Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Logan
I hadn’t gotten to say the words back to her yesterday, but Bexley needed to know she wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
When we’d gotten home last night, we’d had to finish packing up our bags to move into the motel while her floors were being done, and even though we didn’t have a lot of stuff, it’d still taken time.
We were packed now, though, and a majority of it was in our cars, so we didn’t have a lot to do this morning except take the last bags and the animals out and drop it all off at the motel.
Plus, I’d set the alarm to go off two hours early, meaning we had time to do that before we got to work, and we had time to have a shower together.
And that’s why I was currently moving in and out of her, her body braced against the tiled wall with the spray on my back. My movements were slow and measured because I refused to rush through this moment with her.
It was different.
Feeling her walls starting to clench, I sucked her nipple hard, moaning around it when she spasmed around my length .
“More,” she gasped, digging her nails into my back.
Knowing now was the time, I lifted my head and waited for her to open her eyes as I gave her a hard thrust. The second I had them on me, I stopped moving.
I wanted her attention. I wanted her focus. I wanted everything from Bexley Anne Heath.
I also wanted to get the words right the first time because I’d never said them before in my life.
“I love you,” I told her earnestly, enjoying how shocked she looked. “I feel like I’ve loved you my whole life. When you left, I felt like part of me was missing, like there was a hole somewhere that I wouldn’t ever be able to fill.”
Dropping her head down, so her forehead was on my shoulder, she whispered, “ Logan .”
“I don’t have that empty space anymore. Now I feel like everything’s in place, and I’m finally happy, Bexley, all because of you. I love you more than I’ll ever be able to put into words, and I promise I’ll show you how much every day for the rest of our lives.”
Pulling out of her slightly, I pressed back through her tight walls, groaning as they squeezed me.
“I love you,” she whispered in my ear as she lifted her head. “I love you more than the tide loves the moon, and I promise I’ll show you how much every day for the rest of our lives.”
Turning my head to meet her mouth, I kissed her as I started thrusting back into her until she was crying out and I’d joined her.
It was a turning point in our relationship, but it felt like everything we experienced was a turning point in it. Did couples ever stop having those moments? It felt like they built the relationship and like they anchored it in place.
I wanted to have more of them so that we were a solid unit.
As the feeling came back into my body and my legs stopped feeling like they were going to give out, I nudged her jaw with my nose and kissed her slowly .
“Nothing’s ever going to hurt you,” I promised her, and I meant it. “I’m going to make sure of it.”
“That wasn’t a proposal, was it?” she mumbled into my mouth, twisting her hips to show what she meant and making me smile.
“No, baby. You’ll know it when I do it.”
“Thank God,” she sighed, leaning back against the wall again. “ If I got married—and that’s a big if because I don’t feel the need to do it—there’s no way I could go around telling people that story when they asked.”
Bursting out laughing, I lowered my hands so that she could put her feet on the ground and pulled out of her slowly. “I’m fairly certain most of them have stories like that. They just choose to make up pretty ones, so their kids never know.”
The thoughtful and horrified look on her face as she considered this made me throw my head back and burst out laughing…
That was until I realized my parents could also be one of those couples.
“Why didn’t y’all move in with your parents?” Raoul asked as he leaned back in his chair. “The walls can’t be that thin.”
The motel in Piersville was owned by a woman called Hyacinth, who was the oldest resident of the town and hell on wheels. In fact, that was the name of the motel.
“Hyacinth’s place is beautiful,” DB said, reclining in his chair. This was the calm before the storm, and shooting the shit was helping all of us.
Looking like he hadn’t slept all night—which was true, seeing as how he’d been assisting the crime techs with what we’d found yesterday—Alejandro frowned into his cup of coffee. “Why are there lumps in the coffee today?”
“We had to use the old creamer because someone forgot to pick it up,” Raoul replied, pointing at Garrett. “I won’t say names, though.”
“Nice,” Garrett drawled, rubbing his eyebrow with his middle finger. “Excuse me if I had bigger things to worry about this morning.”
