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  I had met a college girl at the gym named Mia. It was the strangest thing. She had cast a spell on me the first time we spoke. It may have been the way she looked at me. What happened between us was not something I would ever do, but Mia had a magic about her. That afternoon was the longest time I’d ever spent at the gym. We talked for hours and it didn’t take much for her to convince me to bring her home. Most of all, I thought what she had suggested would arouse the spark in the relationship between Spencer and I. And I guess, in some way, I wanted to relive the careless life of a college girl once again.

  That night, Spencer came home even more stressed than he was the nights before. Mia and I had been drinking shots of whiskey, and the two of us waited together in the bedroom wearing nothing but skimpy lingerie.

  At first, when Spencer opened the door, he seemed shocked. He froze and his eyes locked to Mia as she began running her fingers through my hair and smirking. His face turned red, then he dropped his jacket and briefcase and stormed out of the house and back to his car. Despite the sound of tires squealing from the driveway, Mia was ready to do what she came there for with me alone, but it wasn’t going to happen.

  My heart shattered, wondering about my husband and what he was thinking. Where he was going and what he was doing at the exact same moment I was pushing Mia away and getting dressed.

  I had to apologize to her. Things didn’t go as planned. My intentions fell through and ended up making things worse. Mia said she understood, and told me maybe we could try again another time.

  As soon as she left, I called Spencer’s phone, but it didn’t ring. Instead, it went straight to voicemail.

  After sobbing and sending multiple text messages, I sat alone on the couch and flipped through the television channels in an attempt to distract me from my sorrow. A few late reruns of my favorite comedy show came on, but not once did they make me laugh. I couldn’t stop worrying that Spencer thought I was being unfaithful. All I wanted was to talk to him for one minute so I could explain.

  The phone rang, waking me in the middle of the night. I had fallen asleep on the sofa with the television screen flickering infomercials. It was Spencer calling to tell me he wasn’t coming home, not for a while. Everything going on at work was too much for him to handle. The kidnappings, the murders, the urgency to find a way to save the city’s children, and what I didn’t know: the stress of coming home to find Mia had infiltrated his home life.

  He explained the seductive girl had been coming by the station, waiting for him beside his car, leaving him messages, hoping to get him alone so she could fuck his brains out. That’s why Mia approached me at the gym. If she couldn’t have my husband all to herself, she had come up with a different plan that involved his wife.

  It didn’t mean Spencer couldn’t come home, and I told him that, but he said he needed a break to clear his head. He told me he was in a darker place than he’d ever been before and was afraid it would affect our family. When he hung up, he left me with a swirl of worry, anger, and heartache.

  “Communication is the cornerstone of any marriage,” says Jonas. “When it fails, everything else follows suit. This girl who puts herself in the middle of it, stirring up rage and adding fuel to the fire; you need to communicate with her too. Make her understand the damage she’s causing. If you have to be assertive, be assertive, but don’t let your rage consume you. Break down, push through, and take back what’s yours.”

  It’s strange how, even though you know what to do with any problem, you sometimes need to hear it from someone else before it clicks. Getting the same advice you would give, but from someone else, is a good reminder.

  A shadow casts from behind the two of us.

  Detective Spencer stands in the doorway of the station entrance. He jingles his keys and steps past us toward the parking lot.

  “Avery, come with me.”

  Jonas and I look to each other. He smiles and winks and I thank him.

  Not one word is spoken on the drive to the hospital. It’s the first time Spencer and I have to ourselves in over a week. There were so many things I want to say to him. There are so many things I want to explain. Yet not one of these things come to mind because they’re not important, not while Haylee is missing.

  We arrive at a hospital and Spencer directs me to room 311 on the third floor. He says in this room, I’ll find a familiar face. He warns me not to rush things, despite my desperation. He says the patient in room 311 wants to talk to me, but only me, so I should be respectful and let him say what he needs to say.

  Spencer knows I can be rather brash when it comes to criminals, but he makes me promise to bite my tongue, and to let this man get what he needs off his chest.

  The patient in room 311 lay restful in bed. His thin body dressed in a hospital gown with a blanket draped over his legs. His short blonde hair is clean. On a table beside his bed sits a red cardinal bird made of cotton balls and glued fabric, like arts or crafts made by a child. Next to the bird sits a folded pair of thin-framed eyeglasses.

  My stomach fills again with heavy butterflies.

  I recognize him immediately. He’s someone I’ve been familiar with for a very long time, but I only know him by his street name—Craze.

  The urge to drag him from bed and throw his ass into a pair of handcuffs, or even beat on him until he bleeds to death, is almost overwhelming. But I have to keep my cool. If Haylee’s life is at stake, and Craze knows something that will help me find her, putting my emotions aside is something I’m willing to do.

  It’s merely my presence that wakes him, or maybe he was never asleep to begin with.

  “Since they revived me, I’ve had other sights, but if your face were the first, you would have to convince me I that I wasn’t in Heaven.”

  Flattering, even from a murderous criminal.

  “I thought you were dead,” I reply, leaning against the doorframe.

  He snickers.

  “You fall easily for misdirection.”

