Where the Blame Lies

by Mia Sheridan

  He cleared his throat as he placed his mug down. He didn’t even like tea. It tasted like muddy water. “Will you go over what happened before you came downstairs and found the rat? Anything you heard?”

  Josie lowered her mug to her lap, wrapping the hand not gripping the handle around the outside, soaking in the warmth from the hot liquid within. She told him about hearing the squeaks, a few small bumps as though someone was walking slowly across the hardwood floor, maybe exiting the house, the dripping of what she’d thought was the kitchen faucet.

  “But nothing before that?”

  “I was in the bathroom before that, getting ready for bed. I’d been running the water in the sink, washing my face. I don’t know that I would have noticed any noise that came from downstairs.”

  He nodded. “That knife, is it one of yours, from a drawer maybe?”

  “The only knives I have are in the block on the counter.”

  So the unknown suspect had brought it along.

  Josie drew her shoulders in slightly and bit at her lip for a moment, obviously thinking about something. Zach waited for her to continue. After a moment she met his eyes. “When I was held in that warehouse, there were . . . rats.” She looked away, behind him, her gaze haunted. She was obviously looking back into that hellish past. “They’d come out sometimes. I’d hear them. Feel them.” She drew her shoulders in more, making her body smaller. “Later . . . he brought rat poison down there. It . . . worked, because I could smell their dead bodies rotting in the walls.”

  Zach’s blood turned to ice in his veins. He wanted to hurt someone, Marshall Landish, he supposed, but he was already dead, burning in hell where he belonged. “Was it in the news? About the rats? Do you remember if that was public knowledge?”

  She let out a raspy breath, setting her mug down. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” She wrapped a hand around one of her ankles that was partially tucked beneath her. “I have scars though . . . from the bites. One or two areas were treated in the hospital for infection.”

  Zach stared, swallowed. Okay, another thing the hospital staff—at least—had been privy to and may have spoken about. “This could be related then, Josie. To the crime the alleged copycat committed.”

  “You’re assuming it was in the news then? About the rats?”

  “Even if it wasn’t, there were rats at the crime scene where the recent victim died. The copycat could have assumed there were also rats where you were held, or simply gotten the idea from the location where he chained the other girl. I don’t know for sure.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Hey.” He reached over, put his hand on top of hers. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get whoever did this.” Her skin was cold and smooth, the bones in her hand delicate. She was strong, obviously resilient, but she was breakable too. That protective streak vibrated within him, something surging between the place where their skin met. Zach pulled his hand away, leaned back, created distance. Yeah, I’m attracted to her, he admitted to himself. And he wondered if she could tell, wondered if it made her feel uneasy. How could it not? He was supposed to be there protecting her, not causing her to feel like she was being ogled.

  For fuck’s sake.

  Zach stood, picking up the mugs, his full, and hers empty, and walking them to the kitchen. He wasn’t ogling her, though, he told himself. That wasn’t it. The pull he felt toward Josie Stratton went beyond physical attraction.

  And it was still wrong. She was off limits. Utterly and completely.

  When Zach re-entered the living room, Josie looked up at him. “This could be related to the copycat, but . . . it also could have been my cousin trying to scare me off.”

  “Your cousin? Why?”

  Josie told him about her cousin’s visit the day before, how he was bitter that his mother had left the property to Josie instead of to him, how he’d made her an offer she’d refused and then told her she’d regret it.

  “A threat?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t really consider it one at the time. Archie’s always been full of hot air. But . . . he was definitely angry with me.”

  “Does Archie have a key to the house?”

  “I didn’t think so. I thought all the keys had been turned over to me. But . . . it’s possible, I suppose.” She seemed so weary suddenly.

  Zach glanced at his cell phone and saw the time. It’d been a long day for her, filled with unsettling news, an even longer night. “Why don’t you go up to bed, Josie? The criminalist will be here in a minute and will be in and out quickly. There’s not a lot to process. I’ll lock up after they leave and sleep on your couch tonight.”

