So Simple, page 2
Luna barked again, happily, of course.
Rebecca squeezed her once more, then stood. “You want to play with your ball?”
Luna responded with an enthusiastic bark that Rebecca interpreted as My ball, you say? But of course I would like to pay with my ball! I am a dog, you see, and we dogs find such diversions delightful!
Rebecca giggled and said, “Hold on, girl. I’ll be right back.”
She ran into her house and fetched the ball. Fetched the ball.
She chuckled at that and ran back outside. Luna was more than ready, her paws tearing up the grass before Rebecca even released the ball.
Luna grabbed the ball and ran toward Rebecca, her eyes alight. Rebecca felt her spirits lift, and by the third toss, she’d forgotten all about Tyler.
“Go get it, girl!” she cried, tossing the ball high in the air and watching as Luna tracked it with her eyes, trotting to the exact spot where it came down and catching it in her mouth.
“Woohoo!” Rebecca cried. “Yay for Luna!”
They tossed the ball around for about an hour before the sun dipped low enough in the sky that she decided it was time to head inside and shower before dinner. “Okay, girl,” she called. “Time to go in.”
Luna whined, and Rebecaa was tickled to learn that she even complained happily. “I know, baby,” she said, “we’ll play some more tomorrow. Tonight, you need to help me decide between Blake or Carter.”
She wouldn’t let on that she enjoyed watching those shows where men would compete to be chosen as a groom by a young, wealthy and extraordinarily vapid young woman. Of course, the men were just as vapid as the women, and the show was about as vapid as something could be, but Rebecca didn’t care. The point was to fantasize about some handsome, perfect hunk who couldn’t possibly exist, and since Rebecca had about enough of real-life boys, a fantasy man was just the ticket.
She fed Luna first, and while Luna munched on her kibble—happily, of course—she headed upstairs to shower. As she was rinsing the shampoo out of her hair, she heard a loud thump and jumped, dropping the showerhead. It arced like a pendulum, spraying her ceiling with water. Luna must have turned the tv on. She must have known how to do that at her old home.
She shook her head and laughed. “God, Luna, you scared me!”
Luna barked.
The sound was close, just outside the shower. And it wasn’t a happy bark, either. It didn’t have the little upward lilt that happy barks usually had. This one was anxious, almost frightened.
Rebecca’s good mood wilted, replaced by ice that crawled from her toes up to her spine then traveled in soft jolts to her neck and arms. She shut off the water. “Luna? Are you here?”
Luna barked again, and Rebecca opened the shower door. She felt a rush of relief as she saw Luna was alone.
“Luna,” she said, “what’s going on? Did you spill your kibble or something?”
THUMP!
She flinched, but some instinct kept her from crying out this time. If you scream, he’ll hear you.
The chill in Rebecca’s spine strengthened into a shiver. She stepped out of the shower and wrapped the towel around her. Luna whined and glanced anxiously between Rebecca and the door.
“What is it, Luna?” Rebecca asked. “What’s wrong?”
THUMP!
Luna bared her lips in a snarl. When she barked this time, it wasn’t as the gentle, happy puppy that Rebecca knew. Luna’s tail was between her legs, her ears pulled flat, her lips pulled all the way back to reveal twin rows of gleaming white teeth.
And she was terrified. The look in her eyes told Rebecca that.
THUMP!
Rebecca felt a coppery taste in her mouth and wondered if it was bile or if she had bitten her tongue when she jumped. Luna continued to bark, standing in between Rebecca and the door, her legs shaking.
There was a baseball bat in her room. If she could get there safely, she could use it to stop whoever had invaded her house.
Oh God, someone’s in my house!
A scream tried to erupt from Rebecca’s throat, but she stifled it at the last second and it came out as a harsh exhale instead. She took two instinctive steps back from the door and Luna followed suit though she still remained in front of Rebecca.
