No Rep by Lani Lynn Vale

CHAPTER 12

Works out but clearly loves food.

-T-shirt

TAOS

“Maria’s dead,” Chief Wilkerson announced roughly. “Found her in your old house, that was sold last week. Couple of neighbors were complaining about lights from there that weren’t supposed to be on since nobody was living in it yet.”

I looked at my watch. “We just saw her about an hour ago.”

“We?” Chief Wilkerson sounded intrigued.

“Fran and I,” I said. “We were working out at the gym. Maria tried to come in, but I’d locked her out. It was thirty minutes past when class started, and I’d locked it. We saw her during our workout. I didn’t answer the door.” He paused. “Are you sure it’s her?”

I saw no reason in lying to him about my actions.

He’d find out anyway.

That, and I didn’t see a point in lying. There was no secret about Maria’s and my mutual dislike for each other.

“Would’ve, too, if my ex had acted like yours,” Chief muttered.

Fran coughed and looked away, bending down to gather the bra that I’d discarded on the floor in our haste to get at each other.

She shrugged it on before I said, “How was it done?”

“Get here and see.”

• • •

Fran and I separated at the front door as I locked up.

“You okay?” she asked carefully.

I nodded once. “Okay. Curious. Wondering if I fucked up inadvertently, but ultimately, I’m okay. There was obviously no love lost between us.”

She nodded, then leaned forward and pressed her mouth to mine.

“When you’re done, and if you want to spend time with me, you’re more than welcome to come over,” she whispered.

Then, without another word, she left, running through the pouring rain in the short shorts that I’d given her earlier, looking back over her shoulder twice before diving inside of her POS car and closing the door.

I watched her drive away in the pouring rain, then jogged to my car and got inside. Once I was buckled in, I sat in my seat for a few long seconds as I tried to scrounge up the will to care.

Sadly, though I ‘knew’ Maria, I didn’t really have much more feelings for her other than a mutual acquaintance type thing. I should probably feel bad that my ex-wife died but…

I started my car, and it rumbled to life with a throaty roar.

Then I drove to the old house that I used to share with Maria.

There were about twenty people milling about out front with umbrellas, and I could see Chief Wilkerson standing on the front steps with his arms crossed over his chest.

I snagged my leather jacket, which honestly looked fucking ridiculous with my knit pants and tennis shoes, and shrugged it on before running toward the front.

The moment I got there, a baby cop tried to stop me, either not recognizing who I was, or just wanting to be a dick.

“Stop,” the cop ordered.

I sighed and rolled my eyes, my gaze landing on the chief. “You gonna handle this, or am I?”

The chief rolled his eyes and said, “Martinez, back off. That’s Taos Brady.”

The cop’s eyes widened comically.

“Oh, shit. Sorry.” He backed off, allowing me to pass without another word.

See, when you solved a serial killer case like I had, your name was flashed all over the news media. Meaning, I was now really fuckin’ famous. Not only did they know my real name now, they knew my pseudonym, too. Which was a huge selling factor in how well all of my books have done.

I couldn’t really complain, though.

I mean, who could when you became a New York Times Bestselling Author based on your notoriety for solving a case that was thought to be unsolvable in over thirty-two states?

“Sorry, sir,” the cop repeated again as I passed.

I grunted a ‘whatever’ and headed for the porch, spotting the newest hire, Schultz, now standing next to the chief.

My eyes met his, and I jerked my chin up in recognition. “Schultz.”

“Taos,” he replied amicably. “How are you?”

Then he winced.

I snorted and said, “There’s no love lost between me and Maria. Fuckin’ sucks that it happened to her but… yeah. Bad divorce.”

“You know that song ‘I Don’t Fuck With You’ by Big Sean?” I heard one of the other officers reply behind me.

I snorted.

That song had been written by the rapper about a woman that’d done him wrong. Pretty much the entire song was telling her to fuck off.

I’d gotten that a lot right after I’d broken it off with my ex.

Let’s just say Maria hadn’t endeared herself to anybody at the Paris Texas Police Department.

Not only had she gone out of her way to make my life a living hell, she went out of her way to make everyone’s life a living hell whenever she couldn’t get a hold of me.

That meant making random 911 calls to dispatch when she couldn’t find me because she was ‘worried.’

What the fuck ever.

I was so going to hell.

“Boys,” Chief Wilkerson grumbled. “Get in here, Brady.”

I rolled my eyes.

At any given time, I could be called by multiple names. Taos. Taos Brady. Taos Dean Brady. Or my pseudonym, Brady Dean.

I answered to all of them but my pseudonym at this point because I thought it was fuckin’ weird how people thought I was someone special just because I could write a book.

I followed Schultz and the chief into the house, feeling a sense of nostalgia roll over me.

I’d worked my fuckin’ ass off to buy this house.

I’d done one-hundred-hour workweeks, scrimped and saved, then got a loan for more than I could afford, just so I could buy Maria the dream house that she ‘had to have.’

The moment that I bought the house, which had only been a few years old, she’d immediately wanted to remodel it.

That I’d put my foot down on.

At least, somewhat.

What I couldn’t afford to do myself was left undone. But the rest of the house was all me.

From the front entrance to the wood floors.

The wood floors that had a smattering of blood on them starting in the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

“Shit,” I grumbled. “Is it bad?”

“Not good,” Chief Wilkerson muttered.

He was right.

It wasn’t good.

In fact, it was terrible.

