Cyn marched into the police station ready for a showdown. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be anyone there to make that happen.
“Hello?” she yelled over the quiet counter. Then the sound of a toilet flushing reached her, followed by heavy steps on the wooden floor.
The young deputy showed up from around a corner. “You’re back.”
He said the words with surprise. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t like she’d just forget her cousin was missing, and Luis was in the hospital.
“Yeah, I’m back. I need to speak to the sheriff,” she demanded. Fuck being nice anymore. “Where is he?”
“Sorry, ma’am, but he said I shouldn’t talk to you. That you have no reason to be here, and that he called your superiors.”
She clenched her jaw and tried not to yell at the kid. It wasn’t his fault the Sheriff was an incompetent. “What superiors?”
The deputy reached into his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper. “A Mr. Galvez.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “What did he say?”
“Mr. Galvez said you weren’t on a case for the Bureau and didn’t have any permission to be here asking questions.” He folded the paper and shoved it into his shirt pocket. “In fact, Mr. Galvez said he’d come over and make sure you weren’t giving us any trouble.”
Great. Just great. “Where is your sheriff, Deputy?”
“Sheriff Kemp is out on patrol. I told him about the boy you found in the warehouse, and he decided to go see what information he could gather on that.”
Useless. The whole lot of them were completely useless. She did an about face, fuming over her lack of progress and rushed out the door. So much for a great day.
Beads of sweat gathered on her upper lip with each hurried step she took out of the station. Outside, things were even worse.
It started to rain heavily, the sky dark with clouds after she’d already walked a decent amount toward the Landley home. She cursed her bad luck and decided to continue to move. She’d meet Brock halfway. Squinting against the rush of raindrops, she chastised herself for not going with him to begin with. She wanted some action. Some answers. Something! Roxy was still missing and now she had more questions than she started with.
Where the hell was the sheriff, anyway? She stayed on the side of the road, not that there were many cars in Holy Oak. Besides, at that time of the day most people were working. Not to mention the town and the number of people in it could probably fit in their office building. The rain let up quickly, but she was already wet.
A honk blared past her. Her heartbeat tripped. Shit that was close. She took a quick peek over her shoulder for safety. If she hadn’t, she might have missed the car zooming right for her. Instinct pushed her to jump into the cascade of trees to her right. She tumbled down an incline, rolling through the grass. Rocks bit into her arms, cutting her skin open. The world shifted with each roll she did, until she came to a stop. Her stomach took longer to make its own stop. A sense of vertigo took over, and she was instantly nauseous. She panted, shaking from the almost hit and the adrenaline rush.
“Yeah. Great day.”
She stood, wincing at the pain on her right ankle. It didn’t feel broken, but she must have sprained it on her roll down the hill.
For a moment, she sat there, wondering what to do next. Her phone rang, pulling her out of her musings.
“Are you okay?”
Brock. She didn’t even want to ask how he knew something was wrong.
“Yeah, fine. I think an old lady almost ran me over just now.”
“Where are you?” he asked, the almost growled words enough to make her heartbeat speed up all over again. “I just came to the station, and you’re not here.”
She glanced around her. Trees surrounded her. She turned to the incline and bit her lip. “If you head toward the Landley home, I’m not far from the station.”
“Stay there,” he ordered. “I’m coming for you.”
She heard more fear through the phone. Genuine dread over her safety sounded in his voice. “That works. My ankle hurts.”
She attempted to crawl up the incline, but gave up after every other move she made she slid further down.
“Cyn?” Brock yelled.
“Down here!”
She watched him slowly use the trees to make his way down to her. Then he stopped in front of her and crouched. He picked her up in his arms, lifting her slowly to cradle her against his chest. She curled her arms around his neck and pressed as close to him as possible. It wasn’t that she was scared. Okay, maybe a little. Almost being run over could do that to a person.
“Let’s get your foot checked out in the hospital,” he said, his breath heating the side of her face.
“Okay, we can probably see about Luis. Hopefully, he’s woken up,” she said, clinging to him.
He held her tight in his grasp as he made his way up the incline. The SUV was parked on the side of the road. He slid her into the passenger side. She met his worried gaze and smiled.
“I’m okay. Just a scratch.”
