Page 19 of Grave Kisses (Graveyard of Hearts Collection #1)

Kendra

I am pacing around the motel room while both Marcus and Bellamy sit at the end of the bed and watch me. I am freaking out because I know what they are saying, but no one has directly said it yet. When there is a knock on the door, I nearly trip and fall running to it.

“Ah, fuck,” I say when I pull the door open. I go to swing it closed, but Collier blocks it with his hand and gives me a deadpan look as he walks into the room.

“Hey, look. Collier is here,” Bellamy laughs.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t arrest all three of you for interfering with an investigation?” Collier asks, sounding pissed. “I’m out here trying to find a damn serial killer, and I have to stop and look for you three because you disappeared.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I say with an annoyed tone, making Marcus and Bellamy laugh. “You whine too much. Step down and just chill out you dick, Detective stick-up-my-ass,” I say. Collier arches an eyebrow at me, and someone knocks on the door.

“Don’t… You never listen,” Collier sighs when I pull the door open.

“Fair warning,” I say to Hannah, Tim, and Cynthia. “He’s a detective who likes to stalk me.”

“No wonder it takes two men to handle you,” Collier mutters.

“I sense this is important. We can…” Hannah starts to say.

“No, Detective Dipshit needs to hear this,” I say.

“He’s going to arrest you if you don’t stop picking on him,” Bellamy laughs and pulls me down to sit between them. Hannah, Tim, and Cynthia sit on the couch while Collier sits in an armchair.

“Nah, then he’d be stuck with my ass for the whole trip back to Huston,” I say, grinning at Collier.

“Marcus was right. You are a brat,” Collier deadpans. “Who are they?”

“Hannah and Tim Waddell,” I say. “And Cynthia Lennon… Suzette Lennon’s sister.”

“And you found this out in the few hours you've been here?” Collier asks suspiciously.

“Mmm. I’m not done,” I say. “Hannah and Tim have a daughter named Tina. They lost her twin sister when they were four weeks old when they got into a wreck. Holly, the missing baby, was presumed dead from the car seat being ejected into the lake close by. Wanna guess what day this happened?”

“When?” Collier asks with a sigh.

“Hours before Suzette died,” I say. “No one but Cynthia and the cops here knew there was a baby with her. No one looked into why she had a random baby, so I was put into foster care,” I say. “So, call up your people and pull the records for Tina Waddell.”

“Why?” he asks.

“One, she sounds like a bitch so I wanna see what her shit looks like. Two, everyone here thought I was her… Hannah thought I was her,” I say. “Look it up. We can wait.”

“You are so sassy,” Marcus says.

“I’m pissed off that all it fucking took was for me to come here to figure it out. Collier has had my records for weeks, and no one thought to check when Archer’s phone also pinged here.”

“Archer,” Hannah says. “Archer Barnes?”

“This is your fault,” I say to Jeff with venom in my tone. I turn and grab the folder off the bed and hand it to Tim.

“Your food,” he says, trading me.

“How much was it? I have some cash,” I say. I turn to go to my bag, but he gently grabs my wrist and pulls me back.

“I know you are about to go through the awful things that have happened to you because we took their word for it… Please know that we would do anything to go back and fix this. We lost God when we lost you, and I’m not giving him credit for getting you back…

Whatever we have to do to make up for lost time… We want to try.”

“You were grieving the death of your baby while raising another. Plus, whatever injuries you sustained from the wreck,” I say. “I don’t blame either of you. I want to get to know both of you, so I promise, this will not be the last time you see me.”

“Good,” he says, patting my hand.

I sit back on the bed and hand the trays of wings to the guys before opening the last one for me.

“Okay,” I say. “So… When I was fifteen, I was lured to Archer’s house.

He was eighteen. He then spent all night and into the next morning raping and brutalizing me.

I got free when he passed out, but his father found me.

Alan helped me, and the short story for him is that Archer was a monster with a habit of hurting people, so he disowned him and took me in.

He became like a dad to me. He is how I got my degree, and the only reason I survived healing from the trauma his son inflicted on me.

Several weeks ago, Alan died of a heart attack.

He left everything to me. He owned CyberSafe and a portion of Vanderbilt Technologies.

Now I own that. Archer didn’t like that, so he put a bunch of propane tanks in my closet in my apartment, thinking I’d be home, and set the place on fire.

I found in Alan’s stuff basically everything the cops needed to put him in jail, but also a lead on other possible crimes.

I permitted them to search the property and…

well… he is definitely a serial killer. I was getting texts from him, and they were pinging off a tower here.

Collier found my records and said that I was found with Suzette here, so now we are here. ”

“How do you know him?” Collier asks Hannah and Tim.

“Uhm… Tina has been seeing him for a while,” Hannah says. “He came into some money, and she convinced him to run off.”

“When was the last time you saw them?” he questions.

“Weeks ago,” Tim says.

“Wait…” I say. “So… My twin sister is dating the man who raped, sodomized, and tortured me for hours upon hours… Which means she knows that he is after me… And knows that I exist in general.”

“Tina is… troubled,” Hannah says.

“She’s a psychotic bitch,” Cynthia says. “She will fuck over anyone and everyone. She has no emotion. If she is with that sick little son of a bitch who hurt you, I guarantee she is helping and loving every second of it.”

“What does she get out of this, though?” Tim asks. “She always has a motive.”

“I signed over Archer’s trust fund to him,” I say. “Alan still had it in his name, and I knew he’d want me to. So… She is chasing after millions of dollars.”

