by Kimberly Rae
Cole rubbed his bad shoulder. “Here’s a letter from Claudia.” He pulled a paper from his inside jacket pocket. “I left the rest of hers in the car. Let me read it for you.” He had to try hard to keep from making a face as he read aloud, “Dearest Lucias, I love you. You are smart and handsome and strong. I can’t wait for us to be together, forever. When will you finally tell me that you love me? When you do, I will kiss you and say I have been waiting for you all my life.”
“Yikes.” Kelsey sat and propped her chin on her hands. “It sounds rather elementary, similar to the note that came with the cards, and the one he left for Meagan here at the store.”
“Right. Steve has those two notes, plus the photograph. I’m sure we’ll be able to match the writing on those to the writing on the notes in both boxes. But I was wondering if you had a sample of Meagan’s handwriting to take to Steve this afternoon. It would solidify that the notes supposedly from Meagan aren’t from her at all.” He didn’t add that the notes supposedly from Meagan mentioned him, and were following a parallel pattern to Claudia’s. Both sets started out friendly and full of praise. They encouraged Lucias to declare his love, saturated ad nauseam with cheesy clichés like, “My heart beats only for you,” or, “You are my whole existence.”
“Of course.” Kelsey stood and crossed to a small rectangular table stacked high with catalogs and order forms. Methodically, she opened the drawers lining the underside of the table and searched through them.
Cole sat in the chair closest to the phone and kept his voice low. “I won’t deny that there is real danger here. Meagan’s letters go beyond Claudia’s, and the most recent show that Lucias is feeling a growing impatience.” Claudia’s box held three letters of frustration before they ended with her death. Meagan’s most recent ones held that same frustration, sometimes in identical wording, but they numbered five.
“Here it is.” Kelsey carried a slip of paper to Cole. “I knew I had an order she’d filled from one of the house parties we host. It clearly shows her handwriting.”
“Thank you.” He placed the order along with Claudia’s letter back into his pocket. “I’ll do everything I can to get this resolved. Soon.” He packed Meagan’s letters back into the box and rose. “I’m on my way to the Federal Building now.”
“Is Meagan there?” Kelsey asked. She tapped the catalogs to even out the edges of the stack.
“As far as I know. Steve wanted to do a polygraph test.”
The back door opened and Kelsey pivoted to face her husband. “Nathan. You made good time. Can you stay here for the afternoon? I’d like to go see Meagan. I’m sure she could use a friend.”
Nathan hugged his wife and received instructions on the orders Kelsey had started. “I’ll see you there, then,” Cole said to Kelsey. “I’m glad you’ll be coming.” As much as he wanted to comfort Meagan himself, it was not his right, nor would attention from him be her desire. Though he would never stoop to writing himself letters with her name at the end, he understood one thing about Lucias Moore. The idea of winning Meagan Winston’s heart was enough to inspire a man to action.
He picked up the box and tucked it under his arm. “It’s time for me to go.”
48
Monday, January 5
2:30 p.m.
They had his letters. How was he going to be able to sleep in a strange place without his letters to read before bed? He had his pillow, but that was all. None of his clothes. Not even his toothbrush.
An ugly woman with yellow-stained teeth and a flap of skin hanging from her chin like a turkey asked, “Can I have a credit card number?”
“I don’t use credit cards.” He hadn’t in years. They made a person easy to find. “I’ll give you—” His phone rang and Lucias frowned. Steve Campbell had discovered his number. The FBI had already called twice during his drive, but he hadn’t answered. Steve had probably forced Meagan to show him her phone. They had probably listened to Lucias’ message to Meagan. Just the thought made his temperature rise. “Just a minute,” he told the turkey woman.
He set his pillow on a dingy chair in the lounge area and pulled his phone from his pocket. He would answer this time, tell Steve to stop antagonizing Meagan. “Yeah?” he said. He leaned his elbow on a window frame, then moved back. His shirt sleeve pulled up a layer of dust.
“Is—is this Lucias?”
