“No, there aren’t many more to come,” Veda screamed at the TV. “Because I’m trying to stop. I’m trying to stop, but the karmic God’s are hell bent on fucking with my life—and the lives of everyone I love—anyway. Get your story straight or don’t tell it at all, Sally!” Veda hurled the remote at the TV and regretted that action the instant it went flying. Thankfully, it hit the wall a few inches above the TV before clattering to the floor. Realizing she’d morphed into a senile old woman ranting into the darkness, unloading all her life problems at two TV newscasters who couldn’t hear her, she buried her head in her hands, groaning from the deepest pits of her stomach. “I just want to be happy,” she cried into her palms, making her skin feel humid and clammy. “I just wanna be fucking happy.”
As if the newscaster could hear her desperate plea, he spoke three words that ensured the exact opposite. “At six attacks confirmed, The Chopper’s serial assault investigation is now the biggest in the island’s history.”
Veda’s eyes flew up from her hands, upper lip curling, one eye cocking. “Six?”
Six attacks confirmed? The newscaster must have misspoken, she decided, because she’d never gotten to number six. She’d given up her quest at Liam O’Dair, and Liam had been number five.
“That’s right, Brad, it seems The Chopper just can’t get enough of Todd Lockwood…”
Veda’s eyes widened, heartbeat tripling because she definitely had gotten enough of Todd Lockwood. As far as she was concerned, now that she’d experienced the pleasure of cutting his gonads out, she’d be perfectly content never laying eyes on that fucking asshole again.
The male newscaster jumped back in. “The Vice President of Blackwater Cruises just can’t catch a break after suffering a second attack by The Shadow Rock Chopper earlier this evening…”
Veda’s mouth fell slowly open until it was gaping as wide as it could go, her eyes so big they were seconds from rolling out of her skull. It wasn’t possible that Todd Lockwood had suffered a second attack by The Shadow Rock Chopper… because she was The Shadow Rock Chopper, and she’d spent all evening pleading her case so the detective who’d just caught her red handed didn’t throw her guilty ass in prison!
She slid off the couch and crumpled to the floor, her knees and palms hitting the carpet since her bones were suddenly too weak to stand. Crawling toward the television stand, she crouched in front of it and turned the volume up manually since the remote she’d thrown was nowhere to be found.
“The attack was especially brutal, even for the Shadow Rock Chopper, and as of this airing, Todd Lockwood remains in a coma at Shadow Rock Hospital, fighting for his life.”
“What the fuck…?” Veda squinted at the TV as her face sank into a cringe, drawing lines on her skin that grew deeper by the moment.
Todd Lockwood had endured a second attack? An attack that had put him in a coma? And they were blaming her for it? This wasn’t even her style. Get in, remove balls, get out. That was her M.O. Todd was a pompous bastard who wasn’t exactly short on enemies. There were hundreds of people on the island with motive to attack that fool. How dare they ruin her good name this way? How dare they tarnish her brand?
She didn’t know who had put Todd Lockwood in a coma, and she didn’t care, but it sure as hell hadn’t been her. As the newscasters went on and on about why Todd’s second attack couldn’t have been carried out by anyone but The Shadow Rock Chopper, due to one similarity—the marring of the false testicles he’d had implanted after she’d snatched his real ones out—it hit Veda.
She had a copycat.
News of The Chopper had been exploding for months. It had gone international, inspiring news articles, blog posts and even message boards for fans of The Chopper to gather and discuss her every move. She’d always found it interesting, the way the world had celebrated the actions she’d taken. Actions that were slowly but surely destroying her life and the lives of anyone she touched. Instead of vilifying her for those actions, however, the world had been drawn in.
But she never imagined someone would emulate her. What a mistake. It was the main reason she’d never planned to have kids. God forbid she actually be a real influence in anyone’s life. She was way too fucked up for that.
On top of all that, if she really did have a copycat, why choose Todd Lockwood? Why so savagely that it put him in a coma?
