Skeleton King Read online

At last she opened one eye, and as expected she saw only the empty bed beside her, the pillow not indented, the sheets not even pulled back.

  Brett hadn’t stayed over; he knew his place in this meandering labyrinth that was her life, and it didn’t include cuddles or ‘sleepovers.’

  Kendra opened both eyes now and turned her head the other way, finally spying her phone that was emitting the obnoxious beeping.

  Her hand reached out, and she swiped at it, but her arm fell short by a few inches and instead sent several empty mini bottles scattering. The clinking they made as they banged against the wall and then ping-ponged their way down the back of the bedside table sent icy slivers of pain through her head. With a groan, she managed to roll onto her left side. Now her phone was within reach and she grabbed it, wincing as she brought it—and the accompanying sound—closer to her face. With blurred vision, she managed to flick the slider and then press the giant red ‘OFF’ button.

  Silence.

  Kendra closed her eyes again, trying to will her headache away.

  And it worked.

  Sort of; when she opened her eyes again, the pounding in her skull had subsided to a dull throb.

  A glass of water and a couple aspirin should do the trick.

  Kendra sighed and brought herself to a seated position. Elbows on her knees, she brought a hand to her face, starting with a gentle massage to her temples, then moving to her eyes and then the rest of her face, trying to wipe away the hangover.

  A hard rap on the door snapped her out of her own head, and she spun around—too quickly. A wave of nausea hit her and she fought the urge to vomit.

  Kendra offered a cursory glance at the number of mini bottles scattered on the bedside table: four, plus at least two that she had sent scattering. There were two more on the dresser, and one beside the TV—which was off, as she wasn’t in the mood for any porn—bringing the grand total to nine.

  More than enough to account for her thickened tongue, roiling guts, and headache, especially considering that Brett doesn’t drink. At least not anymore.

  There was another knock on the door.

  “Kendra?”

  It was Brett.

  Kendra looked down at her body, and realized that she was completely nude. She was not at all sheepish, especially after last night, yet Kendra still felt the need to wrap herself in the sheet before making her way to the door.

  After all, they were work colleagues… and they were on work hours.

  Kind of.

  Six fifteen? What the fuck is Brett doing here so early?

  She tried to think back to last night, to their conversations, their plans, before and after they had decided to re-enact the first fifteen or so chapters from the Kama Sutra handbook.

  Racking her brain, pushing aside glimpses of sweaty, grunting bodies, fluids, gasping, moaning, ecstasy, orgasms, she thought she remembered Brett saying something about meeting up at around eight for his breakfast and coffee.

  So what the fuck is he doing here at just past six in the morning?

  Kendra, her body wrapped in the sheet that trailed her like some sort of whore’s wedding gown, leaned up against the back of the door and closed her eyes again.

  “What do you want, Brett?”

  “You didn’t get my calls? I tried three times this morning.”

  Kendra took a deep breath. Despite what the director thought, she didn’t drink too much.

  Last night was an exception, not the rule.

  “No,” she admitted. “Didn’t hear my phone.”

  “Director Ames called, we need to get going ASAP. Lacy’s father has been telling local media outlets about some sort of demon… that a, uh, uh, demon took his child. He wants us there now, to quiet things down.”

  Demon?

  Kendra scraped her tongue on her top teeth, a chalky substance that tasted of ethanol filling her mouth. Again she fought the desire to puke.

  Hey, sis, what about a little mater est, matrem omnium in the morning?

  “Okay,” she managed at last.

  “Okay? Are you okay after last night? I mean, it was—”

  Sweaty, hot, and violent.

  Kendra felt a pang of soreness in her vagina. Brett was well built all over… maybe even too well built.

  “Fine,” she said, trying to push the images from her head. But the sheet shifted, and the shitty 100-thread-count fabric—like burlap—scraped against her back, reminding her of the rawness there as well.

  Brett had scratched her last night, raked her back with his—small, pale hand, dotted with blood as she tried to crawl out from beneath her parents’ bodies. The same hand that had drawn a picture of the (swamp) water, with the burning (person) pyre, and the sticks (trees) stuck in the mud—large fingers.

  All of a sudden she wished that her mind was again overwhelmed with images of Brett, turning her over, filling her with his hard, thick cock.

  Unable to take it anymore, her eyes snapped open, eventually focusing on a discarded mini bottle of Crown.

  Nine… or was it ten?

  But what annoyed her now was the fact that it was empty.

  Another drink would send the hangover packing faster than any aspirin.

  “Give me five,” she said, her voice but a hoarse whisper. “I’ll be out in five.”

  CHAPTER 12

  True to her word, less than five minutes later, Agent Kendra Wilson was standing outside her hotel room, none the worse for wear. On the outside, at least… thanks, in part, to the over-sized sunglasses that covered about a third of her face.

  Brett was sitting in his car, which was parked in the spot directly in front of the door, his bumper so close to her room that she had to skirt to one side to fit by. Her own rental was parked beside it. Her eyes flicked to Brett, who sat with an arm hanging out of the window. It was clear from his posture that he expected her to join him.

