by Mia Thompson
Chrissy sniggered to herself, then looked back at her dad in the dining room and rolled up her mental sleeves. First up, she was going to help someone she did know.
“Chrissy!”
She turned to see John Vanderpilt down the hallway. He stood still, staring at her with a dozen red roses in his hand.
“John?”
“Christina Kraft!” he shouted. “I love you!”
She felt the smile draw on her lips, and she opened her arms. “Of course you do!”
They ran toward each other. It was like one of those romantic movies where two lovers skip in a meadow in slow motion and meet halfway to share a long kiss. Just like that, Chrissy and John bounced toward each other, arms out, rose petals raining to the floor.
They were only a foot away from their romantic kiss, when an angry cop in a hospital gown and bare ass burst out from his room with an IV stand dragging behind him.
“Mr. Ridder!” a nurse yelled from inside the room.
Aston stepped in between the lovers, then swung around in disorientation. He saw Chrissy and grabbed her shoulders. “Where is she?”
• • •
Sapphire moved behind the parked vehicles on nimble feet and watched Marissa Pearl use her clicker to unlock her car.
She passed the prosecutor and popped up next to her car. “Hello, Marissa.”
“He-hello, Ms. Dubois.”
“Oh.” Sapphire moved closer, forcing Marissa to back away from her own car door. “I think we’re on first name basis, don’t you?”
Marissa scratched her neck nervously. “What do you mean?”
Sapphire switched spots to trap Marissa between herself and the car. “I had my call history checked. Seems like you’ve called me a lot, and have done nothing but breathe.”
“Ah, listen… I can explain.” Marissa swallowed.
“Spare me. I already know who, what, you are.” Sapphire placed her arms on the car hood to fence Marissa in between them.
The prosecutor stared at Sapphire. “So you do remember me after all?”
“No.” Sapphire let her eyes burn into her adversary’s. “Please tell me, how are we old pals?”
Marissa studied Sapphire’s arms, and the lean of her body. “Winchester. You were a sophomore when I was a senior.”
Must have been why she looked familiar earlier. Sapphire stared at Marissa, still unable to place her face.
“No, of course you wouldn’t remember me.” Marissa said, projecting anguish. “I was a nobody, a nerd, and you were Christina Kraft’s best friend. One day, during fencing class, some of the popular younger girls pushed down and teased me for… who I was. Then, out of nowhere, you came. You pushed them off, and took my hand, and you didn’t let go until you were sure they were going to leave me alone.”
The faintest memory flickered in Sapphire’s mind.
A dejected smile grew on Marissa’s lips. “When I saw your name in the newspaper, it was like you’d come back to me. Then I got chosen for the trial and… well, the word destiny comes to mind.”
“So you decided to become exactly what I am?” Sapphire kept her face hard. “Then toy with me?”
“You’re not what I am,” Marissa said confused, “are you?”
“Hey, I was it a hell of a long time before you ever were!” Sapphire spat.
“So you and me… it’s…”
“Oh,” Sapphire motioned her finger between them, “it’s on.”
Marissa gasped then grabbed Sapphire by the cheeks and swung her around. She pushed her against the car and kissed her.
Sapphire froze, eyes wide and palms up.
Marissa giggled, gradually opening her eyes. “I can’t believe this is actually happening. My first love, the girl I never stopped dreaming about, is gay too.”
“Oooh…” The lingering looks, the handshake, it all made sense to Sapphire now. “Wait, then why are you trying to put me in prison?”
“I’m very good at separating work and play. My psychologist says it’s uncanny.” She leaned in for another smooch.
“Aah…” Sapphire caught her lips with her finger.
“What… I thought…” Marissa’s hand flew to her mouth. “You’re not gay? Then what the hell were you talking about before?”
Crap.
“No, yes.” Sapphire’s thumb shot to her chest. “Me: super gay. But…” She couldn’t very well date Marissa Pearl. “I… already have a girlfriend. Chops. Handsome lady.”
