Monster (4 page)

-Annie-

The next time I went into Heather's cafe, I'd left Urso behind. Most of the outdoor seats were full of people taking advantage of the cool mountain breeze to take the edge off of the late June heat.

I didn't mind a seat inside. I'd spent the weekend training Urso, long hikes in the heat. Even the cool shade of the woods didn't help much, when it kept the breeze away and the air was flat and damp on our bodies.

A little bit of air conditioning sounded like heaven.

Heather's brown hair was pulled back in a messy bun as she directed one of her employees in how to make a better latte.

Her mind didn't seem to be totally on the task, she kept glancing at the door and at the clock. Her mouth was pursed in a thin line when she wasn't talking.

There was no line, so I walked right up to lean on the counter.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Jennifer hasn't shown up for her shift," she said.

"She's only fifteen minutes late," the other girl said, frowning in concentration as she held up the hot milk to the light.

"Late is late," Heather snapped.

That wasn't like her.

"Why is that such a big deal today?" I asked. "Normally you don't take it personally."

She sighed, and set the other high schooler to cleaning up the mess she'd made making the latte while she waved me back into her office.

"Another girl disappeared two days ago," she said. "Friday. Another blue-eyed blonde, with you halfway up the mountain totally out of touch, I thought maybe whatever monster is doing this could pluck you off the trail and no one would ever know."

"Shit," I whispered.

"And Jennifer is sixteen, pretty, trusting, and just his type," she finished grimly. "I haven't heard from her, and she normally calls in. She's a good employee."

My friend checked her phone again.

"No news," she said. "I don't know what to do. Call her parents? If she's fine, I'm suddenly the crazy boss."

"I'd say give it another ten minutes," I said. "If she's half an hour late to her shift, that's a way bigger deal. Then you can start to panic."

"Oh, I'm already panicking," she said. "I'll try to wait, though."

She sighed.

I followed her back out of the office, and joined her in her nervous stare at the door.

Four minutes.

Six.

I didn't need Heather's relieved sigh to tell me that the girl hurrying up the sidewalk was the missing Jennifer. She was tall, slim, athletic-looking, and her blonde hair caught the sunlight and gleamed.

My blood ran cold at the thought that someone would want to hurt a girl like that. What kind of monster would kill Jennifer?

The kind we had in our own fucking backyards.

No one wanted to admit it for a while, but our county had our very own serial killer. At first, I'd heard people talk about hushing it up to keep the tourists from running scared, but after the third body was found, that sort of talk dried up.

So far, it was only local girls that had been killed.

Not that that made anything any better, any easier to swallow. It made it downright creepier. One of the girls had been taken from a group of friends, mixed locals and tourists, and she wasn't the only blonde.

It had to be someone local.

It had to be a man.

The bodies were hidden so far in places difficult to get to, and the girls were athletic and strong, and had been violated before they were killed.

Everything else was rumor and fear.

No one agreed on anything else.

I'd heard people convinced that the cops had covered up four more bodies, that blue-eyed blondes had been disappearing all around the state and it was only here that the cops were doing anything at all, that it was a gang of sex traffickers making snuff films...

I didn't know why people needed to make the tragedy even bigger than it already was. Four people, three teenage girls and a woman in her twenties, had been raped and killed.

It was horrible enough without the need to exaggerate.

The whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth.

I wasn't in the mood for coffee and pastries any more. I wanted to go home and hug my dog, maybe get some work done.

I waved goodbye to Heather as she lectured Jennifer, eyes bright with relief.

--------

When I got home, my new neighbor was sitting on the little front porch we shared, drinking a beer.

He was wearing a white oxford shirt, unbuttoned at the collar and cuffs, tie slung over the porch railing.

Damn.

He could fill out that shirt like nobody's business.

I felt my mouth go dry with desire as my gaze rested on his biceps, his strong hands. I wondered what they would feel like under my touch.

"Hey," he said, and I jerked a little, meeting his eyes and trying not to blush.

"Hey," I said, back. A little lame, but I was startled.

"I've decided to embrace my unemployment," he said, his low voice rough with sarcasm and a barely-hidden note of anger.

"Time-honored tradition," I said, nodding. “Porch beer.”

"Want to join me?" he asked, waving a hand at the other chair. "I have plenty."

"Let me put down my bag and get Urso," I said. "I'll be back out in just a minute."

I didn't know why I accepted his invitation.

I tried not to think about Carol's suggestion - hah! order! - that I get laid, find some human companionship.

