I See You (27 page)

I
DON’T USUALLY CARE OR
ask why a client wants a job done, but ever since Devon decided we weren’t playing by the normal rules anymore I became just as intrigued with pretty little Nina as he did, the difference being I know who wanted the assault to happen to her, just not why. This client, like all of them, was a referral from a rich bastard who earned his fortune in the underground fighting trade. He vouched for her, and the plan was made via calls and bank transfer of funds. She hadn’t wanted a meet or to be involved, but I wanted to meet her. I had been strangely intrigued by her. My usual clients are male.

I look up at the client and my fuck buddy hanging from the chain she let me install in her room for kinky sex. My mind goes back to the first night I met and fucked her.

“Another!” I demand from the cocky guy behind the bar. He glares at me and I smirk in return.

He shouts down the bar for a waitress, Tricia. Her ass is showing out of the bottom of her too short jean skirt, and her top shows off more tit than fabric.

“Well, hello.” She laughs, looking around me to see if I’m alone.

“Yeah, there’s no girlfriend sweetheart.” I grin and she quirks a brow.

“Is that right?”

I tap my glass, letting her know to refill it. “And have one for yourself.” She’s studying me, trying to
figure me out, which is usually my job. “I’m Noah and I’ll be fucking you later.” I cut to the chase. I don’t have time for her shit. I have plans to play out and a brother to claim back.

She chokes on the spit filling her mouth. I know she wants me. I’m easy on the eyes. “So, we’re really doing this?” she asks. I knock the drink back she’s poured and order her to get her coat. “Todd, I need to leave early.”

“Tricia, are you fucking kidding me right now? You don’t even know him and you’re supposed to be at mine tonight.”

She lifts a shoulder and smirks back at him. “I do know him.” She looks over at me and then back to him. “He’s Noah.” She makes air quotes with her fingers and saunters over to me.

I throw her over my shoulder and slap her ass. She screeches, and that’s the first of many for her tonight. I flip Todd the middle finger and march from the bar. “Are you into role play, Tricia?”

“Are you?” She laughs so I smack her across the top of the thighs, hard enough to make my palm sting and for her to gasp in pain.

“When I’m fucking you, you’ll be your little best friend, Nina Drake.”

“Of course I will.” She huffs. “And you’ll be?”

“I’m just Noah. Always Noah.”

I can smell her blood as it disperses into the air and makes me shiver with pleasure. I’ll leave the questions for Devon to ask. Just to see if it’s enough to get him to kill . . . again.

Things are coming to a head and the end is in sight. My world has become too distorted without Devon on my side. I lose time and sleep, and the gratification in new marks isn’t the same without him. I’m not me without him . . . I need him back.

I
’M TYPING UP SOME CASE
files when Luke walks through the glass doors after going to investigate a call he’d received from a crazy woman about a dead body she’d found while out walking her dog. He’d found it amusing, saying that the only thing that gets killed around here is the local wildlife by Travis Greaves’ tractor when it manages to get over the speed of 16 KPH. But as he’d said, it’s his job to follow it up.

I look up and frown at his pale face. “Are you okay?”

For a moment he doesn’t say anything, but then his eyes close slowly and he shakes his head before reopening them and sighing loudly. “In all my years doing this damn job I’ve never witnessed something so . . .” He doesn’t finish but he blows out a breath when he gags.

He looks at me, and the horror in his eyes leaves me unable to move. “Luke?”

“You better get on to the guys from Idaho. I just found their Mispers.”

“Oh no.” My voice is quiet, my stomach twisting. It’s obvious from Luke’s expression that he didn’t find them alive but I have to verify what I need to tell the Custer Sheriff’s department. “Are they . . . dead?”

He nods. “Yeah, forensics are with them now. I pulled a partial print from a locket she was wearing,” He sighs again and swallows. “Those poor kids. I don’t envy Custer having to tell the families. They were no more than eighteen, Nina. What kind of fucking . . . monster . . .”

He doesn’t finish. Shaking his head, he walks across the room and enters his office, slamming the door behind him. I turn to watch him, viewing him through the blinds when he opens the top drawer of his desk and pulls out a bottle of whisky, then without pouring a glass, he puts the bottle to his lips and slugs down a good mouthful. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he suddenly turns and vomits into the wastepaper basket.

My heart goes out to him. I couldn’t do his job for any amount of money. I know the scene he found was a rough one, his revulsion telling me as much.

I pick up the phone and make the call to Sheriff Frank Poleski with a heavy heart.

Ten minutes later, I pop my head into Luke’s office. “Custer will be another two hours.”

He looks up at me from what he’s doing on the computer and nods. “Okay. I have some stuff I want to check out so I’ll be a while. You can go. I’ll wait for them.”

“You sure? I don’t mind waiting.”

Shaking his head, he smiles at me. “Go on, get yourself home.”

“See you in the morning.”

