Vanished: A Beautiful Mess Series Novel Read online

  She stared into his eyes, a jolt running through her at the unexpected tenderness she saw there. Emotions weren’t part of their arrangement. They had both loved and lost. Each knew the pain that accompanied such loss. It was foolish to willingly put yourself in that position again.

  “I think we’re ready to begin,” a soothing voice announced, breaking their connection.

  Mark cleared his throat, releasing his grasp on Rayne’s hand as she readjusted herself, unbuttoning her jacket now that the warmth of the indoor heating had fought off the chill that had enveloped her when she first arrived.

  The facilitator went through the typical motions of talking about grief, why they were all there, and that it was perfectly normal and healthy to mourn the loss of a loved one.

  Too bad I don’t feel normal, Rayne thought to herself.

  Tomorrow would mark the one year anniversary of the day she lost her fiancé. They said each day would get better, that she’d think about him a little less, that she’d move on, but she hadn’t. Talking about it didn’t help anymore. She didn’t know if anything would.

  “The death of a loved one can be a life-altering event,” the facilitator continued in the same pacifying tone that once brought Rayne comfort. Tonight, though, it only reminded her she still hadn’t moved on from her loss. “While some of you may have initially felt grateful your loved one was no longer suffering, especially if you lost someone due to disease or old age, others may not have been ready for such a devastating event. Perhaps you lost a child.”

  He looked around the room. Many of the attendees had their heads lowered, trying to hide their tears. Sniffles echoed against the dusty linoleum, followed by the occasional sob.

  “Perhaps the death was sudden or unexpected. Regardless of the circumstances, everyone in this room has felt the anguish of losing a loved one. You’re all here to cope with what has become your new normal. It may not seem like it now, but you will soon begin to live again. Isn’t that what your loved ones would have wanted?”

  He made it sound so easy, like they would all forget their loss one day, the pain a distant memory. Maybe it was like that for some people, but for Rayne, her loss was too great. It wasn’t just her fiancé she lost a year ago. It was her way of life.

  A life she would do anything to get back.

  Chapter Two

  December 18

  3:15 AM

  THE SOUND OF A pair of Salvatore Ferragamo wingtips echoed on the pavement as Alexander Burnham strode toward a rundown warehouse on the channel in South Boston…or, as locals called it, Southie. Glancing over his shoulder at his nondescript company SUV, he cocked his pistol, never knowing what kind of trouble would find him in this neighborhood.

  A streetlamp flickered against the dark, rain-slickened pavement. The storm had taken a break, but the ominous clouds gave notice that it was just a short reprieve. Soon, the heavens would open up again, soaking the city with a layer of rain and perhaps ice as the temperatures plummeted. But now, just past three in the morning, the ground was still too warm.

  An unexpected clanging of a metal object falling to the ground echoed through the night. Alexander surveyed his surroundings, searching for anything that struck him as suspicious. Everything about the area made his gut shout at him to go back to his car, that there was something disturbing going on. It wasn’t just the rundown location, the dismal weather, or the abhorrent stench of rotten fish in the air. He sensed the reason for his brother-in-law’s phone call in the middle of the night was not to tell him he would finally retire from the police force to come work for the private security firm Alexander ran with his brother, Tyler, since leaving the navy over fifteen years ago. Detective David Wilder had to have a damn good reason for pulling him out of his comfortable bed and away from his beautiful wife of nearly ten years.

  It didn’t help that Dave was a homicide detective with more years on the job than he cared to discuss. This only added to Alexander’s unease and curiosity.

  Walking along the perimeter of the warehouse, the air grew thick, the smell of fish and saltwater becoming stronger. Alexander had to fight back his gag reflex. Having grown up on the Connecticut shoreline, then spending the better part of a decade in the navy, he had lived most of his life by the ocean. Still, no amount of time spent near the water could make him ambivalent to the putrid funk of a fishing warehouse. As he covered his nose with a monogrammed handkerchief, all he could think was this was the perfect place to dump a body. The stench was so foul, a corpse would go undiscovered for days, weeks, maybe even months.

  With each step he took, he considered several scenarios about why Dave needed to see him, each one worse than the previous. Alexander’s line of work put him in contact with some of the most vile scum who would stop at nothing to harm the most vulnerable people. Mistakes could mean the difference between life and death. Lately, he’d thought more and more about the mistakes he had made and whether he could have done something to prevent them.

  On the outside, he was the same Alexander he had always been…demanding, assertive, authoritative. But inside, all the bad decisions he had ever made nagged at him, haunting him, making him wonder if lives could have been saved had he acted differently.

  He didn’t know what caused it. Perhaps it was hitting forty just a few months ago. Perhaps it was because he finally had something more to live for…a loving wife and a beautiful eight-year-old daughter. Perhaps it was the approaching holiday season that made him conduct a yearly introspective, analyzing everything he had done in his life. All Alexander knew was, for some reason, he had been living with an inexplicable feeling of guilt for what seemed like months now. He kept thinking it would get better, but it never did. Now he wondered if that guilt had any correlation to the reason he was currently walking toward a rundown fish warehouse in an area of Boston he usually avoided like the plague.