It would be a bad idea to get too wrapped up in a neighbor, someone who knew where I lived and could make my life unpleasant if he was angry that all I wanted was sex.

That was definitely not why I was going back out there with my own drink and a plate of cookies.

Just being neighborly.

I brought Urso along. He'd stretch out in front of me, which couldn't hurt. As chaperons went, he wasn't half bad.

-Quinn-

I didn't know what had possessed me to invite her to sit and drink with me.

It was hard enough to control my desire for her when we just waved at each other as we passed.

Maybe it had just been too long since I'd spent time with a woman.

Even if we'd been living together, the last few months with Cyn weren't enough sex, enough companionship… weren't enough.

My body was aching for the touch of soft skin and long hair.

Annie didn't help at all when she walked out, in a loose blue t-shirt and jeans, looking casual and sexy and effortless.

When she stretched before she sat down, I saw the barest flicker of the skin of her belly, revealed for a tantalizing second.

It was almost more than a man could stand.

“So, what do you do? You said graphic design, but do you do arty stuff, or what?” I asked. I knew it was too abrupt, but I had to focus on something other than the soft swell of her breasts.

“Honestly, not a lot you'd probably call arty. More logos and stuff,” she said. “Mostly casual freelance, but I have a few contracts with small businesses to provide steady updates to their materials.”

“Nice,” I said. “Self-employed?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Sucks sometimes. Too much responsibility, too much paperwork to deal with. It's good, mostly, though. I'm lucky.”

“How'd you get your clients?” I asked. “The steady ones.”

Her blue eyes widened as she thought for a second.

“I saw my friend struggle to hire a designer for her cafe. She needed menus seasonally and so on, but it was hard for her to pay a big lump sum all the time,” I said.

“Yeah, I bet,” I said.

I wondered if she knew the way she lit up when she talked about her business.

The light in her eyes was the sexiest fucking thing.

“So, I set up a deal for her where she paid me fifty bucks a month and I banked hours to work for her, then she had my time when she needed it.”

“Smart,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said, a tiny blush spreading pink over her cheeks.

I offered her a beer, and she shook her head and held up her own drink. Some sort of girly apple cider. Looked pretty tasty.

“So, anyways,” she said, “I approached a few other businesses. I have a whole group of local places with some sort of arrangement like that. I can afford to give them a pretty damn low hourly, because having the contracts to count on keeps me stable.”

“So, just like I thought,” I said, toasting her with my beer. “You're not lucky at all. You're damn smart.”

The blush that time didn't get redder, but it lingered a little longer.

I wondered if – enough, Quinn, I told myself. I didn't need a raging hard-on right in front of her.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

“I'm pretty happy with the setup,” she admitted. “It works out well. I do some other freelance stuff when I have the time.”

“Do you ever get more work at once than you can handle?”

“Hell, yes,” she said, laughing. “Once I had to hire another designer to help me finish up, after I'd pulled two all-nighters and still wasn't done.”

“Ouch,” I said.

I knew about all-night work. It fried the soul.

“I only get slammed like that once or twice a year,” she said with a shrug. “Worth it.”

For a minute, I wondered what my life be like now if I had set up for myself like that. Not design, or anything like that. Maybe construction or plumbing. I've always been good with my hands, and not just with women.

A steady job, steady hours, no night shifts. Maybe I would have taken up with a nice girl, settled down. Maybe even had some kids.

I tried to picture myself that way, white picket fence, two little rugrats running around. It just didn't work. I couldn't see myself without the sweat and tears and blood of the police force.

Especially the rugrats. Kids just weren't my scene.

"Still, sounds good. Don't sell yourself short," I said.

"I try not to," she said.

"It's a big pet peeve of mine," I admitted. "Women selling themselves short, talking down what they've done. I saw a lot of that sort of shit on the force. Don't even think they knew they were doing it."

I felt almost speared by the interest in her eyes.

“Why'd you quit?” she asked.

My opinion of her went up a few notches. She didn't pussyfoot around the question, try to hint that she wanted to know. No bullshit. Just cool curiosity.

“I didn't want to,” I said.

“Don't want to talk about it?” she asked.

“Not particularly.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

I shrugged.

My stupid monkey shirt was too tight. I opened another button. I definitely wasn't imagining it this time. Her gaze flickered to my chest, lingering for half a moment, and then she looked away.

Maybe she liked what she saw.

I tried not to smile.

I've been told that my grin is downright smug.

“The weather,” I said. “Dogs. Your work. Sports. What's going on around town. TV.”

She leaned back in her chair.

“Heather's worried about the bodies,” she said. “She's my friend who owns the cafe. Anyways, one of her baristas didn't show up on time, she was convinced the girl'd been murdered.”

Fuck me.

“Why?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.

I got another beer.

“Jennifer is pretty. Blonde, blue eyes, if she's not a cheerleader, she could be. Seems like just the son of a bitch's type.”

“What son of a bitch?” I asked.

She fixed me with a cool, steady look.

“Don't play stupid,” she said. “Four girls go missing in two years. All blonde, blue-eyed locals. All pretty.”

I didn't say anything. I took a long draft of my beer and kept my fucking mouth shut.

"You were a cop," she said. "Here, right? You can't tell me that you've never heard of all this happening."

"Wasn't my department," I said.

I felt the heat rising in me. Not anger, exactly. I wasn't angry at her. What I felt was too cold and deadly anger. It was a quiet certainty that our town's killer needed to die.

“I'm sorry,” she mumbled. “I don't usually drink in the day. Not trying to be an asshole. Crappy day.”

I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. Just talking about him made me itch.

“I'm not mad at you,” I said. “Really, I'm not. Everyone's talking about it, it's not like it's some big secret that four girls have gone missing.”

I repeated the number to keep myself from saying the wrong one.

Five, maybe six.

The others were officially classified as something else, but I knew it was just to keep the homicide numbers down.

“But you can't talk about it? Or don't want to?” she asked.

Only two bodies found.

“A little of both,” I said. “I wasn't on the case, I don't know any big secrets, I don't know anything that hasn't been in the papers. A few girls have disappeared. Two bodies have turned up. The public is convinced that we've got a serial killer.”

She nodded.

“Have you heard that some people are calling the bastard the Blue Ridge Killer?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Doesn't seem right, giving him a name, attention. Seems like that's what he wants. Why give it to him?”

“Why would you say somethin' like that?” I asked, keeping my voice casual.

“I've tried not to listen to the gossip,” she said, “But I have some friends who know the guy who found one of the bodies. They said it was… posed. It wasn't hidden.”

I watched a shudder steal over her body.

Not the type of trembling I wanted her to be doing around me.

“Heather said I shouldn't keep hiking,” she said, voice abrupt. “What do you think?”

I thought she should stay the fuck out of those woods. I thought about her blue eyes, her blond hair, her pale, pale skin. I thought she should leave, and never come back. Move in with Heather. Something.

“I think she's right,” I said.

Her eyes opened in shock.

“Really?” she asked. “I'm way older than the girls who went missing. The oldest was, what, twenty-two?”

“You've noticed he seems to have a type, right? Everyone has.”

She reached up and fingered a lock of her blonde hair.

“Should I get some dye, maybe go brunette for a while until he's caught?” she asked, clearly trying to keep her voice light.

“You don't look-” I paused. “How old are you? You don't look… how old are you?”

“I'm twenty-eight,” she said.

Fuck. Not even too much younger than me. I'd hoped she was twenty-two or something and I could have an easier time keeping my dick in my pants.

“You damn sure don't look twenty-eight,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said, dryly. “It really helps my career. Really makes people take me seriously.”

“If I were you, I'd be really careful. Don't cower in the house all day, but don't take stupid risks, either. Hiking alone, even with a dog, that can be dangerous at the best of times. This isn't the best of times. Have you thought about getting a gun?”

“A gun?” she repeated, blankly.

“Yeah, a little pistol you can keep on you. It doesn't have to be able to take down a grizzly bear to stop a full-grown man from trying to hurt you,” I said.

“I don't know anything about guns,” she said, waving one hand. “I have Urso. Right, buddy?”

“And if someone tries to hurt you, and they have a gun?” I asked. “They'd shoot him first off. It wouldn't be hard at all.”

For the first time in our gruesome chat, I saw her afraid.

“You're right,” she said, slowly. “He's not stupid, or he'd have been caught by now. Anyone who would kill teenage girls wouldn't hesitate to shoot my dog.”

“Nope,” I said. “Buy a gun. Go to the range. Keep it with you if you're going to take any more hikes.”

“I'll think about it,” she said.

I hoped that she would do more than think about it. I hope that she would keep herself armed and prepared for anything.

I couldn't tell her that I'd seen the crime scene photos, pored over every inch of them, every detail. I had read and reread every line of the autopsy reports. I had watched my coworkers make maps and reports and try to figure out what the hell the motherfucker would do next.