She racked up the balls again.
Jordan Blake was a different story. Her file made much of the tale self-evident. Jordan was out of control. She’d been on academic probation since she arrived freshman year. She’d been booted out of her sorority pledge class, was in and out of the health clinic for three pregnancy scares. Nobody they talked to could give them any definitive ideas on where she had been in the days before her death. It seemed Jordan Blake was friends with everyone and no one.
Irrefutable fact—the girl was pregnant when she was killed. She’d been stabbed and thrown in the river. Even if the detritus on her body was comprised of the same herbs they’d recovered from Shelby, this wasn’t a crime of love. It was a crime of hate. Or passion.
Sam’s comment about the killer being the baby’s father rolled through her head.
Good girl, bad girl. Angel, devil. How could the same man have so much love for one and so much hatred for the other?
Taylor put up her cue and perched on the edge of the table. There was a thought niggling in the back of her mind, but she was too tired to gain access to it. She gave up for now, hoping it would rear its head in the morning. Maybe she could sleep her way to an answer.
Tossing the empty beer bottle away, she made her way back to her bed, hoping she was foggy enough to escape the nightmares about dead girls begging for her help to find them justice.
She wasn’t.
Bullets were flying in the darkened sky. She heard them whizzing by her head, felt the heat as they ripped through her hair. She saw him go down. She was screaming, clawing at him, trying to get away from the hand that reached up and grabbed her by the throat. She fell beside him. He was dead. She could see the entrance wound, glistening silver in the moonlight. Her hands were slick with blood: it covered all of her, drowning her in its viscous blanket, dragging her down into the weeds as they curled and spread over her body. There was no hope. There was no pain. She gave up her struggle and lay serenely next to the empty soul beside her, waiting for the strangling vines to drag her into the earth to decompose along with him. She heard a voice, turned to hear better. Jordan Blake’s empty eyes stared back at her. She jumped, and tried to roll away, but the vines held her tight. Only her head could move, and she turned away, not wanting to see. When she opened them again, Shelby lay beside her, wearing a crown of thorns, hands reaching for Taylor’s face, silently mouthing, “Please…”
Taylor rolled out of bed, heart kettle-drumming in her chest. Her Glock was in her hand, she was panting in fear.
She tried to control her breathing. Put the gun back under the pillow.
The dreams were getting out of control. She had lost her edge completely; the ghosts of her failures were dragging her down, haunting her every moment.
A thought—indistinct, clouded with fatigue. She needed to find a way to help the girls, but it was too late. They were all dead.
She lay back down, head against the pillow, eyes wide, too tired to even cry anymore.
The Third Day
Twenty-Two
Taylor was knee deep in the squad’s squalor and on her third Diet Coke. She’d come in before five, unable to stay alone anymore. At least there was activity at all hours at the CJC.
She was skimming the ViCAP files Lincoln had pulled when she noticed a very tall man walking toward Price’s door. She didn’t recognize him as department material, figured he was a political, maybe from the mayor’s office. Dismissed him with a distracted nod. She’d learned long ago when to keep her head down.
Half an hour later, she was combing the autopsy reports when Price opened his door and said, “Taylor, could you come here for a minute?”
Taylor grabbed her piles of information, assuming he wanted to see where she stood, though she didn’t have anything new. She realized she hadn’t noticed that good-looking guy leave, and sort of laughed at herself. Oh, well. There were plenty of good-looking men out there.
She was surprised to see the man sitting in front of the Captain’s desk, went on guard immediately. What the hell was this? Was he a lawyer? A new Internal Affairs transfer?
The man didn’t make a move to greet her. He was staring at the floor with his shoulders slumped. His salt-and-pepper hair was standing on end, as if he had been running a comb soaked in egg whites through it to stiffen it into a modified mohawk. He reached up with his right hand and scrubbed his hair, leaving it even more disheveled. That explains that, she thought.
“Price?” She turned to her boss, the question lying heavily between them.
“Dr. John Baldwin, meet Lieutenant Taylor Jackson.” He nodded toward the man, who gave her a brief, surprised glance and a grim smile. Taylor caught a glimpse of green eyes surrounded by impressively deep set smudges, as if he hadn’t slept in a week.