He leaned down, pressing his lips hard on hers. Bruising. Owning. His hand cupped her cheek, fingers sliding down to her jaw. Their tongues rubbed, twined, a perfect mambo of need and pleasure. Passion flared to life in her chest. Their kiss turned aggressive, his lips fully branded her as his. Her heartbeat tripped, each beat thumping loud in her ears. There was a desperate edge to the kiss. As if he were ensuring she was okay through the connecting touch. Fire lanced her lungs, a reminder to breathe. He leaned back. Enough to stare into her eyes with his golden ones.
“I need you, Cyn. You’re everything,” he whispered, the words a soft growl.
“Not everything,” she denied.
“Yes. Everything. My everything.”
She couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop her hands from taking control. She pulled him into her arms and hugged him. Hard. Not because she’d been hurt, or because she’d dodged what could have been a severe injury, no. She hugged him to hold the feeling of belonging to him, with him, in her heart. She’d have to quit. There was just no way she could stay on the job and keep her hands away from him. This weekend had been eye-opening. She’d known it might be difficult to work with him, but she hadn’t counted on her love for him pushing its way to the forefront and taking charge.
Brock pulled back, ran his hand over her cheek once more and shut her door. She hoped Luis had woken. She needed to know what he knew about Roxy’s disappearance. Hopefully, something that could help them.
“Alright.” She sighed and stood, trying not to put too much pressure on her bandaged foot. “Let’s go see if Luis is awake.”
Brock offered to carry her, but she wasn’t completely useless. She limped beside him to the ICU.
They stopped outside Luis’s door. Brock’s eyes flashed red.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“The sheriff is in there with Luis,” he murmured.
“Great. Let’s go see what the heck he’s going to do about this mess.” She pushed the door open.
“Cyn, wait—”
Too late. The door shoved inward, and Cyn gasped when she caught the sheriff holding Luis by his shirt, gun in hand.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she yelled.
The sheriff shoved his hand down, dropping the boy back in the bed, but she’d already seen him. “I was just asking Luis here about the injuries he suffered.”
She glanced up at Brock. His face was set to stony hard lines. “Get away from him.”
The sheriff shoved away from Luis. Cyn ran to the boy. He was barely awake, still under the influence of his pain medication.
“Hey, now. What the hell are you two doing in my town anyway?” The sheriff rushed forward. “I called your FBI office,” he spat. “You two don’t have any permission to come nosing into my town.”
“My cousin is missing, and you haven’t done anything to find her.”
The sheriff waved his gun in her direction. “I told you to get out of my town. Or you’re going to regret it.”
Cyn didn’t get a chance to speak. The air in the room thickened to almost oppressive. She jerked to give Brock a long sideways glance. His gaze locked on the sheriff.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” he growled, his voice animalistic. Rough.
The sheriff gasped. “What the hell are you?”
“Not someone you want to shoot at.”
But the sheriff didn’t listen. Everything moved in slow motion. Not because Cyn was scared, but it seemed Brock controlled the gun and bullet with his mind. The pop sounded, and the bullet shot out, fast at first. She screamed a warning. The slowed and stopped in front of Brock’s face before dropping to his open palm.
Cyn’s heart slowed to a crawl. She knew he was strong, but that didn’t matter when a bullet was rushing for his head. Alarm locked her muscles in place. Fear for him almost choked the air out of her lungs. He didn’t move. She watched his features turn feral, the red in his eyes glowing so bright it almost hurt to look at.
Then everything shifted to real time. She gasped and glanced at the sheriff. He stood there, frozen in place.
“James?” She rushed to her man’s side, wanting to be near him.
“He did that,” he said in another round of rumbles.
She blinked at the sheriff. Even without his movement, the fear in his eyes now evident. “What?”
“He beat up the kid.”
She gasped. “Why?”
“The girl at the morgue is Luis’s half-sister,” he said, his eyes slowly dimming from the blazing red to a red-black combination. “They tried to blackmail him. Them and your cousin. The three combined to blackmail people having affairs.”
“How would they know?” She turned to Brock fully, a million questions suddenly popping into her mind.
“Roxy,” he said, meeting her gaze. “She caught them doing things and wrote down the letters and numbers in her diary. Then she told Luis, and his half-sister suggested blackmail to make some money. To be able to leave town.”
“So did the sheriff also kill the other girl?”
Brock nodded, cocking his head to the side as if still digging through the sheriff’s brain. “He promised to meet up and pay her, but instead strangled her to death.”
She gulped, unsure if she really wanted to hear the rest. “What did he do with Roxy?” She pushed away the nausea riding the back of her throat. “Did he kill her too?”
“No. I know he wanted to, but he doesn’t know where she is.”
