There's no place like HOME (Emma Frost Book 8)

by Willow Rose

  “I brought a little something for the trip,” I said, and held up a thermos with coffee. “I also brought some of my home made cake.”

  Morten hardly looked. His silence made me nervous. I grabbed a piece of the cake and ate it, hoping Morten wouldn’t see me. He knew I was an emotional eater, and that I had gained a lot of weight over the last year, due to all the stress and emotional turbulence I had been through. He also knew I was trying to lose a couple of pounds and tried to support me. It was just so hard for me. Going through all the stress I was right now, I simply couldn’t keep to a diet. Maybe I didn’t really want to. Maybe I liked to have this. It had sort of become my thing. Eating made me happy.

  “Do you want me to pour you some coffee?” I asked. “I brought cups.”

  “It’s a little dangerous to pour hot coffee while we’re driving,” Morten said. “Wait till we’re parked at the port waiting for the ferry.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  Silence broke out between us. An awkward long silence.

  What is wrong with him? Did I say something? Did I do something?

  “So, did you have a nice evening with Jytte?” I asked.

  Morten answered with a grumble.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” Morten exhaled. “She’s giving me a hard time. That’s all.”

  “A hard time? How’s that?” I asked, and stuck my hand into the bag and found another piece of cake.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  I bit my lip. I hated how he always excluded me when it came to his daughter. Anything else in his life, he would include me and tell me everything, even ask for my advice. Even when it came to his work. But, as soon as it was her, I had no business. It frustrated me. When you love someone, you want to be a part of every area of their life. Not just some of it. This was obviously bothering him enough to make him moody and ruin our trip. So, why couldn’t I know what it was?

  “Maybe I do,” I mumbled, while looking out the window. The port was coming up ahead of us. There were a lot of cars already waiting for the next ferry. The trip across to the mainland only took twelve minutes, and the ferry left three times an hour, so many of the people living on the island had jobs on the mainland and took the trip every morning to go to work.

  “What was that?”

  Morten drove into a lane and parked the car. I could see the ferry approaching in the distance. “I just said that maybe I would like to know what it was that Jytte was giving you such a hard time about.”

  Morten rubbed his chin. He had shaved this morning, and was even wearing a tie. Maybe this meeting was more important than I had first thought. Was he worried about losing his job if they decided on the cutbacks? Was he keeping his worries from me?

  “I don’t want to bother you with what we’re dealing with. Besides, Jytte would kill me if I did. She already thinks I’m sharing too much with you. She made me promise that what I talked about with her would stay between us. Guess she is afraid of losing her father, the poor thing.

  The poor thing? More like poor manipulating thing!

  I grabbed a bigger piece of the cake and ate it in order to keep quiet and not say anything that I would later regret. I couldn’t believe that girl. She was deliberately keeping me out in the cold, wasn’t she?

  I swallowed my anger, along with the chocolate cake, and flushed it down with coffee. I didn’t speak for a little while.

  “Now, I would like some of that coffee,” Morten said.

  I poured him a cup and handed it to him.

  “Oh, by the way,” he said, as he swallowed the first sip. “It looks like I’m going to have to cancel our dinner plans for Friday night.”

  “This Friday? But we were going to go out for the first time in weeks. Why do you have to cancel?”

  “Jytte is having her birthday party at the club, remember? I rented the place for her.”

  My eyes grew big and wide. “But, you told me she said she didn’t want any adults there.” My voice was shaking. A lump grew in my throat. Jytte’s birthday was two weeks ago, and I had given her the most beautiful bracelet. She, in return, had declared that I wasn’t coming to her party, but up until now, Morten had told me that neither was he. He told me it was her being a teenager and not wanting adults to ruin her party.

  The ferry was now in the port and being emptied of the few cars that drove onshore. The cars in front of us turned on their engines and started to drive onboard. Morten followed.

  “I guess she had a change of heart,” Morten said.

