in such a short amount of time. I’d never been comfortable around men before. I could honestly say that I had never had a friend who was the opposite sex. Though I wasn’t certain if I could describe our relationship as friendship, it had been so effortlessly comfortable and easy to be around him right from the start. The fact that I was attracted to not only Ry but Gage as well, and could secretly admit to being attracted to their friend Dante, was definitely out of the ordinary for me.
I stepped sideways, away from Ry, trying to make it appear as casual as possible. I didn’t want to make it seem as if I was catering to my supervisor. Still, I also didn’t want to make it appear as if I was welcoming Detective Nakamura’s attention, either. The situation was already frustrating, but I would be seriously glad when I no longer had to be concerned with protecting SSA Walker’s feelings just to protect my career.
I took a seat next to Monique and gave her a smile as I placed down my satchel and pulled out the laptop. I glanced up at the murder board, taking note of the additional victim who had been added yesterday. She almost seemed out of place amongst the others. Her gruesome death was an obvious sign of the killer’s escalation in violence.
SSA Walker passed around individual copies of the latest victim’s information.
“Victim has been identified as Carrie Mason, age 23. Recently divorced. One child, aged 13 months. The babysitter said that she was out on a date night with a man she described as,” he glanced down at his copy and read it with a frown. “Handsome, cocky, and somebody she just wanted to have a fun one-night stand with. The babysitter, nineteen-year-old Julie Carmichael, said that our victim met the unsub at the grocery store. They made plans for a date, but she wasn’t serious about getting into a new relationship after her recent divorce. She wanted to let her hair down— the babysitter’s words.”
I snatched the paper up and pulled it to me, reading over it furiously. It was our first real break. All the previous victims had been single with no children.
“Why did he go after a mother this time?” SA Thomas asked, confused.
“He didn’t know,” I said.
SA Thomas raised their eyebrows at my words, so I explained. “Why would a young mother tell a total stranger that she had a one-year-old child? They met at a grocery store. She isn’t going to tell strangers that information. She thought he was cocky. She just wanted to have a little bit of fun. She wasn’t going to bring him into her life. It was supposed to be a ‘hit it and quit it,’ as the guys like to say.”
“That explains the violence,” Monique pointed out.
I nodded. “The longer he held her captive, the more she would’ve begged. She would have told him that she had a child. It would have made him furious.”
“Because she was a lying whore,” Detective Morris said, and I glared at him.
“That’s what the serial killer would say.”
“And he’d be right,” he shot back with a glare of his own. “Women should be honest when trying to jump on a man’s dick.”
“And I bet you think that women are asking for it if they wear a short skirt or no bra. No is a complete sentence, asshole!” Monique fumed beside me.
“All right! Enough!” SSA Walker demanded. “This isn’t helping.”
SA Garcia spoke up, helping to break some of the tension. “Phone records came back. Three of the other victim’s last phone pings before being shut down permanently came from the tower out on Highway 82.”
“The only thing out there that three different women would have in common is the Lazy 8 bar.” Detective Nakamura looked at Detective Morris. “Isn’t that the bar that you go to to pick up women?”
The guy scoffed. “Me and half the other horny single people in the county.”
I hated the man the more he opened his mouth. No, I detested him. He was the worst sort of scumbag. How any woman could ever find him attractive, I couldn’t imagine.
“So it’s possible our killer picks women up at the bar. They leave thinking they would have a one-night stand, and instead, they get a week-long torture session while the killer lives out his fantasies of raping and killing his mother,” Ry says.
“Right,” I agreed. “Or his sister,” I pointed out, feeling disgust roiling in my stomach. “Though the killing of his mother part might not necessarily be the goal. It’s more likely, each time they disappoint him, he loses control.”