“Fucking hell!” she screamed.
“We’ll find her,” he promised. “We won’t leave until we do. But first, let’s get someone in to take this piece of shit to jail.”
Thankfully, the hospital sat on the border of the next town, so they waited to get a different, competent, sheriff to come in and arrest Sheriff Kemp.
Luis groaned, waking from sleep. Cyn rushed to his side.
“Luis?”
He blinked his eyes open. “Yes. Where am I?”
“The hospital, Luis.”
The kid glanced around, his eyes filled with fear. “Who are you?”
“My name is Cynthia Vega. I’m Roxy’s cousin. I need to know when the last time you saw her was.” Her words tripped over each other in her haste.
“Before the sheriff caught me at the warehouse. She’d had an argument with her mother.”
“Did she tell you where she might go?”
He shook his head, his eyes dull with pain. “She knew her mom would punish her, so she came to see me to tell me to be careful with the sheriff.”
Clara punished her? That didn’t make sense. “Punish her how?”
“I don’t know. She never wanted to talk about it.”
But Clara didn’t know where Roxy was. If she did, she wouldn’t have called Cyn in order to find her. It didn’t make sense.
“Thanks, Luis.” She watched him drift to sleep.
“I’m taking the SUV,” she said to Brock. He’d cuffed the sheriff with his own handcuffs and watched him from other side of the room. “I need to speak to Clara again. She must have missed something. Maybe a place Roxy would go when angry or upset. I don’t know.”
He handed her the keys. His hand held her wrist for a moment. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
Cyn arrived at Clara’s house just as the sun started to set. She knocked on the door, waiting impatiently for Clara to open.
As usual, Clara’s eyes had that confused look to them. “Hi, Cici. Come in, it’s time for tea.”
Talk about Déjà vu. Hadn’t they had that same conversation at least twice before?
She followed behind Clara to the kitchen. She sat down on the kitchen table, drumming her fingers on the plastic tablecloth.
“Clara, are you sure you don’t know where Roxy could be?” she asked, her voice pitched with dread. “She might have told you. Maybe given you a hint?”
“No, Cici.” Clara placed a white porcelain tea cup in front of her filled with steaming tea. “Oh,” Clara gasped. “I think I might have something that could help your search.”
Finally!
“Yes, sure. Please. Whatever you have bring it here,” she rushed out.
Clara left the kitchen for a moment. Hopefully, whatever she found could be of some use in the search for Roxy.
“Here you go, Cici.” She placed an album next to Cyn.
A family photo album. Not exactly the kind of breakthrough she’d been hoping for.
“You’re probably the only person that still calls me Cici since grandmom. You can call me Cyn, Clara.”
“What?” Clara screeched from behind her.
Cyn smiled, glancing at the first photo in the album, a sweet picture of Roxy as a newborn.
Cyn’s cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket. Tonya. She’d give her a call in a few.
“I said you can call me Cyn. Most people do.” She flipped to the next photo, Roxy and her parents. A much younger and slimmer Clara stared dazedly at the baby.
“And are you?”
“Am I what?” she asked, confused. She glimpsed at the next shot. Toddler Roxy, playing with an old raggedy doll. The smile slid off her face. It was the doll. The same one from her dreams.
“Are you sin?”
She had a hard time concentrating on what Clara said when she flicked photo after photo to see Roxy growing with the raggedy doll in most shots.
“Is this doll Roxy’s?” she asked, wondering what it meant for her to have dreamt about the doll.
“No. It’s mine,” Clara replied.
“Oh.” That didn’t really help her.
Her phone rang again. “Hi Tonya, sorry I’m kind of busy right now.”
“Cyn, where are you?” Tonya asked in a rush. “I had a vision, of you.”
“Are you?” Clara asked again, her voice rougher than before behind her.
She was having a hard time keeping up with both women talking at once. “I’m at Clara’s, hang on.”
“Cyn, no!”
“What was that Clara?” She glanced over her shoulder, but was too slow to move out of the way of the frying pan traveling to slam against the side of her face. Pain blasted through the side of her skull, down her jaw, and up to her temple. Another whack with the heavy metal, and her head hit the table. Her vision swam. Fear and distress turned her blood ice cold. She slid off the chair, fell to the floor, her face throbbing in pain. The phone fell right out of her hands.
White spots danced before her eyes. She lifted a hand to the side of her face. Something wet and sticky dripped down the side of her temple, matting her hair in wet clumps. She had trouble focusing on her fingers, but she could tell there was blood all over them.
