In the Beginning (Volkov Bratva #1)(68)

Ross nodded. “Alright, canvas the area. See who else knows something.”

“What’s happening!”

Ross spun around as a screaming woman came running towards the house, but the officer behind the tape grabbed her before she could make it far.

She was petite, no more than five-four, a buck ten max, with shoulder length light brown hair that was in disarray as she fought to get past the officer. Though she was tiny, she was putting up a hell of a fight. It was Susan. He recognized her, often seeing her around town shopping with her daughter.

Ross stepped out of the house, waving to the officers to let her through. There was no easy way to tell her what had happened to her husband. She looked grateful as she rushed over to him, clutching the strap of her purse tightly.

“Where’s Cameron? Is he okay? Is Lauren okay?”

Her questions came out rapidly, one after the other, but the last snagged his attention. “Your daughter isn’t with you?”

Her face blanched as she ran for the house, dropping her bags in the grass. “Lauren? Lauren!”

Ross rushed back in the house, barking orders to the other officers. “There’s a missing girl. Get a recent picture from Susan and put out an Amber Alert now!”

The room erupted into chaos as the situation turned from bad to worse. No one wanted to acknowledge that hours had passed before they even realized that Lauren might have been in danger.

A sudden noise from the closet made everyone freeze where they were. Slowly, the officers drew their sidearms, the medical examiner helped moved the body away from the door, moving out of the way as Ross crept towards the door, signaling the men to wait for his mark.

He held up his hand, slowly counting down to one before wrenching the door open, preparing to raise his gun, but there was no need.

On the other side was a little girl in pajamas, clutching a bloody blanket. Dried blood coated her hands, bloody fingerprints covering her face where she must have rubbed her tears away. It was even soaked into her pants where the blood had seeped beneath the crack in the door.

Ross holstered his gun, crouching down so he was eye level with her. Her hazel eyes were watery and he could only imagine the horror she must have witnessed in the closet. Christ, how long has she been in there?

“It’s okay,” he said softly, trying to keep his voice gentle. “You’re safe now. I’m not going to hurt you.”

With a bit more coaxing, she finally crawled out to him, wrapping her tiny arms around his shoulders.

He held her tightly to his chest, not caring about the blood that was getting on his clothes. It wasn’t important, suits were replaceable. He shielded her gaze from her father being zipped into the black body bag. When it was time to hand her over to her mother, he wished he could hold onto her, wanting to keep the horror of this day away for a little while longer.

They never did learn how long she had been in the closet, nor did they ever get a physical description of the perps. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help, Lauren couldn’t remember a thing about the day. Doctors thought that because the event was so traumatic, she had blocked it out.

They couldn’t help and though psychiatrists thought by putting her under hypnosis, she might be able to reveal any facts, Susan had disagreed, arguing that if Lauren didn’t remember her father being murdered, she wasn’t going to force her to.

The psychiatrists, however, did say that one day her memories would return, maybe when she was ready to deal with it, or if she experienced a trigger, but until then, there was nothing anyone could do.

Over the years—and dozens of suspects later—they weren’t any closer to finding the men that did it, so the case had been deemed officially cold, the box placed in a room full of other cases that had been forgotten about until some new piece of evidence was presented.

It was one of the few cases that stuck with Ross. Though Lauren had moved on—as much as one could and was now off at college enjoying her life, he still felt like he had failed her. It was why he looked after her, even when people thought that he was getting too close to them.

But how could he not? He liked to think that he was the first kind face that she had seen after that ordeal, and she treated him as such. He’d tried keeping his distance, treating them like any other family of a victim, but Lauren often called just to see how he was doing, whether he was catching any bad guys, and over the years, it seemed that their relationship had only solidified.

He never knew how exactly to describe it. Ross could never be her father, he never deluded himself into thinking he could be, but he looked out for her like one, and he loved her like she was his own. Susan didn’t mind, often encouraging him to spend more time with her. She thought of him as a good influence.

His love for them was why when Lauren asked him for the files on her father, he had been reluctant at first. Some people believed that they were ready to know all of the details of a horrific crime, but even the most experienced of detectives couldn’t handle full details. Eventually, he handed them over, deciding that she was old enough now to face what she would find inside, but, he removed the pictures of the crime scene.

Since he was only in New York for a few days, two weeks at the most, he didn’t see the harm in letting her have a look, thinking that she wouldn’t have enough time to get through it all.

He was busy assisting on a case with the NYPD, a homicide that bared an eerie resemblance to a case he worked a few years back. He and a Detective Marco Rodriguez—a Puerto Rican homicide detective that looked like he was fresh out of the academy—were going to question a potential lead today, but instead of bringing the suspect down to the precinct, they were going to talk at hi house.