by Mia Thompson
Fifteen minutes. He went for a habitual beard scratch to find no beard. While Sapphire said goodbye to her coworkers and life in Paris, he’d shaved. He hoped he’d feel better once the hair came off, but he still felt grimy.
The plane landed and they said their heartfelt goodbyes to Bob, who said nothing in return.
Five minutes. Aston’s fingers intertwined with Sapphire’s as they headed through the airport. He was positive his palm was sweaty, but she seemed too happy to notice.
They passed up baggage claim. Sapphire had left everything but her purse in Paris, and Aston only brought a carry-on duffle bag.
“First thing we should do is pick up pizza from Mulberry Street,” Sapphire said. “I’ve been dying for it for months.”
Aston didn’t answer and Sapphire sent him a self-conscious glance. Her eyes slid over the empty airport. “Or, I mean… you can drop me off at the mansion, if you want…”
Two minutes. Aston looked down at her. “I want nothing more than to go to Mulberry Street and bring both you and some pizza home with me tonight.” In truth, he wished he could take her home forever.
“Okay.” Her eyes glistened up at him.
Thirty seconds. Aston focused on the sound of their echoing footsteps, and held her hand until he couldn’t hold it anymore. He let go and pretended he had to adjust the strap of his bag.
Three… two…
They stepped outside and the Los Angeles heat rushed at them.
Sapphire froze at the sight of the mob. The cops sat behind their vehicles, guns aimed. The area had been closed off, but curious tourists lined the rope. Two armed officers came up behind them, trapping them. Sapphire looked terrified and instinctively pulled her back toward Aston’s body for protection.
One.
“Sapphire Dubois…” Aston took a sharp breath. “You’re under arrest for the murders of Charles Dubois and Richard Martin.”
Sapphire’s purse slipped out of her hand and hit the ground. She turned to face him and her expression crushed him.
“You are also under arrest…” Aston forced himself to continue, “for your crimes committed as the wanted vigilante: The Serial Catcher.”
Sapphire’s eyes flew to the newspaper stand’s featured headlines: Detective Capelli Tells all about Serial Catcher. Heiress by Day, Killer Catcher by Night. Heiress Murders Two.
She looked like she was going to pass out. Everything happened fast, but to Aston the seconds passed in slow motion. There was too much pain in Sapphire’s eyes. It tore him up inside. He was supposed to read the Miranda rights, but the words—the ones Aston had known his whole career—were gone. He stared at her mutely.
The two cops behind him took over. “Hands on your head, get on the ground!”
Sapphire didn’t move. She just looked at Aston, her face devastated.
“I said get down!” the cop grabbed her arms and slammed her to the ground.
“Hey!” Aston shouted. “She’s coming willingly—” The officer wasn’t listening; he started reading off her rights.
Aston looked down at Sapphire and saw the change occur in her. The confusion settled and she looked back at Aston with something much worse. Sapphire fucking hated him.
The officers pulled her up and shoved her inside the car. In fairness, they handled her the way they’d handle any wanted killer.
“Good job, she bought it.” Barry came up next to him.
Aston and Barry practiced before he left to make sure every line, every expression, and every lie Aston delivered came off legit. By acting suspicious toward Sapphire, he’d taken the heat off himself. It was a version of manipulation he’d used when interrogating criminals. He’d focused on something else to get the lowlifes to say what he really wanted to hear. He had to get her home without cuffs, so it looked like she came back voluntarily. Not only would it help prove her innocence, but the judge would also be more likely to allow her to get out on bail.
The plan was never for him to sleep with her, but when she kissed him he’d realized it might be a long time before he’d ever get to be close to her again—same went for the second, third, and fourteenth time. Based on the hatred she’d emitted, he’d been right.
Aston moved up to the chief and patted his shoulder. “I’m going home to change, so make sure the boys give her the good cell. If Gary Busey is still there, move him to the supply closet; he won’t know the difference.”
