The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(34)

I pack a fresh bag while Eddison loads the leftovers and most of my brand new groceries into a cooler, because there’s no sense in leaving them to rot, and we head out in his car. Holmes and one of the uniformed officers remain there to tape off my house yet again. I’m so fucking tired, and my home feels less like home every time I’m in it, and I just . . .

What happened to this woman? Where did our paths cross, and why is she so fixated on me?



Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was scared of the color red.

There was just so much of it.

She remembered the blood on her mama’s car windows, how dark it looked in the moonlight but how brilliant a red it was in the officers’ flashlights. Her mama escaped that night, got away from Daddy forever, and didn’t even try to take her little girl with her.

She knew the red on her body, blood from bites, and the pink from slaps, and the darker red of places that would become bruises. She knew the red of torn skin. It hurt for days after to pee.

Then there was a new red there, thicker, heavier, and Daddy laughed and laughed when he saw it. You’re a woman now, baby girl. My beautiful woman.

One of his friends was a doctor, the special lady kind, Daddy said, and took her to his office for an exam. The doctor nearly cried when he got to touch her there for the first time. Daddy never let his friends touch her. After that, there was a pill every day. One of Daddy’s friends laughed at the hair that started growing between her legs, said all the hungriest bitches should be redheads.

Daddy looked thoughtful at that.

She hated when Daddy looked thoughtful.

It wasn’t long before he came home with two boxes of hair dye. They weren’t even the same color; one was a fire engine kind of red, the other more orange, and he didn’t mix them together right and he missed spots, but he laughed and called her beautiful anyway, and he took away the hair between her legs and under her arms.

That night, when his friends came to the basement for their party, Daddy showed off the dye job. Gentlemen, he said, if the price is right . . .

Amidst all the clamor, one of them had nearly $300 in his wallet, and he gave it all to her Daddy. Daddy readied his favorite camera.

They’d never been allowed to even touch her before.

They did love a redhead.



13

We’re over hours for the pay cycle and that, as Vic likes to remind us, is a thing the Bureau cares about when you’re working a desk. None of us are allowed to go in on Monday, which we spend sprawled over each other on Eddison’s couch in front of the TV. I don’t hear from Siobhan at all, and when I get into the office Tuesday morning, there’s a box on my desk with the handful of things I kept at her apartment. Eddison peers over my shoulder and winces.

“I guess that’s that.”

“Guess so.”

“Olvídate de las hermanastras, la próxima vez encontraremos a la Cenicienta,” he says, and there are so many things wrong with that I can’t even try to list them out.

We’re still standing there, just looking at the box, when Vic walks up. He identifies it right away and grimaces in sympathy. “I’m about to make your morning worse,” he admits. “Agent Dern needs to see you. Then Simpkins’s team needs to talk to you.”

“They’re paired with Holmes and Manassas PD?”

“Yes. They have all of Holmes’s notes, but—”

“But they want to conduct their own interviews where possible,” I finish for him, and he nods. Grabbing the box, I drop it to the floor and kick it under the desk, out of sight and hopefully, at least for a little while, out of mind. “Is Simpkins going to be okay for this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Last time Eddison and I worked with her, she was pissy as hell, and Cass said something happened on their case last week in Idaho.”

“I don’t know about Idaho, but she’s a good agent, good enough not to let her disapproval of how I ran the team interfere with the case.”

Eddison snorts, but doesn’t offer further comment. Simpkins has never tried to pretend she approves of Vic’s style, but the last time we were loaned to her, she rode our asses like we were baby agents who’d slept through the academy. It was distinctly unpleasant, and uncalled for.

Vic walks me to Internal Affairs and Agent Dern’s office, which isn’t at all surprising, and then follows me inside, which kind of is. He just shrugs when I give him a sideways glance. “Now what kind of friend would I be if I left you to face the Dragonmother alone?”

Agent Dern looks up from her computer with a wry smile. “I thought it was generally agreed not to use that name to my face. Agent Ramirez, please, have a seat.”

The Dragonmother of Internal Affairs, Agent Samantha Dern has been in the Bureau for almost fifty years. Her face is creased and lined, and her light makeup makes no effort to hide it, just as the silver-white hair cropped in a flattering, kind of fluffy bob has no dye to mask it. A pair of plastic-framed reading glasses, the frames almost the same rose color of her silk blouse, perch on her nose, connected to a thin chain draped around her neck. She looks soft and kindly, like someone’s favorite grandmother, but she’s been known to make grown men cry in under ten minutes.

“Agent Ramirez, where would you like to begin? With Emilia Anders, or with Agent Ryan’s call to HR?”