“Also,” Collier says. “He is obviously obsessed with Kendra, so her twin will fulfill what he wants in the meantime.”

“How would he find out, though?” I ask.

“There is no telling with the two of them,” Tim says.

“Do you know Sheriff… Weaver?” Collier asks them.

“Yes,” Hannah says, rolling her eyes. “He was the bastard who told me to give up and plant a cross by the lake.”

“He arrested Suzette the night she died across town from where she was found,” he says, looking at his phone.

“The computer system sends copies of everything automatically to the state. It’s deleted from everything here, so it messed up the state’s file…

But I have it. She was arrested for disorderly conduct and assault on a police officer.

She was booked but released just minutes later at 9:07 PM.

The call for her body was called into 911 at 9:12 PM but it’s a twenty minute drive from the station to where she was found. ”

“He was the one who responded to our wreck,” Tim says. “He was there. I remember him.”

“No, Officer Levi Higgins was. He got Tina out and checked her while paramedics were with us. That’s why he got promoted. He wasn’t on duty but stopped and helped,” Hannah says.

I am looking back and forth between them while I munch on my food.

I am sitting cross-legged on the bed as I absorb everything they are saying.

They're going back and forth between each other, thinking about all of the possibilities aloud. By the time I am done eating my wings and my to-go cup full of chocolate milk is gone, I sigh heavily and get everyone’s attention.

“So… could Suzette have been with him when he responded?” I ask.

“Because what if… I watch too much crime TV… What if he accidentally killed her or she died in his care… He didn’t want it coming back on him, so when he passed the car with twin babies and unconscious parents…

He wanted to make sure she looked as bad as possible so no one would look into it.

Maybe he assumes social services would look for my parents.

Maybe he didn’t care… But with all that…

It sounds like he killed her, took me, and dumped us both.

Then he went to the station, did what he needed to do, and made it look like he arrested her.

Then she’d be found dead with a baby, like she went crazy and stole a baby before shooting up…

Obviously, he realized the timing was suspicious and deleted records so no one here would see it.

He might not have even known it was being sent to them.

Computers were still pretty new back then. ”

“Alright,” Collier says with a sigh. “I am going to get with the police here and get a few things rolling.”

“What now?” I ask. “Do I get a paycheck now for doing your job?”

“Kendra,” Marcus says, rubbing my back.

“No,” I say as I abruptly stand up and step toward Collier.

He doesn’t react, but he is watching me closely.

“I won’t even mention the fact they lost an entire fucking child because no one thought to find out where the fuck I belonged.

No one thought, ‘Oh, hey. This woman couldn’t have been the mom.

Who is the mom then?’ I went from foster home to foster home when I could have been with them.

You wanna know when I was sexually assaulted for the first time? Hmm? It wasn’t even Archer.”

“When?” Collier asks simply, although I don’t think he wants to know.

“Five, Jeff,” I yell at him. As I continue talking, tears roll down my face, but I keep my voice loud and steady.

“I was fucking five years old when my foster brother forced his dick in my mouth. I was eleven the first time someone raped me. I stayed in that home for six months being raped daily. I wasn’t silent about it either.

I reported it to the social worker when I was five, and six, and seven.

I told her when that man held me down and fucked me.

You know what she told me? She told me that I’m lucky to have a stable home, but if I kept complaining, no one would want me.

Alan was the first man in my life to not use my body.

He was the only one I could curl up on the couch with to watch a movie without fear of being fucked over the armrest. All of that could have been prevented, but here we are again with a police department that doesn’t give a goddamn about me.

No one gives a fuck that he tried to blow me up.

No one cares that when he comes for me—which I know he will—I will die. ”

“I do care, Kendra,” he says gently.

“No, you don’t!” I scream at him, trembling with both rage and grief from everything that has been stolen from me.

“Archer is not going to stop. He is angry because to him, I stole his life. I took his dad and everything he should have gotten when he died. He wants revenge, Jeff, and with the way you fucking people investigate, maybe I should go jump off that goddamn bridge. It sure as fuck beats what he will do to me.”

“I know you don’t mean that,” he says in a tone that lets me know he is trying to not set me off even more.

“You saw the goddamn video of what he did to me,” I laugh in an almost crazed way. “Nineteen hours of being fucking brutalized, and that was with him not intending to kill me. Are the fucking cops even going to look for my body this time, or will I just be presumed dead again?”

“Kendra,” he says with a heavy sigh, clearly annoyed with me.

“Did you miss the part where I am Holly? Do you need a goddamn map to find your way around too?” I snap at him.

“Three goddamn hours in this fucking town and I found out more than you have in six motherfucking weeks, Jeff. If you had done your goddamn job six weeks ago, I wouldn’t have gotten as bad as I did.

I wouldn’t have planned my own fucking suicide.

He could be in fucking jail. You expect me to fucking trust you when you couldn’t even check the fucking state records?

I have two babies to fucking think about right now.

How am I supposed to feel bringing them into this world when some fucking psycho wants me dead and you are sitting on your goddamn ass? ”

“You’re right,” he says. “I’ve made mistakes, and it’s cost you a lot.”

“I am so fucking done with all of this,” I say with a dry laugh. I grab the keys to the truck before storming past everyone and going to the door. Collier moves to stand up, and I spin around on him. “I swear to God, I will run that goddamn truck into a tree. Stay the fuck away from me.”

I look at Marcus and Bellamy because I need them to understand that I just need space, and I’m not going to swan dive off anything. Marcus nods once as if to tell me he gets it, so I turn around and leave the motel room. When I get to the truck, I back out of the spot and drive.