Well, there was obviously nothing here.
On the other hand, abandoned houses was kind of a theme in this case. This place could be the kind of place that Destiny Worth liked.
He checked his phone again.
Nothing from Liam. Nothing from Dawson.
He weighed it in his hands. I should text them again, he thought.
Instead, he shoved the phone in his pocket and headed for the house. He wouldn’t go in, he told himself. He’d just walk around, look for any signs of life. If Destiny Worth had come here, she would have had to have brought a car. Maybe he’d find that parked somewhere.
He circled the house, and he didn’t see a car. There was a large yard, dotted with scraggly bushes and small trees. The grass hadn’t been cut in eons.
The house was completely boarded up and covered in graffiti. There were hedges that seemed to be taking it over, obscuring the front windows entirely.
Then he rounded to the back, and there was an open door.
The wind blew. It swung lazily on its hinges, letting out a croak like a knowing frog.
Come in, Ricky, said the croak.
Hernandez suddenly felt cold all over. He peered into that open door. All he could see was trash, strewn all over a warped linoleum floor. Further inside, it was dark.
He was not going in there.
He took a step toward the door.
No, no, no, he urged himself. He wasn’t stupid. He knew better than this. He was getting a very bad feeling about this house, and he didn’t want to go in. He really did not want to.
Even so, his feet were moving, carrying him closer and closer.
He reached a set of rickety steps, and they sighed when he climbed them, seemingly satisfied that he was taking the bait and coming inside.
Welcome, they moaned.
A horrible sweat crawled up his spine, settling at his neck.
He shuddered, and he screamed at himself to stop this, to run, but instead, he grasped the door and he pulled it open, and he stepped inside.
The minute he did, he smelled something old and rotted and meaty.
He gagged, and he would have run, but he was too busy taking everything in. Now, he could see that the trash had come out of a overturned trash bag. There were a lot of crumpled paper towels and cans of soda and beer, empty peanut butter containers, things like that.
That was probably where the smell was coming from.
But it didn’t make sense.
If a house had been abandoned this long, then there was no way trash would be in here, not from the original owners.
This trash didn’t seem new exactly, but—
That was when he saw the hand.
It was at the end of the hall, sticking out of a doorway, attached to a body that he couldn’t see because it was ostensibly lying on the other side of the doorway.
The fingers were dry and wizened and gray.
That was a dead hand.
Run, he said to himself.
But the time for running had passed, and he knew it.
He picked his way through the trash. He walked down the hallway. He got closer, and he could make out the hand and then the wrist and then the elbow. It was a woman.
All of the flesh was discolored and putrid. This body had been lying out here for a long time. He didn’t know how long, but it wasn’t recent. It was dessicated, almost mummified. This could be… Months? A year?
When he cleared the doorway, he saw the body in its entirety. The woman had shot herself up against the wall and her hand was lying out in the hallway. She was still holding the gun, even though most of her face was rotted off—or maybe eaten off? Maybe some wild animal had climbed in and gnawed on her nose.
Hernandez gagged again.
She wasn’t the only dead body in the room. There were two more, and they’d shot themselves too.
On the wall behind them, someone had written in big, black letters, probably with a Sharpie—that might be the Sharpie right there, in fact—The highest form of love is sacrifice.
Hernandez’s phone beeped.
He screamed at the top of his lungs and almost tripped and fell into one of the bodies.
Then, righting himself, he started laughing.
He staggered out of the room with the bodies and back into the hallway.
He made it four steps before he collapsed against the wall. Yanking his phone out of his pocket, he saw it was a text from Liam.
Ricky, what the hell, you can’t go out there on your own.
Hernandez’s laugh intensified. It was nearly hysterical now.
Movement.
He sensed it—saw it—heard it—he didn’t know, but he stopped laughing and froze.
It came again.
His gaze jerked to the door outside.
Destiny Worth was standing behind a man amid the scattered trash. The man had a gun pointed at Ricky.
“Well, well, well,” said Worth. “What are we going to do with you?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DAWSON was standing next to the door to Liam’s apartment, arms folded over her chest.
Liam approached, keys to the apartment dangling from his fingers.
“I can’t believe you went to see him without me,” said Dawson.
“I can’t believe you’re waiting here to chew me out,” said Liam, jamming his keys into the door.
“And what’s this text from Ricky all about?”
“What text?” Liam opened the door and went inside.
Dawson followed him. “It’s an address. I asked him what it was about, and he said to ask you.”
“Oh, that.” Liam crossed to his desk and tossed his keys next to his keyboard. “Look, it might not have been smart to go see Finn, I admit that. But it just drives me nuts, you having to deal with him. I don’t want you anywhere near him.”
“Liam, I am a cop. You shouldn’t even have been given access to him without me, and believe me, that is a hole in the dam that I have plugged. Won’t happen again.”