I know he’s watching me leave. I can feel his eyes burning into my back as I check my cell for any calls or texts. I hadn’t heard from Devon all day and after the incident last night, I’m getting a little worried.

I try calling him but it goes straight to voicemail and as I climb in my car, I try again.

“God damn it, Devon. Where are you?” I mumble as I sling my cell on the passenger seat and make my way home, my worry worsening the nearer I get.

His car isn’t in his drive when I pull onto mine but his front door is wide open. Steve is rolling about on the front yard as I hesitantly push the door wider. Silence is all that greets me. “Devon?” I shout as I step inside.

Nothing seems out of order as I walk along the hallway, Steve now following me with loud meows. “Ssh,” I order when I reach the basement door. It’s always been closed every other time I’ve been here, yet this time it’s open.

I shout Devon’s name again as I start down the old stone steps, the wear in them the same as the ones at my house, and I grab hold of the rail to steady myself when my heels prove a problem.

As I step off the last stair, my eyes widen at the dim red room. It’s a darkroom, for developing photos. Long trestle tables are lined up with trays of fluids and other equipment, and some photographs are developing on pegs hanging from lines of string.

I look over them, awed at how good a photographer Devon is. I move across them, smiling and examining each one. This truly is something that he obviously loves, the perfection to each image astounding. He seems to capture the life of each object, emotion pouring from every single picture. But then as I reach the end of one line I freeze. I blink, making sure I’m actually seeing what my brain tells me it sees.

“Oh my God.”

I reach out, knowing I shouldn’t touch developing pictures, but it’s almost involuntary, my disbelief needing something physical to touch to make it real.

The two missing people, who are now dead, stare back through a variety of pictures. There’s dozens of them, from them swimming in the lake to them messing around, and then some of them having sex. How could Devon spy on them, and take shots of such a private thing between two people? But more to the point, he had known who they were when he found the flyer in my purse. I asked him if he knew them and he point blank said no. I hadn’t imagined or dreamed that he’d said no. It’s there, clear as anything in my memory banks.

How could he lie to me? How could he document the moments before their death and hide it? This could be huge to Luke’s case, evidence of what the poor young couple were doing right before someone murdered them.

I snatch a couple down, hating that I’m betraying Devon, but this is so wrong. As I turn to leave, another string of images comes into view. My heart stops, its stutter making my legs weak. I can’t seem to breathe properly as each photograph blinds me. They’re of me. Me in my bedroom, in the garden, in my car, behind my desk at work through the front window of the department. “What the . . . ?”

They’re all candid shots, pictures I wasn’t aware of him taking. Some people would be honored to be ‘idolized’ like this, but I’m not. I’m sickened by it. It’s as though he was watching me, stalking me even. He’d told me that he wanted to photograph me but I thought he meant posed shots, ones I had given my permission for. This is wrong. So wrong.

I stumble when I start to flee the room, sickened by it all, my foot kicking a box that’s pushed under the table. Bending to make sure I haven’t broken anything, I frown when I see it contains dozens of DVDs, all with numbers and names on. My eyes widen on one.

Nina Francis Drake

Client: 1325

A shiver tears up my spine. My instincts are hyper, and my skin prickles with goose bumps when my mind tells me Devon is hiding something. Something big.

Snatching up the DVD, I race through the house, I shout for him once more and decide to check if he’s up stairs. The place is quiet and empty but Devon’s laptop is open on the bed. Checking the bathroom to assure myself he really isn’t home I find myself hovering over his laptop. My palms are sweating as I move my finger across the touchpad to shift it out of standby mode. I’m panicking, my heart rate peaking as I listen for Devon’s car pulling up the drive. I feel wrong snooping but then I tell myself that Devon has been doing the very same thing to me, going as far as catching me in frames as he spies on me.

When the Windows desktop loads up, I scan across the various files. ‘CamFeed’ jumps out at me and I open the program.

“Oh—my—fucking—God.”

I never cuss yet ‘Fuck’ doesn’t even seem harsh enough when a view of each room in my house pops up. He’s been watching me, viewing everything I do. The bile in my gut burns when I spot one of the feeds in my bathroom. The dirty bastard! Tears scorch my retinas, each one a piece of my soul as it disintegrates inside me. How could he?

Picking up the laptop, I throw it across the room. I don’t care that he’ll find it. I smash my hand across his dresser, his stupid colognes scuttling across the floor, followed by his clothes when I tear each drawer from its housing and rip his bedroom apart.

How could I have been so stupid? I’ve fallen in love with him. He allowed me to fall in love with him. He worked me, and like the stupid girl I am, I fell for him. The pain in my heart is intolerable, its shatter creating huge heaving sobs as I burst out of his house and into my own.

Slumping on the sofa, I draw my knees up to my chest and cry. I thought he was someone special. His compassion and adoration seemed so genuine. Yet it has all been a lie. He’s a pervert and he played me until I practically fell at his feet and begged him to fuck me.