by Harper Shaw
Faruq cracked his jaw, and his boyfriend piped up.
“You were just saying how it was too easy. Weren’t you, Faruq?”
“Shut up,” Faruq growled at his boyfriend.
“See? You have a point. In your gut you know it wasn’t me. Why would I do that? Then why come back here? Why would I use a fucking spear gun? You know I just use my gun. If I was going to hide that I had a Ruger, I wouldn’t have used it to shoot Chad in the head. Someone’s setting me up, and you know it.”
“Okay fine, so what if I thought about it? I thought about it on every case I’ve ever worked. But I have to follow the evidence, Morgan. I can’t just make up my own laws. Systems are in place—”
“Tell me what you know,” Rebecca said hastily, wanting to keep his attention on the unfairness of it all and her innocence. “Tell me what you know, and I don’t have to follow any of the systems.”
“You’ll get fired for doing shit like that.”
“You don’t think I’m already going to be fired? I’ve escaped custody, and I’ve seen my face plastered all over the news. The only reason why the El Paso Police haven’t fired me is because they probably can’t find me. Once I get home, there’s no way I’m going to go back to the police force. You know it as well as I do. So, I need to find the real killer, I need to wipe my name from the record. And then, maybe, I can get my job back. And even if I don’t get my job back,” Rebecca was rambling. She knew it, but she needed to tell someone this. Somebody needed to hear all of this before she was killed too.
Before it was too late.
“The truth will come out. You know this, you swore an oath to make the truth come out. I have the opportunity to find the truth here, and you know it as well as I do. Someone has to find the truth for Monica and all of them. They haunt me, Faruq. We all want some goddamn justice here. Don’t you?”
Faruq sighed, considering all his options. Then, as if deciding, he placed his gun on his bedside table and turned away from Rebecca.
“You didn’t hear this from me,” he said. He hunkered down in bed and turned the light off. “But Bruce’s family has a warehouse. On the south end of town. Might want to start there. Judge wouldn’t give me a warrant, considering I already had a suspect in cuffs. And, if anybody hears about this conversation—”
“It never happened. Yeah, I get it.”
“Make sure you lock the door on your way out,” Faruq snapped in the darkness. “I don’t need any more hooligans breaking into my damn house.”
“Thanks, Chief. Not just for me, but for all of us.”
Elated, Rebecca rushed back to the door, making sure to lock it on her way out.
She had a lead. And not just any lead. A good one. She knew that decrepit warehouse, the one Faruq was talking about. The one Bruce’s parents owned.
It was a damn good place to start, a solid lead. And Rebecca needed all the leads she could get.
She crossed the street and started heading south.
It was time to end this. It was time to get Bruce, and it was time to get him to confess.
And it was time to end all of this.
Once and for all.
For Monica. For Chad and Jennifer and Dennis. Time to lay the dead to rest. Rebecca knew finding the truth was the only way for any of them, her included, to ever find any peace.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The warehouse loomed in the distance with no lights on and swallowed in the darkness of night.
This wouldn’t be as easy as breaking into the Faruq’s house, Rebecca knew. Something was eerie about the warehouse, giving her the creepy feeling something bad was going to happen. She didn’t know what, which made her even more uncomfortable.
That, and Bruce was clearly unstable. He might have wired the entire warehouse to blow at a sneeze or the opening of a door. There was no way to know what an unstable man would do.
She wanted a drink, and she wanted her gun. Neither of those things were available to her any time soon, so her only option was to try and move forward and hope.
Hope that, maybe, the answers were in her future. Maybe all of this would be for something, and she wouldn’t have wasted her career and her life chasing down a ghost. Hope was dangerous, but so were the lies of the past.
And all Rebecca had left was hope. It was the only way she was going to get through this. Especially with what happened to Dennis, right in front of her eyes.
So, as the dark warehouse loomed, Rebecca started watching her step. It wouldn’t be the first time in her life someone had set up a tripwire, killing one of their group. That was over ten years ago. Now, their tripwire could be wired to something even more dangerous than a set of stairs.
Like C4. Or a grenade.
Rebecca had to be careful, and as she picked her way through the uncut grass surrounding the warehouse, she knew there was really no way to know what she could step on.
Every step could be the end. Every time her foot settled into the grass could be her last.
It could all be blown straight to hell by that crazy bastard if Rebecca wasn’t careful.
So, as carefully as she could continue to move forward, Rebecca picked her way to a back window of the warehouse. It was broken, and Rebecca wrapped her hands in the sleeves of her sweater.
The last thing she needed was a piece of glass sticking out of her hand. Jumping, she rolled through the broken window and landed on her feet without cutting any part of her body.
Which was one of her grander successes of the week.
The warehouse was silent. She heard not even the sound of dripping water or electricity. Rebecca had borrowed Faruq’s flashlight, and she flipped it on. She hoped she didn’t summon someone in the darkness. This Warehouse was falling apart around her, though, and she wanted to fall into a hole even less than she wanted to get shot at.
Both were bad, but a bullet to the head was a better death than bleeding out slowly in a hole.
So, she worked her way through the back rooms of the warehouse to the main open area.