Marissa frowned, and the prosecutor in her set in. “So you’re gay and have a girlfriend, but you slept with the cop, and were engaged to John Vanderpilt?”
Sapphire shrugged. “I never said I was good at it.”
“I guess it’s for the best anyway.” Marissa looked her up and down, then sighed and got into her car. “With the way I just rocked the closing argument, it wouldn’t be much of a relationship with you going away for a minimum of five.”
“Months?” Sapphire asked hopeful.
The prosecutor gave a quick chuckle, then shook her head and drove off.
Sapphire watched the car vanish and felt her phone buzz. “Hello?”
“Have you no manners? People have stood in line for centuries, and you feel it is appropriate to break that custom because you have to call your bookie?” It was Professor Thomas Broker.
“I don’t have a bookie.”
“Not you,” he said, “the inconsiderate cellmate whose manners are as poorly executed as his tattoos.”
“Hey!” a second voice sounded in the phone. “Watch it, gramps.”
“Oh, what will you do, Hernandez, shank me with a spork? How original.” He sighed and refocused on Sapphire. “I’ve appraised your document and, at first, the writing confused me. Then I realized I had to evaluate two individuals.”
“Two people wrote it?”
“Not at all. Dissociative Identity Disorder,” her old professor said. “It’s a case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Two personalities residing in one body. My guess is that the primary personality doesn’t even know the secondary personality exists.”
“Split personalities?”
“Exactly. The interesting part is that they’re polar opposites. One a saint, the other a sinner. My guess? The latter personality was born in trauma.”
Sapphire panted as she realized who it was. “Oh my G—”
A violent pain exploded in her side. She saw the stun gun against her rib as her body seized up at the voltage and she lost control over her muscles.
“Hello?” came from the phone clenched in her hand. “Well, that’s just inconsiderate.”
Sapphire tried to scream, but her teeth were clamped together. When the pain eased, she fell to the ground and gasped for breath. She looked up as the Copycat circled over her in a gray suit. The only thing Sapphire could focus on was the skin-colored, high-tech prosthetic—the bionic hand.
“Sh-sh-shelly,” Sapphire got out, her stomach muscles still spasming.
“Oh, Sapphire.” Shelly McCormick shook her head, her eyes filled with an erratic darkness. “Shelly isn’t here.”
She lowered the stun gun then aimed a tranquilizer gun and fired the dart into Sapphire’s shoulder.
Chapter 20
The True Serial Catcher stared down at the basement filled with dark water and took her red wig off. She relished at the image of his dead body at the bottom, tied to the chair.
It was the ultimate reversal of power. He had died in the same basement where the one at home had suffered.
She peeled out of her pantsuit and jumped into her black clothes quickly, knowing her other prisoner was waiting for her. She’d have to burn the clothes later, some of Sapphire’s blood was likely to splatter. She might need the suit she’d worn while shadowing Sapphire in the courthouse sometime in the future.
At one point, she’d accidently stepped too close and Sapphire had smacked right into her. Thanks to the red wig, the briefcase, and gray suit, she’d blended right in with the dozens of f
emale lawyers and Sapphire hadn’t even given her a second glance.
She moved through the abandoned church and dragged the gun over the tattered walls. While the one at home, or Shelly McCormick, hated this place, the True Serial Catcher felt at home. The old church’s structure was as unstable as the monsters she killed, and it had everything she’d been looking for. From now on, she’d sedate the men with a tranquilizer gun, the one Sapphire inspired her to get, then bring them here. After she killed them, she’d bury the monsters in the overgrown garden in the back. It was perfect.
Shelly was a fearful, depressed wreck after she got rescued from this church’s basement. This went on for months, until the day her family forced her downstairs to watch TV. The news of the Serial Catcher and Sapphire Dubois came on. Though Shelly blocked it out—the way she did all news involving serial killers or deaths—the True Serial Catcher was motivated and began to grow inside her.
When Shelly McCormick closed her eyes that night, the True Serial Catcher awoke. She got up and started her work. She picked up MMA training where Shelly left off. She roamed the night searching for murderous monsters.
