SEIZED Part 2: Steamy Romantic Suspense (Seize Me Romance Fiction Series) (2 page)

Blake

I’m shaken by the ordeal, but ready to keep going as I hop back into the squad car. After it happens, I decide to stop for a meal at my favorite diner. There’s something about those red vinyl seats and splurging on fast food that makes me feel calmer about unexpected shit going down.

There’s always going to be places like this waiting for suckers like me to clear their heads in. My stomach is rumbling now. Too much carbs and fat were in that meal, but I needed it after seeing Jessup.

Traffic is starting to ease a little but I don’t turn on the radio, I need no distractions. The first thing I have to do is get April’s phone and purse turned in. After that, I have to explain how the fuck it was missed.

I’m not looking forward to the look on Lieutenant Jacob’s face when I tell her it was sitting in my spare bedroom for two days. She’ll accuse me of losing my head, and she’ll be right. I let Carrie fuck with my mind. I may need to come clean about that too, but I’m hoping I can avoid the part about sleeping with the witness.

Finally, I arrive at the station and open the remote parking gate. At this time of day, the lot is full. Detectives have parking privileges so I use them. I’m not in uniform today and it’s probably a good thing. The sense of foreboding I have as I head up the parking ramp reminds me of last time I was suspended.

That was when I was still a sergeant. That same sick feeling of knowing I fucked up and waiting for the axe to fall. I make my way up the stairs and ignore pretty much everyone—heading straight to the cage to get started on the paperwork for the techs to work on this phone. My vision blurs a little with every fall of my feet, but I’m still numb. It feels like an earthquake’s on mute in my head. The painkillers I took and the anger I feel are crowding everything else out.

I unlock my desk with a practiced flick of my wrist. Everything is lined up exactly as I like it. I store my gun and slide the drawer closed. Thoughts of what went down at the club are pounding in time with the pain in my neck and chest, but I push them both away. No time for pain and no fucking time for thinking either. I pull up the correct forms, fill them in and get my ass straight up to the labs.

Waiting inside the elevator is torture. Every minute feels like a personal affront and the urge to smash my fist into the button panel surges up. I’m trying to breathe. This is how anger comes for me. It’s always been displaced. It’s not about the elevator. It’s about failing April. It’s about believing Carrie. I hate being played for a fool, and all signs are showing she’s done it again.

By the time the elevator opens on the seventh floor, I pull myself together. In my hand, I’ve got some rush processing forms, and the evidence bags with the contents of April’s purse and phone. The techs like me because I’m precise. I make sure they’ve got no extra paperwork or hassle with my items, and I’m hoping that this will get April’s things to the front of the line. There’ll be hundreds of items of evidence waiting to be checked, tested and analyzed. April can’t afford to wait.

My guy Ryan is there but the lab tech at the intake window sees me coming and the smile on her face gives me hope.

“Hey Walker,” I greet her with a grin as I pass over my goodies.

“What have you got for me, Detective?” She says, and pushes the red rimmed glasses back up her nose. She’s an older woman, maybe fifty, but she rocks that lab coat with different colored accessories every time I see her. Today it’s red frames and feathery earrings, which may actually be old fish lures, but what do I know. She could have made them herself.

I don’t know enough about her to call her a friend. I’ve always been polite, so I’m hoping that’s going to help.

“Walker, I’ve got a witness who made a serious fuck-up. She withheld vital evidence. It’s this dead cell phone.” I hold up the bag and shake my head. “There’s a girl in danger and I need the messages and photographs off this phone.”

“When do you need this done? Actually don’t bother. It’s yesterday, right?”

“Yes and I’m sorry I gotta put a rush on this, but we have to move fast.”

She looks at me, then back at her computer, and takes the first bag. “Ok, and what else?”

I pass her the purse and the bags with the lipstick and gum. “Contents of the purse, but I don’t expect to find anything there, just fingerprint it and exclude my witness Carrie James. The details are all here.”

She sees my paperwork and smiles. “Everything in order here Detective?” Her tone is bossy, but firm.

“Yup” I say, trying to keep the guilt out of my tone. “So how long before you can get the techs on to that phone, Walker?”

She taps a few keys and makes a call while I stand there.

“So you just need the numbers, dialed and received, plus traces on those numbers and the email address of the photo?”

I nod, and add, “You can also get me a GPS log of the owner’s movements over the last three days. Think they can swing it?”

“No problem.” She stamps my paperwork and passes the bags over to an assistant who comes to the doorway.

“It’s at the front of the queue now, Detective. Sit tight.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. The woman is notoriously stubborn, and incredibly fair. The last time someone tried to bribe her with a mocha latte and a muffin, she told them to go to hell.

“Thanks Walker.”

She nods and gets on with her business. It looks like the lab Gods are nodding in my favor, even if the rest of the universe is going to shit. Now I just need to come clean with Lieutenant Jacob about Carrie.

