The Good One (The Ones)

Chapter nineteen

Donovan

I’mwokenfrommy peaceful sleep with my woman in my arms by the shrill sound of a ringing cell phone. It gives me a start but barely bothers Kasey at all. She moans into her pillow, reaching over to the nightstand, hopefully to turn the damn thing off. The sound stops (thank God) but soon starts up again. Kasey sits up and looks at the caller ID with worry on her face.

“It’s my sister’s roommate,” she tells me right before answering.

“Hey, Millie, what’s up?” I hear a woman on the other end talking frantically into the phone.

“Slow down, Millie. What do you mean the apartment was broken into? Are you okay? Where’s Lindsey?” The look on her face is becoming more and more concerned with every passing second.

“Millie, where is my sister?”

I can’t hear what this Millie person is saying on the other end of the line, but it has Kasey jumping out of bed, which has me jumping out of bed too. She’s on the phone while we’re both getting dressed quickly.

“I’m coming now. Go across the hall and wait for me. I don’t think you should be in the apartment alone right now.” Kasey hangs up and is trying to put her bra on, looking for her shirt at the same time. I find it under mine from where we tossed it last night and hand it to her.

“Lindsey’s apartment was broken into. Her roommate, Millie, was out of town all last week visiting her parents in Vermont. She just got home and found the place trashed. Apparently, my sister’s room is demolished.” She has a terrified look on her face.

“Did Millie get in touch with your sister?” I ask.

“No, her phone goes straight to voicemail like it’s off or dead or something.”

“I’ll call Aiden to have him meet us there. I know you’re scared, but I’m sure your sister is fine. Just probably forgot to charge her phone or something.” I don’t know Lindsey, never met her, but it seems like something a twenty-five-year-old would do. I don’t like the look on Kasey’s face. She’s near panic and I need her calm so we can figure this out.

“Okay, okay, let’s get over there so we can see what’s going on.” She tries calling Lindsey on our way out the door, but it just keeps going to her voicemail.

“Goddammit, Lindsey, charge your fucking phone,” she yells at her phone when she hears her sister’s voicemail message again.

“Come on, babe, I’ll drive.” We make our way to my parking garage. Kasey is shaking like a leaf as we get into my car. I put a hand on her knee and she gives me a weak smile as we drive to her sister’s apartment.

“Do you have any idea where she could be? A friend’s house? Your mom’s maybe?” I ask.

“She’s not at my mom’s. That I know. My mom would have let me know. We haven’t heard from her in a little bit, which isn’t totally out of the ordinary. Last time we all had dinner, she was in a shit mood. When I confronted her, she said she was just tired. When she gets like that, she likes to be left alone and won’t answer calls for a few days. I know I should have pushed, but this isn’t the first time she’s kinda just ignored us. If she doesn’t want to talk about something, she pulls this shit.” I can tell she is pissed at her sister for acting this way, and also worried this may be something else.

“She was working on a story about some powerful family, but she wouldn’t tell me who. Just that there was sex and money involved and pay-offs were happening. I don’t know. Oh my God, Donovan, what if they found out and did something to her? I told her to be careful, dammit.” She’s looking at me with a terrified expression on her face, and I hate it.

“We won’t know anything until we see her apartment. Aiden is going to meet us there, and he’s the best when it comes to figuring this shit out. We’ll figure it out, sweetheart, I promise.”

Aiden pulls up to the building at the same time we do. I walk up to him as he’s getting out of the car.

“What do we know?” he asks, not wasting time on hello. Down to business. I appreciate that about him.

“Just that the apartment was broken into and ransacked. The roommate should be with the neighbor, so hopefully she didn’t touch too much. It sounded like she had just gotten home when she called Kasey.”

Kasey walks over to me then, barely sparing Aiden a glance.

“Let’s go up. I want to check on Millie and see the damage.” She makes her way to the front door of the building. This isn’t a bad area, but crime doesn’t happen only in sketchy places. I can tell by looking around that security is seriously lacking in Lindsey’s building. I don’t even see any cameras on the building.