Her roommate, Delilah, was out of town for the next three weeks, so it wasn’t her. No one else had a key to her house, and if it was another one of her friends, they would have called first.
She needed to get to the bat.
She stepped toward the door, coming alongside Luna, who shifted her feet anxiously and whined at the door. She reached for the handle and threw it open.
There was no one there. She took a deep breath and rushed to her bedroom. She half expected some jump scare monster from a horror movie to leap out at her when she left the bathroom, but no one accosted her as she ran into her room. Luna followed her, and when both were safe, she closed the door.
She took a breath and released it slowly, then quickly dressed, throwing on sweatpants and a t-shirt. The bat was in her closet, and she picked it up, the weight of the aluminum bat a comforting presence in her hands.
She left the bedroom comforted, but her comfort vanished when Luna reached the stairs and refused to come down.
Rebecca’s heart fell to the floor. Luna knew how to descend the stairs. If she was staying up there, it was by choice.
Luna barked urgently at Rebecca, and Rebecca could see the pleading in the dog’s eyes for her to stay. She actually considered it, but if she stayed, then she could just be giving the invader time to make a plan to hurt her. She hefted the bat, said a quick prayer that she wasn’t being foolish, and headed downstairs.
Each step increased her terror. Luna seemed to feel the same way, because her barks increased in urgency, and when Rebecca turned the corner of the spiral staircase, Luna whined desperately and paced back and forth in front of the stairs before barking at her again.
Rebecca’s heart pounded, and her hands grew clammy. She shifted her grip on the bat so it wouldn’t slip in her sweaty palms and focused on her breathing as she descended the staircase.
She saw the empty kitchen as she descended. The refrigerator and cabinets appeared not to have been tampered with.
When she reached the bottom of the staircase and came into the living room, it looked similarly undisturbed, but when she saw the open window, she realized that Luna was right. Someone had come into her house.
Panic seized her. She lifted the bat high and shrieked, “Get out of my house! I have a bat!”
The ridiculousness of her threat nearly caused nervous laughter to bubble up behind the scream, but she held it down and walked into the living room, prepared to swing at the slightest movement.
There was no one there. She turned back to the kitchen and saw it was still empty. She walked tentatively to the open window and, after taking a moment to screw up her courage, she looked outside.
No one was there. Whoever had burgled them must have left.
Burgled, not robbed. Robbing was the act of stealing something by force. Burgling was the act of breaking and entering for the purpose of theft. She remembered that from her criminal justice class.
She sighed and with the relief of being safe came the anger at being burgled along with mild annoyance at Luna. She might be the perfect playmate, but a guard dog, she was not.
She looked wryly up at the head of the stairs, where Luna continued to bark crazily and called, “It’s okay, Luna. They’re gone. I’ll call the police. Everything will be all right.”
Luna began to leap up and down, barking in a shrill tone that made her sound like a much smaller dog. “Calm down, Luna!” Rebecca said irritably, her own frayed nerves shortening her patience. “It’s no big deal.”
She set the bat down and pulled out her phone. She pressed nine, then one, but before she could press one a second time, she heard the soft sound of aluminum scraping on hardwood.
Her brain flashed a warning, a brilliant red pulse that brought all of Rebecca’s senses back to a fever pitch. She turned around and saw a figure six feet behind her holding her bat.
Figure was the appropriate term. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female. It was tall and lean with disproportionately long limbs and a face wrapped in a ski mask. It lifted the bat and pointed the barrel end at Rebecca.
She drew in breath to scream, and the figure pulled the bat back and swung too swiftly for Rebecca’s eyes to follow the movement. The barrel of the bat connected with Rebecca’s head. There was a brilliant white starburst and a loud humming noise.
Then everything went black.
CHAPTER ONE
Faith felt an eerie sense of déjà vu as she looked at David. A little over two years ago, she had rested in this exact hospital in a bed just like this, in a room almost precisely the same. Even the colors were the same.
