Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
He’d screwed up. Beau realized that ever so important fact. A major, game-changing screw up. But when the alarm had started blaring in the prison, when chaos had been reigning and that big bastard in orange had turned his attention on Avalon…
Beau may have lost his control.
May?
Okay, dammit, he had. He’d completely lost his control. Thoroughly screwed up. And, yes, he’d even screwed things so badly that he’d admitted a truth that he’d tried to keep from even himself.
I love Avalon.
Sonofabitch.
She hadn’t said anything after his big confession. Dare he hope that she’d somehow missed it? Beau cut her a quick glance. He found her eyes on him.
Nope, she hadn’t missed a thing.
She was going to kick his ass to the curb. Get one major restraining order. And never look back.
“This isn’t the way to the hotel.” The first words she’d spoken in fifteen minutes. Yes, he’d been watching the clock.
“I’m not taking you to the hotel.”
“But if you don’t take me to the hotel, then how will your friends Percy and Dominic be able to keep watch over me?”
He sucked in his left cheek.
“It was the chocolate croissants that tipped me off about Percy. And the fact that the cops were extremely pissed that he’d delayed them from seeing me for so long. Let me guess, you told your buddy Percy I needed rest? That the cops couldn’t see me until at least…oh, eight a.m.?”
Was it wiser to stay silent? Or plead guilty?
“And I realized Dominic knew you because you called him by name. I think you were stressed, and you slipped up. Detective Cunningham wasn’t wrong about you, was he? He was actually telling me the truth. You have flunkies everywhere.”
They weren’t being tailed. They’d left the prison far behind. He swung the car into a vacant lot, let the engine snarl, and turned to her. “Really don’t like that term. I have friends who help me out. And, for the record, Detective Cuntingham is pretty much wrong about everything.”
She stared back at him. “That’s not funny.”
“Wasn’t supposed to be. He really is wrong about every damn thing. And the nickname works. Once you get to know him better, you’ll see it’s accurate, not funny.” He exhaled. How to explain things to her? “I have…friends who want to pay me back for favors they think I did for them.”
“Because you did do favors for them. Tell me about Dominic.”
“This really isn’t the time. We need to get back to?—”
“Your place? Because you aren’t taking me toward the hotel. Are you taking me home?”
Home. “Yes.”
A nod. “And you’ll reveal all of your deep, dark secrets to me there?” Her gaze watched him. Waited.
He didn’t speak. Lying to her wasn’t so easy. Everyone else? Sure. A snap. But not Avalon. He was finding it exceedingly difficult to stare into her green eyes and lie.
“I want your deep, dark secrets.”
Hadn’t he just given her one? He’d told her he loved her. And he did. In his dark and twisted way. Not like he was the guy who’d show up with flowers and wine and take her out to a fancy dinner while they danced the night away.
Instead, he was the man who would have a small army at the ready to protect her from danger. The man who would threaten killers so that they’d cooperate with her questioning sessions and never put so much as a finger on her. He was the man who would stand in the fucking shadows, his heart feeling like it was being cut out of his chest, because he didn’t want to touch her life and ruin it. He’d let her go on dates with some other assholes just so she’d be happy. “I damn well hated them.”
“Excuse me?”
His eyes squeezed closed. “I’ll tell you what I can.”
“Dominic. Let’s start there.”
“Dom’s younger brother was busted on a B&E not too long ago in Atlanta. Good kid. Fell in with bad people. I’m sure you know the story.” He opened his eyes and glanced around the area, just to be sure they were safe. We need to get out of here. “Short sentence, but Dom wanted to make sure the kid didn’t get roughed up or come out trapped in some gang that had forced him to swear allegiance while on the inside. I talked to some people. Made sure he had the right protection in place.”
“You collect dangerous strays.”
“Excuse me?” His turn to choke out the words. “I’m talking about people. Not animals!”
She shook her head. Her hair slid over her shoulder. “Something Royal told me.”
Royal. Right. Not a story he wanted to touch at the moment.
“How did Royal get into your life?”
