The Girl Next Door (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery Book 4)

by A J Rivers

  My blood runs cold at the thought of being so close to the killer, and him slipping away. Everything in me says I should have chased the sound. I should have gone after the person as soon as I heard them moving around behind the house. But I've forced myself to become more cautious. I can't fling myself blindly into situations the way I used to. During my time as an active agent, being fearless in the face of uncertainty and danger was an asset. It meant I went into situations others wouldn't. I hunted suspects down and overcame obstacles to carry out my missions. But it wasn't without its risks. It got me in trouble with Creagan. It put my life in danger. It was that same determination to do what needed to be done and unwillingness to wait around for others or follow a rigid protocol that slowed me down, that put me in several tight, dangerous positions over the last year.

  I honestly can't say I'm totally reformed. My experiences haven't suddenly transformed me into the type of person who is going to watch every step and always make the decisions others want me to. But it stopped me last night. It kept me from running into the backyard to find out who was there and forced me back across the street to my house to wait for Sam rather than taking it on myself.

  I know it was the right thing to do. The logical part of my brain reminds me this person just murdered a woman and being on leave means being willing to rely on the police in situations like this. But there's still a voice in the back of my mind. It reminds me of the open door and the blood glistening in the light. If I had gone after him, he wouldn't have had the chance to eliminate the evidence of him being there. I could have stopped them from getting away.

  The thought of Ruby still lying in her living room makes my stomach turn. She doesn't deserve that. A woman who has been through everything she told me, has already been made to feel like she doesn’t matter. She has been ground down and peeled away bit by bit. But she dragged herself out of it. She overcame what so many don't and tried to escape with her life. Now she was being made into even less. She was tossed aside like trash and left to be ignored and neglected again.

  I won't let that happen. Getting dressed as fast as I can, I rush across the street to Ruby's house. Just like Sam described when he came back to my house last night, the door is closed, and the smear of blood across the front was washed away. I hurry up onto the porch and tug on the door, but it doesn't move.

  I head over to the window. The first thing I notice is there are no curtains. I was sure there were sheer curtains hanging over the glass last night. It obscured the people and made it so I couldn't see the details of their faces. But now the glass is completely open. Cupping my hands around my eyes, I press them to the glass and look inside.

  The house is empty.

  It isn't just that Ruby's body is no longer lying where I saw it. Everything in the house—all the boxes that were scattered on the floor, the belongings placed on tables and shelves, the sweater hanging from the banister—is gone.

  My heart clenches in my chest, and my head feels hot. I don't understand what I'm seeing. Yesterday the house was full. It was the mess of a woman just moving in and finding places for everything she brought from her old life and what she bought for her new one. The house was becoming hers, filling with life and energy. Now it was cold and still.

  Back home, I call Sam.

  "Hey," he answers happily. "I was just about to call you. Did you want to grab something to eat before game night with Janet and Paul tonight?"

  "She's gone," I say.

  "Janet? What happened?" Sam asks, sounding startled by the announcement.

  "No, Ruby," I tell him. "Her body is gone."

  "Emma, we talked about this last night." The surprise is gone from his voice and has been replaced by caution. "I know you think you saw something, but you were having a dream."

  "No, Sam. I wasn't dreaming. I saw it happen. I saw her body. But it's all gone. The house is completely empty," I tell him.

  "I'm sorry. I want to talk to you about this, but I have to go. We're rounding up warrants today and this one could get a little tense. I'll see you when I got off work. Okay?"

  "See you tonight," I say with a sigh.

  I try not to let it upset me that Sam didn't call to involve me in the warrant cases today. That's something we have been doing together. Now deputized into the department, I've had a chance to be a part of Sam's work. I've enjoyed the chance to help him. But the more invested I get, the more he seems to pull back. He doesn't want me to push too hard, and he worries about what I've been through. He doesn't talk about it, but I know the thought of me going back to my other house and returning to active duty in the Bureau is never far from his thoughts.

  Another long jog brings me back by Ruby's house. I stare at it, wanting to see something that will tell me what happened. I look at the attached garage. The door is pulled down tight, suddenly reminding me of her brother's car sitting in the driveway. The first time I noticed activity at the house, the door was slightly open, but there was no sign of a car inside the garage. I've never seen any vehicle other than her brother's, or what I assume was her brother's, the night before last. I don't know what it means, but it bothers me.

  A fruitless call to Bellamy and lingering over boxes from the storage unit now sitting in my attic take up the middle of the day. Finally, it's an hour before Sam should be showing up, and I get the cinnamon rolls out to warm to room temperature so I can bake them. The house fills with the intoxicating scent of cinnamon and hot yeast dough as the rolls rise and brown in the oven. A thick ribbon of decadent cream cheese frosting is cascading over the rolls, filling the crevices and pooling between them when the front door opens.

  "You made cinnamon rolls," Sam almost groans with pleasure as he comes into the kitchen.

  He comes up beside me and dips his finger into the frosting, sucking it away before he dips his head to kiss me.

