Life In His Hands [Book I] (Completed)

Life In His Hands [Book I] Chapter XII

       Jake's POV 

        When I awoke it was still dark. The rain was pounding on the windows, and a clap of thunder confirmed my suspicions of a thunderstorm. Fumbling around for my phone, I glanced at the screen. 7:05. I sighed and slumped back onto the sofa and flung my head back and looked up at the ceiling. Furrowing my brows, I jumped up and grabbed my phone again, rubbing my eyes to check that I wasn’t seeing things. Nope. Definitely five past seven; seven oh five, any other way you want to put it.  My fingers stumbled slightly as I dialled the office. It rang out. What the hell? There’s always someone there. I rang again, leaving it to ring longer than before when finally Nick answered.

        “Where the hell are you, Hammond? Stop fucking me about and get down here, now.” He scolded. His heavy breathing on the other end shocked me. The usually calm and collected Nick Slater wasn’t so calm and collected.

        “What’s wrong?” I asked, confused. If there was a crime scene, why didn’t I get a call earlier? And where’s Adam? Surely he should have rang me by now. Then a thought popped into my head. A thought I hadn’t wanted to think, but I couldn’t stop it. “Is it Jasmine?” There was silence on the other end. I felt like someone had ripped my heart out. “What the… why… Where?” I could feel the sting behind my eyes as they welled up and a tear fell down my cheek. “shit.”  I swiped the tear away and sat back down on the sofa. What the hell had I caused? Jasmine was dead and it was all my fault. What was I going to tell her parents? And Lily? She was so set on seeing her come home.

        “Jake, we don’t know if it’s her. ” Nick interrupted my thoughts. “We need someone to come and identify her.” I immediately jumped up and grabbed my keys and ran out of the house, not even bothering to lock the door behind me. The rain hit me immediately, blinding my line of vision to the car. As I made a beeline for the spot I knew I’d parked my car in the previous night, I dialled Dave’s number. I placed the handset in between my ear and shoulder and fumbled with the keys to my car.

        “Shit, Dave. Where are you?” I grumbled out loud as the phone rang off and he failed to answer. Over the past few days, we’d started to get along slightly easier than we had before. We realised that we both wanted the same thing. Mainly Jas’s happiness. I couldn’t tell him much about the investigations but I had told him what was going on with Jas’s case. Also, although I couldn’t keep him in the dark, nothing much had happened in any way interesting or progressional. We’d been attempting to track Tony Foster, but so far hadn’t found a scrap of evidence as to his whereabouts. He was a crafty beggar, that’s for sure. He certainly knew how to keep under the radar.

        We’d also spoken more to Ellie, who hadn’t received any more photos as yet, which meant there were more to come soon. We knew there’d be more murders. There was unfinished business. Amy Harris was one, and Luke Taylor was still missing with no evidence of his murder. We’d searched high and low for the remaining victims. Emma and Alex were out there somewhere deserving of proper burials and at the moment, we were failing them. We’d put Amy into protective custody, moving her to a safe house whilst the investigation was ongoing. Finally, we’d been keeping tabs on Daniel Taylor and so far – nothing. He’d stuck around his bar and home religiously. We weren’t sure whether he knew we were watching or whether he had nothing to do with it at all. Until this morning, we were at a dead end.

        And now, there was another body. Was it Jasmine? I felt sick at the thought and climbed into my car, rammed the keys into the ignition and reversed out of the driveway towards Jas and Dave’s place. As I rounded the corner to the house, I immediately noticed his car in the driveway. Relieved that he was home, I stopped the car on the curb, jumped out and banged on the door, not stopping to give him a chance to answer before knocking again. “Come on, come on.” I shouted through the door. Seconds later, I heard movement from inside and shouting.