She was in nearly as bad shape as David at the time. Jethro Trammell, the Donkey Killer, had cut her over fifty times, most of the wounds superficial enough that they didn’t even leave scars, but a few damaging enough that it had taken her two months to learn how to walk again.
She wondered if David would ever learn to walk. Or if he would even wake up. He’d been in this very bed for a week and showed no signs of leaving his coma.
The bruises had started to heal. When Faith first saw him, he had been nearly unrecognizable. At least his face wasn’t swollen and misshapen anymore.
By her side, Turk whined softly. She reached down and stroked his fur but couldn’t manage a smile or think of anything to say.
The door to the room opened, and the charge nurse came in. She smiled kindly at Faith. “I’m sorry, honey. Visiting hours are over.”
Faith nodded but remained where she was. “Any updates?”
“Doctor Ramel is happy with Doctor Friedman’s progress,” the nurse replied carefully. “It’s still too soon to tell what, if any, long-term damage might remain, but he’s confident that Doctor Friedman will survive.”
Faith nodded again. She felt numb. “Thank you,” she replied.
She stood there a moment longer until the nurse stepped closer and said, “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but it really is time to go.”
Faith stirred and forced a quick half-smile. “All right. Thank you.”
“We open again at eight in the morning,” the nurse offered helpfully.
“Thank you,” Faith repeated. “Come on, Turk.”
She managed to focus just enough energy on the road to get home safely. The streetlamps cast a mellow yellow light that clashed harshly with the hard white light of the hospital. The smell of motor oil, gas and mildew assaulted her as she drove through the rain.
She saw David—what was left of him anyway—and felt a brief, white-hot surge of horror, grief and rage. Once it vanished, she felt absolutely nothing. It was as though someone had seared her brain with a soldering iron and burned off the part of her that could feel emotion. She cleared the apartment, called nine-one-one, then called Desrouleaux, the lead agent on the Copycat Killer case all off of instinct. Then she sat next to David’s broken body and stared at it, willing herself to feel something, pain, grief, hatred, anything.
But she didn’t. Not then and not now. Only this deep, crushing nothingness like a void inside of her.
She understood intellectually that she was grieving. The shock response was her mind working its way through the denial stage. Eventually, she would accept that David was gone in every way that mattered, and when she did, the tears would come.
Or maybe they wouldn’t.
I’m going to break you, Faith.
For the first time since the Copycat Killer had made her that promise, Faith believed he might actually keep it.
They reached home, and Faith led Turk upstairs to their apartment. She went through the motions of making dinner for Turk and for herself, and both ate silently and mechanically.
Turk finished his first and walked over to Faith. He whined softly and lifted his eyes to meet hers. His eyes betrayed every ounce of the pain that Faith couldn’t show. She was able to feel a touch of compassion for Turk. He had suffered just as much at Doctor West’s hand as she had. His first handler, Special Agent Jack Preston, had been killed by the original Donkey Killer, Jethro Trammell. He himself had nearly been killed, like her battling back from grievous injuries.
Now, one of the people they both loved most in this world lay on a hospital bed at death's door at the hands of the new Copycat Donkey Killer, Doctor Franklin West.
Her lips thinned, and a flash of anger interrupted her numbness. Franklin West was almost certainly not a doctor, but he had managed to fool Faith into believing he was and taken advantage of her gullibility to study her intimately. She had sat across from him for months, thinking he was her psychologist when the whole time, he was the person responsible for all of the pain in her life.
She looked back at Turk and saw the same expression in his eyes. “We’ll get him Turk,” she promised.
He barked firmly, and she allowed his agreement to strengthen her. She ruffled his fur. “Good dog. What do you want to do?”
Turk trotted to the linen closet, pulled open the door and came back with his leash. He set it in front of Faith, and Faith smiled softly. “Good dog.”
She hadn’t run in days, not since finding David beaten nearly to death in his apartment. She could feel herself coming out of her shock now, and if she wasn’t careful, grief and despondency would be the victorious emotions in the conflict now raging in her mind. Some exercise would steady her and keep her emotions positive as well, or at least keep her from despair.
