Lovers & Monsters, page 19
It was a mantra she had repeated to herself over and over again in the last year and a half that she’d been in hiding, and she’d learned to take it to heart. She would fight him with everything inside her. She would fight until her last breath.
She shuddered with the thought.
She hadn’t laid eyes on Damien since the night he had beat her so badly that she landed in the hospital with several bruised ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a broken arm. Not to mention the black eye, swollen lip, and various other cuts and bruises.
She’d been conscious, lying on the gurney, as the cops hauled Damien away to jail. That was the last time she had seen him. By the time he got out three months later she had emptied out their joint bank account and ran. The thought of seeing him again now filled her with nothing but raw terror.
“Maybe it won’t come to that, Sid,” she said to herself.
Maybe, now that Isaac knew Damien was behind the murders of the women in his new case, the cops could pick him up and test his DNA against those victims. Get him off the streets for good before he got anywhere near her.
“Yeah.” She nodded, the notion instantly lifting her mood.
Of course, they would have to catch him first. And right now, according to Isaac, they had no clue where to even begin looking for him.
On her next trip around the tiny apartment she paused to turn on the radio sitting on the table beside the bed. Janet was musing about being afraid to fall in love so fast. The words caught Sidney by surprise. She could totally relate to that — being hurt the last time, and heart racing whenever the new man comes around. Being so confused. She got it.
Before she met Isaac her life was a dim, lonely, monotonous existence. Hiding away in that little rented bungalow, never interacting with the world, praying to stay off Damien’s radar. Everything changed the night Isaac tried to connect with his old partner and dialed her by mistake. Now, she saw vivid color where before there were only scary shadows. Isaac made her laugh. He made her feel strong and desirable. He made her feel like everything was going to be okay. Even now, even in this crazy situation, she was oddly hopeful.
That was crazy, wasn’t it?
When they were alone together, her heart raced.
Her stomach fluttered whenever he turned that thousand-watt smile of his on her.
Her skin tingled when he touched her, and when they kissed sometimes she felt dizzy. All of it was so new and so terrifying.
She wondered if he felt that way too.
He was nothing like Damien, and she knew that. But was she being stupid in thinking that what she was feeling was real? Was she truly falling for Isaac or was this all part of what Geneviève had been talking about earlier?
Geneviève had called her Isaac’s shield and his amplifier, and Sidney frowned and wondered again what that all meant. She thought the woman had some interesting things to say about Isaac’s abilities, and she believed that the psychic would be able to help him figure some things out. But she didn’t understand the whole shield and amplifier thing at all.
Swish.
The noise at the door made her jump out of her skin.
What was that?
Her heart pounded in her chest and she stared at the door.
Three swift knocks nearly caused her heart to stop.
Unable to speak, she didn’t move a muscle.
Her gaze zeroed in on the peephole.
She should look out.
Just to see who was there.
Slowly, she put one foot in front of the other and inched her way closer.
“Ms. Fairchild?”
The voice was friendly, but she jumped again just the same.
“It’s officer Mike Davis. I’ve been sent by Detective Taylor to stand guard.”
Relief flooded her system and she rushed to the door and looked out the peephole. A young man in uniform stood on the other side of the door. She watched as he took out his ID and held it up to the peephole for her to see.
“Feel free to call into the station, or call Detective Taylor to confirm, ma’am.”
Sidney swept open the door and smiled at him.
“Hi. Thank you for coming.”
The officer returned her smile with a nod.
“I know this must be a boring assignment for you. I’m so sorry.”
“Not at all, ma’am. It’s part of my job. I just wanted to let you know I was out here. I’ll be here until Detective Taylor returns this evening, but it’s still a good idea to keep the door locked, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you.”
She closed the door, locking it tight, and breathed easy once again. Maybe now she could stop obsessing and actually relax. Maybe even get some work done.
She set up a work station in the living room with her laptop and a cup of coffee, and she worked for a solid hour or so, even putting in her earbuds and listening to ambient sounds for extra concentration.
She felt like a robot as she worked, and she wasn’t sure if that was because of the situation or because she simply didn’t enjoy the job. It was true that her skills were being grossly wasted on basic data entry this way, but when she was running from Damien she hadn’t wanted to look for a job that fit her skills because that would have been giving him an easy way to find her.
Maybe now, if Isaac and his colleagues could find Damien and figure out a way to get him out of her life for good, she could find a job that suited her level of computer skill or maybe even get her teaching career back on track.
She stretched and looked at the clock. Nearly two hours had passed, and she needed more fuel. When she got up again to go refill her coffee, she pulled a second cup from the cupboard with a smile.
“Let’s see how Officer Davis takes his coffee,” she mumbled to herself as she walked toward the door to find out.
Without bothering to look out the peephole, she opened up the door just in time to see Officer Davis slide down the opposite wall into a sitting position.
The trail of blood down the wall paralyzed her.
The look of sheer surprise on the man’s face made her own blood run cold.
