The only thing he had left was Sydney’s cold case.
“I did die,” Knox said. “There was a light at the end of the tunnel—the whole nine yards.”
Jynx and Bianca stared at him, nonplussed.
He went on, even though his chest burned and his breath was raspy—even with the O2 they were giving him. “I went to the light, but she wasn’t there. Sydney wasn’t there, and they sent me back.”
The words hung in the air for a long moment, like a strange smell no one could identify. Then Bianca reached forward and clamped a hand over his forearm. He drew in a sharp, wheezing breath. She hadn’t touched him in five years. Her hand was cold. She peered into his face, the hatred and pain in her eyes palpable.
“You know why she wasn’t there, old man? Because you were at the gates of hell. That’s where you’re going when you die, you miserable bastard. Straight to hell.”
Chapter 4
October 16, 2014
Jocelyn Rush pulled a crumpled black thong from the depths of her underwear drawer. The lace was coarse against her hand. She held it up and sighed. Caleb would love it, and she could picture his brown eyes lit up and hungry. But all she could think about was how uncomfortable it was going to feel to have that tiny sliver of string lodged in her ass crack for however long she had it on. She knew women who wore thongs on a daily basis—like, as their underwear. She would never understand it. Did they just get used to it?
With a sigh, she dropped her drawers, kicking off her jeans and beloved cotton granny panties. She stood before the full-length mirror affixed to her closet door and pulled on the thong. She adjusted the thin strap creeping between her buttocks what seemed like fifty times, but it never settled into anything resembling comfortable. Must be like wearing a gun, she thought. When she first wore the holster with the heavy weapon in it, it felt like she was tugging around a brick. It was bulky and unwieldy. But after weeks, months, then years of wearing it each day, she felt naked and off-kilter without it. That had to be it.
She turned and looked over her shoulder, craning to get a look at her ass. Not bad for thirty-seven. Although she had managed to avoid childbirth, Jocelyn still wore a little extra flesh that hadn’t been there ten or even five years ago, but she could live with it. Maybe it was her active role as mother to her niece that allowed the additional pounds to sneak up on her. Olivia, her four-year-old daughter, was her sister’s biological child whom she had taken in at just seven days old and adopted shortly thereafter. Jocelyn’s sister had been a drug addict and prostitute at the time of Olivia’s birth and was in no position to raise a child.
Her fingers fidgeted with the thin material over her sacrum—the tiny triangle that covered nothing and served no purpose other than to hold the pieces of floss together.
“I will never get used to this,” she muttered.
She resisted the urge to dig in her ass crack. No amount of digging would make it feel better. Besides, she mused as she went back to her dresser to search for a matching bra, once Caleb arrived, the thong wouldn’t stay on for very long.
She and Caleb had met about a year ago while working a high-profile case for the Philadelphia Police Department. She’d been with Northwest Detectives and he with the Special Victims Unit. Caleb’s hours with the SVU were long and erratic. That, coupled with the fact that Jocelyn had neither told her daughter about Caleb nor introduced the two, mostly left them with only enough time for quickies, which gave their relationship the feel of an illicit affair. They had to steal time whenever they could—after Olivia fell asleep, on Jocelyn’s lunch break, on Caleb’s dinner break. Any time that they could be utterly alone for fifteen minutes or longer without Olivia finding out or it interfering with their jobs, they met. They often planned to meet at restaurants for lunch or dinner but never made it out of the car. They were like two horny teenagers.
Jocelyn’s hand seized on a lacy black bra that would go with the thong, but once she held it up, she saw a nickel-sized hole in one of the cups. She poked a finger through it, wondering if Caleb would notice. The bra wouldn’t stay on long either, she was certain.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. She tossed the offending bra in her wastebasket. She really needed new underthings. For today, it would have to be topless with the black thong. He would like that better anyway. She started to pull her T-shirt off, imagining the feel of his heated palms on her bare breasts. A loud banging on her front door startled her. She froze, the T-shirt half off and half on. She waited. It came again, louder and harder this time. She checked her bedside clock. Caleb would be here any minute. But that wasn’t him. He had a key.
Bang, bang, bang.
The whole house shook.
“Goddamnit.”
She pulled her T-shirt back on, fished her jeans from the pile of discarded clothes on the floor, and yanked them back up over her hips. It was probably one of those damn hippie college kids selling electricity. Since Pennsylvania had deregulated, electricity providers competed for customers like rabid dogs. Representatives went door to door at least twice a week. They waited at the entrance to the grocery store. They were ubiquitous, persistent, and annoying. And she was going to punch this one in the face if he or she didn’t get off her porch before Caleb arrived.
Bang, bang, bang.
As she reached the bottom of her steps, the thong riding up her crack, she saw the door shimmy in its frame.
“Motherfucker,” she said. She stalked into the kitchen and snatched her gun from the top of her fridge, the shoulder holster sliding onto her body with the ease and comfort of her oldest, most worn pair of granny panties. She doubted she’d need it, but it was intimidating.
Bang, bang, bang.
She swung her door open and froze, the stream of expletives dying on her lips. Before her stood an old man, his frame thin and frail. He didn’t look strong enough to rattle her front door in its frame, but there was no one else with him. His hair was salt and pepper, mostly salt. He wore a St. Patty’s Day T-shirt and a beat-up pair of khaki slacks. His cheeks were sunken, his blue-gray eyes jaundiced. A nasal cannula rested on his cheeks, the tubes snaking over his ears and down to his chest where they cinched together and ran as one to the portable oxygen cylinder he wheeled behind him on a small cart.
The electricity companies were really getting desperate. Before he could ask if she was the owner, and if he could just have a “quick” look at her electric bill, Jocelyn said the only thing that stopped them cold. “I’m a renter.”
Confusion deepened the lines age had etched into the man’s face. “I’m not—” he began, but she cut him off.
“And I’ve already been saved.”
He shook his head, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “No, it’s not what you—”
“And I don’t need any pie.”
“I’m not here to sell—wait, what?”
They stared at one another.
“People sell pie door to door?” he asked.
“Twice a year. Some church or ex-cons raising money for some charity. They do the whole block.”