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“No matter what marks you could ever have, you’d be just as beautiful to me. In fact, let’s see if we can create a few more on you,” I’d told her before biting along her collarbone. I’d then made love to her, touching and kissing nearly every inch of her before fucking her.
“She was here,” I said out loud, and the officers turned to me. “Part of her necklace is on the floor.”
Jessie pointed at the charm he now saw, and another officer picked it up and placed it into a clear bag for evidence. Travis still seemed unfazed. “She must’ve left it here the other night when we were studying together.”
He seemed to have an answer for everything, and when Jessie had his men do a final sweep and they found nothing, he shot me a sympathetic look. Something was off, and while she wasn’t in this very room, I knew she was here. Travis continued to look at me with amusement, and one of these days, I’d see him on the street and put my attorney to good use when I wiped it right off of his face. The only reason I hadn’t to this point had been because he was my student. Right now, I likely had no career anymore, so it wouldn’t matter.
“Is there a balcony here?” I asked. It was the only place no one had looked, and Helen shook her head.
“There’s a rooftop deck, but not many use it this time of year.”
I could understand that because it was cold as hell the closer to Christmas we got, and it would be even more so once the new year started. The winter weather always led to severe storms in the spring, scorching heat in the summer, and perfection in the fall. I hated to think of her being up there during a winter storm, and when one of the officers said he would go and check it out, something flashed in Travis’s eyes.
CALLUM
“She’s up there,” I said, then rushed out of the room. A few of the officers were in hot pursuit, and I didn’t care whether it was to stop me from getting up there, or trying to just check it out for themselves.
We found the door which led up several flights of stairs, and while the elevator would’ve been easier to take, there was no time to backtrack now. I was in impeccable shape, which was not something all of the other officers could say, so I reached the rooftop first. The cold air and wet precipitation hit me the second I stepped out onto the roof. At first, there was nothing there, but when I saw what looked like a flash of something dark on the other side of an AC unit, my heart rate sped up.
I rushed over there, and this time, two of the officers held me back as another knelt down in front of her. Nicole was there, tied to a chair, and her skin was pale white. She was so still, her head hanging down in front of her as if she was... No, I wouldn’t go there.
“She has a pulse,” one of the guys said, and I nearly sank to my knees.
They photographed her as she was, then quickly undid the rope holding her limbs to the chair. Without anything to prop her up, she almost tumbled face first onto the concrete below, but she was saved in time from face-planting. The one officer stood and picked her up in his arms. It was then that I saw her face. It was heavily bruised, and there was blood smeared on her cheek. Something else was there, too. As I looked at her chest and part of her hair, repulsion filled me.
Travis had assaulted her sexually. I knew that now, and knowing he had to tie her up in order to do it said all I needed to know when it came to how close romantically they were. One of the detectives called for EMS, and when they wouldn’t let me touch her, rage filled me. I was going to kill Travis. I decided it right then and there, and ignoring the order to stop as I raced back to the door, I did eventually when Travis appeared in the doorway.
There was a wild look in his eyes, especially when he saw them tending to Nicole. His expression straightened when he looked back at me. Raising the gun, he pointed it at my chest. I knew this kid hated me, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know why.
“It was you,” I said, then continued. “It was you all along. You couldn’t stand the fact that Nicole love—”
“She doesn’t love you,” he sneered, and I begged to differ, but keeping him talking was the only thing between life, and being shot dead on the rooftop.
“What the hell is this?” One of the detectives said out loud, and when I turned to look, Travis bumped with me the gun. “Put that down, or else I will splatter his guts all over this fucking rooftop.”
I could see that the gun was the same kind the other officers had, and my next thought was about Jessie. “What did you do to him?”
Travis chuckled, and it was nearly maniacally like the Joker in those movies. “Nicole’s mine, and no one will live to come between us.”
“She never wanted you in that way,” I tried to point out to him.
“Shut up. You treated her like a dirty little whore, and she deserved better.”
“I agree,” I told him, and I actually meant it. Nicole had deserved to be paraded around in public, and on my arm like anyone else would have with their own girlfriend. It should’ve been the two of us at the theater, dinner, and walking hand and hand along the pier in California. And I had wanted were all of those things with her, but our love was forbidden, at least as long as she was my student.
“Why did you do it?” I asked Travis, even though I knew the answer. The other detectives were calling for backup, and I knew I needed to keep him talking.
“She’d left you which should’ve been the end of it. You wouldn’t let her go, though. I was so close to showing her how good things could be between us, then you’d kissed her. She kissed you back,” he spat out the last words as if they tasted sour on the tip of his tongue.
She kissed me back because she couldn’t fight what was between us, but I certainly didn’t throw gas onto the fire by telling him as much. “What did you do to her tonight?”
While I didn’t want to hear the details, I had to know. Nicole was alive, although just barely, and I was inwardly cursing the lack of emphasis from the EMTs that had been called. My displeasure must’ve conjured them up because a flurry of sirens came racing toward this building. If I could only keep him talking for a few more minutes.
“I brought her here so I could tell her that I loved her.”
“Did she tell you that she loved you back?”
“Shut up!” he told me, then nudged the gun deeper into my ribs. “Not at first, but she does, especially after I’d told her everything I had done for us.”