A man stepped into her line of vision in front of Officer Davis.
“There’s my girl,” Damien said, smiling at her. “Damn girl, you are a sight for sore eyes.”
Sidney stood frozen, unable to even scream.
Move, Sidney!
Her fight or flight response kicked in and she moved to slam the door in his face.
Damien lunged at the door and muscled his way inside.
Sidney fell backward onto the floor.
She flipped over and quick-crawled, trying to scamper away, but he grabbed her by the ankle.
When he pulled her backward, her hands grasped for anything she could use.
She pulled a glass bowl from the lower shelf and whacked it over his head as hard as she could. The bowl shattered into a million pieces and Damien howled and let go of her leg.
She jumped up and grabbed the gun from the table and turned to face him, but before she could even aim it at him Damien knocked her backwards.
She landed on top of the coffee table, splitting it in two.
The gun skidded across the floor and into the bedroom.
Sidney kicked out wildly with both legs until her foot made contact with Damien’s chest, causing him to stumble back. The move gave her just enough time to leap up, grab her cellphone, and scramble for the bedroom.
Before she could dial Isaac or reach for the gun, Damien was on her.
He grabbed her from behind, snatched the phone from her hand, and threw it to the ground.
“Did you really think I was just gonna let you run off with all my money?”
His voice was low and threatening at her ear, and she could feel his hot breath on her neck. The smell of his strong cologne brought a rush of bad memories with it and made her nauseous.
He was every bit as menacing as she remembered, and she knew without a doubt that he would kill her this time if he had the chance.
“I-I will give you back every cent of it, Damien. I swear. It was wrong of me to take it and I will see that you get every bit of it back. Just please…”
He laughed. The kind of laugh that sent fear crawling up her spine like a centipede.
“I don’t think you understand what’s going on here, Sidney,” he said, tightening his grip on her. “You don’t get to walk away from me. Ever! You know that you can’t live without me. You are my wife. That means we belong together forever! Not even the fucking cops can keep us apart. Didn’t I just prove that to you? Huh?”
His hand was just below her chin, and Sidney opened her mouth and bit him as hard as she could. So hard she tasted his blood.
“Ahhh!”
He screamed and let go of her.
She ran for the bathroom.
Damien caught her by the hair and yanked her back.
She lost her footing and slid backward into him, reaching for her head.
“You little bitch!”
“Ow! Damien please.”
“I see I’m going to have to remind you how this relationship works, huh?”
He spun her around to face him and the back of his hand came across her cheek with a loud swak and the stinging bite of pain.
It was all Sidney remembered before everything went black.
18
“You got an update, Taylor?”
Lieutenant Hayes’ voice rang out through the detectives section before he came into view. Isaac slapped at his notepad with a pencil and looked up as the man came toward them.
“Just got off the phone with the boys at Rocky River. They pinged Jarvis’ cellphone in order to get a look at his whereabouts, and it ain’t good.”
In fact, the results were filling him with dread and an almost unbearable itch to get up and do something, but he knew he had to fill his boss in first.
“What do we know?” Hayes asked, placing his palms flat on Isaac’s desk and giving him his full attention.
“According to the phone’s GPS, in the last three months Jarvis has made two trips to the Cleveland area. The first trip was back in March and it was only four days long. Now, I’m thinking that’s most likely when Jarvis pinpointed Sidney’s exact location. Only he didn’t have the time back then to really spend on doing anything about it. He needed to make plans first and figure things out. Probably needed to get back to his job in LA.”
Hayes nodded. “And the second trip?”
“The second trip began three weeks ago when he returned. Now, that’s also the exact time when all the strange things started happening at Sidney’s place in Rocky River — the mutilated cat on her front porch; the mystery glass sitting on her kitchen counter.”
Isaac used the pencil to punctuate each point, stabbing the air.
“But unbeknownst to Jarvis,” he continued, “at the same time he’s waging his terrorism against her, Sidney witnessed a murder and got caught up in that whole mess with Nacio Rivas-Solis and had to be taken into police protective custody.”
“And Jarvis gets angry at losing access to his prey,” Vega jumped in. “So he grabs victim number one.”
“Exactly,” Isaac confirmed, getting up and pointing to a woman’s picture on the case board. Marsha Woodford became the first stand-in for Sidney in this fucker’s sick mind.”
“Sick is right,” Lieutenant Hayes stated. “He rapes her, then beats her to death. All because she’s not the woman he’s really after.”
Isaac nodded and pointed to a second picture.
“And then he grabs Deondra Markland, stand-in number two, once the first stand-in is dead and Sidney is still unavailable to him. Karen Wilson was to be stand-in number three, only she managed to get away from him. My immediate worry is that while we had Sidney hidden away from Rivas-Solis, Damien Jarvis was just lying in wait. He probably sat on her place in Rocky River just counting the minutes until she returned.”
“You know if that’s true, Ike, then there’s a good likelihood that this guy saw you spiriting Sidney away again after you both got a look at the little love note he left in her mailbox a few days ago.”
