Excerpt:
“Get
to the point. What’s up?”
She
sighed. “I don’t even know where to start.” The watch on her wrist buzzed with
a notification. She checked it, and her mouth tightened into a thin line. “This
case looks to be seriously fucked up. Not a whole lot to tell you right now
other than there were several, and I mean we’re talking numbers in the teens,
bodies found in this old house. Owner is this guy everyone said was super
quiet, always kept his yard clean, etcetera, etcetera. From what the neighbors
are saying, no one would have thought any of the horrors we’ve found were
happening in this house. Talking victims, all women, completely cut up.
Sometimes methodically so. As if he had all the time in the world to do the
perfect job.”
Mike
grimaced. “This is why I do protection and white-collar fraud. I could never
sit through those forensic shows you and Dwayne used to watch.”
Charlie
threw him a saucy smile, then went serious again. “Early this morning, a woman
actually got out of the house. Naked as the day she was born. Ran a few houses
down and collapsed on the porch but not before she rang the doorbell.”
The
mental image she painted had him wincing. “Jesus. Is she okay?”
Charlie
took a deep breath and let it out super slow as if she was preparing for
something. He braced, suddenly feeling a sense of foreboding. Whatever she was
about to say was going to mess him up entirely. That’s why she’d been taking
for-fucking-ever to get to the point. It’s why she was here in person instead
of calling him on the phone. It’s why Dwayne had sent her. She’d always had
ways of calming Mike down, even under the tensest of situations.
Except
for that one time. He shook his head, refusing to think about that now. It’d
been years since he’d seen her.
“Who
was the woman?” he asked, his voice rough. But he knew. The answer was written
all over Charlie’s face, from the grimace to the pity stamped across her faery
features.
“The
woman was Ava.”
Her
name spoken was like someone socked him in the gut. He let out a rush of air,
expelling oxygen immediately, as if it needed a place to escape. Kind of like
his body was fighting to do, too. It was amazing how one’s body reacted to news
or the presence of someone who’d made part of their life hell. That whole
fight-or-flight response was true, and as he thought of the Ava of his
childhood, and both the sister and the murderer of the first woman he loved,
his body was warring with itself, trying to figure out which response it wanted
to go with.
The
urge to flee was so strong, he actually took a step back. Charlie’s knowing
gaze sharpened on him, and she sighed, the sound coming out with a lot of pity
he didn’t need. It only served to piss him off.
“Look,
maybe we can find someone else,” Charlie said, shaking her head, then did a
double take at something over his shoulder and tossed a glare at the women
still admiring them from afar. “Those fucking women…”
It
was at that moment his mother decided to make an appearance and came storming
out of the house having found her shoes. His normally very demure mom looked
spitting mad, her red face a mask of irritation and anger.
“Shit,”
he said.
Charlie
chuckled low, following the path his Ma took to the garden hose, who then bent
and turned the water on.
“Shit,”
he said again, ignoring Charlie’s outright laughter now. He started toward Ma,
intent on intercepting her before she could open the hose up on the neighbors.
He knew her plan almost as if she’d put an announcement in the paper. “You
could help, you know,” he said to Charlie.
She
crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “Not a chance. This is the
best entertainment I’ve had in ages. Come on, don’t be a spoilsport. Let Karen
teach those hens a lesson.”
He
picked up his pace to a jog as his Ma started across the lawn, her intent now
screamingly clear. That the ladies hadn’t moved and were still watching on with
faces of various bemusement was baffling. “Ma,” he called. “Come on now,
don’t.”
“Michael
James,” she said, and he winced. “Go put a shirt on. I’m about to teach the
girls some manners.”
Standing
behind her in the doorway was his father in a similar pose as Charlie had been,
crossed arms and a smile stamped across his face.
“Pops,
come on,” he called. “Don’t just stand there.”
Daniel
Gonzalez shook his head, his chest moving with a chuckle Mike couldn’t hear.
“I’m not getting in the middle of this. Anyone want some popcorn?”
He
reached his mother just as she lifted the hose and pointed, then squeezed the
handle, causing a spray of what had to be icy cold water shoot out and over the
women sitting along the edge of the lawn. Shrieks and screams lit up the
neighborhood before he could grab the nozzle and push it down. The smile on his
mother’s face was the loudest of them all.
“That
should teach them,” she said, and he sighed.
Approximately
thirty minutes later, Mike took a deep breath, calling on patience and
strength, the confidence he’d grown as he went through weeks of training at
FLETC and the Secret Service Training Academy. His hands were sweating like
they normally did when he did any kind of public speaking, something he’d been
struggling for years to overcome. If he’d been in the gym he normally went to,
he’d be able to put some chalk on his hands to soak up the moisture, but as it
was, all he could do was rub them on his light-wash 501s.
After
his mother had doused the neighborhood watch ladies with water earlier, he’d
gone inside to change and had put on jeans and a pale baby-blue button-down. He
was by no means wanting to impress the woman on the other side of the door, but
he couldn’t escape the feeling driving inside of him. The one that told him he
wasn’t a young teen able to be pushed around anymore. That he couldn’t care
less what she thought of him.
But
all of that was a lie, and he knew it. He just refused to admit it.
Ava
Larsen had an impact on his life and who he’d grown to become.
He
was here at the hospital at his brother’s request to consult on a case,
apparently. There was nothing saying he had to spend any length of time with
her at all. He’d listen to what his brother had to say, would hear her version
of events, then he’d make a recommendation for what they should do next. That
was it.
With
another deep, calling-on-calm breath, he pushed and held the door open for
Charlie, keeping his eyes downcast as she entered. He blew out a breath through
pursed lips, then stepped inside and lifted his gaze to meet the sky-blue ones
of his childhood bully.
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