Twenty
It wasn't the first time that she'd thought it. It wasn't going to be the last time. Dad would have deserved it, if either of his daughters had decided to take that route. But hearing someone else dropping a not-so-veiled threat had been jarring, to say the very least.
Erin forced herself to focus again for a moment. On the bike, with him driving, riding was easy. Painless. She could forget about the whole world, just let him control her weight and let him take her wherever she was going. But that wasn't the life she wanted, and it wasn't the life she was going to have for herself.
The minute he slipped up enough for the cops to get involved, she would get them involved, and she'd be free and clear. He pulled up in front of her building. To her surprise, he didn't get off or park. He just let her off at the door. Not that she minded.
She felt her phone buzz in her pocket as she slid off the side. If she didn't miss her guess, that would be Roy. She had an hour to get back to him, or the game was over.
The question, now, was whether or not to tell him what had just happened. He deserved to know. But there was the risk that he would be over-cautious. He could decide that they were putting her at too much risk, and with the clear connection now between Craig and the previous killers, they had what they needed to make a move.
She couldn't allow that. The picture wasn't complete. If they moved in now, then she would have wasted her time and all for a whole hell of a lot of nothing. That wasn't acceptable. Not remotely. Erin's keys came out of her pocket easily as she hit her floor. There wasn't any sign of a break-in. That, at least, she was thankful for. She fit the key into the lock and turned it.
The door was finicky. It didn't like to come unlocked; there was a little hitch in the motion that she'd learned to deal with over the years. It came open easily enough, though. She flicked the light on. Same as she'd left it. Erin didn't know why she had expected any different, but now that she was there and everything was okay, she let out a sigh of relief.
The laptop was still closed on her desk. The place looked exactly the way she'd expected it to. Her wallet, still sitting out on the counter. Still closed.
Something about the way that he'd come on such short notice, the way that Craig had told her to leave everything. It had driven her to think that someone was going to come around after. If someone had, then they had done a very good job hiding it. Then again, she was just being paranoid. Craig was a thug, and he was perfectly capable of getting inside. He'd already proven that.
The only reason that a guy like that demonstrates anything, though, is so he doesn't have to use it. She knew that. If he was showing off that he could get in, it was so that she wouldn't try to hide anything. Because it wouldn't work.
And besides that, as much as she suspected that he would belong to a gang—suspected even further that whatever she'd just seen was gang-related payment—that didn't mean he had the clout with them to send some kind of fixer by her apartment.
Unless he suspected something was up, there was no reason to send anyone in the first place. The whole idea made no sense, none of it did. Erin dropped her jacket over the back of a wooden chair and then pulled her phone out of her pocket. Roy's number showed a message. She read it.
Just checking in.
She said that she was alright, she was at home.
The question of whether or not to tell him was still bothering her. She had to have a free hand. That was the whole purpose of doing it this way. Of not doing it alongside the police force, of not telling her damn Captain the whole plan from the beginning.
If she reported every little thing to Roy, then it was only a matter of time before he decided that she was taking too many risks, that she was putting herself in 'too much' danger.
There was no such thing as too much danger, though. She knew that instinctively. Her sister had put herself in too much danger, and she was dead. Craig was a shock in a lot of ways. She didn't know how to feel about his sexual appetites. Didn't know how to feel about the way that he treated her like his little rag doll. Like his property.
But she knew he was right about one thing. It was her job, as the sister, to protect Becca. She'd failed that job utterly, which meant that there was only one alternative.
Now that it was done, she had to see it finished.
Erin clicked her phone off and slipped it back into her pocket. She had a long time to think. That much was good, at least. She needed the time.
The questions were piling up again, and she wasn't finding the answers she needed fast enough. It was only a matter of time before one of them slipped. Either Craig slipped up and let on that he knew what happened to Becca, or she slipped up and let him know that she was on to him.
Once that happened no more nice guy. No more friendly visits. It would be open season on her ass.
Who was the guy he'd made that hand-off to? Who was he really?
She had to assume that the names from the online profiles were all fake. Craig's too, she knew, but that didn't change that she had nothing else she could call him.
There was at least one other, unless she was wildly underestimating them.
Given how similar the broad-faced man had looked, though, she wasn't keen on believing that just yet.
Which meant that one more, minimum. There might have been two more, maybe three. Maybe there were others that they hadn't made the connection to, yet.
Erin took a breath.
What was the significance of the pattern? If it was one person, then they could profile that guy. Maybe it was worth something, maybe it wasn't. Roy didn't put much stock in it, and they didn't have any cause for profilers in the L.A.P.D.
But if they were a group, and all of them did it the same way, then there was something else to it. Someone, maybe the first killer, maybe someone else entirely, had told the others that this was going to be how it was.
Seven stab wounds in the gut. Alley in the bad part of town. She was missing something, she knew it. There had to be some sort of connection. Some reason that three or more people would get involved with a murder game like this.
Erin's hands were shaking, she realized. She pressed them flat against the bed and let out an unsteady breath. This wasn't how she was supposed to feel. She was supposed to be in control. She was supposed to feel like she knew what was going on with her life. With the case. She was supposed to feel like she was in the driver's seat.
Instead, she felt like she was on the back of that damn motorcycle. Someone was taking her for a ride, and she could wonder all she liked why they were doing what they were doing, but she wasn't going to get any answers. Not at this rate.
Erin tried to calm her mind. It was still early. She'd been working the case for less than 48 hours. That was more time than she wanted it to take, but sometimes these things took time.
She already had a solid lead on a suspect, she already knew what he was doing. She already had a solid link between him and the prior murders. The only question now was why she was feeling so much like she had nothing at all.
Was she building a house of cards? What was she going to do when it fell? She shook her head.
House of cards or not, she wasn't going to let it get to her. She needed to keep herself focused. That was the only option Erin had left, now, and she would be damned if she was going to let some motorcycle punk take her for a ride when it came to her sister's murder.