LUCY: The Complete Lucy Kendall Series with Bonus Content (The Lucy Kendall Series Book 5)

by Stacy Green

  “I’m not afraid of you. I just don’t have time for you.”

  “You’re afraid of what I might do to your operation. But I think you’ll find I’m telling the truth, and then you won’t be able to resist talking to me.”

  “Why?”

  The challenge in her voice sparked his adrenal glands. Lucy’s ability–her need–to keep fighting back was her greatest strength. Her eyes searched his, unable to hide her confusion or fear. She wanted to know the truth about him. So it was time. “Because I’m a product of the monsters you hate so much.”

  She grew very still. “What are you going on about now?”

  “Do you know who John Weston is?” Decades later, and saying his father’s name still made Chris’s throat burn. He hated the man.

  “The name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”

  An image of his first childhood home rose from the many tucked away in his head. He was only five at the time, and it took him thirty-seven steps to cross the yard to the barn he was never supposed to enter. The day burned into his brain was an overcast one, a thundercloud rolling in from the west. He remembered smelling the earth and thinking about his grandfather saying the smell meant rain was near. “He lived in Lancaster and murdered at least three teenaged girls in the mid-eighties. His son and wife found the fourth one barely alive.”

  Lucy’s porcelain skin paled to nearly translucent. “I’ve read about the case. The authorities believed there were more victims. But I didn’t know the son found the survivor.” Her breaths quickened, her body so still she might have been a statue.

  Chris leaned across the table, hypnotized by her attention and the throbbing in her carotid artery. “The boy kept hearing strange noises from the barn. Crying. He was told it was a sick horse. He was only five and believed his parents.”

  He’d stolen the key to the padlock. Slipped it right from the drawer where he saw his father put it while Chris sat at the table eating soggy cereal for breakfast. The plan swarmed in his head, making him dizzy. He needed to get inside and see for himself.

  “So how did he manage to find them?” Lucy’s soft voice didn’t tremble with the question, and Chris’s admiration for her intensified.

  “He couldn’t stand the sounds any longer. The crying kept him awake at night, gave him nightmares.” And the things he witnessed. The things he didn’t understand. His father wouldn’t tell him. Chris thought the only person who could tell him why this was happening was the girl chained up in the barn. “One day he made a run to the barn, and his mother couldn’t stop him. She was afraid of his father too. They were forbidden from entering the barn, and she’d had enough beatings to know what might happen if they opened the doors.” Except that was a lie. The first real one he’d told Lucy. But it didn’t matter. The outcome was the same, even though he protected his mother.

  “Thank God he had the courage.”

  Chris leaned forward. “The father was arrested, the mother too damaged to raise her son. The little boy was adopted by his aunt and uncle, who changed his name from Weston to Hale. He never stopped having the nightmares. And now he’s pretty sure what he saw as a kid made him a sociopath, and he’s desperate to find some sliver of humanity inside him.”

  But his mother wasn’t damaged. She just didn’t want him anymore. She wanted to live a new life and start over with someone else. Chris was a reminder of everything that had gone wrong.

  After he earned Lucy’s trust and helped her to find this little girl and get rid of Justin Beckett, Lucy would feel indebted to him. She had the resources to help Chris find his mother and make things right.

  “Are you telling me you’re the Weston kid?” She whispered.

  Chris leaned back, eyes locked on hers, her shocked expression yet another memory for his vault. “I was born Christopher Alan Weston in Lancaster on April 7, 1982. I thought you’d want to get to know me.”

  Her head whipped back and forth, making her thick auburn hair ripple like ocean waves. “I have no idea why you would think–”

  “Don’t you see?” Chris made his voice low and launched his final plea. “My father was a pedophile, a rapist, and a killer. I witnessed at least part of it. Some days I feel nothing at all. Other days I’m so angry I can barely function.”

  “I’m sorry for what happened to you, if you’re even telling the truth, but–”

  “I’m sure with your connections, you can verify it.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” She still didn’t see it yet. Didn’t realize how they could help each other.

