A Raging Dawn by C. J. Lyons Page B

more like accepting that someone had to do the dirty work. I could tell he wished he’d be the one going in to meet Littleton.
    “I’ll do it,” I told Manny.
    We had to wait while the jailers fetched Littleton and brought him to the interview room. Manny spent the time coaching me. “Remember, privilege doesn’t apply, and we’ll be listening through the video monitor, so anything you can get him to say—”
    “I know.” I gathered my photos, my fingers pausing over the last, a head shot, filled with Tymara’s dark, pleading eyes.
    Ryder turned away from his position at the monitor, where he’d been watching the jailers secure Littleton, now in prison orange and shackles, to the table. There was no way Littleton would be able to touch me, physically at least. “Don’t let him play mind games with you.”
    “I won’t.” The door opened, and a guard beckoned. Gena Kravitz pushed in as I left, planting herself in front of the observation monitor, hands on her hips, obviously not too pleased with her client or his unorthodox demands.
    Taking a deep breath outside the door to the room where Littleton waited, I shoved my nervousness aside. This was what I’d wanted, a chance to nail the men who’d killed Tymara. I pulled the vision of her brutalized body front and center in my mind, using it to fuel my adrenaline. I was walking a knife’s edge—stay too calm and Littleton would grow bored, say nothing of value; reveal too much emotion and he’d slake his blood thirst with it rather than give us what we needed to find his partners.
    I strode into the room and sat across the table from Littleton. Before he could speak, I snapped the photos of Tymara onto the table like a high-stakes poker player dealing aces.
    “Thought you might want to take this opportunity to explain to me exactly how Tymara received these injuries and who inflicted them.” Good, my voice was steady and clear.
    Littleton jerked back as far as his chains would take him. “I don’t want to look at that shit.”
    “Sure you do. Isn’t that what you did while it was happening? Watch?” I lowered my voice, as if taking confession. “That’s what you like to do best, isn’t it, Eugene? You like to watch because you have a hard time doing anything more.”
    “Shut up, bitch! You don’t know nothing. Tymara and me, it wasn’t like that. She came on to me, messed me up, played with me until I couldn’t think straight. I used to go into her place in the middle of the day, and she’d be there waiting for me, pretending to be asleep, wearing these little slips of hers, worse than if she was naked—”
    “Ever stop to think that she was sleeping? She worked two jobs, one from three to eleven, the other overnight.”
    He shook his head. “No. She wanted me. Wanted me so bad. Always calling me to come spray her place extra. Said she was scared of bugs. Used to make these little screams. Once, a bunch of spiders got loose, some of them ended up in her bed. You should’ve seen her.”
    From the smirk on Littleton’s face, I had a pretty good feeling how “a bunch of spiders” ended up in Tymara’s bed. In his warped, narcissistic world, Littleton actually believed Tymara had been attracted to him.
    “I saved her,” Littleton went on, his lips curling and gaze tilting up, as if he was imagining something. “She owed me for that. She liked it rough, wanted me to do her in the worst way. Me and her, we were like this.” He held up two fingers, crossed as if for luck.
    “That night, that was the first time you were ever together? And the last? How does it make you feel, knowing she’s gone?” If I could crack his delusion, he might give me more. Power-reassurance rapists start out stalking their victims, creating a fantasy love affair. The rape is, in their warped imagination, a much-anticipated date. Until their fairytale ending doesn’t play out.
    “What do you mean, how do I feel?” Littleton replied. “I loved Tymara.”
    He