“Who is with Miss De’laross right now?” Cris asked.
“Captain is with her,” Officer Rhye answered.
“Let me know as soon as you find anything, just call me on my cell phone,” Cris said before making his way back to Arie’s house.
****
Arie and Cris sat on either side of the Captain as they told him everything that had been going on for the past few days. Well, everything except for how Grace’s spirit brought them together and has been helping them with the case ever since.
“The only thing I have trouble with is you not telling me this sooner and bringing a civilian in,” Captain O’Kelly said as he turned toward Cris.
“If it helps, I have been pulled in to help the FBI when they needed help and I can give you my contact number to verify it,” Arie said in defense of Cris before she could stop herself. She didn’t want to tell them about her helping the FBI, but she didn’t want Cris to get in trouble either so she blurted it out.
Cris turned and looked at Arie in shock as she handed Captain O’Kelly her contact’s number. There was so much about her that he didn’t know and he wanted to figure out. She was a complete and utter mystery to him.
Thoughts began to bombard his mind as he continued to look at Arie. How did she hold her own against a man twice her size? How did she obtain a carrying permit so easily? Why did the FBI let a blind civilian help them solve their cases? What did she do for the FBI anyway?
Cris didn’t realize he had asked the questions aloud.
Arie quickly began to answer all of his questions. She felt like since she had already opened the can she might as well let all her secrets spill out, well, at least the ones that answered Cris’s questions. She told them about how her father had her continue her boxing, Aikido, and Krav Maga training. How she was at her Uncle Brandon’s house, who was a FBI agent at the time, when she overheard him and his partner going over a case. Ideas began to flow through her head of how she could help them as she closely listened to them recount all the evidence and they went over how their prime suspect was going to get away. Even though they knew his alibi wasn’t as airtight as they were led to believe, there were holes in the alibi but not enough for them to be able to disprove it in court. After helping them solve a few cases, she was brought into the department as an intern to help the whole department.
“Why aren’t you still interning there?” Cris asked.
“I stopped after my uncle was killed while undercover a few weeks before my parents died. His partner wanted me to continue and eventually move up to become his partner, but I couldn’t continue so soon after my uncle’s funeral,” Arie answered.
Arie couldn’t believe she had told them everything.
Cris sat there and let everything Arie said settle in to his mind. She was changing his mind about a lot of things in the past he thought were impossible.
Chapter Six
He slammed the palms of his hands onto the dashboard when he noticed it was only six a.m. He gripped the steering wheel until the blood drained out of his hands. He noticed it was still six a.m as he glanced back at the clock on his dashboard just a few seconds later. His body rocked back and forth, as he continued with his strong hold on the dashboard.
“Just fifteen more minutes and she will be stopping for her stretch,” the Daytime Killer mumbled about his latest victim’s routine.
He had been watching his latest victim for the past two weeks since he had seen her at the Nameless bar for the first time. She was one of those creatures of habit and he loved that about her. Every morning, no matter what, she left her house for her run at five-thirty a.m. By six-thirty, she was stopping for a water break and to stretch again right in the very spot where he was waiting. Leaving him just enough time to snatch her, bring her back to one of his lairs, and get to work by eight.
Just thinking about how he was going to snatch her lit a fire in him that he had been missing since his last victim. He was tired of pretending as if he was in control of himself while he really wanted to hunt. Darkness was starting to cloud his mind and he couldn’t see which way his mind was going, leaving him feeling weak, powerless, and unconfident, not in control of his mind or body. He knew if he didn’t get her soon he would snap on someone and maybe, just maybe, kill them since his control was overpowered by darkness. If he was going to lose it, without a doubt, it would be at work when one of those assholes he worked with fucked with him again.
His mind began to drift back to those times he really felt powerless as a child.
He and his brother had the best time of their lives for the last three months. It felt as though they were finally free and didn’t have to be afraid of their own shadows any more.
When he was a ten-year old kid, he woke hurriedly as his mother’s painful screams penetrated his dreams. He jumped out of bed and made his way to the living room where the screams were coming from. Without having to look, he knew his mother was running around the living room screaming as she ran from his deranged father. She had lasted longer than he had expected this time before she let his father know where they had moved to. He hadn’t believed his mother was truly going to leave his father until two days ago.
Right before he rounded the corner he saw his brother following closely behind him trying to peek over his shoulders. He stopped in his tracks when he saw blood dripping from his mother’s eye and nose. Her right eye was already swollen shut and purple. She was almost out the front door when his father leaped over the couch and tackled her to the ground. His father grabbed her neck and as he began to choke her, he slammed her head repeatedly into the ground.
His ten-year old self stood there, shocked for a moment, as he watched before turning around to his brother. “Go to your room and lock your door,” he said right before he went after his father with the baseball bat that was a few feet in front of him.
