Chapter Thirty-Seven
June
There’s a rock in the base of my skull that keeps dropping over and over, creating ripples through my head.
It flows over my brain, down my throat, into my eyes, on my tongue.
Everything pulses. Throbs. The signal to tell my eyes to open gets lost halfway, and my eyelids shudder with the abandoned action.
What happened?
The question expands with a fresh breath, taking up space in my mind until it’s all I can think about. A skipped track twirls in my ears, repeating the question over and over.
“What happened?”
“What happened?”
“What happened?”
I think about the rock in my mind and how it’s not a rock at all but a pounding headache. And the headache originates from the pain at the base of my skull. Did I fall?
No, I was hit. I’d been standing outside of my office waiting for Theo, and something—some one —hit me in the back of the head.
The realization expands the next ripple of pain, and I groan.
“I didn’t hit you that hard, you should be awake by now.”
The voice is warped in my ears, but I’m pretty sure it’s coming from in front of me. I try to orient myself and realize I’m sitting, hands behind my back. I shift, barely moving an inch, and my shoulders protest with a shout of pain.
“Getting tangled with the Saints of Purgatory was a bad idea,” the voice says. “Were you even aware that your boyfriend has been killing and framing people behind your back?”
The Saints.
Theo.
Where’s Theo?
He was supposed to pick me up. He probably already arrived at the office, so he must know I'm missing. Unless he dropped off my car and left.
If he realizes I’m gone, maybe he’ll know where I am.
Where am I?
I try to open my mouth to ask, but my tongue is still too heavy. Instead, I focus on opening my eyes. It’s like trying to pry superglue off my skin, but eventually they peel apart, and a soft light pierces my vision. Dizziness rocks me, and my eyes promptly spring shut again.
“I’ll give you this, you’re good at covering your tracks. Not perfect, but pretty damn good.”
“Wha…” My voice cracks. I grimace and manage to open my eyes again.
This time, I glance around, cataloging my surroundings.
The walls are discolored, like freshly installed drywall that hasn’t been painted yet.
There’s a dark hallway to my right and a shut door to my left.
All the windows are covered with cardboard.
Sheets of plastic lay on top of whatever furniture is in the room, fluttering at the slightest breeze.
It’s like a house in the middle of a renovation.
I gently move my limbs, finding my ankles tied against chair legs and my hands cuffed behind my back.
Directly across from me, standing in front of what looks like a covered fireplace, is a blonde man with dark circles under small eyes. He’s the same guy from outside the office earlier. Why is he…
Then it hits me.
Detective Lorry McCoy. I should’ve recognized him earlier. I looked him up after Theo told me about his investigation. There were photos of a recent ceremony where he was recognized for his work as a narcotics detective. How many of those cases did he close because Theo did his dirty work?
It seems he’s ready to get his own hands bloody.
“You’ve been out nearly two hours. I started worrying that I hit you too hard.”
He walks toward me, spinning like he’s on a merry-go-round. I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to force clarity through my brain.
“Why am I here?” The question comes out as a croak.
He sneers. “Because there’s no way you’ll go away for what you’ve done. Not with those fucking criminals covering for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Fun fact.” McCoy scoffs and stops a foot away from me.
“A buddy of mine has a C.I. in the South Five. The other day, he comes up with this crazy story about why we’ve noticed some increased gang activity.
Apparently, one of their own was killed in a bar on someone else’s territory.
He didn’t know names, but it didn’t take much pushing to learn the killer wasn’t a member of the Saints of Purgatory.
She was a small blonde girl with a sleeve tattoo. ”
I wince, glancing down at the cemetery inked on my skin.
“Imagine my surprise when none of my questions about this mysterious murderer yielded any answers. The Saints in particular were adamant that nothing of the sort ever happened in their bar.”
Theo has an impressive amount of control over his club. Either that, or they’re all just so loyal that selling out an outsider wasn’t even an option because their leader liked her.
