Cassie McGraw Box Set: Books 1-3

by David Archer

  “You’re sure it’s the same person?” Alicia asked.

  “Absolutely certain,” I said. “It was the same voice I heard on the recording with Wanda and the others. No doubt about it, and get this: he seemed extremely interested in me. Kept talking about how it was a pity we couldn’t meet, because we might be perfect for each other. Then he told me how it would be against the rules for me to give him my last name or any information that could lead him to me, so I acted like a smart-alec and gave him the last name I’m using and the address of the apartment. I figure he’ll be watching me by morning, so Dex and I are going to have to stay in character from here on out.”

  “Cassie, you’ve got to be careful. If he knows how to get to you, he might not wait the way he’s done in the past. We need to get surveillance on you, right now.”

  “No,” I said. “I have a tracking device, something a friend of mine put together. Dex has a special cell phone that can track it by GPS, through cell towers. If anything happens, all I have to do is squeeze this thing—it’s the ugliest turtle you ever saw, hanging on a chain around my neck—and it will set off an alarm on that phone so Dex will know to start tracking me. He’ll call Niles as soon as it goes off, so you guys can get in on it.”

  “Oh, dear Lord,” she said. “I know Dex seems to be quite a guy, but he needs to let the police handle this. Didn’t you tell him…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I tried. You ever tried to tell a stubborn man what he can and can’t do? He’d come after me on his own, so the best I could do was to make him promise to call Niles and work with you guys.”

  “Okay, fine. I just want you to be careful. Believe it or not, I kind of like you, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “In case you didn’t know this, I’m pretty hard to kill. Now, I’ll check back with you later, but I need to let Dex know what’s going on.”

  I ended the call with her, and called Dex immediately. He answered the phone and I could tell by the sounds around him that he was standing under a vehicle.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  I told him exactly what I had told Alicia, and he got quiet for a moment. When he finally spoke again, it was to tell me that he had gone into the personnel office that morning and asked for a week off. Because he hadn’t taken a vacation in more than two years, they didn’t give him any problem about it at all. All he had to do was finish out the day, and he’d be free until the following Thursday.

  “I also,” he said, “told them I wouldn’t make it to the Christmas party. If we broke character for that, it could blow your whole investigation.”

  “Oh, Dex, I’m sorry,” I said.

  He laughed. “Don’t be,” he said. “The last thing I want to do tomorrow night is sit around and listen to a bunch of stuffed shirts talking about how good this last year has been. Besides, Jenny in personnel was in charge of passing out the presents and bonuses. I got a nice little gizmo for trimming my mustache, and you got a set of bath oils.”

  “Wow, sounds nice. Okay, I’m headed for work. I’m only staying till one, then I’m going back to the apartment. I told Stan the Strangler that I’d be home by two, so I’m hoping he’ll swing by and try to get a look at me. That should be enough to make me an actual target, and we’ll have a chance to nail this bastard.”

  His voice came through filled with sarcasm. “Stan the Strangler? That’s the name you’re giving this guy?”

  “Hey, I got tired of calling him just ‘the bad guy,’ okay? If you come up with something better, we can use it.”

  Dex grumbled. “Okay, but be careful. Got your turtle?”

  “Yes, dear,” I said. “It’s hanging around my neck, right where it’s supposed to be. Talk to you later.”

  I ended the call and put the phone into my coat pocket, and that’s when I realized that I was smiling.

  I got to the warehouse and found a parking space, then walked inside, where a receptionist gave me directions back into the picking room. A guy named Biff, I kid you not, volunteered to show me the ropes, and a half hour later I was picking orders all by myself.

  It wasn’t exactly difficult. I would be given an order sheet with the items listed that were to be shipped in the order, and each of them had a stock number printed beside it. The stock number told me exactly which aisle to look in to find the shelf that would be holding the bin where I would find that particular item. The computer was programmed to list them in order, so I could put a box on a rolling cart and just push the cart through the aisles. All I had to do was grab one or more of each item, according to the order sheet, and put it in the box. When I got done, I passed the box off to a packer, who would organize everything inside it and fill it full of Styrofoam peanuts to keep anything from breaking or being damaged during shipment.

  This was easier than being a waitress, and I had done that all the way through high school. It also paid more, because I was making almost ten dollars an hour. Woo hoo, I’m in the money now!

  The money, of course, didn’t mean anything to me, except that it showed the job was legitimate. The only issue I was going to have would be cashing paychecks that were made out to Emily Keeler. I didn’t figure that was a problem, I’d just sign them all over to Alfie as part of what I owed him. Let him deal with the headaches, if there were any.

  Despite the fact I had started late, I was required to take a half hour lunch break. I followed the other employees to the break room and bought myself a sandwich out of a vending machine. I added a cappuccino and found a spot at a table, but there were several other girls who were there and they called for me to join them.

  I went over to their table and sat down, and just lost myself for a little while in the friendliness and camaraderie of coworkers. These girls had never seen me without my mask, so they had no idea they were sitting with a monster. As far as they were concerned, I was just as normal as they were, and it felt good to laugh and joke around with them.

