Darkest Night--A Romantic Thriller

by Tara Thomas

The residents at the shelter weren’t supposed to have cameras. Too much of a risk if someone took pictures of something they had no business taking a picture of. He had interests to protect at the shelter. It was where he found women that wouldn’t be missed. He’d heard rumors that a few of the residents had ignored that rule, the no pictures rule, and he’d sent Jade in to investigate. She could be a brilliant actress when she tried.

  Not only that, she was quick on her feet. Hopefully since she was able to pull the fire alarm while Keaton Benedict’s whore was still chatting with the liability, they would be able to get the cell phone. Jade was searching for it at that very moment. It hadn’t been handed off as far as she had been able to tell.

  The liability had been dealt with. He had thought about disposing her, but she wasn’t all that bad-looking. After a bit of training and getting cleaned up a bit, she’d make several of his clients very happy. And she would be able to spend however long they decided she was useful, thinking about how it never paid to snoop around.

  Now it was time to deal with his incompetent hit man. Unfortunately, none of his clients wanted grown men. Which meant his usefulness was over.

  “Even as late as last year, I wouldn’t have taken action until we knew for certain the status of the phone.” The Gentleman nodded to the security men and they moved forward, each taking hold of one of the man’s arms. “However, like I said not long ago, I no longer give second chances.”

  “No!” The man struggled to break free, but he was no match for the two guards.

  “Oh, yes. Time to go for a little swim.” The Gentleman gave another nod and a third security guard appeared. Within seconds, the struggling man was gagged. The other men in the room watched the unfolding scene uneasily. Good. They needed to see that he was serious about not allowing any more second chances.

  No one breathed a word as the man was led away. No one even fidgeted. He smiled. Excellent.

  “You are all excused.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Keaton was doing the best he could to keep his eyes on the road as he and Tilly drove back to Benedict House, but it was hard what with the fantastical story she was telling him about the homeless woman.

  “We have to go back,” Tilly said. “We have to get that cell phone.”

  Keaton tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for the light to change. “I wonder if we should call the police and tell them. They could get a search warrant.”

  “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t lying to me, but you never know. Plus, I don’t know her name and she had on this ridiculous hat that covered her face.” She bit her bottom lip. “The thing is, she seemed really scared about the possibility of going to the police. She seemed so certain someone was going to come after her if she did. I’d hate it if something happened to her because she gave me information.”

  As much as Keaton didn’t want to, he had to agree with her. “Okay, we’ll go back tomorrow. Maybe that will give the unnamed woman time to think and she’ll be ready to hand over the phone.”

  “I wish I had at least gotten her name. I keep hearing her say no one notices the homeless and I didn’t even get her name.”

  Keaton glanced out the side of his eyes to see a tear slip down Tilly’s cheek. He put a hand on her knee. “Hey. You okay?”

  Tilly nodded silently. “Yeah. I guess she just affected me more than I thought. I can’t imagine why she ran off the way she did.”

  “Maybe that Jade girl scared her.” Keaton had caught a glimpse of the teen. He couldn’t explain it, but she gave off an evil vibe that had nothing to do with the way she dressed and everything to do with the soulless look in her eyes.

  “I’m sure she’s harmless.”

  “Maybe we could try to talk to her tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” Tilly said, her excitement obvious. “And we can try to reason with the hat woman. If she still won’t listen to us, then we can go to the police.”

  “I agree. One way or another, we’ll get that phone,” he assured her.

  “I just know it has what we need to prove Kipling’s innocent.”

  * * *

  They arrived back at the house in silence not long after. He knew Tilly had homework to do and he needed to type up his notes from the meeting he just had and to work on the proposal for Kipling.

  “Meet you in the kitchen in an hour?” he asked her as they walked inside. “I saw Lena’s picked up some ice cream. We should make banana splits.”

  It had been a favorite summertime treat to share when they were kids and he drank in the sight of her first smile since they’d left the shelter.

  “Yes,” she said. “Definitely.”

  He wanted to protest when she said she was going upstairs to do homework, but he knew how close she was to graduating and he was so proud. He didn’t want anything to come between her and her degree.

  Kipling was working in the downtown office today, so Keaton decided to take over his home office. Besides, he figured since it was a floor removed from where Tilly was, he wouldn’t be as tempted to interrupt her.

  He’d just turned on his laptop when Tilly flew into his office. He looked up to find her clutching something in her hands. Her eyes were wide with excitement.

  “She must have dropped it in my bag when she bumped into me,” she said.

  “The phone?” He stood up. “Really?” He didn’t want to get his hopes up, but felt them rise anyway.

  His breath caught when she held up a cell phone. He knew right away it wasn’t hers. This one was several years old and he’d never seen it before.

  “Yes.” She nodded in excitement. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Have you looked yet?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s off and I wanted to talk to you first.”

  He stood up and held out his hand. “Come here. Let’s plug it into the laptop and see what we have.”

  She clutched the phone to her chest. “Be there. Be there. Be there.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “It helps,” she said. “Like hitting Refresh repeatedly.”

