Cold Death

by Mary Stone

  No wonder she was so tired. The stupid, mean man didn’t feed her enough. She knew because her teacher last year had taught them all about bodies and how their cells turned food into fuel. If kids didn’t eat enough food, their cells got super tired.

  Bethany was tired of being tired.

  When she stopped struggling, the bad man sat her on the counter. “Sit.”

  Bethany was too weak and disappointed to disobey. Once her butt touched the cold surface, the man rested his hands on her shoulders.

  “That was very naughty of you, trying to sneak food while I was asleep.”

  The man stood close enough that his nasty sleep-breath hit Bethany’s nose. She tried to wiggle away, but his hands clamped down harder.

  “You must learn self-control. A person should never allow themselves to be ruled by their stomach, so for your own good, your punishment will be smaller portions for the next two days until you learn how to put mind over matter.”

  Bethany’s stomach clenched down hard. “That’s stupid. How can I learn any lessons if I’m starving to death? My teacher said we don’t learn well if we don’t eat enough.”

  His soft laugh made Bethany bunch her fists in her shirt. “You’re in no danger of starving to death, and I’m afraid your teacher is wrong. Sometimes, we only learn the lesson when we’re forced to sit with our discomfort.”

  “I don’t want to do whatever that is. I’m hungry!” Furious now, Bethany lashed out, shoving her palms against his chest before twisting her body to the side. She ducked free of his hands, long enough to leap to the floor and lunge for the cookies beneath the counter.

  He grabbed her by the shirt and yanked her backward before her fingers could grab the bag. With rough hands, he whipped her around to face him. Bethany pulled back her leg to kick him in the shin when light creeping in from the gaps in the boarded-up windows struck silver.

  Bethany’s mouth went dry, and she forgot all about fighting.

  Knife.

  The man shook the weapon a few inches from her nose before tapping the blade against her cheek. Bethany shivered from both the icy metal and fear. She squeezed her legs together to stop her knees from shaking, and she didn’t cry or yell, even though it was hard.

  Never let them know you’re scared. Unless acting scared gives you an advantage, in which case, use it.

  Another of her mama’s tips. Bethany got the feeling that the bad man wanted her to be afraid, though, so she swallowed hard and stuck out her chin. “You keep showing me your stupid knife, but I know you’re not gonna kill me. You want to catch my mama and lock her up too, and you’re using me to trap her.”

  This time, the man’s soft laugh sent shivers down Bethany’s arms. “Aren’t you a clever girl? But who’s to say I can’t carve you up a little while we wait to snare your dear mama in our trap?”

  Oh. She hadn’t thought of that.

  Bethany’s lower lip trembled as the knifed dipped lower, down to her neck. The man pushed the flat side of the metal into Bethany’s throat and used it to lift her chin.

  He pressed harder, and the sharp edge bit into her skin. Just a teensy bit, but enough that Bethany was scared to breathe.

  He laughed, and the sound was scarier than if he’d yelled. “Besides, I only need Katarina to think you’re alive.”

  This time, Bethany couldn’t stop her knees from trembling.

  2

  Click, click, click, click.

  Charleston Detective Ellie Kline hit the backspace key until the freshly typed words vanished off the page. After hunching over the report all morning, she’d hoped to have more to show for her efforts, but so far, every attempt to complete the write-up on Valerie Price resulted in the same pattern. Type, erase. Type, erase.

  She blew a loose red curl out of her face and reached for the breakfast burrito by her mouse, grimacing at the shiny grease congealed on the yellow paper wrapper. She shoved the barely touched takeout to the far side of her desk without taking another bite, the sight turning her stomach.

  Wrong. The breakfast burrito was wrong, her report was wrong, everything was wrong.

  A snippet from the page caught Ellie’s eye and punched her in the gut, stealing the air from her lungs.

  Valerie Price: deceased

  Valerie was gone, and Ellie wasn’t sure anything would ever feel right again.

  The cursor blinked at Ellie from the white screen, as if taunting her to finish. But how? How could she be expected to condense Valerie’s life down to a couple of pages? Especially when Val should still be alive right now?

