Inked

by Drew Elyse

  That, seeing the other layer of damage that motherfucker had inflicted on her, had me at my wit’s end with this search.

  To make matters worse, though I’d been able to put her off for a while, Jess was officially out of patience with me in regard to returning to her apartment. Which meant today, despite the fact that she was still in her own head about what I’d said, she’d gotten me to give in to risk fucking with her emotions even more by going back there.

  I might have surrendered, but that didn’t mean I was doing it without being smart, which was how I’d ended up where I was, calling Jager.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Miller.”

  “Jess okay?” he demanded.

  “She’s fine. She wants to go to her apartment today. I need to know how to handle the alarms, and I need you or someone you trust to be watching the cameras. We haven’t spotted him yet, but he might be sitting on her place, waiting for her to go back home.”

  I’d thought about setting up this scenario before. It had crossed my mind to lure the asshole into a false sense of security. Getting Jess back onto the territory he was more comfortable with in a hope to draw him out, but I wasn’t willing to put Jess through it. Even now, I wouldn’t risk her going alone. However, if there was any chance her just returning there even for a short while would make a difference, we needed to be ready for it.

  I would not let him get away again.

  As we pulled up to the building I’d temporarily called home, a place I’d mostly been tortured by wanting the woman next to me, I tried to keep my tension from being suffocating in the car. Jess had to be feeling enough coming back here, she didn’t need me making things worse.

  I watched everything. My eyes scanning the area, again and again, searching for anything that prickled my instincts at all. Every other building felt like a threat, a place he could be hiding out. If I felt the slightest unease, I would act. I wouldn’t be able to control that if I wanted to.

  I didn’t know who or where, but there were Disciples nearby, ready to move in if Jager gave them the sign. If I placed a call through, he’d mobilize them on the first ring.

  None of that made me feel better. Just the idea that he might be near, that he might even get the chance to see from a distance, had me incensed.

  “We’ll be quick,” Jess said, her voice heavy with unease.

  I knew she was saying that as much for herself as for me.

  “Nothing is going to touch you, goddess,” I swore.

  I was armed. Our backup was armed. If that fucker had the balls to even try, he wouldn’t live long enough to regret it.

  “I know.” Despite the tremor in her voice, I could tell she meant it. She trusted me to keep her safe, even thinking I was doing it alone.

  Leaning across the center console, I gave her a soft kiss. “You don’t have to do this. If you aren’t ready, if you change your mind when we’re in there, whatever, we leave. If you never want to go back in there, you don’t have to.”

  “I can’t let him make me afraid of a place. Even if I never come back, I can’t give him that.”

  I heard my own words about her mother, about letting her have control through Jess’s fear, ringing back at me. I hated it right then, but she was right. She needed to take that power back.

  And if there was any luck on our side, we’d finally catch a break and find this fucker.

  I waited for her to make the move, knowing she needed to be in control of this. She took in several deep breaths, blowing each out slower than the last.

  “You’re so fucking strong,” I praised. “Do you know that?”

  She looked at me, vulnerable in a way that I knew wasn’t something easy for her to be. She searched my face, looking for some sign I was just saying it to help, not because I believed it. She wouldn’t find one. I knew it was the truth. I had the advantage of being able to see how much it took even to be there in the car where she was too blinded by shame at her fear.

  She seemed to relax at realizing I meant what I said. “I’m ready.”

  I got out first, scanning again, looking everywhere as I went around and opened her door. Nothing stood out. No sign of any cause for concern.

  That was more alarming than anything.

  JESS

  It was strange to logically recognize somewhere as your home but feel so out of place there.

  The sensation wasn’t unfamiliar. As a kid, it was what I’d thought home felt like. In some ways, being at the house in my room was a sanctuary from rehearsals and competitions. And yet, I knew that my mother could lock me in, could shut the lights off and leave me hungry in the dark. I’d also never had the freedom to make that room my own.

  But this place, it had been all of that.

  It was colorful and warm, everything was plush and inviting. It was meant to be my perfect space to unwind and relax.

  Now, I was standing in the doorway, too anxious to break the threshold.

  “We don’t have to do this,” Braden reassured me, rubbing circles on my back. “We can leave if it’s too much.”

  I knew that some part of him very much wanted me to take him up on that. He was the consummate protector, and he was worried this was too painful for me. It was why it had taken so much convincing to even get him to bring me.

  I also knew that I needed this, painful or not.

  “Can we prop the door open?” I asked.

  His hand froze, I knew he had stiffened entirely. Keeping the door open meant less of a barrier between us and any threat. I knew he was worried that he was still out there, that being here might put me at risk, but I didn’t think so. Even that night, he hadn’t seemingly come with the intention of attacking me. Not that I was giving him any credit for that. Just noting that the confrontation wasn’t the goal. Now, with me having back-up—armed back-up, not that he knew it—I doubted he would do anything.

