Collin

by Jessie Cooke

  Pulling his head back and letting his cock slip out of her, he looked into her eyes again and said, “Are you still okay, Ava?”

  She nodded, “Better than okay,” she said, and it was true. Even in a nasty old tool shed, he’d made her first time sweet and wonderful. They started dating after that and he introduced her to a lot of different things. The sex was amazing and they did it in every position and every place they could get away with it. She was drinking too much when she was with him and she got a taste for cocaine. She would smoke weed with him after a long night of being high and making love, so that they could come down enough to go to class. He stayed in her dorm room some nights. She would sneak him in at night and out in the morning. Other nights, he’d rent them a motel room, telling her that he didn’t want to take her to the frat house. She let him take pictures of her and they even set the camera on automatic and took many of them together. In some of them she was so wasted that even in a photo, you could tell. There was one where he’d drawn lines of cocaine around her nipples and was licking it off. She was in love, she thought. After twelve years of an all-girl Catholic school, she was sowing her wild oats. Then one day in her senior year she went to the park to meet him, and her whole world came tumbling down. That was ten years ago…

  4

  “You coming to the party tonight?” Finn asked Collin. They had met for lunch at a deli near the fire station on Friday afternoon. Collin had more questions about joining up with the Skulls. He was rarely intimidated by anyone, but for some reason, Jace Bell did intimidate him and he preferred to go through Finn for the answers to most of his questions.

  “I wish,” Collin said. They were having a party at the club that night to patch in two new members. Collin had only been to one of their parties so far, but it had been a blast…and he’d been treated to the best blowjob of his life from a little club girl named Amber. “I go on shift at five today. I won’t be off until Monday morning.”

  “Aw, that sucks. Next time,” Finn said. “Have you thought any more about prospecting? Now that Jace is patching in Ryker and Squirrel that’ll only leave us one prospect. He’ll be recruiting again soon.”

  “I think about it all the time,” Collin said. “I loved this job at first…and I still do, sometimes. But I just can’t see myself doing it full-time, forever. I’m thinking about seeing if I could transfer to a part-time post, maybe day to day…and then I’d have the time to prospect. The problem is…” He hesitated.

  “What, man?”

  Collin sighed and said, “Don’t give me any shit. I know I’m a grown-ass man, but unless you grew up in my family the dynamics of it are hard to understand. My parents’ heads are going to explode over this…and probably at least half of my brothers’ as well. I’m hoping that staying on part-time will help…but, I’m not so sure.” Collin knew they’d be disappointed about his leaving his full-time job…but more than that, his strict, Catholic parents were going to worry that he was becoming a criminal. Collin had been hanging around the Skulls for months now, and he hadn’t seen anything illegal thus far…but they were a 1% club, and he thought he knew what that meant…he had to know for sure before he spoke to his family.

  Finn was chuckling as he said, “Man, there were times in my life I would have paid good money to have that many people who cared about me.” Collin didn’t know much about Finn’s past. His Irish friend played it pretty close to his chest and Collin didn’t want to pry. He looked sad, though, when he talked about having people to care about him and that made Collin sad, because sometimes he wished he didn’t have so damned many.

  “I guess you always want what you don’t have,” Collin said. “There’s something I have to ask you before I make my final decision and talk to my family. I know that you all don’t talk about business to outsiders, and I’m not asking anything specific…but can you tell me what that 1% patch means to you guys?”

  Finn looked down at his kutte, almost like he had forgotten the patch was there. “It doesn’t mean we’re a bunch of thugs, like some people think,” Finn said. “Mostly it just means that we don’t assimilate well in society…most of us don’t fit nicely into any boxes, you know? Am I going to tell you that we follow every law to the fullest?” Finn pursed his lips for a second and then said, “Honestly, I can’t tell you that…but we’re not ‘bad guys’ either. We’re not some street gang.”

  That was vague, but for Collin it was good enough. To his parents, however, he was sure it wasn’t going to be. He was either going to have to man up and just tell them, or put the idea of even doing this out of his head.

  For the second day in a row, Noah followed “Sir Priss,” as Hayden called him. Kyla came back into the office on Wednesday with her thousand-dollar retainer and signed all the paperwork. It was Friday now and he had learned two things. The first was that “Sir Priss” suited this effeminate man very well, and the second, that there was no accounting for taste. When Kyla came into the office Wednesday she had been dressed in her yoga clothes. She apologized for it, but Mr. Happy was dancing in Noah’s pants and saw no reason for the apology. Now as he sat in his car and watched the Mister crossing the street on his way to lunch, he couldn’t help but wonder what the hell she possibly saw in him. Ethan Peterson was about five foot seven…and maybe a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet. He had dirty blond hair that hung down in his eyes and he had to keep jerking his head back to see out from under it. His eyes were blue, but a washed-out, maybe sun-damaged color that instead of standing out, seemed to make them recede into his face. He had scars from a bad case of adolescent acne and he did this weird nervous tic thing with his mouth when he thought no one was looking. Put it all together and it was not a pretty picture.