  “I attack because of what I saw. I know exactly what kind of scum lives on this earth.” He wanted to reach across the table and squeeze her hand. A familiar gesture intimating a human connection usually went a long way in gaining trust. Instead, he tried to smile. “Lucy, I get why you do the things you do. I know the anger you carry around inside, because I’ve got it too. Is there anyone else you can say that about?”

  “You know nothing about me.” Regret at her near confession flashed. She leaned back and crossed her hands over her chest in protective defiance.

  He decided to cut to the chase. A person like her appreciated a lack of bullshit. “I think you’re curious about me, or you will be, once everything sinks in. And I think you’re lonely. Whatever your associates do to help out, they don’t know what it’s like to spill the cup. You’re the one who looks the person in the eye and reconciles ending their life. That’s got to take its toll on you, especially when you don’t believe you’re a real killer. Your head must be a very loud place.”

  He’d gotten to the heart of it. She sucked in a raw breath and shivered, but she held his gaze. If she’d looked away, he might have changed his mind and left her alone. But that unflinching stare and the quiet confidence emanating from her sealed what he’d suspected all along.

  Lucy Kendall could help him.

  ALL GOOD DEEDS

  Bonus Content

  Chapter 11

  Chris waited until Lucy parked her car near the church and then wedged his Audi into a spot a few places down. He locked the doors and hurried to beat her to her destination.

  How many times now had he followed her? Watched over her to make sure she didn’t get into a situation she couldn’t escape?

  At least she came back to the abandoned factory in the daylight. Although walking into it alone was pure stupidity. Thankfully, she took the long route around, leaving him to skirt around the lot and slip into the factory via a broken side window.

  Breathing hard, his stomach turned at the reek of piss and shit and unwashed bodies. He crouched low, easing toward the middle of the bottom floor.

  Across the expanse of trash and broken-down machinery, the doors creaked opened. Smart, Lucy. Now every horny, vagrant man inside the place knew someone had entered.

  Her flashlight glowed like a beacon in the dark space. Chris ducked behind a giant, rusting table and listened to her footsteps.

  “Who’s there?” A man sounding on the edge of death called out.

  “I’m looking for Sly Lyle.” Lucy’s shaky response. “Have you seen him?”

  “You police?”

  “No. I just need to ask him a question.”

  “Police ask questions.”

  “Well, I’m not the police.”

  The man grunted and went silent. But the sound of shifting trash and shuffling feet meant the man was making no point to hide his approach.

  Chris slunk to the other side of the table, eyes on Lucy. Her flashlight whipped from left to right, making her look like a gray ghost. She slid the pepper spray canister out of her sleeve and held it in front of her. Good girl.

  “I just need to ask a few questions.”

  “I’ll answer any question you got.” The piece of shit stood to her left, tall and fat and wearing several layers. The result was a waddling seal with a hard-on.

  Chris tensed to the balls of his feet, ready to spring.

  Lucy’s hard voice cut through the th
ick air. “Are you Lyle?”

  “No. But you have questions. I’ve got answers.”

  “You don’t even know what my questions are about.”

  “I still got answers.” He kept moving closer to her, licking his lips like a starving dog.

  She jammed the spray into his face. “I will burn your eyeballs.”

  Chris smiled and half-wished the man would attack just so he could see her spray him. Would she kill him after that? Is that what it would take for her to understand she wasn’t just killing pedophiles because she needed justice? That she had a thirst for it?

  “You got some pretty red hair. And skin. I bet you’re a really clean lady. Shaved real nice. You shave down there, Red?”

  Chris gritted his teeth.

  “I’m not here to discuss hygiene, but thanks for the compliment. Have you seen Lyle around?”

  “Lyle’s a crazy schizo.” The man-seal’s hands drifted toward his crotch. “And he’s about as big as a junior high schooler. What do you want with him when you’ve got me?”

  “Did you witness a man molesting a little girl two weeks ago?” She shined the light directly in his face, and Chris saw the disgust.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, lady?”