He sat down in his swivel chair and turned to face her. “I know you’re a cop, but you’re also…”
“A woman?”
“A pregnant woman,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said. “We don’t know that. And you keep doing this, and I keep telling you not to, and it’s like you’re deaf.”
“I’m sorry. I just… I can’t help it.”
“He can hurt you too,” she said.
“He’s done his worst to me.” Liam shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t. Do you remember how he got you to come to him of your own volition in Delaware? You walked out of a hotel room and went to him and offered him your wrists and said, ‘Handcuff me.’”
“It wasn’t exactly like that.”
“You want to tell me what it was like?”
“Everything was different then.” But he wasn’t meeting her gaze, now. He was twisting back and forth on the chair, staring at one of his knees.
“Even if I am pregnant, I’m still a cop, and I can still do my job,” she said. “I need you to stop, Liam. You have to promise me that you are going to stop disrespecting me and robbing me of my humanity just because you think one of your sperm managed to dig its way into me!”
He looked up then, and he was hurt. “Robbing you of your humanity?”
“You are turning me into a incubator.”
“I think you’re stating that a little strongly. I’m trying to protect my…”
“Your offspring?” She lifted her chin.
“I was going to say my girlfriend,” he said. “But we’re not really…”
“No, we are not.”
“I think you are pregnant,” he muttered, “because you’re turning this into something that it’s not, and you’re being really emotional, and—”
“Apologize. Take that back,” she snapped.
He got up out of the chair and stalked out of the living room. He went into the kitchen.
She didn’t follow him.
Moments passed.
“You ever going to get a couch?” she said finally.
“I don’t know,” he called back. “I think about it, but I haven’t gotten around to it. I don’t have any way to transport it.”
“They deliver,” she said.
More silence.
Finally, she appeared in the doorway.
He was gripping the counter, bowed over it. He didn’t acknowledge her entrance except to start talking. “Haysle, you know I’m a fuck-up. I can’t see why you’d think I’d be any better at this than I am at anything else in my life.”
“That’s not an excuse that’s going to fly,” she said. “Especially if you want me to be your girlfriend.”
“I guess I can see it from your point of view,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”
This seemed to take the wind out of her sails. She shifted on her feet, unsure of what to do, and then went over to him. She put her palm against his back. “It’s almost sweet, you caring about me, but you cross lines. You can’t lie to me for my own good or take away my decisions. That’s not protecting me, it’s—”
“Abusing you,” he said in a resigned voice.
“That’s going a little far,” she said. “But it’s not cool either.”
He looked at her. “Sorry.”
She rubbed his back. “It’s okay.”
“I won’t go see him alone again anyway. It was a dumb idea. He got me to lift up my shirt and show him the scar he gave me.”
She winced.
“I’m an idiot,” he said.
“You are,” she said. And then she grinned at him. “But you’re a pretty idiot.”
He raised his eyebrows, and then he grinned too. “Okay.”
She raised up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek.
He let go of the counter and grabbed onto her. He kissed her mouth.
She shut her eyes and surrendered to it.
They kissed long and deep.
And when she broke away, she put both of her palms on his chest. “What’s this address from Hernandez?”
“Oh, right,” said Liam. “He said that he’s been in contact with the IT guys, and that he got a location of an IP address where the LolaDust account uploaded a YouTube video.”
She pulled back. “Seriously? He went there?”
“What?” Liam furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about?”
“Aren’t you checking your texts?”
“Well, no, because I was driving,” he said. He yanked his phone out of his pocket and scrolled. He read, looking through them. “Oh, God. I can’t believe he did that. Why would he do that?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “I thought it was weird that he was all like, ‘I don’t want to get killed,’ but I didn’t understand.”
Liam typed something on his phone and sent it to Hernandez. He stared at the screen, waiting. “Okay, why isn’t he answering me?”
“I don’t know,” said Dawson. “It’s so unlike him to do something like this. He never wants to go out to any of the scenes. He won’t even look at the crime scene photos.”
Liam was typing. “Answer… me… now… dammit,” he muttered as he typed.
“I just don’t get it.”
“It’s my fault,” said Liam. “I upset him earlier. It apparently made him self-destructive. Or God knows. Maybe I was supposed to rescue him.” He glared at the phone. “Fuck.”
“How’d you upset him?”
Liam pushed past her, going back to pick up his keys. “We gotta go after him.”
“Okay, yeah,” she said. “But let’s take my car. I have a siren I can put in the dash.”
DAWSON stood next to the shed on the property where they’d found Hernandez’s car. There was a long tunnel that burrowed down into the ground and led to a bunker, much like the other two they’d seen—the one where Liam had been kept captive and the one from his days at college with Slater and Worth. It was empty now, but it was pretty clear that Worth and at least one other person, possibly more, had been staying down there.
Hernandez had likely spooked them.
His car was here.
His phone was here. It was cracked, like someone had stomped on it in the kitchen of the abandoned house.
