by Tracy Ellen
Chapter I
“Cryin’ Like A Bitch” by Godsmack
Wednesday, 01/02
8:05 AM
Life’s latest challenge was going to have to wait. I wasn’t ready to face my friends’ death, much less deal.
After reading NanaBel’s email from last night, the last of several emails and texts from my family members and various friends, I carelessly dropped the cell phone onto the desk in my office in Bel’s bookstore.
Slumping back in my chair, I stared dully at the Daily Word calendar sitting in front of me until my eyes actually focused on the word for December 31st.
Pusillanimous.
The outdated calendar gave a satisfying clang when it landed in the empty metal trash can across the room. The creator of the calendar had to be a depressed individual to choose that particular word to end the year.
“Or they’re a mean psychic,” I amended with a mutter, blowing on my steaming coffee.
I could justify it all I wanted, but the truth was I flat-out fainted last night in the limo. There wasn’t any gun-blasting shootouts or blows to my head to blame this time. I simply freaked after Luke’s horrific news and fainted like a little pusillanimous bitch.
Resting my forehead on my hand, I groaned and closed my eyes.
A few things from last night's vampire ball were vivid in my head. People drinking blood from human vessels was something a small town girl from Minnesota didn’t see too often at parties.
Another thing that stood out in my memory was the coldness in Luke’s tone when he’d stated his beating of Kyle Koch was interrupted due to the police arriving at the house. I got goosebumps all over at the memory of his deadly voice and shivered. Not because Luke had scared me, but in excited anticipation. Kyle Koch must pay dearly for what he did to me last night.
I wish it was a hallucination from the drugs forced on me, but I also remembered Luke delivering the awful news of Darcy and Arthur's fatal car accident. His voice had been relentless and left no room for doubt he was telling the truth. I was too caught up in my own bad trip to care last night, but this morning, I realize there had been sympathy in Luke’s voice, as well. My war-god had lost a best friend when he was a teenager and probably had to face death many times throughout his years in the Army.
I groaned again at my little pansy fainting routine last night. “My God, could I have been more of weak-ass?”
‘Yes, you could have been and were,’ the mean mommy voice sing-songed, bright as a ray of summer sunshine.
“Oh. Shut. Up.”
As soon as I have more energy, I plan to strangle the crap out of that voice--I don’t care if it’s only speaking the truth when answering my rhetorical questions.
I remembered being in a limo, asking about the Milton boys, and Luke reassuring me the four kids had not been in the car when their parents were killed. When Luke had gone on to reassure me that Arthur’s parents understood I hadn’t legally agreed to be responsible for the boys, since I hadn’t signed any documents, I’d felt incredibly relief. But that joyous emotion had been instantly ruined when Luke pointedly added that Darcy had sung my praises to Arthur’s parents. She’d raved what a good friend I was and how, once given, I never broke my word.
That was when I had immediately passed out for the rest of the limo ride.
Oh, I’d known somewhere in the back of my mind that I would have to face everything eventually--Stella losing her baby, Darcy and Arthur’s death, the four little guys left orphaned, and the mess with Kyle Koch, but just not then. Right then, I’d been too messed up on drugs and too dazed with a flood of crazy emotions. So I didn’t deal with anything, but played the willing victim to the drugs in my system. I welcomed being sucked under into unconsciousness.
Luke had held me in his arms on the flight home while I did my best to block out his soothing words in my determined effort to stay passed out for the entire flight. And then once home, I ignored the comfort of Luke’s presence, the strength of his big, warm body, and there for my taking, the blissful escape found in the touch of his magical hands.
Instead, I’d stayed wrapped tight in an unresponsive ball like a prickly opossum. Alone, yes, but blessedly pain-free in my unfeeling void of darkness.
Throughout the miserable night, I’d surprised myself a couple of times with slight yearnings to turn over, open up, and fall apart all over Luke, as I imagined women do with their men. Luckily, I was too frozen in place to make the first move or I dread what might have happened.
