InsistentHunger

by Lyn Gala

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Paige said without even trying to hide the sarcasm. Veronica wasn’t stupid, so she probably knew exactly how Paige felt, but she followed anyway—either out of some ridiculous sense of solidarity or just out of a desire to be in the center of the action. Who knew.

  They were barely inside the door when Veronica leaned back against it as if someone was going to try to push his way in. “Johnson said that the captain thinks that Brady’s disappearance might have something to do with the rape case. Have you heard that?”

  “Considering we’ve spent the last two hours sitting next to each other, you’ve heard everything I have,” Paige pointed out without mentioning what the captain had said to her.

  If that was true, then this rapist was going to be harder to catch than anyone expected. Hell, she wasn’t even sure what these things were. If they were vampires, she’d expect them to kill and move on. Shit. She had a serious screw loose because she had an almost overwhelming urge to go ask the state’s profiler to figure the possibility of a vampire into his fancy equations and geographical surveys. He’d have her committed.

  “It’s a theory.” Veronica leaned against the sink as Paige headed into the stall. “He was a nice guy. Cute. Alex thinks he might have had a thing for you.”

  “Alex what?” Paige demanded over the sound of her peeing. She seriously needed to cut back on the coffee.

  “He thinks Brady liked you. I mean, he wasn’t saying anything because you were training him, and you like that rulebook of yours too much to bend it for a man, not even someone as cute as Brady.”

  “He’s ten years younger than I am.”

  “And? Geez, Paige, that’s something to brag about, not something that would keep him from liking you. Besides, you’re not exactly chopped liver.”

  “I’m not exactly a beauty queen,” Paige pointed out.

  “By your age, lots of women have just given up and you’re still in shape.”

  Paige pushed the door to the stall open. “My age?” She fastened her uniform belt and glared at Veronica at the same time.

  “You’re not exactly young,” Veronica said.

  “I’m not Methuselah. I only recently turned forty.”

  “So, he wasn’t too young for you. He was twenty-nine or thirty.”

  “He is.” Paige closed her eyes and the image of Brady with those pleading eyes and pale face assaulted her. “He is twenty-nine or thirty. We don’t have any evidence he’s dead.” Well, beyond the lack of a pulse or any body heat, anyway.

  “Paige,” Veronica said softly.

  Paige shouldered her out of the way to get to the sink. “And women don’t actually have to go to the bathroom in groups, you know.”

  “I know. Look, I know I’m not good with saying the right thing, but if you need something, I’m here, okay?”

  Paige stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were almost as bloodshot as Brady’s. “I know,” she agreed. “Hey, you should organize the casserole flood that’s about to descend on Brady’s parents. There’s nothing worse than having five tuna casseroles show up on the same day.” When an officer went down, cops gossiped while cops’ wives, partners, parents and significant others cooked. It was a rule.

  “Don’t one of the wives usually do that?”

  “Yeah.” Paige shrugged. “But if you’re doing it, you’ll be too busy to say stupid shit to me and maybe I can get through the day without crying.” Paige gave Veronica a small smile to soften the bitchiness.

  “Fair enough,” Veronica agreed after an awkward pause.

  “And make sure none of that shows up at my house. I just need space.” Paige walked out and stood in the middle of the precinct, feeling like every set of eyes were on her. She’d been nine when she’d learned how much she hated being the center of attention and she hated it just as much this time. Life was funny. When she was a kid, her mother had been taken by a drunk driver, putting Paige in the middle of the limelight as the only witness to the crime. Now she was an adult and Brady had been taken by a different kind of serial killer. Of course, Brady was the walking around sort of dead, so Paige wasn’t sure she deserved the sympathy this time around, but she was getting it anyway. She was getting it and she fucking hated it.

  She turned to the closest cop, a detective who had come in for the taskforce and whose name slipped her memory. “I’m going home. I just need some space,” she said.

