The Taken

“Wait.” She put a hand on his arm, panicked but unable to help it. “You’re gonna help me, right?”

His jaw clenched as he looked away. He was either considering it or posing for a profile shot. “You got anything else?” he finally asked.

“In my notebook, but I gave that to Nic.” She cursed the impulse now. There was little chance of recovering it as it’d surely been admitted into evidence.

Paul opened his mouth to answer, but stopped and jerked his chin at an approaching detective. “Here comes Dennis. He’ll look after you. You don’t need me tonight.”

Kit stared up at him, wondering at what point he thought she’d have ever needed him, if not tonight.

Glancing back down, Paul caught her expression and his jaw clenched. “Look, I’ll read the reports. Ask around, see what I hear.”

He paused, waiting for a thank-you, but Kit merely took a drag on her stick. He was right, she didn’t need him.

Shaking his head, he turned.

“You know, Nicole was once your friend, too,” Kit said loudly, just as Dennis reached her side. “She was killed because someone was hiding something big.”

Paul turned slowly, and waited, knowing there was really nothing he could do if she was determined to make a scene. It was just another thing he couldn’t control about her—like her hair and clothes, like her lifestyle. Like her emotions.

“I’m going to find out who did it,” she told him, chin wobbling but gaze hard. “I’m going to find out what they were hiding. And I’m going to bring them to justice.”

“Still the intrepid girl reporter,” he said, but the bite had left his voice, and his gaze had softened. It was what he’d called her in the beginning, back when she, too, had gazed at him like those girls across the room. Tears, already close to the surface, welled.

“Give me a couple of days,” Paul finally sighed, returning, one hand outstretched for the papers. “I’ll look into it in my spare time.”

“Thank you,” she replied, even though he’d said it like there wouldn’t be a lot of it.

Leaning down, he gave her a dry kiss on her cheek. “Get some rest, Kit.”

Kit didn’t say anything, but watched him go, like every other girl in the room. Then she shrugged at Dennis’s chiding look, sucked down the last of her stale tobacco, and rose to be questioned about her best friend’s murder.

Kit spent the next few hours in a room with the cold personality of a morgue, giving a statement about the time, hours, and days, leading up to Nicole’s death. Some questions could have as easily been applied to a job application as a murder interview, and strangely, these were the ones that tripped her up. How long have you known Nicole Rockwell? What’s your relationship to the deceased? Have either of you ever been a part of a murder investigation before?

Oh, Nic.

The hysteria she’d felt at the murder scene was gone, and the resultant shock had dulled into a numbness to rival a visit in any dentist’s chair. The indignation at being questioned—no, doubted—by Paul had evaporated like boiling water, not too unlike their relationship, actually. All that remained was a faint ring of fatigue.

Dennis, whom Kit had known both personally and professionally, in that order, brought her fresh tea, let her light another cigarette while they were still alone, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder, kneading slightly at her neck before letting his arm drop. Kit looked up with a watery smile, grateful for even that small touch.

“You understand we have to ask you these things,” he said, when his partner arrived and she’d been read her rights and informed the interview would be recorded. “Not because we think you’re guilty, but because it’ll help us put together a picture of the events leading to the crime. Rarely is something like this truly random.”

“I know that.”

“That’s right,” said his partner, who was so stiff he could have been pressed into his clothing. He’d introduced himself as Detective Brian Hitchens. She didn’t know him, but unfortunately he seemed to recognize her. “You’re a reporter, aren’t you? The same one who released the name and address of a gangbanger last year?”

She could tell from the way he said it that he already knew she was, and harbored a grudge over it. Kit gave Dennis a wary glance, then answered, “He was sitting on a stash that would make a cartel blush.”

“It got one of our men shot.”

Her heart jumped in her chest, but she held his dark gaze. “I didn’t pull the trigger.”

“How’s the saying go? The pen is mightier than the bullet? Or the knife.” It was sword, but he knew that. The intimation was that tonight wasn’t the first time she’d put someone in danger.