  Grief crashed over Ellie, ripping away the fragile veneer of control that Ellie clung to as easily as a schoolboy ripped the wings from a fly.

  Val had been a survivor. A fighter. Careful, smart, and capable, she’d escaped a murderer’s clutches once and deserved to live out the rest of her days safe from the human predators that prowled the earth. She was the one who’d got away. The woman who’d lived through the worst yet somehow persevered. After her traumatic experiences, she was supposed to go on to lead a long, happy life.

  Except she couldn’t now. Because, now, she was dead.

  Fate was so cruel sometimes.

  A bark of male laughter across the bullpen wrenched Ellie from the image reel flickering through her head. Two of the other on-duty detectives were shooting the shit in the corner, joking around like today was any other day.

  Meanwhile, the cursor blinked at Ellie, reminding her that, sooner or later, the job required her to fill the blank page with facts leading up to Valerie’s death a week ago.

  With a soft snarl, Ellie shoved away from the desk and stormed out of the bullpen that housed the Violent Crimes Unit.

  She paced the hallway a few times before flinging open the door and stomping down the stairs, the bang of her footsteps against concrete oddly satisfying. With her hands in her pockets and her chin tucked to avoid eye contact with curious coworkers, Ellie wandered the first floor.

  This is a waste of time. You have a stack of cold cases to solve.

  She wasn’t sure why she bothered with the mental reprimand. None of them had helped so far.

  She’d recently tracked down one of her cold cases, a man named Luke Harrison. Luke had been snatched over a decade ago as part of an illegal child adoption and trafficking ring run in part by the now jailed Neil Burton, an attorney who had probably been stripped of his license to practice law by now.

  After finding Luke, Ellie should have been eager to find the rest of the victims. Sold to the highest bidder by the corrupt lawyer, each and every one of them deserved to be found just as much as Luke did. But not even the folders full of missing children on her desk had worked as an effective motivator.

  The most she could muster was a half-hearted scan of her voice messages and email to confirm that none of the detectives from other jurisdictions with possible matches to her missing kids had gotten back to her yet. But…nope. Nothing. And she wasn’t expecting anything for days.

  That left Ellie with a lot of spare time on her hands. Too much. Days she should spend chasing down other leads. Instead, she wasted hour after hour torturing herself with the last few minutes of Val’s life.

  Gunshots exploded, and the man who’d kidnapped Ellie crashed to the floor. Val screamed as she tumbled down the steps.

  Ellie grabbed the dying man’s gun and squeezed the trigger at the madman firing from the top of the stairs. She got off several shots before he fled, then raced to Val’s crumpled body, falling to her knees by the woman’s head. “You’re going to be fine, you hear me? Just hold on.”

  But even as Ellie uttered the words, she knew she was lying.

  Blood. So much blood. A bright red river pouring from her friend’s chest, staining the perverse pink getup their nemesis had forced her to wear.

  That brave, strong woman had died on that cold floor, wearing ruffled pink underwear and a matching cropped baby tee with little white socks. A toddler’s outfit. A cruel reminder of the
man who’d held Ellie prisoner years ago.

  Val died with her blood still warm and slick on Ellie’s hands.

  Murdered at the hands of a vicious monster. The very same man who’d kidnapped Ellie when she was only fifteen years old and had never forgotten her since. One man responsible for so many deaths and so much pain. Some mornings, Ellie was surprised to wake up and find her heart hadn’t exploded from the burden of containing it all.

  Dr. Lawrence Kingsley, otherwise known as Abel del Rey. Psychiatrist, genius, and sociopath. Ellie wouldn’t rest easy again until he was locked away for good or dead.

  If there was any true justice left in the world, it would be the latter option, and by her hand.

  “What did those Skittles ever do to you?”

  Ellie jumped, and Val’s face disappeared, leaving her glaring at the contents of the vending machine and the fuzzy reflection of a tall man in a cowboy hat. Funny, she didn’t even remember stopping there. She definitely hadn’t noticed Clay walk up behind her.

