8. Kendrick
Chapter eight
Kendrick
I can’t look at Spencer. Not if I want to get through this without putting my hands on him again. My loss of control in the car is going to cost me dearly. The taste of him lingers in my mouth, and the sounds of his pleasure are burned in my brain. I’ll be dreaming about it. Think about it every time I jerk off to him. All of my senses have had him now, and they’ll haunt me for eternity.
Abigail, Maverick’s younger sister, greets us first. The black-and-white skull dress she’s wearing seems like it’s in poor taste, given the location, but her bright smile and blinding purple hair overpowers it enough I’m sure barely anyone notices her attire.
“We’ve been expecting you, boys,” she says, leaning up on tiptoes to kiss Spencer’s cheek. He curls an arm around her back and returns the gesture.
Even knowing they’re all basically siblings doesn’t stop my hands from clenching into fists. After that kiss, everything’s too close to the surface to test me like this. The urge to drag him away from her consumes me, and I even take a step toward them. It’s bad enough when men touch him, but women? No fucking way. I bet if she tried, she could make his dick hard. Could pull something from him that I don’t have any hope of finding.
Spencer must sense something is off because he moves away from her and crowds me, his hand sliding into my back pocket, fingers adding pressure to the curve of my ass. “Settle,” he murmurs quietly against my neck.
Settle, he says. Like he hasn’t completely fucked me up with that kiss. My own goddamn fault for starting it. I shouldn’t have touched him, not like that.
“That kind of day, huh?” Abigail tilts her head with a knowing smile and lifts her hands. “No touching. Hands where you can see them.”
Okay. She doesn’t need to point out how transparent I am.
“He’s a bit touchy,” Spencer replies lightly. “Don’t take it personally.”
“Don’t worry, I never do.” She winks at me, and I snarl in response. She laughs and then says, “Mav is downstairs with your girl. She’s pretty.”
Save me from chaotic bisexuals. “She’s dead.”
“They’re not mutually exclusive.” She leads us through the short hallways of the funeral home to the more clinical back area. The white walls are claustrophobia inducing. Good thing it doesn’t bother me. “I bet she had a nice smile. Explains why she had a stalker. I hope you’re planning on putting him six feet under.” She says it so casually, like she’s talking about her dinner plans. These are the people I surround myself with.
“What makes you think it was a stalker?” I ask, following her first down the stairs to the morgue, Spencer close behind.
“The candles in the bathroom? The romantic atmosphere? None of that says impersonal to me. I bet if Spencer killed you, he’d leave candles. Even put on some disgustingly sweet music for you to drift off to, and the cops to find.”
“I would,” Spencer agrees, leaning down from where he’s standing on a stair above me, and kissing my cheek. It’s worlds different than when he’d kissed her. He lingers and even touches the tip of his tongue to my skin, a light flick. He moves across and down to my jaw, nibbling and tasting. I can’t help but turn my head, our lips meeting again. He sinks his tongue into my mouth. Now that the gate is open, he’s just waltzing right in. I wish I could say no to him, to this, knowing how much it will destroy me, but I can’t. Tangling my fingers in his hair, I deepen the kiss, swallowing all the small sounds he’s making.
The sound of the thick door at the base of the steps shutting with a loud bang jolts me out of it, forcing me to lift my head.
“Spence…” What the hell is happening with us? Even as attached as we’ve always been, he’s never been this tactile. Never teased me to this extent. There’s a cruel edge to it that I don’t appreciate. And one I’m reaching for even as I curse his name.
He doesn’t respond, only nudges my back to get me moving again.
Maverick isn’t standing near the body that is laid out on a mobile examination table pushed against the wall. Instead, he’s at a small administration nook on the opposite side of the room, lounging on a chair with one leg lifted and resting over the corner of the desk. “You’re late,” he says in his rough, gravelled voice, without looking up. He’s never touched a cigarette his entire life—as far as I know—but he’s always sounded like a serial smoker.
“We didn’t specify a time,” Spencer says. “If you’d wanted us on time, you should have sent a more enticing invitation. One with flowers.”
“He’s in a romantic mood,” Abigail stage-whispers.
Ignoring them, I approach the corpse. Veronica Fergusion looks the same as she had in her pictures. Nothing like the vibrant, smiling photos that accompanied the rest of the files. A life snuffed out too soon. By all accounts, she’d been moving up in the world, taking names and accomplishing her dreams. I’ll find supreme satisfaction in putting her killer down. Jail’s too good for scum like this. Abigail isn’t wrong in that regard.
Maverick rises to his full height of six foot seven, a solid guy more akin to a battering ram than a person. Shaved head, tattoos covering his shiny scalp. They carry down to his neck, and from what I’ve seen of him shirtless, cover every inch of skin.
Abigail flicks off the safeties and wheels Veronica into the centre of the room, giving us space to move around her.
Maverick tosses me a box of gloves, and I peel out two before handing it over to Spencer to do the same. His fingers drag across the back of my hand as he takes it. He’s pushing his luck tenfold today. Telling him to stop would be futile, and I don’t want to. I’m self-aware enough to know how weak I am for him.
Spencer steps closer and stares solemnly at Veronica’s face, his lips turned down contemplatively. “Who killed you, Veronica?”
