She had a point. But…
“Well, we can’t spend the rest of the fucking year in hiding…” St. James trailed off at my look of annoyance.
He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest.
“The bodies,” Royal said. “Have you been able to identify any of them?”
Yao shook his head. “No. We tried, but everything that would be able to identify them are missing. No dental imprints. No fingers to imprint. No identifying features. Hell, the only thing that has been even semi-identifiable in any of them was one of them was missing an eye. He looked like he had it ripped out. His eyelid was missing, too. Other than being dead for three days each…”
Royal held up her hand, stopping him.
“Wait. Did you say he was missing an eye?” she asked.
Yao frowned. “Yes.”
Royal stood up, her eyes alight with excitement.
Then she ran out of the room.
“Told you she shouldn’t have been allowed in here…” St. James grumbled.
I gritted my teeth and clenched my hand onto the chair to keep myself in it.
“This affects her, Judge St. James,” Luke said. “We talked about…”
Royal burst back in, Tanika with her.
“Tanika,” Royal said. “Remember that call last week where the guy killed himself?”
Tanika nodded. “Tell them what happened,” Royal ordered.
Tanika frowned, then started in.
“A woman called in saying her husband had killed himself,” she said. “He hung himself. And to get him down, his wife cut him down with a circular saw. But the saw slipped, and she ended up cutting into the man’s face.”
I felt bile rise in my stomach.
“Were there other signs on any of the others?” Royal asked Yao.
“Not necessarily…” Yao pulled up his computer. “The medical examiner just found signs of heart attacks in two of the others. One died of some sort of infection. The only other one that didn’t die of something natural was a man that had signs of a car accident…” he paused, reading. “Head wound. Took a pole to the…”
“Chest,” Royal guessed.
Yao nodded. “Actually, yes.”
“They were dead when they got where Marcus put them. He’s stealing the dead bodies from a morgue,” Royal stated. “We took two of those calls over the last week. Tanika told me about the woman cutting her husband down. The pole to the chest guy was a call that I took the day before we left for Louisiana. You said that guy was the one in my apartment, correct?”
Yao looked at his notes, then nodded.
“Where’s he stealing the bodies from?” I asked. “Someone would’ve reported it if they were any around here.”
“Not necessarily,” Royal shook her head. “Not if they’d already had the funerals.”
I nodded in understanding. If the funerals had already been done, then the family likely wouldn’t check on them ever again.
“So we need to contact funeral homes, and check to see if any of the recently deceased bodies are still where they’re supposed to be.” Yao stood up. “I’ll get on that now.”
Then Yao was gone.
“We’ll reconvene after lunch,” Roberts stood. “Judge St. James, I think we’ve got it from here.”
The asshole nodded as if he’d actually helped in some way. “You’re welcome.”
The prosecutor left with a “call me if you need me” which left the two chiefs in front of me.
Royal was standing by herself, Tanika having returned to her post at some point in the last ten minutes. Leaving the four of us.
“I hate him,” Luke said. “I’ve wanted to say that for the last five years. But, Justice, you didn’t make any friends or do yourself any favors back there. You need to be careful…”
“His daughter is the love of my life,” I said point-blank. “I don’t give a flying fuck if I did or didn’t make any friends. The guy is a piece of shit and he can rot in hell for all I care.”
Royal stepped up beside me and pressed her hand to the back of my neck.
“Justice…”
“He’s right,” Luke said. “Your dad is a piece of shit.”
Royal burst out laughing. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
***
Hours later, when Royal and I were making dinner side by side, she bumped me with her hip.
“You’re not the only one in love, you know,” she said, tossing a piece of pepperoni into her omelet. “A part of me has loved you since you saved my brother’s chair.”
I brought her in with a hand hooked behind her neck. When she was close enough, I dropped a kiss onto her mouth.
“And the other part?” I teased.
“The other part fell in love, lock, stock and barrel, when you knocked your mom and dad into the water and laughed your ass off about it.”
I grinned wickedly.
“I’ll do it all over again.” He laughed. “Just to see you smile.”
She threw in two more pepperonis, then turned off the stove.
My omelet, which was halfway cooked, flew straight out of my mind when I got my first good look at her face.
“Kiss me,” she ordered, flipping off the burner.
I didn’t waste time.
Picking her up and dropping her ass onto the counter beside the ingredients we had spread all over the counter, I deftly pushed between her thighs and leaned into her.
The kiss was hard, wet and unforgiving.
“Justice…” she whispered.
“Yeah?” I pulled back, my breath sawing in and out of my lungs.
“What you did today…” she swallowed. “That meant the world to me. Nobody has ever had my back like that before.”
I grinned then, dropping another kiss onto her forehead. “Get used to it. You’re mine now. Nobody hurts what’s mine. Not even your asshole father.”