  Pushing himself against the headboard, Craze puts on his glasses and drops both hands to his lap, looking me up and down.

  “Officer Avery… Spencer?” he asks. “But your name badge has an M at the end.”

  The M is the initial of my maiden name—Mayfield.

  “You’re not wearing a wedding band,” he adds. “You people and your symbols. It’s hard to tell who is who and what is what anymore.”

  From the side table, he lifts a red pen and newspaper that’s folded in half to the crossword section.

  “What’s an eight letter word for ‘deceit?’” he asks, filling in empty spaces.

  This guy is smart. I’ve chased him a few times, but each of those times he’s been a step ahead of everyone else. In and out, right under our noses, slipping through our fingers.

  With that in mind, and as eager as I am to get to the truth, I have to play it slow.

  There’s a thin line between genius and insanity.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I reply. “How are you still alive?”

  He slaps the crossword on the table and rests the pen on top.

  According to Craze, his last night working for El Toro, he had mentioned to his friend, Buddha, he was trying to get away from the business. Buddha punched him in the stomach so hard, it caused internal bleeding and left Craze with the clock ticking on his life. He managed to escape and made his way to a motel off the interstate where he called in his own dead body to 9-1-1, but not before calling in a favor from a couple of friends.

  He waited inside by the indoor swimming pool until he heard the approaching sirens before falling in. By the time he had sunk to the bottom and fell unconscious, the ambulance crew arrived to rescue him. The medics loaded his body onto the stretcher and rushed him to the hospital.

  Any system that uses files and records to identify someone can be misleading. Their information can always be changed or augmented. It’s not uncommon for patients in a hospital to be given the wrong treatment for their illness
es or injuries simply because they’ve accidentally been registered as someone else.

  According to the hospital records, Craze had been pronounced dead upon arrival. However, the medics told the emergency room staff they had no identification for him, and he had to be identified as a John Doe.

  “How are you feeling now?” I ask.

  Craze chuckles.

  “I’m surprised that’s what interests you.”

  “We have our differences, but I’m being humane.”

  “I appreciate that,” he says. “Truth be told, I feel a bit refreshed. My doctor says I’ll be out of here any day now.”

  “You expect to go free just like that?”

  Craze stretches both arms in front of him, turning his bare wrists upright.

  “Please. You know better than that. If I were being charged with anything, I’d be in handcuffs.”

  He’s not intimidated by me, he never has been, so I step closer to his bed with my hands in both of my pockets.

  “So, what are your plans?”

  He yawns.

  “Disappear. Find a house. Start a family. Become invisible.”

  While examining the room, I nod.

  “Just like that?”

  Removing his glasses and pinching a corner of his hospital gown, he wipes a smudged lens.

  “I’m not one to blame my actions on anyone else,” he replies, lifting his glasses to the light to examine them. “I’ve never used the way my father treated me as an excuse. I never blamed my responsibilities on what he did to my mother. But you know, as well as I do, my father was the poisonous root of my life. That poison found its antidote. I couldn’t move on until he was dead.”

  “You’re still a monster,” I say.

  Satisfied with clean glass of his spectacles, he puts his eyewear back on.

  “That life is gone,” he replies, moving a cup of water across the table. “I never played the pity card, and I never asked for redemption. Looking back at all of those lives taken along with mine; we’re all dead. Is that not fair enough?”

  My lips purse and I nod again.

  “Fair enough.”

  “Now, you can waste your time trying to peg me with crimes that will never stick, or you can nag me with your opinions about my reputation, but you and I both know that’s not why you’re here. And the clock is ticking, is it not?”

  My eyes squint.

  “You can’t tell me you don’t know anything.”

  Fluffing his pillow and leaning back, Craze rests his arms to his side.

  “You can’t tell me you can prove that I do.”

  He scoots over, letting his legs hang from the bedside, and pats the mattress with one hand.

  “Sit.”

  “I’m fine where I am, thank you.”

  The two of us are strangers, but the look he gives me goes straight through my soul, like he knows what I’m thinking. As if he knows what I’m going to do before I decide to do it. It’s a relationship you find in arch enemies, complete opposites. Even magnetic poles have a special bond when defying each other.

  “I’m not asking,” he says. “You want The Bull, but you don’t know who you’re dealing with, and it’s not something I would advise hearing about while you stand. All of your life’s nightmares are nothing compared to this.”

  An empty chair sits against the wall, so I pull it closer to his bed and take a seat.

  “Spare me the details of El Toro’s business. I know everything already except for one thing: Who is he?”

  Craze tells me his father used to work for El Toro. He was one of Bull’s henchmen. One of his kidnappers. The Bull has many rules, one of them being the products are not to be touched. Craze’s father was responsible for the creation of that rule. His dad took advantage of the female products, especially the younger ones. It became his obsession. He used his own son to gather these girls, and his own position in El Toro’s business ring to fulfill his fantasies.

  When Craze’s father was caught, he was offered a choice be killed or leave and say nothing of the trafficking empire. The father chose the latter, but eventually became a rat, informing police about the Bull’s operation. He went into hiding until the day he could make his appearance in court.

