Page 94 of Stitch
“There was a body found down the road. It’s a young woman.”
Stitch grabbed hold of me, his breath rushing out of him as I felt his strength leave him in a heartbeat.
“God no, please, not her.”
Reacher slapped the back of Ice’s head.
“Really? That was the worst possible way to tell him. Brother, it’s not Elise, but it is someone we know. One of the club girls, Chrissy.”
Club girls? I wanted to ask what the fuck that meant, but at the same time, wasn’t it pretty obvious? Girls the club members fuck. Had Stitch fucked her? Did I have to worry about that kind of thing now we were staying together?
“What the fuck happened to her? She hasn’t been around in a while, right?”
“No, I’m just checking her phone and she hasn’t been in touch with anyone here in months. Not since she used to be with Ryder and Has.”
Ryder and Has? Just them? That wasn’t so bad, right? I shook my head at myself, because a girl was dead, and I was feeling stupidly jealous of something that clearly didn’t even exist.
I nudged Stitch over to the sofa to sit down, because he still seemed like he was in shock.
“What happened to her?”
“One of my searches picked up the police report, man. She was raped, andstrangled. I dunno more than that yet. There’s no autopsy report, and of course, no connection to us mentioned, especially since she hasn’t been here in a while.”
Reacher leaned his elbows on his knees, and dragged his hand over his beard.
“Jesus, I’m not saying this is about the club specifically, but she was a friend, and I wanna find out who did this. It’s not an attack on us, as far as we can tell, but we owe it to her to find and punish this fucker.”
Stitch was nodding, as he caught my hand and pulled me into his lap, holding on tight. I didn’t tell him that he was pressing on my tattoo, because I think we both needed the comfort right now.
“Do you think Ryder or Has have heard from her lately or seen her, outside of catching up by phone?”
Everyone looked at me, and then Reacher nodded and turned to Ice.
“You’ve been monitoring ins and outs, yeah?”
He nodded. “Last time I have Chrissy on site was uh, just shy of eight weeks ago. She saw Has for a few hours, and left. Shit. How didn’t we realise that was the last time any of us would see her?” He looked morose, still fussing with his tablet.
“Police report shows her home address, but it’s not the one we had on file for her. Guess she was making some changes to her life.”
Stitch
Iwasn’t sure whatwas worse, knowing poor Chrissy had been raped and murdered, or that my damn baby sister hadn’t been heard of since last night. What if the same bastard had hold of her? What if right now, she was fighting for her life, while we were sitting here on our asses?
“We need to get Ryder and Has down here. It’s the best way to find out when they saw her last. Fuck this tech crap, because they could have bumped into her in a fucking pub or something.”
Ice glared at me. “Fuck my tech shit? Yeah, until the next time you wanna snoop on someone, right?”
“You know that’s not what I mean, man. I’m just saying that we should be asking them, because people still do the face to face stuff. Jesus.”
Ice tapped away at his screen, and glared at me.
“Fine. I’ve messaged both of them to come here. I mean, unless you’d like me to go and face-to-face them right now?”
“Stop being a prick, man, I know you hate being awake early, but this trumps your bad mood.” Reacher wasn’t holding back either. This wasn’t trivial shit. It needed our full attention, she did. She deserved our full attention, didn’t she? Camille pressed closer to me, like she could feel my inner turmoil, and that’s when I realised the thing I should have dealt with instantly.
“Camille, babe, can you please go and get dressed in the bathroom? I don’t like you just wearing a fucking t-shirt with other guys around.”
She nodded and carefully slid out of my lap, disappearing behind me.
