Jack (Secret Revenge #1)

by Robin Edwards

  Julie ran to her house and grabbed her bicycle and pedaled down the street and over four blocks where the giant oak tree sat by the trickling water. She saw Lydia before she had pulled up next to the tree and walked her bike over, propping it against the picnic table she had carved her name into as a kid. Lydia didn’t look down at Julie when she walked up and kept her gaze out into the darkness that laid in the trees on the other side of the creek.

  “What are you doing here,” Lydia said still not breaking her eye connection. “Come to make fun of me for the other night?”

  “What,” Julie said slightly hurt. “No Lydia. I was worried about you. The Sheriff told me about you finding the first victim and then you didn’t show up today.”

  “Right,” Lydia said as she jumped down from the tree and faced Julie. “You want me to believe that you actually give a shit? Why? Because I was more palatable as an absolute stranger.”

  “Hey,” Julie said defensively. “It’s not like you knew who I was at first. You were just as into it as me.”

  “Yea, well,” Lydia said as she dusted her hands on her black cargo pants. “I ran as soon as you took your mask off, so what does that tell you?”

  “Lydia you don’t mean that,” Julie said walking towards her. “You don’t have to get defensive. The truth is I was shocked when I found out it was you but that didn’t take the butterflies in my stomach away or make me want to see you any less.” Julie reached out her hand and caressed Lydia’s cheek.

  “You mean that,” Lydia asked stepping closer to Julie. “I mean this isn’t some mean trick where your bestie is hiding with a camera and bucket of pig’s blood?”

  “No,” Julie said chuckling. “It’s just me. I'm sorry I didn’t come sooner, I had to do some detective work on the victims.

  “Ugh,” Lydia said wrapping her arms around Julie’s waist and pulling her close. “That has to be a hell of a day. You want to grab a drink?”

  “No,” Julie said leaning in. “I kind of like it right here.”

  Julie leaned in and pressed her lips against Lydia’s. They began to kiss softly but as the night progressed so did the intensity of their passion. They climbed the large tree Lydia had grown up sitting in and sat embraced from the limbs of the tree. The night air was cold, but they had no problem keeping each other warm.

  “Did you find anything out about the victims of the case,” Lydia asked. “Whoever this is, they are sick freaks.”

  “Yea actually,” Julie replied. “The highlighted lines seem to be correlating with the secret lives of these women. It’s like the killer has something against the women these married men are sleeping with.”

  “Wow,” Lydia sighed. “That is pretty intense. At first, I just thought it was some whack job religious person. I’m glad I’m not into dudes.”

  “No,” Julia stated. “It doesn’t seem to be tied to any religion. We are still way off the beaten path with this case. I just hope we can get to the bottom of it before they strike again. This last victim was a girl from this town.”

  “I know,” Lydia swallowed hard. “I recognized her face at the ball. She was the little sister of Alexandra Brown.”

  “Yea,” Julie said with sympathy. “She used to come over for dinner with the Sheriff’s daughter sometimes. She was a sweet girl, and I heard she just got accepted to graduate school too. I want to keep whatever secret relationship she was having quiet; I don’t want to desecrate her memory because this town is full of gossipy old hags.”

  “Ha!” Lydia laughed. “Be careful, we are almost to that age where we could be the gossipy old hags.”

  The two girls laughed and stayed up in the tree until the sun was about to rise. It was the first time Julie had felt like an average person since June, and she was sad when the night had to end. Lydia walked Julie to her door and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Are you working today,” she asked.

  “No, it’s Sunday, and I know the Sheriff isn’t working unless he has to,” Julie explained. “I am going to go in here, shower and take a nap.”

  “That sounds great,” Lydia winked at Julie. “Call me later, and we can get some dinner or something.”

  “I will,” Julie kissed Lydia one last time and went inside, locking the door behind her.

  She felt guilty being so overwhelmed with happy emotion knowing the Brown’s were having the worst few days of their lives. As much as Julie wanted to jump back out there and get more information on the victims she knew she needed a day off to relax. Julie began walking up the stairs towards her room when she heard a clatter in the kitchen. She froze trying to remember if she had locked the door before she left.

  Julie turned around and slowly crept back down the stairs and grabbed the bat she stashed by the front door. She could see a moving shadow coming from the kitchen, and she pulled out her cellphone, ready to clobber the intruder and call 911. Julie’s footsteps slowed as the thought of the serial killer ran through her mind but figured she was safe since she wasn’t in any extramarital affair.

