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“Well, well, maybe you’re not so dumb,” she says, caressing the top of my breast with the tip of the knife, moving it down my chest. “Although, instead of being smart and leaving town like you were supposed to, you went and made it worse by staying the night with Cooper.” She pushes the tip of the knife in harder and slices down the left side of my torso, making me scream out in pain. Her face takes on this serene look as she watches the blood run down my side.
“You know, it’s your fault those women are dead too. If you hadn’t gotten in the way, I wouldn’t have had to kill them. I will say, though, I enjoyed it thoroughly.” She gives me another smile that makes me shiver with fear. “Shall we get started now? I’m running out of time to make you my masterpiece.”
37
COOPER
“Todd…” My voice is strained. He comes around my desk, rewinds the footage, and pushes play. I watch again as Quinn opens the door, stepping back to let Rachel in, and just as quickly, Rachel whacks Quinn over the head with something in her hand. She goes down so fast you know she’s out cold. “Oh my god,” Todd says quietly.
I feel my blood heat with rage as I try to figure out what’s happened. You can see Rachel dragging Quinn out of the frame and, I’m assuming, out of the building. I stand up and start towards the door, but Todd’s hand on my arm stops me in my tracks.
“We have to be smart about this, Cooper.”
“Be smart? Someone I thought I could trust just abducted the love of my life. I have to find her,” I plead, feeling myself get more hysterical by the minute.
“And we will, but first we need to go through everything logically, otherwise we’ll be chasing our tails and that won’t help Quinn.” I just stare at him. I know he’s right, but I’m strung so tight I don’t know how to do anything logically right now. “Let’s go grab Derek and Liam and have them watch the video too.” I nod in response.
I pace the room while Todd goes and gets them because I’m pretty sure if I had to speak, I’d break down right there. I move away from the desk as the three men come into the room. “We need you to take a look at this,” Todd says, queuing up the video. I watch their faces as their eyes get wide when they realize what they saw.
Liam looks up at me, “Did this happen tonight?” Again, all I can do is nod.
“We need you guys to go through her office and see if you can find anything that would indicate why she would do this. Coop and I are going to her house with Nathan and Chad. I highly doubt she’s there, but there’s a chance she could be, so we’ll have the backup. Call the minute you find anything.”
The four of us leave my office, Liam and Derek heading towards Rachel’s cube, Todd and I towards the bullpen. I stay back, close to the door, and watch the guys gather their stuff and follow us outside to the cruisers. Todd must’ve told Nathan and Chad where we’re going because they walk straight to their car, and I follow Todd to my truck. He gets in the driver’s side, and I get in the passenger side.
What could’ve ever possessed Rachel to do something like this? Quinn has never once been hateful towards her, and Rachel hasn’t been hateful towards Quinn. I know Quinn would’ve told me if she was. My head is a mess as I try to rationalize what Rachel’s done. None of it makes any sense, but as we get closer to her house, I know I need to pull myself together in case she has Quinn here.
It’s highly unlikely, as Todd said, that she would be there. I mean, she knows it’d be the first place we would look for her, but that doesn’t mean we should go in expecting nothing to happen.
Todd pulls into the driveway with Nathan and Chad right behind us. The house is a one-story, brown brick ranch and seems to be completely dark. “Are you going to be okay to go in? We both know you shouldn’t be here at all, but if it were me, no one would be able to keep me away,” he says.
“I’m good. I’ve shut it down and can handle it.” Todd nods in response and gets out of the truck.
We walk up to the door and knock, “Rachel? Mrs. Cassinelli?” Todd shouts through the door, but there’s only silence. We knock again and still no answer, so we try the door, and it’s surprisingly unlocked.
Todd opens the door a crack, and the smell that permeates out of the house tells us we have every right to go inside without a warrant. We quickly clear the house and walk to the back bedroom where the smell is the worst. Opening the door, the room is dark and the smell slaps us in the face. Nathan gags, Todd and I hold our shirts over our faces, and we see Mrs. Cassinelli in the bed, decomposing. We all quickly back out of the room and out of the house to get some fresh air.
I lean against my truck and force every feeling down so that I don’t lose it outside of Rachel’s house. Quinn needs me to be strong right now, and if I let myself break down, I’ll be no good to her. Straightening from my position, I look around and see Chad on the phone calling in the body, Todd has both hands on the truck and his head dangling between his arms, and Nathan is bent over with his hands on his knees breathing deeply.
I may be dying on the inside but these guys need a leader, and that’s my job. “Okay, guys, let’s wrap up and see what we can find until CSU gets here.” The guys straighten up, and we all find something to cover our noses and mouths. Nathan and I find bandanas, and Chad and Todd use t-shirts.
We make our way back into the house. I walk to the back bedroom and quickly close the door to keep the smell from permeating the entire house until we can get the body out. Each of us takes a room, and I start in Rachel’s bedroom. Everything is coated in a pretty thick layer of dust which tells me she hasn’t been here in a while. Makes me wonder where she’s been living all this time.
I start going through her room, systematically cataloging everything I find. It feels a little weird going through my secretary’s possessions. It feels like an invasion of privacy, but then I remember that she bashed in Quinn’s head, and I don’t feel too bad anymore.
I am learning so many things about Rachel, making me realize I never really knew her at all. She’s only a few years younger than me, and apparently, we went to high school together. I was a senior and she was a freshman, so I don’t remember her. I was focused on getting into the police academy and didn’t care too much about my last year there.
She seemed to enjoy reading based on how many books are on her shelf, and what’s even crazier is that I know a lot of the titles on her shelf, having read them myself. I wouldn’t have pictured Rachel as a mystery reader, but that shows you what I know.
I’m not finding anything pertinent to why she would take Quinn, so I leave the room to go check on the other guys and get some fresh air. As I turn to walk out, something behind the door catches my eye. I lean down and grab it, almost dropping it in shock. It’s the painting Quinn did of my eyes. How the hell did Rachel get it?
I walk out to the main living space to find Todd and show him what I found. “Look at this,” I say, waiting for him to turn and look at me. When he does, I hold up the painting, “Quinn did this right after we first met. It was in her house and was pulled out by whoever broke into her house.”
“Do you think Rachel could’ve been the one to break in?” Todd asks.
“How else would she have gotten this? Although she would’ve had to break in a second time in order to get this painting because it was still there when Quinn came home to find her stuff messed up.”
“This is crazy, man. None of this is adding up. I mean, Rachel hasn’t been here in weeks based on the smell of Mrs. Casinelli and the mound of dust on everything. She abducts Quinn, and now she’s breaking and entering? None of this makes sense.”
