Page 7 of Deep Feelings & Shallow Graves

Carson

I’m supposed to be finishing this report.

The cursor blinks like it’s waiting for me to admit I’m fucked. I’ve written the same sentence three times and deleted it four. The notes from yesterday’s unofficial questioning sit in front of me, half-typed, half-scribbled, and absolutely useless.

Subject: Jennifer Lane.

Address: Same.

Reason for contact: Question regarding missing persons tip.

Disposition: Cooperative. Odd affect. Potential witness. Not suspect at this time.

I stare at the word “odd.” It feels... wrong. Not inaccurate, but insufficient. She’s not odd. She’s wrong in the way a riptide looks calm from the surface. You could drown in it without ever knowing it was dangerous until your lungs were already full.

Still, I don’t delete it. I just lean back in my chair and pinch the bridge of my nose like that’ll stop the image flooding in again. Her, fingers sticky with sugar, tilting her head at me like she already knew I wouldn’t write her up.

She smiled when she lied, slow and syrupy, like she was undressing me with the punchline. Who the fuck makes murder sound like a promise whispered against your neck?

I told myself it was nothing. Just a weird sense of humor. Some off-kilter coping mechanism. But my gut says it was more than that. My gut has always been good.

She’s small. Too small. Five foot nothing and shaped like temptation.

Like a warning no one listens to until it’s too late.

Curves for days, no obvious muscle. I don’t care how scrappy she is, she couldn’t have overpowered a man like Gregory Tramble.

The guy was a tank, two hundred and twenty pounds of gym-bro ego.

But up here? In her head? That man wouldn’t see it coming until the plastic wrap kissed his windpipe.

And maybe that’s what fucks me up most, how easy it is to picture.

How much I believe she could. When I looked at her, I didn’t see fear.

I saw calculation. Quiet confidence. Like a woman who already knows the end of the story and just hasn’t told anyone yet.

And fuck me, I wanted to touch her. Even while I was asking about Tramble. Even while her mouth was dropping bite-sized confessions between cookies like sugar-coated grenades.

“Not unless you count the bits of him my rose bush is still feasting on.”

“Either way, nature’s problem now.”

“At home. Baking. Murdering. Watching Bridgerton. Pick your fantasy.”

Should I have flagged that?

I glance back at the form. There’s a line for concerning behavior. I leave it blank. I shouldn’t. But I do.

I don’t want to be the guy who drags a woman through hell for having a dark sense of humor. I don’t want to be the guy who accuses her just because she’s strange. Just because she’s magnetic.

I want to be the guy she curls up against when the world feels too sharp.

Christ.

I lean forward, drop my face into my hands, and exhale through clenched teeth.

I can still smell her, sweet and warm and just a little wrong.

Like cookies baked in a haunted house. I bet her hair would smell like cinnamon if I tucked her under my chin.

I bet she’d melt against me without even realizing it, trusting me.

I’d keep her safe. Wrap her in flannel and lock the door behind us. Not because I think she needs protecting, but because I need the world to know she’s mine to protect. And I’d hold her there. I would. I’d fucking shelter her from everything, even myself, if it came to that.

Even if it turns out she is dangerous. Hell, especially then.

Because there’s something about her, something cold and quiet and glittering underneath all that softness. Like she’s the eye of a storm and doesn’t even know it.

Or maybe she does. Maybe that’s what makes her so hard to walk away from.

I stare at the report again and try to find the thread of the damn thing.

Eventually, I write:

“Subject displays dry humor. Tone unclear at times. No indication of active threat at this time.”

A lie. But it’s a small one.

I don’t hit submit. Not yet. Instead, I sit there like a moron and imagine her leaning into me again. Just for a second. Just long enough to make me forget every oath, every dead-eyed briefing, every damn rule carved into my badge.

The Tramble report stares at me like it knows I’m full of shit. I finally hit save, then minimize the screen like that’ll make the guilt shut up.

I tell myself I’ll revisit it later, maybe after a coffee. Or sleep. Or a fucking lobotomy.

Instead, I open another file. Top right corner of my desk, half buried in old paperwork and unfiled warrants. Been meaning to look at it for weeks. Just never felt urgent.

Until now.

Case ID: MJ042419

Missing Person: Hank Johnson

Date Last Seen: April 24, 2019

Location: Eastwood neighborhood, midtown area.

Hank fucking Johnson. I remember this one now.

Guy was a real piece of work, assault charge, two priors for possession with intent, and a domestic violence conviction that got him two years inside. Big, mean, loud. Had the kind of face that begged for a backhand and the history to prove someone finally gave it to him.

Ex-wife was in rehab when he disappeared. Solid alibi. No one else close enough to care he was gone. No body. No leads. Case stalled out so long it started gathering dust in real time.

I flip through the report, eyes skimming faster now.

Then I see it.

Line item buried under a data pull from his burner phone:

Last outgoing contact:

April 24th, 7:03 PM.

Text message to “J-Lane (App):

“On my way. Wine good?”

My gut knots like it knows something I don’t.

No fucking way. No way she’s been doing this that long, and getting away with it.

I read through the app log print out. Sure enough, there it is, some beta-dating platform that shut down after a privacy scandal. Pulled archives say he matched with a Jennifer Lane a few weeks before he vanished. Messaged back and forth.