Admitting and sharing my feelings for Luke has been hard enough. At least it’s physically rewarding--the wild, passionate sex makes the misery of love worthwhile. And okay, I cannot deny Luke is intelligent and funny, so in the spirit of honesty, maybe our relationship also stimulates me mentally.
But sharing pain?
There’s nothing fun about sharing pain. Sharing pain means leaving yourself wide open and unguarded on a whole new level. Sharing pain means stripping down bare and watching pieces of your flayed soul and bleeding heart left out there flapping in the wind. If that’s not horrible enough, where there’s flapping emotions of pain, copious amounts of tears are sure to follow. I don’t fear much, but I fear tears. Or rather more accurately, I fear heavy crying.
Wailing and carrying on has never given me any of the miraculous emotional relief widely touted by womankind. Crying my heart out gets me no spiritual healing or great release from grief.
In fact, the opposite occurs. If I spontaneously burst into tears, the least of what I’ll get for my efforts are swollen eyes and an aching head. If I don’t stop the flood immediately, I’m in deep trouble. I’ll get a huge lump in my throat and a completely plugged nose.
That may not sound too scary, but see if you can breathe with a lump the size of a boulder lodged tightly in your throat and a nose stuffed with snot made of cement, with no way of swallowing or blowing anything out, because that’s what happens to me.
I suspect asphyxiation to be slightly more than the usual side effect most girls take in stride after some hard crying on their journey to an emotionally better place.
Is it worth possibly suffocating to death to share my grieving pain on Luke’s broad shoulder, so he doesn’t feel frozen out of my emotional turmoil?
I agree, sometimes I have to settle for being less than the most fabulous fiancée on earth in order to live another day to continue tormenting my deserving love.
So, I handled my grief in my own way, which I’d done until about twenty minutes ago, when waking up in a fetal curl to an empty bed and an empty apartment. I had woken up with questions about Kyle the Kochsucker buzzing in my blurry brain like pissed off hornets, too.
I’d trudged to the bathroom and immediately spotted the note Luke had left taped on the outside of the door. Then I’d let loose a shriek of genuine fright when I caught a glimpse in the hallway mirror of a housebreaking, evil punk rocker. In the next second, I realized it was only me. That incident got my heart pumping a little more, but didn’t help alleviate my overall depressed status.
Luke’s terse note said he’d be back around ten. I was relieved Luke hadn’t deserted me for being a fainting little bitch of an emotionally unavailable fiancée, although I prayed he’d left before first light.
Luke’s note ended with a reminder that Arthur Milton’s parents are coming to Northfield at two o’clock today. My mind shied away from the awful sight of myself in the bathroom mirror, and the mention of the Miltons. I was still too raw to consider the ramifications of that meeting until I had absolutely no choice, which was definitely not before morning coffee.
As for my rat’s nest hair standing up and out in a stiff Mohawk, courtesy of yesterday’s gallon of hair spray, and the red-rimmed eyes and swollen, splotched face, once past the shock of seeing I look scarier than a carnie freak, I didn’t much care. Yesterday, I had survived briefly breaking down at the loss of Stella’s baby and probably crying out in my sleep last night over my dead friends, so right this min
ute, I’m thankful to be able to breathe.
I declared to the empty apartment, “Coffee. Now.”
Throwing on my black velvet robe and slippers, I went down to Bel’s, brewed a monster latte at the Fare, and took the scalding hot drink into my office.
Yes, I have challenges that need to be faced, but I decided it’s best for now to focus on the conundrum that’s Kyle Koch.
Whoever believes revenge to be a negative reaction that solves nothing has never been truly wronged or they’re truly pusillanimous. Besides curtailing ongoing bad behavior in others, revenge has several positive uses. For instance, revenge planning was getting my sluggish blood boiling and making me stronger to face the day.
“No more Anabel weak-ass,” I vowed out loud, slamming my fist on the desk. “The Kocksucker can keep his icky blood; I want his head on a freakin’ platter!”
‘Yay!’ the voices in my head unanimously cheered.