“Not as big as moving into a motel called Hell On Wheels,” Alejandro muttered, getting up and pouring his coffee out into the sink and settling on just having it black this time.
“Yeah, so explain why you moved into the motel while we wait for the others,” DB said as he took a mouthful of his coffee and made a face. “Damn, I can’t get past the lumps. I want to try, but it’s just not happening.”
Chuckling, Raoul picked up his cup. “Imagine what it’s doing to your guts.”
Knowing they’d just keep picking away, I figured it was best just to answer now and get it over and done with. “We moved into the motel because of the babies and Doyle. My parents have their own pets, and we didn’t want the kittens to get scared. Bexley’s parents can get… hectic.”—i.e., they were freaking weird when you least expected it— “And her dad tends to do home improvement stuff when you least expect it, and we weren’t sure if something he did would be bad for them to inhale or be around. They also have a bird, and we weren’t sure if it and Prince would mix well.”
Looking intrigued, Raoul leaned forward. “So, as you know, Rose’s parents ain’t exactly normal. What kind of hectic and home improvement shit are we talking about? Chains from the ceiling? Crosses on the walls?”
I couldn’t hold back the shudder that came out of me at the thought. “No, that’s just wrong, man. All I’m saying is that her mom decided to take up belly dancing two weeks ago on a whim, so it isn’t unusual for her to put music on and bang these little finger symbols together.
“Kenton does things like suddenly touch up a wall or shave down a door. Hell, last time we were at their house, he disappeared, and all we could hear was hammering from the kitchen. When we went through, he’s on his hands and knees, breaking up a floor tile to replace it because he thought it looked weird.”
All of them went silent, but DB’s eyebrows went up like he could understand the guy doing that.
Yeah, sure, so could I, except for one detail.
“The floor was laid fifteen years ago. It took him that long to decide he didn’t like the tile. He removed it before he found where they’d put the leftover tiles back then—which took us over an hour, by the way. Having loud music, chipped tiles, cement, grouting, whatever he’s doing, isn’t good for the babies, Prince or Doyle. They could get hurt or ingest it.”
Sighing, Alejandro leaned back. “Gotcha.”
“You know,” DB mused, a small smirk on his face. “You sound like a daddy.”
“Do not put that out into the world,” I growled, glaring at him. “It wasn’t that long ago your daughter was shitting across a floor.”
Garrett and Tamsin had babysat for DB and his wife Tabby once, and while they did it, their daughter had proven exactly how unpredictable a baby’s stomach could be. From what I’d heard, Garrett had almost thrown up while they were dealing with it, and Tamsin had lost her favorite toothbrush in the cleanup.
We were talking projectile diarrhea on the floor, and that was something we didn’t need in our lives right now (or ever).
“Hey,” Garrett barked, “you weren’t there. You have no idea the nightmares I have after that. It was like something out of a horror movie, like pea soup from the ass that never stopped.”
“Wow,” Mark drawled from the door. “And I thought my family was weird. I’m so glad we turned up when we did.” His words didn’t match the sarcastic tone of his voice, FYI. But he wasn’t wrong when he said his family was weird.
All of us watched as he, Carter, and Alex came into the room, automatically going over to where the coffee was waiting for them .
“Are we warning them about the creamer?” Raoul whispered out of the corner of his mouth, getting a headshake from DB.
Once they were all seated, DB launched straight in.
“Surprise, we sent Naomi out to a call at the retirement home after another situation broke out between two of the occupants. She managed to settle it down and get them all discussing a television show within ten minutes.”
Carter whistled. “Well, damn. I still have the shirt they ruined when I went there. How did she do it?”
The retirement home in town regularly had disputes between the occupants. It was like a reality show, but one that none of us wanted to witness. Those old people were brutal, and we’d all experienced the pain of those calls, both mentally and physically.
“Why did you send her?” Raoul asked, watching with a smile on his face as Alex took a sip of his coffee and then scowled into the cup.
