Ain't Your Bitch (Interracial Urban Erotica)(174)

Definitely not Roy fucking Schafer, who was standing in the hall outside.

"Go away."

"You know I can't do that, Jamelia."

"I said, 'go away.' "

"And I said I'm not going to."

"For how long? A few minutes? An hour? What happens when I let you in?  What happens when we solve this thing? You gonna wait outside my  apartment then, too?"

"Jamelia-"

"Don't you 'Jamelia' me. Go away. I don't need you here. I can take care of myself."

He took the comment like a slap in the face. The expression was every  bit as satisfying as she'd thought it was, in the deep place in the pit  of her stomach where right and wrong didn't matter nearly so much as  making sure that people suffered when you wanted them to suffer.

He waited a minute, opened his mouth just about long enough to close it  again, and then walked off. Even from the limited view of the peep-hole  she could see that what started as a casual walk away quickly became  frustrated, even angry.

She smiled the way that people smile when other people hurt inside. That  was all she needed. Another way to fuck her own life up. It was a mess,  and it was perfect, and that was all she'd ever asked for. Doing this  to herself didn't even bother her, not any more.

No need to worry about whether or not there was a future for them any  more, not when she could just end it now. She could almost feel the  weight of doubt falling off her shoulders already. No more need to  question what was going to happen between them. Nothing was going to  happen between them, and that was good enough. As long as she could know  where she stood, it didn't matter that it hurt.

After all, she'd always deserved to suffer. Maybe Roy did, or maybe he  didn't. But she hurt worse, which in the end meant it was okay.





Thirty



Jamelia let herself slump back against the bed and felt the tugging in  her chest that told her to go back and apologize. She couldn't just  leave things the way they were. She shouldn't have said it. She should  have opened the door.

That was exactly why she didn't do it, though. Because every part of her  wanted to, and that part was going to hurt now or it was going to hurt  when he had to leave her behind when he left. But the hurting, that part  was built in.

And if she was going to hurt, then she wasn't going to let someone else  hurt her. She'd been a bitch for twenty-five years, and looking back it  had hurt her as much as it had hurt anyone else.

Then she crawled back into bed and got ready for the time that was going  to come. Things wouldn't stay this way. Craig had told her he was going  out of town, and he'd done it for a reason, though she couldn't begin  to guess what that reason was.

That meant that she needed to be ready for just about anything. Someone  was going to get killed, and it was going to be soon. Neither of the two  men she'd met so far had been accidents.

Nor had they been caught by accident. The one who broke into her house,  'Ryan,' had been sent there. No chance in hell was he there of his own  volition. He wouldn't even know where she lived.

Craig could have been the man pulling the strings, but why? Why would he  want her dead? Because she knew too much? That directly contradicted  what he'd told the others in that little grove. She was 'on the hook,'  he'd told them. Then, not four hours later, he sends someone to kill  her? It didn't make any sense. Not one lick of sense.         

     



 

There was always the chance that he expected her to get the better of  her attacker. Maybe Craig had told the guy that the owner of the  apartment was out of town. Just an easy break-in. But then why bring the  gun?

She'd seen evidence plants before. This wasn't that. The weapon was  holstered and buttoned in. So it wasn't the uniforms trying to protect  her.

If it wasn't Craig, who was it?

The thought ran through her head that whenever things seemed impossible,  there was probably a wrong assumption somewhere. Too many detective  novels as a girl, maybe, but she'd learned a long time ago that it  didn't always work that way. Sometimes the only wrong assumption you had  was that their reasons would make sense.

But just in case, she ran through a few of them. First was that Roy  wasn't involved. More than a few television shows had given rise to the  notion that there might be dozens or hundreds of killers who took over  investigating their own murdering, and then have to pin it on someone  else. If Roy were involved he would have certainly wanted her dead. And  he'd left with about enough time to kill Becca. The pieces fit together,  sort of, but only in the broadest strokes.

She didn't get the gut feeling that he could have done it. It wasn't a  hell of a lot to go on, but as she thought it through, the circumstances  got pretty ugly. Why sleep with her damn near right up until the moment  her sister died?

Well it was to taunt her. The questions were easy to answer. But if he  was trying to taunt her, he could have done a better job of it. He could  have asked about her family, asked about her sister. How things are  going with them, the works.

He had a phone, if it was just an ordered killing then he could have  stayed at the resort until after Jamelia got the call. That would have  protected him from any suspicion. That he didn't know not to have  circumstances make him look suspicious was evidence by itself that he  didn't know about the murder in advance.

She assume that Craig was involved. But it was impossible that he didn't  know anything. He'd been slowly handing her the killers one-by-one, in  order. As if he had them all in his back pocket and every day or two he  decided that she should have another one. Just barely slow enough that  it might be inconspicuous.

By now he'd know that the cops had picked up the blue-and-white truck.  No doubt he'd known it before he told her he was leaving town, probably  got a text about it during their brunch together. Very possibly they'd  reached out to him as soon as the guy was picked up.

The questionable assumption lit up like a Christmas tree. She assumed  that there was someone else in the shadows, someone who was manipulating  these guys into killing the women they'd killed. Or, at least, someone  manipulating them after the fact. Now that they were here, and the women  were dead, someone was passing them orders.

That one hadn't been because of a feeling or a hunch or anything like  that. She just had trouble believing that Craig would make such erratic  decisions, so much relying on chance.

But maybe he wasn't as smart as she had him pegged for, or maybe he was much smarter than she had figured. Maybe-

Jamelia heard the sound of footsteps coming to a stop in front of the  door. She saw the shadow of the figure outside, saw it widen just a bit,  and then an envelope slipped under the door. She reached for it and  grabbed, but she could already tell that whoever had dropped it was in  the wind. They'd taken their sweet time coming up, but the minute that  the envelope was all the way through they'd started booking it down the  hall, towards the fire escape. It was closer than the elevator.

Right on cue as she opened the door, the fire alarm hit. Someone had  gone through the fire door. The heavy door sent a loud slam echoing  through the hall. Jamelia winced as it sounded, and looked down at the  envelope in her hands.

Russo, it said. The handwriting was nice, neat, even. She tore the  envelope open neatly and tossed the torn-away bit in the trash can by  the door. The paper was neatly folded. She unfolded it and started to  read.

The handwriting here was atrocious. She knew right away that someone  else must have written the letter, than the person who folded it up and  addressed it to her.

She could barely decipher it in some parts, but the parts she could told  her that what she was looking at was a diary. A diary for the writer  and the writer only, or they might have tried to fix the numerous  misspellings and mistakes in writing. Then again, maybe they didn't know  about them. Maybe this was how the person always wrote, but nobody  wrote anything like this.

Nobody wrote anything like this, that is, except for a confession.  Jamelia took a breath and sat down at the little table by the window,  flattened the paper out, and pulled out her own pad. If she was going to  make a serious attempt at reading this, then she was going to need a  copy that was at least halfway legible. And that meant transcribing,  which meant a lot of work, considering how poorly written the original  was.

She took a breath and a pen and craned her neck forward in the chair. Either way, she had work to do.





Thirty-One



Jamelia took a long last look at her copy. This was a confession, more  than anything. The problem was that she had no idea who she was supposed  to pin it on. She didn't recognize the handwriting on the paper, nor  did she recognize the handwriting on the envelope. But they spoke of two  completely different individuals. People who were so completely  separate on the scale that someone might wonder if they were, strictly  speaking, the same species.

Jamelia knew better. Or at least, she certainly thought she did. There  were bad people out there, and there were uneducated people out there,  and there were people out there who had unsteady minds. This guy was all  of those things.