After cracking my knuckles, doing some stretches to relieve the knots in my back, and throwing away rude, outdated calendars, I now sat brooding at my desk. I was attempting to make some organized, logical sense of the questions in my head before calling the people on my short list.
What in the hell would possess Kyle Koch to drug and kidnap me from the Bellagio, drug me again with Ecstasy, give me a white dress to wear, and then let me have a mosey round his vampire party? Was he a nutjob?
‘Seriously? And here I thought you were finally on the ball again,’ the mean mommy voice drawled sarcastically.
I lifted my middle finger, and while I derived momentary pleasure at the image of choking that grating voice in my head, I did have to acknowledge that last bit was a dumb question. Of course he’s a certifiable nutjob to do any of those things.
Kyle Koch had talked to me twice in forty-eight hours and that was the sum of our relationship. Yet, I remembered Luke mentioning Kyle said something last night about me being his soul mate. Why had he fixated on me?
Maybe the reasons didn’t matter anymore, since Luke said the Las Vegas police had arrested Kyle for murder. Was he the killer of the poor girl found gutted in the Bellagio’s restroom? Had she been the kook’s imaginary soul mate, too?
“Holy Crap!” I practically shouted, as the realization another killer had entered the orbit of my life really hit home. “What are the odds of that happening once in a lifetime, much less three times in two months? Wait a second…” I frowned and counted on my fingers. “The Hammer, the Behemoth, the Fixer, the Wannabe Mommy, and now the Kochsucker. Five killers!” I laid my head on the desk and moaned, “If Anna ever starts counting, I am so screwed!”
Was Kyle Koch a serial killer? The detectives who had questioned Anna and me never stated if there was more than one girl found murdered like that in Vegas, but would they? Wasn’t it standard police procedure to try and keep a public lid on grisly details of that nature, so as to not scare the citizens, especially in a tourist town like Las Vegas? But I was getting ahead of myself without any facts. Finding out why the police arrested Kyle for murder was a top priority in my revenge plan.
Those were all important questions concerning my future life expectancy, but they weren’t the number one question on my mind since waking up this morning.
Something Luke had said in his fuzzy explanation out in the desert when he rescued me struck me odd at the time, but I was too high then to care. This morning, I couldn’t fully recall the exact details of why I’d been suspicious, but as I mulled over the events of last night, I wondered how Luke came up with Mr. G.’s name in the first place. Not that I wasn’t extremely grateful Luke had made the connection between Kyle Koch and Mr. G., but apparently my brain was stuck on this particular loose end.
Maybe Melly referred to the high roller when she had left her warning phone call messages after she’d spotted Kyle on the twenty-ninth floor in the Bellagio. Or Anna might have mentioned Mr. G.’s name to Luke when they found out I was missing. I suppose it could even be possible Luke knew Mr. G. well enough from playing poker to hear he had an employee named Kyle Koch. God knows it wouldn’t be the first time I was impressed with Luke’s situational awareness and his attention to the smallest details. You’d think my Dark Prince’s omnipotence in general would be reason enough to give my brain closure, but nope, it wanted a solid answer, not suppositions.
The latte was still too hot to gulp, so I took a cautious sip while acknowledging it was time to quit with the speculations. It was Luke who’d drilled into my head during self-defense training that if something felt off or suspicious, do not try to rationalize it away. I had to listen to my gut, whether I liked what it was trying to tell me or not.
Into the silence of my office, I stated, “Okay then, it should be easy enough to find out how Luke knew to ask Mr. G. for the whereabouts of Kyle Koch.”
Perhaps a nicer fiancée would start by asking Luke directly, but my gut was my new advisor, and it suggested I needed more background data before approaching Genghis.
My first call was to Melly, my new friend employed at the Bellagio in Vegas. It was hours earlier in Vegas and I worried I’d be rudely awakening Melly. Judging by the sound of her excited screaming before I could say a word, it turned out she was overjoyed to hear from me.
“Oh, thank the Lord it’s you! Did you hear the news? It was all over the hotel last night that Mr. Koch’s been arrested for murder!”
