Page 24 of The Hanging Dolls (Zoe Storm #1)
TWENTY-THREE
“Do you get tired of it?” Aiden asked.
“Tired of what?”
“Chasing closure for other people?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
“Then why do you do it? Why are you here?”
Zoe sighed. She was tired of him picking at her brain. “Am I that interesting?”
“Sorry?”
“Don’t you have psychopaths and people with split personality disorder who would be more fun to talk to?” She groaned, throwing her head back. Aiden bit his lip, fighting back a smile. “Oh, so now you think I’m funny?”
“Amusing is more accurate. But to answer your question, yes, you’re a one-woman show.”
“I’m here to entertain you?”
His eyes sparkled. “Not going to lie, Storm, but maybe a little bit.”
Her stomach growled. “In that case, I need some calories to keep the Zoe Storm show going. Pizza?”
“With pineapple?”
“That’s blasphemy.”
Zoe lay in bed wide awake, staring at the cracks in the ceiling.
She was wearing earbuds and listening to Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” from the opera Turandot .
A rich voice tore through the gentle swell of the orchestra.
As the piece progressed, the intensity grew, the singer’s voice rising with a powerful surge of emotion.
The rising crescendo loosened the strings that had her insides tied into a knot.
She imagined the cracks in the ceiling mending on their own.
But impatience ran through her. An itch, a tickle, a pebble in the shoe.
She waited for the music to calm her, to ebb away the currents that pulled her under.
But after another minute, the song was nothing but noise in her ears.
She removed her earbuds with a huff and her ears ached in the sudden silence.
She sat up and looked around the empty motel room.
It was so impersonal. Nothing but a collection of basic necessities used by a gazillion drifters before her.
She would also move on, go to another place and crash for a few months, and no one would know she had been here.
She was just passing by and she always would be unless she strengthened her roots to her past. But time was withering those away.
All she had left of Rachel and their time together were memories that would fade with time.
And then what was she without them? Gina had a family. The only thing left of Zoe would be archived cases in the FBI.
She tried sleeping but the uneasiness was like fizz pumping through her veins. With an irritable groan, she got up, wrapped her fluffy robe around her and padded her way to Aiden’s room. Something told her that he wasn’t sleeping either.
When she knocked on the door, he opened it in a second.
“Storm.” His eyes swept over her robe and bunny-shaped shoes. “Interesting choice.”
She scowled and pushed past him. “I knew you slept in a suit.”
“Why don’t you come in?” he said sarcastically, shutting the door.
Zoe’s eyes slid over his room—an organized stack of files and psychology books sitting on the table, the bed made with such precision that she knew he hadn’t gotten in yet. “Can’t sleep?”
“I don’t sleep.” Aiden shook his head, hands in his pockets.
“What?”
“I have insomnia,” he admitted bashfully.
“Then why did you buy a new mattress?”
“So that I can lie on it without breaking my back.”
Zoe nibbled on her thumb, noting how even Aiden didn’t have any mementos of his life—no pictures or signs of anything beyond the daily grind of combing through evidence and people’s minds.
“What’s bothering you?” he asked.
“I don’t know what man Lily was referring to. It could just be Phil?”
“Unlikely.” He sank into a chair. “Didn’t that guy from the fishery, Andy, who saw Lily, say that she wanted to go say hi to someone?”
“Yeah…”
“And it was none of her friends, but it was someone she recognized.”
“But Tara was abducted from her home at night. The killer had risked an abduction in broad daylight.”
When her phone rang, Simon’s name flashed on it.
“It’s 11 p.m.,” Zoe pointed out instead of the customary hello. “Why are you calling me this late?”
“Because I’m sitting here and reviewing your IT request to pick apart a perfectly good CCTV footage,” he replied, his voice craggy with sleep. She could hear the hum of the running dishwasher.
“We got a second missing girl, Simon. One was found dead. With creepy ropes and a message in the woods.”
The minute she said his name, Aiden swiftly turned on his chair, giving her his back and engrossing himself in a book.
“Creepy ropes? How many were there?”
