One Step Ahead, Audrey Walker [best book club books of all time TXT] 📗

“Let go?” She whispered. “When I am so close? I am not giving up! I can’t believe you are asking me to do this. I thought you were my friend.”

“I don’t think Robin should give up on the case,” James, who had been listening in, said.

“It doesn’t matter what you think –” Kyle snapped.

“The FBI wants her on the case,” James said in a stern voice. “Are you planning on going against the FBI?”

Kyle glared at James for a minute and then turned around and walked away.

“Thank you,” Robin said.

“Always,” James said, giving her shoulder a light squeeze. “Now, let’s get back to work.”

Chapter Eleven

Robin gazed into the darkness, her body trembling with fear. A hand reached out to her from under the stairs, and a pair of eyes shone within the dim light.

“Robin?” the voice whispered.

Robin reached out, touching the pale hand that was offered to her. It was a small hand, pale and weak. She could see the bones protruding from it, and as she touched it, she realized that it was cold. As cold as death. She tried to pull her hand back, but the cold, pale hand suddenly gripped hers. Robin wrestled, trying to free herself, but she couldn’t. The hand that held her started to morph and contort. The fingers elongated, and claws grew out of it, and before she knew it, a monstrous talon gripped her hand.

She looked up and found herself staring into a pair of cold eyes and a pale face with a maniacal grin on its face.

“Gotcha!” A guttural voice snarled in her ear, and Robin screamed.

Robin woke up with a gasp, her heart thudding in her chest and her body jittering. The dream was so fresh in her mind that she felt as if it had all been real. But it couldn’t have been. There was no monster under the stairs, was there?

She looked at her watch and sighed as she realized that she had only been sleeping for five minutes. It was four in the morning, and she hadn’t managed to catch any sleep. She looked down at the cases on her desk, ruffling through the files. Her head ached, and it was constant, so much so that she had forgotten what it was like to be without it. Everyone had been staying late these days, trying to work on the case at hand. The public was getting more and more anxious, and the Mayor was now involved.

Suddenly, every phone in the precinct started ringing, and Robin looked toward Kyle. He was looking at her with a pale face, and then he picked up the phone.

“Another murder,” he said after ending the call. “It’s the Executioner. He has done it again.”

__

“It’s definitely him,” Kyle said. “Everything checks out. He left another message, but I think we can all guess the theme.”

“I just had the call from the Mayor,” the Captain said. “He has been breathing down my neck ever since the bodies started piling up. He wants this solved, and he wants it soon. What do we have?”

“Nothing,” Andrews said. “He is too clever. Too careful. He doesn’t leave any clues behind that he doesn’t want us to find.”

“Sir,” Gary Dane said, poking his head in. “You will want to see this.”

He turned on the TV, and the news started to blare on top volume.

“Another dead woman has been found, and it seems the Executioner has struck again. The serial killer has been murdering these women and leaving behind messages targeting Detective Robin Matthews. Well, we have some more information. We couldn’t help but notice the striking resemblance between the women; all had black hair, black eyes, and a similar face. But we have now discovered something extraordinary. We go to our crime correspondent, Joey Farrell, for the news,” the reporter said.

“I’m Joey Farrell, and I am here at the scene of the latest crime. My sources have told me that each murder victim resembled Detective Robin Matthews and shared a similar tattoo of a lily inflicted on them after their death. What makes this discovery truly shocking is the fact that Detective Matthews has a similar tattoo on herself. So that begs the question, are these women being killed because they happen to look like the Detective? Is that the reason these poor women have died? When the family asks why their loved one was killed, is the answer going to be that only because they resembled the Detective?” the reporter said.

“Is it all the fault of the detective? She is the target of the killer, and yet she is safe. These other women are dead only because they had black hair and black eyes. What are the police doing? Why haven’t they made any progress? What is going on? Will these murders ever stop? Or will we continue to lose more women because of one killer’s obsession with a Detective? Robin Matthews, these women died because of you. It is on you to avenge them, but where are you? Why has our police been so incompetent? If they don’t act soon, the blood is on their hands too.”

Kyle shut the TV off and said, “They are just after the ratings. They were giving out sensational news so they can get people to view their channel. The media has always been a pain. We don’t have to give them any attention.”

Despite Kyle’s speech, silence reigned over the precinct. No one said anything, demoralized and broken. The fact that they had no hope, no leads, just made it all worse.

But the one person affected most of all was Robin. She stood there, her head exploding with pain and her mind lost in an abyss. These women died because of her. Their blood is on her hands. She looked down at her hands, trembling and screamed as she saw the blood on them. Because of her; it was all because of her. She thought of Cecile and her son, who had asked