When Shelly awoke the first morning after, she had no idea why she felt better and so full of life again, but it was all thanks to the True Serial Catcher.
From that point on, the True Serial Catcher was always there, watching, plotting, but Shelly was never aware of her. When Shelly was at her weakest, and when the overwhelming fear and memories of the basement came back, that’s when the True Serial Catcher could come out and take control. At least, that’s how it started. She’d grown stronger over the last few weeks. Now she was able to fight her way out even when Shelly wasn’t feeling frightened.
Soon, she’d be strong enough to control the body completely. Soon, there would be no Shelly McCormick left.
She headed up toward the church’s bell tower where she’d duct taped Sapphire to a chair. The L.A. heat felt suffocating in the stairwell; she was covered in sweat when she reached the top.
The only thing still cool on her body was the bionic hand. Shelly didn’t care for it, but the True Serial Catcher saw it for what it truly was when the DARPA scientist Shelly’s father knew handed it over. It was a weapon. It held three times the strength of a human hand, and it had assisted her in bringing down big, bad men by their throats. She’d even ripped out the hunter’s esophagus with it.
She moved the gun to her beloved bionic hand, allowing one weapon to hold another, as she unlocked the door to the bell tower.
“Hello, Sapphire,” she said, her voice full of pride. She’d trapped the original Serial Catcher. What an accomplishment.
Her flashlight hit the giant bell that hung in the center as she carefully stepped around the square hole below it. The eight–by-eight, thirty foot drop that led down between the circling staircase was meant to amplify the bell’s clang, but it was also an excellent way to kill someone. One shove and it was over.
She could throw her prisoner down the drop… or rip her heart out with the bionic hand, but Sapphire deserved a quick bullet to the head, not brutality. She flashed her light to the chair where she’d tied Sapphire, and exhaled.
It sat empty and the duct tape lay scattered on the ground below.
• • •
The unbearable heat lingered around Sapphire and made it hard to keep her breath hushed.
She looked down at the shadow of Shelly McCormick below her. Sapphire was propped between two wooden beams above the giant bell and its hole. Her legs and arms were shaking from strain.
She watched Shelly move toward the door, and held back a scream of joy.
Right as she was about to exit, Shelly turned and looked up toward the dark ceiling’s octal beams. She must’ve come to the same conclusion Sapphire did when she realized the door was locked and she had nothing to pick it with.
Shelly held the flashlight up toward the ceiling, and Sapphire noticed Aston’s gun in her hand. She’d stolen it from Sapphire’s purse.
Shelly’s cold voice bounced around the walls. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Before the light reached her, Sapphire pulled herself to the next beam and held her strained breath. Her eyes drew to the dome above her.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Shelly. This isn’t you.” Her voice traveled around the octagon then funneled out at the bottom. “If you don’t let me take him, innocent people are going to die. I need him.”
“Oh, please. Give up the goodie-two-shoes act.” Shelly moved to the next beam—Sapphire’s beam—gun up and ready to shoot. “You and I are two peas in a pod, Sapphire, and you know as well as I do that all monsters need to die.”
Sapphire steadied her footing and moved two beams down. The heat was thick, all-surrounding, and it caused sweat to drip and burn her eyes.
“What would your sister say, Shelly?” Sapphire asked. “What would Miriam think if she knew what you’d done?”
“You think you can shame me into giving up?” A laugh echoed through the ceiling. “News flash: I’m not Shelly, and I don’t give a shit about her family, especially not her annoying sister.”
“I know you’re not, but on some level, I know Shelly can hear me too.” Sapphire’s legs trembled as she watched her enemy move around the circle below her.
“She can’t. Shelly is weak. Shelly does nothing about her pain and suffering. I’m the strong one. If it wasn’t for me, she’d still be a whimpering mess. Shelly doesn’t know why she was taken, but I figured it out a long time ago. He took her because she looked like you. He took her because of what you did.”