  “What about my rental?” she asked. Chugging a liter of warm water had taken some of the knots out of her vocal cords, but not all; her voice was taut, like a frayed rope pulled tight.

  The man smiled, but he too looked tired.

  “They’ll pick it up.”

  Kendra smirked.

  Not exactly the way the company works, but…

  She walked the handful of feet to the passenger door and pulled it wide, relieved that the AC was pumping on full, even with Brett’s window open. She was barely seated when Brett jammed the car into reverse; the tires squealed as they pealed out of the parking lot.

  “Fuck, take it easy, Brett. Headache over here.”

  Brett allowed the car to come to a complete stop before putting it back into drive. Then he slammed his foot down on the gas, the smirk on his face growing into a complete smile.

  “Asshole,” she muttered, but the truth was her headache was mostly gone.

  They were on the open road in less than five minutes, Brett driving at nearly twice the speed limit, when she finally broke the silence.

  “Where are we going, anyway?”

  Brett kept his eyes on the road, which was odd for the man who liked to get inside people’s heads using his goofy, confused expression.

  “Told you already, going to see about a missing girl. The father is going apeshit online, spreading rumors.”

  Mater est, matrem omnium, no doubt. She swallowed hard, trying to force the associated memories away. That part of her was dead and gone.

  Steph Black’s murder wasn’t related. She had simply keyed in on some funny-sounding words that she had heard on a TV show, maybe, or surfing online.

  Kendra ground her teeth, trying to get her analytical mind to accept her absurd theory. She would have failed, but thankfully Brett continued speaking and distracted her.

  “Three missing girls and the murder/suicide; the only thing linking them is the age of the victim and the glass of milk—all of them had a glass of milk left behind. None of the parents claim that they put it there.”

  This much Kendra also already knew.r />
  She waited for more.

  “What?” Brett asked. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Ah, you want a geography lesson? I see. Going to Rickshaw County, ‘bout three hours from here.”

  At long last, Kendra relaxed into her seat. But while her posture had become comfortable, internally she was a mess, her mind a whir trying to process this new information.

  It was almost enough for her to forget about the voice and the room.

  September twenty-eighth: Meghan Miller missing, both parents home at the time.

  October third: three dead in the Black household.

  Her mind returned to the folder that Brett had handed her at the Black house, which he had promptly retrieved.

  October fourth: Lacy McGuire missing, father home.

  There was another missing girl, but she couldn’t remember the details from the file; her mind had been preoccupied at the time by the three bodies coated in blood lying stacked on the kitchen floor.

  Maybe I am losing it, she thought. Her mind turned to the director, his young face staring at her from behind the desk.

  Kendra shook her head.

  The drink; it’s the booze from last night. It’ll come to me.

  “What about the room?” he asked quietly.

  “What about it?”

  “Spoke to Grover this morning, he said that Latin shit means ‘mother of one, mother of all’. This mean anything to you?”

  And for a second, Kendra was back there, on all fours, reading the oddly familiar words, hearing someone speak inside her head.

  A shudder racked her entire body, and the nausea of this morning returned. Swallowing hard, she reached forward and turned the AC up a notch.

  “No fucking clue,” she lied. Then her tone turned angry. “You think because I was raised in a church I know what all this weird Latin shit means?”

  “No, guess, not. Shit, don’t get all twisted. Was just asking.”

  Kendra closed her eyes.

  “Think before you ask.”

  For a few minutes, neither of them spoke.

  Then Brett let out a heavy sigh.

  “You gonna be okay, Kendra?”

  Can I count on you?

  Kendra didn’t think that the query deserved an answer, but Brett surprised her by pushing the issue.

  “Last night—” he began, but Kendra cut him off with a sharp look.

  Watch it, now… we have an agreement—unspoken, but still binding.

  The atmosphere inside the rental suddenly became tense again.

  “I know, I know,” he continued, as if reading her mind. “But last night was different. You were different.”

  Images of Brett behind her, grunting as he gripped her ass, his nails raking her back.

  “You think that… you think that you should take a break after this one? I mean, with your past, you think this kidnapping of girls is, ah, affecting you?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, and then, to make sure that Brett didn’t continue the conversation, Kendra turned away from him and curled into a ball.

  Sleep hit her like a brick.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Why are there all these boxes here, Daddy?”

  Her father didn’t look at her directly; instead, his eyes wandered off to one side when he answered.

  “Because we are moving, hon.”

  Kendra scrunched her round face.

  “Moving?”

  “Moving.”

  His voice was somber, and it hitched with the word. He had a Blue Jays cap pulled low, hiding his eyes. For a second, Kendra thought that he was crying.

  But that couldn’t be right.

  After all, Daddy never cried.

  “Moving?”

  This time, her father didn’t answer, choosing instead to stack a box on top of two others. Then he turned and went back to clearing picture frames off the mantle. When he removed the last picture, he hesitated and stared at it a moment, and this time Kendra saw something drop from his face and onto the glass. Her father wiped it away quickly with his sleeve, but he wasn’t fast enough for her not to notice.

  He was crying.

