Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(93)

I hated this new girl who wasn’t new. I hated her long dark hair. I hated her gleaming brown eyes. I hated the way she smiled at me, as if she already knew things I didn’t. Such as I was the one just passing through. She would always be the real deal.

The house was shabby. Dirty stucco-colored linoleum in the kitchen. Tired cabinets with sagging doors. Furniture patched with silver splashes of duct tape. It made me feel better. Some basic female instinct: At least my house is nicer than yours.

Except, of course, I didn’t have a house. I had a coffin-shaped box in the back of Jacob’s sleeper cab.

I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know why. My throat was closing up, my heart rate too high.

Jacob, holding the knife down at his side. Now drinking and smoking with this girl, the legendary Lindy whom he talked about in his sleep. They were together. Before. Now. Forever. She would always be his.

Which made me completely expendable. Gator food. Literal white trash.

I was going to be sick. Except I hadn’t eaten enough lately to vomit. My hands trembled, my left knee jogged uncontrollably. Stress, fear, fatigue, hunger. Take your pick. I suffered, suffered, suffered.

While Jacob sat on the sofa, and laughed and smoked dope with the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.

I don’t know when I first moved. I just did. Stood up at the table. Not like they were paying attention to me. Walked toward the jumbled collection of broken-down drawers, sagging cabinets.

A ratty kitchen. A shabby kitchen. But still a kitchen. And every kitchen stocks similar items. Such as knives.

The paring blade, short and easy to conceal? Or maybe the butcher knife. Go full psycho.

In the end, I selected a model in between. Without ever truly thinking about it. If the new girl wasn’t really new, then I could make a decision without really deciding.

Giggles. High-pitched. Happy.

And just for one moment . . .

I am home. I am rolling on a bed, all tangled up with my mother, my brother. We are laughing, laughing, laughing. This is Mom. This is Mom, all cracked up!

The softness of the down covers, the smell of spring rain and loamy earth right outside the window. The sound of my mom, my brother, laughing hysterically.

Home. Home, home, home.

Snapping back, I looked down at my pale skinny arm. I studied my hand holding the kitchen knife. And I realized then, truly got it, that I wasn’t going home again. I would never roll on that bed. I would never laugh with my family.

I would never go to that place. I would never be that person.

That girl was dead.

All that was left was this moment, this place, this knife in my hand.

I held out my left wrist, studied the maze of red scars, blue veins. It would be so easy. One swipe here, one swipe there. Leave Jacob to clean up the mess.

Gator food. Literal white trash.

My mother never knowing what happened to me. Denied even the comfort of burying my body.

She deserved better.

So for her sake, as much as my own, I took my knife and drifted into the family room.


*

THEY DIDN’T SEE ME COMING. Too busy whispering and giggling, reminiscing about the good old days, whatever. Their heads were bowed, Jacob’s hair gray-streaked and greasy, hers dark and silky.

It made it easy to launch the first strike. My arm raising all the way up, just like every slasher film I’d ever seen, except this time, I was the crazy-eyed stalker instead of the doe-eyed college student.

Nobody wants to be a monster.

Or do they?

Arm coming down, down, down.

A scream, sharp and shrill. Mine? Nope. Definitely hers. The beautiful new girl came shooting off the sofa, blood blossoming down her back where I had raked the knife across her shoulder blade.

“Shit!” Jacob exploded, fear just beginning to penetrate his doper’s glaze. “What the fuck, what the f—”

I turned to him next. Arm up, up, up.

Arm coming down, down, d—

She launched herself at me. The new girl who wasn’t new fought like a hellcat. She tackled me down to the ground. Fingernails slashing down my face, going for my eyes. Screaming words at me in a language I didn’t know. Not Spanish. Something far more exotic.

As I heaved against her reflexively, forgetting all about the kitchen blade, which had scattered from my grip.

But she didn’t. Her gaze flashed to the knife, resting several feet away. Her face sharpening with a look of cunning.

I realized what she was going to do the second before she made her move. A fresh launch, this time from my chest, toward the blade. I turned with her, grabbing at her left arm, as if to hold her back.

She kicked at me without ever losing focus, stretching long, and just like that, she had the knife, turning back, looming over me. The smile on her face. Feral. Happy.

So Jacob wouldn’t be the one to kill me after all.

Interesting.

Knife. Not going up, up, up. What would be the fun in that? But instead twirling lazily in front of my eyes.

She spoke again, whispers of death in her exotic tongue. No translation required to understand she was going to slice me up. And she was going to enjoy doing it.

“Stop!” Jacob’s hand, snapping around her wrist. “Gimme that. Stupid bitches.”

She yelled at him. In English this time. Demanded the right to finish what I’d started. I didn’t speak. I didn’t move. My heart was beating too fast. I lay on the floor, the fallen gazelle trapped between two lions.