He went to get his car from the disgustingly expensive long-term parking lot as the chief turned. “They’re not taking her to the station, Detective.” Trepidation burned in Aston’s stomach as the chief moved closer. “She’s going where all female murder suspects go. Ly—”
“Do not say Lynwood.”
The chief’s face turned with pity. “Lynwood.”
Aston’s fists clenched. Century Regional Detention Facility, or Lynwood, bordered Compton and was far from the nice-ass holding cells at the Beverly Hills Police Station. It was loaded with murderers, drug dealers, and crazies either awaiting or on trial. It was as close to prison as jail came.
“She’s being charged with a double murder, Detective. What did you expect?”
Aston stared after the car, holding the woman he loved.
What did he expect? He’d been sure about his plan and that everything would work out when he took off to Paris. Now that the plan had become reality, Aston Ridder was no longer sure about anything, and Sapphire Dubois was about to face some serious allegations.
Chapter 4
“Get your asses out of bed, ladies!” the guard shouted. “There isn’t enough beauty sleep to save most of you. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Jones.”
The burly voice jerked Sapphire out of her dream and threw her back into her nightmare. She opened her eyes to the gray mattress above, tight suffocating walls, and the sound of her cellmate, Lady X, scrambling to get down above her.
She wondered if the serial killers she’d locked away felt like she did every time she awoke; like a wild animal at the zoo pacing its pen, longing to be back in the jungle.
Sapphire closed her eyes, wanting to fall back into oblivion. Sleep didn’t come easy here. Partly because she relived the airport and the bloody country club scene every time she closed her eyes. Partly because Lady X, who was lactose intolerant, couldn’t lay off the milk, and spent her nights farting with Olympic vigor.
“Are you deaf, Your Highness?” Lady X shout-whispered, standing at attention by the cell door. “Get out of bed or you’ll get us both in trouble.”
Sapphire pushed herself up and toward the bars next to Lady X—a strong-armed pimp who’d gotten too rough with a John refusing to pay. Surely, he regretted not having forked over the fifty bucks now, being dead and all.
Nearly a month had passed since the cell doors closed on Sapphire that first terrible night at Lynwood, but she still felt it all—betrayal, sorrow, confusion, panic, and anger. The emotions festered inside Sapphire. Her life was over. Aston knew she was the Serial Catcher. Her friends, family, the whole world knew. It was her worst fear come to life. All the years she spent pretending, lying, and upholding her heiress persona, had blown up in her face.
Aston was a cop, and she got that. But the way he’d done it was worse than anything any killer could’ve done to her; Aston had made Sapphire trust him.
The cell doors opened at a sharp buzz, allowing Sapphire and the rest of the inmates to shuffle toward the dining hall in line like well-trained zombies in matching orange.
“Princeeeess.” A series of kissing sounds came from behind her.
Sapphire kept her head down, trying to ignore the woman with the sharpened teeth.
“How was your sleep, Princess? Must be hard to be like us regular folk. No butler to kiss you goodnight. None of them fancy Beverly Hills satin sheets to sleep in.”
Please. No one in Beverly Hills had used satin sheets since the nineties.
The lunch-lady inmate picked her nose then tossed three blobs of brown, gray, and gree
n on her tray, and Sapphire found a table as far away from the crowd as she could.
She’d been a hot topic in the local papers while she was in Paris, and got harassed by the other inmates the second she arrived. They hated her for being an heiress. Her nicknames included, but weren’t limited to: Princess, Your Highness, and Skinny Rich Bitch. Not the most creative people.
During her short stay at Lynwood, Sapphire had learned to fear two things. One: An undisclosed location called the Doom Room, where inmates went in with guards then came back out beaten bloody, and sometimes, not at all. Two: the showers that lacked protective security cameras. The other inmates saw this as a free for all and Sapphire could not fight back.
To prove to the upcoming jury that she was neither a murderer nor the Serial Catcher and just a delicate heiress, Sapphire had to pretend she wasn’t a trained MMA fighter. It was hard not to take a swing when five naked women shoved you into a corner and told you they were going to string you up like a piñata, smack you until your insides fell out, then eat it like candy. Most of them were full of empty threats though.