  But this revelation came with no exhausted sense of achievement, as was customary with most four-year-olds. This one came with a sadness and fear that she rarely felt.

  “Daddy?”

  The man in the cap sniffed.

  “It’ll be okay, sweetie. It’ll be okay.”

  Kendra’s mind turned to the night before, when she had been having the bad dream again. She had wanted to cry out, to call for Daddy, but voices from the kitchen below had stopped her.

  Mommy and Daddy were fighting—she could tell even though their words were barely whispered.

  Internally, Kendra scolded herself for being surprised to wake up to the sound of Daddy packing boxes again.

  The last two times she remembered Mommy and Daddy fighting, they had moved either the next day, or a day or two later.

  She should have known.

  “Come here,” her father whispered. When he finally looked at her, she saw that his eyes were red as if he hadn’t slept at all the night before. And his face was streaked with tears.

  Kendra ran to him, her own tears coming now, her tiny body racked with sobs. Arms wide, she embraced him, squeezing his sides as hard as she could.

  ‘Stop crying, Daddy,’ she wanted to say. ‘Please, Daddy.’

  But her tears prevented her from getting any words out.

  Her father eventually broke their embrace, his hands grabbing her strongly by the shoulders, pushing her away so that he could stare directly into her eyes.

  “We are doing this for you, sweetie,” he said, his lower lip curling. It was clear that he was trying to be strong, to keep from crying, but he was doing a poor job of it. He looked haggard, ragged, and beaten. “I love you so much.”

  He pulled her in close again, hugging Kendra so tight this time that it was difficult for her to breathe.

  “We’re doing this for you.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Agent Brett Cherry glanced over at his partner, who was curled up in as close to a fetal position as her seatbelt would allow.

  A pang of sadness hit him, and he lowered his cell phone and put it back in his lap.

  Kendra had problems, everyone knew that—especially him.

  As did the director, which was why Brett had picked up his phone and had considered calling him.

  Keep an eye on Kendra, this case is going to hit close to home. If you see anything out of the ordinary with her, anything at all, you have to let me know right away.

  But Kendra was also a good agent.

  Brett shook his head.

  That was his pride talking.

  Kendra wasn’t just good—she was the best. Kendra Wilson was the best agent that he had ever worked with, and although the director never went as far as to explicitly say so, Brett knew that the experienced man thought the same.

  It was in the director’s voice when he spoke about her; it was in the way he instructed Brett to only leak information to her slowly, the way he counted on her to come to conclusions on her own, knowing that this would eventually lead to her solving the case—cases that neither Brett nor the director could solve even collectively.

  Quirks—including her sexual proclivity and propensity for alcohol—had always been part of her MO, her way of dealing with the horrific crimes that they bore witness to. And it was also a remnant of her past, like the cuts all over her body that she tried to hide, the ones that Brett could never quite figure out whether they were self-inflicted or if someone had scarred her long ago.

  But this time—this crime—was different. The director had known this as well. The man’s consistent, authoritative demeanor had faltered when he had brought Brett into the office to discuss not just what was at first glance a cut-and-dry murder/suicide, but the possible connection to other crimes.

  Of missing four-yea
r-old girls.

  Brett’s hand again reached for his phone in his lap, but Kendra sighed, a pained sound that made her cheek twitch, and he hesitated.

  He was no stranger to her past, and more than once he thought he knew more about Kendra than she knew about herself.

  Brett was not without his own quirks; for one, he never entered a situation unprepared, driven to seek out information about the people and places involved before he arrived on scene. Failure would to do so would almost invariably result in nearly debilitating anxiety. Which was the impetus, more than seven years ago, for looking into Kendra’s past, which had brought up some very disturbing facts. Facts that to this day he still doubted, if only because he knew that, if true, they would have immediately disqualified any prospective FBI agent.

  And they would have disqualified Kendra, if she hadn’t been so damn good at it.

  He knew a lot about Detective Tennison, too. His friends in the Agency IT department had filled him into facts about the man that neither his superiors or inferiors in the police department knew.

  Like that he was divorced with two grown daughters, and that he had a third daughter that neither his ex-wife or his other daughters knew about. That he had conceived her while serving overseas, that he treated her as well as he could while still keeping her existence a secret, and spent most of his paycheck continuing to support her. But he also knew that outside of this misstep, he was an honest man nearing retirement, someone who wanted a quiet life on an island somewhere after his police work was done. That he was a good detective, one that could be trusted. Otherwise, there was no way he would have left him alone to deal with the horrors at the Black house, regardless of what Director Ames instructed.

  Brett picked up the phone and scrolled to the listing marked only as ‘The Director.’

  As he turned to look at Kendra again, his finger hovered over the green send button.

  He knew that by calling the director, Kendra’s demands for sex would come to an end. It was their unspoken agreement, after all.

  The director knew about their relationship, of course, as, like he, the man had an insatiable need for knowledge, to understand not just the people around him, but people in general. What made them tick, what made them do the things that they did. And Brett would be lying if he said that he didn’t enjoy his time with Kendra, even though rough sex wasn’t really his cup of tea.