  His attorney had stashed him in the one place he thought no one would look, on the third floor of a mental hospital, disguised as a patient. Unfortunately for the father, El Toro was too smart. He hired someone to kill him, an act that was carried out by the traitor’s own son.

  Leaning forward, I rest both elbows on each knee.

  “Then who is El Toro?”

  Craze scoots closer to me, rolling the side table from his way.

  “The Devil wears many masks. Some are faces of angels, others of demons, but there’s a way to know which face is truly his.”

  He leans in even more, but I don’t pull away. His breath tingles the tiny peach-fuzz hairs on my neck. His lips barely graze the edge of my earlobe as he whispers.

  “The Bull is marked.”

  My stomach is queasy. I feel weak.

  Rolling the table back toward him, Craze sits his cup of water in front of me. The last thing I would ever do is accept something from him, but oddly enough, he’s managed to gained my trust.

  “I can’t tell you where to find him,” he says. “El Toro thinks I’m dead and that’s how it stays. If I go rattling off information, I’ll end up looking over my shoulder for the rest of my new life. If he were to find me, I would die again for nothing, and you still couldn’t lay a hand on him.”

  Pulling the straw from my lips, I shake my head.

  “We’ll catch up to him. He can run as much as he wants, but he can’t stay hidden forever.”

  Craze takes the empty cup from my hand and sets it back on the table.

  “Sometimes, the best place to hide,” he says, “is in the shadows of your own demons. A place where there’s nothing to fear when you are fear himself.”

  Staring in his eyes, I can see something I’ve never seen before. It’s hard to put in to words. It’s like he’s holding back, but at the same time, giving me everything I need to know.

  No one else outside this room can be trusted. El Toro’s evil lurches through so many people. So many who have become his hands at work. Not all of them because they are bad, but because they have no choice. After all, Lieutenant Schaeffer’s family was taken during a traffic stop and shipped off by an ambulance. The very people who were sworn to serve the public were the ones to betray it.

  Guarding his stomach with both arms, Craze slides his legs back into bed and pulls the cover.

  “Someone knows where to go.”

  If he were anyone else, I would ask whom he’s referring to, but I don’t bother. He won’t tell me anything more. No details. No physical description. No secret location. All of these things are part of a life long gone. He wants nothing more to do with it.

  As I stand, a nurse enters, carrying a tray of food from the cafeteria. She sets it on the table next to the crafted red cardinal bird, and Craze thanks her.

  “I know you did what you felt was right,” I say, waiting for the nurse to leave the room, “but if I ever see you again, I’ll—”

  “You’ll do what?”

  He removes the lid from his plate, allowing the warm smell of meatloaf fill the air.

  “You and I are the same, Avery. We stand on opposite ends of the spectrum, but at the same height, the same level. Threats? C’mon. You’re better than that.”

  There is a narrow barrier between good and evil.

  My hand extends to him. He looks at my palm, chewing his food, and then to my face and smiles. With a hospital band secured to his wrist with the name ‘John Doe’ printed in black, his open hand grips mine and we shake.

  “What’s your real name?” I ask.

  He pushes himself up a bit, holding one arm across his stomach and cringing.

  “Cr—”

  The rest comes after a sharp pain passes.

 
“Christopher.”

  Exiting the room, I say, “trickery,” and I stop and turn back. “It’s an eight letter word for ‘deceit.’”

  A smirk spreads across his face as he lifts the newspaper from the table and holds it for me to see. The boxes have already been filled. He had finished his puzzle long ago, before I had a chance to give an answer.

  No matter how many lives he’s taken, no matter how much blood he has shed, Christopher is right; there’s nothing I nor anyone else can do about it. There’s no way for me to force any more information from him. Still, what he’s given me, I’m certain in some way, is enough to help.

  18. PEACE CAN SLEEP FOREVER

  For Jace, the thick hotel curtains keep the lightness from his dark soul.

  A shirtless and sleepless Jace sits cornered in the room with his arms folded over his knees. Dark wet circles under his eyes reflect flashes from the television. Crumbs of food scatter the floor beside dirty clothes and empty liquor bottles.

  The deadbolts locked and a chair pressed against the door. Each sound of passing guests from the other side make him flinch. Scattered thoughts grow so strong with each passing minute. Minutes he can’t measure because the alarm clock lay unplugged and thrown to the carpet.

  Beside his feet, a sixty-day supply of pills for anxiety and depression with the remaining half spilled from the bottle. Only a few ounces of whiskey remain in the last bottle.

  Visions of Miranda engaged in heart pounding sex with anyone but him, flash through his brain. The screams of his son, begging for his father to help him, echo in his ears. Jace fights hard to erase any ideas of what his son could be going through, or how he may be tortured and killed. A child’s hopeless face, his hand reaching to the one person who was too much of a coward to protect him. The guilt of knowing he was responsible for his son’s fate refuses to cease its torment.

  There exists a breaking point between devastation and rage.

  After pouring the last drop of whiskey down his throat, Jace throws the bottle across the room and rises, chasing it before it smashed into pieces. Pulling framed artwork from the walls, he tosses them to the ground, sending shards of glass through the air.