Control: A Blackburn Erotic Thriller (Book 1)

Control – Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

Blackburn stepped from the gas station into an early heat that pressed against her skin like a promise. Light stretched low across the lot, catching oil rainbows on asphalt. Industrial beauty that most would miss. She took in the southeast edge of New Dresden, where warehouses squatted like tombstones, chain-link fencing cutting geometric wounds in the morning, a skyline still dim with sleep.

She rarely made it to this side of the city, but last night’s screamer had been worth the drive. Blackburn flexed her hand, feeling the ghost of flesh against her palm, and cleared her throat. An experienced submissive was always a great find; someone who understood the architecture of surrender without requiring instruction.

Movement.

A figure stumbled in from the east. Unsteady, but not drunk. She knew that choreography. His legs buckled with each step, a marionette with severed strings. Blood had dried in a dark line behind one ear, mapping gravity’s pull. One eye swelled shut. His shirt hung in tatters like shed skin.

She set her coffee on the curb with care and moved. One eye tracked the street for complications, one locked on him like a targeting system. No cars angled in with predatory intent. No shapes peeled off corners to complicate her morning. The risk felt contained, manageable; the kind she could enjoy.

“Detective Blackburn.” The badge caught the morning light as she closed the distance, a small sun she wielded. “Can you hear me?”

His gaze wandered like a lost child before finding her. Shock. She took his forearm, firm but not forceful, the exact pressure that communicated authority without threat. His skin felt cold beneath the grime, vulnerable in ways that stirred something predatory.

“Sit.” She guided him to the concrete ledge by the ice machine. The compressor hummed against his back, an industrial lullaby. Cool stone pressed against his shins. His hands trembled once. An involuntary surrender, then he stilled under her attention.

She scanned him in order, the systematic inventory of damage she’d perfected over years. Airway clear. Breathing was steady but shallow. Pulse raced beneath her fingers at his wrist. It was rabbit-quick, prey-fast. Pupils uneven, the left responding as if it was swimming through syrup. Dirt packed beneath his nails and into the creases of his knuckles, clay mixed with something darker that would stain for hours. She knew how earth clung to desperate fingers.

“Stay with me,” she said, her voice calibrated to that perfect frequency between command and comfort. “Help is on the way.”

She waved to the clerk through glass that distorted his face into something abstract. “Call 911.” She went to her car, pulling the first aid kit from behind the seat. Gloves snapped on, a barrier and permission. Gauze crinkled like old promises. The antiseptic cap popped with tiny violence.

She dampened a wipe and cleaned blood from his hairline, each stroke precise and controlled. He flinched but held still. Good boy, she thought but didn’t say. She pressed a folded pad above his brow where skin had split like overripe fruit. Steady pressure. “You’re doing fine.”

The clerk held up his phone, filming instead of calling. Modern instinct to entertain rather than help.

She dialed dispatch, her voice shifting to a professional register. “Detective Morgan Blackburn, Homicide. Badge 259. I need EMS at Fillmore and Sixth. Taylor Gas. Adult male, head trauma, possible assault. Conscious. Respirations stable. Pupils unequal. Bruising around the right orbit. Unknown time down.” She noted the soil caked beneath each nail like evidence of resurrection. “Dirt under the fingernails. Request uniform units for scene control, and Major Crimes to attend.” She read the exact address from the door sticker and ended the call.

She kept the gauze in place with one hand while the other anchored him upright. Dual purpose, always. “What’s your name?”

He worked for the word like excavating something buried. “Evan.” It came out rough, scraped raw.

“Last name.”

“Hart.”

“Date of birth.”

Each number he gave was a small victory. She logged it in the notebook from her jacket. Time, vitals as she could assess them, injury notes, a quick sketch of the lot. Memory fades like bruises. Paper endures.

“Any weapons on you, Evan?”

His head moved, conserving energy. “No.”

She patted his waistband and pockets. Lint rolled between her fingers. A folded twenty soft with handling. A broken key ring that had once held something important. She lined them beside him on the concrete like evidence. “Allergies.”

“Penicillin.”

She wrote that too.

Traffic whispered on the damp pavement, the city’s morning prayer. A bus wheezed through the intersection, exhaling diesel ghosts. A crow hopped along the lot’s edge, black eyes cataloguing everything with avian indifference. The day pressed upward, the air still holding a thread of cool that wouldn’t last.

“Thank you,” he said. The words frayed at the edges like old fabric.

She nodded. “Save your strength.”

He studied her hand on his arm, then the badge again. Both requiring verification in his scrambled reality. She kept her expression steady and readable, the mask she wore for victims. Professional. Present. The performance of empathy she’d perfected.

He started in fragments, each word excavated with effort. “I went to buy pills.” His voice carried past the compressor’s hum. His fingers picked at a loose thread, nervous energy seeking an outlet. “From a guy I know.”

“Where?”

“Under the bridge at Kestrel.” He blinked hard against swelling that transformed his face into abstract art. “Then someone was there, and everything went white. I think someone shot me. I don’t remember the sound. Just my face. Bright. Hot.”