  Noah got out of the car with his camera bag slung over his arm. He followed Peterson down the street towards the diner where the man had had lunch the day before and breakfast that morning. He let him go inside and waited about five minutes and went inside too. Noah took a seat at the counter where he could see him out of the corner of his left eye. Sir Priss sat in the same booth he’d sat in each time he’d been there. He had his Kindle out and was reading. It was the same routine every time. He didn’t even glance up as the waitress filled his coffee cup. When she came back over to the counter, she smiled at Noah and said:

  “Hey you, you’re starting to be a regular.”

  “I can’t get enough of your coffee,” he told her with a wink. “It’s better than Starbucks.” She giggled and filled his cup.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked. Noah let his eyes run from the top of her dark brown hair down across her pretty face and then slowly raked them down her body. When he let his eyes rest back on her face, she was blushing.

  “I’m in the mood for something sweet,” he told her. “What have you got that’s good?”

  She laughed nervously and said, “I like the cheesecake.”

  “Then cheesecake it shall be,” he said.

  “Coming right up.” She licked her lips and he wasn’t sure if it was on purpose or a reflex, but it was kind of hot. Maybe it had just been way too long since he’d had a woman. He was actually afraid Sir Priss would start looking hot soon. It was a good thing he was seeing Kimmie later on. The waitress came back with the cheesecake, set it down, flashed him a dimple, and said, “I’m Krissy, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you, Krissy by the way. I’m Noah.” Another giggle and then:

  “You let me know if you need anything else.”

  He winked at her and she went back to her duties as he ate his cheesecake and kept an eye on his mark. Priss must have ordered the same thing every day because Noah barely saw Krissy speak to him and suddenly a Philly cheesesteak appeared in front of him. He read and ate and Noah was just finishing his cheesecake when he saw him get up to leave. “Krissy!” he called her over and said, “can I have my check? I need to get back to work.”

  She flipped through her book, wrote something on the check, and handed it to hi
m. On the perforated part at the bottom were her name and a phone number. He winked at her again, ripped off the receipt, put it in his pocket, and left her a twenty-dollar tip. Who knows…he might just call her.

  Noah followed Sir Priss back up the street to the main offices of Carrington Bio Tech. Kyla had told him that her husband was an office manager. Noah wondered how well he managed, when in two days he’d seen him say nary a word to anyone. Once he went inside the building, Noah got back into his car. As soon as he sat behind the wheel, his phone rang…it was Ava.

  “Hi, Ava, busy on the home front?”

  She snorted. “Busy cleaning windows. How is the stakeout?”

  “Boring as hell,” he told her.

  “I did the background on this guy like you asked. It’s weird.”

  “What is?”

  “There’s nothing on him until about six years ago. It’s like he appeared out of thin air.”

  “How did Kyla meet him again?” Ava was there the last time he met with her, taking notes. Noah knew she didn’t even have to look at them as she said:

  “He just walked in one day and applied for a job with her father’s company. He came with a degree in business from MIT, she said….but that’s the other thing, I can’t confirm that.”

  “You looked up the alumni records?”

  “Yeah, and his name is there but…”

  “But?”

  “In the yearbook photos he just doesn’t look like the same guy as the one in the photos Kyla gave us. Does he look like them in person?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. I think the photos were retouched a little.”

  “You mean he looks worse in person? What’s this guy got, a twelve-inch schlong?”

  Noah busted up laughing. “Thank you! That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “Okay, boss, you get back to your stakeout. I just wanted to check in.” He was glad she did. She always managed to make his day better.

  “Thanks. I’ll do the man’s work here. You finish those windows like a good little lady.”

  “We need to do some Facetime,” she said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “So you could see which finger I’m holding up.”

  Laughing again Noah said, “Bye, Ava.”

  “See ya later, boss.”

  He hung up with a smile on his face and was so wrapped up in his thoughts of Ava that he nearly missed Sir Priss leaving work early. It looked like he was in a hurry too. Noah took some timed photos of him jogging across the street and then another of him getting into his car. He followed him and watched from three cars back as Peterson suddenly made a hard right and cut off the car in front of him.

  “What the hell?” Noah was sure there was no way his quarry had made him, he was still way back. The car Peterson cut off honked and jerked his wheel to the right too. That sent him careening into another car and that car pushed him up and to the left, slamming into the one in front of Noah. He tried to think positive; his mother would tell him to be thankful for small favors. He wasn’t involved in the accident. But damn it! He’d lost his mark. Shit!

  An hour later after giving his statement to a patrol cop that he had actually trained, he headed back to the office. When he walked in, Ava had her back to him. She didn’t look up and he could see she was on the phone. “I’ll be right with you,” she tossed over her shoulder. Back on the phone she said, “Listen carefully, Brian, okay? Do not call me here again.” She let the phone drop back into its cradle. She wanted to slam it, Noah could tell. She looked up at him with a smile pasted on her face…until she realized it was him. “Eavesdrop much?”

  “Personal call?” He wanted to ask her if she was okay and what it was this Brian guy did to upset her…but the look on her face told him that it wasn’t a good idea.

  “Sorry, you can dock my pay for the full five minutes I was on.”