“Clara?”
Her aunt stood over her, watching her with angry eyes. She lifted the frying pan again. “Not Clara, Mercy. Clara went away for a little bit. I’m sorry, Cynthia. We can’t have sinners in our house.”
The frying pan came down on her head again. Everything went black.
Brock watched the Olde Towne PD remove Sheriff Kemp from Luis Gomez’s hospital room. His attention focused on the man rushing down the hall toward him.
“Galvez. What are you doing here?” he growled.
“Relax. I came here to make sure Cynthia was okay.” He glanced behind Brock, waiting for her to appear.
“She’s not here. She went to her aunt’s place.”
Galvez’s eyes widened, real fear in them. Palpable dread drifted from him. “You let her go there alone?”
Why wouldn’t he? “That’s her aunt. It’s her family.”
Galvez cursed and rushed down the hall. Brock caught up to him quickly, his steps eating the marble floor in the hospital. “What is it?” he asked. “Why shouldn’t she see her aunt?”
“It’s a long story.” Galvez pressed the elevator button but gave up and ran for the stairs.
Brock grabbed him by the arm, stopping him mid-stride. “Tell me!”
“Clara is sick. Very sick.”
Brock’s heart took a nosedive. “How sick?”
“She suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. When she’s feeling nice, she’s Clara. When she’s not, she’s psychotic. She becomes a completely different person, Mercy.”
“Multiple personalities? How do you know this?”
“Because,” he rushed out, the scent of fear soaring to an all-time high. “I’m Cynthia’s father.”
The words sucker-punched Brock harder than anything he’d ever been told in a long time. Not only did Cyn show clear dislike for Galvez, but she looked nothing like him. No matter what he wanted to think, the reality was Galvez wasn’t lying. He’d know.
“How?” he choked out.
They continued running down the stairs while Galvez hurried through the story. “I met Iliana, Cynthia’s mother, when she was twenty-one. She was going to college, and we fell in love.”
They ran out of the building to the parking lot, rushing into Galvez’s car. Sirens wailed around them of ambulances arriving with emergencies.
“We’d been together a few months when she confessed to having had a child, but her mother took care of her so Iliana could attend college. Her daughter was four at the time.”
Brock watched emotions play out over Galvez’s normally unmoving features. “What happened?”
“About a year into our relationship, she started showing signs of mental illness. Hallucinations. Hearing voices. She’d be happy one minute, then angry the next. Not just regular hormonal altered states, no. Violent outbursts followed by extreme depression. But she refused to get help.” He shook his head and then slammed on the brakes when they found themselves stuck in traffic.
“With time, she got worse, not better. Her daughter started showing signs of the same disease. Not as progressive, but enough to need full-time care. Cynthia’s grandmother couldn’t handle a sick daughter and a sick grandchild. She had a sister who adopted the girl and changed her name to Clara. Under heavy medication, Clara would be able to have a pretty normal life.”
“I get the feeling that’s not what happened.”
Galvez combed shaky fingers through his hair. “No. When Iliana and I broke up because of her illness, I didn’t know she was pregnant. I didn’t find out about Cynthia until her mother passed about ten years ago, and I showed up at her funeral.”
“You didn’t know you had a daughter?”
“No.” Galvez pressed the horn, the sound ear-splitting above the other people doing the same. As if that would get the line of red tail lights moving. He glanced at Brock, his eyes full of misery. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have left her behind to be raised by her grandmother surrounded by the shadow of Iliana’s mental problems.”
“What happened with Clara?”
“Once I found out about Cynthia, I kept tabs on the entire family. Clara wasn’t really Cynthia’s aunt as you can imagine. She was her sister.”
Brock sensed the turmoil inside Galvez over his failure toward Cyn. “And Clara?”
“As I said, Clara would have done okay if she would have taken her medication, and for years she did. She married and had a daughter, but once her husband died, she chose to shift her focus into religion and became so entrenched in it that she gave up her medicine thinking to be cured by the power of her parish.”
“Only that didn’t happen.”
Galvez shook his head. “No. She’s been spending the past year getting worse. I always worried she’d call on Cynthia, and so I tried to keep tabs on where Cynthia was at all times. It was my way of protecting her. Making sure she was safe.”
Brock nodded, his fear turning his muscles stiff. “Why do you think she’s hurt Cynthia?”