  We drove onto the ferry and parked behind an RV…probably German tourists going back home. Fanoe Island was always packed with German tourists at this time of year.

  “A change of heart? I can’t believe her,” I said, startled.

  “Oh, come on, Emma. She’s a teenager. You know how they can be sometimes. Don’t take it personally.”

  Personally? How can I not take this personally? I’m the only one she hasn’t invited to this thing. It is personal. It doesn’t get any more personal that this! Can’t you see it? Why are you not upset about this? Why don’t you tell her you want me there too? Why don’t you tell her that I’m a big part of your life now, and that she has to accept that and treat me right? I’m not asking for much here. I really don’t think I am.

  Morten sipped some more coffee while the ferry started moving. Some people went outside to look around while we were sailing. I used to love watching the island disappear and breathing in the breeze, but not today. Today, Morten and I stayed in the car. I kept stuffing myself with the cake, in order to not say anything I would later regret, while Morten drank his coffee. I felt like steam was literally pouring out of my ears. I was furious. And hurt. Mostly hurt, I guess. I had tried so hard to get this girl to like me, and still, she just kept ignoring me and pretending that I didn’t exist.

  The worst part was that Morten let her.

  19

  July 2014

  JESPER MELANDER COULD hardly take his excitement anymore. He was looking through the newspapers online, and couldn’t believe how far this had reached. All of the big newspapers had written the story, his story.

  Finally, it had begun. Everything was going as planned. The island was in shock at the brutality of this killing, they wrote. He liked that word shock. It had such a wonderful ring to it, especially when you said it out loud. And it described precisely the state he wanted his fellow islanders to be in. That paralyzed state when you are unable to act. Oh, how he loved it. And the best part was that he had only just begun. The beauty of his plan was comprehensive. It was brilliant.

  “Shock, shock, shock, people are in shock, it is shocking…” he said with a grin, while scrolling through the articles. Jesper hadn’t expected to feel this thrilled about executing his plan. But, somehow, it had made him feel alive, made him feel like his life finally had a purpose.

  He was a man on a mission. Like Dorothy. She was on a mission too. Jesper started humming, and soon he was singing.

  “…off to see the wizard, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We hear he is a whiz of a wiz, if ever a wiz there was. If ever, oh ever a wiz there was, The Wizard of Oz is one because. Because, because, because, because, because. Because of the wonderful things he does…”

  A second later, he was dancing on the floor. He grabbed the listing of the house on Niels Sorensensvej that he had printed out from the Internet. He knew they would love the house. Finally, they had decided on one. He had watched them as they looked at houses all over the island for weeks. Finally, it was closing time. And they moved fast, he was thrilled to discover. Before noon, they had put down an offer. Now, all he had to do was wait. The seller would surely accept the offer, wouldn’t they? Of course they would. The house had been empty for quite a while. It was a lot sooner than Jesper had expected to be able to strike again, but that was only to his advantage.

  The sooner the better.

  Jesper thought back to the faces of the couple he had surpri
sed in bed…the gorgeous sight of the red blood spreading on the sheets…the screams of the wife…the crunchy sound of the knife going through the flesh. Oh, and that look the wife had given. Those wide fearful eyes.

  It was better than sex.

  “…Because, because, because, because. Because of the wonderful things he does,” he sang out loud.

  Then he burst into laughter. He couldn’t wait to see that same look on the new couple’s faces. What were their names again?

  Jesper searched in his notes. Ah, yes. There they were. Jacob and Christine Hansen.

  What wonderfully ordinary names. Mr. and Mrs. Denmark.

  They were so ordinary, it almost hurt. They would go on to live boring meaningless ordinary lives, wouldn’t they? No one would ever know about them. They would never do anything extraordinary, anything spectacular. No one in this forsaken country ever did. It was the country of mediocrity. Being ordinary was celebrated, encouraged even.

  What a waste of life.