  Approaching the door of the building, a set of high beams shined on him. Instinctively, he turned toward them, shielding his eyes, and raised his pistol to the brilliant light before they shut off. It took a few seconds for his eyes to readjust to the darkness. Squinting, Alexander saw a familiar face through the front windshield of a tan sedan. He lowered his gun and returned it to its holster.

  “Sorry about that, Alex,” a tall man with a full head of gray hair shouted, jumping out of the sedan. “Department got me a new car and I’m still figuring out where everything is. Waste of taxpayer dollars, if you ask me. My last cruiser was running just fine.” Dave rolled his eyes, approaching Alexander and holding out his hand. When he took it, Dave patted his brother-in-law on the back. “Thanks for coming.”

  “What’s all this about? Why couldn’t you tell me on the phone?” Alexander widened his stance, crossing his arms in front of his broad chest. Dave was easily at least six feet tall, but Alexander towered over him with his six-foot, five-inch frame. Dave was in good shape, but it was no match for the amount of conditioning Alexander received as a SEAL, which he still maintained to this day, nearly two decades later.

  “I thought it would be better if you saw this one for yourself.” Dave stared at him, his gaze almost apologetic, as if he were silently telling Alexander he was sorry for what he was about to show him.

  With timid steps, Dave walked toward the open warehouse door. Alexander followed, the stench and unsettled feeling growing stronger with each step he took. The wind howled, the dampness in the air chilling him to the bone. The long trench coat he wore over his dark jeans and crisp button-down shirt did little to fight off the cold. He hugged the coat closer to his body, to no avail.

  “I’ll admit it, Dave,” Alexander said in a deep, strong voice that always commanded respect. It masked the unease steadily building inside him. “I’m intrigued, albeit a little apprehensive.”

  Dave paused just as they crossed the threshold into what appeared to be a fish processing plant. Rows and rows of steel tables, a conveyer belt in the middle, lined the open space. Despite the workers’ valiant eff
ort in adhering to sanitary food preparation requirements, the amount of blood spilled from filleting what had to be thousands upon thousands of fish a day left its mark on the cement floor.

  “I wanted to wait to call forensics until you were able to get out here.” Dave met Alexander’s eyes, a hint of remorse coupled with sympathy etched within his own gaze. “Out of respect, I… I just thought you should find out from me, see it with your own eyes, not hear about it on the morning news.”

  “Find out what?” Alexander asked, his heart rate picking up.

  Taking a deep breath, Dave paused, then continued down the length of the warehouse toward stacks of metal barrels Alexander assumed were used to store fish. He hurried to catch up.

  “When the call came in about an hour ago, dispatch sent me since I was in the area on another case. A guy who works third shift phoned it in. Who knows how long the body’s been here.”

  “Whose?” Alexander had a feeling his world was about to be turned upside down.

  Dave met his eyes again, letting out a slow, protracted breath. The seconds stretched mercilessly as he grabbed the lid of a barrel and lifted it, Alexander’s vision becoming a cloudy, slow motion scene typically used for dramatic effect in the movies. Except this wasn’t a movie that would end, although he wished it would as he stared at the pale, lifeless body stuffed into the barrel.

  Dave stepped back, giving Alexander space. “Mischa Tate.”

  Words escaped him as he struggled to keep his composure. This swollen face with ferocious bruises and lacerations bore no resemblance to the vivacious, energetic, gracious woman he knew years ago.

  “How did you…?” He looked at Dave, swallowing hard as he covered his mouth with his handkerchief, the stench of death and decay so pungent, it was burned into his nostrils.

  They say when one experiences a devastating event, their senses become heightened. They remember sounds, smells, feelings. Alexander had been through his fair share of traumatic events. He could remember exactly what he was wearing when told his childhood best friend had died. The smell of lemon cleaner and stale coffee would always be associated with the mixture of anger and despair running through him at that moment in time. The aroma of gunpowder and jet fuel would always remind him of the moment he received word his father had been killed on a job for the security firm.

  Now, as he stared back at Mischa’s face, her blue eyes swollen shut, he would always equate this feeling of guilt with the stench of rotten fish, salt, and rain.

  “Know it was Mischa?” Dave finished his question. Alexander nodded, unable to tear his eyes away from the remnants of Mischa’s face.

  During his time as a SEAL, Alexander had been deployed on some of the most intense missions imaginable. He saw the aftereffects of an IED. He witnessed things that would give most people nightmares for years. None of that compared to the bodily damage he now stared at, trying to keep his dinner from coming back up. Some would think things like this shouldn’t affect him after all his years in the military, then running a private security firm. He wasn’t a machine, though. He was a human with real emotions. He reacted as one would expect when staring at the tortured body of the sister of a former employee, friend, and fellow SEAL.

  “I did a preliminary search and noticed this.” Dave pulled on a rubber glove and extended her limp arm, using the flashlight of his cell phone to highlight a tattoo of Lady Justice on her wrist. “When you first introduced us, I remembered thinking how unique and haunting that tattoo was.” He released her arm, then removed the glove.