  Her hands shook as she handed him the phone. He took hold of her hand. “You know that no matter what’s on this, everything’s going to be okay?”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “I just know he’s innocent. There has to be a way to prove it.”

  He pulled her close and rested his chin on the top of her head. “We both know he didn’t do it. Even if this doesn’t hold what we hope it does, we have to believe the truth will come out some way.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  He dropped his voice. “I can’t think that way. I have to believe our justice system works. Not just in putting away the guilty, but also in acquitting the innocent.”

  “I have just about zero faith in our justice system.”

  “Let’s not wait any longer, then.” He pulled away and neither one of them talked while he connected the phone to his laptop and turned it on.

  He scrolled through the files until he came to the pictures.

  “Be there. Be there. Be there,” Tilly started chanting again as he opened the file.

  An image of Kipling walking away from the dock was the last picture taken.

  “That fits with her story that she only wanted pictures of Kipling having sex,” Keaton said. “Too bad she didn’t care about what Mandy was doing. If she had been, maybe we’d have a shot of the real killer.”

  He moved to the picture previous to that one and there it was. Tilly squealed and starting jumping up and down.

  “I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!” she sang.

  Keaton couldn’t help beaming at her excitement, even as he couldn’t keep his eyes off the picture of Kipling walking away from a kneeling Mandy.

  “You know, technically, they could say he came back and killed her.” Keaton hated to bring it up, but he felt it behooved him to be honest. “All this really proves is he was walking away at that point. There’s nothing to prove he didn’t turn ar
ound right after the last picture was taken and kill her then.”

  Tilly stopped jumping. “True, but it’s something, right?”

  “Enough for a jury to find reasonable doubt, yes, I would think so. But enough to get charges dropped? Probably not.”

  “It’s more than we had five minutes ago.”

  “Agreed. It’s definitely worth giving to the cops and who knows, maybe they’ll have better luck with our mystery woman than you did.”

  While he’d been talking, Tilly had moved to the stare at the computer screen. “Do we know how Mandy was killed?” she asked.

  “No, they haven’t released that.”

  “If it was by knife like the other two murders, we’re in luck.”

  He spun around to look at the picture again. “What?”

  Tilly had increased the size of the photo, which made it slightly distorted. She punched a few keys and pulled up the original resolution and put the two images side by side.

  “See this?” she asked, pointing to the shadowy image of a man walking toward Mandy, coming from the opposite side of where Kipling stood.

  “Yeah.”

  “If you blow it up, there’s something in his hand. It kind of looks like a knife.”

  Keaton looked at the photo and squinted his eyes. It might be a knife. Or did it only look like one because he wanted it so badly? “It might be a knife.”

  “Come on.” Tilly punched him. “What else could it be?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s call Officer Adams up and give the photo to her.”

  “You’re right. I know you are, but damn.”

  Keaton put an arm around her. “Don’t be upset. I want us to be completely certain before we start celebrating.”

  “Call her.”

  Keaton took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed the number on the card Kipling had out on his desk. “Officer Adams,” he said when she answered. “This is Keaton Benedict. I have a question for you.”

  “What can I help you with, Mr. Benedict?” she asked.

  “Was Mandy’s throat slit?”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. He heard a door close in the background.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because if she was, I believe we just found a picture of our killer.”

  “I think you’d better explain yourself, Mr. Benedict.”

  * * *

  The Gentleman slammed his phone down with a curse. Damn it all to hell and back, he hated incompetent people. And, unfortunately, the world was filled with them. Of course, this current mess brought up incompetence to a whole new level. He had an overwhelming urge to take his anger out on someone. He drummed his fingers on top of his desk and then reached for the phone.

  “Amanda,” he barked out at his admin. “Send Jade in.”

  “I think she just left, sir.”

  He closed his eyes and counted to three in his head. He still felt like stepping outside to her desk and strangling her with the phone cord, so he counted to ten.

  Better.

  “Then I suggest you find a way to get her back here. I want her in my office in five minutes.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, sir.”

  Fear and intimidation. He chuckled. That’s all it took and the world belonged to him.

  “Amanda,” he started. “You will do more than see about it, you will have her in my office in five minutes. Do it as if your life depended on it.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and then hung up.

  The Gentleman set a timer and waited. Not surprising, there was a knock on the door, less than four minutes later.

  “Come in.”

  Jade poked her head in. “You called for me?”

  “Yes, have a seat.”

  “I was on my way out to get coffee. This couldn’t wait?” Jade kicked the door closed and then spun around to glare at him.

  She was one of the few people he allowed to see him. Partially because she was like a daughter to him, and partially because her secrets were almost as damning as his.

  She wore jeans today and a cream colored tee, having ditched the all black clothes and wig in advance of the police stopping by the shelter to question everyone. Not only that, but she wasn’t wearing the colored contacts that made her eyes appear to be brown. As always, her natural coloring made his breath hitch.

  He shook his head. Focus. He hadn’t come this far to be taken down by Jade’s eyes.

  “Charges against Kipling Benedict were dropped,” he said in answer to her question.

  “What?” She dropped into a nearby chair. “How?”

  He thought that would get her attention. “They aren’t saying. Only that new evidence points to someone else.”

  “I still don’t see how that’s possible. As far as anyone knows, he was the last person to see that dancer alive.”

  “But we know that’s not the case, don’t we?”

  She nodded, and he could almost see the wheels spinning in her head.

  “You never found the cell phone, did you?” he asked.

  “No. Are you sure the woman didn’t have it with her when you handed her over to her new owner?”

  He shook his head. “She was naked and everything left behind of hers was searched.”

  Jade was uncharacteristically silent. Probably because she knew what he was going to say.

  “From all appearances,” he said, “we have to assume she somehow gave the phone to Tilly Brock. Who you were supposed to be watching and failed at. Therefore, it is because of you that we don’t have it.”

  He had to hand it to the young woman; she didn’t look the slightest bit fearful. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even know that worthless employee of yours screwed up, much less that pictures actually existed.”

  “I’ll admit it was quick thinking on your part to pull the alarm, in order to stop them from talking, but the fact remains, you left a loose end.”

  She leaned back in her chair. “Happens to the best of us.”

  He could laugh, but only because it was Jade who was teasing him. She was the only one who dared such a thing. It was a welcome change from the norm, but he still wouldn’t allow anyone else to be so flippant with him. Even Jade knew to curtail the sass when others were nearby.

  “That may well be the case, but neither one of us can afford to have it happen again,” he said.

  “So what do we do now?”

  The question wasn’t unexpected. After all, he’d been asking himself the same thing since the moment he heard Kipling was no longer a suspect. He stood up and walked to the minibar he had in his office, and poured them both a drink.

  She watched him with those damn eyes of hers as he carried the glass to her. It was so unnerving, he almost looked away. He didn’t, though. She could never know what they did to him.

  “The endgame hasn’t changed,” he said. “The plan remains the same, we just need to move the time line up. It’s not a Benedict death, but I find I don’t even care. It will be so fulfilling to watch them suffer over her passing. Tilly Brock has to die and you’re going to do it.”

  She smiled the smile she inherited from her mother and raised her glass. “Here’s to the end of the Benedict empire.”

  He lifted his glass and joined in her toast. She was only partially right. But it wasn’t enough for him to end the Benedict empire. He wanted to crush it beneath his feet, light it on fire, and watch it burn. Then he’d take the ashes and make any surviving Benedict eat them.

  CHAPTER 14

  Two days after he called Alyssa, Keaton sat in the living room with Kipling, Tilly, and Derrick, waiting for the police officer to show up.

  “Where’s Officer Drake?” Kipling asked once she’d arrived and Lena had shown her in. “Don’t you need him to be good cop? Or are you just going to entertain us with your bad-cop impression? I have to warn you, I like it very, very bad.”

  Alyssa crossed her arms. “Your pathetic attempts to disarm me by using sexual innuen
dos aren’t working.”

  Kipling seemed rather undeterred that she called him out. In fact, he appeared to like it. “You know, I did a little checking. I was wondering why your name sounded so familiar. It would seem I’m not the only one who likes bad.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But even Keaton could see that Alyssa did; her face was more guarded than it’d been seconds before, as if she knew what Kipling was talking about and desperately wanted to change the subject.

  Unfortunately, Kipling saw the same thing and now that he knew she had a weak spot, he’d use for all it was worth.

  He rocked back on his heels. “Tell me, Officer Adams. How is it possible for an officer of the law not to know, or at least suspect, that her lover is a murdering sex trafficker?”

  The question was so preposterous Keaton waited for Alyssa to volley an insult back, but instead, she threw her head back, looked him straight in the eye, and calmly said, “Love is blind, Mr. Benedict. Haven’t you heard?”

  “Perhaps. But I hadn’t realized it was stupid as well.”

  Alyssa’s lips tightened. “I don’t see how my past relationship has anything to do with my current investigation.”

  “That’s where you’d be wrong, Officer. It has everything to do with the current investigation. How do you expect me to believe you can tell which end’s up when you didn’t even know the man you were sleeping with had blood on his hands?”

  Shocked at the turn the conversation had taken, Keaton tried to remember a news story even remotely related to what they were discussing in the foyer. Damn. He had no idea. That’s what he got for never watching the news.

  The corner of Alyssa’s mouth quirked up. “Did you realize who I was when you first saw me or did you Google me after I arrested you?”

  There were relatively few people who gave to Kipling as good as they got. Keaton hadn’t expected the police officer to be one of them. His older brother must have felt the same. He laughed and replied, “Touché, Officer Adams. Touché.”

  Alyssa looked mildly amused. “I know your type, Mr. Benedict. You think you’re better than everyone else because you’re wealthy. You think if something doesn’t go your way, you can just buy your way out. Well, guess what? News flash. I’m not for sale.”