  Chris nearly laughed out loud. The guy acted like he was ready to rape Lucy, but suddenly had morals. People were stupid.

  “I’m a private investigator, and I have questions for Lyle.”

  “Knew she was a cop!” A voice came from the corner. Chris dropped lower, heart pounding. He couldn’t be seen. He was here to protect her, but in the best of situations, this looked pretty creepy. She’d never trust him.

  “He’s not here.” A third voice came from farther off. “Jimbo, leave her alone. She was here yesterday with the detective.”

  Chris craned his neck to see the new guy, but the angle was all wrong. New guy must have come down the stairs and stopped at the landing.

  “What are you doing back here, miss?” New guy said. “And alone too.”

  Chris smiled. At least chivalry wasn’t completely dead.

  Lucy started asking the man about a story he’d told, about a man bragging. She wanted to know more of what this new guy–Hank was his name–saw.

  Chris thought about what drink he would have first after hearing about the man with his hands down a little girl’s pants in the vacant lot. At least the Lyle person Lucy was looking for had run him off, but Chris wished they knew where to find him. Lucy would kill him. Chris could watch and learn.

  “What did the man look like, other than tall?”

  Chris caught something in Lucy’s voice: adrenaline maybe, or determination. Whatever it was nearly made him strand up straight. She’d figured something out.

  “What color hair?” Lucy asked.

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Is there anything–”

  “He went on about how big the guy was. Looked like a construction worker type, but he was wearing a uniform. Dark, I think Sly said. He couldn’t get the name on it–although it had red lettering, he said. Guy was too busy running from Sly like a bitch, face red as a tomato, for Sly to get the name.”

  Even from several feet away, Chris heard Lucy’s breath catch. His did as well, almost in time with hers. He knew they were both thinking the same thing: Brian Harrison, the janitor whose brother Lucy had killed. So pedophilia ran in the family.

  “What about the girl? Did she have blonde hair? Brown? What color were her shoes?”

  “I don’t know. Sly just said she looked like a little girl.”

  Lucy thanked Hank, gave him money, and left. Chris crept back through the darkness, ignoring the calls of “Who’s there?” from Hank and the fat scum who’d been all over Lucy. Crawling out of the window was harder than crawling inside, and he rolled onto the dead grass, cursing. Good jeans ruined.

  Chris hurried around the perimeter, hoping to get close enough to see where she was going. If she went for Brian Harrison tonight, he wanted to be there.

  He stopped short when he saw Detective Todd Beckett standing over her. Chris’s chest heaved, and he barely had the presence of mind to duck behind a pile of junk. Beckett was a good cop, and a pain in the ass. If he saw Chris, everything could be ruined.

  How much would she tell him? Or would she save everything for herself? She couldn’t exactly let Brian Harrison spend much time with Todd Beckett.

  Chris had no choice. Even with the clouds, if he came out from his hiding spot, one of them would spot him.

  But then Lucy turned to leave, and Beckett grabbed her arm. An animalistic noise escaped Chris’s clenched teeth. Not at the way Beckett manhandled her, but at the way she stared up at him. No trace of fear on her face but grudging admiration and something that looked a lot like affection.

  And then she pulled free, stalking to her car. Beckett went in the opposite direction, and Chris sank to the ground. Sweat crisscrossed his chest, his armpits felt wet. He dug into his pocket for his favorite coin and caressed it in his cold hand until some sense of calm came over him.

  He’d almost gone into a trance when his phone rang.

  Lucy was calling.

  SEE THEM RUN

  Bonus Content

  Chapter 15

  Chris liked Lucy’s apartment. It suited her, all color and contradictions. Not black and white like his world. He looked at her now, her wide eyes expecting him to tell her something awful. But it wasn’t time yet. She wasn’t prepared to handle the entire dirty truth.