  "I see that the frosting got precedence over me," I comment.

  He grins and goes in for another dip, bringing this one to my mouth so I can sample the creamy sweetness.

  "What do you say we turn off all the lights, close the curtains, and watch movies tonight. Just the two of us," Sam offers.

  "You and the cinnamon rolls?" I raise an eyebrow.

  He shrugs. "You can come, too, if you want."

  I start transferring the rolls onto a dish to bring with us.

  "Janet and Paul live across the street, Sam. I think they'll notice your squad car sitting in front of my house."

  He gives a dramatic sigh.

  "Trivial Pursuit it is, then. I'm going to go change really fast. Be ready in a minute," he says.

  Sam takes his black duffel bag into my bedroom and emerges a few moments later wearing civilian clothes instead of his uniform. He picks up the rolls, and we head over to Janet and Paul's house. Like we do most weeks, we settle in to dig into the evening's snacks before actually getting into the game. We listen to a few stories about their week at work and the accomplishments of Eva, the ten-year-old granddaughter they are raising. It's good to hear she's thriving after the trauma she went through over the summer. The case she was involved in was what brought me back to Sherwood. There was a time when we were terrified we wouldn't find her alive. Now she's growing fast and enjoying a new, stronger bond with the father who missed much of her early life but has returned, dedicated to being there for her.

  They finish, and as I reach for a wedge of pita to dip in Janet's amazing spinach artichoke spread, I glance over at them.

  "Did you notice anything strange at Ruby's house last night?" I ask.

  "Emma," Sam hisses under his breath.

  I look at him with widened eyes, trying to quiet him. I don't plan on giving them the full detail of what happened, but I need to know if they noticed anything.

  "Ruby?" Paul asks.

  "Who's that?" Janet asks.

  My eyes snap over to her.

  "You didn't meet her?" I ask.

  "No," Janet says, peeling off some cinnamon roll. "Should we have?"
>
  "She moved in next door a few days ago," I explain.

  "Really? I didn't realize anyone was moving in," Paul says.

  "You didn't see her? Or the lights on in her house?" I ask.

  He shakes his head. "The only room in the house with windows toward that house are in our bedroom. They have blackout curtains on them, so we don't see any light coming in from anything," he says.

  "But you haven't seen her there or her brother bringing things to the house?" I ask.

  Both shake their heads.

  I'm still reeling from the revelation when Sam walks me home a few hours later. He's crowing in victory after collecting all his little pie wedges first, but I'm too confused to celebrate with him.

  "I don't understand," I say when we get into the house.

  "That I'm magnificent at trivia?" he asks, puffing his chest out playfully.

  "That they didn't meet Ruby. That they didn't even know someone was moving in," I clarify.

  He sags. "Emma, please. Don't start on that again right now."

  "She was there, Sam. She was in my house. I had conversations with her."

  "Just like you said, Janet and Paul never met her and didn't even know someone was moving in," he points out.

  "Are you suggesting I created all my interactions with her in my head?" I ask defensively.

  "I'm just wondering how you explain them not knowing anything about her."

  "I don't know. They both work a lot during the day. When they aren't working, they are taking care of Eva and helping Jimmy get back on his feet so he can be a good father. Maybe they've been so busy they just didn't notice. They missed her," I offer.

  Sam looks at me suspiciously, but I'm not backing down. She was there. I spoke to her. We shared stories. She baked me a cake.

  Then I saw her body. I can't just put her behind me and pretend I never knew she was there.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Him

  They took so much from him. His past, his name, his future. It was all gone, shed from him so easily they acted as though it never even happened. It was easy for them, and that's what made it taste so bitter sliding down the back of his throat. They didn't understand. They never would. All that mattered to them was what they saw. Their lives were sketched out for them. Paint-by-number representations of what was, rather than what was possible.

  Only he knew there was more. Only he could see what could be.

  They had taken so much from him, and every minute they just kept taking more. There wasn't as much to take now. He had already lost so much. Nearly all the most precious things in his life were gone. But he would keep going. What he did have was enough to keep him going.

  One thing they couldn't take from him was his memories. They could force him away, blot him out, make him as though he had never been. But what resided inside him was his, and there was nothing they could to do take it. No matter how they tried, they couldn't split him apart and gut him. They couldn’t scrape away his inner being. He may no longer exist to them, but fragments of all they once were, were still embedded in him.

  They tried to steal his memories from him. They tried to take away what lay ahead of him and determine what his life would be. But he wouldn't let that happen. Little by little, he was crafting that life for himself. The memories were coming with him. They were the beginning, the structure. He built around them.

  He spread the newspaper clippings and torn magazine pages out on the table in front of him. Some were aging, the years curling their edges and starting to discolor the paper. Others were new and barely read. One pulled his attention, and he picked it up out of the center. The newspaper image was of two people, stiff and emotionless as they leaned back against a desk.

