Little Belle Gone

by Whitlock, Stephanie

  “Grrr, damn dog.” Matt muttered, even as he chuckled softly in his throat and reluctantly pulled back from her. Elizabeth leaned after him slightly, wishing he would stay, despite the utter soreness that had settled into her flesh. “Don’t move, I’ll be right back.” He growled sensually into her neck before he kissed it gently and turned back toward the bedroom. “Come on, you.” Matt blurted the command at the dog as he moved and the dog trotted after him, victorious. Elizabeth leaned back against the counter, warmth and contentment spreading through her body, mixing with rich anticipation. Turning to lift her body onto the counter, readying herself for his return, she noticed the calendar pinned to his refrigerator. Matt had circled the dates of the murders in red on the sheet, and for a moment her eyes drifted lazily over the marks without seeing them. As she began to focus, she saw, with growing clarity, a pattern start to form. Jumping hurriedly down from the counter-top she rushed to the calendar and studied it more closely. When she heard the soft plod of Matt’s steps returning, she called to him.

  “Matt, I need to call Mark and Aggie. Now.” Her voice had turned sharp and strict and his steps paused for a moment. When they resumed she could hear the determined cadence of his stride and knew he had become as serious as she.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” Matt was now standing behind her, looking at the calendar, trying to find what she had been so eager to act upon.

  “The murders, they are all exactly nine days apart. Each time the victims have been growing steadily more and more important to me. If I’m right, the next murder will happen Thursday, and I need to make sure that Mark and Aggie are not anywhere he can get to them.” Her voice was far calmer than she felt. Urgency making her turn and face him. “Do you know what I did with my phone last night? Everything after the moment we left the restaurant is a bit of a blur for me.”

  Matt could see the solemn resolve in her eyes. Whatever she was thinking, it was enough to pull her out of the arousal she had been consumed by only seconds ago. Squaring his shoulders, he looked around his barren apartment, trying to remember where he had hastily tossed her accompaniments as he had carried her into the bedroom. Finding her shall lying on the edge of the couch, he moved to it and found her clutch underneath. Rustling inside it, he pulled her phone free and tossed it to her. He watched as she pressed the home button only to see her face twist in aggravation. “Here, use mine.” He moved closer and grabbed his from the counter, checking first to see that it wasn’t dead as well. “What makes you so sure that he will go after them next?” He asked as he watched her type in the number with unsteady fingers. As she put the phone to her ear, she met his gaze.

  “Because that’s the tenth anniversary of my parent’s murder and he will want it to be special.” He gasped, at both her matter-of-fact tone and her impeccable logic. As he watched her pace the kitchen, waiting for the call to be answered, a sickening realization came to him. She had been meant to die with her parents, so this anniversary was not just for their death, but for hers. Terror and rage filled his heart and he found the inescapable truth before him a bitter pill to swallow. He would surely try to kill her again on that day as well. Resolving that he wouldn’t get the chance, Matt moved quickly into the bedroom in search of boxers and his apartment phone. He listened as she gave orders to her aunt and uncle, telling them to get out of town, and quickly, to call her as soon as they arrived at the villa, where ever that was, as he dialed the other phone.

  Listening to the ring, he moved back out into the apartment to join her. She moved toward him, a questioning look in her eyes, her mouth frozen in a prelude to speech. “Yes, this is Detective Barrow. I was curious if there had been any results form the sample you were running through C.O.D.I.S. for me. … Yeah, the serial case. … Really?” As he spoke he held one pausing finger up for her and she tensed, but waited patiently for him to finish his call. “No, don’t bother. Cord and I will be there shortly. Have the report ready for me.” Ending the call, he placed the phone on the counter and moved a step closer to her. “If it’s the anniversary of your attack then he might be planning to add you to the victim list. That’s not going to happen.” His voice was growing rough and possessive, but he didn’t care. She was his, just as he was hers, and he’d be damned if that was going to end in only five days. “There were several hits in C.O.D.I.S. on that sixth sample. Seems our boy’s been busy. Apparently it’s a pretty long trail, too. So much for our day off.” His brow furrowed in disappointment, but she didn’t seem to mind his grumpy nature.