And, of course, she would zero right in on him. “This isn’t the place. We’re going home.” Home. Where he could be sure she was safe. Where he could close the doors and lock out the rest of the world. The world was angry and dangerous and bloody. He knew that. Had always known it. But Beau wanted to make it better for her. All these years, he’d just wanted to make things better for Avalon.
Unfortunately, he was just screwing up more and more.
“When we get home, I want to know about the Jag you were stealing so long ago.”
He drove out of the lot.
“I want to know about the gang.”
The gang. Right. Another nightmare.
“I want to know why you disappeared from the hospital without a word.”
That one was easy. “To keep you safe.”
He caught her swift inhale. And then, softer, he heard her say, “And I want to know if you really do love me or if I’m just some twisted obsession that you have.”
His jaw locked.
He drove them home. The Jag snarled.
Warden Curtis Flint stared down at the body of the dead inmate. The blood had pooled around him. Pooled. Splattered. Gone every dang place.
Everett Thomas’s eyes were closed, and sure, protocol dictated that their emergency medical team still try and save the man, but, clearly, no saving was going to happen. You couldn’t save the dead.
“How many times was he stabbed?” Douglas asked. Douglas was on his feet, with a bandage around the side of head. Weaving a bit. He’d told the DA to stay back. But Douglas was one stubborn bastard. Something he admired.
Curtis angled his head to try and count. “I see at least…fifteen?” Probably more. Three shivs had been dropped on the ground when the prisoners were rounded up.
“Why was he out here?” Douglas’s low question went just to Curtis. “I thought he was being taken back to his cell.”
“Each prisoner is entitled to time in the yard. Even those in solitary.” His head turned so that he could meet Douglas’s suspicious gaze. “The question we should be asking is…why the hell were those other inmates out here?”
Inmates who’d seemed to come with one goal. Kill Everett Thomas.
“Guess they weren’t fans,” Douglas muttered.
No, they clearly had not been.
And neither was I.
He didn’t think anyone was going to be mourning Everett Thomas’s death.
“You have a murder board in your den.”
Beau dropped onto the oversized couch and watched Avalon as she slowly closed in on what was, indeed, a murder board. One he’d carefully crafted with help from Lane and Ophelia. And a few other players in town.
Players that Avalon had not met yet. It had truly been a team effort.
She wore black pants and a black top. Black ballerina flats. He’d bought those clothes for her—and the black bra and panties that she also wore. She hadn’t said a word about him knowing her exact sizes. But she was clearly aware of his…oh, how had she phrased things?
Twisted obsession.
“These are the first three houses that burned. The houses that were hit before mine in New Orleans. The houses and pics of the victims.” She tapped the large, black-and-white photos that showed the aftermath of the fires. “A forty-year-old wife and mother died in the first fire. A seventy-year-old retired grandfather died in the second. And a newly married twenty-five-year-old male perished in the third.” Her fingers trailed to the fourth picture. The aftermath of her fire. Only the skeleton of the house remained. Blackened. Charred. “And I would have been victim four.”
He remained on the couch.
“Do you think they were trapped inside their homes, too? They were all home alone. Something that I have always thought linked the crimes. We were all in the houses by ourselves.” She wrapped her arms around her stomach. “Different ages. Male. Female. Different races. Usually, serial killers have a victim type. But, then again, there aren’t exactly a whole lot of serial killers who use fire as their weapon of choice.” She swung to look at him. “Arsonists like to watch buildings burn. They like to watch the fire grow and twist. I always felt like this person just wanted to watch us suffer.”
Beau slowly exhaled. “I believe they were trapped, yes. In Darius Cramer’s file…” The grandfather. Grieved so much by his family. “There was mention that the windows in his bedroom were nailed shut. The investigator noted it in passing. The house was going through renovations, so he suspected that Darius had been working on the windows before the fire.” A shake of Beau’s head. “That’s not what me and my team think.”
“Your team.” She rocked forward onto the balls of her feet. “Do elaborate. What does your team think?”
