Stolen Lives: A Detective Mystery Series SuperBoxset (33 page)

The kidnapper raised the crowbar high above his head, and another clap of thunder rattled the entire building. The light in the storage unit went black, casting the two into darkness. Irene panicked and sprinted to the door. When she pulled the handle it offered no resistance, and she escaped into the hallway.

Irene’s heart pounded with the same hurried pace of her bare feet that smacked against the dirtied concrete of the storage hallways. The heavy thud of boots pursued her in the darkness, and the heightened power of adrenaline hastened her pace.

The long hallway ended, and she followed the only direction it offered like a rat in a maze. Thunder boomed and rattled the locked storage doors she passed. More than once she felt the graze of the kidnapper’s fingertips on her hair, but she never stopped to look back. She rounded another corner, and a flash of lightning from the window revealed an exit, offering her first glimpse of freedom.

Irene’s body grew light, and she burned what energy remained, adrenaline her only fuel. More lightning flashed through the window and revealed the thick sheets of rain rolling in the wind. With the door less than a few feet away she lowered her shoulder and reached for the handle in the same motion, never breaking her stride. The wind aided her escape and flung the door open.

The harsh whip of rain and wind pelted her face, beating like needles against her bare skin. In seconds the thin dress was drenched and she was soaked to the bone. The confusion and brutality of the storm slowed her pace as her tender bare feet were punished with rocks lodged in the mud. She stumbled forward, screaming, but the wind and thunder dwarfed her pleas. She squinted into the black night, looking for any place to run, any place to hide, but she found no safety.

A harsh gust of wind brought with it more spiked rain that pressed the dress tighter to her skin. The adrenaline disappeared, and her legs turned to jelly. She held up a hand to shield her from the blinding rain, and in her stumbled run she smacked the chain-link fence that guarded the facility’s perimeter. She clawed her fingers through the metal mesh and rattled the barrier, screaming.

Lightning illuminated the reflectors on the roadside, offering a frame of reference. Irene sprinted along the fence in search of an exit. She glanced left in search of her kidnapper, but only the darkness and the thick sheets of rain stared back at her. Blinded in the dark, she tripped and crashed into the mud. She scrambled to all fours, covered in mud. She wiped the slime from her eyes and spit dirt from her lips.

An icy cold gripped Irene, the rain and puddles freezing her bare skin. Her muscles ached with fatigue, barren of energy. Then, amidst the flashes of lightning, another light caught her eye on the road. She squinted, thinking she’d only imagined it. But then another shimmer burst through the sheets of rain, and she reached for the fence like a life raft, pulling herself from the mud. “Help!” she screamed, her throat hoarse and wispy.

The pair of headlights grew larger in the distance. She pushed her legs underneath her, forcing them to steady and clung tight to the fence for support. She waved her arms and continued her stumbled sprint even when the headlights veered out of sight on the winding coastal road, only to return again, closer than before. “Help m—”

The kidnapper’s strong hands covered her mouth and yanked her from the fence in one vicious pull. She flailed her arms and legs, her eyes glued to the headlights that would soon pass, and with it her one hope of survival. But no matter how hard she fought, no matter how much she struggled, she couldn’t overpower the arms and hands locking her in place, pulling her back into the heart of the storm.

The car was close, less than one hundred feet. The headlights challenged the darkness, and she watched the outer rim of their light graze close to her legs. She offered one last defiant kick before she was cast back into darkness, and the act cost her a violent twist of the arm. She sent a muffled scream into her captor’s palm, and she was shoved to the ground, landing on her stomach. The impact knocked the wind from her. She felt her face press harder into the mud, the gritty texture of dirt and rocks rolled over her tongue and rushed up her nose.

Suddenly the pressure on the back of her skull ended, and she flung her head up, gasping for air, coughing up mud and spit. She rolled to her back, the rain rinsing her face clear of the sediment that blinded her. Lightning flashed in the sky, and the outline of the kidnapper towered above her. She crawled backward, but his figure remained motionless. She was cold and tired, and the ferocious wind beat the rain against her face. But on her retreat she caught the brief glow of red taillights. She stopped in her tracks, and her action caused her captor to look behind him. The car had stopped and shifted into reverse. She sucked in a breath of air and lifted her hands, her scream cut short by thunder.