  Knowing those concerns would be playing out in Braden’s head, I turned to face him and explained, “It happened right here.” I gestured into the open space right before us. “I’d closed and locked the door. And then he was there, and—”

  His hands came up, holding my cheeks while he kissed me to cut off my panicked speech. “Okay. We can do that. But I’d like to stay by the door then if you’ll be okay.”

  I thought about that. Everything that had happened was right in sight of the door. The idea of my room didn’t worry me, unless…

  “You’re sure it’s secure?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder at the apartment.

  Braden nodded. “We wouldn’t be here if I weren’t. Jager’s had cameras and sensors in here non-stop. If anyone had so much as tried to get in, he’d know.”

  I could deal with that, then. “Okay.”

  He kissed me again, a lingering one that helped me relax a bit. “I’m right here.”

  “Okay,” I repeated. It was time to face this.

  Turning away, I took the first step inside. I couldn’t know from the state I was in at the time, but if there had been any sign of what happened in here afterward, someone had cleaned it up. Just looking around, you’d never know anything out of the ordinary happened. It was exactly as it always was.

  I looked back to Braden, who’d moved into the doorway standing sideways in it. He’d moved a pair of Doc Martens I had near the door for bad weather to prop it open.

  “It’s like it didn’t even happen.”

  But it did. I wrung my hands together, the brace in the way as it so often was. I knew it had happened. I’d never forget it.

  “It did,” he agreed with my own thoughts. “But that doesn’t have to change everything.”

  Right. I didn’t have to become some “after” version of Jess who lived in fear. I was still me. The same woman that had fought tooth and nail to go back to work when all the men in my life were worried about it. I hadn’t been afraid of that. Why should I be worried about this place? It was mine, dammit.

  Straightening my spine, I walked in all the way, go
ing to the couch. Draped across it was a mulberry-colored chenille throw that I loved. Blankets were one of my weaknesses. A soft blanket in a gorgeous color like that was not something I could walk away from. And it wasn’t going to sit in an empty apartment anymore, especially not when Braden’s place was disturbingly lacking in blankets. A few nights ago, I’d had to drag the whole comforter from his bed out to the living room while we were watching a movie. No more.

  “I’m bringing this to your place. It can go on the couch,” I announced.

  “Okay, goddess,” he agreed, no issue at all with that.

  “I wish I could bring the whole couch. Yours is fine, but mine is way more comfortable,” I told him as I folded the soft fabric.

  “Told you, you can give my place whatever makeover you want. If that means you fill it with your shit, I don’t have a problem with that.”

  Was he…inviting me to move in with him?

  No. Not possible. It was way too soon.

  I didn’t yet know what I’d do next. It felt wrong to keep freeloading at Parker’s, but I couldn’t come back here. And I wasn’t sure I’d be able to win a battle with all the men in my life over getting a new place by myself.

  I liked being at Braden’s, but moving in?

  “Don’t tempt me,” I shot back, a test.

  He looked from the hall he was scanning to me, a smirk playing at his lips. “Pack, gorgeous. We’ll have it out about where you want to settle another time.”

  He was right. This was absolutely not the moment to entertain that discussion. That wouldn’t happen until I’d had a good while to figure out what I wanted to do and be able to fight for whatever that was.

  “You love it.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Nope. Not going there. I needed to pack. I needed to have more of my things available, even if they were getting shuffled around between Parker’s and Braden’s.

  I got on with it, finding it easier when I retreated into my bedroom and bathroom. But still, when I went back through the apartment to put packed bags in the front by Braden, I couldn’t help skirting that spot that I’d lain helpless.

  Regardless of what happened from here, coming back had proved one thing for certain.

  That apartment was no longer my home.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jess

  Braden’s edginess hadn’t abated when we left my apartment.

  It’d taken a couple trips to get all my things, each one we made together so I wasn’t alone at all. On the last, I’d cleared out my overstuffed mailbox that had a passive aggressive note from the mail carrier telling me it needed to be emptied. I was tempted to leave a note in response, but Braden hadn’t been as entertained by the idea as I was. Probably because he felt we were exposed there in the lobby.

  I’d thought getting back to his place would settle him down, but he was somehow more tense than ever. While I’d unpacked some things at his demand—not suggestion, demand—he’d disappeared to make some calls. By the time he’d returned, I was curled up on the couch with my blanket, flipping through movie and TV show options looking for something I hadn’t consumed during my time off. He didn’t say anything, just sat next to me, stiff as a board.

  “Are you going to talk about it?” I prompted, still scrolling.

  He didn’t say anything. Not one to take hints like that—not that I didn’t catch them, just that I chose to ignore them when I did—I persisted.

  “Most people find talking about their problems to be therapeutic. And I don’t mean in obviously pissed off secret phone calls to your partner.” I guessed at the last, figured Jack was at least decent odds.

  He grunted. Like an animal.

  “Ah, yes. Very insightful.”

  His hand flashed out, wrapping in my hair as he turned me to him. “You’re stubborn as fuck, you know that?”

  I flashed him a big smile. “I prefer ‘persistent.’”