  He knew the room. An office in the FBI headquarters. The article detailed the exceptional work of two agents bringing a particularly intense case to a close. He ran his fingers along the image of Emma. She looked stark and intense, but even with her hair pulled back into a tight bun and wearing a severe suit, she was beautiful.

  He looked at the second picture, and his jaw and the back of his throat tingled. The laughter bubbled up inside him, and he couldn't hold it back. It was the last picture take of Emma and Greg together. Looking at them standing beside each other, no one would know they were supposed to be a couple. They looked like they barely wanted to be in the same room together; much less were in a relationship. It wouldn't be long after that picture that their relationship fractured, and they were little more to each other than a memory.

  Chapter Eighteen

  "No one? You haven't seen anyone near that house at all?"

  Jim Corcoran, one of the neighbors from near the end of the street, shakes his head in response to my question.

  "No. Not in a long time," he says. "You say there's a young woman moving in there?"

  "There was," I answer, trying to ignore the somewhat lecherous note in his voice. "Thanks."

  I leave his porch and make my way down the sidewalk and to the next house. A woman I can only remember talking to two or three times since I moved back opens the door slightly. She peers at me hesitantly, her eyes flicking around my feet and behind me like she's trying to suss out why I'm there.

  "Hello?" she says.

  "Hi. It's Emma. From down the street," I say.

  "I know who you are."

  "Great. It's Ellen, right?" I ask.

  "Yes."

  Her eyes keep moving, and she grips the side of her door tighter by the moment. I want to reassure her I'm not there to sell anything and I'm not wielding a petition for her to sign, but I just continue to smile instead. I hope it's the kind of pleasant, unassuming smile that makes people want to be cooperative and puts them at ease. I'm not sure. I don't know if I have one of those smiles in my collection.

  "I just have a quick question for you." I twist slightly and point toward the house beside Janet and Paul. "Have you met Ruby? The woman moving into that house?"

  Ellen leans slightly out of the door and peers in the direction I'm pointing.

  "Ruby? I don't know anybody by that name," she frowns.

  "You never even met her?" I ask.

  Ellen shakes her head. "No. I never even heard someone was moving in there. Usually, we know when someone new is moving into the neighborhood."

  I let out a sigh. "That's so strange."

  "Something wrong with her?" she asks in response to my mutter.

  I avoid coming right out with the news that she's dead. It would be better for them to know who I'm talking about before they start figuring out how to feel about her death.

  "It's just that she said she walked around the neighborhood, introducing herself to the neighbors. That's how I met her. When I came home from a jog, she was standing at my sidewalk. She told me she met the people on this street," I explain.

  Ellen shakes her head again. "Maybe someone else, but not me."

  "Thank you," I say, feeling weighed down with disappointment.

  "I'm sorry I couldn't be more help," she offers.

  "It's alright," I sigh. "You have a good day."

  The next two houses I visit are largely the same. No one seems to have met Ruby. They are surprised to hear me mention someone moving into the house, much less her telling me she was walking up and down the street, introducing herself to the neighbors. I'm discouraged and even more confused when I finally get the first small bit of information that has anything to do with her.

  "I didn't see a woman," Brandon Larsen tells me when I get to the house three doors down from mine on the opposite side. "But I did see a car at that house."

  I perk up slightly. "You did? What kind of car?"

  "Well, it actually wasn't so much a car. It was a truck. From Davis Landscaping Solutions," he nods.

  "Davis Landscaping Solutions? That sounds familiar," I raise an eyebrow.

  "It should. They're those boys who come take care of some of the lawns around here. They're up here usually a couple times a week during the summer, a
little less around this time of year," he says.

  "But why would they be at that house if no one was living there?" I muse, trying to guide him into the realization Ruby had moved in. "She must have hired them to come do some work when she first got here."

  "Not necessarily," he counters. "They're up at that house every few weeks to keep up with the lawn so it doesn't get out of control. The company that takes care of the house sends them. I only mention it because they came twice in the same week, and like I said, that's unusual this time of year."

  Now that he mentions it, I seem to remember seeing landscapers mowing the grass during the summer. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now something else he said pops back into my head.

  "The company that takes care of the house… is it Lionheart Property Management?" I ask.

  "I believe so," he says.

  I nod. "Thank you. I appreciate your help."

  I hurry down off the porch and rush back to my house. Without even going inside, I hop into my car and head into town. Pamela isn't happy to see me when I burst through the door, but I don't have the time or patience to concern myself with her today.

  "I've already told Derrick all about the terrifying rope, Emma," she rolls her eyes. "You don't need to fill him in."

  I won’t even dignify that with a response. I walk right past her desk and to Derrick's office. He's on the phone, but gestures for me to come in. He finishes the conversation and gives me a pleasant smile.

  "Hi, Emma. Always nice to see you. Something going on with the house you need our help with?" he asks.

  "I'm not here about my house," I tell him.

  "Oh?"

  "The woman who moved into the house across the street from mine is… missing. I was wondering if you had any contact information for her so I could make sure she's alright," I say.

  Derrick folds his hands on the top of the desk and tilts his head to one side.