She pushed my shirt up then, clearly indicating our talk time was over.
I lifted my arms and bent forward, then stepped back to help her lose the shirt. Seconds later, I was doing the same to her.
Her breasts fell free with a soft jiggle and I moaned at the sight.
“They’re just boobs, Justice.” She laughed.
“They’re my boobs, baby,” I said, cupping them. “All mine.”
“Baby,” she said. “They’ve only ever been yours.”
I liked the sound of that. I liked the sound of that a lot.
I made a mental note to talk to my dad about getting my mother’s engagement ring. Because I had no doubts now. She was mine. Forever.
I leaned forward until I could reach her breast with my mouth, then twirled my tongue around her nipple.
She gasped, her hands going to my hair.
“The other one,” she urged. “Lick the other one, too.”
Since she asked so sweetly, I did. Switching between both of them until she was writhing on the counter.
“There’s only one time that I feel right,” Royal said, squeezing my face. “And it’s when I’m with you. When I’m forgetting all of our problems, and what brought us together in the first place.” She swallowed hard. “I have to be honest here. I wasn’t all that ‘right’ before you came along. I was moving through life while only half living it…and then there was you.”
I kissed her then, unable to help myself.
“I love you,” I told her.
She was saved by the bell—or the ringing of my phone.
I sighed and pulled it out of my pocket, glancing at the readout.
“Yao,” I found myself saying as I answered.
“She was right,” Yao said. “Twelve graves have been dug over the last week, and only five of them have actual bodies in them.”
Well, that explained that.
“How is he getting them?” I asked, squeezing Royal’s hip.
“He’s digging them up.” Yao paused. “Or, a
t least, his minions are. We’ve got four of them in our interrogation rooms now. Two that work at the cemetery, and two that work for a local moving van company.”
Joy surged through me.
“They’re not talking, though.” Yao sighed. “We’re going to charge them with everything that we can, however. They’re not going to be going back to Eleventh Street for him to use whenever he wants for a while.”
Thank God for small favors.
“He’ll just find someone else,” I found myself saying.
Yao grunted in affirmation. “Everyone’s so fuckin’ scared of him that I don’t doubt it for a second.”
I hated that he agreed with me and that I was right.
It was time to pull out the big guns.
This couldn’t go on.
Marcus needed to get gone, and the people of Eleventh Street, as well as Royal and I, needed to return back to normal life. Life when we weren’t fucking scared to go out our door because the threat of Marcus Gomez was always there.
“Do you need me to come in?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” he said, understanding what I meant.
Royal hadn’t, though.
When we hung up, she was once again dressed and presentable.
She was also looking worried.
“You have to go help with their interrogations tomorrow?” she asked.
No. I was going to put myself out there as bait tomorrow.
Not that she needed to know that.
The less she knew, the better, in my opinion.
At least when it came to Marcus.
“Yeah,” I lied.
I felt like shit immediately after the word came out of my mouth.
“That sucks,” she said. “We were going to get to sleep in.”
The thought of waking up with her in my arms was like a soothing balm to my burning soul.
“Yeah,” I said. “But this will help.”
And it would.
It would help, and hopefully by tomorrow night, it would all be over.
Chapter 21
I planned to work out and eat right so I’d have a nice body for the summer, but then I remembered that I like food more than people.
-Royal’s secret thoughts
Royal
I knew that something was wrong the moment that I woke up. Other than the aches and pains that were wracking my body, I was missing something essential to me.
Justice.
Justice was gone, and he hadn’t kissed me goodbye or even woken me.
Granted, it was rolling onward toward ten in the morning, but he usually woke me up when he was going for a run. Let alone when he was leaving me for a long time.
Brows furrowing, I threw the covers off and crawled out of Justice’s bed, heading straight for the bathroom.
I groaned when I got there and realized that I’d started my period—hence feeling run over by a goddamn Mack Truck.
No wonder I was in such a shitty mood. My period arriving was the worst of intruders.
And I’d be feeling it for days.
Dayyyyys.
Long, awful, no good, very bad days.
Frowning hard at the box of tampons, I contemplated what I wanted to do.
I knew what I should do—get up and move.
But I wasn’t working today, and Justice wasn’t here to tell me that we couldn’t lay in bed all day.
For that reason, I did what any sane woman would do—crawled back under the covers and prayed for death.
It didn’t take me.
In fact, when I woke up next at twelve, it was with the sinking feeling that Justice really should’ve called or come home.
But the house was as quiet as a tomb.
A chill washed over me as I pulled my phone from the charger.
When I did, a piece of paper floated down onto the floor, and I leaned over and grabbed it without falling to the floor.
Squinting my blurry eyes, I read the note.
Then read it again.
Gone to get groceries. Then to run a few errands. Also, your place burned to the ground. Love you.