The idea that someone she trusted did this to her makes fury roar inside me like a storm that won’t abate. To put that kind of faith in a person, enough to allow them that close while so vulnerable, and to have them turn around and abuse it… boundaries crossed and broken trust. I’ve killed people for less.
There’s only one person I allow that close to me, that I allow into the heart of my life. Spencer has all the tools to destroy me. I open the door and let him walk right in without an invitation. The idea that he would use that against me, would turn it on me, is unfathomable. It would break me. Death would be a relief. I’d welcome it with arms wide open.
Is that what happened to her? Once she realised what was happening, did the fight go out of her? No. The evidence doesn’t support that theory. Neither does the bruising still present across her throat. Something else happened in that room.
“Fingerprints here.” Easy to see the outlines of where he’d held her around the throat. He didn’t care about leaving the evidence.
“Here as well,” Spencer sees, the tip of his finger tracing another hand-shaped bruise over her side. Hovering without touching.
I place my hands in both positions, judging the distance and what kind of force would be needed. “He strangled her and kept her underwater by holding her throat and then here to stop her struggling. What about her hands?” There aren’t any bruises there, or any wounds that might indicate drugging. “She wouldn’t have been passively allowing him to kill her.” The water all over the bathroom floor corroborates that theory. “Was there anything under her fingernails?”
“No,” Maverick says. “But there were traces of cleaning products. Antiseptic and light burns indicative of bleach. She most definitely fought back, and he made sure there wasn’t any trace of himself left.”
Enough sense to clean up after himself, but not enough to do it without obvious bruising? There’s a cruel deliberateness to it. He wanted someone to find the wounds, to know he’d killed her.
“Clever motherfucker.” Spencer frowns and holds her hand, lifting it up so he can turn her and check underneath. “That kind of thought… not his first kill.”
“Or he watches too much TV,” I say dryly. Everyone’s a homicide expert these days. Or they like to think they are. I’m inclined to agree with Spencer, though. It stinks of a process perfected, and that takes more than one murder. “He cleaned the apartment the same way, which makes it all but impossible to trace him through DNA.”
“We should get Greer to do a search for any kills similar in the state. Start with unsolved murders and go from there.”
I nod. It might not turn up anything, but it’s worth checking. I’m sure Greer will be thrilled to have more work land on his desk. I wish I was joking, but he always takes on more than he should. Not even Six can get him to slow down. He’ll burn himself out one day.
“Did you get the pictures of the first victim?” I ask Maverick. While he didn’t originally deal with the first kill, we sent him everything he’ll need to evaluate and compare the two crimes. Nothing about the first crime touched any of our desks. A slam-dunk murder with an easy-to-find killer. Except that hidden underneath is a potential darkness no one could have predicted.
It’s why we exist.
“Yeah.”
Maverick doesn’t elaborate, and I resist the urge to rub my forehead. Not with these gloves on, and not after touching her. “And?” I prompt.
He lets out a deep sigh, his chest expanding and stretching his black button-down shirt. “He was angry when he killed Veronica.”
Can’t argue with that. “Not with Anderson?”
He shakes his head. “No. It was more methodical. Planned to a T.”
Spencer’s hip leans against mine. “You think it’s the same killer.”
“You don’t?” There’s mocking and a challenge in Maverick’s words. They stare at each other, locked in a war only someone with a sibling can understand.
“Anderson’s guy is sitting in jail,” I say, interrupting this before it turns into some weird bet. Wouldn’t be the first time. “He was convicted and thrown in a cell. We can’t discount the copycat through”
“It’s not a copycat,” Maverick says with a grunt.
I nod. My thoughts as well. “We should make an appointment to visit the prison.” I’m curious to know just what he’ll say about his innocence.
“This is turning into a mess,” Spencer says wryly, giving me a smile that makes my heart skip a beat. Those lips, and that fucking dimple, could convince me to walk right into an active volcano.
“It started a mess. It’s turning into a total clusterfuck.” How many others has this psycho killed? I’d bet my left nut that two isn’t the magic number here. And if Maverick’s hunch is correct, an innocent man sits behind bars while the real killer is walking around, free as a bird. Likely looking for his next victim. I’m not going to let that happen.
There’s nothing else to catalogue on Veronica, and Maverick confirms there’s no evidence of sexual assault. The attack isn’t random, but neither is it about wanting what they can’t have. The lack of rape can lend to the theory of some kind of romance, or the opposite. There’s no easy to see answers here. No simple pattern or thread to follow to a conclusion to put this away quickly. Not yet . Spencer and I will find it, and we’ll stop it.
“We’ll send you our notes,” Abigail says with a wide smile, looping an arm around her brother’s, leaning against him. Maverick glances down at her without a word. Comical, considering he’s three times her size. In a fight, I’m not sure I’d bet against her, though. “Dad says he wants to see you for dinner next week if you can make time in your busy schedule.”
“We might be able to,” Spencer says, ignoring her sarcasm. He pulls off his gloves and drops them in a nearby bin before slapping my stomach. “If you find out anything new, let us know.”
“Sure thing.” Abigail winks at me. “Bring your man to dinner too. Dad likes him; I don’t know why.”
Spencer snickers. “I like him too; I think I’ll keep him. And stop perving on him, or I’ll cut your hands off.”
She only laughs harder because the entire family is fucking crazy.
Christ.