As a million questions flew through her head, a loud knock came through the front door, causing a gasp so loud to race up her throat that it filled the air and bounced off the walls. Cursing under her breath, she covered her hammering heart with her hand and stood on shaky feet. As she made her way toward the door, another bang came through, freezing her in mid-step as her heartbeat picked up speed.
It hit her for the first time that Linc had just left her apartment like a bat out of hell to go after her boyfriend, who’d somehow gotten himself into a world of danger. It hit her that Linc had instructed her to lock all the doors on his way out. It hit her that the reason Linc had told her to lock the doors might be on the other side of that door right then, banging like a madman.
Even as a cold chill raced down her spine, she powered through, moving toward the door on a slower foot, hand still over her heart. Her breathing grew heavy when her bare feet hit the cold tile of her foyer floor.
She squinted one eye through the peephole.
At the sight of Coco Lockwood—the seventeen-year-old student nurse who’d once been the bane of Veda’s existence but had somehow managed to worm her way into the deepest depths of her heart—on the other side of the door, Veda exhaled. Her shoulders collapsed, and her heart slowed, a relieved smile crossing her face as she unlocked the door and threw it open.
“Coco, you scared the shit out of me—” A gasp raced up Veda’s throat, cutting off the rest of her sentence.
On the other side of the doorway, in jeans and a long sleeved white t-shirt, Coco’s wide brown eyes were filled with tears, her slim body shaking like a leaf. Her baby face was filled with horror, lips curled, and teeth chattering. Coco sputtered at Veda, struggling to speak. Streaks of dried blood were splashed across her ebony cheeks and down the outstretched arms of her white top. Her palms were upturned and covered in blood as well—her splayed fingers the most blood-soaked of all—as if she’d been finger painting with the brightest red she could find in the paint box.
Veda drank in the sight slowly, her own bulging eyes running Coco’s body as the newscaster’s voices continued droning away in the distance, still discussing Todd Lockwood’s second attack. The hairs on the back of Veda’s neck stood on end as she slowly lifted her eyes back up to Coco’s.
Coco opened her mouth to speak, stumbling around every word, every bone in her body shivering as she finally managed to whisper, “I think I messed up…”
4
As Linc’s black pickup truck tore down the quiet streets of Shadow Rock just minutes after leaving Veda’s apartment, tears prickled his eyes, blurring the road before him even as he laid his foot on the pedal and picked up speed.
“Last time I saw Emma, she was in London…”
His breath came short as his wife’s last words ran through his mind on a constant loop, relentlessly, the way they had been since the moment he’d watched her die in his arms, just hours earlier. Words that were slowly tearing him apart, bit by bit. So much so that even Veda had seen it, more concerned about what was shredding him to pieces than even her own freedom in the wake of being exposed as The Shadow Rock Chopper. He hadn’t been able to answer Veda’s questions. Not because he hadn’t wanted to, but because his wife’s words had been permeating his mind even then, sealing his lungs and closing his throat, rendering him unable to speak.
He hadn’t been able to tell Veda that his wife had just died in his arms, moments after telling him about the daughter he’d never known. The daughter who’d been stolen from him. The daughter who was still missing. The daughter that could’ve very easily, once upon a time, been one of the kids in the roya
l blue container Gage had just informed him he’d found in the cargo hold of the Celeste.
Fury encased him, and his tires screeched against the asphalt, his clammy palm slippery against the steering wheel as he made a sharp left. The green streetlight blazed by in a foggy haze as moisture filled his eyes.
“You have to—” Lisa sputtered out a cough that caused blood to spill from her lips. When the next breath didn’t come as easily, she was forced to gasp it in, her failing lungs making an unbearable sound as she struggled to finish what she was saying through clenched teeth. “Find her. Save her. No police. Just you.”
His lips curled down, but the tears in his eyes didn’t fall. He wouldn’t let them. As the shipyard came into view from the distance, hundreds of tall cranes soaring into the sky and glowing against the dark clouds, he realized there was no time for weakness.
If he was going to find Emma—and he would find her by any means necessary—and avenge Lisa, there was no time for emotion. No time for tears. No time for anything but finding the truth. Sparing the daughter he’d never known from the same tragic fate her mother had just endured earlier that night.
So Linc sucked in a deep breath through flared nostrils, powered on, and less than twenty minutes after Gage’s phone call, he arrived at the docks, parked his truck and stepped out. The scent of the dewy ocean mist on the cruise docks to the north, mixed with the sulfur floating in from the shipyard to the east, filled his nose. He breathed a sigh of relief to see that the emergency call he’d made the moment he’d left Veda’s apartment hadn’t been for nothing as dozens of police cruisers greeted him from the docks, their lights blinking in the night.
A heavy cloud of smoke floated up from the shipyard in the far distance, where hundreds of multicolored shipping crates were stacked high. Scattered among the crates were several gutted cruise ships, hoisted above the water. The shipyard had always given Linc the creeps, reminding him of a steel graveyard. Most of the ships in the yard were a shell of their former selves. Surrounded by sprawling cranes that pierced the starry sky. Some of the ships were in the process of being built and others repaired. The bright lights of the yard shone down on the calm ocean waters below, reflecting against the trickling black surface. The white noses of the gutted ships shone off the water’s surface as well, making them appear even more grand and haunting than they already were. Gray clouds with hints of dark orange wafted along overhead, giving subtle hints to the stars twinkling beyond them.
Moving his eyes away from the shipyard where cruise ships went to die, Linc gave all his focus to the dock were the Celeste was alive and well. The Celeste. The very ship Gage had just called him from, claiming to have seen something unimaginable. The Celeste. The ship Linc had named when he’d placed the emergency call claiming that underage stowaways had been found in the cargo hold, a call that had produced the legions of police cars that surrounded the ship at that very moment, their colorful lights blinking.
As the largest cruise ship in the world, nicknamed the “City on the Sea” and carrying a whopping 7000 passengers, the Celeste’s white body screamed against the dark sky. Every cabin light had been illuminated, making the sixteen-deck behemoth glow as brightly as the skyscrapers soaring from downtown Shadow Rock in the distance.
The gravel on the concrete crunched below Linc’s boots as he approached the two billion dollar ship, which was surrounded by dozens of police officers. Word of his termination apparently hadn’t yet finished making the rounds because the moment Linc flashed the gold badge he’d yet to relinquish, the officer manning the only gap in the crime scene tape strewn across the dock stepped aside, letting him through without question. The beep of police radios and the roar of approaching sirens in the distance never relented. Nor did the curious eyes of his former co-workers. Their eyes locked on him as he moved, more and more the closer he grew to the sprawling ship—one pair after the other, but no one stopped him. No one spoke. Regardless, even in their silence, Linc could feel them screaming.
He knew that Lieutenant Chavez, however, standing a few feet away with her back turned, speaking to the Coast Guard, wouldn’t shy away from screaming to the high heavens the moment she laid eyes on him. She seemed to feel Linc’s presence as he approached her from behind, swiveling on her heel, wearing her signature black pantsuit, and catching sight of him.
Her brown eyes widened, and if it were possible, her dark ebony cheeks went deep red, fully visible thanks to the tight bun she’d pulled her hair into.
“Absolutely not,” Chavez spat to Linc, the scent of her perfume surrounding him as he came to a stop in front of her. Her eyes instantly fell to his bloodstained t-shirt, and she shifted her feet, probably at the memory of how it had gotten there.
“I called it in.” Already pleading his case, Linc held his arms out at his sides. “I deserve to be here.”
“You punched one of your fellow officers square in the nose—it’s broken by the way—which means you’re no longer an employee in my department, Hill.”
Linc clenched his teeth, every bone in his body tightening at the thought of the asshole rookie who’d delivered three bullets to his wife’s chest with zero hesitation. The three bullets that had stolen her last breath. Stolen her from Linc forever. That rookie was lucky the two strongest cops in the precinct had jumped in to hold Linc back, or he’d have walked away with a lot worse than a broken nose.
He wouldn’t have walked away at all.