“Damned straight,” Kit said, without apology, but inside she was cringing. She knew her work helped people … but did it also hurt them? Kill them? Had it killed Nic?

“Let’s get back to the interview, shall we?” Dennis said, shooting Hitchens a hard look. “Tell us about Nicole.”

Her favorite color was blue. She could dance for hours and never break a sweat. She was a flea market junkie, she could recite every line in Grease, and she wore beautiful lingerie just for herself …

“We’ve been friends since junior high. Met on the student newspaper. She was a wiz with the camera, even then.” Kit cleared her throat, which had tightened in a painful knot, and took a sip of her cooling tea. “She could tell a story with her photos, or even alter one with a camera angle alone. She was a college dropout, but smart. Edgy, liked to push people’s buttons. And of course, she was a billy, like me.”

“Billy?” Hitchens asked, glancing at Dennis and back to Kit.

“Rockabilly,” Dennis answered with a small smile, and Kit flashed back on an image of desert sun glinting off the pomade in his jet hair, ciggies tucked in his shirtsleeve, and creepers crossed at the ankles as he leaned against a ’sixty Starliner. It’d been a while since she’d seen him that way, but she smiled, too.

“I’ve heard of it.” Hitchens leaned against the wall. His forearms looked like black logs folded across his chest. “You dress up like you’re stuck in the fifties. Took ‘Let’s Do the Time Warp’ literally.”

“It’s not just music or dress,” Kit explained, though Hitchens’s pinched expression told her she needn’t bother. She gave Dennis a look to let him know she was taking one for the team—rockabilly didn’t fit in any better with life on the force than it did in a federal courtroom. Fortunately, Kit didn’t have to worry about either, as a reporter. “It’s vintage cars, hot rods. Pinup girls. Mid-mod home décor. Cigarettes. It’s a way of living.”

It was a celebration of the senses, and it married well with Kit’s theory that life was about the details. She was ever aware of what she put on her body, how she wore her hair, how she crafted her cocktails. Despite the effort, or because of it, Kit had only grown more fond of rockabilly after a decade-long involvement. In a world increasingly guided by touch screens, sometimes it seemed nothing touched the mainstream populace at all.

“It’s a subculture,” Dennis added.

“A lifestyle,” corrected Kit, again pulling out her gold cigarette case.

“You can’t smoke in here,” said Hitchens. Dennis looked pained, but nodded. Kit returned the case to her purse, a square, red Lucite clutch that Hitchens now eyed suspiciously, like it was a piece of a puzzle he was still trying to fit.

“Let me get this straight. Your friend was involved in a subculture that essentially lives in the past? So maybe it was one of these weirdoes who offed her.”

Dennis stiffened, but didn’t say anything.

Kit was careful to move nothing but her eyes. “My friends and I get off on American cars, swing music, and nautical-themed tattoos. We’re not murderers.”

Hitchens huffed. “It still sounds weird.”

“Probably because it demands more of you than plopping down in a La-Z-Boy, sticking your hand down your pants, and plugging into someone else’s reality.”

“O-kay,” Dennis said loudly, straightening as quickly as Hitchens. Kit just leaned back and crossed her legs. “So we’ve defined Nicole’s lifestyle as rockabilly. Boyfriends?”

“Plenty,” Kit answered, then looked at Hitchens. “All weirdoes.”

“And when did you last see her alive?”

“Twelve thirty. There’s a café attached to the motel. Just a hash house serving grease and caffeine to overtired truckers. She did a round there to attract our contact’s attention, as agreed, then crossed the gravel lot and went up the motel stairs.”

She’d dressed in conventional hooker wear, Kit remembered—too short, too low, too tight—and had shot Kit a pained grimace as she fought the skirt for movement, hating that such a junky item of clothing would even touch her body. Not yet knowing she would die in it.

“She didn’t take her camera with her? We didn’t find one at the scene.”