I get back downstairs, and Jacob isn’t in her office, so I head back to the cage and make notes on the new information. I’ve still got the tissue that Carrie scrawled the numbers down on. I search them out on the database. Both are unlisted, but when I authorize a department search I find that one is a Times Square location.

No surprise here—the first number is the office line at Caliber, and the second is from a company called Blue Star Office Supplies, located in Brooklyn. I suspect it was Jessup trying to get hold of April from two different places, but there’s hardly anything criminal about an uncle calling his niece—except that she was purposely ignoring his calls. It’s interesting, but it’s not the case breaker I was hoping for.
Fuck
. The anger rises up again, and I look down at my hands on the keyboard, trying to steady them.

I take some time is to look more closely into April’s background and personal history. I check her social media pages and her high school records. Articles about her parents’ car crash come up, and some pictures of April and her parents at her high school graduation. There’s a listing with a photo of April at the Veterinary clinic where she works. I examine the other staff members, wondering who she was close to. If she’s not telling Carrie everything, there may be someone else she’s confiding in. Probably one of the other nurses.

It doesn’t look like April has much to hide, but I can go deeper. There are records somewhere from her state-approved grief counseling sessions. Normally I’d need to get a warrant to access people’s information like this. This is clearly a situation where she’s in danger, so I bypass the permissions page with my password and click through to her session notes.

I’ve been to my fair share of counselors on account of this job, and I can tell from the first session that April didn’t want to be there. The therapist notes her as reluctant to participate and unwilling to explore deeper issues around her grief. April only went to two sessions before she stopped showing up all together.

She’s noted as having a classic case of repressed grief, presenting in general anxiety. There’s no documentation of the reasons. This information lines up with what Carrie mentioned about April being a worrier, and I’m surprised Carrie even managed to convince her to come to New York for a girl’s mini break.

Reading further, I see April has contributed several articles to a local blog on dog care and the importance of spaying and neutering. Her writing is passionate, even though it’s not a topic I’d read about. There are also pictures of her with a Golden Retriever, looking vibrant and happy.

This must have been before her parents died. In every photo since then, April looks pale and worried. She’s tagged in a few group photos on Facebook and there’s one guy who shows up more than once. I follow the tags to his page and see that he has a girlfriend already. If they were having an affair, it certainly wouldn’t be laid out on Facebook.

There’s still nothing solid to follow. April’s posts are few and far between, and most of them are animal-related. She doesn’t seem to have any other social media accounts. Her personal files will take a little more effort, but I decide now’s the time to face Jacob before her afternoon gets too busy.

I’m in luck when I wander past her office again. I see through the glass windows that she’s alone, typing. I knock on the door and wait. She doesn’t look up right away, so I get a moment to see how intent she is on whatever she’s working on. For some reason, I start to wonder if this woman is part of any scheme to put April in danger. I don’t know and I have nothing that points to her. What I do know is she’s my boss, I report directly to her as part of the anti-trafficking squad, and it’s time for me to let her in on the situation with April’s phone, and Carrie.

“Afternoon Lieutenant,” I say.

She looks at the clock and sees that it’s past noon. “Come in, Anderson. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Carrie

I slide back into the prone position I was in before. I must have gone to sleep, because when I open my eyes, the shadow through the skylight has moved over me. I’m cold. I get up to turn on the heater, and grab one of the blankets rolled up in the basket beside the sofa.

The bookshelf is full with tempting treats, and I wonder how long it’s been since I just shut my brain off with a good book.

I browse the shelves for a second but nothing seems appealing. I’m about to turn on the TV when I come across the bound spine of an old photo album.

Well this is officially rated as stalking, but I rationalize that if his mother hadn’t abandoned them, she would want me to see them. That’s supposed to be a rite of passage when a guy brings bring home a girl, or so I tell myself.

I make some herbal tea, and sit cross-legged to start perusing their special memories. The album is a combination baby book and photo album. There are pages showing both Brenda and Blake’s birth weights and early eating habits. They are signed by a midwife, so I assume his mother was still under care.

The pictures and staged that follow in the coming months are more sketchy. Sometimes the writing is neat and concise, while other times there are just scrawls and whole months missing from their early lives.

Who knows when Blake got his first tooth or when Brenda took her first step. Seeing this makes me sad for them both. Their parents were absent from the start. Clearly it was for different reasons, but it looks like his Mom may have had mental health issues, maybe even before she gave birth to them. There’s a brochure on post-natal depression tucked into the inside of the album, along with some coupons for baby milk that she’d obviously meant to save.

I turn the pages and the photos begin. The first is little Blake sitting on his Dad’s knee. The man looks extremely uncomfortable, but Blake is staring at him with adulation. That’s what babies do. They love you and love you until finally they learn you don’t love them back. Humanity is so depressing. There’s one family shot with the four of them, and a few of Blake’s Mom holding unidentified little bundles of blanket and looking tired. Later on in the album, there are shots of Blake on his first day of school.

It almost jumps forward a decade, with no photos at all of their time in grade school. The siblings next appear at age fourteen or so in a group of kids the same age. I look closely, but don’t recognize the others. This must be from before they came to Iowa. There are pictures with Brenda looking shy, holding the hand of her first boyfriend, and then come the Blake photos.

