Leave Me Breathless: The Black Rose Collection

by Dakota Willink

  Kace’s eyes are drawn to the movement. “What are you doing here, Eleanor? I specifically told you to stay the fuck home.”

  “To be frank, I could give two shits about what you want or say.”

  He bows his head and runs his fingers through his hair. “How did you find out?”

  “Shut up!” I growl at him and step aside, hinting his presence is not required. “I need to talk to Cap.”

  Kace steps forward. “Eleanor, you need to calm—”

  The captain clears his throat and calmly nods his head. “We were just talking about you, Eleanor.”

  “Talking, huh?” I pass my ex-, take a seat on one of the chairs in front of Cap’s desk, and put my purse in the other on top of Kace’s phone.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means your lips are better skilled in other things.” I may be jumping to conclusions, but those images of him did not lie. I sure as fuck didn’t have blonde hair.

  All this time, I’d been so blind to the tells. Before Nolan, he was barely home, he didn’t kiss me much, and he was always on his phone. These last ten days flash before my eyes, revealing signs I quickly shut down. “I said, take your lying ass and get out.”

  Confusion hits first and then a slight lean back on his heels. “What are you talking about, Elle?”

  I’m not interested in his words, just his movements, so I wink at him and shrug, purposely instigating a fight. “With all the bull shit coming out of your mouth, I’m surprised your breath doesn’t stink.”

  He steps forward with a locked jaw. “Elle,” he clips loudly and looks at Cap, who has not said a word. “This is not the place to talk about what happened at home.”

  “Nothing important happened,” I throw back at him.

  His lips drop to my mouth with a pinched expression.

  Good. I’ve got his attention. I reach into my purse and pull out a little black box. He immediately checks my hand for my ring. It’s still there, but not for long.

  I place the box on the captain’s table and push it in his direction while looking at Kace. “Get out, Kace. I need to talk to Cap about the Bullet Man case.”

  Kace shakes his head and glances at Cap for help. “I told you she knew we picked up the suspect. It’s all over the fucking news.”

  I had not. TV-time was not on my agenda yesterday. I spent all fucking afternoon going through Kace’s files, looking for any clue as to who the Bullet Man was, and instead, the Bullet Man found me.

  “And like I said, Detective Dalton, we need Eleanor on board with this interrogation. In less than twenty-four hours, we have to let her go, and then what? Do you think you’re going to be able to pick her up again? She’ll sue us for defamation so quickly, we won’t be able to touch her with a ten-foot pole.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  Kace resigns and looks at me. “We have the Bullet Woman in custody.”

  I scoff at his audacity. “Bull shit. Just bull shit.”

  A quick glance at the captain tells me, Kace isn’t kidding. So, I open the ring box to reveal the bullet. “You got the wrong person. This got delivered this morning. The courier said they were using an app called ‘Money-life,’ and it was posted late last night.”

  “We’ve got a few calls of random deliveries this morning, but after the first ten yielded turned out pranks, we didn’t even think to continue,” the captain says.

  Kace almost stumbles, not because of his error, but because he knows what the ring box holds—answers.

  Or more questions in this case.

  He doesn’t approach me, and he doesn’t even look at me. The silver bullet is all he sees. He mouths words that never make a sound. His hand slides up to his heart, gripping his shirt before he steps forward.

  “Is that?” The pitch of his voice is too heavy for the words he wants to express. “How… Did you…”

  I don’t clarify. If he can hide things, so can I. “I need you to get out.”

  His eyes glisten in the bright light of Cap’s office, and though he tries to hide the hurt, he does a poor job. “You can’t be serious. Elle, he was mine too.”

  Fuck you. I glance at Cap, who had now put on gloves and retrieved two evidence bags from his desk. “This is the name you received?”

  Location? Yes.

  Someone in this precinct shot me or was responsible for shooting me, and while Cap figured it out, I’d be busy following my own lead.

