[ Highest Rank #101 in Mystery/Thriller ]
Time has passed. Things have changed. Isabeth, Benny, and Faith aren't quite the same. They have blood on their hands, a code they honor, and secrets they keep locked away. The Psychopath Maker knows this an...
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Isabeth parked her Rover behind Red Rhapsody along a dark, deserted, rough street in New York City. She was uneasy, being in a neighborhood like this after dark. Yes, it was after dark. It was half-past five and it was all Faith's fault. The heel of her pump snapped, she bumped into Harper and Harper's latte splashed into Faith's face. A quick stop at Faith's house for a change of clothes turned to minutes and a long shower.
Isabeth's phone chimed in the cupholder. It was a text.
Alex: Where RU?
Isabeth texted back: New York
Alex: When will you be back?
Isabeth: In a bit.
Alex: Be Safe. Luv u.
The streetlight shone down on Faith standing on the curb disgustedly looking at a street man sound asleep on a cardboard mattress, snuggled under a plastic bag blanket. She looked down her nose at the pure sight of poverty. She knew those sort of things were out in the world; people with no homes, no cars, no jobs. She just never wanted to actually see it. That way she could put it out of her mind, act like it didn't exist; it wouldn't plague her with resentment when she dropped thousands on a new winter wardrobe in the upcoming months. She was starting to rethink her morals, giving to charities instead of dropping cash at Bendals. Faith looked away from the homeless man and down the dark sidewalk. That was crazy talk. Never happening.
Isabeth clinched her keys walking up the curb activating her alarm. "Is this the right place?" She asked panning the street lined with trash and graffiti and a prostitute showing her cotton candy pink thong under a three-inch, ultra tight mini-skirt to a man in a Mazda.
"This is where the GPS led me. This is the last trip reversed." Faith confidently forged for the stoop. She knew what she was doing when she found the key to Red rhapsody by the gas-cap. She knew how to work a computer in the car that she always worked when they went forging in the middle of the night hunting for the Mystery Clue Party of the month. "Why would Fiona be in a place like this?" She said peeping in the dark, smudged window of the building door into gloom.
"Let's find out." Isabeth pushed open the rusting metal door, shrieking as the hinges cried out. Isabeth looked back at Faith apprehensively before going in.
A wave of liqueur, old cheese, and urine smacked them in the face as the door shut behind them, sealing them inside a den of filth and dilapidation. Isabeth coughed from the stench rushing up her nostril, choking her lungs. Faith held her stomach, gripping the buttons of her long-sleeve navy shirt gagging.
"This is the funk in front of the gates of hell! I'm out!" Faith shot for the door.
Isabeth grabbed the waistband of Faith's red boot cut trousers.
"Where are you going?" Isabeth shouted over the wailing baby in the apartment down the hall.
"To the car, Nancy Drew!" Faith swatted Isabeth's hand away, her eyebrows raised teeming with a strong urgency to flee from this hellhole.
"Don't you want to know why Fiona was here?" Isabeth asked. "What she was doing?" She knew she did. She wanted to know what would make a girl that had a world-class designer friend of her father design and tailor a complete line of outfits so no one wore the same thing as her every season be there.
"Oh my great God in heaven." Faith stared at the wall with saucer-wide, frenetic eyes pulling Isabeth in front of her like a safety blanket.
"What is it?" Isabeth fretted. "What is it?"
"A cockroach!" Faith shoved her to the wall. "Isa kill it!"
Isabeth swirled around before her hand hit the wall causing the critter to scurry away. She slapped Faith's shoulder, her heart pounding from the thought of coming into contact with the disease-carrying insect. "Don't do that again or you'll be the one I'm spraying with Raid!"
"You know roaches make my skin crawl like a thousand ants running underneath my dermis." Faith scratched her collarbone, felling tiny insect legs crawling around her chest.
"Get a grip." Isabeth demanded barking like Giselle on Sunday morning when they were caught giggling at gifs on Tumblr.
Faith counted to ten in her head. "Okay. I'm good." She glanced at the wall. "It's gone."
"Are you girls lost?" A voiced asked from the dark. "This doesn't look like your kind of neighborhood." He said walking down the creaking stairs lined with a stained dingy white carpet. He scratched his scruffy beard under the flickering light studying the Burberry belt around Isabeth's Burberry denim dress.
"We're looking for an apartment." Isabeth walked to the stairs.
"What number is it?"
"What number's what?"
"The apartment; the apartment that you're looking for. One through ten is downstairs, eleven through twenty is up." He pointed up to the second level with a red and purple paint-stained hand.
Faith kept her mouth closed looking at the red lips tattooed on the six-foot wife-beater dressed man. Did he beat his wife or was he just a slacker that put little thought into how he looked. This was seriously out of character for Fiona. She liked prep school brats with a Porsche for every day of the week. This dude whatever his name was; was not Fiona's taste. Looking at his flat abs and sagging blue jeans, unruly black hair and midnight eyes. Faith smirked. She'd do him for a night.
"Actually, we don't know the apartment number." Isabeth nervously wiggled her toes in her gold Tory Burch ballet flats. Why didn't she think they needed to know the apartment number? It wasn't like Fiona own the building. She really expected there to be a doorman and a front desk where they could ask to be escorted up to a penthouse suite in the Upper East Side, not a building where someone was probably making meth right now as they spoke in the lobby.
"Since...you don't know the number." He scratched his thick eyebrow. "What's your friend's name? I mostly know everyone here."
"Fiona. Fiona Hamilton." Isabeth spoke hoping he knew the one girl that looked like she didn't belong, that stuck out like a sour thumb.
He flinched like the name woke up a corner of dormant cells sleeping in his body. He walked down the remaining stairs hovering over Isabeth's 5'3 frame smelling of paint thinner and butter.
"You're friends of Fiona?" He asked fixing his gaze on Faith
Faith narrowed her eyes at him; she wasn't there for that. "You know Fiona?"
"How do you know Fiona?" Isabeth backed up. He was occupying seventy percent of her personal space.
"She was sleeping on my couch for five months."
"Why?" Isabeth questioned.
"Who are you?" Faith stepped forward sizing him up, completely forgetting about the roach.
He looked down the hall, and then out the dingy window, "I'm Santiago. This is a conversation that should be had behind closed doors" He looked around again. "These walls have ears. Follow me."
