Hidden in the Blood: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 5)

Chapter Sixty-Three: Joanie, Saturday

"Oh yeah?" she said, suddenly hot with anger. Any minute now, she was going to kick him in the balls. "Maybe you made a hashtag about me too?"

Suddenly his face twisted in an angry sneer. "You fucking bitch," he growled. "Did your friends steal my car?"

"What?!" she cried in disbelief.

"Those bitches who screamed at me at the bar last night, those guys who intervened. Were they friends of yours? Did they distract me while another of your friends stole my car? And did one of them make a hashtag about me? I saw my face on the Internet warning people about me, and the footage was from last night!"

How did he make that leap in logic in connecting the two events? Trying to figure that out made her hesitate, and Brandon took her hesitation as confirmation, and with a roar he slammed into her, forcing her backward, the flowers dropped in his rage, replaced with a box cutter at her throat.

He didn't get very far into the house before the gunman took his gun from against her head and casually shot him in the face. The blast was deafening in the small house.

Brandon fell to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut. His blood and brains spattered against the floor and a nearby wall. Juxtaposed with the flowers he'd dropped, it made for a particularly gruesome tableau.

Joanie didn't even have the breath to scream. Her ears felt full of cotton balls. She couldn't take her eyes off the man lying on the hallway floor, his blood staining the hardwood. He'd come here to do her harm, the box cutter was proof of that, but she'd wanted to take him down and collar him, not kill him; that had been her intention when she'd brought the tracking device here. It might have been reckless and foolhardy, definitely against procedure, but she'd just been so fed up with his bullshit that she'd been willing to try anything. She'd lured him to his death, though, and while it wasn't at her hand, she still felt the guilt of it.

Not for long, though. The gun was back against her head.

"Jesus Christ," the second man said, looking down at the body as he closed the front door. This was the first look she'd been able to get of her assailants. It didn't do her any good, though. The man was wearing a balaclava and dressed completely in black. There was nothing she could see that would identify him. 

He turned to her and said, without any irony, "That guy was a fucking psycho."

She shrugged. "Just another toxic male I've had to deal with over the years. Maybe they don't all resort to violence, but they all start off the same, assuming women are there only for their pleasure."

The man nodded as if this were a universal truth. "You really weren't expecting him?"

"Didn't you see the box cutter?" she asked, marvelling at how calm she sounded.

"I did," the one with the gun said. "I shot him out of instinct. Not very professional."

"I might have done the same," Joanie said conciliatorily. This had to be shock. She was chatting casually with two men who had earlier suggested shooting her in painful places to get Agnes' whereabouts from her. It had to be the shock of seeing a man die in front of her. Except... and she was ashamed to admit it, but she had to be honest with herself if she was going to die soon... part of it might have been relief that they'd killed him. She could feel both guilt and relief at the same time, she realized.

"This is quite a mess, though," the second one said. "It wasn't professional. It was also loud, and I'm sure someone's called the police by now."

"Go, then," Joanie said, thinking furiously. "You know Agnes is with the Mercers now, so there's no reason to do anything to me. You're wearing balaclavas so I can't identify you. I could take credit for this shooting, I'll say it was a home invader! Hell, I could even say he was one of you, and then the police will stop looking for you!"