Page 22 of Hide and Seek
“Take a seat. Make yourself comfortable,” I murmur, indicating toward my couch as I stride past her. “I’ll grab you a towel to dry off.”
“Thanks,” Harper says in a small voice as water drips off both of us.
I make my way down my hall to the linen closet and grab a towel before turning on my heel and heading straight back to her. Only she’s not sitting down. She’s hovering in the corner and carefully toeing off her shoes as though terrified of traipsing water through my home.
I resist the urge to smile as I hand her the towel, and she awkwardly thanks me again before drying her face and arms. I reach for my tactical belt and unclip it, and as I feel her stare on me, I glance up to see the way her eyes are locked on my movements, sailing over my body and lingering on the way my wet black shirt sticks to my skin.
I clear my throat, and Harper’s gaze snaps back to mine. “Take a seat, Morticia. Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
“Right.”
Harper blows out a shaky breath and makes her way over to my couch as I drop my tactical belt on the hallway table. She sits down, and as I cut through my living room to join her, those big green eyes track my every step.
Her hands visibly shake. “This is messed up.”
I nod. “You spend your days cutting open corpses. If whatever this is has you so worked up, then I can only assume it’s messed up.”
“Okay,” she continues, taking a deep breath and blowing it out slowly. “So, a new body came in. You know Detective Gray? The hot one?”
“Gray?”
“Yeah. It was a brutal murder, so he wanted it prioritized as a matter of urgency, so I started right away, and this body . . . I’ve never seen anything so—”
She lets out another heavy breath, not being able to find the words, but I nod, understanding where she’s coming from. I’ve seen more than enough bodies to know how she feels. There aresome that rattle you to your core, and years later, you’ll still be thinking about it. And this, I get the feeling this is that for her.
Harper shoves her shaking hands under her thighs as if to settle herself before going on. “There were cuts all over his body. There must have been hundreds of them, and as I was documenting them, I realized the ones over his chest weren’t so random. The carvings were words. It was a message.”
I pull back, staring at her more intently, not liking where this is going. “What? A message for who?”
She shakes her head. “It readSmile for the camera, kitten.”
“What the hell?”
“My thoughts exactly,” she mutters, sounding sick to her stomach. “But I kept going, and when I reached his hands, I found more carvings on each of his knuckles. Ten fucked-up little jagged letters. And shit, Knight. It spelled out my name. Harper-Rayn across his knuckles.”
I fly to my feet, my eyes wide as I gape at the beautiful woman sitting in horror on my couch. “Your fucking name?” My stomach knots with unease, and I quickly realize this is more than just another bad case. This is related to the bullshit that went down during her last shift. Her stalker.
Harper nods. “That’s not even the worst part.”
“How the fuck is that not the worst part?” I demand, beginning to pace my living room, desperate to get to the bottom of this. The idea of some asshole targeting her like this makes me want to break.
“When I started the internal portion of the autopsy, I found a black rose,” she tells me on autopilot, trying to distance herself from the horror of it all. “Just like the one that was left on the table the other night. It had been shoved up in the ribcage. All the organs had been disturbed, and the heart—”
Harper whimpers and cuts herself off, and I drop down on the couch beside her, taking her delicate hand in mine. “Tell me, Harper. You’re safe now.”
She clutches my hand like it’s her only lifeline, and I don’t dare pull away. “There was something off about the heart. It had been disturbed in a different manner, and when I started to inspect it, I found more carvings.”
“What did it say?”
Harper visibly swallows. “Tag, you’re it.”
“The fuck?”
“Yeah,” she mutters. “I didn’t hang around much longer. I closed up as quickly as I could and came straight here. I’ve never had to deal with anything like this before. I just—I don’t know what to do. The other night they were just watching me and leaving a black rose, but this . . . Whoever this is has escalated, and now some poor guy was brutally murdered just for the sole purpose of this asshole sending me a message. I can’t be responsible for that. I never asked for this.”
“I know,” I say, pulling her closer to me. “It’ll be okay. You haven’t done anything wrong, and you’re sure as hell not responsible for this. We’ll get to the bottom of it, and I’ll find this asshole. I swear, Harper, I’m not going to let him hurt you. You’re safe with me.”
“You can’t promise me that,” she says, her big eyes filling with tears. She hastily pulls away from me and wipes her eyes on the back of her hand before getting to her feet. “I’m sorry. I’m just—I’m all kinds of fucked up right now.”
