Painted Walls

by Megan Mitcham

  Keen’s head bent and his long low exhale heated the back of her neck. “You said it would be easier if we didn’t see each other at Shepherd or Brewer family functions.” Though she remained perfectly still her hair shifted under his touch. Ava closed her eyes to hold back tears.

  “You were right,” he whispered. The barest hint of his hot lips hit the shell of her ear, sending a rush of long dormant need through her. “It was easier not seeing you, smelling you, touching you, but you need someone in your corner. So until your family shows, you’re stuck with me.”

  He stepped back and opened the door. It took her several seconds to remember how to move her feet. So long that his hand cupped the small of her back and ushered her forward. It took a year to climb that flight of stairs. When they finally reached her floor she stopped in the doorway.

  What if another newspaper awaited her? If Keen saw it, if he knew someone threatened her, he wouldn’t leave no matter how hard she pushed. She couldn’t deal with him, maybe ever, but certainly not right now when she needed all her wits about her to figure out who framed her for murder.

  “I’ve got it from here.” Ava turned toward his broad chest and stayed him with a hand. The moment her fingers touched the worn shirt and the tautness of the muscles underneath she knew she’d made a fatal mistake. She jerked her hand away as though he were fire.

  “Thank you,” she choked.

  “You’ve been away from home for a few days. I’m not leaving until I check the inside.”

  “I’m not a helpless little woman.”

  “That’s right. You have help right here.” He hiked a thumb at his sternum.

  “Lord, save me from ego inflated men.”

  “You know, you’re really cute when you roll your eyes.”

  “Just hush. I don’t need a knight in shining armor to storm my castle. Okay?”

  His brows wrinkled and a smile curved one corner of his mouth. “I thought storming the castle was a euphemism for something else.”

  Ava’s cheeks heated. Her chest flushed. “Look, I’m going into my apartment. You’re not. End of this convoluted discussion.” She pivoted on the balls of her feet and stormed the ten feet to her door.

  “Clear your home. Check under your bed, the shower, closets, and your window locks too, and then blow me a kiss goodnight, and I’ll leave.”

  “Fine.” Anything to get him out of her hair.

  She retrieved her keys, unlocked the door, and braced to find at least another newspaper inside her threshold and at worst a dead body on her bed. The most sinister thing in the place was the scatter of magazines Annelise had left jumbled on the sofa the other day that Ava hadn’t had the time to straighten before she’d left the next morning.

  Room by room, Ava cleared her apartment with a strategic sweep, but nothing was amiss. On her way from the bathroom and closet she even opened the side table drawer to make certain all the newspapers were where she’d left them. They were.

  When Ava opened the door Keen closed the distance. Her hand tightened on the door knob.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not storming your castle. At least, not tonight. But you better get some sleep because tomorrow we’re going to get to the heart of this thing.”

  Did he mean them? No.

  “The who, the what, the how.” He ticked each of them off on his fingers.

  “Oh,” she mumbled like an idiot. Ava clamped her mouth shut to keep from telling him she already knew the how. Those were issues for tomorrow. The who of the victim would be nice, but tonight she intended to figure out the other who—as in who the hell was doing this to her. “Okay.”

  His gaze studied her. “You’re not going to get any sleep, are you?”

  “Goodnight, Keen.”

  “See you in the morning.”

  Ava closed the door, locked it, and then quietly placed her eye against the peep hole. She watched him go and she wished she could say it was for the privacy she needed to do what she was about to do, but she watched him because she couldn’t rip her gaze away from his prowling shoulders and tight ass.

  She flattened her cheek against the cool door and rested there until reality crashed against the front of her skull on a monumental wave. Copycat. Blood Red Killer. Her. Framed.

  Her sandals slapped against the hardwood as she dashed through the apartment to the back corner of her closet. She pulled a black case from the top shelf and prayed the damn thing still worked and that she remembered how to use it. Ava grabbed a beach towel from the bathroom, and then skidded to a stop next to her bed.

