Fireflies: A Katie Bell Mystery (book 1) (19 page)

W
hat are
you doing for New Years?

Katie had woken up to the message and had been staring at it for a long time but still had no answer for it. It was from Gideon, and she had received it in the middle of the night, when she had been … Occupied. Luke lay snuggled up next to her. His breathing still quiet and steady.

Undecided, Katie clicked her phone screen black and set it back on her nightstand.

Arthur had left two days prior, to consult on a case up in Washington, leaving Katie alone in the house.

Christmas had been a real winter wonderland. The snow had continued to fall until Thursday, and as Katie glanced out her bedroom window outside she noted it was still coating everything in a thin blanket of white.

Katie had wanted to get back to SCU earlier. Even though the winter break had been nice, she was feeling restless. Over the last few days she had started to go over all of her notes of the case. She had carefully crafted the most honest timeline she could in a two-page document, depicting everything she knew to be true from her own two eyes. She had sent it off to both Gideon and Stacy, but had heard no response from either of them.

Of course in her head she had gone over all the details several hundred times, and yet something about it was nagging her. There was something obvious she was missing, and Katie knew it.

She slipped out of bed and went to her old desk, where her laptop sat sleeping. She started to scroll through the pictures again, hoping that another look might trigger something.

9
:30AM

Arthur’s back was slick with sweat as he finished his eightieth push up. There was a knock on the door of his Holiday Inn room.

“Come in,” he said, continuing his workout.

Agent Fields opened the door and entered the room, dressed in a blue pinstripe suit. Arthur didn’t recognize it, but liked the flair. It was bolder than her usual affair.

“We got him. It looks like it was the stepfather, because he was having an affair with her. Wanted to make it look like she ran away with the boyfriend, but really when he confronted them it was a lovers quarrel,” Fields added holding out a file towards her boss.

Arthur didn’t take the file or stop doing push-ups.

“What did we find?”

“The gun turned up when we dragged the lake. Ruger 380. It was wiped clean of prints … but the magazine. We got three partials on the outside and a solid thumbprint on two of the bullets.”

Arthur made it to a hundred and stopped, popping up from the floor. He took the file from the junior agent and set it on the bed.

“Anything else?”

“Oh yeah. A diary hidden in a heating vent underneath her bed. Tells all about their affair. Obviously he didn’t know she had a diary otherwise he would have taken it.”

Arthur grabbed a towel from the bed and dried off.

“Good work, Fields.”

“Honestly, it was a pretty open and shut case. He was always good for it. You wanna get dressed so we can go make the arrest?”

“Sure thing. You’re buying the drinks at the airport,” Arthur added as he headed for the restroom.

W
hen are you coming back
?

The text was from Stacy this time, and came in just after noon. Luke was gone, off to go paint and had left Katie to continue to go over the case.

I don’t know, probably Sunday or Monday.
She had texted her back right away, unlike Gideon who she still had not messaged back.

Cool. I have stuff for you as soon as you are back.

Sounds good.

Katie felt uneasy. On the one hand, finding clues on what had actually happened that night would be great, but on the other hand it meant they were getting that much closer to actually finding a very dangerous individual. The question of what to do once they found the evidence of course had come up before, and Katie had always brushed it aside that they would simply hand it off to the police. Except … would that actually be effective? She wasn’t so sure.

4
:57PM

Arthur sat at the airport bar and nursed his dirty martini. Agent Fields sat next to him, sipping on a double of Bullett Rye with a single ice cube in it.

“You know technically this is breaking protocol,” Field said, right before she lifted her glass and took another sip of the whiskey.

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Arthur said.

“Tattle on my mentor? I think not.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Ugh, please I’d rather not.”

“What?”

“Be a mentor. Just being your boss is fine by me.”

“Why not? You already are one. You’re a genius in the field.”

“And look at me.”

Fields looked him up and down and raised an eyebrow. “With all due respect, you look pretty damned good, sir.”