  Nodding, she added, “I’ve told them to go to France. They usually spend the winter there anyway, so they will simply leave a little earlier this year. I also told them that I will be calling every hour until they are on the plane and they are to call me the second they land so that I can know they are safe. Mark sounded really freaked out, but he will do it. I’ve also got him sending me a list of all properties they own, along with all the information his people can give me on each. No one else I know is going to die. Not by his hand.” For a moment they stood admiring each other, then, like a bullet being struck by the hammer, they leapt into frantic motion. Without words, they began readying themselves to head to the office, their day off would have to wait. She jumped into the shower as he filled a couple of coffee mugs and made a quick breakfast. By the time she finished her shower and was dressed, he had finished his breakfast and they traded places. After only twenty minutes they were grabbing their keys and phones, ready to head to the office. Just before he pulled the door closed behind her, she leaned into his chest and kissed him lightly. “Thank you.”

  At first the phrase caught him off guard, but he suddenly realized what she meant. He had already endured so much, been so patient with her and now she was asking for even more. He smiled slowly.

  “Anytime, Liz. Always.” With the soft clunk of the door and the click of the locks, they were moving down the hall to the elevator. His hand hovered against the small of her back. He intended to be right beside her, within arms reach for the foreseeable future. Not once would she be out of his sight, not one second would he allow for that mad man to take her away from him.

  Chapter 40

  The elevator doors slid open in homicide division. Being Saturday did not mean an empty house, as detectives in suits and skirts scuttled about their business, investigating the multitude of murders that plagued New York City on a daily basis. Slipping through the crowd to their desks, set in a cozy corner of the bullpen, Elizabeth slipped into her chair and pressed the power button on her computer. As she set her purse in its customary drawer, Matt bent over the edge of her desk, his face stern and coated in apprehension.

  “Will you be okay here if I run downstairs and grab the C.O.D.I.S. hits?” At first his question caught her off guard, but as she came to around to face him, she could read the fear in his eyes. If he hadn’t looked so concerned, she might have laughed.

  “He’s not going to try and grab me from the middle of homicide. I’ll be fine here. I’m going to see if Pannel came through with the original case file. Go, I’ll be here when you get back.” She gave him a sweet smile and the tension in his eyes seemed to lessen a bit. Smiling wearily back at her, he nodded, stood, and walked off in the direction of the elevators. Elizabeth, still grinning slightly at the line of his frame disappearing in the distance, turned her attention back to her computer. Entering her password, she logged in and immediately opened her e-mail. She hadn’t checked it in days, not since the day of the attack in her apartment, and she suddenly regretted it. She watched in horror as countless e-mails scrolled past and her e-mail slowly filled with everything from meaningless spam to interoffice memos and get-well-soon wishes. Heaving a heavy sigh, she propped her auburn and ivory head in her small hand and waited for the wall of bold, unread messages to cease appearing.

  Nearly one hundred messages later, she was finally able to scroll back through the wall of words to find the one she so eagerly wanted. There, with the simplest of subjects, �
��file 23464G”, was the unabridged official story of the day that forever changed her life. The body of the e-mail itself was a short letter, meant for her, from Pannel himself. It started with another plea for her to leave the file alone. She should not have to read what terrors and ghoulish details it contained. He reminisced about the case and how it had hurt him so to see her lying in the hospital clinging so weakly to life, and how utterly proud he was to know that she had become a cop. The last line of the letter said something about how it must have been fate that had lead him to that case, since according to the rotation, it wasn’t supposed to be his. She puzzled slightly over the last statement as she opened the scans. Pictures and reports popped open all over her screen. One file at a time she assigned them to the printers, all but the photos as she already had most of those, and it was the text she was truly interested in anyway.

  As the final file was loading to the printer, Matt appeared beside her. She had been so consumed in her task that she hadn’t noticed him return, his arms laden with a box of files, each representing a case with a D.N.A. hit to their suspect. She met his eyes as he set the small file box down on his desk and reached inside as if to retrieve the first file. She stood to help as a voice boomed across the room, deep and angry. They froze together, knowing full well who the voice belonged to. Moreano stood at the far side of the bullpen. His over-loud voice called their names again, contempt and rage coating each syllable. Neither of them looked away as they seemed to swallow their fear in unison. Turning, they followed the echo still hanging in the air toward where he had been only half a second before, but he had already disappeared down the corridor to his office.