  She blinked at him. “Would you?” She shook her head, looking embarrassed. “I mean, it’s going above and beyond, I realize that, but—”

  “It’s not going above and beyond. It’s my job to protect you. If the guy who came into your house comes back tonight, I want to be here to catch him.”

  Their eyes held for a moment. “Right,” she said. “Yes. Thank you.” She gave him a small, tired smile. “There are extra blankets in the linen closet in the hallway. I’ll sleep better knowing you’re close by.”

  She scooted past him, the delicate scent of her shampoo meeting his nose. “Goodnight, Detective Copeland.”

  He turned his head slightly. “Zach.”

  She hesitated behind him and then repeated his name quietly. He heard her ascending the stairs and then heard a door open and close upstairs. It sounded like several locks were engaging. Zach blew out a long breath just as he heard a car pulling into the gravel driveway. The criminalist had arrived. He hoped Josie would sleep well despite the circumstances. As for himself, he didn’t expect to sleep at all.

  What sick fuck does this to a woman who has already endured enough personal hell to last a lifetime?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Before

  Marshall’s feet sounded like they were dragging on the stairs. Josie pulled herself up, a spear of pain traveling through her neck. She’d been sleeping with it lolling to the right and it hurt to straighten. She tensed at the sound of scuffling outside the room, coming more fully awake as the door opened and Marshall wrestled something inside. A mattress? But why? Her mind went blank. She didn’t know what to think.

  He carried it to where she sat against the wall. “Move over,” he said, and she tried to scoot her body sideways as much as she could despite the chains. He leaned the mattress against the wall and placed a plastic bag he’d had hanging on his wrist on the floor. Josie watched as he removed some sort of cleaning spray, the smell of bleach filling her nostrils as he sprayed the floor where she’d been sleeping and wiped it dry with paper towels. Why had he done that? Was he giving her a cleaner place to sleep, or was he trying to remove the DNA he’d left behind each time he’d violated her in that exact spot?

  “Climb on and I’ll move it back,” he said. She did as he asked and he pushed the mattress until it hit the wall, Josie sitting on the soft foam instead of the hard floor. For a moment she thought she might weep, both with the relief of having something soft beneath her, and the fear of what this might mean. He wasn’t going to let her go anytime soon. He was making her more comfortable where she was.

  “Why did you bring this?”

  His hazel eyes moved to hers. “It seemed like . . .” His words drifted off as though he didn’t know how to answer the question, hadn’t thought about how to articulate it.

  “It’s very nice,” she said quickly. “I appreciate it. I just wondered why you thought of it.”

  Her comment seemed to take him off balance, his eyes narrowing as he glanced around the room as though looking for an answer that satisfied him. “Because I’m tired of the hard floor under my knees while I’m fucking you.”

  A shudder went down her spine. She’d made him feel some way he didn’t like, and in return, he’d verbally stabbed her. What was it that upset him? The insinuation that he’d done somethin
g nice for her simply because he’d wanted to? She didn’t know, and she was too tired and starved to care. “Did you bring food?” she asked, her voice rough and dry from lack of use, lack of hydration.

  He went back out and grabbed a bag he must have set down to unlock the door and drag the mattress in. He fed her, gave her water. He wiped her mouth. She didn’t look at him but she felt his eyes on the side of her face, measuring.

  “I think about you d-down here when I’m in my b-bed at night. I get turned on,” he said matter-of-factly. “Sometimes I t-touch myself and pretend it’s you, that your h-hands aren’t chained behind your back. That I’m just me, and you’re just you, and that you want me too.”

  She turned her head, her gaze finding his. Should she try to play this angle? Attempt to convince him they could be together? She swallowed. What did she have to lose? “Maybe we could—”

  “Don’t even t-try it. I’m not stupid, J-Josie. You don’t even know what I l-look like under this mask.” He used his hand to wave over his masked face. “I could be a l-leper for all you know.”

