by Blake Pierce
The front door to the truck hung open.
Jason was already scrambling into the driver’s seat. He shot a look in her direction, then cursed loudly before slamming the front door and jamming his keys in the ignition. She heard a muffled rattling sound, and a string of oaths in Spanish.
She raised her weapon, pointing it at the window. “Stop or I’ll shoot!” she yelled.
But Mr. Hernandez ignored her. He continued fumbling with the keys. Finally, at last, the engine revved. Jason stared out the window, his eyes wide in panic. The twisting tattoo of the two snakes seemed to pulse against his skin, and veins protruded from his temples.
He muttered something she couldn’t hear through the glass, then shifted into gear. He slammed the gas. There was a squeal of tires, and the truck darted forward, nearly colliding with the office building. Jason cursed inaudibly and readjusted his gear shift before glancing over his shoulder and preparing to reverse.
Unlike the motel, Jason’s truck was in immaculate condition. The windows were clean, and the truck itself didn’t carry a single chip or dent. Some of the eyewitnesses who’d seen Hernandez follow his supposed victims home had claimed it all started when Mr. Carter nearly rear-ended Jason’s truck.
Adele kept her weapon trained and braced herself, shoulders set, feet apart. “Stop, FBI!” she shouted.
“Agent Sharp!” a voice called over her shoulder. For the briefest moment, she flinched and glanced back.
Masse was stumbling through the building nearest Jason—clearly he’d run around the street, going the long way. But now, this meant he was closer to the truck than she was. Masse spotted Jason; the young agent’s eyes widened, and he raised his weapon.
“Wait!” Adele snapped.
But Masse unloaded three rounds. Two struck the hood of the truck; the third shattered both windows, piercing clean through one and out the other. None of them hit Jason Hernandez.
But, through the now scattered glass of the truck’s window frame, Adele had a good long look at Jason’s expression.
He was no longer fiddling with the wheel or the ignition. He stared through the shattered glass, his eyes wide as if haunted, his features pale now. He stared at the smashed pieces of glass, and then his eyeline traced the hood of his car toward the two smoking bullet holes in the front of his beloved vehicle.
“Puta!” he screeched. Hernandez scrambled across the seat and flung open the passenger door before stumbling out. He was now on the opposite side of the vehicle from Adele, but closer to Masse.
Adele tried to hold her posture, but growled in frustration; she’d lost line of sight. She moved quickly, still with controlled motions, trying to keep the two quantities within field of vision as she hastily circled the parking lot.
Jason started toward Agent Masse, ignoring the gun waving in his face and Adele skirting around from behind. As she repositioned, Adele glimpsed his expression: Jason’s eyes were dilated, blood vessels throbbing in his neck and forehead.
“Cavron!” he screeched, glancing from his ruined truck to the FBI agent who’d shot it. He seemed entirely indifferent, or perhaps unaware, regarding the weapon in Masse’s still trembling hands.
Adele’s earlier cry of “Wait!” only now seemed to register with Masse. His trigger finger was still white against the mechanism, but he seemed frozen. He waited, hesitating, glancing between Adele and the approaching form of Hernandez. He hesitated for a second too long.
“No—don’t!” Adele shouted, but too late.
Jason surged forward, ducking Masse’s line of fire, and tackled the young agent around the waist, sending both of them clattering to the sidewalk.
Adele rushed forward, looking for an opening, her weapon raised. The cold concrete of the parking lot and the safety barrier provided a harsh surface against which Masse’s shoulder blades slammed once, twice as he tried to rise. But Jason snarled, punching and scratching the agent’s eyes.
“Get off him!” Adele shouted. Then she fired.
Masse loosed a cry of terror. Hernandez, though, grunted in pain, spinning like a top and slamming into the ground next to the agent he’d tackled.
“First one is the arm,” Adele snapped, weapon trained on Hernandez. “Keep struggling and the next is going in your chest, understand?”