  “We’ll call it a paid break this time,” he told her, but then finally couldn’t stand it. She looked really anxious. “Are you okay?” he asked, softly.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

  “Your eyes look sad,” he told her. She reverted to the humor she always used to keep from having to face whatever it was she wanted to avoid.

  “I was thinking about being stuck in this dead-end job. It made me want to cry.”

  Noah shook his head at Ava and went into his office. When she first met him at a benefit that she’d gone to with her parents and a couple of her brothers, she thought he was the handsomest man she had ever laid eyes on. She still did, only now that was interspersed with a bunch of messy feelings as well. She couldn’t look into his chocolate brown eyes without feeling that tickle in the pit of her belly. She told him to get a haircut…and he did…but it wasn’t all about his looking professional. When his dark hair grew down to his collar it started to curl up and she kept having the ungodly urge to run her fingers through it. The unshaven thing gave her the same problem. That look made her picture what he must look like when he first woke up in the morning. She knew it was all pure, animal lust…but some days when a girl had been starving for over a year, it was all she could do to control it. When she started feeling that way, she would go out of her way to be mean to him. She didn’t have to work too hard at it. Growing up with three big brothers, she’d had to be mean just to get anyone to notice her. Some days it seemed to hurt his feelings, but other times she got the feeling that it turned him on just a little bit. She didn’t flatter herself over that one, though. Noah was the kind of man that was turned on at the mention of a woman. She wasn’t special in that department and she cherished her friendship with him too much to ever try to explore that dangerous territory anyway.

  She looked at the phone, wondering what she was going to do about Brian. He didn’t believe she would go to his wife…or maybe he didn’t care. She could ruin his marriage, but that wouldn’t stop him from posting those pictures. She knew it was a long time ago, and she wasn’t twenty-three any longer…but she couldn’t imagine that her brothers or parents or any of their friends…or even Noah…could ever look at her the same if they knew how wild she had been. Brian had actually called and suggested that she meet him for a drink. Even after she had told him off at the diner, he wanted to act like they were best friends. She had half a mind to tell her brother Sean all about his friend, but in order to do that, she would have to tell him all about herself too. Damn it! Her head was pounding but she forced herself to get up and try to finish her window cleaning. She passed Noah’s office and the door was cracked open. She could see him leaning on the desk with his head in his hands.

  “What’s wrong?” He looked up at her with tired eyes and said:

  “I lost Peterson earlier. I called Kyla and she said he hasn’t come home. I thought maybe he went back to the office, but I called there too and they said he was out. Kyla can’t even tell me where to look for him. It’s been a week since the last killing. What if he goes out and kills someone after I let him get away?”

  “You can’t blame yourself if that happens, Noah. This guy…the Valentine Killer…he’s a psychopath. He’s not going to stop just because you’re following him around. If he wants to kill, he’ll find a way. You know that. You were a homicide detective…one of the best, from what I heard.” He grinned, as she knew he would. The man had an ego the size of Texas.

  “Really?” he asked. “You heard that?”

  “I did indeed,” she said.

  “From whom?” he asked, looking smug.

  “From you, like a thousand times,” she said, picking her Windex bottle back up. “Now pull yourself together and prove it.”

  She heard him laughing as she walked out the door.

  Noah was feeling like shit after losing Sir Priss. Ava was right, though…if the man wanted to kill, he was going to find a way to do it. The fact was, Noah didn’t really see this guy as the killer anyway. He’d seen the Valentine Killer’s handiwork up close and personal and he had a hard time ima
gining Sir Priss with the knife in his hand. He just seemed too apathetic to have the motivation to kill anyone. The other component was that this guy left not so much as a trace of DNA or any kind of evidence behind. Noah had suspected for a while that he was a cop, and of course got nothing but flack for that suggestion within the department. The girl found in the alley last week was the killer’s tenth victim in almost five years. That number was scary enough…but he was clearly escalating. The murder before this last one had only been a month before. Before that, it had been every few months; to begin with, only twice a year. This guy was getting better at what he did…like they all do. But the one thing Noah did know from being a homicide detective was that once they began to develop the arrogance that screamed out “Catch me if you can,” it was about the time they started getting sloppy and screwing up. It was even the saying they used at the department when a killer started to screw up. They would tell each other that he was yelling, “Catch me if you can.”

  “Hey, boss, I’m taking off,” Ava said at about four.

  “Okay, big plans for Friday night?”

  “Yep, my pajamas and I have a date with a bowl of popcorn and the television.”

  “Hmm, what do these pajamas look like?” He thought he might have detected just a tiny bit of color in her cheeks as she said:

  “Thick, footed flannel.”

  He laughed and asked, “Trap door?”

  That actually got a laugh out of her. She sounded like a little girl when she laughed and her nose wrinkled across the bridge. It was really cute. “Good night, boss.”

  “Night, Ava. Drive safe.” He watched her leave and decided that he would head home too and shower for his “date” with Kimmie. He grabbed his keys and locked up the office. As he got ready to make his way across the busy street towards his car, he saw Ava up the block a ways next to her own car. There was a man there with her and from where Noah was standing, it looked like they were arguing. Instead of crossing the street, he headed down that way. When he got close he could hear her saying: