Chapter Twelve

 

Unease flooded his body as he drove through the streets and every time he came to a stop light he felt like screaming. That same nagging feeling he felt, before the serial killer started on his rounds, came back and he bit down on his tongue to try and feel something. There was a little sting and he opened his mouth before closing it again. His fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly as he tried to navigate through the morning traffic.

He didn't like the idea of leaving Priety alone but what else could he do? He couldn't keep bringing her along with him everywhere he went. It wasn’t fair to her and what if they never caught the killer? The thought caused Luke to tighten his jaw resulting in a sharp grinding sound as his teeth pressed together. The thought of never catching that monster made him sick to his stomach and angry as hell.

He shoved his hand down over the horn as someone cut him off and then slowed down almost causing him to slam into their back. The man flipped him the bird and hurry or not, Luke stuck his siren on his dash and pulled the man over. He generated a ticket from the small computer in his dash board then slowly walked over to the man's window. “Here you go, courtesy of the Edison PD,” Luke told the man bitterly while handing him a ticket. He hardly ever had to do that anymore but the jerk got on his nerves. “Have a marvelous day, Punk.” He knew his voice was dripping with sarcasm but Luke couldn't care less.

He hurried back to his vehicle and sped off again but this time he left the siren on.

Rushing into the station house, he signed in and took off for Chen's office. It struck him as odd that Chen wasn't there yelling into his phone but he only dwelled on that for a second. He was frowning as he saw the man sitting in Chen's chair. That was the last person he ever wanted to see again.

“And they said this day couldn't possibly get any worse,” he muttered before pushing open the door.

Walking into the office he let his tired body fall into a chair across from his chief's desk. “This better be important,” he growled.

“Detective Stanton,” the man spoke to Luke.

“Where's the Chief?” Luke wanted to know instead of answering the man's greetings.

“Miss me?”

“Like hemorrhoids.”

“What? No, oh it's you...no, up yours Larson?” Christopher Larson, Internal Affairs and giant jerk extraordinaire teased, but Luke was beyond jokes, he was in a hurry.

“See? Normally I would have been in the mood to play your little games, but today isn't one of those days. What do you want?”

Christopher Larson had been a giant pain in Luke's side since the first day Luke made detective. It was as though Larson was waiting on that very day to start flexing his proverbial muscles. He probably took Luke for a sucker who didn't know much about the force but Luke had friends—and family—in high places and all the little tricks Larson thought Luke didn't know, Luke mastered by age seventeen.

Luke hated show-offs, teacher's pets and know-it-alls. Nothing grated on his nerves more than a man who talked too much and not say anything at all.

“Well, your chief couldn't be here. He said something about leave of absence as he gunned the engine of his Lancer out the parking lot; so he asked me to stand in for him and IA is looking into some allegations of a leak here so they sent me. I'm filling in until Chen gets back.”

“And I care because...”

“We know the leak didn't come from you. There is no risk in telling you because you seem to know how to keep your mouth shut.”

Luke stood up and turned for the door when Larson's voice stopped him cold, “I have some information for you.”

“Well?”

Larson handed the folder to Luke. “They've managed to recover the data that got fried on Jacob's computer.”

Luke hurriedly flipped it open and scanned the contents.

“Did you see this?”

Larson shook his head.

Luke returned his attention to the contents of the folder. He read the information before him and tilted his head. Picking up the first picture he arched a brow. It was a sketch artist rendering of something that resembled a shark jumping through a ring of fire. Frowning he turned the picture to Larson. “What's this?”

“A tattoo,” Larson spoke. “We spoke to a witness over on Lombardi that said a man with that tattoo bought a hunting knife from him a few months ago. Real high end too.”

“So the bastard's got style,” Luke spat. “Thanks for this.” Luke dropped the picture back into the folder and hurried from the room while tossing a half-hearted wave over his shoulder.

Pushing into the office for Trace, he dropped the file down on the desk. “Find out who this belongs to. Fax me a copy at my place.”

“But...” Mitch Clemons started to object.

“As of now, this is your only project. Got that?”

“Got it...ah before you go, I had some stuff faxed over to me by some guy named Larson just now. He said you might be interested in it.”

Briefly Luke wondered how Larson knew he would be heading to Trace but shook his head and leaned his tired body against a large filing cabinet. “What is it?”

“He sent me the autopsy reports on the victims from your Ojo Killer.”

“And?” Luke asked in a voice sounding like a bear that had been poked one too many times.

“And each of the victims had black sand in the wounds,” Mitch explained as his fingers typed away at his keyboards. “Before you say and again. There's only one place in Edison or surrounding counties that you can find black sand.”