  Well, now that was about to change. At least for this couple. The press would be all over the news in just a matter of days. Once he was done with them, their names would be forever burned into the minds of the Danish people.

  20

  May 2009

  LOUISE WAS SHOWN inside a small room and asked to wait. She found a chair. It was quite uncomfortable. Maybe it was just her being edgy and wondering if she was making a mistake by coming here.

  He had sent her a letter inviting her to come. Then, she had applied for permission to visit, and a week later, they had granted it. All she had to do was to show up with this letter and personal ID, it stated. And then they had sent her a list of things she couldn’t bring.

  She had to put all of her stuff in a locker at the security entrance, and then walk through a metal detector. She had brought a cake. She wasn’t the type to bake, so she had bought it at the bakery.

  She was allowed to bring food, it had said in the letter. She just had to be aware that they might search it for drugs or other illegal items. And, it had to go through a scanner, so they could see if she was hiding something in it.

  She wasn’t. It was just an ordinary carrot cake. He had told her he liked carrot cake, and that he missed eating carrot cake. So she decided to bring one to him. That would give them something to do while visiting, in case they ran out of subjects to talk about. Louise feared that awkward silence more than anything. It always made her feel so insecure. She never knew where to put her hands when she was insecure.

  She put the cake on the small wooden table in front of her. There was a gray bench against the wall. It was as long as a bed, and was padded. Louise wondered if that was for when a prisoner had many visitors, since it could fit a lot of people, but in the letter they had told her there could be no more than three visitors at the same time.

  The door opened and Louise gasped. Two officers, or guards, or whatever they were called, escorted Bjarke inside. Louise rose to her feet.

  The door closed behind him, and the guards disappeared.

  They were alone.

  Louise’s heart was pounding in her chest. There he was. Right in front of her stood Bjarke Lund. The man she had watched over and over again on her TV screen. The man the entire world outside of these thick walls called a dangerous psychopath.

  He was looking at her. It made her nervous. Then, he smiled.

  “Finally, we meet,” he said.

  Her eyes met his. They were even deeper brown that she thought. She had always loved a man with brown eyes. He looked at her like he wanted to eat her alive. It made her feel special. This was the man everyone was talking about. Here he was. Here he was with her. Not with some beautiful tall model or actress, no, with her. With Louise.

  His hungry look made her giggle.

  “I’ve brought cake,” she said.

  “I thought I smelled something good.”

  Louise laughed awkwardly. “You want some?”

  “Sure do.”

  They sat at the table. Louise broke off a piece of the cake with her fingers and handed it to him. He took a big bite and closed his eyes.

  “Oh, my God. I had forgotten how delicious carrot cake is. Oh. It’s wonderful. Thank you so much for bringing this. You’re my saving angel, aren’t you?”

  Louise giggled again. “You told me you missed eating carrot cake, remember?”

  Bjarke nodded with a smile. “I do remember that. Guess I’m just not used to people listening to what I have to say.”

  His face turned serious. Louise knew why. It was so unfair that they didn’t listen to him. He had told her over and over again how they had judged him beforehand, because of the story with his mother, and there was nothing he could do to change their opinion of him. He was falsely convicted, and there was not a damn thing he could do about it. He had to accept the facts.

  It’s all about making the best of what life hands you, he wrote in one of his letters.

  Louise didn’t agree. She thought he should fight for his freedom. But he had told her when they spoke on the phone that it was no use.

  “Unless they can find someone else to blame for this, unless someone else confesses to have done this, and can prove it, then I’m pretty much stuck here.”

  Now, sitting in front of him in this small room, Louise wanted so badly to do just that. She wanted to help him get out.

  Once he was done with his cake, Bjarke grabbed her leg under the table and pulled her closer. Louise shrieked. He put his face close to hers. She could smell his breath. She could feel his beard against her skin. She breathed hard.

  “My God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered. “There are so many things I want to do to you.”