A light. As soon as she turned the corner to the main area, she saw it at the back of the warehouse. The light was paired with a rhythmic beeping sound.
Rebecca turned off her flashlight and crept her way forward, trying desperately not to make a noise. She worked her way through the warehouse carefully.
And made her way to the side of a hospital bed.
A part of her thought she was dreaming while another part was holding on to reality tightly. Because, in the hospital bed, was Bruce. He was being kept alive with medical machinery attached to him and an extension cord that ran out of the warehouse.
Confusion filled Rebecca. If Bruce was there, that meant she was the only one alive. Had she actually killed all these people? Without even knowing it? Had the trauma and the alcoholism caused a rift in her brain, one she couldn’t get past? One that made her kill people even though she didn’t know she was doing it?
Rebecca took a hasty step backward, needing to find answers and needing to get away from Bruce, when a shadow crossed behind Bruce’s supine form.
Rebecca stepped backward in fear. The Shroud stepped into the light.
She wanted to turn and run, but her feet were frozen to the concrete.
The Shroud was here.
And it wasn’t Bruce.
Her heart hammered in her chest as the shadow reached up and pulled the hood away from its face.
What the hell was going on?
Jennifer emerged from the hood and stepped into the light above Bruce’s hospital bed.
“What the fuck?”
This had to be a dream. It had to. She’d seen Jennifer die, her body engulfed by fire as flames licked to the ceiling of her rental property. This was impossible. Jennifer couldn’t be the one.
It was Bruce. It had to be.
All of it pointed toward Bruce.
And Jennifer was dead.
“I’m sorry.”
Rebecca was surprised Jennifer could talk
. Usually, when bodies came to life in her dreams, their mouths didn’t move properly to their words. Like something was off, like a television program where the audio was half a second behind the video.
But Jennifer spoke properly. The words came out like they should.
It wasn’t a dream.
It couldn’t be.
“I didn’t want you to find out like this… I swear I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want any of you to find out like this…”
“Find out like what? That you wanted us all dead?”
“No!”
Jennifer stepped forward, revealing the spear gun held in her right hand. The same spear gun she had shot at Rebecca in Chad’s garage.
The one that had killed Dennis.
Anger burned in Rebecca’s heart as she saw that spear gun.
And she saw Dennis’s eyes die all over again.
Die because of that spear gun.
For the first time, she was glad she didn’t have her gun because she would have shot Jennifer in the head.
“What the fuck?” That was really the only thing Rebecca could say. Confusion consumed her, and she was having trouble getting a grip on reality. So much so, she thought that maybe she was dead. Or maybe she was in a dream still.
Because she’d seen Jennifer die.
This didn’t make any sense.
“I can explain,” Jennifer said quickly.
Rebecca wanted to turn and run, but it seemed her feet were frozen to the concrete.
Jennifer raised the spear gun to point it at her chest.
“I don’t want to kill you. Really, Rebecca. I don’t want to kill you.”
“Why? So, you can frame me for a bunch of murders? What stopped you from killing Chad? Or Dennis? What stopped you then?”
“It’s not like that,” Jennifer mumbled. There was obviously something wrong with her because she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince Rebecca.
“It’s not like that at all. It’s not like I wanted you to take the fall. It’s not like I wanted to kill people. I had to…” She looked up at Rebecca, desperate for her to understand. “I can explain. It’s not what it looks like. I can explain.”
“But you kept killing people and made it look like it was me? Seems like you meant to kill everyone. In fact, you made it look like it was me. That wasn’t an accident.”
“Just shut up and listen to me!” Jennifer shouted. “Just shut up, Rebecca!”
“Why should I? All you’ve ever cared about was yourself That’s all you’ve ever cared about since high school. Not like you cared about any of these people you killed.”
“I did care! I do care! This isn’t just a fun game for me. I cared about you guys. I really did. And I cared about Monica…”
“Cared so much about Monica you killed her? That makes some complete fuckin’ sense.”
“You really are not making this easy,” Jennifer pleaded desperately.
“Well, you haven’t made the last month of my life easy.”
“It was just a front. Don’t you see? I just had to have this tough exterior, but I was dying on the inside. The guilt was eating me alive, Rebecca. The guilt of seeing Monica dead was too much to handle.”
“What about seeing Chad dead? Or Dennis? Or Bruce in a coma? What about all those guys? What about me going to prison for a bunch of shit I didn’t do? What about that?”
“I feel guilty about them too… but I needed people to know she wasn’t in an accident. I need people to know why Monica died.”
“Why did Monica die?” Rebecca asked it deadpan, silently trying to figure out how to get out of the building. She needed to call the cops. Needed Faruq to come and arrest this crazy bitch.
Something about Jennifer’s eyes made Rebecca so uncomfortable she absent-mindedly reached for the gun on her hip.
The gun that wasn’t there.
“You need to listen,” Jennifer repeated. “The guilt, Rebecca. The guilt was too much. It was all too much. I needed to make sure we were guilty. I needed everyone to know we were guilty.”
Rebecca held out her hands, trying to keep Jennifer calm.
“Okay,” she answered softly, hoping the change in tone would help keep Jennifer’s attention on her.