Oh, and then there were the bodies. How long had these acolytes of Worth moldered here in this old house? Why had they killed themselves? Was this what Worth did? Did she just randomly decide it was time for people to pull the trigger, thin out the ranks of her little group now and again?
Liam crossed the field toward her, coming from the ranks of the other police cars, which were now surrounding the place. There were uniforms and technicians and photographers all over the place now, processing the scene.
“Didn’t find his body?” Liam called in greeting.
“No,” she said.
“So, that probably means he’s alive?” said Liam.
“I don’t know,” said Dawson. “I hope so.”
“I wish I would have come out here,” said Liam. “He told me there was a location and it was the place where Destiny was, and I went to see Finn.” He shook his head. “It could have been over, if I’d just listened to Ricky. But I never listened to him. He was there, looking at me, telling me that he was falling for me, and I wasn’t listening. God, I’m such an asshole.”
“Liam—”
“If he dies because of me—”
“He’s not going to die.” She didn’t know that he wasn’t already dead, of course. She didn’t know if Worth was going to kill him at some point in the future. But she said it anyway. She felt like it was what Liam needed to hear.
“I can’t live with this.” Liam hunched his shoulders, jamming his hands into his pockets, as if he was trying to make himself smaller, as if he was trying to squeeze himself out of the world.
“That’s not going to help,” she said. “Blaming yourself? It’s pointless.”
“You were just in my house, hours ago, blaming me for shit that I was doing to you,” he said. “I think we’ve established that a lot of things are my fault.”
She sighed.
He scuffed his foot against the ground. “He’s just a kid, Haysle.”
“We’ll get him back,” she said. “Safe and sound and whole.” And probably in need of a whole hell of a lot of therapy, but she didn’t say that out loud. “You think that there are more places like this, scattered up and down the east coast? Abandoned houses with moldering bodies lying around? What does she do, you think, Liam? She moves in, gets into people’s heads, convinces them to kill themselves and then leaves?”
Liam didn’t answer.
“I don’t think she would have come back here if she wasn’t desperate,” said Dawson.
“Maybe the bodies don’t bother her,” said Liam. “Maybe she likes hanging out with her victims.”
“True,” muttered Dawson. “Okay, well, here’s what we need to do. We need to get together a list of properties owned by people who disappeared from MadCad conventions, and—”
Her phone beeped at her.
She tugged it out. “And then… we can go through it, and find out…” It was a notification from her email. She usually didn’t open email on the phone, because she would forget about it and never manage to respond. But she could see that this email was from Worth. Two in one day? Really? She clicked on it.
“What?” said Liam.
It was another Zoom link.
“What is it?” said Liam.
“It’s from Worth,” said Dawson. “She sent me another Zoom link.”
“Another Zoom link?”
“Oh, right, I didn’t tell you about that.” Dawson walked a few feet away from the shed and peered out at the gathered cars. Was there anyone here who could be helpful tracing this?
“Tell me about what?” said Liam.
The time of the meeting was now. Again, she felt pressured, wanting to hear from Worth if she could. She wasn’t ev
en sure if it would make a difference if she alerted the technology guys to this. She clicked on the link.
Liam stepped closer to her, peering down at her screen. “You’re not going to tell me what’s going on?”
The meeting opened. There was a blank screen. Worth had her video off.
Dawson turned her video off, too, clicking the check box before entering the meeting. Good. She didn’t want Worth to know where she was. She didn’t want to give Worth any information at all.
“How are you, detective?” came Worth’s voice.
“Been better,” said Dawson.
Liam’s expression tightened at the sound of Worth talking, but he didn’t say anything.
“I could have killed him, you know,” said Worth.
“Are you talking about Rick Hernandez?” said Dawson. “Is he with you?”
“Yes, he claims he was there in an official capacity, and I admit that the CCPD does seem to be a bit of a shit show, but I can’t think you really sent him out here on his own after me. That’s too stupid even for you, detective.”
Liam spoke up. “Put him on.”
“Liam?” said Worth, delighted. “You’re listening in? Really?”
“If he’s alive, put him on,” said Liam. “Let us hear his voice.”
“No,” said Worth. “I can’t. He’s not conscious currently.”
“You have the leftovers from Slater’s stash of injectable sedatives, don’t you?” said Dawson. “We’ve never found them, not in any place we’ve searched.”
“I decided to keep him alive in case you need a little nudge,” said Worth. “I think we might put a ticking clock on all this. That would make things more exciting, wouldn’t it? So… how much time do you need to get me my video? Give me a suggestion.”
“I’m not making you a video,” said Dawson.
“If you don’t make a suggestion, I’ll make a suggestion,” said Worth.
Liam turned on her with wide eyes, questions all over him.
Dawson tried to communicate with her eyes that she would explain later.
Blood Indulgence: a serial killer thriller (Phineas and Liam Book 3) Page 12