With everything he had in him, he rammed the bat into his father’s back and didn’t stop until his father let his mother go. The only thing wrong with this was his father stood quickly and went after him. Just as his father reached out to grab him a lamp came sailing from behind him and hit his father in the head. Without looking back he knew it was his brother who threw the lamp since his mother was laying on the ground moaning in front of him. His father stumbled just a little bit from the impact of the lamp but he was quickly gaining his balance back.
“Hit him with the bat again, now!” his brother yelled from behind him, snapping him out of his trance.
He lifted the bat and swung it at his father’s legs making him yelp and run out the door quickly. He watched in like a dream-like reality as his brother ran to the door, locked it, and placed a chair under the doorknob.
“Help me make sure all the windows are locked in the house and put a stick or something in them just in case,” his brother said as he ran around the house locking the windows before his dad came back.
He went around the house placing sticks into the windows his brother already had shut and locked. It never crossed either of the boys’ minds that their father could just break the window and enter. After all the windows were secure, they helped their mother to her bed and placed a bag of frozen peas on her eyes.
His mother let his father back into their home three weeks later. The first thing his father did when he got back was beat him until he passed out from the pain. He was out of school for an entire month from the beating. It made him angry at his mother for letting his father back in after years of beating her. What really pissed him off was she didn’t say or do anything to his father after he almost killed him, her own son.
During that month, darkness about himself, life, and other people took over his thoughts and body. Dark thoughts clouded his mind while stuck in bed. He was worthless, powerless, unlovable, unprotected, lonely, vulnerable, and he promised himself he would never feel this way again, if he could help it.
He gripped the steering wheel tightly with one hand and banged on the window with the other. He yell
ed and screamed until he noticed the time on the dashboard was six twenty-five. His body instantly calmed down as he climbed into the back of the van and crouched down in front of the sliding door. Serenity instantly took over his mind and the darkness receded some as he began to feel a little bit in control and some power came forward. His mind drifted back to the first time he felt like this.
He was at the edge of their backyard where his backyard butted up with the woods when a lizard came stalking out from the woods. He slowly crouched down, placed his hands into the grass, and waited for the lizard to walk into his hands. He snapped his hand closed quickly like a mouse or bear trap did when it caught its prey. He felt a little bit powerful and in control as he tightened his fist around the lizard making it where he couldn’t move no matter what.
He was getting bored with the lizard when an idea popped into his mind. He took off one of the safety pins his mother put on his pant to keep them up and started to poke the lizard with the sharp edge. A slight spark took over his body as he watched the lizard squirm whenever he poked it with the sharp point. The slight spark took over the darkness and made him feel all the things he didn’t feel. Powerful, strong, confident, and the most important—in control—when he accidently poked the lizard in his heart and he watched as the lizard took its last breath and blood poured from the wound.
The smell of the blood drifted into his nostrils and smelled like pure bliss to him. He pressed his nose close to the blood and took in huge deep breaths, trying to embed the scent of blood into his memory. A few months later the reptiles he found weren’t doing it for him, the darkness was still there. He wanted to hear them scream out in pain as he tortured them and it wasn’t happening. So he moved up to cats and dogs, and boy did those screams do something for him. He replayed their screams over and over again in his mind every waking moment of the day. Eventually after a few years the small animals weren't enough and he moved up to bigger animals until finally, when he was a young man, he moved on to women. Women who were in a way like his no good trifling mother who didn’t deserve to live.
He watched her as she came jogging down the street, he grabbed a towel and poured chloroform onto it. His palms sweated and a broad smile took over his face the closer she got. He double-checked everything in the van with a scan of his eyes before turning his attention to the lock on the door. His eyes roamed over her as she stopped and took a sip of her water before starting her stretching.
He opened up the door, leapt out of the car, and placed the towel over her mouth, all in a matter of seconds as she bent over to stretch. His prey began to fight him back kicking, screaming, and thrashing with all her might.
I am going to like this one, she’s a fighter—and a tiny little thing, he thought as her body slumped to the side as he dragged her into the back of the van.
He laid her onto the cool van floor before making his way to the front of the van. A smile took over his face when he noticed it was only six thirty-one exactly.
He quickly drove her to the cabin that was an hour from where he was at and only fifteen minutes from his job. A sensation of home filled him when he pulled up to the abandoned-looking cabin surrounded by the woods. He parked behind the cabin, picked his prey up from the back of the van, and carried her into the cabin. He whistled like he didn’t have a care in the world as he carried her to the basement. He placed her on a cool metal table he stole from a morgue and strapped her in tightly. He looked at her one last time before making his way to work so he wouldn’t be late.
****
Arie groaned and covered her eyes with her hands as the sunlight streaming through the blinds woke her. Confusion clouded her mind as she looked around the room trying to remember just where in the hell she was and how the hell she got there. She grunted as her memories from the night before came rushing back to her. Her eyes focused in on the plain room trying to shake the memory overload from a sleep clouded mind. The walls in the room were white and only held the king-size bed she was laying on and a small black dresser pushed up against the wall.