“Ophelia and Lane went to New Orleans. They found the old arson investigators. Two worked the cases originally. They dug up all the old case files for Ophelia and Lane. They talked for hours. They…” An exhale. “We believe no one was random. The victims were all deliberately selected. Targeted. All the attacks occurred between midnight and two a.m. No one else was in the homes. Just the vics. Neighbors weren’t even around at the first two scenes. The fires were caused by an accelerant that was poured throughout the home. In your case…” His nostrils flared. “I remembered smelling gasoline when I got up the stairs. He’d soaked your house.”
She shuddered.
“Lane and Ophelia found at least two other cases after yours. Not in New Orleans. One was in Birmingham, Alabama. About a year after you graduated high school. A girl your exact age—she was the victim then. Found in her bedroom. Trapped inside. Dead.”
She jerked.
“Then three years after that, another woman was the victim of a similar fire in Nashville. First responders were called to the scene at one thirty-three a.m. They rushed in to try and help her. Too late.” His gaze drifted to his murder board. “Zoe Dagger’s photo is behind you.”
She looked back. Shivered. “She…she kind of looks like me.”
There was no “kind of” about it. “I don’t think he had a type before he set the fire at your place. But after you got away, I believe he did.”
“He’s been burning me over and over? Those poor women have died in my place?” She choked back a sob. “I hate this.”
He surged off the couch. Beau could not just sit there and watch her pain. It ripped him apart. His arms curled around her, and he yanked her against him. She struggled for just a second, and he was already preparing to let her go when she suddenly locked her arms around him and held on as if she’d never let go. The same way he was holding her.
“I was scared,” Avalon confessed. “So scared in the prison. Scared when we were running through all those corridors. Scared when I was in my bedroom and that jerk in the mask was attacking me. Scared when I was a teenager.” Her head tilted back. “I am so sick of being scared.” A tear tracked down her cheek.
His hand lifted. Caught the tear. He hated it when she cried.
“Everett was the key. He knew things about our past.” Another tear slipped from her eye.
Tenderly, he wiped it away.
“He knew about the Jag. About your gang involvement. He knew so much.”
Yes. “Because he knows the killer.” The only conclusion Beau could reach. Correction—knew the killer. Past tense because Beau was sure Everett was being loaded up into a body bag about now.
Her head turned. Her lips skimmed over his hand. The briefest of caresses, before she backed away. “Tell me everything. No secrets. None. Understand? You tell me everything you’ve been holding back, or I walk.”
“You’ll be afraid.”
A broken laugh escaped her. “Didn’t I just cover that I’m already scared all the time? And I’m sick of it. Nothing you can say is going to make me fear more.” She blinked away tears. “I hate crying.”
“I know.” Soft.
“Because you know everything about me?”
“Not everything. I feel like I could be with you for a hundred years, and I’d still not know enough.”
“Do not say freaking sweet things to me right now. Talk to me about the past.”
There was certainly nothing sweet about the past. “I was in the Garden District that night because I was supposed to boost a Jag. I was inside the vehicle, ready to ride into the night, and then I smelled smoke. Heard the crackle of fire. Heard a voice calling for help.”
This time, she was the one to swipe away the tears on her cheek. She wiped them away even as she stiffened her spine.
“I went into the house to save you.”
“Why?”
“Because you wanted my help.” Simple. Because you were going to die, and I couldn’t just stand there. “I hadn’t done that before. Helped someone, that is. Mostly, I just tried to help myself.” A shrug. “My old man was in prison. Serving two murder convictions. He still is, by the way. My mom left me in a church when I was ten. Found out that she died three weeks later of a drug overdose.”
“Beau…”
His shoulders tensed. “It is what it is.”
“No. It’s not.” She surged toward him.
But he lifted his hand. “Sweetheart, you touch me again, and you’re not gonna be hearing the rest of the story right now. You’ll be getting fucked. Because you might want to offer me comfort—and believe me, I do appreciate it—but I want you. Always have. Always will. And I’m riding one insane blast of fury and adrenaline due to what happened at the prison. My control is razor thin. So, just…thanks for the sympathy. But it’s really better if you keep your distance.” Safer for you, sweetheart.
