A/N: Twilight belongs to Stephanie Meyer. I'm only borrowing her characters for a little while. The plot and original characters of Longing do belong to me, however. Jasper as the God of War and Peter "just knowing shit" are ideas that belong to Idreamofeddy.
My love to my beta and wonderful friend Laurie Whitlock, to my beloved sister Shelljayz, who is also my beta, prereader and best friend, and to my friend juliangelus for prereading. Many thanks ladies! :)
I so appreciate each and every one of you who have read, followed, favorited and reviewed Longing. :) If I didn't respond to your review, I apologize. My week was rough.
Please note: I never intended to write Jasper's POV of what happened between him and Bella from the first part of chapter 30. However, since almost all of my reviewers would like to know what was going through his head at the time, I decided to go ahead and write it as an outtake. I am still working on it, but I should have it finished in time to post next week. Note the word "should." I can't make any guarantees, but I will try my best. :)
oOo
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2080
BPOV
As I stared at the picture of the beautiful woman on the screen before me, I felt a tear slip down my cheek. "Hello Layla, it's nice to meet you."
Jane Doe's name was Layla Davidson. She was twenty-eight and originally from Nampa, Idaho. She had blonde hair, blue eyes and a mother named Kathleen. She also had a record. She'd been arrested three times for possession. The first was as a minor, the second when she was twenty-one and the third when she was twenty-five. It had happened after an overdose which resulted in a three month stint in jail and Child Protective Services taking her child away. Her drug of choice was heroin.
I abandoned the idea of doing any of my homework. I finally knew who Jane was and finding out more about her was infinitely more important than solving fifteen Calculus equations, reading two chapters of Candide, which was a strange book that wasn't worth my time. It was more important than translating complex paragraphs from English to Spanish, applying Newton's Laws to everyday life or theorizing on the causes of the Revolutionary War. Those things weren't important in the least. I didn't give a fuck about high school. Jane was my priority. She took unequivocal precedence.
Once I knew everything there was to know about her, I could find her killer. She would finally have peace and justice for her murder. I could contact her mother and her daughter and give them closure. I could lay all this to rest.
oOo
Three days later …
The first time Layla Davidson had gone to rehab and taken it seriously was when she was twenty-two. According to the digital notes her therapist had made, her mother had kicked her out of the house at twenty. Kathleen had supported her through her drug problems since she was fifteen, spending every last dime of her husband's life insurance policy and dipping into her 401k to pay for rehab and therapy Layla either skipped out on or scoffed at. She loved her daughter but had been worn down and devastated by all the lies, Layla stealing and pawning her things for money to feed her habit and the hurtful words her daughter hurled at her whenever she tried to help. Not knowing what else to do, Kathleen had kicked her out with the hope that cutting Layla off would wake her up and give her the drive to seek sobriety. It didn't.
Layla ended up in Louisville; two years later, she met a man named Brandon McCormick, and they fell in love. He'd been supportive and encouraging, helping her to finally realize she was tired of life as a drug addict living for her next fix and that her mother loved her and had only ever tried her best to help her. Layla discovered she finally wanted to live a life that wasn't ruled by her need for heroin.
Though she loved Brandon, she was changing for herself. She went through the program, following their guidelines meticulously, which meant cutting off contact with him for three months, since a staple of those guidelines was to avoid relationships at first.
Brandon had waited for her. I could only assume this since he was listed as the father on the birth certificate of the daughter she'd given birth to fifteen months later, just forty-one days after her twenty-fourth birthday.
"Holy shit!" I exclaimed, staring at my monitor in disbelief. I could not believe what I was seeing. Brandon and Layla's daughter was named Shiri McCormick, a beautiful little white blonde-haired girl with wide, beseeching blue eyes … and who now bore the scars, both physical and psychological, of domestic abuse, courtesy of Rafe Jones.
When Shiri was just eleven months old, Brandon was killed in a convenience store robbery, taking a bullet in place of the clerk he'd pushed out of the way as the gun was fired. In her devastation, Layla entered a downward spiral, relapsing and inconsistently caring for her daughter. Six months later, she overdosed and lost custody of Shiri. Shiri eventually ended up with Rafe and Lydia Jones as foster parents. For Layla, it was a wake up call.
Over the next two and a half years, Layla again went to rehab, religiously attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings and cleaned herself up. She wanted her daughter back. She got a stable job with the help of the rehab facility and recommitted to sobriety with an even greater zeal than she had previously. After she'd held her job down for a year, her therapist told her she was ready to be a mother again—something Layla had already known. Just before she died, she had started the process of filing for custody of Shiri, and the judge presiding over her case was on the verge of granting it to her when she disappeared. They had no idea she'd been murdered, so Shiri remained with the Jones' … paving the way for our paths to cross and my eventual trip to the morgue.
After the careful study of Layla's financials and phone records, reviewing the case file, the notes of the chief investigators and the physical evidence and looking into every person whose number appeared on those records, I had narrowed the suspects down to one most likely candidate with the rest of the other possible perpetrators listed in statistical numerical order.
Derek Henry was a thirty-five year old accountant from Bisbe, Arizona. He had lived in ten different cities in the last thirteen years. He had no criminal record, not even a parking or speeding ticket, and stellar performance reviews from his bosses and coworkers at every job he'd held over the last sixteen years. His high school and college GPA was a solid 4.0 from the day he'd started ninth grade until the day he'd earned his business and accounting degrees from Yale. He lived a quiet and uneventful life, appearing as vanilla and Joe Normal as Rafe Jones on the surface.
The problem with Derek Henry was that in five of the ten cities he'd lived in in the last decade, a woman he'd had some connection with had disappeared, only to be found dead days or weeks later with their fingertips removed at the first knuckle. Layla was the sixth. He never made it onto the police's list of suspects, but Derek Henry always moved within two weeks of each woman's disappearance, always for a better job somewhere else. He always began looking months before each woman died, which reeked of premeditation. He always got the job he wanted in the city he set his sights on because he was so damn good at what he did and which gave him a valid reason to take off. He covered all his bases. My gut was screaming that working with numbers wasn't the only thing he was brilliant at.
Derek Henry was Layla's NA sponsor, but there was no proof he'd ever been an addict: no hospital records of overdoses, no record he'd been to rehab or therapy and his squeaky clean record of course meant no arrests for possession, but his deception made sense if he was the culprit. Layla had lived a high-risk lifestyle for a decade of her life, and that made her a low-risk target—easy pickings. All the other women, with the exception of his first potential victim, had lived similar lifestyles.