The kidnapper pounced on her, the weight of his body pinning her to the ground, concealing them both in darkness until he could drag her, hands still over her mouth, through the mud and behind a cluster of bushes. She howled and screamed, but every shriek only tightened the noose around her neck and mouth. She sobbed, peering through the tall weeds of the bush that blocked her from the driver’s view, and saw a shadow at the fence.

“Hello?” The driver’s voice was nothing more than a faint whisper on the wind, barely piercing the gusts of rain seeking to drown the world. The driver lingered for a little while longer, but with no answer to his inquiry he returned to his car.

The kidnapper positioned her head so she could watch the taillights disappear. He increased the pressure of his hand over the front of her teeth, and she thought they would buckle back into her mouth. Once the vehicle was gone he released her, and she splashed helplessly in the mud. She thrashed wildly, her last gesture of defiance, then cried. All of her defensive walls crumbled. She looked back to the kidnapper, who was unmoved by the gusting winds and sharp, biting rain.

Water streamed off the tip of the crowbar in the kidnapper’s hand, and Irene sensed the finality. She looked up and clasped her hands together. The rain had clumped her bangs in wavy strands on her forehead, and her dress had become so wet and heavy that her chest was exposed, stripping away what remained of her dignity. “I don’t know why you’re doing this to me.” She slurred her words in grief, and her sobs rivaled the storm’s wicked cries. Helpless, she rolled to her side, her chest heaving up and down, and she sucked gasps of air in between her wailing. She clawed her fingers into the dirt and crawled, which was all the movement her body allowed her to do.

She turned to look back, and the kidnapper slowly followed as she shuffled her knees and hands through the sludge of mud, grass, and debris. “Just leave me alone! Just let me go!” She fisted a clump of dirt and flung it at the kidnapper’s legs, but the splatter neither hastened nor slowed the kidnapper’s pace. He stayed within an arm’s reach, and she knew he was toying with her now. She banged her knee against a rock and collapsed back into the mud, having neither the strength nor the desire to continue her escape.

“Just let me go.” Despair dripped from Irene’s lips along with the running water from the rain pelting her face. Lightning revealed the kidnapper raising the tire iron high above his head. “No, please!” She thrust her hands and arms in an attempt to block the devastating hit, but the kidnapper was too strong.

The crash of thunder masked the crack of bone. The front of Irene’s forehead caved in, and her body went limp. A well of blood rose through the crack in her skull and trickled down the side of her face. The kidnapper tightened his grip on the crowbar and paced frantically back and forth in the rain, cursing. He dropped to his knees and straddled the woman around her waist. He raised the crowbar again and brought it down once more, widening the hole in her forehead. The tip of the iron hooked inside the skull, and the next yank pulled with it blood and brain matter that spread across the woman’s chest and stomach. The kidnapper brought the crowbar down again, this time more viciously, beating her face again and again in a fury that rivaled the storm’s thunder.

Finally, panting, he dropped the crowbar into the mud. The woman’s face was nothing more than a pulpy mix of blood, brain, and bone. His labored breathing heaved his chest up and down as trails of blood rolled through the mud and water and into the drainage ditches. He squeezed his gloved fists so tight that his arms shook. But once the rage subsided he uncurled his fingers and reached for the woman’s mangled head. He gently caressed her ear, tucking a strand of hair behind it.

The kidnapper rose from the dead woman’s body and looked to the storage unit. He picked up the crowbar and tucked it into his belt. He knelt down and scooped the dead woman’s body into his arms. Her head hung back limply, blood and brain matter draining from the gaping hole that was once her face.

Chapter 2

The door to the corner office of the homicide unit of Baltimore’s central precinct was shut, and the lights inside were off. Inside, a long whiteboard stretched across the entire side wall from the front door to the rear wall with unreadable notes scribbled under mugshots and surveillance pictures. Two desks were joined together, with backlogged case files covering every square inch of desk space stacked a foot high.