I never, not ever, would’ve wished the way that Maria died on anybody.

The sad thing was, from the way the blood splatter was, it meant that she was alive initially when the stabbing happened.

“Just like the last one,” I murmured, mentally going over all of the information from the previous murder files I’d poured over.

“Agreed,” Chief Wilkerson grumbled. “Serial killer in town strikes again.”

“Fuck,” I hissed.

Then I spent the next four hours going through it all with a fine-tooth comb.

I made sure to take everything in, from the way the curtains were drawn, to the way Maria’s body was positioned.

There were just too many similarities for the two murders not to be related to the others that were part of a larger serial killer case.

The woman alone in a house that was being sold or had just sold. The age of the women—all between the ages of twenty-five and thirty.

The only real difference between them were their skin/hair color. Though each woman had different hair and skin colors, all of them had some degree of curliness to their hair.

“The profiler on his way?” I asked all of a sudden as I stared at the blood.

I wasn’t unaffected by it, per se, but I wasn’t seeing it as a gory nightmare anymore. Just a scene that I was trying to make sense of.

“Sent him down from DC this morning. With two confirmed cases now, they think that he’ll get three more before he moves on to a different state. As long as he or she continues the pattern, anyway,” Chief Wilkerson said.

He’d been standing next to me for just as long, knowing that I needed someone to bounce ideas off of.

Schultz had to leave to go get his nieces from the babysitter, leaving us alone in the house.

Thankfully, the medical examiner had come and removed Maria’s body, leaving me with just the remnants of the vicious crime.

I shook my head and stood up, my head pounding and my back aching.

I stared at the room one more time before I turned to Chief Wilkerson.

“I can’t see anything,” I said. “I’ll go over the notes again from the other cases. But this person, whoever he or she is—and my money is on a he—knows their shit. They’re very careful, they know better than to leave any evidence behind, and have great location choices. This one aside, seeing as my neighbors are awesome, the other houses never strike up curiosity. Hell, the last one wouldn’t have even been found as fast as it was if it hadn’t been for that guy from the electric company coming over to check on their fuse box after that transformer blew across the street.”

Chief Wilkerson sighed. “I don’t like this.”

I shook my head as I headed for the door. “I don’t like this either.”

After saying goodbye to the chief, I headed for my house on autopilot.

Once home, I headed for the shower, and then for the notes that I’d taken on the last murder.

I spent an hour making more notes on the most current one—my ex-wife—before there was a knock at the door.

I frowned hard at the paper, wondering who it might be.

Getting up, I walked to the door and felt my breath hitch at the sight that greeted me behind the smoked glass.

Feeling a grin fill my face for the first time in hours, I opened the door to find Fran standing on my doorstep with a paper bag in her hand that smelled like it was filled with food.

Then I remembered that she’d invited me over, and I cursed.

“I’m so sorry,” I apologized. “I completely forgot about you.”

She batted her eyes as she held the bag out to me. “I am a very understanding person, Taos.”

I grinned and took the bag from her, taking in her attire.

It being cold as fuck outside and alternating between rain and snow, she was much more appropriately dressed now in sweatpants and a sweatshirt.

Both of which looked like they’d once again been doused on her mad dash toward the door.

“I just wanted to bring you something to eat.” She paused. “And make sure that you’re okay.”

I swung my door open and gestured for her to come inside, but she shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I think you need some time. I just really wanted to bring you dinner.”

She was the sweetest fuckin’ girl on the planet.

So different from my ex that it was unreal.

My ex would’ve thrown a walleyed fit at being forgotten.

As in, she would’ve called every single person in the town until she found me. Then made such a huge stink about everything that I would’ve been forced to go see her just so she could ‘make sure I wasn’t dead.’

Truthfully, when we’d finally called it quits, it’d felt like a large weight had been lifted straight off my chest.

Before she could think to leave, to go back to her car and drive away from me, I caught her by the wrist and pulled her inside. “Come inside. Warm my couch up and watch TV or something beside me while I read my notes.”

She tilted her head sideways slightly, and I wanted to press my lips against hers.

But she sadly shook her head. “I can’t. I’m all wet…”

“I have sweats that are probably just as baggy as those are that you can wear.” I pulled her closer until our lips were almost touching. “Please.”

She sighed. “My food is in the car.”

I let her go and said, “I’ll get it.”

She snorted and dashed back out into the freezing rain to retrieve her food. By the time she was back, she went from soaked just a bit to ‘you need to get out of those clothes before you catch the plague’ soaked.

“Strip,” I urged her as I took the bag from her hands and placed it on the nearest table—the coffee table that had my notes spread out on it.

I heard her wet shoes hit the tiled entryway and headed for the dryer where I’d just turned on, for a fourth time, the clothes that I’d been wearing all week.

Pulling out a t-shirt, sweats, and some socks, I caught up a towel from the folded pile and then headed back for her.

I found her shivering and slightly blue in the entryway.

Grinning, I dropped the clothes on the arm of the couch before I walked up to her and shook out the towel.

She came to me willingly, and I wrapped her up in the soft cloth before wrapping her up again in my arms.

She sighed and leaned in.

“I missed you,” she breathed.

Something inside of me that had been cold since about halfway through my marriage warmed.

“Let’s get you warmed up,” I breathed as I bent down and swooped her up into my arms.

She didn’t even let out a startled squeak.

Instead, she went willingly, laying her chest on my shoulder, and placed all of her trust in me.

It changed everything.

My day was instantly better.