Chasing the Fall (Naughty and Spice)

Two

Twiggy

Bryce Savage pumps through my noise-canceling headphones, and I bob my head in time with his beat as my eyes scan line after line of messages. Most are either unrelated, unhelpful, or just obnoxious, but that’s the trade-off with these online chat rooms. If you know what to look for, gems of information exist.

They’re just hidden.

Probably the boyfriend. It’s always the boyfriend.

I heard she was eviscerated.

I bet it’s her boss. She worked at that club.

She had it coming.

Sighing, I exit the chat room and tab over to a national crime database I hacked into earlier. Earlier, I programmed it to run a search and find any similar crimes in other locations.

I kept the target field isolated to the state of Virginia, choosing to start narrow and gradually broaden if necessary. I input several parameters, using what I knew of Shiloh’s abduction, the previous area murders, and the new crime. A blinking cursor alerts me that the search is complete, and I click, revealing neat rows and columns of data.

“Bingo.” Over the last year, seven similar crimes were filed as open cases in the DC metro area, Baltimore, and Norfolk. Each of the crimes starts with a missing girl, usually someone working in the sex trade or another high-risk occupation. Weeks later, she turns up with evidence of torture and ligature marks around her neck. The cause of death is always a gunshot wound to the head.

The crimes have been scattered enough that no pattern sparked an alert. But I’m looking, now, and I see it. “I see you,” I murmur.

Taking several screenshots, I send the information to Jack using an anonymous and several-times re-routed IP address. Jack will know it’s me, but he’ll also have plausible deniability when he sends a request for more help up the ladder.

Henry Thurston is still active. The question is why, when he was flying under the radar in NOVA, did he decide to come back to Lucy Falls?

The whole thing reeks of unfinished business, which is not going to make Gunner and Shiloh feel better.

Tabbing back over, I resume reading the chat room messages.

I heard the dead girl worked at that gentleman’s club.

Don’t you mean strip club

I pause in my endless rolling, Savage fading to a dull roar in my ears as I re-read the comment. That information hadn’t been released in the brief press conference Jack led a few hours earlier.

Shaking out my fingers again, I crack my neck and type.

Where did you hear that?

Dots appear beside the username, then disappear. I wait a few minutes, but the user doesn’t return. “Shit.”

Pulling the headphones off, I toss them to my desk. Whoever it was got scared off. Someone who works at the club, maybe? Someone who knew the girl and suspects a link to the club?

Regardless, it reinforces my theory.

Thinking for a moment, I let my fingers hover over the keyboard. Taking a deep breath, I begin to type. This is going to stir some shit up.

But that’s what I want to do…dredge the bottom of a murky lake and bring light to the darkness. The message I add to the chat is simple.

I heard it’s Henry Thurston.

Replies initiate almost immediately, but they’re nothing more than gratuitous curiosity. I wait a second, then turn my screen off. I’ll come back later, see what that dragged up.

It’s late, and I should be in bed, but I’m too keyed up to sleep. In between bouts of computer work, I decorate my small apartment for Christmas, instead.

I step back and tilt my head, eying my scrawny Charlie Brown tree with a critical eye. It’s a potted pine, spindling and almost too ridiculous for the shiny glass balls I hang on each branch.

Only almost, though.

“Almost…” It needs something on that bottom right branch to balance the weight of the left side… Musing, I sift through the box of my mother’s ornaments, searching for the perfect one.

Ah. That one. The little glass hummingbird winks at me from the tissue paper it was wrapped in after its last use, and I unwrap it with careful fingers and position it. The tiny red bird was my mom’s favorite ornament, one she kept out all year round. She hung it in the kitchen window during the other seasons, saying she loved the way the sunlight flickered through the colorful blown glass.

I can’t not use it, having found it again. This is the first year since my mother’s death that I’ve felt emotionally stable enough to decorate with her things. This will be the perfect reminder of her when I’m feeling low.

I’ve just hung the ornament and stepped back to check its appearance when I hear a sound at my door. Not a knock, but a thump, followed by a slide of something against the metal.

“Brodie?”

I walk over and put my hand to the knob, waiting for Brodie’s response. Because it has to be him. Even though he and Cotton were supposed to leave earlier this evening for Ireland…there’s no one else who’d be here at eleven p.m. …not knocking.

There’s no response, and I try again. “Brodie, is that you?” He and Cotton were supposedly on their way to catch a flight for Ireland, but maybe they had to come back for some reason. For the first time, I curse the lack of a peephole. Brodie had installed a thick metal door and said it was enough…he didn’t feel like drilling a peephole through it.

The doorknob rattles beneath my hand, just enough to test the lock. I jerk my own hand back.

“Who’s there?”

“Knock, knock.” A laugh comes, low and insidious for all that it sounds perfectly normal. Just a laugh. One you might hear in response to a joke told in a bar.