The anger nearly took over, and Linc slammed his eyes closed, taking a moment to allow the only word that mattered to float through his mind.
Emma.
“Find her. Save her.”
His eyes flew open as Lisa’s last words sent his heart racing. “It was my informant who found a can full of underage stowaways at the bottom of this beast.” He nodded toward the Celeste. “And I’m the only one who can direct you where to go, Lieutenant. Let’s not do this.”
“You’re a civilian, and this is an active crime scene. Civilians are not welcome here. Please don’t push me into having you forcibly removed. I think we’ve all had enough drama for today.”
“Utilizing the informant but not the officer he informs…?”
“Former officer.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Lieutenant.” He chuckled. “Why spend hours probing this ship when I can tell you exactly where the bodies are buried?”
“Remove yourself, or I’ll do it for you.” Chavez raised her eyebrows and turned away from Linc without another word, giving him a chance to heed her warning and leave the scene on his own.
Linc turned away from her, grinding his teeth, retreating as slowly as he could while shooting her looks over his shoulder as if waiting for her to change her mind. To come to her senses and realize it really would take hours for them to search that ship. Too much time wasted when Gage had given him the exact location of the royal blue container. Regardless, Chavez didn’t look back.
When his cell phone rang, Linc snatched it out of his pocket with trembling fingers and groaned at the name on the display.
He answered dryly. “Are you dead or bleeding?”
Veda’s voice rang in. “Neither. But… I’ve got a situation.”
He looked up at the Celeste. “Yeah? So do I.”
Her voice grew worried. “Gage?”
“Is safe. For now.”
“For now?”
“Veda, I don’t have time.”
“Wait. I have a problem. A huge problem.”
“Is the problem dead or bleeding?” He slammed his eyes closed and squeezed the bridge of his nose.
“Well… no.”
“Then it can wait.”
“How long?”
His voice went vacant when he looked over his shoulder and saw Chavez approaching, probably to make good on her promise of having him forcibly removed. “Wait for my call.”
He hung up, facing Chavez just as she came to a stop in front of him, her face tight, cocking a leg out while crossing her arms.
Just as Linc was about to tell her he was going, she nodded up at him. “You said your informant told you the exact location?”
His eyebrows shot up at her sudden change in tone as he slipped his phone back in his pocket. “He did.”
She took a deep breath, clearly bothered that she was being forced to ask anything of him. “Listen, we pulled the judge out of bed to get this warrant, so the quicker we can give him answers, the better.”
Linc swallowed thickly. “That’s all I want. Answers.” Answers about where his daughter was. Answers about why his wife had gone missing on that very ship, five years earlier. Answers about who was going to bleed to death the same way she had, by his hand. By any means necessary.
Chavez considered him from the corner of her eye. “This doesn’t change anything. You’re still fired.”
Linc nodded softly.
A sharp whistle rang out, and she looked over her shoulder to find the Coast Guard and the shipyard Captain motioning to her before she swiveled back to Linc. “Captain’s ready to bust it open. Where did the informant say he found the stowaways?”
“He says they’re in the cargo hold, inside a royal blue container on the far left.”
Chavez turned and began moving away, holding his eyes over his shoulder. “This better be worth my while.”
He followed with a smirk. “I’m still fired regardless, right?”
She looked away with a scoff, approaching the shipyard Captain and relaying the information. After a quick glance at Linc over Chavez’s shoulder, the Captain rolled his eyes and turned away, beginning to move toward the door to the Celeste’s cargo hold while waving his finger for his men to get to work opening the door.
Minutes later, as hundreds of officers gathered around the large door that led into the Celeste’s only cargo hold, located at the rear of the ship, Linc realized this was it. Five years fighting to obtain a warrant to search this beast, and the warrant had finally been issued. Five years of fighting to find out how and why his wife had disappeared after stepping foot upon it. Five years of waiting, hoping, wishing, only to watch her writhing in his arms, choking on her own blood, telling him that not just one life had been stolen from him, but two.
Rouse (Revenge Book 7) Page 3