Page 18 of Hide From Me

My phone was telling me to turn up ahead and Cas had pulled in front of me. It was then that I noticed the bandana that he wore. It was a skull on the bottom half and the helmet was matte black. His eyes were all you could see. The tattoos on his neck were on full display. I’d always known he was part of the Spectors, but it was easy to ignore when I was just a kid and he was the lesser of all the evils. Or was it that was how I wanted to see him?

I watched the little dot on my GPS show me just where to turn and I swore the air was getting thicker here as I tried to gasp in another breath like a damn fish. I rubbed at my chest that suddenly seemed to remember what it was like to have the weight of abuse sitting on you like a three-hundred-pound man.

“I can do this.”

The address was ringing a bell the closer I got. Maybe I couldn’t envision the house I was headed to, but the street was all too familiar. I should have paid more attention. Until Cas had pointed out where I was going, I was in blissful ignorance. Now though?

I sucked in a breath and held it as I turned down the street that had once felt like a death sentence. Until Cas. The little barbed wire ring hadn’t meant anything other than to protect myself and it had. I still wore it like it could somehow stop evil from ever touching me.

The ring was just old painted metal, but I held on to it like I held on to him: like he was the light at the end of my dreary tunnel. And I’d never thanked him for it any of it. I’d never told him what it meant to see that house burning to the ground and knowing my father was never making it out. I never asked, but I knew.

I knew he’d done something to my father and the guy that had left me with a broken rib and ripped panties, but I’d left him with a penis that would never work, all because of Cas’s little gift to me. Cas had always protected me, even if he didn’t mean to.

I was focused on him now, following his bike down a street that had more holes than Swiss cheese. The grass seemed to grow everywhere but in the yards. It hadn’t looked pretty when I was here, but the houses had more boards than glass and porches looked like they’d seen better days decades ago.

This was the first time I’d been back. I didn’t realize how tight I was holding the steering wheel until my knuckles ached at thepressure. I tasted blood as I nibbled at my lip. But there, in all its glory, was the aftermath of the fire Cas had set. No one ever convicted him. No one even cared. And there it stood, or what was left of it. A reminder that hell was only a doorstep away.

The rev of Cas’s engine called to me, and I noticed he was barely moving and it was because of me. Shit. I was practically coasting.

He looked at me, meeting my eyes, and I nodded. I was okay. I would be okay. His engine roared to life, and we finished the trek down my memory lane. Literally.

The GPS said I’d arrived, and the way Cas parked his bike up on the lawn and waved for me to move my car a bit further past some yellow police tape, I knew this was the spot.

He was opening my door before the car had rocked to the stop of the brakes.

“Let’s get inside. This is my territory, but shit stinks around here and it isn’t just the fucking rotting wood of these houses.”

I nodded and grabbed my bag and the case that was police issued for all the scenes I had to catalogue. Cas nearly dragged me out, and I was barely able to kick my door closed.

“No one is stealing your car, not here. Not with my bike right there. Let’s go.”

“Okay. If you say so. But I don’t think you’re supposed to be onsite at a crime scene.”

He chuckled, and I nearly tripped. He all but carried me around the rotting stairs of the porch steps.

“Oh, baby girl, I can be where I want to be around here.”

I was going to ask him exactly what that meant. What kind of power he actually held around here, but I never got the chance.

“Klein, is that you?”

Cas’s hand tightened on my arm.

“Geez, Caspian. Let me go. That would be the detective on the case and essentially my boss for the moment.”

He released me, but I swear I could feel the heat of his stare as he followed close behind. The smell of the place had me dry heaving. There was no one recognizable scent.

Urine, vomit, burned drugs, something grossly chemical and not in the bleach kind of sterile way. If there was a dead body here, it was the least of this place’s problems.

I rounded the corner and stopped in what was undeniably the kitchen, even if the stove and been stolen long ago.

“Hey, Fuller. I’ll get right to work.” The detective didn’t even look up at me. He was focused on covering his nose and looking down; he was glaring down at the bodies.

“I think you just call me Eric from now on. I feel like we are going to get really intimate on this case.”

“How about you don’t fucking touch her?”

That got Eric’s attention and mine.

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