He touched the puffy eye once. Testing reality. Then withdrew. She let silence work its slow magic.

“Woke up underground,” he said, and something cold moved through Blackburn’s chest. Each word came like he was pulling them from deep water. “Couldn’t breathe. Dirt in my mouth. I tried to shout. No air.”

“How long?”

His head moved. “I don’t know.”

“You clawed your way out,” she said, recognizing the specific terror in his eyes; the kind that comes from premature burial. She had seen it before.

He nodded and swayed forward like gravity had doubled. She braced him with her shoulder, adjusting the gauze with ease. Blood seeped through. Not heavy, but persistent, like secrets.

“Any names?” she asked. “Supplier. Anyone else.”

“Tom. I met him at the Regional ER a couple months back.” His voice scraped raw as exposed as a nerve. “Last night was differ…”

“Evan, hey, Evan. Stay with me.” She lightly tapped his face and his eyes blinked open. “Last night was different? Evan?”

His head lolled, his mouth opened, and nothing came out.

She wrote it down. Tom. Kestrel bridge. Things different. She underlined different twice. He had come from the east, where soil stayed soft, where shovels could bite deep without complaint.

Evan coughed. His eyes tracked to the lot’s edge, and fear flickered across his features. Small, animal, honest. His heel tapped concrete once in unconscious rhythm.

“You’re safe here,” she said with the absolute certainty she wielded like a weapon. “No one gets past me.”

He swallowed, throat muscles working hard against invisible obstruction. “I thought I died.”

“Not today.”

The clerk pushed through the door and hovered nearby like a moth drawn to trauma’s flame.

“Stay inside.”

The door wheezed shut on pneumatic hinges.

Blackburn shifted her grip and checked his pulse again. Still racing but threadier now, a violin string wound too tight. Faint lines marked his neck in linear patterns, parallel and precise. Pressure marks, but not from hands. Too uniform, too clean.

“Evan, did they bind you?”

“I think so. Tape. Plastic.” His eyes fixed beyond the gas pumps on some middle distance only he could see. “A bag. Over my face. Then dirt.”

She wrote Plastic restraints. Bag. Each detail was another piece of someone else’s careful planning.

A siren wailed from the south, growing louder with Doppler certainty. She let the sound work on him, watched his shoulders drop a fraction as help approached.

“Stay with me,” she said again, her voice an anchor. “You are still with me.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“What were you buying? Did you take anything besides what you went to buy?”

He shook his head. “Dillie 8s. I didn’t get any.”

“Did anyone say anything before they shot you?”

“Don’t remember.” Shame crossed his features like a passing cloud. She left it alone. Everyone had their methods of managing existence.

She scanned the lot with the systematic attention of someone who understood how situations could turn. A cement truck rumbled past, exhaust hanging thick as guilt. A cyclist slowed, took them in with the quick assessment of urban survival, and pedaled on. Nothing immediate threatened the area. She would leave once the uniforms arrived, but she noted his dusty footprints along the curb. If traffic spared them, she would follow that trail back to its source.

He wet cracked lips with effort. “I remember a smell. Sweet. Chemical. Like glue. And metal.”

She logged it, building the sensory map of his ordeal. “Any accents. Any words.”

“Music,” he said, the memory surfacing. “Tinny. From a phone, maybe. A woman singing. Old song. I couldn’t place it.”

She sketched a square for the ice machine and an arrow showing his approach, the map in her head sharpening with each detail.

“Someone I can call?” she asked. “Family? Friend?”

“My sister.” He gave a name and number that she transcribed. She would pass them to Major Crimes, let them handle the notification. This was not her job.

He sagged against her, not fainting but surrendering to gravity’s insistence. She adjusted to take more of his weight without comment.

“You’re doing fine,” she said. “Hold the gauze.” She guided his hand up with the same precision she used for everything. “Firm. Not too hard.”

He managed it. Dirty fingers, a careful touch. Small tasks always steadied people who needed reality. Purpose cut through shock’s fog.

The siren rounded a corner and swelled into certainty. A second engine joined in harmony, the city’s emergency chorus. Close now.

“Evan,” she said, timing the question for maximum retention. “When you woke up underground, what did you feel? Wood. Plastic. Concrete.”

“Plastic,” he whispered, the word carrying specific horror. “Thin. It tore when I pushed. Dirt poured in. I swallowed.”

She nodded. Plastic sheeting. Noted. Someone’s attempt at containment that hadn’t accounted for desperation’s strength.

“It was dark,” he said, lost in the memory now. “Then it wasn’t. The top gave way, and there was sky. I crawled. Lights. Train.”

Her pen moved across the paper with purpose. The rail spur ran three blocks east. That tracked. Soil tracked. Sound tracked. The account held together with the internal consistency of truth.

A cruiser glided into the lot, lights painting blue ghosts across faded parking stripes. She lifted a hand and directed them to the far side of the pumps, leaving a lane for EMS. Always thinking three moves ahead. The officers read her gesture and complied without question.

She stayed with Evan as the gauze grew warm beneath her palm, morning strengthening around them like a tightening fist. The quiet eased some of his visible tension. Next steps lined up cleanly in her mind.