  She grimaced. Some detective she was. So lost in her own thoughts that anyone could have snuck up on her. She needed to get her head on straight…and fast.

  Shivering, Ellie rubbed her forearms as she turned to face Special Agent Clay Lockwood. With his usual casual aplomb, he leaned his shoulders against the wall, his favorite cowboy hat perched atop his dark hair. Most days, she allowed herself at least a few moments to appreciate the agent’s lean, muscular grace.

  Today, it was all she could do not to whirl back to the vending machine, beat on the glass with her fists, and scream.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She winced at the sharp edge of her voice, but Clay didn’t miss a beat. “I’m picking up Luke Harrison’s file so that I can use it to help find Caraleigh.”

  His tone was so matter-of-fact, he could have been discussing the weather, but Ellie wasn’t fooled. When it came to the younger sister who’d disappeared on a family trip to the fair when she was only eleven and he was thirteen, the agent was a maelstrom of guilt and fear.

  “You should probably leave her case to someone who’s less emotionally invested.”

  Clay’s eyebrows pinched together as he studied her face, and she thought he was going to say something about pots calling kettles black. Instead, he asked a simple question. “What’s wrong?”

  On the heels of her snappiness, his soft, gentle tone was almost more than Ellie could take. Her throat tightened, and that annoying burn kicked in behind her eyes. Another second of his concerned gaze would topple her over the edge, so Ellie stared at her shoes and blinked. “None of your business.”

  The hand that circled her upper arm and guided her into the closest empty room was gentle. Clay kicked the door shut behind them. “Go ahead, cry and get it all out.”

  The pressure in her throat intensified. “I don’t need to cry. I’m…fine.” The tremor in her voice contradicted her words, but Ellie didn’t care.

  She balled her fists, clenched her jaw, and fought off the pain. Crying was worthless. Not even an ocean of tears would bring Val back or rescue poor nine-year-old Harmony…Bethany…from Kingsley’s clutches.

  After the psychiatrist killed Val, he’d shot his former protégé, Katarina Volkov, and vanished with her daughter. The pair had been living under the aliases of Katrina and Bethany Cook, courtesy of WITSEC and the federal marshals, but he’d found them anyway.

  “I know you better than that.”

  Emotion exploded in Ellie’s chest. Dark and furious and wild. She didn’t want Clay to know her better than that. She didn’t want anyone to. Letting people in always ended in pain. Relationships crashed and burned, and the people she was sworn to protect were murdered by sadistic serial killers. Each time, the outcome flayed another piece from Ellie’s heart.

  Why couldn’t he understand that and leave her be?

  “You might think you know me better, but you don’t. Just because we slept together once and we work together doesn’t mean you have a direct line to who I am or how I think.”

  She scoffed, the need to lash out coming stronger and stronger with each word.

  Ellie waited for Clay to say something, and when he only looked at her with those tender brown eyes, she poked him in the chest. “I knew Nick my entire life, and I guarantee you he had no idea what made me tick, not really. So, stop pretending that we have this deep connection. Some people are just meant to be alone, and I’m one of them.” She poked him again, harder this time. “This isn’t a Twilight movie, and we aren’t soul mates. Get over yourself. It’s the twenty-first century now. Women don’t need a man to feel complete.”

  When her fury and heartache were finally spent, the last of the fight drained from Ellie. Her legs wobbled like she’d just run a hundred miles. She grabbed a nearby chair to steady herself while shame seeped through her pores and filled her throat with a thick, oily residue.

  A tear slipped down her cheek. Ellie bowed her head, searching for the words to apologize for lashing out.

  Clay’s finger was gentle as he lifted her chin. “Look at me.”

  Ellie didn’t want to look at him. She’d rather crawl into a hole and hide away. From him. From Val’s death. From Bethany’s kidnapping. From her memories. From the world. But she was tougher than that. She had to be.

  His face swam in front of her, thanks to the stupid tears filling her eyes, but she blinked and blinked and forced herself to meet his gaze anyway. Whatever rebuke he planned to deliver, she deserved it.

  “I love you.”

