A Present Mistake (Deadly Mistakes #3)

Chapter 1

ONE

Liam

“Let me in!” I bang on the door, desperate to be let inside. The lock is holding tight and the metal door barely budges when I beat against it. I need in. I desperately need to get inside before it’s too late.

I hear footsteps on the stairs. They’re coming.

It’s already too late for me.

Fuck. No. It can’t end this way. I refuse to let it end this way.

“Let me in. Let me in, dammit.”

“There’s no one in there to help you.”

I spin and press my back against the door. My fingers twitch, hoping for something to grab onto. Something that can save me from this hell.

“Just… just walk away. Turn around and walk away, and I’ll let you go,” I promise, but what kind of threat is that? He has nothing to lose. I smack my hand against the door one more time before he descends upon me. He grabs me by the front of my shirt and shakes me while he laughs.

“What is wrong with you?” Gabriel asks. “You are so freaking dramatic and ridiculous.”

I look at the man I swore my heart to and question how he could laugh during my moment of distress. “You find this funny?”

“Hilarious, actually.”

“You find my agony hilarious?” I question disbelievingly. I thought this man loved me and now he just laughs at my pain?

Gabriel’s perfect eyebrow arches. Honestly, everything about the man is perfect.

His perfectly messy dark hair. His perfect brown eyes.

His perfect smile. His perfect face. His perfect— “You find everyone else’s agony hilarious, so why can’t I find yours?

” he asks, interrupting my thoughts about his perfect body that I want to kiss all over.

Now that sounds like something I’d rather be doing with my time.

“I sure do. But I’m allowed to. No one is allowed to cause me agony,” I explain.

Gabriel grins as he runs a hand down my chest. “Not even me?”

How dare this man use himself against me?

He knows that he’s the only human I have no power to say no to.

He’d use that smile on me and go, “Let’s jump out of this plane,” and I’d jump without hesitation, even though I find skydiving the most ridiculous of hobbies…

unless I was skydiving with my next victim and happened to forget to give him a parachute.

Gabriel smiles at me, drawing me out of my thoughts. Has such a magical man ever existed? I’m sure that would be a significant no.

I jab a thumb behind me. “That finger can peruse bare skin if you find a way to open this door. There are even beds for us to frolic on. I will lay you down on the finest of beds where I will suck your—”

“That’s the fucking medical examiner’s office! And those aren’t beds, Liam! How morbid can you get?”

I laugh, pleased by his expression. Really, any expression is best when Gabriel wears it. “I tease. I tease. But I’m not kidding that I could lock myself inside and no one would find me.”

“Doing stuff with your coworkers won’t kill you,” Gabriel promises me.

“Are you sure? I’ve seen the way Matthew has been looking at me. Don’t get me started on Donna. She has it out for me.”

“No one has it out for you. You’re pretty much the only one who has it out for anyone else.”

I wrap an arm around his waist and pull him in before delivering a soft kiss to his lips. “Do you want to know something we could be doing right now?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the team-building session that we’re scheduled to join in two minutes?”

“I can last much longer than two minutes,” I assure him.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

I take his hand and lift it up to kiss the tips of his fingers, but he doesn’t seem to have any intention of letting me win this. How can he be so magically stubborn?

Gabriel says, “Your reward for participating is a good lunch. We’ve been promised that much.”

His hand squeezes mine, putting me in a calm state that somehow allows him to pull me through the department and over to the large open room they’re doing this hell in. People are frolicking around, chatting and laughing like they could possibly be enjoying any part of this.

“I see you found him,” Jesse, the medical examiner, comments.

He’s a shorter man with black hair and a sassy attitude.

He should keep that sass reserved to himself, but oddly enough, he seems to enjoy inflicting it on me.

I’m sure it has nothing at all to do with my personality and everything to do with his.

“Did he tell you he tried paying me off to close him in one of the drawers so he could skip this?”

“I even offered you my diner and you brutally declined,” I say.

“I just really thought seeing your miserable face would make me feel better than the five thousand dollars you offered me,” Jesse retorts.

“Five… five thousand dollars?” Matthew, a fellow homicide detective, asks.

I’ve tried my hardest not to get along with him but he’s very persistent and, for some reason, Gabriel seems to think that Matthew is my new best friend.

