Angela awoke sprawled face down on the floor. Her head thumped, her eyelids were heavy. She rolled onto her right side slowly and, when she completed the motion, lifted her left palm off the linoleum. It was slick and sticky. There was a palm imprint where she had pressed against the ground. Rubbing her fingertips against the meat of her hand she registered the substance—blood.
She jerked to attention and scanned her torso for wounds. Nothing there. She glanced toward her extended right arm and saw, just beyond it, a bloody cooking blade. Beyond that, a drooping, middle-aged man’s body was mounted in a stockade. He wasn’t moving—or breathing—and there was a deep laceration on the inside of his upper-right thigh. Dried blood covered his leg below the wound and viscous blood spread across the floor beneath it.
Her heart fluttered in her throat.
“Hello,” she said aloud, her voice hoarse and tired. No response from her limp companion.
Oliver Knox. His name is Oliver Knox.
“Oliver?” Still nothing. Did I kill him?
She remembered holding her phone and reaching for the knife. And then the sharp, stabbing pain.
Was someone else here?
She sat up and surveyed the room. She was alone aside from Knox. She felt her neck—nothing there. Maybe a small bump.
There’s blood everywhere.
She reached for her phone, which was next to her against the wall, smeared with blood. She wiped it clean and checked for videos. But there weren’t any. There was a 23-minute-old message from Nicole, though, asking about Samara.
Samara!
It came back to her: Samara and Mark had been hours away from release; Angela had to film one last series of videos with Oliver and send them to Samara’s kidnapper; she had to get the videos to him in time or she and Mark would die.
Where are the videos of Oliver I took? How long was I out?
She had no messages from the kidnapper yet. Maybe there was still time. Did he know?
She marinated on the thought.
Was I set up to fail? Does that mean Samara and Mark are . . . ?
She couldn’t text the kidnapper—he had been very clear that he would kill Samara if Angela asked any more questions. So if she wasn’t dead already, she would be then. Detective Linares had made no progress finding Samara and Mark’s captor, so he was useless, too. He probably thinks I’m involved anyway after that bullshit with Trickett and McElroy. They do, for sure.
I could just . . . go . . . . But where? Mexico? “He’d kill them for sure then,” she mumbled aloud. If they’re even alive.
What if I got rid of him myself? She looked over at Oliver’s blanched body, the fleshy gash in his leg, the syrupy blood that had drained from it—and quickly turned away, covering her mouth and chewing back vomit. Brilliant idea. I can’t even look at it without puking. They’d figure out Oliver came here before disappearing anyway, and I’d still be fucked.
Maybe I should just . . . call Linares . . . . She scanned her bloody back room and her bloody clothes, the blood-encrusted knife and her blood-smeared phone. There is no way he would believe me . . .
A blaring shriek pierced the room, a shrill, ear-rending, two-note blast she wasn’t sure if she felt or heard first. In microseconds her pulse surged to the brink of cardiac arrest. Before she could consciously process the intrusion, she’d realized the source of the threat—her phone, sitting on the ground next to her, still set with all the notifications at maximum volume. Detective Linares had just sent her a text, a response to a message apparently sent from her phone just before she received Nicole’s text. He was on his way, he said. He would be there shortly.
What the fuck?!
Angela shot to her feet. The room would be impossible to clean before Detective Linares arrived. She could only close the door and hope he didn’t go back there. She needed to rinse herself, though, and she had to make the trek to the bathroom without getting blood elsewhere in the house.
Leave everything except the phone. Get to the shower.
She tiptoed to the bathroom, tore off her clothes, tossed them in the tub—anything leather would be ruined, but she had to flush away the blood—then she stepped in and turned on the shower. Trying to process what was happening, she scrubbed her skin violently with a loofa. There was no denying that a message was sent from her phone to Detective Linares. But she had no memory of sending it. It had to have been someone else. But who? And what the hell am I going to tell Linares? There is no time!
Arms bent at a 90-degree angle, hands and elbows raised to shoulder level, she looked down to scrutinize herself. The front of her body seemed clean. She jumped out of the shower with the water still running and inspected her back in the mirror. I think I’m OK. She ripped a gray towel off the wall to blot her hair and tie it off, stanching the dripping. Using a second towel snatched off the hook behind the door she swept her arms, legs, and body, and wrapped herself tight. Dry enough. She turned off the water.