  “So many fucking shit applications.” The captain grumbles as he places the bullet inside the bag, and then does the same for the ring box. “Detective Dalton?” Cap snaps his head up. “This can be a copycat. I need you to get in contact with Money-Life and explain the ongoing investigation. Maybe they will cooperate and release the records. If not, get a warrant.”

  “Sir…” Kace swallows his anger. “With all due respect, the name of the person who murdered my son is in that bag.”

  The captain nods and bounces his gaze between the both of us. “And that’s exactly why I don’t want you to see it. Keep this to yourself, Detective. We don’t want the suspect’s lawyer getting wind of this.”

  Kace nods his head and looks at me with pleading eyes.

  Maybe he should go plead to the woman he was with last night.

  I swivel my head around, ending the conversation. I was not interested in hearing his excuses. “The captain and I have some things to discuss.”

  “Fine. We will talk about this soon.”

  Without glancing in his direction, I nod and stare at Cap.

  Once the door fully closes and Kace is gone, Cap begins, “First off, let me start with my initial thoughts: this is not the proxy killer’s normal method; we may be dealing with a copycat or this may be a distraction tactic—something our killer has in place in case of getting picked up.”

  “This is true,” I offer. “I didn’t know you had picked up a suspect.”

  Cap holds the evidence bag with the bullet up and studies it, no doubt comparing the engraving technique to Coralee Mitchell’s bullet. “Within the last few days, we’ve received a few of these messages. If things weren’t hard enough, people are playing around with a serious case and turning these into fucking Valentine’s Day cards or something.”

  “It’s the ammunition for my sidearm,” I point out. “After going to Nolan’s office, something kept gnawing at my brain, so I went home and went over all Kace’s notes...” I trail off, realizing I could get Kace in trouble, and then I thought about it better, and I didn’t fucking care. “And—”

  “Stop.” Cap leans back on his chair and grips his armrest, turning his head this way and that while contemplating his actions. When he finds one internal thought he likes, he swiftly nods his head. “Don’t tell me anything that can get you in trouble. You were on medical leave and ordered not to directly interfere with the case in an official compacity, you and Kace disobeyed my orders. Until yesterday, you did not have the official okay to come back.”

  His emphasis on yesterday cues me to his meaning. “Yesterday, after Kace left me....”

  Cap gasps softly and wheels his chair closer. He leans forward, offering me some condolence. “I’m sorry.”

  “He wouldn’t answer any of my calls, and I didn’t want to make a scene at the precinct, so I went home and spent the whole night going over the files from his desk.” I leave out the fact that I took a bottle shot every time I started over. “I didn’t notice much, except that the bullet message matches the gun registered to the victim. The one for Elijah Bitten Senior, Coralee Mitchell, and now mine.”

  “And?” He writes something down on his yellow paper, which captures my attention.

  “Maybe he, or she, has access to gun databases.”

  “It’s a theory,” he speculates. “We’ve started poking around private investigators and technicians, even looking into people from The Tank.”

  The crime lab. “Technicians,” I mumble back, rubbing an itch behind my ear. “He’s smart. I m
ean not of average IQ.”

  “Do you propose I ask the nurse to take an IQ test in order to vindicate her?” Cap scoffs. “That’s merely speculation.”

  My gut is telling me it’s not. “People have come forth with bullets, right? But not just today. There’s an older man who lost his wife eight years ago.”

  The detective nods. “Not many relevant people have come forth.”

  Probably because they are holding onto that name for a rainy day.

  “Yes, we didn’t think much of the case. Of the ones we have, same story: courier drop-off, lots of fingerprints on the packages, none matching any other of the bullets, except for one.”

  My ears perk up. Why did his conversation seem so familiar?

  “The nurse’s. She was also the one in the ER when you were shot. She was the one who came to tell us Tyler had passed.”

  “She’s one of the couriers.” Multiple apps. “Maybe she delivered these packages and lied to us. I don’t think it’s not the nurse.”