Arthur snorted and took a sip of his martini. “I thought I wasn’t your type.”

“Well, you are a man, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect pretty when I see it.”

Arthur blushed, and Fields tried to hide her smirk.

“So kind of you. Do you want some advice, Agent Fields? Me being your mentor and all.”

Fields nodded. “Of course.”

“This job can be your everything. It’s very easy for those of us that are career driven to let that be the case. Don’t let it. Have a family. Go home to them. You know what I see when I look back over my career the last twenty years?”

“What?”

“A lot of nights I wish I had spent with Catherine and Katie. Nights where I was in hotel rooms and out there … hunting.”

“But all those people you caught, all those lives you saved. Wasn’t it worth it?”

Arthur was silent for a moment and took another sip of his drink.

“At great cost I suppose it is. There’s only one thing you got wrong though.”

“What’s that?”

“Our job is not to catch people. Our job is to stop monsters. I’m just cursed with being good at doing it. I have a strong suspicion so are you.”

It was Fields’s turn to blush, but Arthur seemed to not see it. Instead he killed his drink. He raised the empty high ball glass towards the bartender.

“Come on, Agent, we got time for one more before our flight.”

Fields drained her glass and set it down on the bar top.

Arthur smiled at her. “Don’t forget, you’re buying.”

1
0
:18PM Sunday, December 31
^st

The New Year’s Eve party that Gideon had invited Katie to took place at a house overlooking the main Asheville Lake, aptly titled Trader Lake.

The house was owned by one of SCU’s locals, who also was on the football team and who had a younger brother who was on Asheville’s high school team, so the party was a solid mix of both high school students and the usual college fare.

There were four kegs and copious amounts of big plastic liquor bottles. Katie had gotten a ride in Gideon’s BMW, leaving her Camry at the school.

Katie was wearing dark green cords, a white button up shirt and her leather jacket over it, as well a maroon scarf wrapped around her neck and black gloves. She was once again wearing her Chucks and her messenger bag she left in the car, carrying the tiny black cylinder in one of her jacket pockets, along with her cell phone. She left her wallet in the M5 as well.

For his part, Gideon was wearing jeans, black Nike trainers and a dark green western shirt that matched her pants. He had a heavy wool pea coat over the whole outfit and looked good.

Katie had been surprised how nice it was seeing him. Still, she felt a little uneasy when he had reached out and squeezed her hand when he had been driving.

“Glad you made it back,” Gideon said as they exited the car and entered the sea of their peers.

“Glad to be back,” Katie said, as she followed him into the house, the familiar thump, thump of party music shaking the wooden deck as she stepped onto it.

1
0
:40PM

Special Agent Kenneth Tapscott sat at a corner booth nursing a double of Jack and watched the sea of people out on the dance floor. He was on his third drink and feeling pretty good. He was out with a few of his former Marine buddies and was fully planning on taking advantage of one of his few nights off. It didn’t matter that New Year’s Eve landed on a Sunday. He had arrived without a date, but Tapscott had no intentions of leaving alone.

There were two likely candidates at the club. One was a cute, very short Filipino girl who had made eyes at him but was attached to a pack of other girls, dressed in a tight golden dress. The other was a blonde at the bar who was sitting by herself, but she was wearing a low top that revealed a very large tramp stamp and Tapscott was pretty sure it would be a sure thing with her, but the chances of him catching something were also pretty high. He thought of her like something behind safety glass. Break in case of an emergency, but otherwise leave in place.

“And why on earth are you not out there dancing?”

The voice came from his side, and Tapscott turned his head. For a second she was only familiar, until he realized who it was. Lacy Persons. The cocktail waitress from the case that was ongoing but basically dead. She had let her hair get longer, and had it straightened. She was wearing a cute low cut navy blue dress and she moved closer and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Because I prefer to watch,” he said.

“Are you sure? You seem more like a man of action to me.”

Tapscott looked at her hand again, then back up at her. Lacy smiled at him, hunger in her eyes.