  Julie reached the kitchen door, took a deep breath and ran into the kitchen with the bat over her head. She didn’t see anyone in front of her, but the back door was sitting wide open. How did someone get in without breaking the lock and how did they get the security code to the house. The kitchen was trashed as if the intruder was searching for something. Julie turned around as the kitchen door slowed from her kick. She gasped and began to back up as she noticed a note stuck in the swinging door, suspended by her own large kitchen knife. The note was written in red as if the person had used blood to write it. The note simply said:

  Back Off Little Julie. You Don’t Want To End Up Like Poor Macy Brown.

  Xoxoxoxo

  Chapter Six

  The grass under Julie’s feet was still wet from the dew that morning, and Lydia nudged her shoulder smiling sweetly. The pastor was finishing his speech, and then they would lay Macy Brown to rest, her autopsy turning up the same thing as all of the other girls. Julie just couldn’t help but wonder why the killer picked her; she was so young and so promising.

  The group began to move forward in a line, tossing a red rose into the hole as they walked past. Julie stopped for a moment and stared down at the red oak box holding the body of a woman who should have never had her life snatched away. Lydia walked up beside her, grasping her hand and resting her chin on Julie’s shoulder. Julie looked at her and gave her a half smile before tossing the rose onto the casket and walking forward.

  “Julie,” Sheriff Bartlett called after her. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay Sheriff,” July answered. “I am just ready to get back to work. This week off was appreciated, but I am going crazy.”

  “Well,” Sheriff Bartlett seemed to contemplate his next words carefully. “I promised your folks you would get ample time, but I guess if you are ready then I will see you Monday morning.”

  “Thanks, Sheriff,” Julie said as he kissed her forehead and caught up with his wife and children.

  Julie and Lydia decided to walk back to town, thinking some fresh air would do them well. It was now into the second week of November and Thanksgiving was drawing close. Lydia had become a source of strength for Julie, and even though Kait didn’t quite understand, she was just happy Julie wasn’t working all the time. Kait had left for the weekend, too stressed over the events with the Brown family. She and Tommy said they were going to go to Boston for the week and just relax, get away from the crazy.

  After the note was found on Julie’s kitchen door, the police came, and the Sheriff got nervous. Julie was like family to him, so he gave her some paid time off and assigned police guards at her house around the clock. There hadn’t been a peep from the murderer since then, and Julie was determined not to let the killer scare her away from the trial. These six women deserved to have someone on their side, fighting for their justice. Lydia had started getting involved in the case as well, and though she said it was to help bring the killer to justice,
Julie was pretty sure it was to keep an eye on Julie and her safety.

  Though Julie felt safe knowing there were cops at all her doors she still couldn’t sleep at night, having flashes of the victim’s faces fill her dreams. Even when Lydia slept over, which was most nights now, she still would sneak out of bed and sit at her desk writing about possible leads and motives in the murders. The only time Julie stopped obsessing was when Lydia and her would discuss Thanksgiving and how she was planning on introducing her to her parents and brothers. Lydia was nervous for a couple of reasons. One, Julie had never brought a woman to the house to meet her family and two, Julie’s mom was well aware of Lydia’s past and issues, and she was afraid they would judge her without even knowing her first. Julie tried to calm those fears knowing her parents were real people and the Sheriff would be there too, but Lydia seemed to grow more and more nervous as November wore on.

  There hadn’t been many breaks in the case with Macy Brown and the locals were proving hard to crack especially when it came to Macy’s private life. From what Julie understood from talking to the guards at their house, Macy was definitely seeing someone, but the secret was being protected like she was dating the President. Julie wanted to get out there and take a crack at it, especially since she wasn’t a cop and so many people in town trusted her. She had every intention of going out first thing Monday and talking to Macy’s sister about what was going on.

  Lydia didn’t seem happy at the idea of Julie going out without her and had talked the Sheriff into letting her drive Julie around in one of the police SUVs as precautionary measures. The Sheriff had been distant from Lydia, and she was starting to feel slightly confused by his reluctance to talk about Macy Brown and who she may have been dating. Lydia watched everything around her and had acquired the ability to see things most people would miss through her youth since she always had to be prepared with her mom. Lydia knew two things, the Sheriff was acting strange, and though Lydia hadn’t mentioned it to Julie, she had run into Kait’s boyfriend Tommy that morning, and he didn’t know anything about Kait going to Boston for a week.