  The headlines peeked out from the drawer. Ava’s heart dropped a level in her chest. Each one hit a different nerve, all of them raw. Blood Red Killer Suburban Father, Bloody Red Hardy Confesses, More Victims Come to Light, Bloody Red’s Reckoning.

  Ava spread the towel onto the floor, set the case next to it, flipped the latches, and flung it open. The musk of years and disuse permeated the lavender scented room. The tips of the puffy white zephyr brush were stained gray from the hundred or more times she’d practiced lifting prints for her forensic science class. Fingerprinting technology had come a long way since she’d been in school, but she didn’t trust anyone else to search these papers.

  At the moment she had trouble even trusting Keen. Once upon a time, she’d trusted him most of all, but she’d wrecked that.

  She opened the jar of aluminum powder. Only a thin layer of the dust coated the glass bottom. Hopefully it would be enough. Ava wrestled on two latex gloves. She grabbed a large plastic bag from the kit, dropped the newest blood coated paper inside, and then sealed the bag. Her tiny apartment didn’t have DNA testing capabilities, but she didn’t need it tested to know it would match the victim’s blood.

  Carefully she removed the drawer from the stand and set it on the bed. One at a time she liberated each newspaper and laid them face up on the towel. Despite the rapid tremors of her heart her hands remained steady.

  The intercom buzzed.

  Ava covered her heart with her hand and swore she caught the thing on its way across the Potomac. Her sternum thumped under her gloved hand for several beats before she grabbed the side of the bed for leverage. She climbed to her feet, stepped around the papers, and hurried to the speaker by the front door.

  “Yes?” Her voice quaked.

  “Miss Shepherd, it’s Tim from the front desk. I’m sorry to call so late, but I have a Miss Braden to see you.”

  “Oh, thank you, Tim.” Ava nearly sagged with relief. She hadn’t known who or what to expect. With all the horrors her mind conjured in the scant second since the buzzer rang a visit from her friend hadn’t made that grim list. “Please, send her up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She unlocked the deadbolt and knob. Apprehension parched Ava’s lips. Annelise knew about her father, but how would she feel about Ava being questioned in a murder so similar to those her father carried out? Annie would probably be pissed that Ava would want to talk about that instead of her potential sexcapades on the trip. At least she hoped her friend would.

  Latex squeaked and popped under Ava’s wringing hands. The longer it took her friend to make it to the door the more frantic the fidget became. She growled at herself, ripped the things off, and then crumpled them into a ball. There were plenty more in the kit. Before Ava realized her feet created a pacing path from one side of the room to the other.

  What the hell took the elevator so long at… What the hell time was it? On her next lap Ava veered into the kitchen and stared at the little green numbers on her microwave. One thirty-three a.m.

  A gasp from the other room almost made Ava swallow her tongue.

  Shit, when would she stop being so jumpy?

  She tossed the gloves onto the counter and walked into the living area.

  Annelise stood hunched over the towel of newspapers. Her blonde hair swung back and forth over her shoulders in an eerie cadence. Of course, her friend stared at a display of headlines about her father that she had la
id out on her bedroom floor, which warranted an odd shake of the head.

  “I’m sorry you had to see those,” Ava whispered, surprising herself with the hoarseness of her voice.

  Her friend jumped and swiveled. Annie’s long fingers spread wide over her mouth, a mouth that gaped.

  “I didn’t mean to…” Ava couldn’t finish the words. Annelise’s swollen red eyes stopped her. Shakes vibrated her friend’s shoulders and the tips of her hair. “Annie, what’s—”

  A scream crossbred with a cry and a growl crawled up Annelise’s throat and procreated before Ava’s eyes. Ava stepped forward and opened her arms.

  “Don’t you come any closer.” Her friend backed into the footboard of the bed. She recoiled at the touch and shrank into herself, becoming as small as Ava had ever seen her.

  An unsolicited tear slipped down Ava’s cheek. “Annie?”

  “Shut up! Shut up! You don’t get to say a word,” her friend cried.

  Ava opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out, as though her body followed Annelise’s orders instead of her own. She closed her mouth, banking an unexpected sob.