Vega said the words he hadn’t wanted to, and Isaac nodded.
“Right. And if it’s true and he followed us that day, then he may already know exactly where to find her.”
The fact that he knew Officer Davis was already stationed at his place made no difference. Isaac couldn’t shake the feeling of dread, even though he knew Davis was a good cop who knew what he was doing. He pulled out his cellphone and dialed Sidney anyway, just to check in and make sure everything was okay.
It rang five times and then went to voicemail.
Isaac hung up without leaving a message.
For the first time in his life, he found himself wishing his abilities were stronger and that he had some way of knowing what was going on. Some way of tapping into it for answers.
“Maybe she’s just in the bathroom or something,” Vega said.
“Yeah. Give her five minutes and call again,” Hayes chimed in.
Isaac couldn’t wait that long. He dialed again.
Still no answer.
He pulled the police issued radio from his desk drawer and turned it on.
“Car 241, what’s your status?”
No answer from Officer Davis.
The feeling of dread slowly began to slither around Isaac’s throat like a snake.
“Car 241, please acknowledge.”
Nothing.
The dread snake started to constrict, and Isaac took a desperate breath even as his heart stopped.
“Fuck!”
Without another word to Hayes or Vega he turned and bolted for the stairs. Down four flights on a dead run.
It wasn’t until Vega jumped into the car two seconds after he did that Isaac realized his partner had been on his heels. They didn’t say anything to one another the whole frustrating ride to his apartment, but Isaac appreciated the support and backup.
The tires squealed to a stop in the apartment building’s parking lot, and they leapt from the car and ran inside.
In the hallway outside his apartment they stepped out of the stairwell with guns drawn.
Down the hall and across from his door, Officer Davis was slumped over in a pool of blood.
Isaac pointed, motioning for Vega to check on him, and he went straight for the open door leading into his place.
The moment he stepped inside he saw signs of a struggle — things knocked off the counter, one of the stools kicked way to the side. Shattered glass that he recognized as a bowl that used to sit on the shelf now scattered all over the floor. Sidney’s laptop sat open and abandoned amid the rubble of what used to be the living room table.
He rushed into the bedroom and his heart sank.
His spare gun lay on the floor at the foot of the bed. Sidney’s cellphone lay forsaken a few feet away with a busted screen. The straight-backed chair that normally sat beside the door to the bathroom was overturned. Isaac frowned when his gaze landed on something shiny beside it.
He knelt down and picked up Sidney’s delicate little gold chain. The one with the tiny charm with the cross stamped on it. The one that used to belong to her mother and that she rarely took off.
He remembered kissing her neck and his lips brushing against the thin slip of gold.
The instant the fragile gold chain touched his palm he felt the strangest sensation. The thing vibrated in his hand. Was that possible? And he felt something he couldn’t quite place. Something…
Despair?
“Oh, God. Sidney,” he whispered.
“Davis is dead and his gun is missing,” Vega said as he walked into the bedroom.
“And Sidney’s been taken.”
19
Sidney was roughly thrown across the room.
Her hands hit the old, warped wood floor, palms flat as she nearly face-planted.
Her breath stuttered.
She had no idea where they were or how much time had passed.
She didn’t remember leaving Isaac’s apartment either, although one glance around told her immediately that they were no longer there. She had no recollection of the ensuing time. Had Damien knocked her out or something? Had he drugged her somehow? She had no clue, but she looked around now and took everything in. She vaguely remembered tripping over her own feet as she was led from a car into here.
Wherever here was.
The place looked neglected, forsaken and old. Fixtures had long ago been stripped, leaving exposed wires dangling from small holes in the walls. Crown molding hung haphazardly from points around the ceiling. What little paint there was on the walls was chipped and peeling. There was no furniture of any kind in this room, but the far wall sported the guts of what she assumed used to be a wood-burning fireplace. Then there was the old warped floor she was still intimately acquainted with.
An abandoned house?
Before she could explore that notion further, a door slammed behind her and Damien stomped around mumbling and cussing.
“… and you think you gonna just up and leave me. Bitch, I will show you.”
He grabbed her by the arms and yanked her up from the floor.
“Ahh!” Sidney yelped.
“Shut up!”
He pulled her down a short hallway and into what was probably at one time a parlor or a sitting room. Right now though, it was home to a dingy full-sized mattress with one pillow and a thin blue blanket, and Sidney could tell that this was where Damien had been staying. There were empty pizza boxes and takeout cartons, chip bags and crushed beer cans sitting in little piles all around the room, and in one corner there was a duffle bag and other personal stuff. This was Damien’s extended stay, his freeloader’s Holiday Inn.
A shudder ran through her as she thought about the fact that it was also most likely where he’d killed those other two women. Where he had raped them and then beaten them to death.
Where the third woman had fought back and gotten away.
She hung on to that thought.
She would do that too. She would fight and get away from him. She had to.