“Brair Beach!” Luke stared at the computer over Mitch's shoulder.

“Give the man a cookie!”

“But that's in the ghettos. These women were middle and upper class they wouldn’t be caught dead in the ghettos—forgive the pun.”

“Uh-huh,” Mitch nodded. “But it still remains that you're looking for someone from there or someone who would have a reason to be there for an extended amount of time.”       “It could be anyone living there and that place is huge!” Luke ran a hand over his head. He didn’t have time to shave and his head showed some growth of hair. “Let's think about this.”

Luke stewed over this new set of information for a while and paced the limited space permitted in the lab. “The sand was found in the gunshot wounds?”

Mitch nodded again.

“Ballistics report?” Luke questioned.

Mitch rolled across the small space, narrowly missing Luke's toes, to a beeping printer and grabbed the printout, “A Taurus Twenty Four Seven,” he read. “The striations match a Taurus but it didn't match anything in our database.”

Taking the paper from his hand, Luke read the report. Particles of sand were found on the bullets, the gun had small traces of rust. “Surprise, surprise the gun isn't registered. Thanks, Mitch.”

“Oh wait!” Mitch yelled as one of his many screens in the room beeped. Luke turned around to see Mitch picking up a piece of paper.

“Ah, we didn't find out who the tattoo belonged to, but we found out who did it.”

“Even better,” Luke grinned and walked over.

“Death Star Designs over on Lombardi.”

Thanking the young lab tech, Luke left the labs and once again sat in his office rummaging through his desk.

“Where are you?” he muttered. Something on the file had caught his attention. He was sure he had seen that tattoo before.

 

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

The pictures in her head came out of nowhere. Everything from her parents' death to the crime she witnessed and then nightmares she had all her life, all mangled into one. To soothe her were memories of Luke and how loving he was to her after they made love. Images of the storm that captured his eyes and completely whispered to her soul made her moan.

Priety moaned and remembered she had to finish folding the laundry and then finish dinner. “Dinner! Oh no! The stove is on!” She moved her feet to run to the kitchen but something stopped her. She tried to bend forward to see what was around her ankles but her arms were restrained. Panicking she yanked but nothing happened. The cuffs just started digging into her wrists.

“What the...” she started but then it dawned on her.

“You have caused me so much trouble,” the voice spoke out of the darkness to her left and she gasped. The voice was cold and heartless but it sounded different than the one from the tape. The one on the tape was obviously altered to hide the man's voice and identity; she was hearing the real voice.

“You have interrupted something that was supposed to be fun for me and so help me I'm going to make all of you pay!”

What he said didn't sink in because she was busy trying to figure out why she was shackled and where she was. “Where am I?”

“That's for me to know and you to find out. And don't worry. I turned off your stove for you.”

“How considerate.”

“Your sarcasm doesn't escape me, Miss Roshan, but I'm going to let that go.”

Tugging again she groaned.

 “You'll only cut yourself open doing that, Miss Roshan, so don't bother.”

“You won't get away with this.”

“And in fear of sounding like every television bad guy out there, who's going to stop me?”

The man stepped out of the darkness and faced her. She gasped. “You! It was you all along? Luke is going to get you for this!”

Fear was replaced by anger inside of Priety and she wanted to rip his eyes out. She wanted to do to him the same thing he did to all those other women and was about to do to her.

“The man can't even catch a cold! I mean, I am right under his nose and he couldn't catch me. What makes you think he's going to be able to now? Well, my dear, the game has just gotten interesting.”

Priety tugged again but this time warm liquid began dripping down her arm and she looked up. She was bleeding, just like he warned earlier but she couldn't let that affect her. It dawned on her that if she bled too much she would pass out or die but she would have to take those chances.

* * * *

Luke entered the house and locked the door behind him then turned around with his arms opened. When Priety didn't come bolting at him or appear at all he arched a worried brow. “Priety?” he called and dashed up the stairs. “Priety!”

Shoving open each door his apprehension turned into stress, anger even longing as each room bore no sign of Priety. He returned down the stairs and into the kitchen. There on the table the note stared back at him like a kick in the groin.

Detective,

You should know better. Locked doors and windows do not a prison make.

“Oh God...” Luke felt the strength to hold his body up leave as he slumped to his knees. He crushed the letter into a tight fist and growled as he hurled it across the room. Grabbing a nearby chair he gritted his teeth and shoved, sending it across the room into the wall. How could he have been so stupid? Grabbing a hold of piece of furniture, he managed to push himself to his feet.