“That made me start questioning the work Zervas, Kip, and the others do for me. I’ve never had any reason to doubt them before, but all I’ve gotten these last three weeks has been evidence of your innocence and empty promises that he’d get the job done.”
His words are starting to string together, and I squeeze my eyes shut for a second. I swallow down a wave of nausea, cursing my fucking body. I clearly have a concussion.
“So, I followed Zervas yesterday. Watched him take you to work. Kiss you.” He sounds so disgusted that I wouldn’t be surprised if my nausea transferred into him. “Want to know where he went after dropping you off?”
I don’t nod or reply. McCoy isn’t discouraged, though.
“To a townhouse near the university. Last week, my case finally started going somewhere. I struck gold, without the useless help of the Saints. I found a witness to your involvement with Pastor Tim Bidwell.”
My eyes snap open and snag on McCoy’s smug grin.
A witness? There’s no way. They would’ve come forward.
“I didn’t realize Zervas was going to the house until he was there.
He wasn’t inside for long, but he left in a hurry.
Imagine my surprise when I decided to check on my witness, only to find him dead on his floor.
Your little boyfriend snapped an innocent man’s neck all because he could place you with Bidwell before he disappeared. ”
I gape at the detective, unsure whether to believe him. Did Theo really kill someone yesterday? To protect me?
“I would’ve assumed you did it, had I not seen Zervas with my own two eyes,” McCoy continues.
“You didn’t see Theo kill anyone,” I say.
My brain may be bruised from the blow earlier, but I heard McCoy’s words.
He watched Theo go into the house, then walk out.
He didn’t see him kill anyone. That’s probably why he didn’t call it in.
And he would’ve had to explain that he was following a citizen without orders and entered a private residence without probable cause.
“Maybe he was dead already.” It’s a thin argument, but enough for me to hold onto.
I don’t care that Theo killed someone, but I don’t want him to go to prison because of me.
“You sound like a defense attorney.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to pay for killing my cousin!”
I recoil from the shout, another bout of sickness washing through me. This time, I don’t tamp it down. I lean forward, projecting the vomit forward so it lands on McCoy’s shoes. He exclaims in disgust and jumps back.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “Concussion.”
He gives me a look worthy of a rotting carcass on the side of the road. After a beat, he says, “There are two ways you’re getting out of this. You can either walk out of here to confess to your crimes, or you can leave in a body bag.”
“Thought you were too good to be a murderer.”
“You’re not human enough for it to be murder.”
“That’s not very nice,” I say, even as the irony registers. My victims are bad men. Monsters. I tell myself that killing them is different than killing innocent women, like other serial killers. But that doesn’t mean it's not murder.
Cops have a term for people like me. An organized, mission-oriented killer. Or a vigilante killer, though I don’t belong with the vigilantes. My consistent ritual and lack of remorse puts me squarely in the serial murderer category.
“You murdered my cousin,” McCoy says, pausing after each word for dramatic emphasis.
“Who?” I ask innocently.
“Solomon.”
“Don’t know him.”
“You’re lying !” he screams. His face turns red, filling with rage.
Unpredictable. That could either be good for me or very, very bad.
“You’re right, I’m sorry.” Sarcasm drips from my lips. “Solomon. King of Israel, right? I went to Sunday School.”
In a blink, McCoy’s fist comes flying at me, then an explosion of pain sparks behind my nose and in my skull as my head snaps to the side.
The chair doesn’t budge, which suggests that it’s bolted to the floor.
Smart. I sniff, wince at the burning, then spit.
Unsurprisingly, the saliva is red. Pressing my tongue against my cheek, I feel the cut where it slammed against my teeth.
McCoy paces away from me, hands in his hair as he attempts to breathe through the anger. Using his brief distraction to my advantage, I do a quick inventory of my person.
McCoy took away my pocket knife and my small bracelet, which has a tiny hidden knife inside I might’ve been able to use to shim out of the cuffs or cut the ropes around my ankles.
My shoes are gone, so I don’t have shoelaces, but I think he left my earrings in.
