The Cleaner (Professionals 9)

"Here is hoping that by this time tomorrow, we might have some information, one way or the other.

"I will be back with my regularly scheduled video tomorrow. We will be covering another string of missing person's cases. Until then, stay safe."

Chapter Six

Poppy

It had been three days since I covered the three missing girls' cases.

In that time, my followers and I, along with several other true crime content creators had made a lot of progress. Which was great, since the police forces from Seaford, Handell, and Baettytown—the towns where the girls had gone missing from—hadn't even thought about connecting the cases.

The lead on the case in Seaford had the audacity to scoff at us for our concern, convinced that Maggie simply up and ran away from home.

An extremely beautiful, popular, well-liked, smart girl who was involved in half a dozen after-school activities, had an active social life, an amazing family, and a boyfriend who worshipped the ground she walked on, up and walked away from her very happy life.

Yeah. Because that made a lot of sense.

With the podcast and video garnering nationwide attention, the detectives on their cases were forced to start sharing information, comparing notes.

The most recent theory was human trafficking.

The girls were all young, all beautiful.

It made the most sense given how widespread the issue was getting.

I was glad the police were making progress, that more eyes were on the case now with my subscribers paying attention, but I couldn't shake the guilt I felt as I filmed and recorded, as I uploaded, as I chatted with my audience about the particulars of the case.

Had I not been so laser-focused on my serial killer angle, I might have picked up on the similarities earlier. Maybe soon enough to actually impact the outcome. There had been cases in the past when the disappearance went nuclear thanks to social media and the news, and the trafficked girl was dumped out of fear. Alive. Abused, but alive.

Now we were a year or more into this.

If the girls were still even in the States, it would be hard to find them.

Logically, I knew it wasn't my fault, that I in no way made things worse.

But I couldn't shake the idea that I possibly could have made things better.

I'd never been in this situation since I started my podcast. I'd always jumped onto any cases that I came across, had studied it, had brought it in front of a bunch more eyes. So even if the outcome was heartbreaking, I knew I'd tried to help.

That mattered to me.

So the guilt was new and overpowering.

I swear it felt like my steps were heavier, my shoulders were more slumped under the pressure. Hell, this morning, I'd struggled to get out of bed. And I'd only done so to get some coffee, eat some frozen pizza, shower, then climb right back in again.

- Tell me there's nothing I could have done.

I felt weaker than I expected when I shot off that text, suddenly wishing Finn was a social media sort of man, so I could have deleted the message. But there was nothing I could do via text. It was just out there. For him to see.

But not respond.

Not within an hour.

Or three.

Or five.

Eventually, I fell to sleep and got sucked into a seemingly never-ending nightmare. The kind where I was alone in an unknown city in the middle of the night without a single weapon, or another human being around to help me while a shadowy figure managed to follow me, no matter how cleverly I tried to hide.

I startled awake with my heart attempting to break free of my ribcage.

My stomach felt like it was swirling as I reached up to push sweaty hair out of my face.

It was only then that I realized what woke me up.

Not my shadowy stalker finally grabbing me in my dream, but someone knocking at my door down below.

One glance at the clock on my nightstand had real-life dread unfurling through my system.

No one should have been knocking at my door at two in the morning.

I reached for my phone with one hand, and my steel baton in the other before making my way downstairs, refusing to turn any light on, because I didn't want anyone to know I was home until I could figure out what was going on.

Even walking on tiptoes, I felt like my footsteps were too loud as I made my way into the foyer, as I tried to find the nerve to glance out the peephole, suddenly wishing I'd invested in the doorbell camera system when I'd considered it a few months back.

"Poppy," my name was called through the door, making my heartbeat speed up, but now for a different reason.

Because I knew that voice.

Finn.

I fumbled to get my baton in the hand with my phone, so I could unlock the door, then wrench it open.