Rebecca needed to keep Jennifer talking.
Because both her and Bruce’s lives depended on it.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Listen, Jennifer, I understand what you’re saying, what you mean. I felt guilty, too. Hell, I still do. Every damn day,” Rebecca said. She didn’t walk any closer to Jennifer and slouched her posture some. “It haunts me, you know?”
Jennifer nodded. Her face wasn’t readable, but Rebecca could tell the gears were turning in some way.
“You know, back in El Paso, I swear all I did was try to forget everything that happened. I joined the force, tried to make friends, and did my best to move on. Obviously, my best wasn’t good enough. I started drinking a lot. You know all of that, though. I developed a pretty bad habit there for a while. I’m okay now, but I used to drink too much too often. Every day and every night, some weeks. I hated it, but I didn’t know what else to do with my feelings.”
“Hm,” Jennifer remarked, her gaze still unchanging. She bit a small part of her bottom lip and looked Rebecca up and down.
“I’m in AA now, though. Of course, you know that, too.” Rebecca chuckled and broke into a smile, not minding when Jennifer didn’t smile back. “I feel like you kept up with me after graduation pretty well. You definitely did a better job than any of the rest of us did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s not supposed to mean anything. I was just saying.” Rebecca shrugged. Taking advantage of the moment, she now inched toward Jennifer and a comatose Bruce. She made sure to keep her hands where Jennifer could see them and tried not to make herself seem suspicious.
“Oh,” Jennifer answered.
If Rebecca was being honest with herself, she did feel for Jennifer some. The genuine sympathy was not nearly as much as what she was displaying, but it was there. She had guilt the same way Jennifer did, but she was dealing with hers in a different way. And while drinks weren’t the best, she was doing better now. Back when she was drinking, she definitely wasn’t hurting—killing—others in the process.
Still, she had to get Jennifer off her guard if she was going to get anything done right now. She still had a chance to get Bruce out of here and to get Jennifer’s confession to clear her own name. She didn’t know what she was going to do after that, but it didn’t really matter with the task at hand.
“Do you want a strip of gum?” Rebecca asked Jennifer. Before Jennifer could answer, Rebecca stuck her hand in her pocket and turned on the mini tape recorder she had inside. She pulled out gum to make herself seem less suspicious and folded the minty sheet into her mouth.
“What?” Jennifer scrunched her nose, her cold facade flaring once again. “No.” After that her face returned to its more anxious state, Jennifer’s lips coming out in a sort of pout.
“I have nightmares, too.”
“About that night?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too. Sometimes it’s what happened, but then it’s other things… worse things.”
“Just the other day I had a nightmare that happened back at the beach house. We were all there, and everyone was having a good time at first. Bruce and you were having fun and so were me and Dennis. Monica and Chad were the same. We all went into the house, and we danced and drank for a while. Then we went over the balcony, and everything started going wrong. Monica was drunk, and she flipped over the railing. You, Chad, and Dennis went behind her.”
“Me?” Jennifer asked, a speck of fear coloring her voice.
“I thought you were dead up until now.”
“Oh.” Jennifer looked at the ground. “And then what happened?”
“And then Bruce tried to push me over, too. Before I could see what happen
ed, I woke up, all sweaty and anxious. I think my heart has beaten faster since that day. Drinking was the only thing that could make the nightmares and the guilt go away for a moment. I don’t have anything now.”
“I guess I’ve handled things differently than you,” Jennifer said, stiffening. She looked back up at Rebecca and met her eyes. It seemed as if Jennifer was trying to probe into Rebecca, figure out what was fact and what was fiction. Her body softened, so Rebecca wondered if Jennifer found nothing.
“How so?”
“Well…” Jennifer didn’t gesture to the warehouse, to Bruce’s body, but the look she sent Rebecca’s way was incredulous. How do you think I handled it?
“It feels like yesterday. Doesn’t it?” Rebecca asked, trying to prompt Jennifer to talk.
“It does. It really does. You know, I actually liked Monica. She dressed well. She wasn’t so bad. She was really my only friend back then—no offense.”
“None taken. She was my best friend, too.”
“I wish we would’ve just told the truth that night. I don’t think we knew what would’ve happened.”
“No, we didn’t. What’s happening now, though? We’re dropping like flies.”
“I guess.”
“Why’d you do all of this? What’s there to gain from all of us being dead? Won’t that just leave our parents the way Monica’s are? Traumatized? Vengeful?”
“You just don’t get it, Rebecca. Honestly, I don’t expect you to. The only person more against it than you was Chad. Dennis and I had tried to be smart about things.”
“And look where it got us.”
“What? You still went along. It’s not like you can say, ‘I told you so,’ or something.”
“It’s not about that, Jennifer. I just hate the past the way you do. I hate the present, too. What’s happened is more than a clusterfuck. Don’t you think?”
Jennifer shrugged.
“You can just say it, Jennifer. It’s not as if we don’t know most of each other’s secrets. I feel like I know everything now. Don’t you?”
Jennifer nodded. Her middle fingers dabbed at the corners of her eyes as she blinked away the tears threatening to pool in them. She shook her head, though.