“Lights,” he said, eyes tracking to where New Dresden cut its jagged edge against the brightening sky. “I followed the lights.”

Blackburn kept her tone even, professional curiosity masking deeper interest. “Before that. Do you remember who shot you?”

A shiver ran through him despite the warming air. “I don’t remember. Maybe they got Tom too.” A small nod, processing. “I thought I was dead.”

The ambulance rolled in, siren dropping to silence as it stopped with precision. Paramedics moved in with the efficiency that came from repetition. Gauze, oxygen mask, a careful transfer that spoke of experience with broken things.

Blackburn stepped back, ceding territory. She gave them the essentials. The victim is a white male mid-thirties, possible GSW, conscious, fragmented memory, confinement, possible burial site. Each word chosen for maximum information density.

As they secured him to the stretcher, his hand lifted, fingertips brushing her badge. Seeking an anchor in institutional authority.

“We will find out what happened,” she said, steadying his forearm with calculated reassurance. “You’re safe now.”

The doors closed with force. The ambulance pulled away, and she stayed on the curb a moment longer, watching the lights recede into the city’s hungry mouth.

She briefed the responding officers with the same economy of language, explaining the scene, outlining next steps while they waited for senior staff who would complicate everything with protocol.

A quick time check. A decision crystallized. She walked east along Lakehurst, following the trail Evan had left in his resurrection. Humanity fell away like shed skin. Warehouses claimed the rest. Industrial tombstones marking the city’s transformation. Forklifts beeped in the distance, their warning cries echoing off concrete. Steam curled from vents near the rail spur like the city’s dying breath. The river’s sour edge rode a shift in the breeze, organic rot mixing with chemical precision.

This part of the city showed its skeleton. Concrete bones, steel sinew, stacked pallets like vertebrae. Plastic snagged on wire fencing, urban prayer flags. New money pressed into old industrial ground with the arrogance of progress. Few people. Fewer witnesses. Perfect for certain kinds of business.

She found the lot by following Evan’s path backward, reading the story written in disturbed earth and desperate footprints. Temporary fencing surrounded the space, gate hanging half open, secured with rusted wire that spoke of habitual trespass. Dirt berms and parked equipment formed makeshift walls. A colosseum for private violence. An excavator slept with its bucket caked in clay, a mechanical predator at rest.

A patch to the right broke the grading pattern. Subtle, but wrong to trained eyes.

She closed in, shoes crunching over packed earth. The surface showed recent disturbance, raked by someone who understood concealment but not investigation. Television lessons always lacked. The underlayer still held moisture from last night’s work. One edge showed signs of collapse and drag at the margin, as if weight had pressed up from below and shifted sideways in desperate escape. In the loose soil, nail marks caught the light. Thin crescents still packed with grit, each one a testament to the will to survive.

Boot prints crisscrossed the area in a dance of violence. Two tread patterns. One wide with blocky lugs that suggested weight and authority, one narrower with chevron pattern that moved with a more intentional purpose. Both sets stepped in and out with a pivot near the depression. The choreography of burial. A third set broke the rhythm with shallow scrapes. Not a normal gait. Crawl marks or stumbling. Evan’s resurrection.

She checked the gate mount. No fence cameras, though the mounting bracket remained. The nearest pole wore an empty mount where one had been, four screw holes describing absence. She logged it along with the utility tag number, building the inventory of what wasn’t there.

Heat radiated up from the clay in waves that made the air shimmer. Diesel fumes lingered from idling equipment, industrial perfume. A metallic tang rose where groundwater pooled in low spots, the earth’s blood seeping through. A small fly lifted from the disturbed earth and drifted away, sole witness to whatever darkness had unfolded here. A truck rumbled past two blocks over, the city’s pulse continuing despite individual traumas.

She called Major Crimes. “Detective Blackburn. I’m at the gas station. When is someone getting here?”

“Sgt. Levy should be on site in five, ma’am.”

“You’ll need to send CSU,” she added before disconnecting, already calculating how much evidence would be lost to their delayed response.

The city kept its rhythm, indifferent and eternal, and Blackburn matched it. She strode back into the gas station with the controlled precision of someone who never rushed. “Officer,” she said when the cruiser window rolled down, her tone carrying the weight of authority. “Possible crime scene one block east. Fresh ground disturbance. Multiple shoe impressions.”

“What is your name, ma’am?” the driver asked, hand already reaching for the radio.

“Detective Blackburn. Homicide. I am off duty. I’ll forward a report to Sgt. Levy. Start a scene log.”

“Yes ma’am.”

City sounds filtered back in thin layers. The morning returned to its routine. A delivery truck beeped in reverse, warning the world of its intentions. A dog walker approached, saw the tape already being strung, and turned back with the wisdom of the uninvolved. Another cruiser arrived. Not Major Crimes yet, but reinforcement for the perimeter.

Blackburn checked her watch. Time to head to work and leave behind Evan’s fever dream, the careful burial, the resurrection through desperate will. She loved New Dresden surprises.

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