“Princeeeeess.”
Most, but not all.
Sapphire took another spoon of the green goo, eyes down.
“Mind if we sit, Princess?”
Her body tensed as Chops and her menacing entourage sat down around her.
“I get the feeling you think you’re better than I is. Is that right, Princess?”
“Are we talking grammatically or…?” The sardonic words slipped out before Sapphire could stop them.
“You calling me stoo-pid?”
“No,” Sapphire hurried. “Proper speech is overrated… dawg.”
Chops bared her sharpened teeth, eyes burning with anger. Some said the nickname came from her fangs, others because she bit off a guy’s penis before she killed him. Lucky for Sapphire, she was penis-free.
“One of my close friends told me your trial’s tomorrow. Same friend told me nobody showed up to your hearing, not even your momma.”
The memories of court came back like a slap in the face.
She was shuttled to her pre-trial hearing in Beverly Hills two days after the-son-of-a-bitch, formerly known as Aston, sent her to Lynwood. She’d tried to get a hold of the Dubois family lawyer, Mr. Goldstein, but he was nowhere to be found.
She’d stood in front of the judge in her orange jump suit and listened to the female prosecutor list the horrors of her actions. The hearing was closed to all but friends and family, but her mother never showed, Chrissy was nowhere to be seen, and even Julia, the traitor who’d told Aston where she was, didn’t come. She’d called Father O’Riley who was back in the States, and told him to stay away from Lynwood and the upcoming trial. He wasn’t connected to her Beverly Hills life, and she had to keep him out. She was screwed if the prosecution found out they had a relationship and put him on the stand; he knew everything about her Serial Catcher life, and he would never lie after putting his hand on a bible.
The only person at her side was her public defender, Mr. Leary, who came in with his hair in disarray, and kept calling her Saffron. They pleaded not guilty on both accounts and when the judge set her bail at $1.3 million, Sapphire knew no one was going to pay it.
She’d been right to hide her Serial Catcher activities from the people close to her all those years. Now that the truth was out, nobody, not even her own mother, stood behind Sapphire. She’d never felt more alone than she had in that empty courtroom.
She was shipped back to Lynwood and spent the last twenty-five days awaiting the trial.
“Is there something I can do for you, Chops?” Sapphire asked, then pinched her lips to stop the next words. A back shave? Advice on dental care?
Chops stuck her nose in the hair of a dainty woman next to her and inhaled. “I got months in this place before my trial starts and I like me the looks of you.” She nodded to Sapphire’s body and winked. “Catch my drift?”
“You’re a very… er, handsome woman, but,” Sapphire looked over at the inmate next to Chops, “I don’t want to step on your girlfriend’s toes.”
“She ain’t my girlfriend; she’s my bitch,” Chops snapped in disgust. “I ain’t gay.”
Sapphire glowered at her. As judgmental and superficial as Beverly Hills could be, at least she’d grown up in a community where sexual orientations were never frowned upon and always celebrated. Here, it seemed the jail-veterans used it as a power play.
“And it ain’t a question, Princess.” Chops grabbed Sapphire by the collar and yanked her forward. “If you don’t give me what I want, I’ll have my close friends haul you off into the Doom Room and you ain’t even gonna make it to your trial. Got it?”
Sapphire was about to ask who the close friends were, when a guard discreetly dropped a Snickers bar on Chops’ tray and walked off. She had the guards in her pocket and Sapphire cringed at the idea of the Doom Room.
Chops grinned, peeling the wrapper of the chocolate bar.
“I don’t suppose I can respectfully decline?” Sapphire asked.
Chops looked at her entourage. “Listen to this shit, ‘respectfully decline.’” She turned back to Sapphire with resentment. “You do think your shit smells like vanilla puddin’, don’t yah? Pretty vain for someone who murdered her own stepfather.”
Murderer.
Chops shoved the last of the Snickers in her mouth, and chewed with glee.