  “How could you?” Annie’s fists balled into white-knuckled rage. It righted her posture and seemed to give her strength while it stole the little bit Ava clung to. “I was your best friend. Your only friend.”

  “I didn’t,” Ava cried. She didn’t know what Annie thought she’d done, but she’d never do anything to hurt her friend. Annie couldn’t know about her being questioned in the murder, and if she did, she wouldn’t believe it.

  Would she?

  “You stole my only family.” Annelise lurched forward. “You took the only other person who gave a shit about me.”

  “I don’t—”

  “No!” Snot slipped out of Annie’s nose with the force of her shaking head. “Josie can’t talk anymore. You can’t talk. You can’t say a thing that will make this okay.” She slipped at the clear mess with the back of her wet sleeve. “Trent wanted to come and slit your throat. I convinced him that Finn needed him more than he needed revenge because I didn’t believe you’d murdered my sister, but now…” Annie’s gaze slid to the newspapers in a neat row on the floor. “I should have let him.”

  “Annie, no! I didn’t kill anyone.” Ava slapped at the tears streaming her face. “You know me. You know—”

  “I know your dad fucked you up. I know my friendship with you killed my sister, and I have to live with that for the rest of my life.” Annelise walked backward toward the door as though she feared turning her back.

  A sob wracked Ava’s torso. “Josie? No, please—”

  “Don’t you dare say her name.” Annie averted her gaze, but kept Ava in her periphery. “I’ve had days’ worth of hours to ask myself why. Why would you take my sister from me?” She braced her hands on either side of the painted wood frame. “Tell me, Ava. At least give me that much.”

  Ava wiped the tears from her lips. Fresh ones replaced them in seconds. “If I could have taken her place, Annie, I would.”

  “But then you wouldn’t have been able to carry on daddy’s twisted legacy.” She turned to leave, but stopped. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about killing Fiona. Saturday when I found out about Josie, I went to the hospital because I couldn't get ahold of her and I caught her cheating on me with some bimbo nurse. So, I officially have no one left for you to take.”

  The fissures in Ava’s heart split in a fiery burst. “Annelise?”

  Her friend closed the door so quietly she didn’t even hear the click of the knob and yet it brought Ava to her knees. She collapsed forward with her head in her hands. Tears dripped like a tiny leak in a damn. Pressure built inside, threatening to obliterate her brain. But the damn thing refused to leave her in peace. Questions and utter despair swirled in dizzying loops for too long.

  If Annie thought she killed her sister, the only way to make her believe otherwise was to prove someone else killed Josie.

  Ava scrambled on slick hands and knees from her puddle to the row of newspapers. Print type swam in her watery gaze. She used the backs of her hands to collect her tears, and then wiped them on the sides of her shorts. Her hands quaked on their way to the canister of metallic powder. The metal lid scraped against the glass. Ava covered her teeth with her lips and shuddered through another wave of anguish.

  The soft bristles danced on the end of the zephyr brush between her fingers. She dragged in a deep breath and slowly released it, much like she did before shooting at the range. After two more breaths the tremors eased enough that she eased the wand inside the jar and collected the silver dust.

  She knocked off the excess powder, and then started at the top left of the first aged paper. The fibers swiveled across the page in even rows.

  When a bit of the aluminum collected at the bottom edge of her brush Ava quit breathing. She longed to skip to the spot, but she maintained the straight, uniformed pattern. Her lungs burned with the need to breath, but she didn’t dare. On the next line the closer the bristles came to the simmering mark the more she leaned toward the paper.

  “What?”

  The dust collected in a wide line, not a nice round print. It could be a smudge, but the even lines were too deliberate.

  Ava swiveled and circled her brush to the next line. Then the next. An identical line revealed itself parallel to the first. Fast and faster she moved. The sixth line exposed a wide arch.

  Sweat gather on Ava’s upper lip. Agitation boiled her patience to steam. This wasn’t a fingerprint. Already halfway done with the page and she hadn’t found one. She broke and swiped the powder diagonally down the center of the page.

