Billion Dollar Mistake by K.C. Crowne

Chapter 21

JOLENE

Two weeks later…

Iran my hand through my hair, exhausted as all hell from a long day in the morgue.

A third body had been found, this one a little further outside of town than the ones before. A pair of hikers had come across it earlier that morning. Jimmy had sent me a text with the news while I was on my way to Whitepeak to take care of some things at the office.

I didn’t even need to see the body to know that it was going to look like the others. Sure enough, when I arrived at the hiking area outside of town, Hart and Cole were there to show me the body of another transient man with four gunshots to the back, the wounds letting me know it was the same gun used for the other killings.

It was a mess, and the fear was palpable in town. The murders were all anyone was talking about whenever I’d stop for coffee at Claptrap or swing into the diner for a lunch break. News teams from Denver had been poking around, and I had feared that a third murder would be the thing that would take these cases from local to national.

Even Megan and Dave were less than their usual selves. Everyone in town seemed to have the same question on their mind – when was this murderer, whoever he or she was, going to switch from killing transients to people in town?

When I stepped outside of the office, the sun had set, and it was well into the evening. I felt…fear. It was such a strange sensation to experience in Whitepeak. My hometown could feel small, could be a little boring at times, but it had never, ever been scary. I could only imagine what the rest of the people in town had to have been feeling as they locked their doors for the first times and told their kids to be home before the sun went down.

I climbed into the brand new, dark red Jeep Gladiator Sawyer had bought me last week. The car was nice, new, and reliable, just like he’d wanted. I still missed the old girl, though, and drove her around on the weekends if I had errands to run.

The hour-long drive passed like nothing at all. Before too long I was in front of the apartment building, the tower looming over me, the nearly full moon hanging in the night sky. I said my hellos to the front desk staff before taking the elevator up to the top floor.

The apartment lights were on as I entered.

“I’m here,” I called out, my voice echoing through the enormous space.

No one called back.

Not thinking much of it, I let my purse slide off my arm and down onto the couch. I was hungry, having not eaten since noon that day, so I made my way into the kitchen to grab a quick bite before attempting some wind down time before I had to go to bed and get up to do it all again tomorrow.

When I stepped into the kitchen, however, something caught my eye.

Something red.

It was blood – and a lot of it.

I gasped, grabbing onto the nearest counter as I took in the scene. A small pool of fresh blood was on the counter, the trail leading back to the living room. I hurried out of the kitchen and followed the trail of blood up the stairs, realizing that I’d been so lost in my own world that I hadn’t even noticed it when I’d arrived.

Nightmare scenarios flooded my mind, thoughts of some murderer having broken into the apartment and…God, I didn’t even want to think about it.

I reached the top of the stairs, the blood leading down the hall. Why was there so much of it, I wondered? The amount of blood on the floor was so great that, had I not known better, I would’ve guessed that it had come from more than one person.

My heart racing, I hurried down the hall and threw open the door to Sawyer’s bedroom – a part of the apartment I hadn’t yet been to. The bedroom light was off, but the one to the en suite bathroom was on.

“Come on, Zander,” came his voice, dripping with frustration, from the bathroom. Relief settled over me – if he was speaking, that meant he was OK.

I rushed over to the bathroom and stepped inside.

I gasped at what I saw. Sawyer was there, seated on the edge of the massive jacuzzi tub, a blood-soaked hand towel wrapped around one hand, his phone in the other, and he was pale.

“Where the hell are you, dude?” he asked to his phone.

“Sawyer!”

He looked up at me with tired eyes.

“Hey.” Sawyer glanced around. “Sorry about the mess.”

“Oh my God,” I said, hurrying over next to him, avoiding the blood on the floor. “Did you cut yourself? This is so much blood, Sawyer – you might’ve hit an artery.”

He shook his head. “Not that.”

“What? How do you know?”

He pursed his lips together, as if about to tell me something he didn’t want to share.

“It’s…” He trailed off.

I sprang up, grabbing a bigger towel from where it hung behind the door. That in hand, I took the blood-soaked one away and tossed it into the jacuzzi, where it landed with a wet plop.

“Wait,” I said as I inspected the wound in his palm. “This isn’t that deep.”

The slice through his hand was long and looked pretty gruesome at first glance. However, once I’d wiped the first bit of blood away, I saw that it didn’t go in very deeply. Relief washed over me – whatever had happened, it wasn’t too serious.

I glanced up at him as I placed the towel on his hand and pressed hard.

“What’s going on?”

The moment I asked the question I realized what the answer was. He was bleeding like crazy from a slight cut, more than he should’ve been.

“I’ve got a little condition,” he said, his eyes sleepy and a tinge of embarrassment to his voice.

“Hemophilia.” I said the word with gravity and certainty all at once.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“You lose blood to your brain?” I asked with a slight smile. “I’m a doctor, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” He glanced at his phone. “Zander…he’s my hematologist. But I can’t get ahold of him.”

“Shoot. OK, he tell you what to do in a situation like this?” I took another look at the blood. “This shouldn’t even be happening – a guy like you should be able to afford the best factor medication available.”

“Well, that’s true. But you have to take it. I ran out a few days ago and haven’t gotten around to getting more.”

I let out an annoyed noise and gave him a slight shove.

“Sawyer! You can’t be doing that with a condition like this! Exsanguination is not a pretty way to go.”

I got up and looked around.

“You’ve got to have something here for emergencies. Like…oh! Fibrin glue!”

Sawyer nodded toward the cabinets. “Yeah, I’ve got some of that. It’s in the top drawer, I think.”

He was going to be fine, but the blood loss was starting to make him woozy and weak. I sprang up and rushed over to the cabinets, opening them until I found the small tube of fibrin glue. It was nearly empty – probably enough in there for his cut and not much else.

That in hand, I cleaned off his hand with some medical wipes that were in the cabinet along with the glue. The blood flow had stemmed a bit, but he still needed some attention.

“You were making dinner?” I asked as I applied the glue, trying to take his mind off the subject. The glue smelled sharp and astringent.

“Huh? Oh, in the kitchen? I was, uh, trying to surprise you. Didn’t go very well, as you can see.”

I smiled slightly at his words. “Well, we’re doing pizza once this is all said and done.”

He smiled right back. “Nice to know that not only are you pretty to look at, you’re also helpful in preventing me from killing myself by being a careless dumbass.”

Sawyer was being silly, but his words still warmed my heart.

“That’s what fake wives are for, right?”