I have no friends. I have my lover and myself…

or at least that was my plan until my sweet Gabriel bullied me into making “friends.”

I will admit that “friends” can be convenient when I need them to do something… much like those I blackmail.

Matthew, still hung up on that whole five-thousand-dollar bit, plucks the keys to the medical examiner’s office out of Jesse’s pocket and sets a hand on my back. “Right this way, sir. We have the finest table made of metal sourced from the rarest of ores for you to lay your body upon.”

“About time you became useful,” I say as I allow Matthew to guide me toward the door until Gabriel blocks us with his body.

“Liam, I’d really like for you to be here,” he tells me, and how could I say no to that? His words cut right through the darkness in my soul and penetrate my heart.

“Think of how quiet the room will be when you have it all to yourself,” Matthew coaxes. “You won’t have to hear my voice or see my face. And Donna? Donna will be nowhere to be seen.”

“I’m listening and extremely interested,” I admit.

“You’re going to make me suffer this alone?” Gabriel asks.

And fuck, does that face work on me. I will suffer for this man and for this man only.

Matthew continues, “They’re planning on putting pictures of us up, so I’ll just photoshop you into them. Did you know I went to school for graphic design before giving up and switching to forensics?”

“You really shouldn’t have,” I say.

He scowls at me. “Right this way, Liam.”

“No, stay here,” Gabriel says.

“Gabriel, I’ll split the five thousand with you. Stop making him stray from his decision.”

“Why would Gabriel need your chump change? Liam bought him a whole house, Matthew,” Jesse says, a fact that they seem to think they are teasing me about.

Really, though, I’m quite proud of myself and my ability to buy Gabriel anything he looks at.

After my parents passed, they left me a significant sum of money which I never bothered doing much with until Gabriel came into my life.

Now I would very much like to spend it all on him, even though he refuses to let me.

That’s when Sergeant Michaels claps his hands like he wants the attention on him.

If I had his personality or scraps of hair, I would want exactly zero attention on me at all times, but I guess he’s in charge of this.

The chief of police is requiring all units to have team-building sessions.

Today just happens to be ours because apparently, gazing into the eyes of our fellow workers and whispering heartfelt secrets to them is significantly more important than finding out who murdered someone.

When this atrocity was announced earlier in the week, and I declared, “All our clients are already dead, so what’s the rush, we might as well waste time staring at each other,” I got quite the magnificent glower from Sgt. Michaels.

“I am very happy to say that Alana is here with some team-building activities for us to enjoy!” Michaels is trying his hardest to sound enthusiastic. It just really doesn’t fit his look at all. Brooding and irritated is more his style, and I do my best to help him uphold it.

Alana, who looks so happy that I immediately decide I do not like her, steps forward. “The first thing I want all of us to do is give ourselves a round of applause for being the best we can be.”

Matthew chooses to lift his hands as close to my ear as possible while he claps wildly, like his enjoyment in life comes from my misery.

I refuse to clap at all because my hands are reserved for roaming Gabriel’s body and will not be pressured into anything else that could cause them harm.

“Liam,” Gabriel whispers, elbowing me lightly, and then suddenly my hands are moving of their own accord and clapping with the rest.

How the fuck does he do that? How the fuck can he control me with just a look?

“That man has magic,” Jesse decides as he watches me clap with the rest of these brainless fools.

“Beautiful. I’m so excited to work with all of you today. Let’s start off with a mini icebreaker. Grab someone who is not your partner in crime—get it? Because you all solve crime—and sit back-to-back with them.”

The look on my face has to show how well I “get it.”

“My back refuses to touch anyone’s back other than Gabriel’s,” I announce before watching my traitorous lover drop down and smoosh his back against Matthew’s. I gape at his willingness to touch another man while I watch.

“Work with Jesse,” Gabriel urges. “Or Donna doesn’t have a partner yet.”

I eye Donna and quickly turn to Jesse. “We will win, do you understand?”

“I… I don’t think it’s a competition to win,” Jesse says as he sits down and I sit with my back to his.

“This back is so tiny I’m uncertain whether it’s Jesse or a child,” I comment.

He sighs loudly. “I’m already in misery.”

Alana hears Jesse’s declaration and pauses as she hands me a clipboard. “Today is about having fun and learning about your coworkers. So relax and enjoy it.”