According to the notes of the therapist Layla was seeing before she died, she and Derek had become fast friends, and Layla often admitted he was her lifeline as she got herself clean for the second time. She talked about all the time they spent together and their financials corroborated it, coffee and dinner dates and whatnot showing up on both of their bank statements. The therapist noted that they'd developed an unhealthy codependency. Layla never mentioned any inappropriate behavior on Derek's part, never taking her therapist seriously when she mentioned her concerns.
True to his pattern, Derek had packed up and moved from Louisville to Salt Lake City, Utah, taking a job as an accountant at a prestigious law firm five days after Layla disappeared.
My research suggested he was again posing as a former addict and that he'd already selected his next victim. Her name was Sheila Rogers, and she was another woman who'd recently been discharged from a rehab facility. Derek was upping the ante, and I couldn't be sure he would follow the pattern he'd established in the past. The fact that he had already targeted his next victim was an indicator that he was no longer satisfied with the time frame of that pattern.
Though I'd been working on this practically nonstop for three days, even continuing my research during school and work when I could get away with it, I couldn't discount the possibility that I was wrong. I just didn't believe I was. If I was right, I had to get my hands on concrete proof and put a stop to this before he killed another woman. I was going to Salt Lake City to hopefully obtain the proof that would castrate his ass.
I had just gotten home from school and was upstairs tossing a couple changes of clothes, my favorite weapons, carefully wrapped in protective cloths, and some tools of the cat burglary trade into a large, sturdy backpack I'd bought specifically for this purpose, knowing I would need it when I met my goal. Once I was done with that, I made my way to the kitchen and started loading the pack with granola bars and other various snack foods, bottles of water and other things for the trip.
"Going somewhere?" Rosalie asked as she entered the kitchen with Emmett, folding her arms across her chest. As always, her tone was hostile.
"Yep," I answered as I zipped my backpack.
"Where are you going?" Emmett asked. He looked nervous and worried.
"On a road trip," I said as I shouldered my bag and turned to face them fully.
"That doesn't answer his question, sugar," Charlotte said, joining us with Peter at her side.
"I'm going to do the world a service," I responded vaguely.
"You're real big on the mystery aren't you, darlin'?" Peter observed.
"A girl can't go tellin' all her secrets," I quipped, recalling Jasper's words from what seemed like forever ago and mimicking his accent. "It makes her less attractive or some shit like that."
Peter grinned at me, and I returned it. Charlotte's lips curled up as well, though for her, it seemed like it was against her will.
"What about work and school?" Emmett asked, drawing my attention back to him. He was fidgeting. I'd never seen him fidget before.
"I made arrangements with Laurie for the next few days off," I replied. She'd hired one other waitress, Leah Clearwater from the Quileute Reservation, since she had offered me a job, and Gale had recovered enough from her chemo to return to work, so she wouldn't be left high and dry in my absence. I suddenly realized what Emmett was nervous about and decided to reassure him without being obvious about it. "I start up shifts again next Thursday. As for school, I'm a smart girl. I'll catch up."
"I'll help," he said.
This made me feel all warm and tingly, so when he grinned at me, I grinned back. "Do you mind telling Carlisle and Esme that I'm taking off? I would do it myself, but I've really got to hit the road."
I was glad Dr. and Mrs. Cullen weren't there. If they tried to say anything against me taking off on this road trip, all hell would break loose. I liked them. I didn't want to have to tear them new assholes, and I wouldn't be able to stop myself from doing it. I had been waiting too long to finish this, I was too fucking close to resolving it and I'd been too torn up over it to have patience or understanding for any protests they might make or concern they might show.
"Yeah, I can do that," Emmett assured me.
Just then, Edward, Alice and Jasper entered the kitchen and joined the party.
Edward's brows furrowed as he took in my backpack. "Are you headed to the library or something?"
"No," Rosalie answered for me. "Bella's going on a road trip."
"Where to?" Alice asked with her usual enthusiasm.
"To do the world a service," Rosalie said flippantly. "Whatever the fuck that means."
I felt Jasper's eyes on me but didn't look at him. We hadn't spoken since the day I'd fallen asleep on him, and I was relieved by that. I was a bit embarrassed by the whole situation, still grateful, but having a hard time coming to grips with my behavior. He seemed content to let me be, and I was yet more grateful since I was feeling so fucking awkward about it. Still, it was hard not to move my gaze to his.
Instead, I moved forward and threw my arms around Rosalie. I planted a big, sloppy kiss on her cheek, pulling away from her before she could pry my arms off and shove me out of her personal space.
"Oh, Rose," I cried dramatically. "I'll miss you too!" Oddly enough, I found that was true.
She gave me a dirty look, and I waved saucily at her. Impulsively, I hugged Emmett, Alice, Edward, Peter and Charlotte goodbye. When I came to Jasper, I halted awkwardly in front of him. He was too close to me for comfort, so I took a step back.
"See ya, Whitlock," I said with a wry smile. He just watched me, not uttering a word.
That made things more awkward, so I turned on my heel and took off to the garage, climbed in my car and pulled away from the place that had become almost like a home in the last couple weeks.
I had to make a pit stop at the storage unit I'd rented in Port Angeles to house the hard copies of Jane's case file and the physical evidence from the crime scene before I left the area and headed to Utah.
oOo
Saturday, November 7th, 2080 ... Salt Lake City, Utah ... 4:00 am …
I'd made the drive from Forks to Salt Lake City in ten hours. I could have gotten there much faster, but I'd taken my time for many reasons. Driving recklessly invited unnecessary and very unwanted attention from all the wrong people. To alleviate that worry, I'd driven the speed limit. I'd also taken the precaution of switching out my plates, storing the ones logged on the car insurance and owner's paperwork which were in Dr. Cullen's name in a bike locker in Portland's Rose Quarter Transit Station. I'd disposed of the plates I'd used while driving through Oregon when I made it over the Nevada state line and repeated that process when I'd passed over into Utah to cover all my bases. Taking those ten hours also gave me more time to prepare and center myself for what needed to be done.
I parked in an all-night parking garage in downtown Salt Lake City and made the rest of my way on foot. I couldn't risk anyone being able to recognize my car.
I was now lurking outside Derek Henry's condo, dressed all in black as I observed the place, casing it for the best way in. I was going to search his home for any evidence he might have hidden there after I'd tailed him for a couple days. Studying digital footprints only got a person so far. I needed to get an idea of who this guy was before I went so far as to violate his personal space. That was always necessary in an operation like this.
According to my thermal vision, Derek was home, and my hearing indicated he was asleep. That was good. He was already making my surveillance that much easier.
Derek Henry left his house for work at precisely 7:30 am, suit impeccable, not a hair out of place and whistling cheerily. I wanted to punch him. His firm was working a big case that hinged on understanding money trails, cooked books and all sorts of other crooked shit that required a person who understood numbers. He'd been asked to serve as a consultant by the firm's senior partner specializing in financial and white collar cases. The guy was perfectly capable of doing it himself, but they wanted all their T's crossed and I's dotted because this was a case they couldn't lose, and having Derek Henry to corroborate all of his work ensured that. It required working around the clock, which included a Saturday.
I tailed him there, found a rooftop building with a perfect view for surveillance and watched him all day, which was pretty easy considering most of the work on the case was being done in a conference room with a wall that was nothing but window. I paid close attention to his mannerisms and body language, how he interacted with his co-workers, listened to how he spoke to people. I even took note of how the guy turned the pages of the invoices he was scrutinizing for inconsistencies, how he held his pen and the way he ate the food that was ordered in for lunch.
The guy was smooth. He was well-spoken and had this way of patronizing everyone he spoke to so subtly hardly any of them picked up on it. He was clean cut, precise and had to have everything in order, from the way his pencils and legal pad were arranged to where he placed his coffee mug in relation to his laptop, but it wasn't in an OCD sort of way. It was more of a control freak, alpha male thing that suggested there wasn't anything in his life, mundane, material or social, that he hadn't made his bitch. He was well-liked despite his underhanded insults, his charm undeniable. Whether he was my guy or not, he had everyone in his life completely fooled by his façade as a mild-mannered accountant and wrapped around his little finger by his dynamic personality. Even if he wasn't a sadistic serial killer, I could very plainly see that he was one icy son of a bitch.
When he left work, I followed him home, where he showered, changed clothes and headed out to the bad part of town. He was going to an NA meeting, that much I knew for sure.
Luckily for me, the building where the NA meeting was being held had a skylight, so I nimbly leaped onto the roof and crouched next to it, my view of the room just as perfect as the one I'd had to his office building, if from a different angle.
During the course of the meeting, Derek Henry once again proved what a smooth bastard he was. As he spoke to the group of recovering addicts, he expertly wove a tale of a heart-wrenching battle with cocaine as a result of his inability to cope with the death of his parents at the hands of a drunk driver when he was only fifteen and all the traumatic foster homes he'd been placed in afterward. Each member of the group was unquestionably enthralled with him, and Sheila Rogers was no exception.
She was raven-haired with grey eyes, a petite build and a kind but impressionable smile. Her eyes held a nakedly eager desperation. Her addiction to methamphetamines had driven everyone she loved away from her, much as Layla Davidson's addiction to heroin had. She was starving for attention and someone to believe in her, and Derek was playing on that beautifully. She was easy pickings just as all his other victims had been and was falling into his trap so easily it broke my heart … presuming I was right.
After the meeting, they got a cup of coffee and talked for hours, Sheila pouring out her heart and soul to him and totally buying into the bullshit stories he was feeding her. I knew so much about him and his life, and there was not a grain of truth to any of them. Whether he was guilty of killing Layla and those other women or not, this guy needed to be stopped. He was fucking with a very vulnerable woman, and it wasn't right. I just wasn't sure how I would go about doing that if he wasn't a murderer, but I would figure it out.
The more I watched Derek Henry, the more convinced I was that I was right though. My instincts were screaming that he was guilty, and I was chomping at the bit to search his condo. I would have to wait to do it until he headed to work the next morning, so it was a good damn thing I was so fucking patient.
I followed him home, disappeared into the shadows at the back of his house and scaled the wall until I reached the roof. Derek's condo had a skylight just like the NA meeting place, only his had a nook of sorts that would keep me hidden from anyone's view until I made my move.
oOo
Sunday, November 8th, 2080
I waited two hours after Derek left for work before making my fingerprints disappear and slipping in through the skylight. His financials had provided me with the name of the security company his alarm system was powered through. After hacking said company's records and discovering which model of alarm he had, it was easy for me to deactivate it. I could have done it on the fly but having that information just made things easier, and I was all for easier.
Just like his clothing and work space, Derek Henry's condo was neat as a pin. I had the urge to vandalize the place when I saw it but kept myself in check. It only took me half an hour to find what I needed to appease my gut.
Hidden in the crawl space under the house, the entrance to which was in his closet of all places, I found two lockboxes full of evidence. Enclosed in one of the lockboxes were photo albums filled with pictures of each of the women I'd suspected were his victims, as well as newspaper clippings on their murder investigations. In the other, there was a separate, smaller box made of cedar. In it were sixty finger tips, one full set for each of his six victims. Some of them had withered away until nothing was left but bone while others appeared mummified. Taking a look at the least decomposed set, my keen vision revealed to me the distinct ridges and whorls of Layla Davidson's fingerprints. In addition to those were other trophies: locks of hair from each woman and a piece of jewelry taken from each one at the time of her death. Layla's was a white gold locket with three separate layers for pictures. There was a picture of her mother, a picture of Brandon, a very recent picture of Shiri and a picture of her, Shiri and Brandon together before he was killed.
I gently removed all the items from the lockboxes, loaded them carefully into my backpack and slipped back out the way I'd come. Then I headed back to the parking garage I'd left my car in and found a motel to check in to. I needed a place to think, plan and make the appropriate arrangements.
oOo
My hair was dyed blonde and styled straight now, my eyes the exact shade of blue as Layla's, and I'd gone to meticulous lengths to make myself look as close to her both in age and appearance as I could. I'd even gone so far as to dress similarly to the way Layla had in the picture of herself with Brandon and Shiri I'd found in her locket. Our heights hadn't been much different, and my resemblance to her was close enough that it would rattle Derek when he saw me. It wouldn't be exactly the same as seeing a ghost, but it would do its job.
I was waiting for the perfect opportunity to crash the NA meeting he was currently running. Ambushes were always a nice touch. When I heard him asking if anyone new to the group wanted to introduce themselves, I knew that was my cue. I rushed through the door of the meeting hall with all the subtlety of a rampaging herd of elephants, looking flustered and taking a seat at the back.
Derek's eyes immediately flitted to me, everyone's did, and to anyone else he appeared absolutely unaffected by my sudden entrance. I was not anyone else. I was just as well-versed in interrogating people as I was at not breaking under interrogation, and I knew the little things to look for. No matter how tightly people might be in control of their emotions, if they weren't trained, when taken by surprise or triggered by something, there was always a little slip that betrayed them. Those little slips were called microexpressions. Sometimes they were inconspicuous, sometimes they weren't. Derek Henry's fell into the former category. He was a smooth son of a bitch, but he had no training, not like I did, and he couldn't hide that shit from me.
I listened patiently as two people took their turns behind the podium at the front of the room and shared their stories. During the whole of that time, Derek was almost successful in ignoring me, but every once in awhile his eyes would stray in my direction, and it was clear in those wary glances that I had succeeded in rattling him. I, however, acted as though he didn't exist, my own glances at him through my peripheral vision going unnoticed, which only unnerved him more.
When he asked if anyone else wanted to share, I got to my feet and made my way to the podium. He was observing me keenly, trying in subtle desperation to figure out what the hell was going on.
I let my gaze travel over the group gathered before me, my eyes landing on Derek. His gaze was still intent, and I smiled at him in convincing innocence.
"Hello," I said. "My name is Layla, and I'm an addict."
"Hello, Layla," the crowd echoed.
"My addiction began when I was fifteen," I announced to my audience. "I started out like most, first experimenting with pot and getting progressively more adventurous. By the time I overdosed for the last time at twenty-five, my drug of choice was heroin …"
oOo
I chatted some with the other group members after the meeting ended. Derek did not approach me, but I had known he wouldn't, at least not in the presence of others. He would wait until he could get me alone. I indulged in twenty minutes of this, waiting until all but two others had left and thoroughly enjoying as his agitation and alarm began to snowball. I walked out with those two people, knowing Derek was trailing three and a half feet behind us, and broke off from my companions as they headed to their cars. I went the typical horror film route, choosing to head down a dimly lit alleyway the way all those idiotic heroines did before they managed to grow a brain cell and get a fucking clue.
I was ten feet in when his hand closed around my wrist. He spun me around to face him, and I continued to play up my innocent ignorance.
I gave a surprised gasp. "Oh!" I cried, bringing my hand to my chest and resting it over my heart in faux-fright at him sneaking up on me and subsequent relief at realizing he wasn't some stranger aiming to rob me. "Mr. Henry you scared me. What do you want?"
"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.
I had to admit I was disappointed. All my digging had led me to believe he was a criminal mastermind too intelligent and cocky to spook so easily … rattle, yes, crack, no.
I smirked. "I always love it when people ask me that in that tone," I said, my smile widening. "I almost always get to follow it up with some sort of violence."
I pulled my arm back and let it spring forward, my fist colliding with his jaw. He crumpled to the ground, hitting it brutally. I didn't hit him as hard as I had Rafe Jones. I didn't want to hurt him ... yet. There would be time for that later. First, I needed him to help me out a little.
I crouched next to him and slapped him a couple times to bring him back from dreamland. "Wakey, wakey, asshole."
Derek's eyes fluttered open, glazed over by the force of my punch but becoming more aware by the second. I pulled a syringe filled with a low dose of a rapid onset benzodiazepine from the bag I'd stashed in the alley before I'd made my entrance into the meeting and plunged it into his jugular. He'd be out of it but compliant and that was necessary. I didn't want to be seen leaving this place carting around an unconscious man with six inches and sixty-seven pounds on me like a sack of potatoes.
After he was under my control, I fished his car keys out of his pocket and led him to his vehicle, him trailing behind me like an obedient, but disoriented, puppy. Once I had it unlocked, I stowed Derek in the back seat, arranging him none too gently, and zip-tied his hands to the door handle. Then I tossed my duffle in the trunk, climbed in the driver's side, engaged the engine and headed in the direction of Derek Henry's comeuppance.
oOo
Monday, November 9th, 2080 … Four hours later …
It was twenty-three minutes after two in the morning, and Derek and I were in a little, isolated cabin in Capitol Reef National Park, about four hours outside of Salt Lake City. I hadn't driven there even a millimeter of a mile over the speed limit. I was driving a technically stolen car with the owner drugged and zip-tied in the back seat, after all. The cabin was sparsely furnished and in good shape, with high ceilings and strong wooden rafters, the feeling it evoked distinctly rustic.
Derek Henry was currently unconscious, stripped down to his boxers and strung up by heavy duty chains to one of those wooden rafters with punishing shackles around his wrists, hanging limply but perfectly in the center of the room. I had hoisted him up so that his naked toes skimmed the wood floor by the tips of his toenails, gravity doing all the work of making him uncomfortable at the moment. That would change eventually, but for now, it was good enough.
I had decorated for the occasion. The walls of the small living room were plastered from floor to ceiling in the smiling faces of all of his victims, not the way they'd looked in their last moments, the way he surely remembered them most fondly, but in the height of happiness—when they were full of life. After I came up with my plan and ironed out the details, I'd had to sketch nearly eighty percent of the pictures myself, using crayons to mimic megapixels in order to make them look like actual snapshots from a digital camera. It had been a little tough to pull off in the time frame I'd allowed for all the arrangements, but I'd done it.
I had changed my hair from Layla's beautiful blonde to a rich light brown and my eyes from her shade of blue to hazel. My clothes and makeup had morphed from Layla's casual sexy to "girl next door" sweet. I now looked astonishingly like Amber Jenkins, Derek's first victim. She was the only one of them who didn't fit his former addict pattern and the only one I believed he'd ever truly given a shit about. Seeing her again, more than any of the others, was really going to fuck with his mind.
I allowed him to remain unconscious for another two hours before bringing him back to the land of the living. The needle on the syringe full of epinephrine slid through the skin and muscle of his chest like a hot knife through butter, piercing his heart in an instant, and with the quick swipe of my thumb to the plunger, he jolted into awareness with a hoarse yelp. I sped back across the room in a flash of movement he wouldn't register and arranged myself casually in a chair I'd placed ten feet in front of him. It would look as though not a hair on my head had moved before his eyes adjusted both to consciousness and the light.
That adjustment took thirty-nine seconds, and during the course of that time, Derek cursed and grunted and groaned in ways that would amuse me until the day I died. When his vision finally cleared enough for him to ascertain that I was there, his reaction amplified that amusement tenfold.
"Amber?" he questioned incredulously, an undercurrent of harshness to his tone that betrayed his need to be in control of all the things and people around him. He didn't like the helplessness of his position at all, his confusion, anger and wariness at the situation clear to me, but he was still trying to maintain his dominance.
Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts you sick fuck, I smirked internally. On the outside I maintained the sweet, "girl next door" facade. I sat there watching him for several long minutes, not a whisper of movement disturbing my body or a sound escaping my lips. I didn't twitch or blink or even breathe, just watched, and the longer I observed him this way, the more agitated he became.
"Amber?" he repeated, still confused. I remained silent. "Amber?" Silence. "Amber?!" More silence. "Amber, answer me!"
I cocked my head to the side but still didn't utter a word.
"You're dead!" he screeched, finally breaking, his frustration over my noncompliance and the odd nature of the situation boiling over. "You're fucking dead!"
"Am I?"
At the sound of Amber's voice, which I mimicked perfectly after having watched a home video I'd found of the two of them in one of his boxes of treasures, Derek jerked violently at the chains restraining him. He had no leverage, so all that did was make him flop around like a fish trying to wriggle off a hook. I was dying to let my internal smirk twist my features, but I kept my face innocent and inquiring.
"Yes!" he roared, a vein in his forehead throbbing furiously. His eyes had a maniacal glow to them, but they were glassy from the lingering benzodiazepine and epinephrine, and his chest was rising and falling rapidly as he continued to struggle. "I killed you! I fucking killed you!"
"Did you now?" I said, getting to my feet and making my way toward him slowly, continuing to watch him all the while.
He growled viciously, doing his damndest to get to me. My fist shot out quick as lightning, striking his cheek with a loud thwack, accompanied by the crunching of breaking bone. Derek sucked in a pained breath but otherwise made no sound.
"Funny thing about ghosts," I remarked, picking at my fingernails for a moment before returning my attention to him. "They can't punch for shit, but they can creep you the fuck out."
Derek's eyes widened in rage, and he renewed his efforts to get free. "You bitch! Who the fuck are you?"
I jabbed him in the ribs this time, hearing two of them fracture. I wanted to break them, shatter them to pieces, but if I hit him as hard as I was capable, this little sit down would end too quickly. He hissed but kept himself in check.
Impressive, I noted. I didn't respect the guy, he made me fucking sick, but he had a high pain tolerance.
"They are also really good at haunting people," I continued on as if he hadn't spoken, and reverted back to my normal speaking voice, "making them feel like shit for the things they've done or torturing them with memories of the good times or the things they could've done different." I went to my bag and started pulling out various instruments both sharp and blunt, loading them onto a tray atop a wheeled cart. "You, however, have the ghosts of six women 'ooga booga bogeying' in your ear, and you go about your life as though they aren't riding your ass for eternity. It totally defeats the purpose of being haunted." I picked up a wicked-looking curved knife and began twirling it between my fingers. "That is where I come in," I explained. "You can think of me as a ghost whisperer of sorts. See, since you seem to be deaf and dumb where they're concerned, your ghosts are now whispering in my ear, and I, in turn, am going to translate those whispers into a language you can understand."
I dug the knife into the skin of his fractured and now sunken cheek, hearing as the blade punctured the flesh and watching as the blood beaded and ran down his face. It was a light touch, and it didn't cause him much pain, but it wasn't meant to.
Derek's breathing sped up, but he didn't react the way most would have. He wasn't terrified or terribly intimidated, but that wasn't my intention. I was working up to those things, but he didn't need to know that. It was better if he believed that this was the worst of what was to come.
"I won't break," he said calmly. His gaze was serene and sure as he uttered those words. He had no doubt that he wouldn't, but he failed to see the point. That was the problem with arrogance. "You won't get me to admit anything."
"You already did, dumbass," I pointed out with a smug chuckle. Then I smiled at him. "Even if you hadn't, I don't need you to," I said. "This isn't an interrogation, Derek. I already know everything, so there isn't any need to use any of this—" I gestured to the tools— "to make you cooperate. Like I said, I'm here to make sure your ghosts are heard and understood. Once I'm certain you've gotten the message ... well, after that, I'm free to do a little whispering of my own."
My bag was still half full of a variety of instruments of torture, all of which I'd procured in Salt Lake City in record time, and I had an idea which one I would use first.
"Do you know what a picana electrica is?" I asked idly, wrapping my hand around the weapon and lifting it from the bag. It looked like a wand or a prod with a bronze tip, had an insulated handle and was connected to a control box that regulated the strength of the voltage—one flip of a dial raised it or lowered it. It used high voltage, which made the shocks ample, but low current, which made it less likely to kill the victim. That ensured prolonged periods of torture, and it was painful. I was using a car battery as a power source instead of a transformer rigged to a wall socket. I elected not to strip Derek completely naked and hang him upside down by his ankles in the manner of a classic picana session.
Derek Henry just glared at me. I went to the corner of the room where I'd stored another wheeled cart, on top of which was the control box for my weapon of choice, placed the wand on the surface and pushed it close, so he could see it more clearly. "No?" He still gave no response. I tsked him as I connected the picana to the control box with the wire. "For a serial killer, you are surprisingly ignorant, but that's okay. I have no problem enlightening you. This baby delivers shocks at 1/1000 of an amp. The low current is what makes it different from a taser. The voltage is still high, but that low current ... well, it won't kill you, but it will make you wish you were dead. I know this from personal experience, though for me the settings were quite a bit higher."
He did his best to keep his expression neutral, but he was slipping. The emotions battling for dominance in his blue eyes were rage and trepidation. I was making him nervous.
I went back to the corner where I'd stashed the cart with the control box and hefted the five gallon bucket filled with ice cold water waist high and made my way back to Derek. I doused him with such force that he sputtered as he unintentionally inhaled the water that splashed against his nose and mouth. At the first touch of the picana electrica to his nipple, he flinched and let out a low moan. I forced a smile onto my face and did everything I could to make it genuine. I didn't like doing this, it made me sick, but he had to genuinely believe the tables were turned. He had to believe that the sadist predator was now in the clutches of an even greater one, so I kept the smile plastered on my face.
After an hour of exposure with few breaks, he'd screamed himself hoarse and lost control of both his bowels and bladder, and I was lounging against the wall convincingly pretending like I didn't want to hurl. I had never tortured anyone before, but I knew how—a girl picked up a few tips and tricks while on the receiving end, after all. I just never thought I would use that knowledge. I'd certainly never wanted to, and that hadn't changed despite my activities of the last hour. I wanted Derek Henry to hurt and to pay for the crimes he'd committed, but I couldn't do this anymore ... not even for Jane and the others. Anger and self-righteousness only took a person so far, and mine had run out. I didn't want to be like him.
I'd been telling myself I would avenge Layla for months now, but in reality that wasn't my place. Revenge was something reserved for those who'd suffered the crimes at the perpetrator's hand or the loved ones who had suffered in the wake of them. As grateful as I was to Layla, I was neither of those things, despite the attachment and fondness I had developed for her during the course of all this. The most I could do for her was hold up my end of the bargain I'd made, which included justice and peace for her mother and Shiri, but no matter how much I didn't want to continue torturing Derek, there was one thing I still needed to do.
I gave him three hours to recover before I slapped him again to get his attention. When he looked at me and could hold his head up to meet my gaze for several seconds on his own, I brought my hand out from behind my back and waved the contents of my fist in front of his face.
"Recognize these, Derek?" I asked. They were bolt cutters.
His eyes widened in realization.
"I knew you would," I said. "They are yours, after all. These are what you used to cut off all your victims' fingertips."
I looped some extra chain under his armpits so that he would remain hanging when I released the tension that was holding his body aloft and then let his arms drop. He was too weak from the torture to take a swing or even make a grab for me. Picking up his left hand, I ran the bolt cutters against his fingers before clamping them around his pinkie until they just made contact with the surface of his skin. He shuddered, knowing what was coming.
"Now, I know you prefer the first knuckle, Derek," I said. "But what are your thoughts on the second?"
I tightened my grip on the bolt cutters, aligning them perfectly in the space between the bones, and then there was the crunching sound of skin and cartilage being ripped apart. Derek screamed.
oOo
Thursday, November 12th, 2080
I'd returned to Forks the day before, the tightness in my chest I'd only noticed had gone after I left again easing when I got back within the city limits.
Derek Henry was still in the cabin in Capitol Reef National Park. I'd left him hanging there, one slow drip I.V. programed to allow him a one liter bag of fluids per day inserted in a vein in each of his hands, one each in a vein in the crooks of his elbows, one each in a vein in his feet, and one in his jugular. They were on a timer: the first I.V. started its drip at 6:00 am the day after I left, the second started precisely twenty-four hours later, and each of the rest of them would continue in that pattern until they'd all run dry. It wouldn't keep him totally hydrated, but he wouldn't die from dehydration either. There were seven in all because I hoped I wouldn't have to wait longer than a week before I called in his coordinates. If I did have to, he would be okay for a day or two without fluids before he kicked the bucket.
He was still hanging from the ceiling by shackles around his wrists so that his toes were just barely skimming the floor, but I'd made some adjustments—his shoulders were now dislocated. With no leverage and the sturdiness of the rafters, chains and shackles, he would not be escaping. The manner in which he'd stabbed his victims was designed to make them suffer as much as possible. After all the pain he'd inflicted, he deserved some pain of his own. I had, unfortunately, had to treat and bandage his now mangled hands though. I wouldn't want him to bleed out before he got what was coming to him, would I?
I wouldn't call the police to tell them where he was until I implemented the last part of my plan. Once the final phase was completed and I called in his coordinates, he would be fucked. I'd left every scrap of evidence from Louisville and all the stuff I'd collected on my own and at his house in plain sight. That evidence included a recording of him shouting out that he'd killed Amber Jenkins—after editing out my voice—the photo albums, trophies and the sets of fingertips. His own fingertips had joined all of it. If he didn't at least get life in prison, I'd be shocked. I would also be pissed. I did figure that that was unlikely. It was far more feasible that he'd end up with the death penalty. After the terrorist attacks of 2012, our judicial system came down even more harshly on murderers than they had before. I was kind of uncomfortable with that even though he deserved it. It wasn't my place to decide who lived and who died, but I did need to prevent him from killing any more women. It wasn't my intention to play God. That didn't mean I would feel sorry if he got the death penalty though—that was a sentence he'd earned all on his own whether I had gotten him arrested or not.
I had also left Derek high on strong doses of LSD and acid, a high that would last for several days without food to absorb it or enough fluids to flush it out of his system. I hadn't been able to stomach torturing him anymore, but if I couldn't be there to make the ghosts of his victims haunt him as much as something like that could a person like him, I had to come up with a way to do it in my absence. The drawings on the walls were aiding in that endeavor as well as loud noises and some other rather creative things, and the hallucinations had been in full swing when I left. Needless to say, he'd been in quite a state. Personally, I thought it was poetic. The guy had been preying on women with drug habits by pretending he'd had one as well. Now he was so fucking high he was approaching the sun, and he was miserable, out of control and a totally different kind of crazy because of it.
Poetry aside, I was beginning to wonder if I would be going to hell for drugging people after all. No matter how despicable those people were, it was an awful thing to do. I didn't like that it seemed to be becoming a habit for me, first with Connor and now with Derek.
Emmett and Rosalie were the only ones home at the moment, the others all having things to do.
I had gotten home from work an hour ago and was now curled up on the couch watching a movie with them. Rosalie was unsurprisingly disgruntled by my presence, but Emmett was his usual cheery self.
He'd been ecstatic and relieved by my return. I had known he was concerned that I was lying about coming back, but I hadn't realized just how much. All of the Cullens' relief at my return really stumped me. Even Peter and Charlotte were noticeably glad I'd come back. Rosalie obviously wasn't, and Jasper was just as unreadable as ever, but I just didn't get it. I had done nothing to deserve their affection, I certainly hadn't earned it, but it was undeniably present.
Emmett was chattering about the movie and making jokes that were actually lightening my mood when my cell phone rang. My breath hitched in my throat. I didn't need to look at the caller I.D. to know who it was, and I didn't want to.
Answering this call was going to be the last and most difficult part of wrapping things up with Layla by far. This would be the end of the long road to redemption I'd been travelling down, the conclusion of my plan to bring Derek Henry to justice and give Layla peace.
I lifted myself wearily to my feet, mentally preparing myself for this conversation—one I knew I needed to have, one I wanted to have on some level but on another wholeheartedly didn't. Making my way out onto the back porch and a good distance from the house, I stared at my phone in unease.
Taking a deep breath and steeling myself, I pressed the talk button and answered, "Hello, Mrs. Davidson."
"Hello?" the soft, feminine but weary voice sounded on the other end of the line. She sounded confused, and I didn't blame her. "You're the girl who called me?"
"Yes, ma'am," I responded.
I had called and left a message on Kathleen Davidson's voicemail on Tuesday, requesting that she call me just after I'd passed over the Utah state line. I had been hoping to talk to her then, while I was far away from Forks. I felt the need to keep those two parts of my life as separate as possible. It would have been better, more respectful, to have this conversation face-to-face, but it wasn't possible for so many reasons. For starters, even though my involvement in this whole situation was vague and disconnected, the likelihood of the police discovering my part in it slim, I was still involved and couldn't take the risk. But my primary reason for avoiding breaking this news to her in person was the simple fact that I couldn't face her. It was cowardly and inexcusable, but how did one stand there and look a mother in the eyes as they told her her daughter was dead and that she would never get to bury her while neglecting to mention you were the reason for it?
"What is it that you want? You didn't say in your message."
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "I wanted to speak with you about your daughter."
She took a similar breath to mine. "You know my Layla?"
"Yes, ma'am, I do," I confirmed quietly. My voice should have been stronger, but for once, I couldn't manage to do what needed to be done. I didn't know Layla in the typical sense of the word, but after everything, I felt like I did.
"Oh my God!" Kathleen exclaimed breathlessly. "I've been searching for her for years!"
That was true, but Kathleen Davidson hadn't had the money to hire a decent private detective, and she'd been taken advantage of by the ones she could afford.
"I know." My voice was still quiet. I still couldn't make it stronger.
"How is she?" she asked excitedly. "Is she alright?"
I paused, attempting to collect myself. I had been trying and trying to figure out what to say to her, to find the right words to tell her that her daughter was dead, but those words didn't exist.
"I wish I could tell you she was, ma'am," I answered solemnly.
The other end of the line went silent. Kathleen was hardly even breathing. When she finally spoke several minutes later, her voice was choked with emotion despite her resigned sigh. "I can't say I'm surprised."
A lump rose in my throat and stuck there no matter how many times I swallowed.
My silence invited Mrs. Davidson to continue.
"It's an overdose, isn't it?" she asked. "Is she in the hospital?"
Her voice was pleading. She wanted me to tell her it wasn't as bad as it could be. I wished I could tell her that. I had never wanted to lie so badly in my life.
"No, ma'am." I wasn't able to say any more than that, not yet, and I gave myself a few seconds before I pushed on. In those seconds I began to pace. My energy level had skyrocketed, become nearly unbearable, and I needed to move. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your daughter is dead, Mrs. Davidson."
Another sharp breath sounded. "You said no about the hospital," she managed to say thickly. "But you didn't say if it was an overdose."
"It wasn't."
"What happened to my daughter?" she demanded, her tone turning harsh in spite of her obvious grief. She had picked up on my hesitancy. There was no way she couldn't have.
I clamped my eyes shut and dropped my head into my unoccupied hand, digging my thumb and forefinger into my temples until it hurt. I suddenly longed for cool fingers and the shock of electricity to loosen them.
"She was murdered," I answered, my voice going from quiet to barely a whisper. The speed of my pacing increased, no rhyme or reason to my path.
I knew Kathleen Davidson heard me from the strangled cry that escaped her. It was practically deafening in the quiet that surrounded the Cullen home and the sensitivity of my hearing. It was another several minutes before she spoke again, but the shuddering gasps of her tears broke my heart little by little until it felt as though there was nothing left of it but a pile of ash in my chest.
I wished I was crying too. It seemed disrespectful not to join Kathleen in her grief, both to her and to Layla. Still, my eyes were bone dry.
"How did my Layla die?" she asked, her voice eerily calm once her sobs dissipated.
I sighed. "You deserve to know that, and you will, ma'am, but that isn't why I called. You'll be hearing from the police in a few days, and they will give you those details."
"If that's not the reason you called, then why did you?" she asked. She sounded tired. I understood. I was tired too.
"I called to tell you the things they can't."
"I don't understand," she replied, her confusion palpable even over the phone.
I took a few more deep breaths. This should have been the easy part—telling her how far Layla had come in the years since they'd last seen each other—but it wasn't. The words were even more difficult to find, and I wanted them to come naturally, to flow like water off my tongue. Layla deserved to have someone confident and proud telling her mother of her final accomplishments, not someone awkward and floundering. At least I was proud, there was that.
"Layla was clean when she died," I began, my voice steady. I hadn't expected that. I forced myself to halt. All the frenetic energy that had taken root in me had drained suddenly, but that didn't affect my need to move. Still, I felt like it was important to stop, though I didn't know why. "Had been for two years. It was the second time she'd managed it in the last six. I believe, had it not been for circumstances, that it would have stuck the first time.
"She met a man, you see. His name was Brandon, and they fell in love. She cleaned herself up, and she was doing well," I told her. "He treated her the way any mother would hope a man would treat their daughter, and they were happy. They loved each other more than anything, but one day, two years after they met, Brandon walked in on a convenience store robbery. He was killed saving the clerk's life, and in her grief, Layla relapsed."
Kathleen's tears had returned, but I tuned them out. If I didn't get through this as quickly as possible, I wouldn't get through it at all.
"Six months later, she overdosed, and that was when she realized she'd hit rock bottom again. She became determined to get back to sobriety," I said. "She had a really good reason to, you see." I was bumbling around, repeating words I'd already used, but I couldn't seem to help that, so I pushed on. "When she overdosed, she ended up serving three months in jail, and she lost custody of her daughter." I knew she'd probably want to interrupt after I revealed that information, but I didn't give her the opportunity, neither with time nor my tone of voice, but she was quiet as the dead. "She went to rehab, started going to therapy and NA, got a job. Layla really got her act together, Mrs. Davidson. You should be proud. You should also know that she'd filed for custody of her daughter just before she died, and if she hadn't disappeared, the judge would have granted it to her."
I finally stopped there, waiting for my words to sink in.
"Daughter?" she breathed, finally breaking her silence. "She had a daughter? I have a granddaughter?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"I have a granddaughter," she repeated in wonder.
"Yes," I confirmed with a smile. "She's four years old, and she's beautiful."
"You've seen her?" Kathleen gasped.
"Yes, ma'am," I responded, still smiling as I thought of Shiri, the sweet little girl who'd stolen my heart in a matter of seconds. "She's got white blonde hair and blue eyes, and she's the spitting image of Layla. She's got Brandon's smile though."
"Oh," she cried out, half in grief and half in happiness. Having a granddaughter wouldn't take the pain of losing her child away, but it would ease the ache. "What's her name?"
I sighed again. Kathleen wouldn't like what I was about to say. I began to pace again. "I won't tell you that."
"Why not?" she demanded in indignation.
"Your granddaughter has been through hell, ma'am. She has lost both her mother and her father, and the foster home she was placed in wasn't a good one. I was there. I experienced that firsthand."
Another anguished cry escaped her, and I hated myself for causing it, but I was still determined to protect Shiri.
"I'm afraid that if I tell you her name and where she is that you'll rush off to see her half-cocked," I explained. "I think it would be wonderful if she could see you, maybe even be raised by you or, at the very least, have you in her life, but now isn't the time for that."
"The hell it's not!" Kathleen snapped furiously. "That isn't your call to make."
"No, it isn't," I agreed. "But I'm making it anyway."
"How dare you!" she screamed.
"Let's get one thing straight," I cut in, the strength of the ferocity and menace in my tone shutting her up. "I am holding all the cards at the moment, so you're going to stay as quiet as you are now and really listen. Right now you're in shock, you're grieving and you're desperate to get even a little piece of your daughter back. You're not thinking about what it would mean to truly be involved in your granddaughter's life for the long haul, so you're going to take some fucking time to consider it from every angle before you make a decision. She deserves for you to be sure about it before you just show up making promises that you may or may not keep! I met your granddaughter by accident funnily enough, having no idea she had any connection to Layla at the time, and I wasn't kidding when I said she's been through hell. I was the one who figured out she was being abused, and I was the one who did something about it! You have no idea the price I nearly paid to get her out of that situation, and I will not allow anyone to come into her life and hurt her again, so like I said, maybe it's not my call to make, but I'm damn well fucking making it anyway!"
Shit! I had never intended to say that last part. I could only hope that Kathleen Davidson wouldn't put the pieces together once she knew more about Shiri.
Kathleen remained quiet again for awhile. "How do I know you're telling me the truth? That all of this isn't some sick joke?"
I had wondered if she would ask me something like that, and I was prepared for it. "You don't, but I am. If you give me a second, I can prove it."
I didn't wait for her to give me an answer, pulling my phone away from my ear, clicking out of the call without disconnecting from it and emailing her the photos from Layla's locket, which I had scanned into my phone a couple days ago. "Check your email."
It was only a minute later that I heard her gasp again. "Oh, she's beautiful! They're beautiful!"
"I know."
"Thank you for this," she said. I could hear how sincerely she meant it and it warmed me, but I still felt an emptiness.
"Please don't," I requested, my shame over everything—the morgue in particular—welling up and making it impossible for me to accept a thank you. I wasn't doing this for a thank you. "I'm just keeping a promise I made to Layla as well as one to your granddaughter."
I just had no idea they were connected at the time I made them.
"I have to thank you," Kathleen insisted. "I might never have known any of this if not for you."
"If you really must thank me—" I sighed wearily— "do what I asked and be sure before you get involved with your granddaughter. Mean it with all your heart because if you hurt that little girl, I will kill you, and I mean that with all my heart," I threatened.
"I will," she promised, and I knew she meant that too. "You haven't told me your name."
I smiled. "My name doesn't matter. The only thing that does is that you and Layla find peace and get justice and that your granddaughter does as well. The justice part is coming, and I've given you the tools to find peace and closure. What you do with them is up to you. I imagine you will be hearing from the police in about a week. Goodbye, Mrs. Davidson."
I would give Kathleen five days to think things over, and then I was calling in Derek Henry's whereabouts.
I had thought when all of this was said and done that the relief I would feel would be overwhelming, but it wasn't. As I stood there in the Cullens' backyard, gazing intently at the treeline of the forest that edged their property, what I felt was emptiness. And then, all of a sudden, with the force of tsunami, it hit me. All the emotion of the last two months: the rage, fear, uncertainty, anxiety and sense of betrayal at being arrested, the anger and injustice at Rafe Jones' abuse of his wife and children, the terror, panic and trauma of ending up in the morgue and nearly dying, the crippling guilt, shame and disgust over what I'd done to escape, and my determination and desperation to make it right when that was impossible to do. My knees buckled, hitting the ground with a brutal impact, and the tears came hard and fast.
I was a girl who rarely cried, but the sobs consumed me now, deep, relentless and heartrending. They stole the breath from my lungs and left me trembling in their wake. I pulled my knees to my chest, wrapped my arms around them and pressed my forehead into the empty space, the wetness of my tears soaking through the denim of my jeans.
I don't know how long I was crouched there before big, muscular arms encircled me, lifting me high into the air and carrying me toward the house. They were Emmett's arms, cradling me tight to his chest like I was something precious, and they made me uneasy, but I also, contradictorily, found comfort in them. My own arms snaked up around his neck, and I buried my head in his shoulder, my tears still coming hard and fast. Emmett stroked my hair with soft touches and dexterity, murmuring sweet, comforting words I couldn't register into my ear as he carried me to my bedroom. He held me until I had no more tears to cry. I let him.
oOo
A/N: So there we have it—the Jane Doe murder mystery is solved!
I got the picana electrica idea from an episode of Burn Notice, though I had to do a bit of research on it outside of Michael Westen.
Bella sketching Derek's victims using crayons by making dots on the paper as megapixels is from Kyle XY. I don't know if it can actually be done, but it is my little tribute to a brilliant show that was cancelled too soon. It was a favorite of mine. The way Matt Dallas portrayed Kyle with such an innocent wonder that then morphed into such maturity and responsibility was fantastic. If you haven't seen it, you should.
This was a pretty heavy chapter for Bella. She accomplished what she set out to—to find justice for Layla, and ended the emotional journey that had been tearing her up since she escaped the morgue. Now that that is over and done with, how will she fare? What else do I have in store for her? Hmmm ...
If you want to see Layla and Shiri, pictures are posted on my photobucket album.
Next week is an outtake. As I said above, whether or not it will include Jasper's POV, I don't yet know.
Until next time, take care. :)