  Lydia was determined to figure out what was going on behind closed doors in that town. She always thought she had the shadiest life in their small community, but it turns out the secrets were a lot deeper than she imagined. There was only one way to sift through the drama, and that was by watching and waiting because everyone messes up, it’s just a matter of paying attention to the details.

  The sun was overhead as Julie and Lydia walked along the streets from the cemetery and the light warmed Julie’s heart. Lydia couldn’t help but see that beautiful little girl still inside this amazing woman Julie had become. Thanksgiving was just around the corner Lydia feared there would be more than just a carved turkey on the menu this year.

  Hidden Meaning

  A Lesbian, Holiday Romance

  By: Elle Crosby

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  Prologue

  Lydia Thompson didn’t know how she got into this mess of a case, but she found herself chasing after a girl she had hated all of her life while trying to track down a serial killer that was using scorned lovers from romance novels to justify their killings. Ever since she walked up on that first victim’s body in June, Lydia had found herself teetering between disgusted, scared, and intrigued.

  Falling in love with the coroner, and now Assistant Detective on the case, at the Halloween masquerade ball had Lydia living in a horror movie but with a sexy face to look at every day. There was just something about Julie Ophelia that made Lydia want to protect her and keep her out of harm's way, and since Julie was just as stubborn as Lydia, she would have to immerse herself, in this case, to stay close by her.

  It all started six months ago when, after another drawn out fight with her alcoholic mother, Lydia jumped in her car and just drove. After nearly an hour and a half, she took the next exit on the highway and found the closest park in the little town. Lydia was about a hundred miles from her home in Bushwick and still she didn’t feel far enough away. She sat on the swing set in the abandoned park and thought back to when she was a child watching her mother down bottles of vodka and blame Lydia for her husband leaving her. As a little girl, Lydia was very self-sufficient and often found herself tucking her drunk mother in bed after cleaning up the vomit on the kitchen floor. As she grew up, nothing changed except Lydia’s ability to get away from it all and hide out in the tree at the creek in the neighborhood.

  As Lydia swung on the swing in the strange little town, she found her thoughts swirled around her childhood, or missed childhood as she thought about it. She began swinging higher on the swing set, ignoring the sound of people behind her crunching in the twigs and old leaves that no one raked last fall. Finally, she drug her feet across the sand under her to slow the swing down. She looked down at the rising ground and yanked her feet up, gasping at the red blood mixing with the sand beneath her. Lydia grabbed the metal bar to slow the swing, and she jumped off, landing on her knees in the dirt in front of her. The next moments Lydia only remembers in slow motion. She stood up and slowly turned around not knowing what she would find behind her. There was a tall bush that backed the swing set and Lydia’s eyes followed the leaves to the base where a small hand was sticking out, blood running from the fingertips and pooling beneath the swing set.

  Ever since that day, Lydia hasn’t slept well at night, and she doubles checks the locks on the door before bed, something a town like Bushwick has never had to do. In total, there have been six bodies found, all with the same carvings etched into them and all having died from a heart embolism. The latest victim, Macy Brown, was discovered right there in town. Nothing more was known about these bodies until Julie started doing a little detective work of her own.

  Julie began retracing the areas in which the bodies were found and came across five different romance novels at each one of the crime scenes with one page bookmarked. The page number corresponded with the number etched into the palm of each of the girls. Once the Sheriff realized the work Julie had done, he had started allowing her to do some collaboration with the detectives and Julie had begun uncovering secret lives of each of the victims.

  Days before Macy Brown’s body was
found, someone had broken into Julie’s house and left a cryptic sign stabbed into Julie’s kitchen door. The realization that this killer had gotten closer and closer hit Lydia and Julie in the gut that night, and it was only a few days after that they found Macy Brown’s body. The whole town showed up at Macy’s funeral except Julie’s best friend Kaitlyn Brown who had told Julie she was going outside the city with her boyfriend for a few days.

  Lydia didn’t like Kait too much, but she dealt with her being Julie’s best friend since they were little girls. Oddly enough, though, Lydia found out that Kait never went out of town, but she kept it to herself, not wanting to stress Julie out any more than she already was.