She didn’t bother to put the leash on Turk. She only carried it in case a patrolling police officer happened to be having a bad day and wanted to shout at her to leash Turk. Turk didn’t need it. He would follow her commands instantly and without question, just like a good K9 unit should.
She and Turk ran toward the local park. At this time of night, there were very few people on the sidewalks, and the rain would keep away the amorous young couples who were the only evening visitors to the park. She could exercise there without worrying about who was watching her.
By the time she reached the park, she was in better spirits. She went through a fitness regime she had learned at the academy. It consisted of sets of wind sprints and burpees, then pushups, crunches pullups and army crawls to burpees. Faith added several exercises of her own to intensify it, pushing her body to the limit and allowing the adrenaline to clear the rest of the fog that plagued her mind. Turk kept pace with her, and several times far exceeded her pace, particularly during the sprints and crawls where his four legs allowed him much greater speed than her two.
Both were in far better spirits when the exercise was done. Not high spirits, exactly, but better spirits. Faith could think now, could allow her mind to approach a circumstance that before now it had refused to admit existed.
Franklin West was back in Philadelphia. There was no doubt of that. He was watching her too. There was no doubt of that either. He wasn’t tracking her every single movement—Turk would have smelled him if he were close—but she believed that he was aware of her general activities.
He wouldn’t kill her either. She knew that now. His goal wasn’t to kill her but to break her. He didn’t want to end her life, he wanted to ruin it. That’s why he had spared her twice when he could have killed her. That’s why he focused his attention on her friends and loved ones. He wanted to cause her pain and watch as she suffered.
A part of her hoped he was watching her now.
Watch me recover, asshole, she thought. Watch me find you and beat you anyway.
They jogged home, keeping a steady pace to keep their heart rates elevated and their energy level high. Faith’s mind was in full gear when she reached her house, but her thoughts all tumbled one after the other, as though her brain was overcompensating for the numbness of the past several days by trying to pick apart every aspect of her life at once.
She pulled out a Rubik's cube and started to solve it. She had solved the puzzle hundreds of times before, and lately, she would challenge herself to draw different patterns in the cube rather than simply solve it.
Tonight, she was trying to make an X. She worked through the puzzle absently, allowing her subconscious mind to work through the problem of West. Turk sat in front of the tv but judging by the look of concentration on his face, he was paying no more attention to the late-night news than Faith was to her puzzle. Like her, he was only allowing the background noise to occupy some of the noise in his mind. Maybe she was reading too much into it, but she liked to think that she and Turk thought similarly to each other.
She solved the cube and twisted absently several times then started to solve again, this time looking for a plus sign.
West had probably changed his appearance. His description had been broadcasted across the entire country. Agencies from coast to coast were looking for him. If he was travelling freely, he had to have changed his appearance.
She wondered if he had always been Franklin West. He hadn’t always been a doctor, hadn’t ever been a doctor, actually, but he might have been Franklin West before then.
She doubted it, though. She could find no information on Franklin West beyond his now-obviously fictitious identity as a doctor of psychology and his marriage license at the state records office. It would be helpful if his ex-wife, Ellie, who was now married to her partner, Special Agent Michael Prince, would talk to her about how they met and what she knew about him, but she refused to talk to Faith for any reason after Faith had accused her of being the copycat killer.
Besides, what Ellie knew was almost certainly a lie as well.
She solved the Rubik’s cube again and twisted it randomly several more times. She was just about to try for a checkered pattern when her phone rang. The Boss.
She set the cube down and answered. “Bold.”
“Bold, I have a case for you.”
Special Agent-in-Charge Grant Monroe, known affectionately as the Boss to his agents, was a no-nonsense and straightforward leader who preferred to get right to the point rather than waste time with small talk. That was just fine with Faith right now.
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