“You mean, you believe me?” He snorted. “Guess that makes you more the fool than me. And, no, I don’t have any more details for you. Thanks for calling.” He hung up. And once again he tossed his phone. It was becoming a habit. If he could toss it away, then he could also toss away his connection to the world, as if that act would cleanse his soul.
Needing to get away, he walked to the bakery, ordered a bagel from behind the counter, and then walked to the butcher, where he picked up some fresh cheese and ham. By the time he was on his way home, he was hungry and stressed. He slowly rotated his neck and his shoulders, choosing to walk up the flights of stairs in his building and maybe wear himself out a little bit more. By the time he made it to his apartment, instead he was even more irritable.
He walked to his door and unlocked it, then pushed it open. His phone rang. He let it. When it finally stopped, he said, “Good riddance.”
He put down his purchases, then checked the ID of his caller. The detective. He frowned. If he didn’t answer her, she would probably hound him.
Then he noted four other missed calls. “I was gone thirty minutes,” he snapped to the empty room.
He put the phone carefully on the counter, as he brought out the bagel, sliced it, then buttered the halves.
He knew the cop couldn’t stand him already. He didn’t know where the restrained animosity came from, but it was there. And, considering her job, he probably didn’t have to look very far to find reasons why.
His Quebec-born grandmother had had the sight—after all, that was what led her to finding Simon at the age of six, and he would go as far as to say that maybe he had inherited a little bit of her ability. But he didn’t want more than that. He had only had four years with her, but her gift was not something that had made his grandmother’s life any easier. On the contrary, it just made it harder and more impossible. She’d been both revered and hated. Who the hell needed that? His grandmother had warned him once that, the moment he went down this pathway, there was no turning back.Pas de retour en arrière. He’d laughed at her.Ne pas y aller. Not going there.
She’d given him that narrow glare that she’d been so damn good at and said he didn’t have a choice; he was already on it.
He stared at his phone and wished to hell that whatever that first misstep was, he hadn’t taken it. Grandma had been proven right, and he knew that this one-way path would only get worse.
Chapter 5
Third Monday of June
The days justslammed hard from one day into the next. Somehow it was the third Monday of June already. Kate worked her ass off all day, every day, and crashed blindly every night. Nothing like the pain of trying to figure out what had happened to a missing or a murdered child. It brought up all kinds of memories that Kate tried to dampen down. And it wasn’t working. The longer she worked on Jason’s case, the more she thought about Timmy, her kid brother. She’d pulled up everything there was on his case and had nothing, absolutely nothing to show for it.
Her brother had gone missing two and a half decades ago. Kate had been responsible for looking after him, but one moment he was there, and the next he was gone. Her mother had blamed her ever since, never relenting from that position, placing her in foster care immediately. Even after her mother had been in rehab several times, her phone calls were nothing but a sickening tirade over and over again about how Kate had ruined her mother’s life by letting Timmy die. Now in a long-term-care facility, her mother was nothing if not consistent in the verbal and mental abuse that she rained on Kate.
Fact of the matter was, Timmy had been five. But Kate herself had only been seven. And she’d been put in charge of her younger brother. When she’d come out of her classroom to find him on the playground, she’d forgotten her homework, so ran back inside to grab her books, and, when she returned, he was gone. But she was to blame.
Somehow a seven-year-old had paid a price that should never have been put on a child. And she’d never stopped looking for her brother. Anytime a John Doe showed up, anytime a child was found, even after decades, Kate’s heart leaped. And anytime they found a tiny corpse, decomposed beyond recognition, she knew instinctively that it was him—only to be proven over and over that it wasn’t.
Nobody here knew how bad her childhood had been. No one here knew about her secret guilt or why she held up prickly barriers against the world. A couple knew about her brother but only that he’d gone missing. Not the details of how her life had derailed at that point. And how could she explain that the people who should have been there for her weren’t and the people who she should have been there for were gone?
She trusted herself, but she didn’t trust anybody else. That made for a pretty tough working relationship. But she’d do whatever the hell she had to do to keep this job because this was what she’d wanted, ever since her brother had gone missing. Come hell or high water, this was her role in life. And she was bound and determined that she would find her little brother. Somehow…
“Penny? You know?… For your thoughts?”
She frowned and looked up to see a smooth, way-too-expensively-dressed, and overly coiffed Andy—their fifth team member. “Not worth it. Isn’t there some broad you’re supposed to be picking up for dinner?”
“That’s tonight,” he said. “You really need to get your timing straight.”
“And my jokes apparently,” she said. She studied him. “You’re looking pretty dolled up. Did you even go home last night?”
“Of course I didn’t go home,” he said. “I never do. That’s the way I like it. You do know if you’d loosen up a little bit yourself, you might like it too.”
“I, at least, like to know the name of the person I sleep with,” she drawled.
He flushed.
And she stared. “Oh. My. God. You can’t remember who the hell it was last night, can you? So they all roll into this jumbled mess of images? Is that it? What do they call that? A collage, that’s it,” she said triumphantly. “A collage of faces. The bodies have the prerequisite parts but, other than that, not a bit of difference between them.”
He stared at her, shocked.
She shrugged. “What the hell?” she said. “Too crude for your refined sensibilities? Am I not allowed?”
“No,” he said. “You’re supposed to be sweet and feminine.”
“Then I’m in the wrong job,” she said bluntly. “Don’t get me wrong. Sex is good for everybody,” she said. “But, when you have so much, with so many different partners, that you can’t even remember who the hell you’re with”—she checked her watch—“like four hours ago, you’ve got to ask yourself,Who or what are you running from?”