  Most of them, anyway. One girl, whose name was Rachel, I noticed staring at me after a while. At first I wondered if I might have met her before, but then I realized what she was looking at. I turned to her and smiled.

  “Is it my eye? Is that why you keep looking at me?”

  She blushed. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I just noticed that one of your eyes never blinks. I’ve never seen that before, I didn’t mean to be staring.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I was in an accident, and that area of my face was paralyzed.” I took out the little bottle of eyedrops and showed it to her. “The eyelid doesn’t move, so I have to moisten the eye every now and then.” I demonstrated, tilting my head back and squeezing a couple of drops in on the glass eye, then stretching the latex eyelid down to rub it in.

  Surprisingly, this little “admission” only seemed to make me more interesting to the group. We all sat together until the lunch break was over, and then I was back in the picking room, pushing my little cart around and gathering items for strangers scattered all over the world.

  I had told Biff that I had an appointment that afternoon, so he didn’t object when I said it was time for me to leave. I said goodbye to a few of the girls and told them I’d see them the next day, then got my coat and went out to the parking lot. I started up the Camry and headed out, but I cheated. The sandwich I had eaten for lunch had not been nearly filling enough, so I zipped through the drive-up window at Taco Mayo for a half dozen taquitos to eat on the way back to the apartment.

  Shoving those down my throat took only minutes, and I still had a bit of a drive, so I called Alfie to check in.

  “Make my day,” he said.

  “Other way around,” I said, “you make mine. Give me something good, anything at all.”

  “Well, I could tell you that they caught the guy taking all the women, that would be good, but unfortunately it wouldn’t be true. So I’ll settle for telling you something I think you’ll actually like. I took a fresh look at the Harvest of Hope phone syst
em code today. You apparently made the impression you wanted to make, because our secret Casanova added you to his list of phones that ring straight through to him only. If you try to call when he isn’t logged in through forty-eleven anonymous servers, you won’t get an answer at all.”

  My eye flew open again. “Really? That’s fantastic! That means he’s interested, so he’s probably already planning to start watching me.” I automatically scanned around to see if there were any sign I was being followed at that moment, but I hadn’t thought to pay attention when I left work. Stan could be on my ass right then and I wouldn’t know it. “I’d better get off this phone, then. Thanks, Alfie!”

  “No problemo, Princess,” he said as I was hanging up. I drove on, keeping a watch and not seeing anything that looked like a tail, but I kept my personal phone out of sight anyway.

  I made it up the stairs and into the apartment without running into anyone, which suited me fine. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Donna, it was just that I didn’t want her or anyone else to be around if my mystery man happened to come by. I couldn’t bear the thought of another person getting hurt just because they saw something they shouldn’t have seen, especially if it was something about me.

  And I wouldn’t be able to protect anyone else. The hardest part of all of this for me was the fact that, in order to save the women who had already been abducted, it was necessary for me to be taken to wherever they were being held. That meant I couldn’t carry my gun. If it were found on me, I would either have to use it to save my own life, or—and this was more likely—it would get me killed. I had thought it through, and decided it was best to be unarmed when my abduction took place.

  I thought briefly about letting Alicia know I had made an impression on Stan, but that would have meant explaining how I was able to get into the phone server. It struck me that what we were doing was technically illegal, so I decided to keep that bit of information to myself.

  I sat around the apartment all afternoon, but there was no sign of the mystery man. It occurred to me that it was more likely he was simply waiting out there somewhere when I got home from work, trying to get a look at me and see if my description had been accurate. I had good reason to believe that he stalked his victims for at least a few days before he grabbed them, so I was hopeful that my own stalking had already begun.

  Dex came in at six, and he immediately went into his act, complaining about the fact I didn’t have dinner ready. I made my excuses, but we didn’t pile it on too thick that night. The last thing I needed was Donna coming over again, so we got through the argument quickly and settled in for the night.

  Quietly, Dex let me know that he had gone by and taken care of Critter, and even remembered to step into the bathroom and flush the toilet. “I’ve got to admit,” he said, “if you’re gonna have a cat in the house, one that uses the toilet is the way to go. It took a little getting used to at first, but it’s a whole lot cleaner and doesn’t smell at all.”

  “That’s why I went for it,” I said. “I had a friend who had a cat that was trained that way back when I was in high school. When I got Critter, it just seemed like the logical thing to do, and I couldn’t go back to a litter box now to save my life.”

  “I agree,” he said. “If I ever live with a cat again, it’s got to be toilet trained.”

  I started dinner, opting for Hamburger Helper this time, while Dex said he had to run an errand. He promised to be back in a few minutes, so I went ahead and started frying the hamburger. That took about fifteen minutes, and I was just at the point of adding all the other ingredients when he came back in, carrying a small, flat screen TV. He set it up on top of what we figured must be a TV stand and hooked up the cable, but there was no signal.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I never thought about getting cable, here. I can call and do it in the morning, if you want.”

  “No need,” he replied. “I can just turn on the Wi-Fi hotspot on my phone and we can binge on Netflix.” He walked into the kitchen and sniffed hard. “After dinner, that is. What is that, it smells good.”