  “No!” Ava pinned her gaze to the ceiling and willed the smeared word to disappear. “No! No! No!” Her gaze plummeted to the page, but the letters b, l, o, o, d, y remained.

  “Bloody.” She choked on the word.

  Ava reloaded her brush and repeated the pattern on the second page. “Red.” And the third. “Hardy.”

  Tears dripped off Ava’s nose. Small letters swam in inky pools. It didn’t much matter. Whoever left these for her to find had planned her downfall with elaborate and intricate detail.

  She sucked a shaky breath and dusted the fourth page.

  Her finger wrapped around the glass container of aluminum dust. She hefted the jar and hummed it across the room.

  The bottom edge formed a chalky white dent in the sheet rock. Metal powder scattered across the floor while some of it exploded into a cloud gloomy enough to match her mood and her future.

  “Bloody Red Hardy Lives.”

  8

  F og finally glazed the last section of the windshield. Keen tossed himself into the seat and looked around. Visual clarity of zero left him damn near as vulnerable as open windows. He leaned over and yanked the latch of the rental’s glove box, and then slammed it shut. He’d already tried the center console. Not a napkin in the joint.

  Sweat suctioned his boys to the side of his leg and broke the stalemate. He placed his foot on the brake, rolled down all four windows with the touch of a button, and sneered at technology. Computers had no place in automobiles. It stole the mechanical artistry from history and replaced it with sensors and microprocessors.

  Keen unlatched his seatbelt and scrubbed his hands through his hair. He’d staked out about a thousand different places and people in his day. So why the hell was he fidgeting like a toddler on a sugar high? Probably because the word stalker scrolled across his brain like a news alert ticker. He wasn’t pulling a paycheck off the job, but he’d been commissioned to “be there” for Ava all the same. Too bad four stories, some brick, distance, and metal was as close as she’d let him get.

  The haze cleared on a hot breeze. So far he’d cataloged a homeless man shuffling his way down the street, a group of guys who stumbled their way into the building, and a hot blonde with soaked cheeks and sad eyes. Since the blonde left nearly an hour ago no one had moved a muscle except him. If New York was the city that ne
ver slept, DC was the city that liked its eight hours. Keen liked his sleep too. Somehow it never seemed to like him back.

  He scooted the seat back as far as it would go, and then worked on the recline, not too much, just enough that his breaths didn’t fog the glass again. His shorts defied gravity, riding high enough to classify as the boy shorts only girls wore. He wrestled the ends down, huffed, and then leaned forward to glare at Ava’s window. If she’d just let him in…

  Ava’s windows had morphed into ominous black panes.

  Maybe she’d gone to bed, but Keen couldn’t imagine the suspicious woman he’d once known snuggled in bed while her life took a nose-dive into the shitter.

  Instinct—also known as the nauseous feeling in his gut—forced him out of the car. He retrieved his sidearm from the door pocket and stuffed it at the small of his back. Quick and quiet, his steps lead him toward the front door.

  Halfway to the awning Winslow Gray stepped out of the front door and held it open.

  How the fuck had he missed Winslow? Damn humidity and fogged glass.

  Ava walked out of the door backward. Her finger jabbed at Lara Abbott’s face and her head bobbed. One more step onto the street and Keen heard every salty word that flew out of his fiery red head’s mouth.

  “Hell no. I cooperated last time and you didn’t even have the decency to tell me who it was I supposedly killed. You couldn’t say, ‘Hey, your best friend’s sister was murdered. Oh, and she thinks you did it because that’s what we told her.’ So,” Ava added a bob of her head, “your resting bitch-face self and your mute-as-shit partner can go fuck yourselves. And—”

  “What the hell are you two doing now?” Keen sprinted the distance between them before Lara knocked her into yesterday.

  Winslow grabbed Ava’s wrists and wrenched them behind her. She snarled, but didn’t cry out. But one close up look at her swollen, bloodshot eyes told him she’d been crying all right.

  “We’re taking her in.” The big guy jutted his chin and puffed his chest.