Page after page of Blake holding up a bottle, a girl plastered against him, or he’s pumping his fist at some music or some victory etched in history. These have been clearly taken by some adoring girl, and I can’t help but laugh at the way she’s tried to capture him unaware. I bet these were from one of his first girlfriends, because he looks about fifteen years old. Several are taken during parties with people of all ages around him. Most of them are displaying the meaty, intoxicated grins of teenagers after midnight. I can almost imagine the conversations, and the sleazy dudes that were his weekend companions.

There are no shots of either of them taken in Cedar Rapids. From what Blake told me about his Dad’s drinking and his Mom leaving, I’m not surprised. It’s sad to look at the rest of the photos. By then, the family was almost entirely disintegrated with Blake and Brenda doing whatever they could to get by. Next, I see some photos of Blake dressed all in black, ready for work as a doorman. He looks handsome.

The next page has a set or pictures taken on the same night. He’s standing next to a gorgeous girl with jet-black hair and sly-looking eyes. Her skin is beautiful and I can’t help feeling a spark of envy. This must be after he left Cedar Rapids, during the party days, sometime before he got sober. It’s the way the two of them are looking at each other that’s disturbing. I’m all for being friends with the ex, but there’s no way I’d want this woman in Blake’s life if I’m seeing him. They look like their connection is strong, and even stand in the same way. I can just tell this woman broke his heart.

Something in me softens toward him. He might still think I’m a liar, but I want to hear his voice. I stand at the counter and use the phone to key in the number on his card. It’s still pinned to the notice board where he left it, in case of emergencies. This isn’t an emergency, but I don’t care. There was something so sad seeing all of those photos, he looked so different. Like the Blake I used to know was trying to play grown up.

I know those party days must have been dark times. The New York City club scene can be flashy and appealing, but after some time, my guess is that it starts to feel grimy. I began to see it when April and I were out, and I read about it all the time. Everyone’s a victim of something. Money buys anything you like, and the highest bidder always wins.

Maybe I should have been a Detective. I couldn’t stop noticing the careless drug deals happening right in front our faces. Most people were out to have fun, but there was so much sketchy energy in the clubs—upscale or not. Maybe I’m just drawn to it. Who knows.

The number I call finally starts to ring. It must need to connect through the police operator because I hear several clicks. He doesn’t pick up though. I start to wonder,
does he see it’s me and is purposely ignoring the call
? I’m sure he wouldn’t do that. But then again, I’m not sure of anything anymore. I hang up and try the line again. Still no answer. Weird. I’m standing in the kitchen and my head gets lost in the past.

I’m drawn back to another time I tried to call Blake. I’m sixteen years old and I’m scared. I’ve been attacked and no one knows. My parents are out having dinner, and I’m slumped in the bathroom of my room crying and in pain. There’s blood in my panties, blood dripping out of me and it’s not because of my period. I don’t know what to do. I’m so scared my heart is pounding. I can still feel his hands on me. I’m disgusted.

I try and vomit, but all I can do is wretch and heave. The resort we’re visiting with our church for the family vacation is supposed to be nice. But it’s not, and my broken body is the proof. I find a phone and call him. He’s the only person I can think of. But I hang up before it rings. How can I tell him this? How can I tell anyone?

I get in the shower. Blood is still trickling down my legs and I can feel that I’m ripped. My entrance is swollen and sore. I can’t bear to touch it so I just lean up against the wall and let the water wash me down. My head is foggy. I can hardly see through the tears and the water. I feel dizzy and this time, I do throw up. The vomit mixes with the blood, but it clogs the drain, and I can’t believe this nightmare is my life.

I turn the shower off. I still don’t feel clean, but I’m cold and the tub is disgusting. The towels are old but thick and still soft. I think this is the nicest resort our church congregation has ever visited, but I’m never coming back here. I’m still wearing my ankle bracelet, but he’s ripped away my other jewelry and the loss makes me cry again. I look pale and I’m shaking, but at least I’m safe here. He can’t ever get me again. We’re leaving in two days. I’ll just stay in my room and tell everyone I’m sick. There’s no way I’m going near him or that fucking room again. If this is what being a good Christian means, I’m over it.

I want to talk to Blake, I want him to tell me I’m going to be ok. So I call again. The phone rings, but no one answers. My head is going crazy wondering where he must be. It’s late, he should be home. I need to hear his voice to feel better. I start to guess he’s probably with one of the girls in our Chemistry class. I know who she is. She’s the one who gives me dirty looks every time we sit together.

I bet she’s taken the chance to track him down on a Thursday night. It’s summer break, and she’s hot, so of course he’d say yes. She’ll be wearing next to nothing and probably ready to suck his cock or something foul. Men can’t be trusted. I start to second guess why I even bothered trying to ring him. Instead, I fall asleep on the bathroom floor. My head on the tiles, my hair is still dripping wet and my virginity has been taken by force.