Chapter 14 #2
“But the hay thing? That’s just because you look damn fine. And seeing you do illegal things makes me extremely horny.”
I hurry off into the barn without him, which I’m sure he’ll believe is actual torture.
With gloves securely in place, I head over to a large toolbox. I find a hammer quite quickly, but it’s a new one and not what we’re looking for. I leave it behind and start digging deeper.
The barn looks like it mostly stores farm equipment, which I have to shimmy around.
“This is like a haunted house,” Liam whispers from behind me. I jump since I didn’t even hear him coming.
“Liam!”
He chuckles, knowing what he did. “Yes, my sweets?”
“You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“With a heart that beautiful, I don’t know how anything could attack it.”
“What, you now know what my heart looks like?” I ask skeptically.
“I know what every part of you looks like.”
“You’re such a creep.” I wave the strange man away and shimmy deeper down the rows of equipment before I slip into a back room just piled with junk.
“I bet I’d have been a sexy farmer,” Liam decides.
“Oh yes. For sure. I’ve seen you interact with the cats. I can’t fathom you interacting with cattle—or dear god, imagine you and a horse. You two would butt heads like there’s no tomorrow.”
He grumbles a bit. “Stubborn animals and I don’t seem to mesh.”
“Lucille and Butter are winning you over.”
Liam makes some noise that tells me that he really doesn’t agree with me for some reason. I think the noise also means that he’s aware they’re winning him over, but he’d never admit that.
“Look here,” I say as I lean down and he aims his flashlight my way.
“I’m looking, alright,” he comments, and I realize the flashlight isn’t on the hammer but my ass.
I wave him away and grab the hammer.
Liam smiles at me. “Perfect. All of you. Especially these two globes right in front of me.”
“I’m going to leave you here so you can get started on your farmer life,” I threaten.
“You’d miss me.”
“I’d have such a nice big house all to myself. I could collect more cats.”
He shudders, so I poke him in the back as he starts out the door.
“Hey, Liam, would you love me even if I had ten cats?”
The sound he makes tells me what he thinks about that, but of course he says, “I would love you no matter how many cats you make me buy you.”
“The house will be crawling with cats. Maybe fifteen? I bet they’ll be sitting on your lap and rubbing on you, and when you sleep, they’ll attack your feet every time you move.”
“I think Lucy Fur has declared that two is the optimal number of cats for our household. Or maybe even just one.”
“I don’t know. I actually think she’d get along with a kitten better. So maybe a litter of kittens.”
“I devote my very existence to you. If you choose to suffocate me in felines then I shall suffer to see that smile on your face,” he declares robotically. He really is quite dramatic for a man who claims he isn’t.
We reach the car where Liam grabs the cleaning products he took from the diner.
He scrapes off some rust particles which he slides into a plastic evidence bag he must have had in the car.
And then he proceeds to clean the hammer with the precise movements of someone who has done this more than once.
I have no doubt that by the time this hammer reaches the department, there will not be a single trace of anything on it.
“I think that’s as clean as it’s going to get,” he says before sliding it into a bag so it won’t touch anything. He pulls his gloves off and tosses them in the trunk. “Ready, my sweet peacock?”
“I was going, ‘Oh wow, look how talented he is,’ and it immediately shifted to ‘I regret everything’ the moment you called me that.”
“What would be better? Ya ready, my sexy buckaroo?”
“Maybe like… hon or something.”
“No thanks,” he says as he gets in the car like he’s just going to leave me here since I’m not thrilled by being called a “peacock” or “buckaroo.” What does that even mean?
Once we’re buckled in, he takes off and taps his finger against the steering wheel.
I can’t help but watch him and question what’s going on in his mind.
I also can’t help but question how long before we get caught.
It feels like we take risk after risk, and at some point, it has to catch up with us, right?
Although… if I hadn’t caught Liam, would anyone have?
“Do you want to work on moving your stuff tomorrow?” he asks.
“That’s what you’re thinking about? Not the fact that we could get caught. Not that we’re doing something highly illegal. Not that we’re helping our friend get away with murder—kind of.”