His hands went damp and he wiped them on his pants. Meagan! He’d know that voice anywhere in the world. She had never said his name before. Had never called. What should he say? He couldn’t start with I love you.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
“I’m—I’m here.” He spoke to her. To Meagan. His heart nearly exploded. He looked around the motel lobby with new eyes, seeing it as he would if Meagan were there with him. Three chairs, all in need of new upholstery. One glass coffee table with scratches. Five windows, all with dust half an inch thick on the sills. A cockroach scurried for cover under an elevator door with an “Out of Order” sign. One outdoor stairway. One counter. One nasty old woman wanting his money for a night in this rat hole. “Meagan, I have a better place planned for you. I wouldn’t make you stay in a dump like this. When we’re together—”
“Lucias.” Her voice was breathy and stirred his soul. “The FBI arrested me.”
His mind stalled and went blank. They had Meagan in their clutches? Her voice broke through his sudden terror. “Lucias, they have arrested me because of you. Because of the drugs. And because of a woman named Claudia who was murdered.”
“They read your letters,” he accused, his terror turning to fury. “They read how you praised me for rejecting her and choosing you instead.”
“What should I do, Lucias?” Her whisper was a dart that shot through straight to his heart. “They’re asking so many questions.”
“Don’t tell them anything. I will take care of you. Don’t worry.”
“They’re coming. I have to go.”
The call was over before he could say what was on his heart. He tried to call back but no one answered. He rushed back to the counter where the yellow-teethed woman still stood. “I’ll give you twenty dollars cash now and pay the rest when I check out.”
“You don’t pay, you don’t stay,” the woman said. Had she practiced that arrogant little phrase?
Only his love for Meagan stopped him from reaching across the counter to wring her scrawny, sagging neck. If he got arrested for murder, he couldn’t help Meagan get free. “Listen to me.” He leaned over the counter and put just one hand around the front, wrinkled part of her neck. She gurgled and he wanted so much to squeeze the life out of her. “You don’t want to say no to me.” He increased the pressure until she nodded, eyes bulging in fear. He loved that look. Maybe when he and Meagan were together, they’d go on a spree before they settled somewhere. They could steal fancy cars, take money, and enjoy watching people fear and die in their wake. What a vacation they could have then. Better yet, a honeymoon.
“I’ll take the twenty,” the woman choked out when he let her go.
“You’ll take nothing now,” he said, alive and full of power. He would avenge his love, rescue her from the oppressors. “You can hope I will pay you something tomorrow when I leave.”
He took his pillow to room forty-nine. Once inside, it was time to get serious. He summoned help. Raymond was gone and Damion was too unpredictable. He needed someone he could trust. When she came, he felt a sense of peace. All would be well.
“Agatha, Meagan needs us.” He leaned back against the rickety headboard of the bed and held his pillow against his heart. “We have to make a plan.”
49
Monday, January 5
3:00 p.m.
“Meagan, are you okay?”
Meagan rushed across the hallway to embrace her friend. “Kelsey! I’m so glad to see you. They made me call him! It was horrible.” Her insides still shook. “Hearing his voice, pretending I was whatever sick fantasy he’d created in his mind...”
Kelsey hugge
d her again then took her hands. “Do they really think you’re working with him?”
“They did when they brought me in, I know that.” She looked back to where Steve had stopped to talk with Cole Fleming. Cole handed over the box of letters, then gestured and leaned forward as he talked. Whatever he was saying, it was important to him. When he had walked into the building with Kelsey, she hated how her heart betrayed her. If he was anything like the man she had been told he was, she should feel nothing but disgust for him. But Quinn had said those phone calls came from Lucias, not him. It was possible none of what he said was true. “Now, I don’t know what to think,” she told Kelsey, “about anything.”
“You know what to think about the things that matter most,” Kelsey said. She sounded like she was giving goodbye advice, and when Meagan glanced back again, she saw why. Steve marched toward them, his mouth in a grim line. “Remember,” Kelsey said quickly, “you are loved with an everlasting love. No one and nothing can take that away or make it fade.”