“I’m calling the police.”

“Your voice is shaking, little girl.” A fist falls upon the door, heavy with intent. “You’re smart to be scared.”

“Go away!” I move away from the door and dial Jack, then inch back, leaving the line open as I get closer. “The police are on their way. And I have a gun. And cameras.”

There’s no response.

From the phone, I hear a flurry of tinny response—Jack, mobilizing. “Don’t open the door,” he barks loud enough for me to hear.

“You think I’m a fucking idiot?” I snap.

I whirl around from my position near the door as another sound comes, this time at the window. “Get the fuck away from my house! Jack, he’s at the window!”

“Stay away from the windows.”

Fear wars with the need to see who’s terrorizing me. Breath coming rapidly, I reach out with a shaking hand and snap open the shade. The lights are on, making it impossible to see out, and I flick the nearest lamp off.

Instantly, I see him. Henry Thurston, inches from the window as he stares inside. The screen is gone, popped out and lying on the ground, more than likely, although I don’t see it.

He’s not even trying to hide his identity. I guess he figures we all know his face so well, there’d be no purpose in it. Thurston smiles and flattens a palm against the glass, making eye contact with me.

“Such a smart little girl. Already figured everything out, haven’t you?” His voice is muffled by the glass, but I hear him clear enough.

“Why are you here, Thurston?” If I can keep him talking long enough, maybe Jack can get here in time. Maybe we can get this guy, put him behind bars where he belongs.

He cants his head to the side. “Why do you think?”

Without warning, he draws his fist back and slams it dead center in the lower pane of glass. It cracks, and I scream and leap back.

Fuck. Motherfuck, fuck a duck, he’s going to get in before Jack gets here—

Even as the thought crosses my mind, sirens sound in the distance. Thurston looks from me to his hand, dripping blood, and shrugs. “I’ll be seeing you, Tallulah Gentry. Round one to you, but the game is just beginning. Shiloh got away from me, spoiled all the fun…” He pauses and takes a step back. “...her friends won’t be as lucky.”

With a salute of his bloodied hand, he melts into the darkness and the woods behind my apartment just as a cruiser comes screaming into the driveway.

hours later, I stand in my kitchen with my arms crossed over my chest, glaring at Jack over the cell phone on the counter between us.

“That is not going to happen,” I say—loudly, just to make sure Brodie hears me. “No way, no how, you’ve lost your damn mind.”

“Then you need to get your ass to Philly where Kael can keep an eye on you,” Brodie argues. An intercom system bleats a flight cancellation announcement through the line, signifying his location.

“See what you started?” I hiss at Jack. He called Brodie as soon as he cleared the premises and made sure Thurston was gone.

He shrugs. “You need someone watching out, Twiggy. I can’t be here twenty-four-seven to play watchdog. I need to be hunting this guy.”

“Philly is not an option.” I shake my head, then realize Brodie can’t see it. “I’m not letting that psycho scare me from my home.”

His heavy sigh tells me it doesn’t matter. My opposition is coming through loud and clear, but one thing I’ve learned through the years is that you can argue with the mob all you want…in the end, they’re going to do what they’re going to do. “Then Kael is sending someone. End of. You’re too valuable to him and the Irish for him to consider anything otherwise.”

A growl escapes before I rein it in. I’m not unaware of my position within Kael’s organization. He uses my skills too frequently to ignore any kind of threat to me. Brodie has the ace, and he knows it. “I’m hanging up now, Brodie.”

“Either Kael or I will be in touch.”

I grind my back teeth together, super hard, to keep from responding, and hang up.

“Thanks a lot,” I tell Jack.

A grin ghosts across his usually stern face before disappearing. “Don’t mention it. Why are you so against Kael sending someone to keep an eye out?”

“Because I happen to value my personal space, and if I have some asshole underfoot all the time, I lose that.” Trying not to stomp like a petulant three-year-old, I cross the floor and fling myself onto the sofa.

“It won’t be forever,” he responds mildly. “You’ll live…which is the whole point.”

“Yeah, yeah. What’s going to happen tonight?” I’m suddenly exhausted, but I don’t know that I’ll sleep even if I do go to bed.

“I’ll be in the cruiser. And I have a deputy coming in the morning. You won’t be alone.” Jack crosses to the door and opens it. “Get some rest, Twiggy.”

“Jack?” I stop him just before the door closes behind him, and he pokes his head back inside. “I’m not afraid.”

His gaze softens. “Of course not.”

“Thank you for getting here so fast.”

He tips his chin. “Goodnight.”

And then he’s gone, and I’m alone. I pull my feet onto the couch and hug my knees to my chest, staring at the pool of lamplight on the floor. I should turn it off and go to bed, but God help me…I’m a damn liar.

I am afraid, and that light is staying on.