She knew she didn’t have to hide anything from him. “Three. There’s nothing in any database about a similar MO. Aiden believes it’s three victims, and I agree.”
He whistled. Dishes clanged. “Z, my hands are tied. How are you and Wesley working together?”
When he said Z , a current ran through her. She didn’t feel any want or desire. It was like an old feeling trying to resurrect. “Great. He says hi. What’s the problem? Budget?”
“We’re stretched thin. IT is overloaded. Oh, Aiden is with you? It’s late…”
Zoe sensed that sharp tilt to his tone, but she refused to acknowledge it. He was married. Why would he care?
“Children, Simon. These are kids!” Her voice climbed higher.
Ever since she’d held Gina’s twins in her arms, she knew she had become soft.
She finally understood something that was both illogical and pure truth—how the value of a person was inversely in proportion to their size.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Aiden focusing too hard on the same page, his grip tight on the spine.
“Harborwood isn’t the only place with a child killer.”
Zoe slumped into a chair and rubbed her eyes. “I know. I know. You’re right.”
She had worked all kinds of disturbing cases. Whenever she found herself in the midst of a disturbing case, staring into the eyes of someone whose world had been blown to smithereens by someone wielding a hammer, she painfully remembered that she had somehow dealt with worse.
Somehow there was always something worse out there. But evil was a funny thing. It didn’t have a gradient; it just had different shapes.
“Listen. I’ll try my best,” Simon said, his voice softening. “I can’t make any promises, but you’ll have to be patient.”
“Okay.” At least that was something. Maybe she could learn how to work ultra-savvy software and analyze that video herself.
Nancy’s voice could be heard in the background. “Who are you talking to?”
“Oh, it’s just work. Dale,” Simon said.
“Okay, I’m going to bed!”
A hot flush crept over Zoe’s face, making it throb.
“Sorry about that,” Simon said. “Where were we?”
“You don’t have to lie to your wife that you’re talking to me,” she said in a hard voice. “We were just talking about work .”
“Ah… come on, Z…”
“Don’t Z me!”
He sighed. “She’s sensitive about you. She gets insecure. I just didn’t want to get into another fight with her over you after a long day.”
Confusion muddled her brain. “Over me? Seriously, Simon? Why does your wife think I’m the other woman?”
He fell silent. A loud silence that pierced Zoe’s eardrums. “You’re not. But we used to be together.”
“That was years ago, before you even met her…” she whispered.
“And she gets awkward about it. I’ll let you go.” He cleared his throat. Before Zoe could reply, he hung up.
She kept the phone pressed to her ear, rehashing the conversation. Maybe she was too hard on him. She knew somewhere that Simon still held a torch for her. Who was she to have an opinion on what he was telling his wife? Why was she getting involved? She had bigger things to worry about.
Suddenly, she remembered she wasn’t alone. Aiden was now facing her, his expression stony. Was he judging her? It was an inappropriate conversation to have with a boss. She thought she was going to explode. Her nerves were jangled under her skin, threatening to puncture their way out.
“Sorry about that.” She lowered her gaze.
Aiden shrugged, as unreadable as ever. And she felt it in her bones—the judgment. Wasn’t he a shrink? Wasn’t he supposed to talk and not judge? “I should go.”
Aiden made no attempt to stop her and she felt like an even bigger idiot. For a second, she’d thought they were maybe even friends.
When she got to her room, she twisted her hair in a bun and opened the preliminary reports submitted by the patrol officers and the CSU.
None of the neighbors saw anything. The abduction had happened around midnight—too late for any neighbors to be out and about.
And due to the storm, no one heard anything either.
The CSU had tagged the shoe print as priority.
She studied the report, mulling it over.
The shoe size was 10.5, which was standard for an adult male in the US.
Based on the pattern, it was Nike. Another generic brand.
Particulate evidence of tiny particles of limestone dust and some traces of rust. Could this be an industrial site of some sort?
Lily had an allergic reaction to devil’s club—a plant not found in the woods where her body was discovered. But perhaps devil’s club was present at the site she’d been taken to before she was killed.