  All Ellie could do was gape as Clay leaned in and pressed a featherlight kiss to her lips. The contact was there one moment, gone the next. When he straightened, she pressed shaky fingers to her mouth, which still tingled from the brief contact.

  She tried to speak, but her vocal cords locked up. Probably for the best because she had no idea what to say. Her mind spun, and her emotions yanked her in every different direction all at once.

  And curse him, Clay must have had an inkling of how she felt because he tipped his hat with a faint smile. “Shh, don’t say anything now. I just needed you to know that whenever you’re ready, I’ll be here.” His expression turned solemn. “And I mean it. When you’re ready, and not a second sooner. Pressure and love don’t mix, no matter how someone in your past might have acted.”

  Great. Now her eyes were burning again. Ellie nodded, afraid if she tried to utter even a single word, she’d collapse into a sniveling heap.

  “Good, glad that’s settled. In the meantime, I’ll be filling every free hour by searching for Caraleigh.” His voice turned to steel. “Luke is the first real lead I’ve had on her case in years, and I won’t stop until I exhaust every damn resource and reach every dead end.”

  As if mentioning his sister was the reminder the agent needed to get back to work, Clay headed for the door but paused when his hand touched the handle. “Any word on how long Katarina will be stuck in the psych ward?”

  Still reeling from Clay’s shocking declaration, Ellie’s brain required a few seconds to process the abrupt subject change. When she did, she hugged herself and grimaced.

  “That’s entirely up to Katarina.”

  3

  After Clay left, Ellie entered the corridor that led to a cluster of labs. She slipped inside the one that housed Carl’s tiny office, breathing in the mix of chemical odors while she rapped on the open door. “You have a minute?”

  The young man lounging behind a giant computer monitor didn’t acknowledge her at first. His fingers raced across the keyboard while he hummed along to whatever song was playing on the oversized headphones covering his ears.

  Rolling her eyes, Ellie stepped closer to the desk and clapped her hands. “Earth to Carl!”

  With a screech of metal, the lab tech jolted upright in the chair and yanked the headphones off, his round-eyed expression almost comical. “Wha…oh hey, Ellie.” He flashed her a sheepish grin and tapped one of the earpieces now dangling around his ne
ck. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “I can see that.” She returned his smile and waved a hand at the empty chair. “May I?”

  Carl brushed his frizzy brown hair off his forehead and grinned. “Yes, of course. Come on in.”

  Ellie wrinkled her nose as she settled into the seat. “What’s that smell?” Definitely not chemicals. Something sickeningly sweet.

  Carl greeted her question with a blank stare before he slapped his palm to his forehead. “Oh, sorry. I forgot. I left a banana in here over the weekend, and it got a little funky. It’s in the trash now. Is it bothering you? Because I can take the trash out now if it is.”

  He half rose before Ellie had a chance to wave him down. “No, it’s fine. Please sit.”

  Carl flopped back into the chair like an exuberant puppy. “Actually, I’m glad you came by. I have a favor to ask.”

  “Ask away.”

  “I was hoping you could write me a letter of recommendation.”

  Another surprise coming on the heels of the last one. Whatever question she’d been expecting, it sure as heck wasn’t that. Ellie’s jaw slackened. “I…you want to leave CPD and go somewhere else?”

  Carl nodded. “Yeah, I’m considering moving to Georgia. I…um…” The tech’s pale cheeks turned pink as he fiddled with a notepad on his desk. “I’ve been seeing a woman who lives close to Savannah.”

  At first, Ellie was too stunned to do anything but blink. First Jillian, now Carl? Was everyone in her orbit managing a romantic life besides her? When she finally recovered, Ellie summoned a small smile. “That’s great, Carl. I’m happy for you.”

  The tech’s hazel eyes lit up. “Thank you, that means a lot. But it also means I need to find a new job.”

  “Well, we’ll be sad to lose you, but I’d be happy to write you a rec. Without your help, I don’t know where we’d be on some of our cases. Oh!” An idea struck Ellie. “I just remembered, Clay and I met a detective from Savannah recently. We could put in a good word for you if you like?”