Riley lies on her back, Axel between her legs. His hands are on her hips, her ankles wrapped around his torso. She rises in a crunch position and sweeps his left hand away. It slaps the mat as he falls forward, into her, and in a fluid motion, she releases her ankles and snakes an arm over his shoulder and under. With her right hand, she grabs her own left forearm, drops her hips, and pulls his arm tight against her chest. His face grinds into the mat that smells of cleaning chemicals and sweat. He fights to straighten his elbow, to escape the pain that’s burning in his shoulder, but she curls her hand and twists. She recrosses her legs, securing him in a traditional kamura—also known as a double-joint arm lock.
He taps.
Now, he sits on his knees, facing her, fighting to catch his breath. “That was much better,” he says, finally.
Riley is stronger than she looks. While not necessarily a petite woman, she is tall and lean. A sprinter in her college days, she’s a 130-pound bullet of sinew and muscle. “Thanks,” she says, breathing hard. “I misplaced my thumb early on, should have been pressing it into your arm from the beginning, but…”
“But you corrected it, and that’s what matters.”
Riley is one of only two female practitioners at Silva’s Jiujitsu Academy. She’s vastly outnumbered, but as a double minority at the police department—female and Black—she’s no stranger to it. She drags the sleeve of her gi across her chin to catch the sweat. “You want to switch?”
Axel smiles and holds up one finger. “Give me a second, I’m old.” He flashes her a self-deprecating smile.
Riley rolls her eyes and delivers a friendly punch to his shoulder. This is her twelfth year in the sport; she’s competing for her black belt next month. It was she who got Axel into it. She invited him to enroll when he left Patrol and came upstairs, and years later, he finally took her up on it. He’s a blue belt now. Not awful for six years of training, but nothing to write home about, either. He’d be further along if he wasn’t constantly ditching practice for a major crime incident, or hunting down killers. Not that Riley didn’t do the same, but she doesn’t have a family to absorb the rest of her time and attention. The gym is her second home, the bureau her first. Or the lighthouse, since the VCTF moved out there.
If we find the killer, we find Chloe. The memory of Kole’s hard-edged voice melts into the youthful soprano of Sari Simons saying, Mr. Winthorp … I’m afraid your daughter is going to kill me next. The thoughts race separately on an infinity knot–shaped track in his mind until they collide.
If we find the killer, we find Chloe.
But what if they are one and the same?
No. He shakes his head violently. Chloe is not a killer.
“You okay?”
Riley noticed. Of course she noticed. “Yeah, just … had some sweat in my eye.” With a grunt, Axel lowers himself onto his back, trading places with Riley. She kneels between his legs, and opens her mouth to speak. He knows what she’s going to say before she says it. Years’ worth of long nights of searching residences and guarding prisoners at the hospital together will make you that way.
It’s those same long nights spent on watch together that stir up rumors. While he’d like to think that the police department is comprised of rational-minded individuals, not one of them can seem to rationalize the fact that his and Riley’s relationship is anything but romantic. Friendly, yes. Trusting, yes. But romantic? Never. He loves Rowan. Always has, and always will.
But lately he’s begun to wonder if Rowan hasn’t caught a whiff of the rumors. She works closely with the people spreading them, after all. He feels it in her sideways glances sometimes, when he comes home later than expected or grabs his gym bag. He’s considered bringing it up, getting ahead of her concerns by addressing them point-blank and reassuring her that she has nothing to worry about, and yet, he knows that will only make him look guilty.
“So, what’s the deal with Sari Simons? She telling the truth?”
Dread draws his muscles tight. They don’t usually talk shop while sparring, but time is of the essence. Back-seat quarterbacks would criticize them for sparring in the midst of a homicide investigation, but Axel needs to blow off steam and get his head right after … everything.
The scare with Rowan.
The obituary she’s apparently kept after all this time.
And what Sari Simons told him just a few hours ago. How she and Madison started the rumor about Chloe sleeping with the drama teacher. How there had been bad blood between the girls in the weeks leading up to Madison’s death. And how, now, she’s afraid she’ll be the next to die.
“About what?” he asks.
“All of it,” Riley says. She inhales to catch her breath. “It isn’t a virus. Being exposed to a murder victim doesn’t mean you’re gonna get it next.”
He and Riley drove Sari home after the interview. It appeared she was telling the truth about her father being away at training. No one was there except for a cat that sprang effortlessly onto the back of the couch and meowed at them from the other side of the picture window. Sari keyed her way into the back door. It yawned to reveal a dark, vacant entryway.
“You shouldn’t be alone,” Riley said. “You have any family you can stay with? An aunt, or…?”
“They’re all back in Florida. I used to stay with Madison whenever he was gone, but…” She re-shouldered her backpack, the straps hanging down and grazing the sides of her thighs.
Axel couldn’t meet Sari’s gaze, then. He stared down at the scuff marks on his shoes. She was in danger, maybe, because of his daughter—also maybe—and there was nothing he could do to protect her. Her father was out of town, her best friend dead, and there was no place for her to go but remain inside the walls of this cold, uninviting house. She was as safe here as she was anywhere.
“Well…” Riley did that thing where she sucked in her lips. “We would advise you to stay inside. Lay low for a couple of days if you can, okay? When will your dad be back?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Okay. We’ll plan on making contact with him then. In the meantime, we can send a patrol unit as often as we’re able, if that’s all right with you?”