Sapphire felt something bubble to the surface. She grabbed her tray and got up to walk away before she did something she would regret. Must. Not. Fight.
“How was it?” Chops pushed behind her. “Did he cry? Did he beg? Did he piss himself?”
The control she’d held for weeks was gone, replaced by strong, flaming emotions.
Sapphire smacked Chops across the face with her tray.
All eyes went to the chocolate bar that flew out of Chops’s mouth. It slid across the oblong table and dropped to the floor where a passing inmate stepped on it.
Chops stared at it and drew an elongated breath through her nose. When she turned back her previously chalk-white face was purple with rage. “That’s my Snickers, Bitch!”
It was on.
Chops pulled Sapphire down. They tumbled to the floor and wrestled. A sharp pain spread in Sapphire’s arm as Chops chomped down on it. She screamed, and wrapped her arm around Chops’s neck.
Snap it. Kill her like you killed Richard Martin. Sapphire gasped at the forceful thought. She let go of Chops’s neck and rolled on top.
A crowd gathered around them in a circle and chanted: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
“Two smokes on Skinny Rich Bitch,” someone called, and other bets followed.
“Back to your tables!” the guard shouted and the crowd scurried. He yanked Sapphire off Chops.
“She attacked me!” Chops stood and pointed.
“Get back to your seat,” the guard told Chops, then pulled Sapphire’s arm. “You’re coming with me.”
“Ooh, you’re gonna get it now, Princess.” Chops wiped the blood from her lip and grinned.
“No!” Sapphire panted as the guard hauled her away from the inmates and through a door. “Where are you taking me?!”
She knew. She was going to the Doom Room. Chops had either bribed him to beat her to a pulp or fake her suicide. Sapphire dug her heels in the ground, but the guard pushed her forward. She didn’t want to die, especially not in something called the Doom Room.
The guard dragged her through a tight hallway, then yanked a door open. He pushed her inside, and locked the door from the outside before he vanished.
Sapphire put her fists to the door and banged. “It was just a Snickers!”
She turned and her breath hitched.
A huge female guard with latex gloves stared at Sapphire with disdain. She shoved a bundle to her chest. “One pair of pants, one bra, one shirt, and one giant purse.”
Sapphire looked down at her own stuff. “What?”
“Your bail has
been paid.” The guard stared at her stone-faced. “Whoop-di-doo. Now take your pants off.”
“By who?” Sapphire asked as the woman yanked her pants down.
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
Next thing Sapphire knew, she was re-dressed and hauled outside.
As the massive iron gates to the Century Regional Detention Facility closed behind her, Sapphire stood beside the security booth in the sweltering heat, purse to her chest, arm full of bloody teeth marks, and stared at the abandoned parking lot. Her only company was two security guards fighting over a newspaper.
Freedom.
“How come I always get stuck with Classifieds and you get the good stuff?” One of the guards yelled.
Someone paid her bail. Somewhere out there, she had an ally. Whoever it was, had given her a temporary release from Hell. She still had the trial, and in order to win it, she would have to change. Sapphire Dubois would do anything to stay out of prison. This new beginning meant no more hunting and no more trapping. Unless one smacked her upon the head, she wouldn’t even think about serial killers.
“Fine, you big baby! Take it!” the other guard rolled up the newspaper and flung it. The first guard ducked, and the paper smacked Sapphire in the head.
It landed at her feet and the headline unfolded.
Phelps Heiress Still Missing: Assumed to be Beverly Hills Killer’s Fourth Victim.
The guard waved and apologized, but all Sapphire could focus on was the familiar, unstoppable urge to hunt cultivating and festering inside her. She looked up to see her new beginning sail away into the blue.
Damn.
• • •
“What if the thief comes back to steal my wedding ring, too? It was from my favorite marriage.”
Aston tried to keep his eyes on the rich old coot and the photos of the missing items, but they strayed to the computer on his desk. Someone had burglarized her jewelry collection, but he had bigger problems. One, was a serial killer responsible for two dead heiresses with two more missing. They’d had several detectives on it, and no one had as much as a lead.