Steve grasped Kelsey’s arm. “I need to ask you to leave, ma’am. No visitors for the prisoner.”
“We’re all praying for you,” Kelsey called back as Steve escorted her to the door.
“Wait!” Meagan said with a sudden step forward. “Kelsey, will you visit Pops? He doesn’t know about any of this. He’ll be worried if I don’t come see him.”
“I’ll put his mind at ease,” she assured, adding with a look at Steve, “without giving anything away.”
“You can’t stay here either, Cole,” Steve said on his way back. “I’ve got to get her to the county jail for the night. Baine is waiting for my report at five.”
“Have you thought about my condition?” Cole asked.
“I have, and I agree to it. I’ll be there in the morning with a representative of the press.”
“Who has a good camera.”
“Yes.”
Steve turned to unlock the door to his office. Cole faced Meagan. “I’m here to fight for you, Meagan.” His jaw worked. “And tomorrow I’ll fight for myself.”
Her whole body tensed when his large hand cupped her jaw. “And Meagan,” he whispered, “I work in the porn industry the way you work in human trafficking.” He pressed a light kiss on her forehead and left before his words could find home in her thoughts.
“Okay, Miss Winston,” Steve said. He had placed the box of letters on his desk and was locking his office again. “Let’s get you to jail.”
__________________________
Monday, January 5
5:00 p.m.
Steve paced outside Baine’s office. The moment the door opened, he bypassed the secretary and deposited the boxes of letters on the large imposing desk set in front of floor-to-ceiling windows. He gave his report, concluding with, “I have a photo and handwriting sample for Lucias, a voice sample on his accomplice’s phone, and the accomplice herself is being processed in our county jail as we speak.”
“Good work,” Baine said. He had not risen from his seat, and now leaned forward to stack the boxes one on top of the other. Steve waited for him to open one and look at the letters, but instead he said, “I’ll want everything you have. All your files. All your evidence.”
“S-sir?” Steve wished he had been asked to sit.
“You’ve handled this case well, and I’m convinced the DEA can go from here with your accomplice to get what they need to close the drug case. We need to focus on the murder investigation now.” He slid the boxes to the side. “Can you box up everything and have it on my desk before you leave today?”
“But...” Steve’s right hand floundered, feeling for something solid to keep him upright. He grabbed hold of the back of a chair. “But I know everything about this case. I—”
“That’s why you’ll be on call and available to consult whenever needed.” Baine leaned back in his chair. “And when you’re not needed, you can start on the other cases waiting in a stack on your desk.”
At least three arguments readied in his mind for expression, but Steve knew none of them would do any good. Baine had already turned to his computer, something Steve had done numerous times to show someone at his desk that their conversation was over. Steve reached the door without tripping over his shoes or running back to beg for twenty-four more hours.
“Oh, and Campbell?”
He stopped at the door but did not turn. “Yes, sir?”
“You’ll want to make sure everything of yours is ready to transfer back to your cubicle. Agent Simmons will be returning by the end of the week. He’ll want his office back.”
Steve made sure to close the door carefully behind him, and kept his face devoid of anything that showed how Baine’s last words were lemon juice on an already painful cut. He returned to his office and packaged up every piece of information and evidence he had for Lucias’ case, and marched it back down the hallway. He set it on the secretary’s desk. “Baine wants this,” he told the woman. She nodded with a blank expression and went back to her typing.
He returned to the office that would only be his for another day or two, and just to rub the lemon juice in, he boxed everything of his on the desk, as if he’d been fired, and set the box on the chair nearest the door. If they called him to leave and go back to his little square of space first thing in the morning, he’d be ready. He’d take his box and his filing cabinet, and head back to the bottom rung of the ladder again.
He was not sure why he drove home instead of to the nearest bar. Maybe because it would be easier to pick a fight with Stephanie than a drunk stranger. He trudged up the stairs to the apartment and opened the door. “Oh, excuse me, I’m in the wrong—”
“Hello, Steve.”