Twisting my hands, I blindly study the handcuffs to confirm that he used an average police-issued pair.
He activated the second latch to lock the cuffs in place, which means they won’t tighten any further, but it’ll also be impossible to shim out of them.
I could probably dislocate my thumb then tug my hands free, but I’d prefer not to.
Thankfully, I’ve been on alert ever since Theo told me a detective was looking into me.
Clipped on the tag inside the waistband of my pants is a micro-clip handcuff key, which I usually wear or tie into my shirts before a kill.
I made sure to always have one on me the first two weeks with Theo, but then I got complacent and went several days without one.
Since learning about McCoy, I started wearing them again.
Unfortunately, the awkward angle I’m at and the chair makes reaching the key difficult. I won’t be able to while McCoy is in the room. It’ll be too obvious.
“I really am sorry,” I mutter. “But I don’t know who Solomon is. I’ve never killed anyone.”
He spins around. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Play innocent. It’s pointless. I know you killed him. And I know Zervas knows. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be going to such lengths to protect you.”
“Why would he protect me? He wouldn’t do anything to put the Saints in jeopardy.”
“I think he would for you.”
I actually laugh at that. “Theo would never pick me over the Saints.”
“He broke a boy’s neck for you just yesterday.”
My expression stays frozen, giving nothing away. “I’m a therapist. I volunteer at the children’s hospital.” Though I haven’t done that in a while. “Why would I kill anyone?”
“I don’t care about your motives. I care about justice. And you’ve avoided it far too long.”
“Our justice system generally frowns upon kidnapping people and tying them to chairs.”
“There are holes in our system that let people like you get away with murder without consequences.”
Yeah, it does. It also has safe pockets where abusers and rapists and narcissistic assholes can comfortably sit, knowing they’ll never be locked away.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” I insist through gritted teeth.
I know his mind is never going to change.
He’s decided I’m a killer and that’s that.
The fact that he’s correct doesn’t matter, because I won’t be admitting anything.
Not to a cop. Especially not when I’m likely being recorded.
Arizona is a one-party consent state, so while any recording he gets may not be admissible in court, it would be legal for him to do so.
“You did. And the families of the people you killed deserve closure.”
His watch flashes, and he pauses to look at the little screen. His jaw ticks as he looks back at me. “Think about your situation for a bit. You can either do the right thing or you can meet the same fate as your victims.” Then he disappears down the dark hallway.
As soon as he’s gone, I work on maneuvering my hands up and over the slits in the chair.
Pushing with my heels, I angle my hips up, bringing the back of my pants closer.
The metal edges of the handcuffs slice into my skin, and I hold in a hiss as blood drips down my fingers.
Finally, a finger hooks over the waistband of my pants.
Sliding my back up the chair and pulling down with my finger, I manage to nudge the tiny key just as the sound of a bang makes me flinch.
“FUCK!” McCoy’s returning footsteps are loud, an ominous threat following him. He slams to a stop in front of me, eyes wild with fury and fear from whatever phone call he just received. Spit flies from his lips as he yells, “If Zervas touches my wife, it’s more blood on your hands, understand?”
“What?” I gasp, leaning away from the detective.
“Zervas wouldn’t pick you over the Saints? Then why the fuck did he threaten Kip’s sister to get to me?”
Kip’s sister. Lorry’s wife.
Theo’s looking for me.
I smile. “Want to keep your wife safe?” I ask as sweetly as I can. “Maybe you should let me go, detective .”
Another punch, this one with more force than before.
I feel my nose break, and the blinding pain that follows makes me momentarily forget where I am.
Then he lands a punch in my stomach, and I huff, falling forward as much as I can while cuffed.
I cough and gasp, curling in against the pain.
Red saliva falls from my mouth and lands on my knees.
Blood trickles from my nose, and I fight the urge to sniff.
“You have an hour to decide how this ends.”
His threat is clear.
Confess or die.
And by the sound of it, if I die, Theo will break. Last time, he almost destroyed himself.
This time, he may take all the Saints down with him.