“Gabriel… I feel like you’re confused. Ninety-six percent of my thoughts contain you.
One percent of my thoughts involve ways to blackmail others.
One percent pertains to how much cat hair is on my clothes.
Like look at this,” he says, showing me his arm.
“You know cat hair has been the reason why serial killers get caught, right?”
“I hope you change clothes before you… engage in business.”
“Of course I do, but just one stray little flutter of hair and I’d be toast.”
“I’m confident my cat isn’t going to be your downfall.”
“If you saw the way she looks at me when you aren’t home, you would know that she dreams of my downfall every day. She plants cat hair in places that irritate me the most.”
“Sure, sure. So what about the remaining two percent?”
He just flashes me a smile, as though doing so will make me forget. I decide I’ll just brush it off and pretend the remaining two percent is dedicated to him trying to find ways to give me a wedding ring for Christmas.
When we park, Jesse is already there. He looks like he’s been absolutely petrified in his seat.
Liam gets out and smacks the window of his car. Jesse jumps and slowly opens the door.
“Why do you look so fucking foolish?” Liam asks.
“Liam, be nice.” I feel like an adult trying to remind a child to play nice with his friends.
“I was oddly convinced you had me collect evidence so when the police descended on me, you could go, ‘I told you so! Look at the dumb fuck who literally put evidence in his own car.’ And then you’d have gotten to wear your ‘I told you so’ shirt and eat your ‘I told you so’ cake.”
“That would have been hilarious,” Liam says.
“Would it?” Jesse asks.
“For one of us. And delicious for two of us.” A look from me tells Liam to get back on task. “I trust that Zach’s clothes don’t have anything to do with you on them, right? No hair, your fingers didn’t touch any buttons or surfaces they would have left a print on, correct?”
“Correct. I had us wearing both hair nets and gloves and then the paper outfits they wear in the lab.”
“You promise you didn’t fuck up?” Liam asks.
“I promise you.”
With gloves on, Liam grabs the bag with the hammer and the bag with the clothes and heads toward the dumpster. He flips the lids open and hangs over the edge. I assume he’s just going to bury them beneath a few layers, but instead, I realize he’s opening up the trash bags.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to find the bags from that night.”
“How are you going to do that?”
He grabs a crumpled receipt and unfolds it.
“People throw their receipts away all the time,” he says before tossing it back in the pile and digging deeper.
When he seems to be satisfied by what a receipt says, he shoves the clothes and hammer into a trash bag he carefully reties.
Then he covers everything back up like he’s never been inside at all.
“Let’s go. Jesse, here are the rust particles; make it look natural that you didn’t see them previously but did upon another examination. Then let’s get the word out about the hammer. Make sure everyone in that zoo knows. I’ll call in the dumpster nonsense the following morning. Any questions?”
Jesse shakes his head. “I have a lot but none that actually matter.”
“I’m glad you’re learning,” Liam says before he walks to the car and gets inside, ready to head for home. Jesse looks over at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Liam, of all people… Gabriel, was this your idea?” he asks, understandably assuming that I was the one to save his ass, not the man who cares so little for everyone but me.
“No. I actually had no idea what was going on until he texted me.”
“I think you should have him checked by a doctor and make sure there isn’t something medically wrong with him. The Liam I know would never willingly help unless he wants something… he’s going to make my life miserable, isn’t he?”
“He might,” I admit.
“Is he really blackmailing Michaels?”
“How else do you think he got rehired and placed as my partner? I mean… would they ever let a dating couple be partners?”
He shrugs, likely realizing that they definitely wouldn’t.
It’s probably also occurring to him that a lot of what Liam does are things that he probably shouldn’t be involved in.
He really does seem to have the run of the department.
After contemplating for a moment, Jesse finally says, “He’s scary good. ”
“Right?”
“Thank you. I don’t… I promise if I ever go down for this, I’ll never breathe a word of it. I owe you both everything.”
I smile at him. “This is what friends are for… kind of. Like… maybe not this exactly. But helping people out kind of thing.”
“Understood.”