  He stared at her intensely, while his hand climbed up under her skirt and touched her panties. “I dream about you every night, Louise. I have to have you. I have to taste you.”

  Louise gasped for breath. Never had a man spoken to her in this way before. To her surprise, she realized she liked it. She enjoyed every word, and what it made her feel.

  “I dream about you too,” she managed to say.

  “I want to take you on that bench right now,” he said. “We’re allowed to have sex with visiting girlfriends.”

  Louise really liked that he called her his girlfriend. No one had ever wanted her like this before. “But…but Bjarke…I’ve…I’ve never…”

  “It would be an honor to be your first,” he said.

  Bjarke Lund didn’t wait for her answer. He lifted her up and threw her onto the bench. With a madman’s grin, he held her down and made a woman of her.

  21

  July 2014

  “YEAH, JUST AS I suspected, we’re not getting any help with this case from the mainland.”

  Morten came out from the red brick-police station and jumped inside of the car where I had been waiting, writing some ideas down on the laptop.

  By the time he came out of the meeting, I had almost finished the cake.

  “What?” I said. “But what do they expect? That you do it all alone?”

  “The chief said that we’re supposed to be able to deal with these kinds of things on our own. A double homicide doesn’t require an entire team to solve. That’s what he said.”

  “Well, did you tell him that there are only four officers on the entire island? Four officers to cover two cities and a load of tourists who want to feel safe. Did you say it was going to be impossible for you to solve this on your own?”

  Morten looked at me angrily. “What do you take me for? Of course I told him that. But his hands are tied, he said. There isn’t anything he can do. Plus they’re considering cutting us down to two officers. They’ll decide it this fall.”

  “The press is going to be all over this as soon as the families find out. I mean, they want to know who did this. They want him behind bars. We all do.”

  Morten sighed. “Don’t you think I know that? Can’t you just leave it alone? This is my problem, not yours.”

  I sc
offed. “Wow. And here I thought we were in this together. I thought we were a part of each other’s lives.”

  “Well, I need to have at least some privacy,” Morten said. “If I am to keep being me, and not just be a clone of you, then I need to have some space, to have my own life as well. You’re kind of smothering me, and I’m losing myself and who I am here.”

  Morten turned on the engine. I stared at him, completely baffled.

  What the hell was going on here?

  “You’re losing yourself? I’m smothering you?” I said.

  Morten lifted his hands, annoyed, in the air. He made an irritated growl. “It’s like you’re swallowing me here, Emma. Like, for every day that passes, I’m losing myself. I have stopped living my own life and started living yours instead. All the things I used to do, I never do them anymore.”

  I had no idea what to say. Those words coming out of him sounded nothing like him. He had never said anything about these things before. Why now, all of a sudden?

  Jytte. It has to be coming from her.

  It all made sense now. Of course it came from her. She had been giving him a hard time all night last night, telling him that he had changed, that he never did the things he used to, that he was losing himself, that he was living my life instead of his own, and so on.

  Was she really that crafty?

  I really didn’t like to think so. I really wanted her to be this innocent young girl who just missed her father, but lately, there had been a few too many examples of her trying to get between us.

  The question was, what Morten would do about it? Would he choose her over me?

  “I’m sorry, Emma,” he said, and looked at me. “It’s just all the pressure right now. I had to talk to the parents yesterday, and to be frank, it was awful. Luckily, I wasn’t the one to tell them the news, since the local police did that, but I spoke on the phone with them afterwards, and they were just so devastated. They didn’t understand how this could happen to their son. I…I…It broke my heart, Emma. And now this? What do I tell them when they call me to ask how the investigation is going? I gave them my cell number. I told them they could call me day or night if they had any concerns or questions. Once the first week has passed, they’ll start wondering when the killer is going to be caught. What do I tell them? That it might take months to get to the bottom of this, since I’m the only one on the case? When do I tell them that?”