Sari nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
Axel frowned, fighting a cringe. As often as we’re able might easily mean once or twice. It was Saturday and drawing close to darkness. Black Harbor could either be dead quiet on nights like this, or Armageddon.
Riley gave Sari her business card. “Call if you need anything, okay?”
The girl nodded again, her tight, springy curls bouncing.
It seems a lifetime has passed since then. “I think so,” Axel says after a beat, finally answering Riley’s question. “Otherwise, I don’t know why else she’d incriminate herself … for starting that rumor.”
Riley scoffs. “Maybe to incriminate your daughter?”
“You think she’s lying?” He locks his ankles around her torso, squeezing below her ribs. She shoots her left arm toward his neck to grab the collar of his gi. He weaves his right arm underneath and twists into a side-crunch, locking Riley’s arm in place. She taps the mat.
They sit, facing each other. While he hates to default to Kole’s coldhearted philosophy that everybody lies, the fact that Sari could have been lying creates a pinprick of hope.
Chloe is not a killer.
“It’s just…” Riley chooses her words carefully. “The girls around here seem to have a flair for the dramatic.”
She’s right. It isn’t the first time Axel and Riley have found themselves untangling teenage drama. There was that incident on Hoffman Drive last year that resulted in a near-fatal game of Spin the Bottle when one party broke the bottle over another party’s head. That was a doozy and a half to figure out, especially since everyone fled the scene for fear of getting underage drinking tickets, leaving the two violent parties locked in a sudden death struggle.
Not to mention, knowing his own daughter with her method acting and mood swings, Axel cannot disagree. He returns to the rumor. Sleeping with a teacher. Not only could a lie like that have ruined Chloe’s reputation, it could have shattered her dream of getting into Juilliard. And consequently, her dream of leaving Black Harbor in the dust.
A sinking realization occurs to him: no wonder she had withdrawn. Dyeing her hair black was just the beginning. She started wearing sweatshirts that were two sizes too large, often sitting on the couch or on her bed with her knees tucked in, head sunk in like a turtle in a shell. She pushed safety pins through her earlobes and listened to music that sounded as though it was recorded in basements with screaming girls and out-of-tune guitars, and whenever he dared to ask if something was wrong, she always gave him the same answer: she was getting into character, doing everything a modern-day Lydia Deetz would do.
For weeks leading up to her disappearance, Chloe had kept up the ruse of the goth character she was portraying so well that Axel and Rowan grew concerned that something sinister might have been going on. Perhaps they should have heeded their instincts.
A ruse. He wishes that’s all any of this is. That he will go home after this and Chloe will jump out of a closet and yell, “Boo! I tricked you!” like she used to do when she was young and they played hide-and-seek.
Now she’s all grown up and playing a game of killing spree.
No.
Chloe is not a killer.
Chloe is not a killer.
Chloe is not—
“Hey.” Riley squeezes his bicep. She waits until he gives her eye contact, then says: “Chloe is out there, Axel. We are going to find her. And there’s no fucking way in this hell she’s killing off her classmates. Okay? Sari Simons is going to be just fine. We’ll make contact with her dad tomorrow and—”
“Well, well, well, Gordo, look what the street sweeper dragged in. Bueller and Walking Dead have finally decided to show up to class.”
Axel hears Orca’s wry voice mocking his and Riley’s sporadic attendance as of late.
The jiujitsu community is relentless when it comes to naming its members. Despite their often derogatory nature, the nicknames and the anonymity they afford is what Axel loves most about this place. The ability to shed your hard outer shell and leave it at the door like a discarded suit of armor to grapple barefoot and barefisted with others who are doing the same. They exonerate themselves from the weight of their public personas, whether they be janitors or CEOs, doctors or homicide detectives. Because at Silva’s, who you are outside of these walls holds no weight whatsoever inside them.
Axel’s truancy earns him the parallel to Ferris Bueller, and according to an academy-wide census, Riley resembles the machete-wielding character from The Walking Dead series. No matter what sphere she is in, Riley cannot shake the invisible cloak of death. They’ve called her Riley the Reaper at the police department for as long as he can remember.
“Don’t you two ever get tired of each other?” Orca smiles, showing pointed, spaced-apart teeth, thus the moniker. Although he joined the academy after Axel, he’s already a purple belt with two stripes.
Gordo used to be more portly, which is why his name means “fat” in Portuguese. He might be a barber, a suspicion formed from the straight razor tattoo on the inside of his wrist, but for all Axel knows, he could be a cop from another jurisdiction.
No, not a cop. Cops can always sniff out other cops. It’s how they hold themselves, the ego that puffs out their chests and makes them stand up straight, the unflinching eye contact. Gordo is not a cop. No way, no how.
“Let’s have a go,” Gordo says to Riley. “One soon-to-be-black-belt to another. You can leave ol’ Bueller behind for a roll or two.”
Riley starts to look guilty, but Axel nudges her with his foot. If she wants to progress and truly improve her technique, she should spar with someone who knows what he’s doing—someone who can live and breathe jiujitsu every waking moment of the day, like Gordo. Not someone who has to leave early every night to answer the death phone.
Riley leaves with Gordo and Orca, and Axel is glad for the alone time. The truth is, after what Sari told him, he needs a minute to indulge in some serious self-loathing. How could he have let himself get so far out of touch with Chloe? He had no idea she was suffering from such a devastating rumor. Suddenly, his ears burn hot, his hands tighten into fists. He will interview Cutler in the morning. And if there’s a shred of truth to the rumor, he’ll kill him.