The sound of cursing and crying faded from Jason’s direction where he rolled back and forth, his teeth flashing as they gritted in pain, and he pressed his head against the rough sidewalk. Rivulets of red stained his fingers. Every few moments he would look away from his injured arm and turn toward his steaming truck, shaking his head with a renewed anguish.
Adele sighed, then put her hand to her battery-powered field radio. “We’re going to need medical,” she said.
She glanced between her partner, who was still shakily getting to his feet, and Hernandez’s writhing form. She sighed again. “Better make it two.” Then, with a roll of her eyes, she approached Jason, handcuffs emerging from her belt.
CHAPTER TWO
Adele loosed an explosive gust of breath, listening to the quiet creak of hinges as her apartment door closed behind her. Four hours of ridiculous paperwork and interviews later, Adele was glad to be back home.
She flipped a light switch and peered into the cramped space as she rolled her shoulders and winced against a sudden pulse of pain. Adele glanced down at her side and, for the first time, noticed a stain of red on her white undershirt beneath her suit.
She frowned. Wincing again, Adele scanned her small apartment as she went to the kitchen sink, resignedly untucking the front of her shirt from her belt.
A new place. The lease only lasted two months at a time. It had been too expensive to stay in the old apartment. After Angus left, Adele simply wasn’t paid enough to keep up rent South of Market, where Angus and his coding buddies had congregated. Now, having moved to Brisbane, she found she didn’t mind the change. It wasn’t loud—which she had her neighbors to thank for—though the place was little more than a kitchen, a TV, and a bedroom with an en-suite bathroom. All of it, even somehow the TV, smelled a bit of mold.
It wasn’t like she spent much time at home anyway.
Adele winced again as she pulled her shirt from her belt and examined the long scratch against her skin. She grimaced in recollection. A gift of the chain-link fence, no doubt.
“Damn rookies,” she muttered beneath her breath.
Agent Masse was young. Only a few months out of training. Adele doubted she’d been much better on her first collar, but still… that had been a debacle. She missed John. Last time they’d met, though… things had grown awkward. She remembered the late-night swim in Robert’s private pool. The way John had leaned in, the way she’d recoiled, almost reflexively.
Adele frowned at the thought and immediately wished she could take it back. Instead, she reached for a clean length of paper towel from the counter and began running hot water. She opened the cabinet over the fridge and snagged a bottle of rubbing alcohol. She dabbed it against the towel and pressed the makeshift disinfectant wipe to her ribs, wincing yet again.
She moved over to the single chair in the kitchen, pressed against the half table between the fridge and the stove, and took a seat facing the wall, dabbing the strong-smelling paper towel against her scrape. At last, as she leaned back, she let out a long breath.
Absentmindedly, she glanced over her shoulder toward the door. Two bolts and a chain lock ornamented the metal frame, remnants from the previous tenants.
The chair creaked as she adjusted herself and leaned one elbow against the table, staring at the surface of the smooth wood. She shifted again, if only for the sake of the noise. The apartment was so quiet. Living with Angus, there would always be a TV show running or some podcast blaring from his room while he worked on a coding project. For the couple weeks she’d spent with Robert back in France, she would often find herself in the same room as her old mentor, enjoying his company by the fire as he read a book or listened to concertos on the
radio.
Now, though, in the small, stuffy San Francisco apartment… it was all so quiet again.
Adele shifted once more, listening to the creak and protest of the poorly constructed chair. A phrase from her childhood, one of her father’s favorites, crossed her mind. “Simple things please simple minds.” In a sort of phantom protest, Adele wiggled in the chair, listening to the strangely consoling creak of wood one last time, before she gritted her teeth, still pressing her makeshift disinfectant wipe against her wound, and then she regained her feet and trudged down the hall.
“Bloody Renee,” she muttered.
Jason Hernandez never would have bolted if John had been there. She missed France. After the interview with Interpol, she’d spent some time with Robert. A nice time—refreshing in its own way. It had given her an opportunity to look for her mother’s killer.