She pulled the cover over her head and turned away from the window. The bed felt so warm and cozy she snuggled in deeper and would have stayed there the whole day if her overactive bladder didn’t need emptied. Arie closed her legs tightly and held it in as long as she could, trying to delay getting out of the bed for as long as possible. She threw the cover back then swung her legs off the bed and onto the floor.
Earlier, she noticed there were two other doors besides the one leading out of the bedroom. She knew one had to lead to the closet and the other to the bathroom but didn’t know which was which. She stood in the middle of the room looking back and forth between both doors as she shifted from side to side. While contemplating which door to try first, she grabbed her suitcase and dragged it along.
I might as well shower while I am in there, Arie thought as her stomach began to rumble from hunger.
Yes, definitely a shower and then breakfast time, Arie thought as she patted her stomach before heading into the bathroom to relieve her bladder and take a nice warm shower.
Arie threw on the same kind of sweat suit from last night, just in black this time. Her stomach growled as she pulled her hair into a loose damp ponytail. She grabbed her dead phone and charger as she made her way out the door and into the kitchen.
“Definitely coffee first or else I will be full of sugar, spice and nothing nice,” she mumbled to herself as she started a pot of coffee.
She looked through the cabinets as she sipped her coffee and got excited when she saw everything was there to make chocolate-chip pancakes. Wow, you know you don’t have a life when you get excited at the thought of making chocolate-chip pancakes. Just pathetic, Arie, get a life. Pulling out everything she needed, she started on enough pancakes for her and Cris for when he woke up.
Cris rubbed his already burning itching eyes as he slid to the edge of the bed. He hadn’t got much sleep last night between his sensual dreams of Arie returning and the nightmares invading. Since he had met Arie almost a year ago, he had been having dreams of them exploring the spark he felt whenever he was near her. Until the nightmares of his sister’s death took over.
He ran his hands through his hair as his dream from last night drifted into his mind.
Cris and Arie danced in the middle of Arie’s living room in front of the fireplace as soft music filled the room. Cris wrapped his arms tightly around her waist as they swayed back and forth. A fiery heat burned throughout his body as Arie’s soft curves melted into his hard muscular body. He moaned and pulled her even closer as the enticing sent of strawberries and kiwi filled his nostrils. Damn, she smelled and felt so good, Cris thought as Arie’s body brushed up against his hardening cock and her scent encompassed him once more.
Arie looked up at him and bit her bottom lip seductively as she felt his cock hardening against her. His left hand ran through her hair as he leaned forward and captured her slightly parted lips in a heated kiss. He could feel the heat radiating off her body as she whimpered.
It was as if their minds were connected as one, and without breaking their connection, he lifted Arie up as she wrapped her legs around his waist. Their lips parted just long enough for him to walk up the stairs. He shoved Arie’s bedroom door open and entered her room, kicked the door closed behind them, then turned around and swiftly pinned her against the door.
Arie moaned in his ear as he kissed down the side of her neck until he reached her nipple. He sucked and licked her nipple through her silk button up shirt causing Arie to tighten her hold on him and arch into him. That took the rest of the control he had. He pulled her away from the door and made his way to her bed. When he got there he lightly tossed her onto the bed before sliding his clothes off and leaving them in a pool on the floor. Climbing onto the bed, he positioned himself so he was over Arie.
Unbuttoning her pants, Cris roughly pulled her pants off her legs. He put all his weight onto his left hand as he began to unbuttoned her shirt ma
king sure to kiss, bite, and lick a trail down to her navel as he revealed her smooth skin.
Moving back up her body, and aligning his cock with her slit, Cris looked into Arie’s eyes. And just as he was about to thrust into her and feel the heated bliss of having her sweet wet walls wrapped around his cock, his sister’s corpse appeared in front of him and looked into his eyes and said, “What kind of brother are you? Sitting here having sex and you still haven’t found my killer.”
Hearing those words instantly snapped him out of his dreams. He had laid there in bed for the rest of the night letting the guilt consume him. Even though he knew Grace would never think or say anything like that to him, in his heart he thought it was how Grace would feel, but in his head, he knew it was just his own guilty subconscious portraying in a dream the thoughts he had deep in his mind.
Surprisingly, despite all of this, he had gotten more sleep than he had in the past two and a half weeks. It was as if just having Arie close to him was enough to help him through the dreams, making him wonder what would it be like if he could feel her next to him every night, all night.
The only difference between Cris's and Arie's bedrooms, and the other two bedrooms in the house was that he had unpacked his clothes and put them away during the night. His mind felt like it was consumed with clutter when items weren’t in their place and he couldn’t function.
He slid out of bed, grabbed clothes out of the drawers, and jumped into a steaming hot shower. The tension in his body evaporated as the steaming water massaged him. He stood under the steaming water until it grew cold, causing him to rush the rest of his shower.
The smell of coffee and pancakes drifted into his room, rushing him to dress quickly. He threw on black jeans, a t-shirt, and made sure his holster was secure on his jeans. As he hurried out the door and started down the stairs, he couldn’t remember the last time he had a home-cooked breakfast.
The Eyes Tell No Lies Page 8