Typical shit: ur hot, what u into, dinner plans.

And then this:

“You cook?”

“Sure. Come hungry.”

And that was the last anyone ever heard from Hank Johnson.

I stare at the screen, heart pounding in a way I don’t like.

Jennifer Lane. Her goddamn name, right there, five years before Tramble. Same house. Same zip code. Same type of man, violent history, known misogynist, the kind of bastard who thinks a slap means affection.

I lean back, slowly.

At first, I think I’m imagining it. Maybe it’s a common name. Maybe it’s not her.

She was it. The last woman that bastard ever laid eyes on. And somehow, that makes sense.

And now Tramble, too.

Fuck.

My mouth is dry. I glare at the page like it might take it back, like maybe if I blink hard enough it’ll all rearrange into something that doesn’t make my dick go soft with dread.

Jennifer Lane. Sugar sweet. Cookie crumbed. Soft-spoken, head-tilting, dangerous.

Not in the way women usually are. Not careless. Not emotional. Methodical. Like a butcher in a ballgown and mercy never even entered the equation.

I should feel sick. But there’s a part of me, twisted, buried, and ugly, that doesn’t.

Because I remember Hank Johnson. I remember the busted eye socket on his ex. I remember the way he laughed when I threatened to press charges. I remember thinking, Someone ought to put this bastard down. And now maybe someone did. Maybe she did.

But even now, even staring at what could be evidence, I’m not reaching for the phone. Not calling it in.

I’m sitting here thinking about how soft she would feel against me. How easily I could’ve wrapped my arms around her and kept her there, protected her from the world.

From men like Hank. Like Tramble. Like whoever the fuck is next.

But now I’m wondering if I’ve been protecting the wrong person. Or maybe the right one, in the wrong way.

Maybe it wasn’t about men like Hank. Maybe it’s about the system that would crucify her for doing what it couldn’t.

My hand hovers over the file. I should flag this. Open a new report. Start the protocol. At the very least, alert Missing Persons.

I pull the pages, fold them slow, and slide them into the drawer like a priest stashing sins he doesn’t regret.

Then I turn the key. Not to bury the evidence. To guard it. If anyone’s coming for her, they’ll have to get through me first. Because part of me, maybe the part that should’ve retired three years ago, is already rewriting the story.

Maybe she’s not the monster. Maybe she’s the answer.

Or maybe I’m already hers, and too far under to pretend otherwise.

I should stop.

I should stop right here.

Print the report, tag it for review, take it upstairs and say, “Hey, remember that dead creep? Yeah, turns out he was hanging out with a serial killer cookie fairy.”

But I don’t. Instead, I lean in and start running the app records again. Not just for Hank Johnson. Not just for Tramble.

I dig into the server pulls. Archived messages. Login IPs. Metadata. All of it.

Jennifer Lane used three dating apps over the past six years. Different usernames, different profile pics, but the same email backbone, the same device ID on the back end. She’s not even trying to hide it. That’s what fucks me up. It’s all there.

Men start stacking up. All missing. All with rap sheets a mile long, abuse, assault, stalking. One guy tried to burn down his ex’s trailer with her inside.

Jennifer matched with each of them.

Dated them. Laughed at their jokes. Let them think they were getting laid. A few dates. Then nothing. Gone. Erased.

She’s not a serial killer. She’s a fucking reckoning.

I lean back, spine ice and adrenaline, stomach curled around the sick thrill of it. This isn’t chaos. This is pattern. It’s not a mess. It’s a method. A private justice system wearing a sundress and a smirk.

And I’m fucking in awe.

And I should be horrified.

Instead, I feel like I just found the fucking Rosetta Stone. Like I’ve been squinting at pieces of a puzzle and now the picture is finally snapping into place.

Jennifer is effective. And every man she took out? Yeah. They fucking deserved it.

I exhale slow, like maybe if I do it quiet enough, the walls won’t hear.

Then I open my department login and start deleting logs. First the local app archive I just pulled. Then I flag the access as a false positive “internal error” and mark it for deletion.

I close Hank Johnson’s case, mark it “no actionable leads.”

Then I go one step further: after noting the name of her current target, Derik Putzly, I tag her dating app account as compromised, flagged for deletion in 72 hours due to “suspicious activity.” That buys time. Scrambles records. Buries the trail in red tape and low-priority tech tickets.

My hands shake. I think I’m gonna throw up or jerk off or both.

I just rewrote history for her. Not for justice. Not for duty. For her. I’m not a detective tonight. I’m hers. Just hers. A complicit, lovesick fool jerking off to justice in a sundress.

I wipe a hand down my face, heart hammering, half-sick, half-hard.

She’s dangerous. She’s divine. And maybe I’m not her protector. Maybe I’m just the next man dumb enough to die with her name on my lips and a smile on my face.

If anyone ever comes for her, if they so much as breathe her name like it’s a crime, I’ll bury the badge, burn the evidence, and make it my holy fucking mission to keep her untouched.

Even if I have to bleed for it. Even if I’m just her next mistake.

I can still hear her laugh, smug and knowing, like she’s already picked out the shovel I’ll use to bury myself for her.