Charging into her bedroom she slipped into a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt, then grabbed paper towels and a bottle of bleach cleanser from the kitchen. If there were traces of blood on her phone, she didn’t want Detective Linares to see them.
He’ll be here any second.
She had sanitized her phone, but now she had a fistful of bloody rags to dispose of.
Was that a knock at the front door?
The wastebasket under the kitchen sink would have to do for now.
In the front entryway Detective Linares greeted her with an unexpected apology: “Hello ma’am. Before you say anything I just wanted to say sorry for the West L.A. detectives the other night. They have this old-school way of doing things and sometimes they get out of line. That’s the kind of stuff that gives cops a bad name. I should have said something to them—I take more pride in my work than that. Anyway, I apologize. It won’t happen again.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but the words caught in her throat. Her bottom lip jerked into her top one as she sniffed back a suddenly runny nose. He was studying her, confused.
She was confused, too, when the first saline droplet slid down her face. A pressure built around her eyes and in her sinuses. Her diaphragm began to spasm, portending an ugly disgorgement. Then she erupted into tears.
“Ma’am?” was all Detective Linares could muster.
Forfeiting speech for the moment, she stepped aside and gestured for him to enter. There was no hiding the truth now, no plausible cover story that could save her.
“Wanna tell me what’s going on?”
“I—” she gasped, her shoulders lurching back to accommodate her lungs—“don’t know what’s happening to me.”
“Ma’am, I am going to need you to get a hold of yourself and tell me what’s going on. Nice and slow, OK?”
“The kidnapper knew, Detective. He knew.”
“What kidnapper?”
“The person that took Samara and Mark. He knew that I shared text messages with you. He knew that you came here with the other detectives.”
“Please slow down. How do you know Ms. Ryland and Mr. Newsome were kidnapped?”
Angela described the text messages she received after Trickett and McElroy’s visit. She explained that the kidnapper threatened to kill Samara if she shared further information with the police. And she told Detective Linares about the box she received in the mail.
“Someone mailed you Ms. Ryland’s finger?” He was beyond skeptical.
“It’s in the freezer.”
“Show me.”
Angela pointed him to the appliance, and he opened it. He reached in, shuffled some items, and then turned back to her. “Where?”
She stepped to his left and began lifting her hand to indicate the box, but it was gone. “Of course,” she said, exhaling emphatically.
“Ma’am?”
“There’s more I need to tell you, Detective.” She indicated the kitchen table. “Please sit.”
“The kidnapper told me to freeze the finger until further notice
. That same day, he instructed me to make films of my clients and send them to him, or he would kill Samara. His demands were specific. I had to make a certain number of videos, each a certain length. Once I sent them to him, I had to delete them and all his texts.”
“So you have no evidence of these ‘demands’ or the videos?” Detective Linares seemed both irritated and incredulous.
“No.” Anticipating her next revelation, her heart started thumping, a battering ram pounding the inside of her ribcage. With a deep breath she continued: “It gets worse, Detective.”
“Go on.”
“He made me cut my clients. Little slices at first, but they got bigger over time. I was filming the last set of videos this afternoon. I was almost done—just about to start the final video—when my phone shut off. I went to reboot it, but I felt a stabbing pain in my neck and then passed out. I think I was drugged.
“I was out for a while, but when I came to, my client was dead—murdered—in the stockade in the back room I use for sessions. And the videos from today were wiped from my phone. Just gone. He probably took the finger back while I was unconscious, too.”
“Ms. Gianni”—his face was stern and sober; he spoke deliberately—“are you telling me that there is a dead body in your back room?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to get up very slowly and walk me back there.” He took a deep breath.
In her mind his gun was already drawn, though for the moment it stayed fastened in his shoulder holster. She walked calmly and carefully three steps ahead of him; she eased the door open and stepped aside.
He winced, possibly choking back vomit. He radioed Angela’s address to dispatch, noting the body and that this “was an apparent homicide.” He requested detectives and a battery of specialists.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a litigator in New York City and Washington D.C., and as a neurogenetics and neuropyschiatrics researcher earlier in his career, Adam Aust had more fodder for stories than he could reasonably keep to himself. So, he started writing. A Glitch in the System and Sanity’s Only Skin Deep are the first of his efforts, but other works are on the way. Be the first to experience them by connecting with Adam directly.
Website: adamaust.com
Email:
[email protected] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AdamAustAuthor/
Twitter: @AdamAustAuthor
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/AdamAust
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends