A second later, Archer's phone beeped with several incoming messages, and he clicked them open, then groaned and shook his head before handing the phone to Steele.
"Someone else paid MrsJones a visit before Danny and Leon got there," he informed us, "and left a pretty clear message to claim credit."
"Fuck," Steele breathed, then passed the phone across to Kody and me. We were sitting together on the couch and could both look at the images.
Then I immediately wished I hadn't.
The Kody-obsessed blogger had been brutally murdered, her body duct-taped to her desk chair and mutilated in what looked to be a horrendously painful way. But worst of all was the little brunette Barbie doll sitting on the computer keyboard with crosses drawn over her eyes and the little plastic hands hacked up.
"Why'd he do this?" I whispered, bile rolling in my belly. "Danny said this chick was harmless. Why'd he kill her?"
Archer took his phone back from Kody's hand and gave us a grim look. "I guess we're about to find out."
I swallowed heavily and nodded, rising out of my seat. He was right, of course. We needed to get there in person and investigate any other clues or messages my psychotic stalker had left behind, and we needed to do it before someone reported the murder to the cops. The last thing we needed to be dealing with was some bullshit power trips if Charon or Zane's pocket cops showed up.
None of us spoke as we headed for the car. We'd been expecting something soon. It simply wasn't in my stalker’s pattern to go dark so long without something explosive as a result.
The only shred of hope I pulled from this latest message? He hadn't delivered it to the house. So maybe with Trevor gone, his access had been cut off.
Hopefully, we might be a fraction safer inside our own home once more.
Nothing could have prepared me for the smell that hit as soon as we entered the studio apartment of MrsJones4eva.
"Oh wow," I murmured. Using my hand to block my nose, I tried to breathe shallowly. "This isn't so fresh."
"Couple of days old would be my guess." Steele handed me a pair of latex gloves, then pulled some onto his own hands. I guessed we would leave this crime scene for someone else to clean up when we were done.
"Didn't Danny say she and Leon visited a couple of days ago?" I asked, my voice strangled as I tried not to gag on the smell of decaying corpse. Not to mention the blood. It was everywhere. I almost didn't want to go any further into the room for fear of what I might step on.
Kody nodded. "And they said she kept posting on her blog after that."
"My guess?" Steele offered from where he stood beside the woman's corpse. "Your stalker followed Danny and Leon here the first time they visited, then killed the blogger after they left."
"The blog posts after she died?" I pointed out.
Steele reached over and carefully tabbed down the open browser window. "Most likely posted by our guy. Take a look. These aren't her usual Kody obsessed junk; these are specific messages to MK."
"Stop," I gasped, pointing to an image on the feed. "That's my mom. That's the photo from the gift box with the bra."
The four of us all peered at the computer screen, ignoring the decomposing corpse beside us.
"Is that..." I squinted at the photo or, specifically, at the man with his arm around my mom. "Is that groundskeeper James with my mom?"
20
Patricia Sparrow. That was MrsJones4eva's real name. Patricia Sparrow had been a twenty-two-year-old girl who'd seemingly formed an obsession with Kody after meeting him at a party when they were seventeen. He, of course, had no recollection of ever meeting her, but she'd kept extensive journal entries detailing the brief encounter that had sparked her obsession.
Patricia had also been hosting a much more sinister discussion thread on the dark web under the username MadisonSLUTneeds2die, which showed she had a much crueler streak than her Kody fan page suggested.
It was likely because of that page that my stalker had killed her, considering all her fingers looked like they'd gone through a meat tenderizer and her own hateful comments from the discussion threads had been cut into her skin with sharp, familiar handwriting.
"He's protecting me," I murmured as we arrived home from the crime scene. I needed a shower and to scrub my skin with a pot scourer, but even then I doubted I'd get the stench of old blood and decaying human from my nose.
Kody took my hand, linking our fingers together. "In his fucked up serial killer way? Yeah, it seems like that."
I sighed, scrubbing my hands over my face. "At least that's one person who doesn't want me dead."
"That's looking at the glass half full," Kody agreed with a crooked smile.
Archer grunted a sound of disagreement. "Yet."
I blinked at him in confusion, my brain too fuzzy to connect the dots. "Huh?"
He shrugged. "One person who doesn't want you dead yet, but whatever he does want to do to you would probably make you wish you were dead. Given how many people he's killed in rather brutal ways, we know he's capable of some fucked up shit."
I blinked a couple more times, then shook my head. "And on that depressing note, I need a shower. Night." I untangled my hand from Kody's and hurried up the stairs to my bedroom. It'd been refurbished since the night of the break in, with smash-proof privacy glass installed.
My shower was quick but scalding hot, and I scrubbed every damn inch of myself with antiseptic wash. God only knew what crazy diseases a person could pick up from decaying human bodies.
When I emerged from my bathroom wearing only panties and a T-shirt, I found a freshly showered Archer climbing into my bed like he owned the damn thing. Which, I guessed, he did.
I didn't comment because it'd become a habit for one of them to sleep with me every night since the break in, like they all had an agreement that there was no way I'd actually sleep if I were left alone in my bed. They were right, too.
Yawning, I crawled into his arms and curled up with my cheek against his hard chest. He stretched out and flicked the lights off, then stroked his fingers through my hair.
For a while I just lay there, listening to the steady beat of Archer's heart and picturing all the horrible things that had been done to that poor girl. A deep shudder ran through me, and my stomach churned. The pain she must have experienced prior to death was unfathomable.
"Sleep, Kate," Archer whispered, kissing my hair. "I promise, you're safe tonight. I won't leave."
I huffed but didn't argue his phrasing. Because he was right. Tonight I was safe. But what about tomorrow? Or the next day? Or the next week? Sooner or later, my luck was going to run out.
With that depressing thought, I slipped into a restless sleep filled with nightmares of cut-up bloggers and shadowy figures at my window. Yet every time I startled myself awake, Archer was there to soothe me back to sleep. Eventually, though, my mind must have given in to exhaustion because the next thing I knew, I was waking up well past my usual time.
I was all tangled up with my brooding bad boy, but he wasn't asleep. His breathing was steady, but his fingers traced a pattern down my spine that lit up all my nerve endings and made me groan.