  She didn’t know the man and he didn’t know her, but his expression turned sympathetic. “No problem. I’ll let the captain know.”

  Paige turned and headed out of the station, stopping to just breathe. After months of muggy heat and bugs, the first cool snap had made leaves start to turn red and the air turn crisp. If she got up early enough, she could sometimes see her foggy breath on mornings like this, but the sun was up and the heat was already starting to gather on the sidewalks today.

  Paige considered asking a uniform for a ride back to Brady’s place where her car was parked or even her place, but she vetoed the plan in favor of a nice, long walk. She had to clear her head and start making some sort of plans. Plans. Yeah. How did you make plans when you weren’t sure what you were dealing with? She rubbed her sore arm. And when you weren’t sure what you were turning into.

  She hadn’t even reached the corner before a gray sedan pulled up to the curb. “Need a ride?”

  Paige sighed and looked inside where the state profiler was sitting behind the wheel. “I don’t need a psych eval.”

  He grinned at her. “That’s the problem with my job—everyone assumes I’m trying to profile them. I was just offering a ride home.”

  “I can walk.”

  “Yeah, you can. But I can offer you a ride without saying anything stupid while trying to make pointless reassurances.”

  “Can you promise to not talk at all?” Paige asked.

  “Deal.”

  Paige studied the man. He was older, someone with a weary and worn expression who looked like he’d come up through the ranks. And hopefully he could keep a promise because Paige really didn’t want to walk. She pulled the car door open and got in. “I left my car at Brady’s place.”

  “Do you want to go there? I could just take you home.”

  “I’m fine to drive.”

  “I never suggested you weren’t,” he said, “I was just giving you a choice.”

  “And I asked to go to Brady’s place.”

  “Fair enough.” He pulled away from the curb and headed down the street. It all looked so normal and Paige wanted to stand in the middle of the street and scream that vampires were real. Instead she just watched the streets pass. “Is there any news yet?”

  “Nothing.”

  True to his word, he nodded without offering any sort of empty reassurances. Paige stared out and tried to figure out what she should do now that her first plan had fallen flat. Maybe she shouldn’t put quite so much faith in the police, but sixty-five percent of murders got solved, and that was the lowest solve-rate in a decade. Their department was running close to an eighty percent close rate and she had this fantasy that she’d call and the detectives would magically find the assholes who had hurt Brady.

  And that’s about where the fantasy ended because Paige was pretty sure she didn’t want the department to find out that Brady had caught a bad case of death.

  “Here we are.” The profiler pulled to the side of the road. The entrance to Brady’s apartment was still blocked by a black-and-white, and a large crowd had gathered on the street, including a camera crew that had parked in the dirt and was set up by the mailboxes. “Can you even get to your car?”

  Paige looked at the mess. “Probably not.”

  “And that camera crew would love to get film of you.”

  “You’re just a glass-half-full kind of guy,” Paige said.

  The profiler cracked a smile. “I can be. I can also be the guy who drives you home.”

  “Fine.” Paige knew she
wasn’t being very gracious to someone who was just trying to help, but she wasn’t really in the mood to be grateful to anyone right now. She was going home to Brady and she didn’t have any answers for him.

  “You might want to tell me where we’re going. I don’t really know the town that well.”

  Maybe Paige was just having a shitty day, but she frowned as it occurred to her that she didn’t know this guy from Adam. Yeah, he was a cop, but he was also a stranger and he’d been awfully quick to offer his help.

  “Maybe I should just get a ride from a uniform,” she said as she reached for the handle.

  “Fair enough,” he said without even a pause and now Paige was pretty sure she had imagined everything because he had the same pleasant expression. “Look, I know what it is to lose a partner. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, so whatever you need, I’ll get it for you if I can.”