  “Proof doesn’t lie, Eleanor.”

  “But it’s open to interpretation,” I remind him. “You want this woman to be the killer so you can end the case, but what happens when more victims turn up?” These courier positions cannot be set up ahead of time.

  “Money-life is a newer app. You can shop for paying jobs by scrolling through a list.” I pull out my phone and bring up the application. “It’s easy to sign up, but you have a three-hour window. If your job isn’t accepted within three hours, you have to post it again. Buyers and sellers get rated. So, if you take a job and you don’t show up, your rating goes lower and then you get kicked off if you go below a two.”

  Cap takes my phone from me. “You posted a job?”

  I had. “You can create a profile and post right away or accept right away. There’s no intermittent period. Whoever posted the job, did it at three a.m., and at seven this morning, there was a messenger at my door delivering my package. You had the nurse in holding, so how did she post it?”

  “A friend or an accomplice?” Cap brainstorms with me. “A lot of drug dealers use this to traffic in the city.”

  Drugs. Pregnancy Center. “Do you think the doctor from the Pregnancy Center has anything to do with the proxy murders? He’s smart, already evading captures, and he doesn’t get his hands dirty.”

  Even as I list the reasons, something doesn’t sit right with me.

  But it does sit right with Cap. “We handed off our case against him to another department in order to pursue the Bullet Man.” Cap shoots me a scalding glare, daring me to give him shit over it, and makes a call. “Bring me all the doctors who the nurse has worked with before working at the hospital.”

  Back to the nurse again.

  “Elle, I’m going to ask you to go home. Leave this with us, and I’ll figure out why the precinct has been implicated.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to show this to the nurse. Do you want to come with me? I could really use your help.”

  “No—” Because I’m no longer interested in the Bullet Man…

  “Captain? Do you read me?” The radio goes off, static crackling in the air.

  Cap snatches it off his desk and presses the transmitter. Before he can answer, the voice, I recognize as Frank’s, fills the air. “We have another victim.”

  “Shit. You continue patrolling the neighborhood and await orders.” Cap heaves himself up. “I’m getting really tired of this shit.” He opens his door and shouts, “Dalton, get your ass back in here. We have work to do.”

  In less than a minute, a sad-eyed Kace walks through the door, looking at me like I had finished breaking his heart.

  I wasn’t done yet.

  13

  Baby Killer

  Eleanor Devero

  The desire for revenge is wired within me. It rushes through my brain and burns through any rational thought, clouding my vision.

  Except I clearly see one goal: revenge.

  For months, I’ve dreamt of watching this person bleed before me, of destroying the person who destroyed me. I pictured it over in over in my mind. Finally, thanks to the Bullet Man, I’m almost certain I found the baby killer.

  First, I want to know why, and then, I’ll set myself free from this rage. Killing the killer will liberate me from the brokenness. Justice and retaliation drive me forward.

  I glance at the stolen phone on the passenger seat before I park behind the squad car in my driveway. A picture of Kace and me, taken right after I took the pregnancy test, adorns his screen. For me, our happy smiles serve as a reminder of what we could never have again—at least not in the same way—but for him, it was a goal.

  All this time, he had been working on getting back to this exact picture-perfect moment, without understanding time changes people. It eradicates sentiment and completely modifies all the fundamental principles of a person.

  The guy in this photo wouldn’t have lied to me.

  The girl in the photo would never have killed for revenge. Even with the bullying, she persevered unscathed and forgave, but nothing on this earth could ever make the new me forgive the person in my house.

  Not even Kace.

  Yesterday, I would’ve relented and allowed the unknown to harbor all my hate, but knowing the identity of the killer changes everything. It intensifies the putrid hatred.

  Someone I trusted—who attended the memorial service, had the key to my house, and watched me fall apart—killed my baby, and now she was going to pay.