A low rumble sounded and the tower shook around them. The wood beams quivered, shaking off dust, and Sapphire pinched her nose not to sneeze. Shelly’s footsteps ceased, waiting for the shaking to stop.
An aftershock from yet another earthquake somewhere in California, Sapphire realized as she closed her eyes. “You have no idea how sorry I am about what happened to you, to Shelly.”
“Sorry?” her opponent sneered. “Without his torture, without you, I may never have existed. You and that monster created me. I owe you my life.”
Sapphire frowned. “Then you might want to work on your appreciation technique.”
“Meh, I’m not the sentimental type.”
A bead of sweat rolled off Sapphire’s nose. It plunged through the hot air and hit Shelly’s forehead.
Sapphire’s body stiffened as Shelly’s eyes drew toward her spot. She aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.
Sapphire launched off the beam as the blast sounded and hurled herself at Shelly. She smacked into her and they tumbled to the ground. Shelly fired another shot that ricocheted off the bell and into an old trunk above them. A delicate diiiing sounded as Sapphire slammed Shelly’s arm onto the ground. The gun flew out of her hand. It slid across the dusty floor and stopped at the trunk against the wall.
Shelly kicked Sapphire in the stomach, sending her flying backwards and sliding toward the hole beneath the bell. Her fingernails dug into the wood and it scraped her raw. She came to a stop just as her head slid out over the thirty foot drop.
Shelly headed for the gun as Sapphire jumped up and bolted toward her. She threw herself and let out a scream as she connected with Shelly. They punched, kicked, and blocked each other’s blows. Having the same teacher, they knew the same combos and the same defense. Except, Shelly’s punches were stronger, and her bionic hand indomitable.
Shelly grabbed Sapphire by the throat and the iron fingers began to close around her esophagus. Sapphire was getting light-headed; she clawed desperately at the hand’s base.
Her opponent laughed. “You really think you can harm it? It’s state-of-the-art robotics.”
Sapphire gasped, willing her reach farther.
“Go ahead,” Shelly mused, “try to break it. You won’t be able to.”
Sapphire yanked her arm forward and grabbed onto the base of the hand. She twisted the release, and the hand came off. Unattached to
its carrier, the hand unclenched and Sapphire threw it.
“No!” Shelly screamed.
The hand hit the floor and skidded toward the bell tower’s drop. Shelly threw herself after it, no reservations. The hand vanished into the dark mouth and Shelly’s stump pointlessly reached after it.
That’s when the second aftershock came. The old building roared and the ground shook. Shelly lost her balance and slid into the hole. Sapphire dashed toward her.
She caught Shelly’s hand and screamed at the sudden weight pulling her toward the drop. Both their hands were slick with sweat and the struggle made it worse. Shelly was slipping.
You’re already a killer, so let go. A sharp thought whispered. Let her fall. Sapphire tried to shake the thought away, but it was hard. Why save someone who was preventing her from getting to her father, to, in turn, save Julia?
Their eyes connected and the expression changed in her opponent. Shelly blinked several times. “Sapphire?”
Sapphire stared down at her as she felt the hand slip farther. Shelly’s look was full of confusion and desperation. “What’s happening?”
They’d switched. The psychotic alter-ego was gone. “Shelly?”
Shelly looked down at the drop and screamed.
Sapphire pulled her other hand away from Shelly’s wrist and held onto the bell above her. “Hook onto my arm with yours.”
Shelly swung her arm up and hooked it to hers. Sapphire yelled out as she pulled back. Glistening sweat covered Shelly as she crawled up.
Sapphire helped her to her feet, and held onto her arms. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Shelly sobbed, and pulled away from Sapphire. “Why does this keep happening to me?” She stumbled toward the trunk and crumpled to her knees. “Why? Why?”
Sapphire followed Shelly and placed a hand on her back. “It’s okay, Shelly. I’ll help you figure this out.”
“God, God,” Shelly cried as she stood and braced herself against the wall. “God!” her tone turned colder, and a laugh rang out as she turned to face Sapphire. “You are so amazingly gullible when it comes to Shelly.”