“No cameras,” I tell Aiden.

“There are a couple at the shops across the street. I’ll see about getting the footage. See if there're any angles that show her building. So Lindsey is Kasey’s sister. What else do you know about her?” We’re walking up the stairs to her apartment. No elevator either.

“We haven’t met yet. She’s a reporter. Independent. Apparently, she told Kasey she was working on something involving a powerful family. Sounded like they had some secrets they wanted to be kept hidden.” I can relate to that. “Kasey’s worried they found out and did something to her.” Aiden looks at me with a thoughtful look.

“Could be.”

We get to the front door of the apartment and don’t see any signs of forced entry, but the door is slightly ajar. Kasey knocks on the neighbor’s door to let Millie know we’re here. Aiden and I step in and the place is a mess. Spoiled food in the fridge that was left open, broken picture frames, some with pictures of Kasey and Lindsey with cheerful smiles on their faces, and some of Lindsey and who I’m assuming is the roommate. The pictures of just her roommate without Lindsey have been left alone. Yeah, this definitely seems to be directed at Lindsey. Whatever this is. Kasey walks into the apartment then with fear marring her features.

“Who would do this?” she asks no one in particular as she walks farther in and looks around at the damage.

“Be careful, sweetheart, there’s glass everywhere.” I don’t think she registers that I’m talking to her. Her eyes are filled with tears. Aiden is having a look around and taking pictures of the damage. He isn’t one to comfort a woman in distress.

“Lindsey’s room is just down the hall.” She points down the short hallway and Aiden leads the way.

The door is wide-open, and if we thought the rest of the apartment was bad, this is downright scary. Women’s clothes are strewn all over the place, ripped into tatters. They’ve ripped all the pictures off the walls, and what I’m guessing were posters have been torn and crumpled. Kasey is the last to walk in and she gasps at the sight. Her eyes are wide, like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. Aiden is taking more pictures around the room and when he gets to the bed, he puts his phone by his side and stares at what’s sitting there.

“Come see this,” he says to us. We carefully make our way over, not wanting to disturb the scene, and look at more pictures on the bed. There must be hundreds. Most of them have one thing in common. They’re of my brother.

“What the hell?” Kasey murmurs, looking at the pictures. “Why are there all these pictures of Jackson?” she asks.

They’re all taken in various places. In some of them he’s just walking down the street in his neighborhood, but they took some of them in a place I recognize. Club Noir. I also spot some that are similar to the photos I’ve been mysteriously getting over the last few weeks. Was Lindsey sending me those pictures? I look at Aiden, who is taking more pictures of the bed. He glances up and gives me a knowing look. This can’t be good. Suddenly I hear Kasey gasp.

“Oh my God, Donovan, look at these.”

I look where she’s pointing and see more defaced photographs on the bed. These are of Kasey and Lindsey in various places, but Lindsey’s eyes have been crossed out with what I hope is a red marker with a line through her throat as if it had been slashed. Kasey has tears running down her face now.

“Why, Donovan? Why would someone target her like this?” She looks at me, then at Aiden for answers. I have none, so I take her in my arms to try to give her some sort of comfort in this madness. Aiden gives us a moment and walks over to the little desk in the room with notes strewn all over it. He bends down and picks up a shoebox, putting things in it, then comes back to the bed and puts the pictures in there as well.

“What are you doing?” Kasey asks. “Shouldn’t you wait for the police?” Aiden looks at me and I give him a small nod.

“Kasey, Aiden will do a much better job at figuring this out than the police will. They have hundreds of cases. He has one right now,” I tell her.

“I don’t know, Donovan. I think they should be involved. This is obviously a missing persons. I want my sister found and I think we should use their resources to help.”

“Baby, I promise you, Aiden is the best. He will find her and bring her home. We need to go about this carefully, though. Whoever has her could be looking for signs that the police have been called. We don’t have a ransom note or anything other than a destroyed apartment to show them. You said she has a history of disappearing. I don’t think they’ll look at it as a missing persons yet.”