Not my cock, of course. Someone else’s. And I don’t let that thought piss me off as much as it tries to.
I pull my phone out of my pocket for a distraction, bringing up the tracking app again. The Bug is moving in this direction, but still maybe ten minutes out. I need to get out before she pulls up outside and sees my truck parked at the curb.
Pushing my phone back into my pocket, I set my bag down on the ground and pull a tiny camera out, eyeing the dresser and the framed photographs lining the surface with strings of pearls wound around them. I lean over to inspect the pictures closer.
The Black Widow herself is in the first one, her long, blonde hair hiked up into a ponytail with the type of colorful scrunchy you don’t see anymore. She’s holding a tiny child in her arms, which I’m assuming to be Black Widow Jr.
Fluffy, blonde curls frame her face, her little pink lips opened up into a toothy smile. Before she was tainted by her mother’s skewed ideals.
A few inches away is a framed photo of Chloe standing next to her mother, their blonde waves matching now. Their lips the same crimson red color. Chloe’s holding a high school diploma in her hands with her arm draped lazily around her mom’s shoulders, the two of them standing tall with their sleek legs poking out from similar springtime dresses. They’re standing in the exact spot their pool would eventually be. The pool Caroline’s second husband would come to die in. My head tilts as my eyes carry over the two of them. They look like any innocent mom and daughter duo. In this picture, they could pass as sisters. Twins, even.
The thought itches at something distant in my brain, and I try to form a rational path of logic out of it, but it’s gone before I can fully grasp it.
In the next picture, they both appear slightly older, but not by much. They still look eerily similar, which I never noticed until now. Maybe because I never really saw Caroline much growing up.
Back in the day, she was just a pretty enigma to me. An enigma with a shitload of money, a beautiful daughter who went to my high school, and a mansion at the top of the hill. Now I know that money came from the investigative journalism work she participated in when Chloe was a child. Work that cracked open a nationwide sex trafficking ring that saved thousands of women’s and children’s lives, and earned her a seat at the tableon crime podcasts, interviews, and even a few guest appearances in true crime documentaries.
Still, I’d pretty much only ever seen Caroline Stark in a prison jumpsuit with no makeup on. And while Chloe showed up to her mother’s court hearings dressed and made up modestly, there was a vivid difference between the two.
This picture was taken in the winter based on how bundled up the both of them are, holding each other close with steaming mugs in their hands under a row of Christmas lights.
They lookso normal.
But they’d have been dangerous at that point—at least Caroline would have been. Chloe was nineteen when her first stepdad was murdered. I wonder briefly if he’s the one behind the camera. I glance out the bedroom door, out the foyer into the backyard where this picture was also likely taken, in the same spot her stepdad would die not long after.
I force myself back to the present. I’ll have plenty of time to walk down Chloe’s sordid memory lane another time. I quickly press another adhesive onto the back of the little black square pinched between my fingers, and stick it into the intricate design of one of the picture frames set a little further back from the rest. The cameras are flat and sleek enough that it blends in. As long as Chloe doesn’t get tired of looking at this photo and turn it face down, I’ll have the perfect shot of her bed and any suitor she brings up here and attempts to harm.
Not that any of this will do me any good in court, but at least it will give me my own proof that she’s dangerous, and I’ll have a starting point on my journey to evidence I can use in a courtroom. On my way out of the room, I bypass the marble floors of the attached bathroom, because there’s no need for a camera in there. I’m not a fucking pervert, and reminder to self: Ido notwant to see Chloe Stark naked.
I check her location on my way back down the stairs, and she’s too close for me to have time to see the part of the house I really want to see.The garage. More specifically, the door in the garage that leads to who knows where, and who knows what is hiding down there. I’ve seen it through the windows of the garage door on my many drop-ins and attempts at lurking in the past. I curse myself for not starting there tonight, but I can always prioritize it during my next breaking and entering adventure.
Creeping out through the back door, I lock the handle before pulling it shut and double checking that the deadbolt doesn’t have any damage. I hightail it around the side of the house and down the driveway before tossing my bag into the bed of my truck and closing myself into the driver’s seat, trying hard not to squeal out and draw attention to myself. Pulling up the GPS tracker again, I watch the little blue dot get closer and closer to Chloe’s house as I navigate further and further away.
I should be home just in time to have my first, true look into who Chloe Stark is behind closed doors.
5
Chloe
By the time I’ve made it past the iron gates of my property and the orange trumpet vines dangling from the sharp edges, I’m no longer riding on the high of handing those handsome losers their asses.
When they’d first approached us, we were uninterested in talking, like we normally are with men, because you can’t trust a damn one of them, even if they are handsome.Especiallyif they’re handsome.
But then they challenged us to a game. And besides the mean competitive streak the three of us all share, we also never turn down drinks—which is what they offered us if we beat them and we got in the end.
We offered them nothing.
We played one game then politely shared a drink with them—and by shared, I mean we tossed our drinks back and left Mickey’s so fast we probably left burn marks in the flooring on our way out.
Only for me to make it outside and realize my keys weren’t in my purse. Only for me tothenrealize they were lying on the ground right outside my car door. That had me pausing for a long moment. Maeve’s chatterabout starting a three-woman bowling league filled up the air as I spun out in thought, because I very vividly remember wrapping my hand around the keys while they wereinsidemy purse while I wasinsidethe building, because the guy a lane over was treating his girlfriend like shit, and I wanted to ram my house key into his neck.
And now the keys were lying there on the ground like I’d hallucinated the whole thing.
My gaze dropped to my open palm, finger running across the fading indent from how tightly I’d been squeezing the keys over an hour ago.
I made the girls stand on the asphalt in the forty-degree night air as I rummaged through my vehicle to ensure everything was accounted for. Not that I keep anything of particularly high value in there, but I had stuffed my mom’s letter in the console before I left the house, and it was still exactly where I left it.
So imagine my surprise when I finally park my Bug in the garage next to my mother’s Suburban, step over the threshold into my house, and that curious new cologne of Detective Colin Mills dances in the air around me.