  Pulling his bottom lip between his teeth, Alexander struggled to look away from Mischa’s face. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw her. He kept meaning to call to see how she was doing, but life got in the way. Life had a strange habit of slipping out from beneath you when you were too busy to stop and take a breath.

  “That’s when I looked at her face again and realized who it was.”

  “What happened?” Alexander stepped back, straightening his spine.

  “I won’t have a definitive answer until the medical examiner does his exam and issues a cause of death. Right now, I’m operating under the assumption she’s another victim of the Castle Island Killer.”

  Alexander nodded, staring at the barrel. At least every other day for the past month, a report of another murder appeared on the front page of the Boston Globe, the police attributing it to the Castle Island Killer.

  “It fits his M.O. Assaulting the victim, killing her, then stuffing the body in a barrel and leaving it in this area of the city. The only thing giving me pause is that her throat wasn’t slashed, unlike all his other female victims, and the physical assault appears to be substantially more severe and brutal. He may be progressing. Does she have any family or—”

  “They were raised by their grandparents, but they died years ago,” Alexander interrupted with a heavy sigh. “They have a few distant aunts and uncles, but no one who would care that she died. Landon was all she had left before…” He trailed off.

  The fact he worked in a dangerous field was never lost on Alexander. Over the years, he had lost some of his best men on various assignments his company had been contracted to orchestrate and oversee. He took each one of those deaths personally, but none of them hit him as hard as Landon’s. He wasn’t just an employee. He was a friend, a brother in every sense of the word except blood. They could go months, even years without talking, then pick right back up where they left off, as if the passing of time had changed nothing. Their bond went back to the beaches of Coronado, where they were broken down and built back up as some of the most highly trained weapons in the United States military.

  “Got it,” Dave said quickly. Apart from the sound of trucks beginning their early morning deliveries and seagulls squawking over the water, it was silent for a moment. Suddenly, Dave cleared his throat. “I have to ask.”

  Alexander shot his head up, knowing the question that was about to follow. He would ask the same one if he were running the investigation.

  “Do you have any idea who—”

  “Could have beaten this woman so badly as to be barely recognizable?” Alexander paced back and forth, the stink of the fishery no longer making him nauseated. “I have no idea. If I did, I’d—”

  “When was the last time you saw her?” Dave asked, cutting him off.

  Alexander stopped in his tracks, his face burning with guilt. An ache settled in his stomach as he remembered the promise he had made to Landon time and time again during their time together on the same SEAL team.

  “If anything happens, promise you’ll look after Mischa,” Landon said.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you, pussy,” Alexander joked back.

  “I know. If anyone’s going to get shot, it’ll be you,” he sneered, jabbing Alexander in the shoulder.

  They laughed nervously, although they tried to hide it. They had been trained to be dropped into any number of remote locations and take out some of the most dangerous threats to national security. Still, the anticipation never got easier, the adrenaline never going away. Would they come home in the passenger compartment or the cargo hold of the plane?

  “But seriously, Alex,” Landon pushed, looking him in the eyes. “I’m all she has. If anything happens to me, I need to know she still has family out there.”

  Nodding, he shook his friend’s outstretched hand. “You bet. The only easy day was yesterday,” he said, repeating a line they said to each other over and over again during their training days.

  “Fucking A.”

  “The only easy day was yesterday,” Alexander mumbled, returning to the present.

  Failure was never something he coped with easily. Not acting a certain way could have disastrous consequences in the field. Why didn’t he foresee that his failure to fulfill his promise to Landon would have those same disastrous consequences? Alexander had always thought his promise to Landon was an empty one, something one says to another before parachuting into some remote te
rrorist hotspot, not something he actually had to follow through with.

  He kept meaning to call Mischa, but as the weeks turned into months and the months turned into a year, the time between phone calls had stretched until, one day, she was no longer a blip on his radar. He had no idea what was going on in her life. If she was dating anyone, if she was still trying to save the world one impoverished kid at a time. All he could think was this could have been avoided if he had just been true to his word, had taken his promise seriously. Instead, he had practically forgotten about the promise he made to the friend whose death made headlines exactly one year ago today.

  “It’s been a while,” he admitted finally. Staring at the swollen eyelids hiding those same blue eyes Landon had, Alexander couldn’t help but feel as if he had failed him all over again.

  “Can you ballpark it?”

  “At a holiday party maybe?”

  “Recently?”

  “Last year,” he added in an uncharacteristic soft tone. “Olivia kept pushing me to call and invite her to our house, but one thing led to another and it kept slipping my mind.”

  They stood in silence, staring into the barrel for what seemed like an eternity, regret swirling around Alexander’s brain.

  “Well…” Dave cleared his throat.

  Alexander snapped his attention away from Mischa’s face, her soft features now mutilated.

  “My partner will probably be here any minute.”

  “And I probably shouldn’t be here.”

  Dave nodded. “Slight breach of protocol for me to call you before the forensics team. I’ll be sure to keep you posted.”

  Alexander shook his outstretched hand, then started back toward the warehouse doors, welcoming a breath of comparatively fresh air. Pausing, he looked over his shoulder. “And you’ll let me know what the M.E. finds?”