  She knew he wasn’t, but that was hardly the reason she didn’t desire him. She almost laughed at the sick absurdity. She didn’t desire him because he was a monster. She was tempted to ask him to remove the mask, to give her a chance to convince him she really could be with him willingly. But that mask—the belief that she didn’t know who he was—was the only reason he might let her go at some point. Plus, he already knew she wasn’t interested in the real him—she’d practically run from him each time he’d approached her in the building where they lived. That life that seemed so distant now. So unreal.

  He sat staring at her, tilting his head. “Do you think I was always s-sick, Josie? Or do you think they m-made me this way?”

  “Who? Who made you this way?”

  He looked up at the window, the streetlight beyond bright enough to illuminate the room in ashen shadows. “The people who were supposed to give a fuck about me.”

  Her muscles felt tight. “I don’t know. But . . . but you can change now. You can be whoever you want to be. I haven’t seen your face. I don’t know your name or where you come from. If you let me go, you can live the life you want to. Be better. We both will. We’ll both be better. Okay?”

  He didn’t react to what she’d said, acted as though he hadn’t even heard her. But after a moment, he murmured, “No. No, I c-can’t be. Not anymore. I’m too f-far gone. Even I know it.”

  “That’s not true.”

  He shook his head and she got the notion he was frowning under his mask. He sighed, a weary sound. “It is. It is t-true.” And with that, he got up and left, leaving her alone on the mattress he’d brought her. It was more than she’d had, and she was grateful for the warmth and softness it provided. Grateful. The thought made her want to laugh. But she didn’t think she knew how to laugh anymore.

  Josie slept. And woke. She still yelled sometimes, but not much anymore. She hadn’t heard a sound other than Marshall coming and going. Sometimes she sang to herself, every song she could bring to mind, ones from childhood and current songs she’d liked on the radio. Time melted, the days spun slowly by. She melted. The weather got warmer. Sometimes it was stifling in her small cell.

  The smell of the uncleaned bucket made the room reek. Her world had been reduced to fear, despondency, hunger, fatigue, and thirst. I’m nothing but an animal, she thought.

  There was no schedule to Marshall’s visits. Sometimes she was sure she’d die of hunger or thirst, but then he’d show up with food and water, bringing her back to life, though she wasn’t sure she was glad of that or not. She tried to engage him and sometimes it worked. Sometimes it did not.

  A green and yellow leaf stuck to the window for a minute before a breeze peeled it away once more and it cartwheeled off to somewhere beyond. Free. It was almost fall. She thought she’d been in the square cement room for four months. A thought wound its way through her mind, a red ribbon of dread. She tried to push it away, tried to fall back to sleep, her only place of refuge, of peace. But it would not let go, it demanded to be heard. It had been four months, maybe longer, and Josie had not gotten her period once.

  Terror gripped her and she sobbed.

  She was carrying a monster’s baby.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The loud knock at the front door roused Zach and he startled, sitting up, disjointed for a moment. Josie’s living room. The dead rat. Gone now, thanks to the criminalist who had come and processed the scene quickly and removed the vermin in a paper evidence bag.

  Zach pulled himself to his feet, squinting toward the window where the sun was just beginning to rise. He’d been up most of the night, listening for any strange sounds, unsettled about the whole case, the fact that he’d somehow come to be sleeping in a room just below Josie Stratton. It almost felt like one of those full-circle moments from the first night he’d stood outside her hospital room as she’d slept the sleep of a traumatized, medicated victim. But that didn’t feel completely accurate. Zach had a feeling the path he was traveling with Josie Stratton would go at least a bit further, and that didn’t spell out positive things for either of them. It meant she might be in danger, and it meant he had a killer to catch who was still on the loose.

  “Hiya, Cope,” Jimmy said, bustling through the door, a cup holder of coffee in his meaty hands. Zach grabbed one of the cups and took a sip of the dark brew before the door was even shut.