“It wasn’t an actual call out, more of a check-in. I asked her to do a review of the place, and while she was there, a fight broke out. She just waded in and settled it, so they’ve requested her as a contact in the department.”
“If she gets called to a dispute there, I’m going with her,” Carter said, looking pissed off. “She can’t go on an official capacity because she’s not an officer, but I’ll go as her back up.”
“Agreed,” DB nodded. “Now, onto yesterday. The techs uncovered a body in the basement of the cordoned-off property that Alejandro and Logan looked at yesterday. I’m not sure if y’all are aware of what they came across, but the body was buried under dirt, and they were planning to pour the concrete on top of it. Unfortunately, the mixer broke, and a burst pipe up the hill moved water into the space, making the dirt liquid.”
“It was mud,” Alejandro clipped. “And they hadn’t leveled it off properly, so a lot of it moved down to the lower part of it, meaning his arm was uncovered and up in the air.”
Pretty much .
“And has the body been identified yet?” Garrett asked. “You guys said it was Jordy’s friend, Ashesh Morash, but it could still be Cullan Watts.”
There were a lot of differences between the two men, so I was able to answer this. “Cullan Watts has ginger hair, pale white skin, is roughly five feet and six inches tall and weighs about one-twenty. Ashesh has dark brown hair, is six feet tall, and weighs about two-eighty. Trust us when we say—it’s more likely to have been Ashesh or someone else who was part of their group.”
“It was Ashesh,” DB confirmed, looking at a piece of paper. “Fingerprints match, but they’re going to run DNA just to confirm, and his mom’s coming from Alabama to identify him. A preliminary autopsy shows ligature marks around his neck, but nothing else has been reported so far. We also have an update on Jordy’s autopsy—the shot to his chest happened hours after he died, so that’s what we think was the shot to get residue on Cinder’s hand.”
None of this was a surprise to any of us, but it still didn’t give us many answers.
Shuddering at the mouthful of coffee he’d just taken, Mark put the cup down and pulled a face. “Any idea where he was killed?” he choked out, covering his mouth with his hand afterward. “Jesus, that’s disgusting.”
“No, we don’t know where he was killed yet. Cinder’s breathing by herself, but she’s not in the clear yet. Her brain activity is looking okay and normal, though, so we just have to stay positive. Her detail is being passed over to Palmerstown P.D., who’ve offered their assistance with her and the investigation. This frees us up to have a look around for the place Jordy was killed and to figure out what’s going on with the Kirkwoods and their involvement with this.”
Standing up, Alex hit a button on the laptop that was sitting on a table in the corner, attached to a projector.
“My turn. I’ve compared the specs given in the magazine of Dirk Kirkwood’s house to the original plans. We also have updates that were filed, like the extension he had added twenty years ago. I’m not going to draw it out because we don’t have time, but here are the plans from the magazine placed over the original plans.”
Pictures of the three levels of the house appeared on the wall.
“The original plans are in black, the new layout is in red,” he explained, moving around the table to stand next to the image. “If we discount the extension from it and focus on the original three floors of the property, you can see that on the second floor, the study’s smaller than the original measurements. There’s also an anomaly in this room here, which is marked as bedroom number four.”
There were definitely significant differences between the measurements if this was all correct. One area stood out to me, though. At the bottom of both plans was a note about the basement having a habitable layout.
“There’s something on both plans about the basement. What’s that about?”
“Oh, you can use it for more than storage because of a damp course and things like that. Sometimes people chose to cut corners back then so that it was cheaper, and a damp course was one of those. It led to problems with foundations, rotting boards, subsidence, and big structural issues. The person who filed these made sure to point out they hadn’t cut corners and that the basement would be suitable for habitation by someone, to increase the value and, I guess, the notoriety of the property at the time.”
I couldn’t ever have done a job like that. There were too many issues and avenues that needed to be dealt with to make sure houses were safe.
I wonder if Bex’s family had done that when their house was built? I’d never been into the basement, maybe I should check it out?
I was about to ask another question when the door burst open, and Naomi came running in.
“Call from the school. Someone’s shooting at it.”