The woman who stood there was his wife, but Steve had a hard time believing he was in the right place. “What happened?”
She smiled. “I thought I’d make some changes.”
Change would be a cleared spot on the couch big enough for him to sit without something poking into his rear. This was a transformation. He could see the floor, all of it except for the places covered with furniture, and the furniture was cleaned enough for company. And Stephanie, she was in her new dress. Her hair was up in some kind of twist and her eyes were bright. She had shoes on. He thought of asking if they were having guests, thought of asking if it was their anniversary. “What happened to the stacks of books?” was what came out.
His wife blushed. Steve couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen that. “I realized they weren’t helping. A lot of things I did weren’t helping me get what I wanted, so I thought I’d try a different way.”
Here it came. The divorce papers. Or the blackmail. I’ll look nice and I’ll clean the house, but you’ll have to do something to keep it this way. “What do you want?”
“Well, I’ve been talking to God about us, and—”
“Oh, come on, Steph. You went to church one time. Now you’re talking to God? Did He tell you to get all cleaned up? And then clean up your jerk slob husband?”
She blinked. “No, that’s not what I—”
“Is this some way of manipulating me?”
“No!” Her eyes glistened. “I just wanted—”
“Never mind,” he cut in. “I don’t want to know. Whatever it is, I can’t. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll fail.” He still had his hand wrapped around the knob of the door, which stood wide open.
“Steve?” She stepped toward him. “Honey, why are you so upset?”
Honey? Why did she have to start being nice to him now, now when he needed to tell her that everything was slipping away?
“I went to the grocery store after church yesterday,” she said. Her voice was soft and hesitant, like when she approached a stray she feared would run off. “I can make dinner. We could talk. About us.”
Us. The word was quicksand waiting to suck him under. She stepped closer. Would she want a hug or a kiss, like the old days when he was happy to come home? He felt remorse rise like a bad case of heartburn. “
I—I have to go,” he said. “I can’t—”
“Can’t what?” She reached the door just as he abandoned it and raced down the stairs. “Steve, where are you going?”
He did not respond. What good would it do to tell her that he couldn’t pretend, not tonight? The case was stripped from his hands. His one big chance to make it, gone. And Cole...his best friend...
Steve knew where he needed to go. The one place to forget it all. He drove there, walked inside, and ordered a drink. And another. And another.
50
Monday, January 5
8:00 p.m.
Meagan thought of unhappy, war-jostled Lucy Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia when Lucy told her siblings, “The sheets are scratchy.” Meagan wanted to say the same of the orange material of her prison uniform. It looked like a set of scrubs five sizes too large, as ill-fitting to her body as the holding cell was to her sense of security.
But she was too old to play Lucy Pevensie. Meagan had her own war to endure, and needed to do it with maturity or at least the appearance of it.
“Wassup, girl?” A woman with an enormous mass of hair sidled up next to Meagan. “What you in for?”
Meagan tried not to cough at the cloud of smoke that permeated the air around her. “Drug trafficking.”
“You fooling me? You ain’t got no piercings. No tattoos.” She pointed at her own generous collection of body art designs. “The girl I buy from has a big silver dumbbell through her eyebrow. And her tongue’s pierced. Her ears hang down because she stretched big ole holes in them, like as big as Oreo cookies. And up the sides of her ears, she’s got three...”
Meagan pulled her knees up on the hard bench and would have wrapped her arms around them, but the handcuffs attached to her waist chain prevented it. “I hate, hate, hate this place,” she whispered.
The woman leaned in and Meagan coughed. “Aw, it’s your first time, ain’t it? Hey, everybody, she’s a first timer.”
Her yell had no effect on the other women in the large cage the policeman had sent her to wait in while she was being “processed.” Sixteen women filled the containment. Most stared with vacant eyes at the TV hanging in the corner. One shrieked into a telephone attached to the wall. Two women leaned back-to-back on a bench near the far corner and somehow managed to sleep. Meagan couldn’t hear herself think over the three prisoners arguing to her left.