  “You’re an angel, Jimmy.”

  “I keep hearing that. It must be true.”

  Zach gave him a wry smile as he gestured toward the open doorway that led to the living room. He pushed aside the blanket he’d grabbed from Josie’s linen closet the night before and sat on the couch, yawning, and taking another sip of the life-giving liquid.

  Jimmy took a seat on one of the chairs across from the sofa and removed his own coffee. “Sleep any?” he asked before taking a sip and making an appreciative grunt.

  “Drifted off for an hour or so. I’m beat.”

  “Yeah. Get on home and get a few hours of sleep. I’m all set here.”

  Zach nodded but hesitated. Jimmy peered at him from over his paper cup. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. There’s a lot to do today. You sure you’re okay camping out here for a while? I can be back after work, around five, and take the night shift.” He’d called Jimmy the night before, after Josie went to bed, and told him about the break-in and what was left on Josie’s kitchen table. Then he’d called his boss, cleared it with him to watch Josie’s house for a couple of days until they could be certain she wasn’t in imminent danger.

  “You’ll need more than a few hours of sleep this morning to do another night shift here,” Jimmy said, taking a sip of his coffee. “See if we can get one of the rookie third shift officers to sit vigil.”

  The idea of that left an immediate sour taste in Zach’s mouth. A rookie? Watching over Josie? Playing on his phone all night? He’d been a rookie the first time he’d watched over Josie, and he’d taken his job seriously. But . . . “Nah, I’ll be fine.”

  Jimmy was watching him carefully as though there was something different about him he was trying to figure out. He scratched at his prickly jaw. “Your call.”

  A door opened upstairs and a few seconds later, footsteps could be heard descending the stairs. Josie appeared in the doorway, looking sleep mussed and . . . beautiful, Zach acknowledged, a robe tied tightly around her waist.

  Jimmy stood, walking to her and extending his hand. “Ma’am. Detective Jimmy Keene. I’m Copeland’s partner. I’ll be keeping an eye on your house today so you don’t have any need to worry.”

  Josie glanced at Zach who nodded. Her eyes moved back to Jimmy. “All right. Thank you. And please, call me Josie.” She looked at Zach again. “Thank you again for staying the night. I hope you got some sleep.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. And no problem. I’ll be back later tonight.”

  “Okay.” Z
ach glanced at Jimmy who was watching them both closely.

  “Oh,” Zach said, “I’ll need your cousin’s last name and his phone number if you have it.”

  Josie nodded. “I have a pen and some paper in the kitchen. Is it safe . . .”

  “Oh. Yeah. It’s been cleaned up.”

  She nodded and headed toward the kitchen. “She’s a looker, isn’t she?” Jimmy said, still giving Zach that knowing look.

  “What? Yeah, I guess. Stop looking at me like that, Jimmy. Jesus. Yeah, she’s beautiful. And she’s the victim of a heinous crime who’s now been thrust back into a situation that could spell danger for her. The city of Cincinnati owes it to her to keep her safe. We’d do the same for any other citizen.”

  Jimmy smiled, his jowly cheeks shifting. “You running for mayor, Cope?”

  “Fuck off, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy laughed and took a casual sip of coffee, holding it in his mouth for a minute before swallowing it down, his annoying smile reappearing.

  “Here you go,” Josie said, re-entering the room and holding out a piece of paper to Zach. He took it, slipping it into the pocket of his track pants. “Great. Thanks. I’ll let you know what your cousin says after I meet with him.”

  She gave him a slight smile. “Thanks again.”

  Zach shot Jimmy a look as he headed to the door. “Keep me updated.”

  “Yup,” Jimmy called and from his peripheral vision, Zach saw him take a seat back in the easy chair. As much as Jimmy annoyed him sometimes with his ability to see things Zach wasn’t interested in telling him, he trusted his partner with his life. And in this case, with Josie’s life. He shut the door behind him and walked out into the early morning sunshine.

  **********