  “It’s a new flavor, triple cheese pasta or something like that. It sounded good, and the picture on the box looked really good, so I bought it. It’ll be ready in about three minutes.”

  “Cool. I’ll set the table.” He walked over to the cabinet and took out a couple of plates, then put them on the table. As he did so, he looked up at me and said loudly, “Dammit, Emily, these dishes are still not clean!”

  Stirring the Hamburger Helper, I called back, “I’m sorry, Darrell, I’m really sorry. I was so tired after work today, I guess I just didn’t look closely enough.”

  I glanced at him, and he was making a mug of a face at me. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing, but I managed.

  We sat down and had dinner together, and I told Dex what Alfie had said. He looked at me, but didn’t say anything, so I let it go. I knew he was concerned about what would happen if Stan the Strangler learned who I was, but I was counting on him and the police to track me and save the day. Beyond that, I was planning to rely on a lot of prayer and a willingness to bite through the bastard’s throat if I had to!

  We finished dinner and then worked together to clean up afterward. I was actually glad there were no windows in the kitchen or living room, because anyone who looked in would see an exact opposite from the squabbling, abuser-and-abused couple we were supposed to be. Considering that I was hoping to be stalked for the next few days by someone who apparently wanted to punish me for being abused, I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to see that.

  Afterward, we went to the tiny little living room and sat on the couch together. Dex pulled out his phone and turned on its Wi-Fi hotspot, plugging it into a charger so that it wouldn’t drain the battery completely, then turned on the TV and found a setting that let it access the Internet. He logged into his Netflix account and we spent a comfortable three hours watching The Walking Dead.

  I hadn’t seen the show before, because the previews I had noticed contained zombies that looked better than I did. In fact, I had once considered going to where they film the show in Georgia to see if I might get hired on as an extra, just so I could say I had been on TV. I thought I could probably sell them on it, since they wouldn’t have to spend any money on makeup for me. Of course, that was just a silly pipe dream, not something I actually wanted to do.

  We went to bed around ten thirty, but this time Dex didn’t turn away from me. He reached out his arm and pulled me close, and then he kissed me again. The kiss became rather passionate after a moment, and then we were together, wrapped around one another and blended into something that was more than either of us, but not quite a true mixture of both of us. It was wonderful, and it ended with both of us too exhausted to do anything other than fall asleep in each other’s arms.

  In the morning, I felt it when Dex got up, but I was feeling too good to roll out of bed just yet. I pulled the covers up over myself because the room was cool. Without the heat of his body, I could feel the air draining warmth out of my own. I stayed there until the aroma of coffee made its way to me, then got up and shuffled into the kitchen.

  Dex had a cup for me already, and I took it gratefully. The hot liquid drove some of the chill away, and then I saw that he was heating up toaster waffles in the oven. A toaster had been one of the things I had forgotten to buy, even though I had grabbed the waffles from the grocery store. Sometimes, not often, I don’t feel quite as smart as Dex likes to tell me I am.

  He had figured out how to do it. When he took the waffles out of the oven, they were hot and golden and perfect. The butter and syrup were already on the table, so I smeared them both onto the four slices he had given me and dug in.

  “You’re going to be careful today, right?” It came out as a question, but I knew that it was as close to a command as he felt he could get away with.

  “Of course,” I said. “All I’m supposed to do is call him this morning, and I’m hoping he’ll start talking ab
out meeting up. That was part of his technique with all the others, apparently, so I’m watching for it. Of course, I’m not going to roll over too easily. I’m going to be a little hard to get, just to try to make him want to step this up a bit.”

  The look on Dex’s face told me that he wasn’t enjoying my wit. I know he was concerned for my safety, but there was a part of me that got the impression he was actually feeling jealousy. That was ridiculous, of course, because any semi-romantic or even erotic things I might say to this bastard were only part of my cover. A man like Stan the Strangler, which I seem to have nicknamed him, could never appeal to me. Even if I weren’t with Dex, I’d never…

  How did those words even appear in my mind? Dex and I weren’t together, not really, so why would I even think such a thing? Of course, it was true that Dex was a far better man than Stan could ever be, but he wasn’t—he wasn’t mine, we weren’t a couple, not really.

  I sat there looking at him across the table, and allowed myself to imagine that we were sitting at my table, back at my house. I thought about what it would be like if he and I really were together, and even though I could think of a thousand logical reasons why it should never happen, it suddenly dawned on me that the corners of my mouth were turning upward.

  I shook it off. I didn’t have time to even consider such things, not while I was in the middle of what amounted to a murder investigation. The man, or men, I was after were almost certainly guilty of at least three dozen murders; I couldn’t afford to distract myself with thoughts about a future I had already given up on.

  Dex took our plates and put them in the sink, and then went back to the bedroom to finish getting dressed. He wouldn’t be going to work for the next few days, but he didn’t want to hang around the apartment and risk blowing the whole investigation. Instead, he would go and hang out with Alfie, ready to move if I sounded the alarm.