  Paige opened the door and felt better once she had one foot outside the door. She was just too off-balance here. “I just don’t want to take more resources away from this rape case. These women deserve justice and Brady does too, but not at the cost of letting this guy get away,” Paige said. “Brady’s a cop. He’s going to put civilian lives first. It’s the job, right?” Paige hated how insecure she suddenly sounded.

  The profiler nodded. “For good cops, it is.” He didn’t say anything else as Paige got out and she closed the door and raised a hand in gratitude and farewell before turning toward the apartment. Maybe she should just ask the uniforms to pull out so she could get her car. She really didn’t want to spend any more time in a small space with another human being. She wasn’t fit company right now. Rubbing her sore arm, she headed into the complex.

  Chapter Five

  “Brady?” Paige stood in her empty bathroom and called the name out softly. If he was a vampire, he couldn’t have gone wandering very far. Could he? Paige’s stomach curdled as she remembered her early morning observation that he was acting like a predator. She might respect certain predators—like coyotes and wolves—but she sure never trusted one too far. If she had Brady in front of her where she could keep an eye on him, she’d feel a lot better.

  Her bedroom was silent, the books still on the floor where she’d knocked them over. The living room stood empty. A few drops of blood were smeared on the linoleum in the front entry and Paige made a mental note to wipe it down. She didn’t know if it was her blood or Brady’s, but she didn’t need to have someone find blood in her place—not when she had a missing partner.

  The kitchen and her tiny, neglected dining room were also empty. That left the attic and the basement. One was cramped, dirty and full of spiders. The other was spacious, dirty and full of spiders. Assuming Brady would rather have space, Paige headed for the basement door. She normally kept a padlock on it since the basement led out to storm cellar doors. Now though, the screws on the hardware had been ripped out of the wood.

  “Great. You’re fixing that, Brady,” Paige complained softly as she tried very hard to ignore the amount of sheer strength it would take to do that kind of damage. She’d installed the lock herself and she’d used four long screws right into the king stud, so nothing human could have pulled the screws out. Now the hardware dangled from the door, the closed padlock still in place.

  “Brady?” she called softly as she pulled the flashlight off the shelf just inside the door. Her weapon was in her holster and she had an urge to pull it. However, it was a stupid urge. He was still Brady. And if he wasn’t Brady, she had no business going into the basement with a creature strong enough to do that damage. Ignoring common sense, she went down the first couple of steps. “Brady, if you don’t answer, I’m setting the fucking house on fire.”

  “It’s your house,” a low voice answered.

  “I never said it would be logical for me to set fire to it, only that I would.”

  Brady chuckled. “Embrace your flaws?” he asked, parroting back one of the phrases she’d used on him when she’d started training him.

  “Hey, I was talking about you when I said that. I never said I had flaws,” Paige’s stomach unclenched as she could feel the more rational side of Brady taking hold. If he was turning into a predator, he wasn’t doing it today. He stood at the foot of the stairs and looked up at her, one of her lavender sheets wrapped around him like a really ugly handkerchief skirt. Paige’s eyebrows went up and Brady shifted uncomfortably and clutched the sheet. “Most of your sheets have flowers. I wouldn’t have pegged you as a flowery sheet kind of woman.”

  “Yeah, well I’m full of surprises.” Paige dropped her messenger bag on the step next to her and pulled out the clothes she’d grabbed from his apartment. “Crap, I forgot shoes.”

  “As long as I don’t have to wear a sheet with little pink roses, I’m happy. Barefoot isn’t a problem.”

  Paige tossed the clothes down to him and Brady caught them and then retreated into the shadows of the far nook where the washer and dryer had been before Paige moved them up into the garage. “Why are you in my basement?” Paige asked.

  “People were looking in your windows. I didn’t want them seeing me,” Brady called from the shadows.

  “People were what?”

  “I think they were reporters. Either that or one of them has a camera fetish.” Brady walked back into the main part of the basement, buttoning his shirt. “I thought a broken door was better than a whole lot of questions.”