  Elizabeth cringed at the thought of what surely awaited them in his office. In spite of the fear their confrontation with him had created last night, Matt’s arms had washed away the memory in a sea of bliss. Coming face to face with it again made her heart pound in her throat, which was likely the only thing preventing her breakfast from returning on her. Tied in knots and scared for Matt even more than herself, she lead the way down the hall. Slipping into the office, she took a seat across from the red faced, burly man behind the large oak desk and waited for the anvil to fall on her head. She didn’t have to wait long, either. No sooner had Mathew found his place than Moreano had sprung into rage. His voice hurt her ears as he yelled and screamed at them. He asked personal questions that he did not wait to have answered as he berated them for their behavior. As he shouted and railed against them, Elizabeth noticed a shift in his tone, his manner. She bristled, and not just because she was being demoralized at the decibel level of a sonic boom. His voice had gone deep, gravel and darkness, it was a tone she was sure she had heard before.

  Suddenly, she began to listen to some of the phrases he used to describe her. “his little protege,” “his masterpiece,” and the possessive way he seemed to covet her, spewing jealously at Matt thinly veiled with professionalism and “superior officer” concern. Her heart went cold as she stared at him. Everything fit. His size and stature, his build, his voice, yet there was no smell. He reeked of aftershave and mouthwash, not dried blood and stale cigars. As her eyes followed him from one corner of his oversized desk to the other, He pulled his coat free and tossed it onto his chair. It was followed closely by his tie, no longer able to bare the tight grip it had on his swelling neck. His top shirt button popped free on its own under the ferocity of his beratement, causing the back of his collar to gape away from his neck as he bent his head, adding animation to his ravings.

  Elizabeth was studying him, his movements, his mannerisms, trying to either confirm or deny her suspicions, when she caught sight of dried blood along the back rim of his dress shirt. Her jaw dropped open a fraction. He had a bleeding wound on the back of his neck. Nothing too serious, judging by the small amount of blood, but it had definitely broken the skin at some point. Her mind went from dead silent to thunderous in the bat of an eyelash. She needed to calm him, get a sample of his D.N.A., escape his office. But most importantly, she needed to tell Matt what she now suspected, truly feared, was right in front of them. Formulating a plan, she sprung into action. If he indeed was the killer, he felt a greedy pride in possessing her ownership. She cleared her throat and played to this characteristic, praying that she was right.

  “Your quite right to be up-set, Harvey.” As his first name rolled off her tongue Moreano froze and turned on her with frightful speed, the rage in his eyes was now mixed with what could only be curiosity, with a sickening hint of arousal. She cringed on the inside as she continued, choosing each word carefully. “What you saw last night must have looked abysmal from your position. Looked, only. I can assure you that it was not what it appeared. Barrow is my partner, nothing more. While I did agree to have dinner with him last night, it was my friend Alexandra, the woman I have been staying with, who insisted that I get out. Barrow volunteered to accompany me. Really Harvey, after all the time we have spent together, surely you know how I feel about men. Besides, he is clearly not my type. You of all people should know that.” The suggestive curl she added to the last statement nearly turned her stomach, not to mention the rips and tears that sprang up all over her heart at seeing the rejected and shattered look that Matt flashed her briefly. Despite how shredded her insides were at the vile nature of her words, Moreano seemed quite pleased with them. Unsure what to do next, the red rage that had colored his face seemed to wain.

  Clearing his throat heavily, he scanned her face suspiciously, but seeing only the calm, cold face of the girl he thought he knew, he seemed to relax. “Well, I suppose that your right about that. If there is one thing I am certain of, it’s that Elizabeth Cord will never engage in a romantic relationship with a man like…well, a man.” His voice almost purred at the end and she mused coldly that it had been far easier to assuage him than she had feared.