  “I was about eight,” he started. “No one in the area knew who I was–my uncle kept it secret. But this kid at school–his dad was a social worker–was an eavesdropper. He confronted me in front of all the other kids, and I lost it.” Chris picked at his cuticles, keeping his eyes down. He didn’t want Lucy to see the memory flashing through them. And he wanted to relish Kyle’s shocked face, the sound of his jaw snapping as Chris finally attacked. “It was like a movie scene. Me and Kyle in a circle. He kept calling my dad a murderer, my mom a bad mother. I just started beating on him.” He looked back up at her.

  As usual, she didn’t waiver. “How bad was it?”

  “I broke his nose and gave him two black eyes. Broke his ribs, and he ended up with a punctured lung. Kid almost died because of me.” He wiped moisture from his forehead, the sense memory so powerful. He still smelled the blood and sweat, the urine as Kyle pissed himself in fear.

  “He was in the hospital a long time. And my uncle made it all go away. We moved to another part of town and started over. And I got counseling.”

  He looked at her then, wondering if something would ignite. Would she finally remember? But he saw only concern. Empathy.

  “Did it help?”

  “Yeah. I was so afraid I’d end up like my dad.” He laughed bitterly. “Turns out I should have been worried about dear old Mom.”

  “You didn’t know.” She sounded like a broken record now. He was getting sick of hearing the same crap coming from her. “I know it doesn’t make you feel any better, but you were just a kid who’d been through a lot. We know now, and we will find her.”

  “I know.” He relaxed into the couch, trying to focus on anything but the stuff she was spewing. How were they going to find his mother if Lucy kept getting distracted? “Seeing those kids tonight was like being back in that schoolyard. And I just needed to tell you about it.”

  “I’m glad you did.” She looked flushed and comfortable, her fingers twitching like she wanted to reach out to him. He could tempt her into his arms. A part of her wanted him. He saw it in her eyes, read it in her body language and the tension emanating between them. But sex right now would throw everything off course. So he would continue to keep his hands and the best of his charm to himself.

  And now Beckett thought Lucy might have killed Sarah. Chris had a hard time keeping a straight face at that. The things Beckett didn’t know could fill a dictionary. But he didn’t like the way Lucy talked about him, almost as though she wer
e more worried about what Todd Beckett thought of her personally instead of whether or not he was going to charge her for a murder he didn’t commit.

  He asked her about Sarah’s crime scene photos.

  She actually looked sick. “Bad. Blood everywhere. She was stabbed.”

  So blood wasn’t Lucy’s thing, nor stabbing. Too up close and personal. No chance to run away. Although that time had slipped through her fingers already.

  He almost drifted off until she said she’d gone out to Strawberry Mansion with that lovesick, pansy of a friend of hers. He jerked up, silently cursing himself for not taking off the shift. “You went to the ghetto with only the wonderful Kenny G for protection?”

  “You’ve never met Kenny. How do you know he’s not good protection?”

  “Because all you talk about is how fun and happy Kenny is. What is it you call him? Your light in the dark?” Kenny wouldn’t know how to protect himself from a Girl Scout, let alone a bunch of thugs in Strawberry Hill. If something happened to Lucy, Chris would have been forced to change everything. “Not exactly a bodyguard.”

  She kept babbling about the great Kenny, and Chris thought his nerves might actually snap in two. He had to curl his hands into fists to keep from grabbing her and shaking sense into her.

  Now she was going to go after Preacher. This would get interesting, because she couldn’t use cyanide. Not with Beckett on her heels. Too suspicious. And once she revealed herself to Preacher, she’d have to kill him.

  Chris relaxed against the couch and listened to her plan.

  SEE THEM RUN

  Bonus Content

  Chapter 24

  This little boy who thought sharing some DNA made him family stood in Chris’s doorway. Dressed in cheap clothes and a flimsy jacket, Justin looked as poor as he was pathetic.

  Goddamn, he hated Justin. His pathetic existence was just a reminder to Chris that his mother moved on without him, forging a new family and a new life. How did she just leave her child, especially after knowing what Chris witnessed? Did she ever wonder where he was? Did she think about him? Did she know he’d found her years ago and watched from afar?