  “True,” Paige agreed. She came down several more steps, the smell of damp earth and mold greeting her. The foundation had cracked and the basement flooded about three times a year, which was one reason for just padlocking it and forgetting it. “Do you really want to be down here though?”

  “No. No, I really don’t.” Brady grimaced. He turned his back and headed over to an old metal shop shelving Paige had installed when she first moved into the house. The top two shelves still had neglected boxes of Christmas decorations, but the lower shelves were empty and water stained. He leaned against it. “Either my senses are improving or this basement stinks.”

  “The basement stinks,” Paige said. “So, I went over to your apartment.” She came down to the bottom steps and sat on them as she watched him. Brady wasn’t meeting her gaze and he flinched away when she mentioned the apartment.

  “Am I going to get a big department funeral?” he asked.

  Paige leaned forward and rested her elbows against her knees. “You know about the blood?”

  “I remember bleeding, someone stabbing me low in the back, and I was thinking that I wasn’t going to make it.”

  “Did you scream?”

  Brady looked at her. “Why? Does it matter?”

  She thought about that for a second. It might help her find a witness, but then again, the officers who canvassed the area would have asked the neighbors if they heard any disturbances. “No, I guess not. I guess I’m just trying to understand this. There was a hell of a mess in there, and so far, none of your neighbors remembered hearing anything.”

  “A couple of them have blown their eardrums out by playing music loud enough to rattle my dishes in two apartments over, so that’s not surprising.” Brady made it sound like it wasn’t any big deal, but he was rubbing his throat, his fingers stroking over the curve where his neck and chest met.

  “Did they hit your throat?” Paige guessed. It would explain why he hadn’t screamed.

  Brady shrugged. “I remember trying to cough and I couldn’t. I remember someone grabbing me and I tried to fight, and then there was this sharp pain in my back and I could see the blood.”

  “Do you remember his face, the man who attacked you?”

  Brady shook his head, mute horror coloring his expression.

  “Do you remember where they took you? Were there black gum trees around?”

  He blinked fast and slowly retreated to the cinderblock wall. When he tilted his head to the side, she held her breath as Brady fought through some memory. Part of her wanted to go over and rest her hand
against his shoulder in a promise of support and part of her couldn’t forget that he was a predator. He’d tasted her blood and he’d warned her that he wanted to run her down.

  “Brady?” she called softly.

  His gaze found her. “There were hillocks and water and I thought it should smell bad, but I could only smell my own blood. I was choking on it.”

  “Gravel road or hardtop?”

  “Hardtop.”

  She kept her voice crisp and official and just hoped that her tone could protect Brady from the horror of his own memories. She knew what it was to have emotions that clung to you like cobwebs and Brady didn’t need her making it worse. “A house or a business?” she asked quickly.

  That made him think for a second. “A house. An old one back from the road, only there was a big sign, like a business sign, only I couldn’t read it in the dark. And there were people, several of them, grabbing me.” He stopped suddenly and shook himself before darting across the basement like he could escape the memories. Turning, he pointed at her. “That’s why I came to you. You’re good, Silver. I didn’t know I remembered all that. You should be a detective. Everyone on the force says so.”

  “Not everyone wants to work long hours and deal with victims,” Paige answered. “God knows, I don’t. I’ll do the interview and let someone else go back week after week to tell the family that we haven’t found someone or that we did solve the crime, but the DA won’t prosecute. I don’t need the ulcer.”

  “But you’re good with people.”

  “No more than you. No more than John or Rick. Okay, so I’m a lot better with people than Alex or Veronica, but that’s like being smarter than a moron.”

  A quick laugh slipped out of Brady, but then his expression turned serious. “I wanted to be a detective.”

  “Maybe you still can be,” Paige said with a strained smile. “On television, people do it all the time. There was that show with the Nick guy who was dead. He made a good detective.”

  Brady looked at her like she’d lost her mind and Paige had to admit that it was a possibility.