Page 15

Chapter 14

Eve

The strident alarm of Eve’s phone woke her up, which was unusual as her internal clock always woke her up before that awful sound. Eve growled as she tried to reach the damn machine on her bedside table, feeling the wood of the furniture blindly deciding not to open her eyes until she reached her phone. A sigh escaped her when she finally turned the thing off.

Note to self, pick another fucking alarm. Why am I so tired?

Cyrus Fucking McRory.

The man had destroyed her, mostly her pussy, in a good way. They had managed to escape the Gala as discreetly as they could and came back to her place for an insane night of fucking. And an insane Sunday of fucking. It was a lot of fucking for one pussy, and she sure was feeling the effects now.

Eve stretched her back, her favourite cat stretch, yelping in pain. This damn guy broke her, she had to kick him out of her flat last evening, unable to take one more inch of his cock. She grunted sitting as slow as she could on her bed, enjoying the quietness of her apartment. I’m in trouble…

She was pretty sure a few people spotted them leaving the Gala, and stupidly she had brought a dangerous man to her killer den. I am dumb.

“Oh well.” What was done was done. She jumped to her feet, immediately regretting the decision at the ache of her limbs, but eventually she took a quick shower before getting ready for work.

Eve knew something was wrong as soon as she stepped into the station. Taking a deep breath, she advanced towards the stairs leading to her office, Erik was whispering to Andy in front of the anti-psycho room, the rest buzzing behind the closed door.

Her heart accelerated while she tried to climb the stairs steadily, a little bit of guilt was gnawing her after her debauching time with Cyrus. The police party for fuck’s sake . She could still feel the warmth of Cyrus’s hands on her, especially on her lower parts, the man sure knew how to find his way on a woman’s body. Her cheeks were burning and red when she finally reached her boss and Andy.

Andy scoffed. “Girl you need to work out a bit harder if ten stairs make you breathless.”

Eve chuckled, burning even more. “Yeah, working out sounds good.” She looked around feigning ignorance. “What’s happening?”.

The dark shadow that appeared on both faces screamed it. Her heart accelerated. The psycho did it again. He loved to kill even more than she did, which was already quite an unbelievable truth. She sighed before they could say anything. “Do you need me in the meeting?”

Erik nodded, a strange glint in his eyes while he looked at her, before inviting her to follow them into the special anti-psycho office. Eve quickly ran to her desk first to drop her jacket, making sure to leave her phone. She refused to handle sexting with Cyrus right now when the next hour or so was going to be a presentation of dreaded pictures.

An hour later Eve was finally out of the room, nausea threatening her stomach. This body was worse than the last one, even worse than the one before that. This time the killer seemed to have unleashed all his anger on the poor woman, her body was nothing like it should be. She had been raped, multiple times, in every way possible, including with sharp objects. Her breasts had been sliced up and down, reducing what used to be the apogee of her femininity to a shredded flesh cluste r. The pain she must have gone through was gut wrenching to imagine, and Eve could feel the tears coming every time she thought about it.

The psycho was losing his mind, he was becoming crazy — well, crazier — and she didn’t need to be a profiler to know he was furious. She sure hoped Ian, who was supposed to arrive soon, was not going to ask that the team make the killer angrier. Something they did multiple times, over and over again, in her favourite thrillers.

She sighed, stretching her back, a well-deserved cup of coffee in her hand and tensed up at the voice behind her.

“Tough weekend?”

Eve scoffed and turned on her heels, to see Ian, his long auburn hair tidy in a neat bun, a light of mischief in his beautiful blue eyes. His grey pants and sky-blue shirt making him look, for once, professional. He sure was a handsome man as well. No wonder Zorfield is all over him. She liked him, in the middle of all her crazy banging with Cyrus, they had managed to have actual conversations, and Cyrus obviously admired his best friend.

“Yeah tough, had to stay in bed all week…”

Erik arrived in the break room, interrupting her.

“…was so siiick,” she finished, accompanying her last words with an uncomfortable chuckle.

Erik glanced at her, and Eve swore he had a knowing gleam in his eyes, the same she spotted earlier. Could he know? Or was she just imagining it, her guilt taking over any common sense? She immediately stopped breathing and took a big chug of her drink, promising herself to be more careful in the future.