“A few days ago, I got a report from Roxy’s, Clara’s daughter’s, school counselor, informing me that she showed signs of physical abuse. When questioned, Roxy said her mother had a bad temper when she disobeyed.”
“Why didn’t anyone do anything to help her? To protect her?” he demanded.
Galvez sighed. “This is a small town, and the sheriff didn’t give a crap, nobody did anything. I’d already arranged to come here next week.”
“If Clara’s disease causes her to turn violent, can she also forget having done things?”
“Yes, it’s very likely she’s the one who caused her daughter’s disappearance during one of her episodes. She could have blacked it out and not remembered. She could have killed her and not remembered.” Galvez met his gaze with his own worried one. “She’s a ticking time bomb that can go off at any moment. If Cynthia pushes her too hard, she could explode.”
Fucking hell!
The traffic line started to move slowly. Too slowly for his peace of mind. Meanwhile, he dialed Cynthia’s cell but got no answer.
“Is this mental illness hereditary?” he asked, thinking of the woman he loved and how she could cope knowing her mother and other family members suffered from mental disease.
“There’s a blood test that can check for the bio markers of Schizophrenia, which is what Iliana and her father suffered from. I don’t know if Cynthia has ever done it, but it’s probably a good way to rule out the disease could show up in the future.”
“What are the chances she could have it, though?”
Galvez pursed his lips, weaving his way through traffic. “Iliana showed signs in her early twenties. Clara showed signs as a child. Cynthia’s medical records don’t show any signs of any kind of mental instability. But like anything, if it’s hereditary, it can show up at any time.”
Brock growled, punching the call button repeatedly only to be sent into Cyn’s voice mail.
They took the shoulder and rushed past the slow-moving vehicles. Within moments, they were rushing down the main street to turn at the dirt road the led them to Clara’s old house.
Brock jumped out of the car before Galvez had a chance to stop, focused solely on finding Cyn.
He kicked the front door open, rushed inside but there was no noise. The scent of blood smacked him at the kitchen entrance. His chest almost caved at the sight of the puddle of blood on the table, dripping down to the glossy wood floor.
The beast inside him pushed out. Power danced over him, shaking the house to its foundation, everything around him a hazy red.
“Brock, is she—” Galvez stopped, his gun drawn, and his expression tight with anger.
Brock lifted a hand to stop Galvez from talking further. It was time to find Cyn. A loud growl rolled from within his lips. Then he heard it, the voices. Distant, but still inside the house. He pushed his power out, searching for his woman. He jerked to his right, darting at an inhuman speed to the door leading down to the basement.
“Now, Cynthia, I’ll help you rid yourself of those sins you carry,” a woman whispered. “It’s no good to live in sin.”
“Clara, stop,” Cyn mumbled. “Look at your daughter, Clara. She needs help. You need to get her to a hospital.”
“I already told you, my name is Mercy. I will have mercy on your soul and save you both,” she sing-songed.
Cyn’s pain and fear urged him to her. To rid them of the danger.
He took the steps softly, his gaze intent on his target. Clara. The moment he could visually connect he’d be able to push into her mind.
“Clara, what are you doing?” Cyn screamed.
The sound further prompted him to reach her. Cyn sat on the concrete floor, bleeding from the side of her face. The other woman, Clara, stood above her, a large kitchen knife in her hand.
With a single mental command, he shoved the raging woman away from Cyn and hurled her against the wall. He held her there. Trapped with his power.
“Who are you?” she screamed, her body contorted, struggling to move. “Get out of my house!”
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop the invisible binds holding her trapped to the wall.
Brock rushed forward to Cyn. His heart almost stopped at how swollen and bruised the side of her face was. He felt her for other injuries. She winced at the long gash and knot on the side of her head.
He cut her loose from the metal bar Clara had tied her to.
“Galvez? What are you doing here?” she asked glancing at the foot of the stairs.
Galvez marched forward and released Roxy from the binds holding her hostage.
“I had a feeling you might need my help,” Galvez muttered, cutting the rope from Roxy’s legs.
“Thank you.” She bit her lip, brow furrowed in worry. “She needs a hospital. Clara had her down here all this time, days.” She glanced at an unconscious Roxy. “I don’t know if she’s fed her at all, but it’s clear she hit her.”
Cyn threw her arms around his neck, holding him tight. The ache in his chest loosened, though he had a hard time stopping the shaking in his hands.
“You need a hospital too, love.”
“I’m okay.” She sighed into his neck. “I have you.”