Behind the towers of files, next to a stained coffee mug that was nearly empty, lay a lifeless hand with nails chewed down to the cuticle. Long strands of wavy dark-brown hair covered a head like a mop, and her back rose and fell steadily with her breathing. A detective’s badge dangled from a chain around her neck in the space between the desk and the chair, and her pistol was still in its holster around her waist.

Through the windows of the office, shadowed figures passed, one of them slowing at the door. The officer burst inside, flooding the room with the early-morning bustling of the precinct. The woman on the desk fidgeted at the disturbance but didn’t wake. The officer slammed a file on the desk, which was enough to jolt her out of the coma, knocking over a few of the stacked case files in the process.

“Wake up, Cooper. Detective Hall wants to see you.” The disdain in the officer’s voice was thick, and he exited without another word, leaving the door open and with it the trail of light and sound that infiltrated from the hallway.

Adila Cooper wiped her sleeve over the corner of her mouth, removing the drool that had collected during her slumber. Her shirt left an imprint on her cheek, which masked the age lines she no longer tried hiding. Her hand brushed the coffee mug, and she reached for the handle, draining the cold liquid in one gulp. She grimaced at the bitter taste, and the coffee did little to improve the dark circles under her eyes, but it was enough to jump-start the morning.

Cooper brushed the tangled mess of bangs out of her face, her fingers catching and pulling the knotted hair that refused to be tamed, and tapped the space bar of her keyboard. When the screen remained black she tapped it again but was only offered the same result.
Power’s still out.

She reached for the new case file the officer had dropped off, and the stretch popped her neck and back like bubble wrap. She set the file on the small sliver of space where she’d fallen asleep and flipped open the first page. Her stomach rumbled, and she opened the drawer to her right, pushing her hand through the discarded wrappers of power bars and scraped the bottom until she wrapped her fingers around something solid. She ripped off the top half of the bar, and it crunched loudly in her teeth.

The stale taste of granola lingered over her tongue, and she flipped the wrapper over to check the expiration date, which passed nearly a month ago. She frowned and forced another bite down. She furrowed her brow, looking over the file’s details, shaking her head. “This is a missing-person file.” She snapped the folder shut and tossed the half-eaten protein bar in the trash, where it landed amongst the graveyard of discarded take-out boxes, candy wrappers, and fast food bags.

Cooper shut her eyes as she stepped out into the hallway, the bright emergency lights angering the lack of sleep her body received last night. She stumbled through the hallway, the lack of coffee, food, and sleep transforming her gait to something akin to the undead. She looked down at her dirtied, wrinkled, untucked shirt and tried smoothing the front of the blouse with her palms. Her strands of hair continued to impede her line of sight as she maneuvered through the hallway, and she swooped it back with her hands, wrapping the thick strands into a makeshift bun.

Two traffic officers rounded the end of the hallway and cast Cooper a dirty glance, shoulder checking her hard enough to throw her off balance. “Fuck you, Wurtz!”

Wurtz and his partner spun around. “You just give me the time and place, Cooper.” He offered an obscene hand gesture, and his partner flipped her the bird. The two chuckled to one another and disappeared into one of the offices down the hall.

Cooper rubbed her shoulder, stretching it backward, and winced as her back gave another pop. After twenty-one years on the force there wasn’t a joint in her body that didn’t complain. Still, every time Mother Nature tried telling her it was time to hang up the badge, she brushed it off. At forty-one, she wasn’t in any mood to retire, not with her city streets still so dirty.

The office was mostly empty with the night crew coming in off shift and the morning crew just getting ready to start. Cooper pulled out her phone and checked the time: 7:00 a.m. She passed the bull pen of desk jockeys, and though she tried to stay out of sight, she couldn’t help but hear the whispers behind her back.

When she arrived at the missing persons unit every desk in Hall’s department was empty, so she veered toward the interrogation rooms. The first two were unoccupied, but when she peered through the window of the third she spotted Detective Hall’s bald head, shining from the fluorescent lighting, speaking to a woman, while his partner watched through the one-way glass of the anteroom. She reached for the handle just when an angered shout stopped her.