Page 6 of Sinful Reality

My badge. My wallet. Keys. Coins.

The rock with the sharp edge.

I place it with the dozen others I’ve brought home over the lastmonth or two, then I turn and find the top of her brown hair peeking over the back of the sofa. That’s all I see, which means she’s hunched. Terrible posture. Too tired to sit up straight.

“It’s not infusion night, Mayet.” I rub my hands together and start across the apartment, peeking into each corner to ensure Cato isn’t hiding anywhere. Then I stop at the back of the couch and frown when I not only find my wife mentally captive in a whole other world, but a messy pile of files and a laptop perched on her folded legs.

“Hey?” My heart knocks in my chest, crushing my lungs and settling in with a tang of anxiety pulsing in my blood, so I grab her ponytail and gently pull until she’s forced to look up at me. But even then, her eyes are absent. Her focus, somewhere else entirely. “What’s going on?” I bend and press a gentle kiss to her lips—it’s like kissing a wall—then I spy the files laid out in front of her. “You have Diane Philips’ case notes out again?” I release her hair, but only so I can crouch and rest my arms on the back of the couch. “What’s going on?”

“January eleventh.” She flips through pages. One after another after another. “It’s January twenty-seventh now.”

“Uh… Yes?” I study her laptop screen and find it split in two: one half has a spreadsheet, dates and times, facts and figures spelled out in neat lines, and the other half, a picture of a little girl. Smiling face, missing front tooth. Could be pudding on her lips, and bright brown eyes staring down the barrel of the camera. “It’s been about two weeks since the eleventh, right? You told me to stop making it into a big deal.”

“Sixteen days,” she rasps, setting a stack of papers aside and leafing through the next pile. “Sixteen days, six hours, thirty-seven minutes.” She swallows and brings her haunted eyes up to mine. “Since 9-1-1 was called.”

“What?” I snatch the laptop and minimize the spreadsheet, so I can scan the article about a girl named Janiesa Sawyer. “Was playing in a park under her mother’s watchful eye,” I read out loud. “Coffee cart. January eleventh. Abduction?” My stomach drops like a lead fucking balloon, but it grows exponentially heavier when I find the dozen other tabs open at the top of her screen. Nausea and curiosity create a tangled web in my mind as I go to the next and find a different article. Same girl, different picture, same story, different perspective. “Negligentsingle mom,” I snarl. “Child was alone.” Then the next. “Similarities to the Body-In-The-Bag killer who began his reign in the winter of ‘98. Janiesa Sawyer may be the newest victim of a crime that spans over twenty years. What the fuck?” I snap the laptop closed and meet Minka’s stare. “What?”

“Soph called me at work.” Her voice is weak. Tired. Her throat is dry, and her eyes are void of… anything. These are the eyes I’ve seen in the past. Rarely. But I’ve seen them. “She called this afternoon and told me about Janiesa’s case.”

“You don’t believe it’s the same guy, though, right? He stopped.”

“I mean…” She unfolds her legs, groaning as she sets her feet on the floor and slumps against the back of the couch. This might literally be the first time she’s extended her spine and given her organs space to breathe since she sat down. “I said no. I believed myself when I said it.”

“Minka?” I throw my leg over the couch and slide onto the cushions so I can sit beside her, crumpled papers between us. Pens poking my leg. Seventeen lifetimes crushed between me and a couch cushion. Grabbing her chin, I drag her focus back around. “He stopped. Like, five or six years ago.”

“That’s what I said, too.” The whites of her eyes turn a horrifying shade of pink, tears making them shimmer. But she refuses to let them fall. “He stopped. That’s what I told Soph. But she’s Soph, ya know? She doesn’t dowrong.”

“Babe—”

“January eleventh, a little girl was taken from a park in Bronxville, New York. She’s the only child of a hard-working single mom doing it all alone. Her father, who was otherwise absent in her life, has an airtight alibi and is actively and passionately helping with the investigation. He’s not a suspect at this point.”

“The others were taken closer to Manhattan!”Why do I argue? How does it help?She’s still missing, and finding her abductor, whoever he is, is the most important next step. “Does she have a connection to any of the seventeen who came before her?” My eyes spring wide when a thought hits me. “Did he leave a dead girl at the park before taking her?”

“No.” She reaches out and carefully, robotically, takes back her laptop. “Detectives have been working the case for a little over twoweeks already. They’ve run through everyone’s alibis, every single relative, school teachers, bus drivers, daycare workers, and even the owner of the coffee cart. They’ve found no one of interest, not only for this case, but have found no connections to any of the previous seventeen.”

“So…”Fuck! My brain stretches and strains to figure her out. “Apart from the day she was taken, what makes them connect this one to the others?”

She opens the laptop, listless and waning, and shrugs. “They consulted the primary detective from the original cases. And since everything else in Janiesa’s life has been worked through, I guess they landed on this being too much of a coincidence. Or maybe they haven’t been forthcoming with the information they have so far.” She reopens her spreadsheet and slowly reads each line. I see dates. Times. Names. Locations. She’s scoured countless articles and files to gather as much information as possible until…

Obsession.

“Babe? You did all this today?”

She drags her bottom lip between her teeth, the shine of the laptop screen glittering against the unshed tears in her eyes. “Some. I started this spreadsheet years ago.” She releases her lip, but doesn’t pull her focus from the screen. “Before I even met you.”

“And now you’re adding to it?” I snag the piles of paper and things stuck between us and set them on the coffee table, all so I can scoot closer and see the screen easier as she scrolls. “Justine Desmond?”

“She served Janiesa’s mother the coffee at the park.”

I narrow my eyes and scour the spreadsheet. “And Tahnee Staines?”

“Was at the park with her kid when Janiesa was snatched.” She leans forward when I set my arm on the back of the couch, escaping my touch and eliciting a stabbing spire of dread spearing through my gut. “Not a suspect, but she had contact with Janiesa before she was taken. Her kid was playing with Janiesa on the swings approximately twenty minutes before Janiesa was taken.”

“How do you…” Scowling, I stroke a lock of her hair between my thumb and finger and feel the silky strands on my skin. “How do you know this stuff? Did Soph pull the files?”

“Some.” She brings her legs up again, crossing them under her laptopand rests her elbow on one side, setting her chin in her hand. “I got some from the investigating detective, too.”

“The New York detectives? Why would they send that?” But horror whistles through my blood as theories populate my mind. “Jesus, you didn’t use that fake fuckin’ badge Sophia gave you, did you? You know that’s gonna land your ass in prison long before the vigilante shit will.”

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