Where the Blame Lies

She woke with a scream lodged in her throat, someone’s hands around her neck. Panic shot through her body—hot, immediate—bringing her quickly out of the deep sleep she’d been in. She registered a man in a black ski mask on top of her, his hands around her neck, his weight crushing her into the mattress.

Josie’s heart seized, horror spiking through her in pulsing waves. He made a movement with his hips and she felt his erection. Oh nonono. Her mind went numb. She was only fight now. She bucked upward with her body, flailing outward with her arms, attempting to kick but unable to with his weight on her hips.

He laughed, a slick, oily sound filled with glee.

OhGodohGodohGod.

She couldn’t breathe. I’m going to die, I’m going to die. Hot tears leaked from her eyes as she writhed and twisted and fought, his hands around her neck only growing tighter as her body grew weaker, sparks bursting before her eyes as her brain struggled for oxygen. Suddenly he let go and she sucked in a huge lungful of air, surging forward, his elbow connecting with her cheekbone in a jarring thud. She opened her mouth to scream just as something sharp plunged into her thigh. He held her down easily as whatever drug he’d given her shot through her veins, making her limbs too heavy to move, her brain thick, soupy. Once more, she tried to scream, but no sound came out.

The world went dark.

**********

Ping. Ping. Her eyes cracked open slowly, a groan rising to her lips. Her head throbbed and she shrank back from the small bit of light, eyes squinting. Oh God. Panic surged as she realized her arms were chained to the wall behind her. She attempted to pull loose, but the chains were heavy, unwieldy in her weakened state, bolted to the concrete with metal rings that had been drilled into the stone. She turned, breathing hard, her gaze flying around the room. Concrete floors, walls. A window high up on the wall. What was this? Some sort of warehouse room? Her head throbbed again. A man in a ski mask. He’d attacked her in bed. The prick in her thigh. And now she was here. Where is here? Hot tears slid down her cheeks as panic rose, her chest rising and falling. “Calm down,” she gasped. “Calm down, calm down, calm down.” She was going to hyperventilate if she didn’t get hold of herself. It was daylight streaming in through that high window. Morning sun.

“Help!” she yelled as loudly as she could. And again and again and again until her voice cracked, emerging only as a broken whisper as tears continued to stream down her face. She sobbed, yanking at the chains that held her, her shoulders throbbing along with her head, wrists now stinging and abraded. She felt moisture rolling down the side of her hand. Blood.

She collapsed back against the wall, breathing hard. In. Out. In. Out. She stared up at that small square of muted light, her lids dropping closed. The drug in her system took hold once again, and she didn’t fight it. She slept.

The sound of footsteps woke her and she sat bolt upright, her head swimming as she listened, panicked, trying to decide whether to call out or not. A faint light shone through the window. Not the sun. A streetlamp maybe.

Her heart thundered as a key jiggled in the lock and the door swung open. He stood in the open doorway, the man in the black ski mask. Her heart slammed against her ribs, her harsh exhales mixing with the distant dripping sound she’d heard earlier. “Hello, Josie,” he finally said, closing the door behind him and stepping into the room.

“Please,” she whispered, tears sliding down her cheeks. “Please let me go. I’ll do anything.”

He laughed. “Oh, I know you will.” He came closer, knelt down in front of her, his hand caressing her cheek. She shrank back, terror making her feel weak, lightheaded. He clicked his tongue. “I wish you hadn’t m-made me hit you. I didn’t want to hit you, Josie. You really look t-terrible now.”

“How do you know my name?” She was trembling and the words came out wobbly, strangely spaced as her jaw shook.

“I know everything about you. I’ve made it my b-business to know, Josie.” He clicked his tongue again, leaning even closer.

“Why? Why are you doing this?” Her breath hitched on a sob and the chains clanked on the cement floor as she attempted to lift her hands but then let them drop at the reminder of the heavy chains, her bleeding wrists.

He leaned even closer, and she could tell by the movement of his mask that he was smiling beneath it. “Because,” he said, “because you’re a whore, and you d-deserve to be treated like one.”

His words washed over her along with his scent. It registered, memory responding. Pineapple. Coconut. Something overly sweet and tropical.

She knew immediately who he was.

CHAPTER ONE

The girl—or what was left of her—lay crumpled against the wall, hands secured behind her back with a chain bolted to the concrete wall. “Jesus,” Detective Zach Copeland muttered. He squatted next to Dolores Appleton, one of the city’s criminalists, who was snapping photos of the victim from every angle, including close-ups of her hands, feet, face frozen in a silent, never-ending scream. Pressure built in Zach’s chest. This girl had suffered. Horribly.

“Zach.”

“Hi, Dolores. Any idea on the cause of death?”

Dolores’s bright blue eyes met his and she shook her head, her red curls dancing. “Nothing obvious. Cathlyn will have to determine this one. But my guess?” She paused, her voice lowering with her next words. “She starved to death.” She pointed to her ribcage. “A good amount of decomposition already and rats have gotten to her, but you can tell her ribs were very pronounced even before that.”

Zach felt his lips go thin as he took in the ravaged body under the harsh LED lights the team had strung up. Rats. Fuck. They’d been here after death, which meant they’d been here before too. Had she been left in the dark in this underground space? Had she heard them skittering around, her hands tied, trapped as they brushed past her feet? The horror of what she’d gone through pressed on his chest once more, a ten-ton brick that made his lungs ache. Death was rarely pretty, but this level of suffering, this level of depravity, made his blood run cold.

He’d have to wait to hear Cathlyn’s determination on cause of death, but some sick fuck had chained this woman up in the rat-infested basement of an abandoned house and done God knew what to her. Then he’d possibly left her to starve to death. What terrors had she survived before her heart had ceased beating? And why?

It was his job to provide motivation for the crimes he investigated, but deep down, there wasn’t any good answer. No reason that would help make any sense of this.

“Sexual assault?” he asked Dolores, his tone harsher than he’d intended.

Dolores glanced up, tweezers suspended in midair for a moment. Her eyes met his. “The body’s too decomposed for me to make a guess.”