“That’s great news!” Confirming Kyle’s arrest was one question mark scratched off my list. It was a huge relief knowing he was off the streets while I devised an airtight revenge plan. “Did he kill the bathroom woman?”
“Don’t know,” Melly replied in her cheerful Oklahoma drawl that brought to mind bowlegged cowboys in chaps. “I saw the news in the break room before my shift was over last night, but the police didn’t give out any details about who Mr. Koch went and killed. Maybe there’s been an update. I’ve got my laptop right here. You want to hold on a sec while I check the local news?”
“Sure.”
After a few seconds of muttering and humming under her breath, she griped, “Well, dang it to hell, Anabel, but I’m not finding anything new yet.”
I was as disappointed as her. “The detectives said the police don’t announce the name of a victim until the family is notified, so maybe that’s the hold up.”
“Yeah,” she agreed reluctantly, “I guess it’d be awful to hear news like that blurted out on TV, wouldn’t it?”
I closed my eyes briefly. Darcy had grown up in Northfield. I might have been blindsided by the report of Darcy and Arthur’s death, if I’d been watching the local news at home and not in Las Vegas with a missing phone.
“Yes, it would be awful,” I replied quietly. “Look, I’m sorry to call this early, but I…”
“No, no, don’t be,” she broke in, sounding amazingly bouncy for six in the morning. “Truth is, since you didn’t call me back, I was worrying a teensy bit when I went to bed that you might be the woman Mr. Koch killed. I was thinking on contacting those detectives and reporting what you’d told me.”
“You were? It’s a good thing I called you so early then.”
It was a damn good thing because Melly was the one person who knew the complete story of my interactions with Kyle Koch, up until he nabbed me from the hotel room. I hadn’t decided yet if my revenge plan against Koch included pressing criminal charges. I wanted to leave my options open and lay low, so I didn’t share with Melly now what Kyle Koch did to me last night.
Melly said, “I was already rethinking calling the cops. I remembered your phone was lost,” her voice turned teasing, “and that you were gettin’ hitched and all last night. I’m sure you had much better things to do then call me back, and wouldn’t appreciate the po-po knocking on your bedroom door.” She paused then and demanded, “Hey, why are you up and calling me so early after your weddin’ night, anyway?”
“Actually, I’m calling from Minnesota. Due to a family emergency, we postponed the wedding and left Vegas
last night.”
Using the term “family emergency” encouraged most people brought up with any manners to back off with the questions. Sure they’re curious about the nature of the family emergency, but the words themselves imply a tall chain-linked fence with a sign clearly stating, “No Trespassing.”
Melly verified she wasn’t raised by a pack of wolves when, with an appropriate degree of polite sympathy, she exclaimed, “Oh, poor you! I hope everything is okay at home…?”
“Thanks, it will be eventually,” I answered vaguely. “But, hey, I do have a reason for calling. When you left your Kyle Koch warning messages, did you happen to mention anybody else in your voicemails?”
Her voice full of curiosity, she answered, “Nope, who else would I mention? I only saw Mr. Koch doing that slinky walk of his down the hall on your floor. After everything you’d told me about him, I nearly peed my pants when I saw him near your room! I was in the elevator and saw him right as the elevator doors were closing.” She hurried on apologetically, “I got stuck behind my service cart and couldn’t hit the open door button in time. I didn’t desert you, though. Soon as I could, I went right back up to your floor, but Mr. Koch wasn’t anywhere around. You didn’t answer your door when I knocked,” Melly dropped her voice, as if Bellagio security might be lurking in her bedroom, “so I used my housekeeping key card to take a peek around your suite, but it was empty. That’s when I called to warn you.”
I fondly pictured Melly’s sincere face as she spoke. She may be only eighteen, but she was a quick thinker. It was through no fault of hers that the Kochsucker had somehow gotten to me. It was fortunate Melly hadn’t been in time to spot Kyle Koch again. The police think he’s a killer, so I shuddered to think what he would have done to the girl if she’d stood in his way.