Drop Dead Perfect (An Ellen Harper Psycho-Thriller) (9 page)

“Use your head, Harper. You’ll live longer and so will the people around you. I’m not going through that again, got it?”

Her nose touched his as Miss Pissy Attitude made a quick appearance, trying to displace the real her. But it didn’t happen. She bit her lip and, with surprising ease, heaved that anger to the side, for now.

“Then get your muscle-bound ass in motion and do your job. Do
you
get that? And don’t grab me again.”

He stepped back, began to speak, and then stopped. She saw the quick smile infiltrate his jerk-off look. It came and went so fast she wondered if she’d actually seen it at all. Something had happened
, because the rest of her anger melted into oblivion. The man was far more complex than she’d realized. She lowered her defenses a little more and let him speak.

“Okay. The first thing we need to do is sweep the people standing around the scene. They may look benign, but we need to make sure.”

“Damn it, Brice. We don’t have time for this.”

“We’re taking time, Harper, got it? We do this the right way, or you can get your ass back in the unit.”

He was right, but she didn’t like it. Cops were trained, as the first on the scene, to make sure it was safe for who came next, no matter the circumstances.

“Come on then,” she snapped.

He nodded, and she stood with her back nearly touching his as they did another check of the area. She saw no threat. The only movement involved a tall man who had been on the opposite side of the street, walking away from the scene. She watched him dissolve into the dark shadows of the side street and disappear. She stared after him then shook her head. She thought, just for a moment . . .

“Clear?” asked Brice.

She exhaled. “Yeah. We’re good over here.”

“Okay. Let’s check out the vehicle. You go to the left side; I’ll go to the right. Take it slow and keep checking over your shoulder. The Looky-Loos seemed to be just that, but you have to cover your fanny. All right?” He gave her that quick, reassuring smile.

In light of her angst, reassuring was good.

Ellen nodded and began to move to the vehicle, still wondering how a smile from the Ice King could send her pissy alter ego scurrying into the dark, but liking how it worked its magic.

Come on, woman. Stay focused.

Moving in sync, she and Brice made a “Y” at the back of the vehicle, looping no more than five feet from the unit. The odor of escaping exhaust from the still-running vehicle was strong as she moved past the rear tire. She wondered how long it had been sitting in this spot before the call. Unmoving.

Her pulse quickened even more. Oscar would have driven away, had he been able. She took three more steps and listened, hardly wanting to breathe, fearing she’d miss something. Any sound, any movement. Nothing. Only the ambient city just after midnight.

A moment later, she heard Brice’s shoes crush small shards of glass against the pavement as the two of them approached the rear seat, each on either side of the vehicle. She could see that the windows on the driver’s side had been broken out, but there was no glass on the pavement under her feet. Why only one side? Why break them at all?
What, or who, were they looking for? Oscar?

“Shit,” she whispered.

She was trying to control her imagination. It didn’t want to be controlled.

Working her way past the rear door, Ellen found a hole, a bullet hole, with the metal pointing at her, from inside out. Someone had pulled the trigger from the other side of the SUV and apparently missed what they were aiming at.

Ellen Harper could stand it no longer. She rushed around the front of the vehicle, slid over the hood and landed, standing face to face with Brice. The look on his face showed no surprise. He must have expected her to react that way. Maybe because he would have done the same. Hell, she didn’t care. She
had
to see Oscar.

Focusing on the inside of the truck, she glanced at the wheel. Her eyes traveled to the top of the wheel, upon which Oscar’s right hand fell limply, covered in blood.

She cried out.

Oscar stared back at her, a strange smile on his face. Her gregarious partner’s eyes were wide open, but he saw nothing. The hole in his forehead and the one in his neck told her why. Her partner, her friend, had been used for target practice.

A moment later, she heard Brice swear, but he sounded far away. Distant. Surreal.

Ellen felt the tears stream down her face as she moved her eyes lower. The rest of her breath caught in her throat.

The middle of Oscar’s chest was ripped apart, a large gaping hole that gave her a view of his jagged ribs and the cartilage of his sternum.

It looked like his heart had been torn from his body.

CHAPTER-14

Standing at the edge of the midnight darkness, just out of reach of the greedy circles of light emanating from the yellow street lamps, he hugged the small, blue, insulated cooler close to his chest. It felt warm, even now.

He glanced at the still Chicago PD Forensic Unit some one hundred feet away, then back to the cooler he’d gotten from his mother for his birthday, and he wondered if the woman had actually gotten a good look at him. He thought not; otherwise, she would have come running, yes?

He turned and walked back to his pickup, and the rest of his life. He’d done well, and now he was trying to help his brother and to an extent, his whacked-out mother. Noble? Perhaps.

His grin widened.

If mom could only see
me now. My dim-witted brother too. There is just no accounting for family. You get what you get.

Family. Almost everyone had some good and some bad. No matter what, they were always family, right? At least that’s what he’d been taught. Even if he was the black sheep. He liked that analogy. He didn’t belong, at least in the conventional way most people embraced the family tradition. He simply wasn’t like the rest of his relations. But his kin cared for him anyway, in their own way. And acceptance was a matter of the heart, was it not? He’d been taught that too. He only wished he believed it half as much as his idiotic brother.

“Yes. A matter of the heart. Especially tonight,” he whispered, squeezing the cooler even closer.

But he knew his brother was just holding on to something that kept him going, and he really couldn’t blame him for that. He did the s
ame, albeit on an entirely different level.

Glancing back one last time, he turned down the next shadowy street, heading west and away from the confusion that he had created, the faint echo of his whistling the only sound filtering
through the night air.

CHAPTER-15

Her eyes fluttered open.

After a brief moment of disorientation and another spontaneous bout of disbelief and horror, she pulled so hard against her ties that she thought she might actually pull the chair from its anchor and go completely over. Nothing happened, except that Joannie discovered an unexpected epiphany—she could see. Not much and not right away, but slowly her vision returned, and her heart raced with emotion. Seeing was wonderful.

She also didn’t feel as groggy. She squeezed her eyes to get the rest of the fog to dissipate and then slowly took in her surroundings.

The room was dank. The lone bulb hanging to her right ensured that the corners of the square chamber belonged to the shadows. No other furniture filled the murky space, and the old door just to her right was the ancient kind with four small, square windows inside a larger square. They let no additional light into her prison. There didn’t appear to be another way out of the room, but she couldn’t see a third of the space, even with craning her neck to each side as far as she could. The floor was warped in a few places, and the wood reminded her of old grain
eries where she and her friends had played while growing up on the farm. The room also carried, at least in part, a remnant of the smell unique to those old farm buildings. A little dust, a little mold perhaps. Her “cell” wasn’t pleasant by any means, but—thank God—she could see it. Her heart leapt as her sight continued to improve. The old saying about not knowing what you had until it was gone traipsed through her thoughts. It was true. An act as simple as opening one’s eyes and having objects and light register was something most people took for granted. She made a quick promise to herself to appreciate what she had. All of it.

Looking down at her bindings, even in the partial light she could see they were made of sturdy, yellow ny
lon rope. And although her captor had been thoughtful enough to place fleece padding between her body and the ropes, she knew there was no hope of breaking free from her bindings. He’d simply made it comfortable. What did that say about him? She wasn’t sure.

Crazy and considerate?

Glancing farther down to the floor, she noticed long, thick stockings on her feet, covering up to her knees, protecting her shins from where the ropes crossed. She frowned. They were
her
socks. Her favorite socks. The red ones her ex-boyfriend had bought her for Christmas last year. She hadn’t been wearing them when she’d gotten into Kyle’s BMW.

Good God. He
’s been in my apartment.

Her euphoria at having the blindfold removed from her eyes quickly changed to an unsettled anxiety that drove home the crazy part of this situation. It didn’t get any worse than being kidnapped and tied to a chair, but the thought of a complete stranger invading her apartment and then riffling through her drawers and closet, through her most personal belongings, brought the violation to a whole new level. She shivered.

What else is this lunatic capable of?

Her mind suggested that he was capable of anything, anything at all, and she was going to be the object of those possibilities.

Joannie felt the panic return in spades. She screamed against the tape still covering her mouth. She did it again and again. She struggled against the bindings, fearing that any second she just might go completely insane. For one brief, terrifying yet comforting moment, she embraced the possibility. Maybe the madness would protect her from what was going on— and what was coming next.

What
was
coming next?

Fighting back wild fears and horrifying visions, Joannie began to take control of her emotions. She knew panic woul
dn’t feed the bulldog, so she had to get it together. She couldn’t quit. Joannie Marie Carmen had never quit anything. She steeled herself. She wasn’t going to start now.

But it’s so hard . . .

One more deep breath, at least her best shot at it, and she began to analyze her situation the way she would in the ER with a patient who couldn’t communicate.

Turning her neck again, she studied every inch of the rundown room within her peripheral, noticing things she hadn’t seen the first time around.

There were little deformities in the faded wooden walls. The dirty floors held a few strips of cloth and a three-foot stack of rope, accompanied by several rolls of duct tape. She closed her eyes, warding off the thoughts of why her captor would need so much of each.

Slowing down, she concentrated on more smells. There was the musty odor she’d noticed before, yet it seemed more subdued. There was a faint remnant of grease and oil, maybe. There were no were other distinguishable odors, other than the less subtle scent of urine. Human? Animal?

Panic gripped her heart again. Animal piss meant there could be critters roaming the building. She grew up a farm girl, but rats or raccoons or skunks weren’t on her list of pet preferences. They were each capable of doing damage to a person. Big damage. Especially in her current condition.

Human? The implications of human urine soaking these wooden floorboards, maybe even
her own if she chose to think of it, threatened to paralyze her. She shook the idea away—and the accompanying terror.

What else? Come on, girl, think.

Okay. The fact that she wasn’t cold and there were no sources of heat that she could see or hear, yet anyway, could mean the place was centrally heated.

That might mean . . . her anger rose. Mean what? That the power company would come read the meter and find her and rescue her,
and then she’d get to rip the balls off from the man who put her here? She would have laughed out loud if she’d been able. She refocused. Fairy tale indulgences weren’t going to help. Still, Joannie lingered on what it would be like to rip Kyle’s scrotum from his crotch. She could almost hear him scream.

Back to reality.

She listened closer. The room allowed no natural light, which in turn, offered no sense of time. It could be rush hour or three a.m. The lack of sound could mean the latter, or she was just too well insulated from any sounds on the outside. If that were true, however, why was she still gagged? Maybe Kyle was being cautious.

Her mind traveled back to the voice that had spoken to her, however long ago that had been. It was Kyle-like, but she was sure it wasn’t him. Again, she wondered if the man she’d met at the coffee house was in trouble too
, or had he masterminded this whole thing? Just her luck, particularly with men. She meets Mister Perfect, who proves to be the kind of nut case that you see in a true-crime movie. A few hours later, he’s tied her up in a room for God knows what reason.

One more time, she wondered why. Why kidnap her and then just stick her in the room? And
—if it was Kyle—why tell her he loved her and that he’d never hurt her? She’d seen that line in more than one of her Kindle books. Sometimes it worked out that way, sometimes it didn’t. But she swore he’d been sincere, so genuine. Could her instincts be that far off? The question would eat at her if she let the doubt grow. She refused. She'd deal with it later. Besides, what choice did she have?

Another trip around the room and reality replaced any hope she might have had for an escape. He’d planned it too well, covered all of the bases. Her precarious vein of optimism was disappearing at an alarming rate. Disquieting tears started to form. Despite her best effort, she was losing the worst kind of battle—
her tenuous grip on hope.

Dropping her head to her chest, she blinked away damnable tears. Then she saw it. The thin line of light coming from where the floor met the wall, some five feet away. The light winked on, then out, her heart leaving and coming with it, then back on again. It was truly astounding how much hope that light returned to her.

She strained to see more. She grunted and yelled through the tape, hoping that someone could hear. Joannie worked harder to move the chair, knowing it wouldn’t budge, but hoping anyway. She looked at the opening again and saw it was wider.

Then she saw eyes. Wide, curious eyes, staring back at her.

CHAPTER-16

For the third time in less than twenty hours, Ellen watched the red flashing lights of the ambulance disappear into the distance, escorting a once-vibrant life to the ME’s morgue. This time, it took part of her soul with it. Oscar was gone. Just like that. Her partner, her friend, and her part-time confidant had been forced to check out. Murdered. What was she going to say to his wife? His children? She’d been to their house for dinner, for cookouts. She’d even bought Christmas and birthday gifts for his kids. And what about the way he would always try to calm her down and then lose it himself? God in
Heaven, she loved that about him. He’d helped tame her monsters, probably wasn’t even aware of it . . . then again, he probably was. Good people weren’t an accident of nature—they were gifts. Oscar had been one to her just when she’d needed him. They’d been partners for only eighteen months, but it would take a lifetime to get over the loss of him.