She froze in place. Was that a flash of pain in her eyes? Sonofabitch.
I’m the sonofabitch. He cleared his throat. “Where was I? Oh, right. Saving this terrified teenage girl. We were on the third floor of her house. I’d realized someone locked her in to die, and all I wanted to do was make sure that we both didn’t get burned alive. I had this crazy idea to climb down the old pipe or gutter or whatever the hell it was near her window. But it broke. And we fell. And when I woke up in the hospital, for the first time in a very long while, I wasn’t alone.”
“I was at your bedside.”
He nodded. “Every time I opened my eyes, you were there. Your parents were there. People were coming in and saying how grateful they were. How much of a hero I was.” His lips curled down. “Like the hero could admit he was only in the right place because he’d been in the middle of stealing a fancy ride. I already had a rap sheet at that time. Lots of fake IDs. Giving a false name was easy. But they still tracked me down.”
“They?”
“I was supposed to deliver that car, sweetheart. You don’t just tell a gang that you changed your mind. Thanks, but no thanks.” A mocking laugh slipped from him at the very idea. “Certain individuals came for me when you went home one night. I barely got out of that room with my life.” They’d come to kill him because they’d been so sure he would talk to the cops about their operation. At the time, the car theft ring they’d been working had been absolutely huge. But it hadn’t just been about cars. It had been about drugs. Weapons. Pick your poison.
Beau cleared his throat and continued, “They were gonna pump me full of drugs. I wouldn’t wake up when they were done with me. Maybe they thought it would look like I died of my injuries or some shit. Maybe they didn’t care what it looked like. But I wasn’t going out that way. I fought them, even with that stupid cast on my leg. Then I got out.”
“You left me.”
Never. “They look for weaknesses. I couldn’t let them hurt you in order to get to me.”
“I-I didn’t matter. You’d just met me.”
“You always mattered. From the moment I met you.”
Her lashes swept down to cover her eyes as Avalon seemed to find the floor oddly fascinating. She must, the way she stared so hard at it. But she murmured, “You mattered, too. From the moment I met you.”
Did she have any idea how badly he wished that was true? But she wanted the whole story, so he’d keep giving it to her. “I had to get out of that gang. Sever ties. But it wasn’t easy. There were things I knew I’d have to do. Power I’d have to gain.” A dark part of his life that didn’t need to ever touch her. “When I could be clear, I was gone from that life. Done. But I wasn’t alone. When I left New Orleans, I took Royal with me. He’d been in the same gang, only I knew he didn’t belong there. Royal was like me. Hell, so much like me.”
“Brother from another mother.” Her gaze had lifted to study him once more. “That’s what he said.”
She didn’t understand. “I told you that my mother left me. She abandoned me in a church.”
Her eyes were so wide.
“When he was two years old, he was found wandering around Royal Street.”
A swift inhale.
“That’s why he mocks about us being brothers—brothers from two mothers who’d abandoned us. Royal has no idea what became of his mother. I know mine died. I also know that he was a torn-up kid who needed someone to watch out for him. I took him with me when I left, and we’ve been in and out of each other’s lives ever since.” Royal had so much darkness inside of himself. So much pain. For a while, Beau had been afraid of what Royal might become.
I tried to help him. To channel him. Beau was still trying. Some days, Beau thought he might be helping his friend. Other days, he worried that he was just putting Royal on a path straight to hell.
“He’s…your bodyguard.”
Occassionally, maybe. But mostly, “Royal is his own thing. He has his own business interests. His own goals. But, yeah, he’ll do some bodyguard work for me because he is one of the most dangerous bastards I know. Royal is also my family. I don’t care about blood. He has been with me through every nightmare I’ve faced. He knows how important you are to me. When I need someone that I can absolutely trust with your safety and I can’t be there, he steps in.”
“You’ve seriously been…guarding me all this time.”
She was sugarcoating. “Yeah, let’s just call it guarding instead of stalking. Way more PC.”