  He kissed my temple, then pulled me to lean against him as he settled into the cushions more. Already feeling accomplished, I burrowed into him. Maybe more physical contact would loosen him up. In the meantime, I kept clicking away at the remote like my watching choices were actually what I was focused on.

  “I thought we might be able to lure him out today,” Braden finally confessed.

  My heartbeat kicked up at the idea. I didn’t want to see him. Not at all. If they found him, I’d force myself into the courtroom to make sure he was locked up, but even that scared me.

  Braden brought a hand up to massage my nape. “I wouldn’t have let him get anywhere near you. I didn’t even want you to have to get a look at him. But I was hoping having you in the building would draw him out enough for Jager to catch him on one of the cameras.”

  “But it didn’t?”

  He sighed. “Nothing. He was watching live, keeping an eye on every angle, and there wasn’t a thing that looked even questionably suspicious.”

  I didn’t know what to make of that. In the weeks since the attack, I’d been torn about the fact that he hadn’t been found. On the one hand, I hoped that meant he was far, far away from me. On the other, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be totally at ease again unless he was caught.

  “We’ll find him,” Braden swore, sounding like it was as much for his own benefit as mine. I knew he’d try, but I was starting to wonder how.

  Needing to not dwell on those thoughts, I clicked on Friends and decided the gang would fill the quiet house for a while.

  “Friends?”

  Worried, my brows pinched together as I looked at him. “Do you not like Friends?”

  I mean, I wasn’t going to say that was a deal breaker. But…

  “Who doesn’t like Friends?”

  Well, that was good.

  We settled in, and I grabbed the huge stack of mail I’d brought in and put on the couch next to me. I sorted out all the real junk—weekly sale fliers that were all outdated now, credit card offers, anything addressed to “current resident”—then spent some time flipping through the couple catalogs from stores I actually shopped at, mentally noting a couple things I might need. It was when I was opening the actual addressed envelopes that it happened.

  It should have caught my attention. I should have handed it to Braden, let him be the one to look. There was no return address, not even a logo of some type where it should go. Just my information cleanly typed in the middle. Not even a stamp.

  When I opened it, a small stack of pictures lay inside.

  At first, I didn’t realize what it was I was looking at. It seemed to be a room, one that wasn’t familiar at all. But it was what was on the walls that stood out. They were covered seemingly from floor to ceiling in pictures. On autopilot, I flipped to the next. It was closer, and I gasped. Those pictures, what seemed to be hundreds of them on the wall…

  They were all of me.

  BRADEN

  “How the fuck did it get into her mailbox?” I demanded.

  “Braden,” Jack tried, again, to keep me from blowing up.

  “We didn’t have eyes on the lobby. It’s not somewhere we could just install shit,” Sketch returned, pissed, too.

  It wasn’t each other we were pissed at. Not really. Even if it fucking felt like it then.

  We were pissed at the sick motherfucker that had sent Jess pictures of his shrine.

  There was nothing else to call it. I’d poured over those images now. There were over three hundred fucking photographs of her, and they weren’t all recent. Some featured a Jess I’d never known, in her later teens and early twenties. The lack of tattoos making the time clear more than anything. They were printed from websites and cut from ads. There were some Sketch and Carson were able to identify as being from different conventions they’d gone to. After getting those leads, we’d found them on the websites, taken by photographers that were there to capture the events. Most were from her own social media, or from the pages she ran for Sailor’s Grave.

  But every single image was of her. />
  I’d taken shots of the photos he’d sent before taking them to the station. Not one fingerprint besides what Jess had left. Not a scrap of evidence left behind. Even the envelope was one of the peel and stick ones. Not even the change of lifting DNA from saliva there.

  Just the same thing we had before.

  Fucking. Nothing.

  Only now, we had the heightened threat that was implicit in those pictures.

  He wasn’t gone. He wasn’t going to leave her alone.

  The photos he’d sent had a timestamp. They were taken four days after the attack. It was a warning, whether he meant to hurt her again or not, it was a promise that him being in her apartment that night hadn’t been the end.

  We’d already known that, but having it confirmed, having Jess know that it was confirmed, had fire blazing through my veins.

  “We’ve got officers tracking down who would have delivered the mail that day,” Jack reminded me of something I knew.

  Not just anyone could have put that envelope in her mailbox. They were all locked. Only the residents of a specific unit, the building management, and the post office had the ability to open them. So either someone working for one of the latter two was the guy we were looking for, or else the someone had been talked—or bribed—into delivering that letter.

  It was the only fucking lead we had.

  We’d been at this for hours. The captain had forced Jack to come in and get me out of the precinct. I’d let them remove me, but only because I planned to come right here to the Disciples’ clubhouse and see what the fuck they might be able to find. Jack had made the choice to stick with me for that.

  “Jager’s working that angle, too,” Stone added, finally telling me something I didn’t fucking know. “After hours, he might be able to get the info on who has that delivery route quicker.”

  Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. We both knew what we were hearing there: Jager was hacking into the postal service computer system. That kind of shit should have us breaking out the cuffs, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to stop him. And Jack knew he might not be able to if it were Cassie, either. That was enough to keep him quiet.