Adele pushed open the bathroom door at the end of the hall and stood in front of the mirror. It was a small, cramped bathroom. The shower sufficed as Adele hadn’t taken a bath in nearly six years. Showers were far more efficient. The Sergeant—her father—likely hadn’t taken a bath his entire life.
She sighed again as she undressed and stepped into the shower, turning on the hot water, but the spray was still lukewarm. Another little flaw of the new apartment. The water pressure wasn’t great either, but would have to do.
As Adele stood beneath the tepid drizzle, she closed her eyes, allowing her mind to wander, pushing past the events of the day, of the past couple of months back in the States.
Words played through her mind.
“…Honestly, it’s funny you left Paris, you know that? Especially given where you worked.”
She sighed as the water soaked her hair and began to drip down her nose and cheeks in slow uneven pulses, matching the temperamental jets from the showerhead. Yet she kept her eyes closed, still mulling over the words. They echoed—sometimes even when she slept—resonating in her head.
That’s what the killer had said.
Back in France. A man who’d sliced his victims and watched them bleed out, helpless and alone. She and John had caught that serial killer, but not before he had nearly murdered her father. He’d nearly killed Adele, too.
The bastard had worshiped her mother’s killer. Another murderer—so many of them.
Adele’s brow bunched in the stream of water as she clutched her fists and her knuckles pressed against the cold, slick white plastic pretending to be porcelain.
John had killed the serial killer before he’d ended Adele, but that had only left her with more questions. Part of her wished he’d been allowed to live.
Why was it funny she’d left Paris? That phrase haunted her now. She kept running it through her mind. Funny you left Paris… especially given where you worked… Almost like he was teasing her. They had been talking about her mother’s killer.
Paris. She was nearly certain now. Her mother’s murderer had lived in Paris. Perhaps he still did. He would be what, fifty? Adele shook her head, sending water droplets scattering across the shower onto the slick floor.
She gritted her teeth as more lukewarm liquid pulsed in uneven jets from the nozzles.
In a surge of frustration, she twisted the knob the full way, but the water didn’t warm. Adele blinked, her eyes stinging against the trails of liquid inside the slope of her cheeks. She stared in anger at the shower knob, the arrow pointing at the culmination of a red slash.
“Fine then,” she muttered.
She grabbed the handle and twisted it the other way. Small disciplines compounded over time. The cold water began to arc on her head and sent goosebumps rising on her arms. Adele’s teeth began chattering within moments, and the pain in her side faded to a numb chill as the cold water turned frigid.
Still, she stayed in the shower.
The killer had taunted her. As if he’d known something. Something she’d missed. Something the authorities had missed. What was relevant about her workplace? That part bothered her the most. It was almost as if… She shook her head again, pushing back the thought.
But… what if it was true?
What if her mother’s killer was somehow connected to the DGSI? Maybe not the agency itself, but the building. Perhaps there was a proximity. What else would make sense of his words?
Especially given where you worked…
The man John had shot had known something about her mother’s killer. But he’d taken it to his grave. And the Spade Killer, the man he had worshipped, the man who had killed her mother, was still out there.
The cold water continued to seep down the angled slope of her shoulders, and she drew in small, quick breaths against the sensation, but still refused to move.
She would be sharp next time. They had asked her to join a task force with Interpol on an as-needed basis. But Adele was itching to return to Europe. She liked California, and she liked working with the FBI, especially with her friend Agent Grant as supervisor. But her desire to solve her mother’s murder required a level of proximity.
Finally, pushing one forearm against the glass door, gasping, Adele twisted the shower knob.
Mercifully, the freezing water stopped. She stood trembling in the glass and plastic partition for a moment as the water dripped off in quiet taps.
Whoever designed the bathroom had placed the towel rack on the back of the door on the opposite side of the room. It took a few steps to reach it, and though she had a bathmat on the floor to absorb water, she preferred to wait in the shower a bit to dry off before stepping out.
