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“No problem,” she said. “You okay?” she asked as I sat in the back, staring at the police station as she idled out front.
“I will be,” I told her, climbing out as I added a little extra to her tip, then tucking my phone away as I walked up the steps of the building.
“Can I help you?”
“I, ah, yes. I need to speak to Detective Vaughn,” I said to the woman in uniform standing at the desk.
“What is it regarding?” she asked, distracted by something she was looking at on her computer.
“I’m, ah, I’m the survivor of the Silent Sadist,” I said, watching as her head snapped up. Her keen eyes moved over my face, lingering on the spots where the makeup was barely covering my bruises, then down to my wrist that was still wrapped in gauze and vet tape.
“Of course,” she said, smile warm.
Then she led me into the precinct and a large, open room full of desks manned entirely, it seemed, by men.
I spotted Detective Wells Vaughn almost immediately.
He’d changed into a dark blue suit, this time pressed, and his hair was neat, and his face shaven.
He was even more handsome than I remembered, my memory a little clouded with my trauma.
“Miss Yates,” he said, moving to stand, buttoning his jacket with one hand in a way I’d always thought was sexy.
“Mari,” I corrected, moving closer as he grabbed a chair and moved it in front of his desk.
“Mari,” he said, and my name sounded really smooth coming from between his lips. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon,” he said, waving to the seat as he went back around his desk, waiting for me to be seated, then undoing that button to sit down again as well.
“I wasn’t planning on coming in today. Until I found out that I just narrowly survived an encounter with the Silent Sadist.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Detective Wells Vaughn
Shit.
Yeah.
I’d been kicking myself for not telling her the whole truth about the attack the night before. But she’d been so withdrawn and in shock that I was worried about piling anything else on until she’d gotten a chance to get checked out, catch some sleep, and recover a little bit from the event.
I should have figured the media would get to her before I could again.
“I was going to tell you,” I assured her, noticing how the harsh overhead light made the makeup over her bruises appear yellow. She’d done a good job covering them up, though. And from a distance, the colored vet tape on her wrists could be mistaken for some sort of bracelets. “The news beat me to it.”
“No, actually,” she said, shaking her head. “I haven’t watched the news yet. I, ah, you seemed disheveled last night,” she went on, surprising me. “Which made me think they’d called you in. And if they called you in, this was a case of yours. Which meant I wasn’t the first woman attacked.”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were a cop,” I said, giving her a smile, even though she didn’t seem like she was in the mood for it. “Is someone in your family?” I asked.
“No. I, ah, you could say I know a decent amount about law enforcement because I know a lot about true crime,” she admitted.
“I did notice the books,” I agreed, nodding.
“So after I concluded that this was an ongoing case, I started to look into other cases in the area. I haven’t been here that long, and when I first moved here, I got a little… fascinated by the organizations in this town.”
Who wouldn’t be?
My family had moved to Navesink Bank when I was in high school. It didn’t take me long to realize I was in school with the kids of outlaw bikers, the mafia, loan sharks, hired muscle, and just about everything in between.
For a populated, yet very normal-seeming town, Navesink Bank had more than its fair share of criminal organizations.