1
1
:30PM

Katie focused on walking straight as she headed up to the third floor to go pee. After she had finished, left the bathroom and made her way back downstairs. Katie wandered into the kitchen. She was looking for Gideon, wanting to tell him just how good he looked in the shirt, but instead she found herself watching the Latino man with heavy scars on his face talking angrily to a man Katie took a second to recognize. One of the Green Leafs frat boys. Walter Pike.

He was the one Katie had walked in on having sex with a girl, right before she had found the bathroom. In the corner of the room Amelia Wood was also there, her face focused on her phone. Walter was showing the man something on his phone, and whatever it was had clearly made him very, very angry. He noticed Katie in the room and he leaned in and whispered something in Walter’s ear before turning and walking straight at Katie.

For her part Katie staggered to the side a little to let him past her, and that’s exactly what he did, blow right past her and head in the direction she had come. Walter looked at Katie, scowled, and followed after the older man.

Amelia Wood meanwhile continued to stand in place. She still hadn’t noticed Katie. Katie entered the room and moved over to the mini bar that was located almost directly behind Amelia. The redheaded teen grabbed a clean red solo cup and poured a couple fingers worth of Absolut into it.

“Hey,” Katie said as friendly as possible. “You wanna grab a drink with me?”

Amelia spun, clearly being brought out of her head and social media.

“No thanks, I don’t drink,” Amelia said with a smile.

“Come on, it’s New Year’s!” Katie said.

“No really, I can’t drink. Not since Dan.” Amelia said.

Katie shrugged and started to add orange juice to her cup. She wanted to be as discreet as possible, but she knew even in her drunken haze that she needed to establish just who the mysterious Latino man was.

“Everything okay?”

Amelia blinked twice and ran her fingers through her blonde hair. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

“That dude seemed pretty angry. Who invited the old man anyway?”

Amelia laughed, but there was absolutely nothing real about it. Katie knew her drunken face was not a perfect shield of hiding what she was thinking, so to cover it she took a sip of her screwdriver. It needed ice, but she was impressed with how well she had mixed it. She could be a bartender if she wanted to.

“He’s always angry. He thinks Walter has something that belongs to him, which he doesn’t have.”

“What’s that?”

Amelia looked at Katie oddly, her head tilted to the side a little. Katie felt her head bob and she took a step back, overplaying her drunkenness.

“Drugs. Which like I said, he doesn’t have. What was your name again?”

Katie took a step towards Amelia and stuck out her hand. “I’m Katie Bell,” she said, smiling at Amelia.

Amelia smiled back, but just as there was no warmth in her laugh, there was no warmth in her expression either. “Nice to meet you, Katie Bell. I’m Amelia. I’ll see you back at the party yeah?”

Katie nodded and took another sip from her cup. She wasn’t sure what exactly Amelia was up to, but she was certain drunk-or-not-drunk that the other girl was lying. Certainly something to consider for later. After she enjoyed the party and found Gideon.

1
1
:57PM

“There you are, I was looking for you!” Katie said, punching Gideon in the shoulder.

“I’ve been here the whole time,” he said, hugging her.

“Good. I just wanted to say I’m glad I’m here and I’m happy to be celebrating New Year’s Eve with you,” she said, poking him in the chest.

Katie liked how tight his chest was.

“Same, Katie. You okay?”

“I’ve had a lot to drink, but I’m happy to be here with you!”

The crowd started yelling, and most people were either coupled up or huddled in a big pile on the deck overlooking the lake. The crowd started chanting the countdown.

“So am I. Though I’m not entirely sure how much of this you’ll remember.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’m here with my favorite guy.”

Gideon wrapped his arms around her. “And I’m here with my favorite girl.”

Her hands drifted down and squeezed his ass.

Gideon laughed and leaned in, kissing her. The crowd started to scream as they yelled “Happy New Year!”

Katie was too busy kissing Gideon back to yell anything.