Busy with her thoughts, she hadn’t been listening to the exchange between the two men which appeared quite cordial, before Erik guiding Ian towards the anti-psycho room quickly turned to Eve and asked her to join as well. Eve held back a sigh, she really would have preferred not to look at the hideous pictures again. She was not that sensitive usually, but it hurt her in a different way when she was looking at the bodies of those poor women, increasing her rage, little by little.

She climbed the stairs quickly, not wanting to have the team wait for her, and arrived right on time to see Bonnie welcome Ian, her usual smile on her lips, while Andy sat on his desk, crossed arms with a pouting face that did not fit him at all. Eve went to him anyway, sitting by his side giving him a light elbow, whispering, “hey stop pouting, we need him, I heard he’s good.”

Andy grumbled which made her snicker, but immediately stopped when she felt Erik’s eyes on her.

Angry. He was angry. Eve straightened on the desk before jumping off it, heading for her favourite corner, her heart racing, a lump forming in her stomach. Erik had NEVER been angry at her, but she knew she was right, he was pissed off at her, meaning he had to know about her adventure with Cyrus.

Deciding to forget about it for the moment, after all what you don’t think about can’t hurt you, right? She focused on the psychopath. If Erik knew something he would talk to her about it. Until then, she would act as innocent as a virgin. Kind of. She sat in her corner, biting her lips, not sure she was ready for another go at the pictures; but she was curious to know what Ian thought about the increased violence. She had the impression that Andy and Bonnie weren’t even sure where to start, thankfully Ian took the lead.

“Forget about the older victims, I want to see the new one first, we need to focus on her for now.” Ian rolled up his sleeves, showing off muscular but thin forearms.

Eve couldn’t stop a shiver spotting the various lines, so parallel they looked like a work of art, the pink colours contrasting with his snow-white skin.

Ian observed every picture of the new body, spending so long on each one that she wondered how he could not have nightmares. He furrowed his brows, observing a picture of her face, a bloody, bruised, mush of a face, as if trying to place a name on the woman. “Where was she found?”

“Still the same,” Andy retorted with a smirk. At Ian’s interrogative look he pursued. “In your friend’s territory.”

Ian responded with a derisive scoff.

“I will keep an open mind on this profile, as I promised Erik.” He turned to the Commander. “But I don’t need to be friends with Cyrus to tell you right now he has no connection to this case. Bodies dropping in his neighbourhood means very little.”

Andy sighed, rolling his eyes. “Well one could hope, right?”

“ What about the first victim?” Ian asked. “Where was she found? And what did her body look like after… this…”

Andy pushed another stack of pictures and the accompanying file towards Ian, July’s murder.

As Ian reached for the documents, he turned to Bonnie, who appeared tense in her chair. “Something wrong Bonnie?”

The beautiful woman hesitated a minute. “I don’t think Roisin was the first victim, I think there is another one, one that has been… erm…. overlooked.”

Eve raised her head, not surprised Bonnie might have picked up something the others had missed. She was the best. With Andy, yes, but Andy was more efficient in a brutish way.

Ian grabbed the thin file Bonnie handed him.

“We have no concrete proof whatsoever that the prostitute was indeed the first victim,” Erik said. “She was not tortured the same way, she was vulgar while the others all have some sort of… class…” Erik cleared his throat. “And well, hard to know if she was raped or if it’s simply from work.”

At Ian’s blank look, Erik continued, “This is mostly likely a day at work gone bad, we should focus on the other ones.”

“I disagree, Erik, it won’t add much work for me to go through it. First victims often provide insight into the mind of the serial killer, they are their first after all. She’s important to him, not to mention he could have made mistakes then.”

Bonnie flashed a grateful smile to the redhead, and Eve thought she spotted some kind of recognition in Andy as well.

“As you wish, you are the expert after all.” Erik sighed, glancing at his watch. “I am sorry Ian, I have a meeting that I can’t escape, but Eve will stay and take notes so I can review them later.”

Ian nodded with a smile, while Eve for the first time felt relieved Erik was leaving the room. The notion that he might not want to solve the murders briefly crossed her mind.

After all it was of common knowledge that bribes and politics were ruling the police world, and perhaps Cragnum had finally managed to get a hold in her friend. But worrying for her old friend that he could be in any kind of trouble, had to wait, and she quickly came back to the conversation, feeling if she messed up her report, she would hear about it.