And so she waited, thinking, contemplating, shivering. She thought of another time, soaked in water, also shivering…
A flash of warmth crested her cheeks. She thought of swimming in Robert’s pool—John had come over for an evening…
He was insufferable. Rude, obnoxious, annoying, unprofessional.
But also handsome, said a small part of her. Dependable. Dangerous.
She shook her head and stepped from the shower, causing the glass and metal door to squeak open and slam into the yellow wall; a few flecks of paint chips fell from the ceiling. Adele sighed, glancing up. Already patches of mold had formed beneath the coating. The previous tenant had painted over it, which had only served to disguise the issue.
Perhaps she should text John.
No, that would be too familiar. An email then? Too impersonal. A call?
Adele hesitated for a moment and reached for her towel, pulling it off and drying her hair. A call might be nice. She reached down to her side with the scrape and winced against the minor injury.
Some wounds healed slowly. But other times, it was best to avoid a wound altogether. Perhaps it was better she didn’t call John at all.
Exhaustion weighed heavily on her shoulders as she moved through the house to the bedroom. Her eyelids were already beginning to droop. Three hours of overtime, filling out paperwork and justifying the shooting, had taken their toll.
It was a horrible thought, but Adele was starting to wish for a case in Europe.
Perhaps something that didn’t hurt anyone too badly. Just something to get her out of California. Out of the small, cramped apartment. It was too quiet. For some people, the sounds of other human beings moving around, enjoying their lives, assuaged them. It staved off bouts of loneliness.
Adele sighed again, and she moved into her room, donning bedclothes. She reaffixed a bandage on her scrape and tried to push back any further thoughts of animosity toward her new young partner. She flopped into bed and lay there for a few minutes.
In the past, she and Angus would watch TV as they drifted off. Sometimes he would read a book, narrating it line by line out loud so she could enjoy it too. Other times they would just snuggle and talk for a few hours before they drifted off.
Now, though, she lay in her bed. No TV. No books. Just quiet.
CHAPTER THREE
Melissa Robinson moved up the apartment steps, humming quietly to herself. In the distance, she heard the bells fro
m the city. She paused to listen, her smile only widening. She’d been living in Paris for seven years now, yet the sounds never grew stale.
She turned up the next set of steps. No elevators in this apartment. The buildings were too old. Cultured, she thought to herself.
She smiled again and took the stairs one at a time. There was no rush. The new arrival she was going to meet had said two o’clock. It was 1:58. Melissa paused at the top of the landing, glancing out the wide window into the city beyond. She hadn’t grown up in Paris, but the place was beautiful. She glimpsed the old, yellowed stone structures of buildings older than some countries. She noted the angled pattern of apartments and cafes and crisscrossing streets through the heart of the city.
With another contented sigh, Melissa reached the door on the third floor and politely extended her hand, tapping on the frame. A few moments passed.
No answer.
She continued to smile, still listening to the bells and then glancing back out the window. She could just see the low-peaked steeple of Sainte-Chapelle spiraling against the horizon.
“Amanda,” she called out, her voice pleasant.
She remembered the first time she’d come to Paris. It had all seemed overwhelming. Seven years ago, an expat from America, resituating in a new country, a new culture. Knocks on the door had been a welcome distraction at that time. Melissa knew many of her friends in the expat community had a difficult time adjusting to the city. It wasn’t always as friendly at first blush, especially not for Americans, or for college-age kids. She remembered her time on an American campus for the first two years. It was as if everyone had wanted to be her friend. In France, people were a bit more reserved. Which, of course, was why she helped organize the group.
Melissa smiled again and tapped on the door once more. “Amanda,” she repeated.
Again, there was no response. She hesitated, glancing up and down the hall. She reached into her pocket and fished out her phone. Smartphones were all well and good, but Melissa preferred a bit of an older style. She scanned the old flip phone and noted the time on the front screen. 2:02. She scrolled through the text messages and scanned Amanda’s last text.