  I swing the door of my car open and stick Kace’s phone into my back pocket. My purse and gun are tucked deliberately at my side. The walk up the small stone drive, surrounded by grass, takes an eternity. I deliberate on the most important moments of my life. Graduation, communion, academy, engagement—all shadowed in comparison to this very moment.

  Confronting the killer.

  She’s going to beg for her life. I’ll make her feel what my baby felt, over and over again. People don’t know, and Kace refuses to believe it, but babies feel pain, and Tyler felt pain inside me. I failed to protect him.

  My baby, with perfect toes, cute nose, and firing synapses, suffered in my uterus.

  The bullet pierced the placenta and tore through his stomach. He didn’t die instantly; he suffocated because that bitch shot him!

  God, it makes sense now—most of it. She wanted me out of the way to be with Kace.

  A niggling thought halts my hand, keeping it from turning the doorknob. Kace’s words fill my head, pounding against the crevices of my mind and battling my instinct. ‘After revenge, then what?’

  After I torture her and make her suffer, I’ll put a bullet through her lungs and watch as she struggles to breathe. Then, I’ll pour water down her throat, teasing her with death, until the pain is so much, she’s begging.

  Apologies are unnecessary. People who murder babies don’t deserve forgiveness. She’s a heartless, soulless killer, and I feel no remorse in the idea of ending her pitiful life before she hurts other people.

  Retaliation isn’t release. More of Kace’s words flow through my mind, but this time they don’t stall me.

  I twist the knob, knowing wounds never close, and I didn’t want them to. I’d rather spend the rest of my life in jail than live knowing I let the person get away with murder. Here, the Unborn Victims Law doesn’t apply, and the ‘born alive’ regulation for homicide still upholds. To be charged with murder in any degree would be a legal mess, mainly because nothing traced back to her, and unfortunately, I didn’t die too.

  The only justice left for me was an eye for an eye, and I’d be happy to carve each of those eyes out one … by… one.

  I throw the door to our modest home open. Kace’s partner, Stefanie Frank, let herself in with the spare key. She’s standing near the fireplace, holding a picture frame in her hands. My body revolts at the idea of her touching my baby’s 3D ultrasound picture.

  I study her, searching for any sign of guil
t for her moral transgressions in her posture. Nothing. Her shoulders are pulled back, her feet shoulder-width apart, and her body’s not showing any sign of discomfort.

  I’d almost be tricked into believing her innocence. Like I had every day since the murder. Things I noticed over these last eleven weeks finally filter through the haze of feelings.

  She smiled at the wake. Her face showed signs of happiness, even when she frowned.

  The messages about trading partners.

  Kace’s responses.

  My blood pumps rapidly while I force my facial expressions to remain stoic. Being a human lie detector only works when I’m calm and focused, and when I have a baseline of natural behavior.

  Condemning her to death requires a confession, so I can live with myself after, and so Kace and Cap can understand.

  Gently, I close the door and brace myself for the act of a lifetime. Clutching my purse and gun close to my side, I saunter over to the living room.

  It takes her a moment to realize she’s not alone. “Hey, Ellie,” she says while placing the picture back on the mantle. The pitch of her voice remains monotone, meaning no excitement in seeing me here.

  Of course. She expected Kace.

  “Hey, Frank.” My pitch comes out perfectly, and the smile comforts the bitch. I glance around the room as I force my throbbing heart back into place. “Where’s Kace?”

  “Oh…”

  There it is. The drop in the tone and the slight slack of her jaw. I caught her off guard. I don’t give her much time to think. “Weren’t you two working on the case today? He told me about a new victim.”

  “He did?” She stands behind the couch—the same one I’ve been sleeping on for months because of her—and eyes the pillowcase and sheets I didn’t put away. “You two are talking now?”

  Technically she told me about the other body at Cap’s office, but pissing her off is part of the fun. Plus, she knows Kace and I talked, but she’s explicitly referring to the last twenty-four hours. “Yeah, I saw him at the precinct.” Cover my bases, in case anyone told her I was there. “Didn’t he tell you?”