“Beau—”
He stepped back. “I was going to stop.” That had been the plan. “Once we’d unmasked the arsonist. I never intended to actually enter your life. I wasn’t even going to talk to you.”
Her delicate jaw seemed to harden.
“I’ve watched you. Saw you go out with other men.” Had wanted to rip those men to freaking pieces, but he hadn’t. Because… “I want you happy. That is all I’ve ever wanted, and I know you can’t be happy with someone like me.” He swung away and stared out the window. Darkness stared back.
Didn’t it always?
“Beau, I believe this is the part where you should ask me what I want.”
“You want to be safe. You want to be free.”
“I actually want this really arrogant asshole of an ex-gang member.”
Beau’s shoulders tensed.
“He’s this really intense guy who may or may not have been a crime boss. He recently had his bar burn right in front of him, but instead of being enraged about losing something that mattered so much to him, he’s basically moving heaven and hell combined because he’s trying to protect me.”
Beau looked straight ahead. In the window’s glass, he saw more than darkness. He saw Avalon’s reflection as she edged up behind him.
“Want to hear some crazy stuff?” she asked him.
Always.
“I think I knew you were in my life.”
He shook his head. No, she hadn’t.
“I never saw you. Or your goons.”
They hadn’t been goons.
“Because if I had, that would have freaked me the hell out.”
He hadn’t gotten close enough to freak her out. And he’d tried to be so careful but… “Everett knew I was watching you. I think he might have come to LeBlanc’s because he was studying me.” But how did that work out for you in the end, Slasher? While Everett had been in LeBlanc’s, he’d become prey.
Another dark story Beau would have to tell Avalon.
“When my parents died, I felt so alone. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Where I was supposed to go. My past haunted me—it still does—and I was so uncertain all the time and then I just…I swear, I could feel you.”
He shook his head.
But he saw her reflection, and he saw her come closer.
“When I walked into LeBlanc’s, I saw you behind the bar, and I could have sworn the whole world stopped spinning for just a moment. Not the boy I remembered, but a man I absolutely recognized with every part of my being.” She was right behind him now. Her hand rose and pressed to his shoulder. Lightly skimmed over the scars that marked him. “When we were kids, you were willing to die in order to protect me.”
He spun toward her. Caught her hand. “I’m sure I warned you about touching me.”
She smiled at him. Those dimples—those damn dimples had his heart aching. “I am scared of many things in this world. I’m pretty sure I just went over a rather extensive list for you. But you know what wasn’t on the list? Or who wasn’t?” She rose onto her tiptoes. Her lips brushed over his jaw. “You.”
He should have been at the top of her list. Hadn’t she heard what he’d confessed?
“We aren’t kids any longer.” She kissed his jaw again.
His hand remained locked around her wrist. He could feel the frantic beat of her pulse beneath his touch.
“But I still know that you’d die to protect me, wouldn’t you?”
“Killing is more effective than dying, but, yeah, sweetheart, for you, I’d do both.” In a heartbeat.
“And you’ve been hunting my arsonist.”
“I suspect my hunt is what has spurred him into action again.” Dammit. My fault. “Ophelia and Lane think that they might be able to tie a few more arsons to him. They were going to head out of town to chase down those leads, but then LeBlanc’s went up in flames.”
“We don’t need to head out of town in order to find him. He’s here.”
“He was clearly telling me to back the hell off.” A giant message as his bar burned.
Another kiss. This time, on his neck. Over the pulse that raced even faster than hers. “You aren’t going to back off.”
“No.”
Her tongue licked against his skin. Then she sucked.
His eyes closed.
A sensual bite followed. One that had his dick shoving hard against the zipper of his jeans. I warned her. Why didn’t she listen?
“What are you going to do?” A soft taunt from Avalon. “Catch him, cuff him…and then slap a bow on the bastard?”
His eyes flew open.
“Because that’s what you have been doing, isn’t it, Beau? You’ve been hunting killers and leaving them tied up for the police. Tied up with a pretty, red bow.”
Shit.