Swiping his hand across the large desk sent everything on it across the room. He looked around the room helplessly. Luke told Priety he felt like giving up but how could he give up now? He could have spent the rest of his life protecting Priety from the psychopath , Ojo Killer, but now the killer had Priety; what was he to do?

Luke knew if anything happened to her he would never be able to forgive himself. Every time he thought of Priety being harmed or killed, his heart beat erratically.

Maybe his heart was trying to tell him he could not live without this Indian woman who stormed into his life and brought with her innocence, second chances, mind blowing passion and a deranged serial killer. Priety was the woman who cured Luke of his fear to be intimate with another woman and that meant more to him than he realized.

Luke stumbled from the kitchen, bracing himself against the wall and any piece of furniture he could into the living room. He was reaching for the phone when it rang. Diving over the coffee table, he chucked the phone off the hook, “Listen to me you sick son of a bitch...”

“Whoa!” Keegan's voice was confused. “What did I do to deserve such a sexy greeting?”

“Sorry, Bro, but he's got her,” Luke spoke through gritted teeth.

“Say what now?”

“The killer has Priety! Damn, I shouldn't have left her but I couldn't bring her along with me down to the house for my meeting...”

“All right, sit tight, I'm gonna gather the boys and get over there.”

“You can't ask me to just sit here...”

“I know you want to go out and beat the crap out of something or someone. But we have to do this right or this jack-off could walk on a technicality. You got that?”

Luke nodded. “Got it. But I can't just sit here while she's out there somewhere...”

“Damn it, Luke!”

“I got it!”

“Good.”

The phone went dead in his hands and he yanked it from the wall and let it join the killer's letter, the contents from the desk and the broken chair across the room. There was a sharp ringing noise as the phone slammed into the wall and landed on the ground in pieces.

“Damn it!” For the first time in his life, Luke felt utterly and completely helpless. He felt almost handicapped and he didn't like that feeling one bit. When Jason had fallen through the ice, Luke had known what to do. On every one of his busts, car chases, traffic stops... he had known what to do. When the woman he loved was gone, nothing but pure, unaltered anger flowed through his veins. Causing him to breathe heavier, his hands curled into fists and he paced the room like a caged cat, running his hands repeatedly over his head.

It was a feeling Luke made a mental note to take out on the perp once he got his hands on him. It may not be right but his anger was too much to think about anything else. He turned his attention to the clock, staring at it until the face blurred. They were taking too long. Bowing his head, Luke pressed his eyes shut, trying to stop the haze that had fallen over him. When he looked up again, the clock was still out of focus.

The silence told of time slowly dragging by. Soon, the door sprang open and Michel barged in. “I heard what happened,” he said and Luke walked over and fell against his friend. “Hey, buddy. I've never seen you like this before.”

Before Luke could say anything Keegan rushed in with Riyu on his heels. “People, we need to get to work,” Keegan spoke before stepping in to give Luke a hug. “I stopped by the house and picked up the evidence we'll need. It was like pulling frigging teeth.”

Luke wanted to laugh at that but his body was too numb. He couldn't get himself to even smile.

“Okay,” Michel spoke as the men sat around the table, “let's start with what we've got.”

Keegan grabbed a chair from the den while Luke spread the photos over the large table. “We have a climbing number of victims that has deviated from the original profile I had of the Ojo Killer. He started out with clean, blond haired vics. It seems as if he was meticulous on whom he chose. Now, he's just grabbing women off the street. Now he has Priety. I know she's still alive because now he wants me to find him.”

“How do you know that?” Michel questioned.

“Because her eyes aren't here,” Luke muttered as he focused intently on the pictures before them. The tattoo kept flashing in his head but he didn't know why.

“I wish we could sit back and wait until he makes a mistake because at the rate he's going, he's bound to.” Keegan frowned.

Luke knew he was right but no matter how hard he thought about it, he could not think of anything.

“We have a tattoo artist over on Lombardi who did that tattoo. The hunting shop that sold the perp the knife is also on that street. Michel, you and I will go check out the Lombardi leads. Keegan, you and Riyu take off down to Brair Beach. We have to cover all possibilities and right now these are all we got.”

“On it.” Keegan stood up and patted his brother on the shoulder. “We will find her.”

“I think I love her, Keegan.” Luke gave a small, sheepish smile turning to look at Michel, thinking about Priety his sunshine—his breath of fresh air.

“Ready?”

“Born ready.” Michel nodded and stood. They all formed a circle, wrapping their arms around each other’s shoulders and bowed their heads. Riyu said a small prayer and the four friends stood there for a split second before stepping away from each other.

“Let's go hunting,” Keegan growled.