  “Of course, sir. If that’s all, we have work to do. May we?” Silk and cream with a hint of bitterness, her voice seemed to reassure him that all was as he wanted. After a pause, during which he seemed to glare victoriously at Matthew, he nodded and moved to hold the door open for them. Elizabeth allowed Matt to leave first. She needed all the room she could manage for what she was about to do. As she drew even with Moreano, she took a faulty step in her high heels. Something she had done countless times in the park to lure predators. In fact, she was so practiced that the movement had become flawless. As she felt her body slipping dramatically toward the floor, his large, bulging arm swooped down to catch her. She feigned an attempt to right herself, digging her fingernails deeply into his wrist. While she saw his face grimace a bit, he seemed completely unaware of what she had just successfully managed. Regaining her feet, she forced a slight blush and lowered her eyes as she whispered a “thank you” and swept past him into the hallway.

  Matt had waited for her a few feet further down, but, as she was sure that they were still being watched, she walked past him coldly and led the way back toward their desks. She could feel his nervous steps behind her and it tore at her already aching heart, but she had to do something first. When she reached the bank of elevators she punched the button with her other hand, cradling her contaminated fingers cautiously in front of her. Matt paused with her at the elevators, questions hanging between them that were simply too painful for her to answer just now. Unable to speak to him, she turned as the doors opened and said, “I’ll be right back.” His eyes seemed to burn into her as the doors closed between them.

  Matt was in shambles. He knew that she loved him, but her behavior in Moreano’s office had been more than disconcerting. He stood staring at the metal slab that had severed them, wondering who would return in that car, his Mara, or the cold Elizabeth Cord from moments ago? Turning slowly, he tried and failed to reassure himself that everything she had said had been to free them from Moreano’s wrath, and that was no small feat. His ears still hurt from the sound of the bulky man’s overly loud raging and his heart was in his throat wondering if anything she had said might po
ssibly be true. He made his way numbly back to their area where he set about fishing the files from the box and laying them out on the desks. He couldn’t look at them. The names on the folders seemed to blur as his mind was too full of questions to consider the information before him. Until he had a chance to speak to her he knew that wouldn’t change. As he finished pulling the fifth folder from the box, an older detective appeared beside him. Matt had been so distracted that the tap on his shoulder sent him hurdling back a few inches in shock. The older man laughed nervously as he handed a stack of papers to him.

  “Relax, Barrow. We’ve all had a turn in the shout chair. Just took you longer, that’s all.” For a moment Matt couldn’t understand the words, but the detective’s smile seemed to warm him a bit as he nodded woodenly and looked down at the stack of paper in his hand. When Matt did not return his humor, the older detective simply sighed and moved away, leaving him alone with Elizabeth’s original case file. Matt swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly filled with cotton. She had told him what had happened, but in his experience, police reports contained details and truths either too painful or too gruesome to tell the victims. Deciding that distraction was his only option, he settled into his chair and began reading through the original file.

  Each line that had been redacted in her file provided him with pain and remorse. The crime scene had contained far more brutality than Elizabeth knew and he wondered, for a moment, if he could hide the file from her. Prevent her from seeing the horrible details now clear upon the page. When he reached the specifics of her attack he had to close his eyes. The descriptions of her injuries and the violation that she endured rent his heart into a thousands pieces, each one simultaneously aching for her and writhing with the need to seek revenge.

  When a particularly graphic description of her stab wounds became more than he could bare, he looked away from the file just in time to see her return. His heart began to flutter wildly as her small, wonderful body, came into view. He rose out of his chair and met her in the middle of the room. When she started to speak, he motioned for her to wait, leading her quickly down a far hallway. She followed him unquestioningly as he moved around a few corners looking for the one room in the office he knew they could be alone. Turning the knob, he slid her into the broom closet, following behind and pulling the door closed, plunging them into utter darkness. Fumbling in the dark for the pull cord, he almost pulled it out of the ceiling as she wrapped her arms around his neck just as he moved to tug it on. He had brought her here so that they could talk, but it was quite clear that she had followed so that she could be close to him. Matt sighed deeply as he buried his face into her wonderful hair, allowing his arms to fill with the soft strength of her tiny frame. He closed his eyes as he squeezed her tighter, allowing all the apprehension and confusion to wash away. She still loved him. Of course she did. The second he made the realization he felt miserably ashamed for ever having doubted her.