That was all it said.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Also, your place burned to the ground.
Thinking I needed to talk to him—and now—I dialed his number.
But it went straight to voicemail.
It did this twice more before I decided he was likely purposefully ignoring me because he didn’t want to have to explain about my place.
But I found that I wasn’t nearly as upset about it as I might have been at one time.
In fact, besides the piece of shit feeling that I had going on at the moment, I was actually a pretty happy—and giddy—piece of shit.
The next thing on the agenda was to call my brother.
He, luckily, answered.
But I didn’t like what I heard.
***
Justice
“Mic check. One. Two,” I said.
“It’s working,” Yao said into my ear.
I had a very discreet, very high-tech earpiece in my ear that allowed me to hear what the team was doing and saying, as well as doing the same for them.
I still felt like I had a rock lodged in my gut.
“Remember,” Yao said. “Just look like you’re here to work. Don’t seem…”
“Overeager,” I repeated our decision. “I know.”
Yao sighed. “I got a bad feeling about this.”
I did, too.
And I wasn’t sure why.
I had three officers in my apartment upstairs, ready to come down at a moment’s notice. There were four stationed at Stratton’s old place.
And two were in the convenience store.
All of them ready and willing to act at the first sign of aggression on Marcus’ part.
We had our bases covered.
But it didn’t matter. I still felt like something was wrong.
When I got the text a moment later from Royal, that rock grew to boulder-sized in a heartbeat.
Royal: I’m going to visit with my brother. He’s being weird.
I told myself over and over for the next five minutes that there was nothing wrong, but the longer I tried to convince myself, the worse it got. It stayed like this until I couldn’t stop myself.
I had to call her.
“What are you doing?” Yao asked, sounding concerned.
I wiggled my phone, knowing that he’d see the movement.
“Calling Royal,” I answered.
“But Marcus…”
“Isn’t here yet,” I said. “It won’t take long.”
I was playing bait.
I was standing in my shop, working on a car, hoping it would be enough to flush Marcus out.
Only it hadn’t happened yet. Not in two long, never-ending hours.
“Why?” Yao asked.
“Because she sent me a text that she was going to visit her brother,” I said. “Said that he’s being weird.”
Yao grumbled something on his end of the microphone.
“I thought that she was at your home…” he paused. “Marcus just pulled onto Eleventh.”
The clearly lifeless tone of his voice sent chills down my spine.
“Yao,” I said when Royal didn’t answer. “Can you get someone to go to her brother’s place? Royal isn’t answering.”
As I said that, I turned off my phone, hating the fact that she didn’t answer.
Then I bent over the front of an old car—one that’d been a project of mine since I’d bought the place—and waited for Marcus to show.
It didn’t take long.
In fact, it took a lot less time than I thought it would seeing as Marcus was normally one to make me wait.
“So…” Marcus said as he strolled into the forecourt of my garage. “You’re back.”
“Been working,” I said. “Gotta make money to buy mys
elf food and all that.”
Marcus crossed his arms over his chest. The black swirling designs of his tattoos looking darker and more contrasting against his olive skin tone under the fluorescent shop lights.
“You failed to accomplish the task I set upon you a few weeks ago,” he said. “Why?”
I dropped the wrench I’d been holding, and it clattered loudly to the floor beneath the open hood of the car.
I turned my head and stared at the piece of shit in front of me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But when did I become your bitch? If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.”
Marcus grinned then.
“Yeah?” he asked.
And the way he said ‘yeah’ had a chill of dread practically ripping down my spinal cord.
“What is it that you want from me, Gomez?” I asked. “Because I’m not liking being led around like a dog.”
Marcus leaned his hip against the part of the jack that was holding the car off the ground, looking for all the world as if he was barely affected by the conversation.
I followed suit, leaning my elbows against the metal of the car and crossing my arms.
I would not show him how much I hated him.
I would not.
Would. Not.
“I wanted you to do what you were told,” he snapped. “Yet you couldn’t even follow simple orders. Now, I’m going to have to show you why that was wrong.”
I opened my mouth to ask ‘what he was going to do,’ but another car pulled into the parking lot then.
“Go close the doors,” Marcus ordered, eyes locked on mine.
I would humor him.
Mostly.
Who I wanted to see had eyes on the shop regardless of the big bay doors being open or not.
After closing the doors, I walked back to my original position and waited.
That was when I heard the hard ‘thump’ that reverberated from the inside out.
I tensed.
Who was in the trunk?
But, for some reason, I didn’t need confirmation.
I knew exactly who it would be from the moment that the door to the car opened.
“Open the trunk, Bruno.”
Bruno opened the trunk using a button inside the car, not bothering to get out.
“Bruno, get the fuck up and bring her to me,” Marcus ordered.
Make Me Page 17