Chapter 28
AIDEN
It had been two days since I last saw him, and I could say without a shadow of a doubt, Nate was officially avoiding me. And that was not a good sign.
I sighed as I threw the phone onto the counter and braced my hands against it, with my head hanging between them. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.
He had me lying to everyone. Victoria could tell something was wrong after we had left Star Bird, but I couldn’t tell her that the man who left the office with our witness was my boyfriend, my Daddy.
A choked sob escaped from my chest as I collapsed on the floor and curled into a ball.
What the fuck was he doing there? Did he know the witness?
I wanted to go back and ask the receptionist about him, but we had already been iced out. Not to mention, if I mentioned Nathan’s name, it would have set off all of Victoria’s alarms. Hell, it had set off all of my alarms.
No, there had to be a perfectly good explanation.
He was in real estate development. It was a real estate office. He was probably just there for a meeting about a property he was interested in purchasing and developing.
As I rocked back and forth on my kitchen floor, one thing became clear. I needed to pull myself together. The behavior I was exhibiting was not befitting a homicide detective. I knew how to uncover people’s secrets.
I just never thought I’d have to dig into Nate like that.
But I knew I had to do it. Because if I kept avoiding the truth, if I kept my head in the sand because I didn’t want to know what was really going on with him, then I would always wonder.
But fuck, I wanted to trust him.
With a shake of my head, I pulled myself up onto my unsteady legs and grabbed my phone and stormed into the small bedroom I’d converted into a home office. Firing up the computer, I sat down and instantly lost my nerve.
Shit.
No. I had to do this. I deserved to know the truth.
And I knew, deep down, I should have done all this into Nate’s background when he admitted to stalking me.
The fact that I hadn’t, had been stupid and reckless and was what had gotten me into the mess I found myself in. I knew better and I had to do better.
Every time I tried to look him up, I’d always find an excuse to turn away, to turn back. But I couldn’t anymore. There were too many inconsistencies and variables that weren’t adding up, too many things that didn’t make sense.
They say the truth would set you free. Now, it was time to hope it would set me free, rather than bury me.
I tried not to take it personally, that he was ghosting me. But all evidence pointed to something shady. And I needed to know. If I had to take another day of Victoria and her looks while we were at work, I was going to lose my fucking mind.
The last thing I needed was to blow a gasket in a fucking police precinct with a bunch of other armed police officers. I’d be fired on the spot. Charges pressed. And I’d be lucky if I didn’t end up in the psych ward.
Because I felt like I was going goddamn insane.
My heart raced as I pulled up a private, untraceable browser. I could do this. Even if my hands shook as I typed his name and hit enter.
While I scrolled through the results, weeding through what I already knew and what was irrelevant, I tried to tell myself that we hadn’t been together that long. That I could handle whatever I found.
If there was anything bad, if he had any skeletons he was hiding, then I would deal with them the right way. Or, if it turned out he was just an asshole, then I would break up with him.
But deep down, I knew that wasn’t true. He was mine. There was some deep, dark, possessive part of me that had latched onto him and didn’t want to let go. I didn’t know where it had come from, and it scared the hell out of me. But it knew what it wanted, and that was Daddy.
I came across an article about his parents’ deaths and looking at a picture of young Nate shook me to my core. My eyes closed, breathing ragged as I tried to reconcile the boy in the picture with the man I knew.
He looked so young, so lost. And so cold.
There was nothing there. Looking in his eyes, it was like no one was home.
I’d gotten a glimpse or two ever since he told me the truth about his diagnosis and he felt comfortable enough not to put his walls up so high with me.
But that little boy hadn’t learned to put up any yet and it was chilling to look at.
The most shocking thing to discover was his family history. Apparently, they came from money. It was obvious he was wealthy from the cars he drove and the clothes he wore, but I hadn’t realized it was something he had inherited, not that it made a difference to me.
I loved him either way.
The thought rocked me and I fell back in my chair.
Despite everything, I still loved him. Part of me had known that. But to think it as though I didn’t have a care in the world, it pulled me up short and made me think.
It brought up another question. With all that wealth, what were they able to hide?
But I knew the only way I’d get real answers was to confront him. I had to ask him directly and not let him evade.
As I trudged to my bedroom and finished grabbing what I needed to head to work, I wondered if I was really ready to face whatever answers he gave me. I had no idea what sort of Pandora’s box I would open.
But I was more determined than ever as I pulled out of my drive and headed to the precinct. I was going to get my answers, whether Nate wanted to give them to me or not.
I pulled up to the precinct, only to have Victoria waiting for me in the lot.
She slid into the passenger seat and gave me an address. “Drive. Our guy dropped another body.”
“Shit.” That wasn’t how I wanted to start my day. Especially considering I had hoped to clock out at a decent time and confront Nate. I really didn’t want to have to put it off until the next day. But I knew the job came first. It had to.
The whole way there, she didn’t say a word, letting me know she was still pissed off at me.
Well, then, fine. She wasn’t the only one who could give the silent treatment.
I pulled up to a house in a run-down neighborhood and shot her a questioning look. “You sure this is the place?”
All of the victims had been found in remote locations up to this point. So, finding someone in a neighborhood, even one as derelict as this one, seemed out of character for our killer.
She shrugged. “That’s what they said. And from all the crime scene tape around that residence, I’d say we’re at the right place.”
I rolled my eyes at her and got out of the car, slamming the door. Pulling my badge out, I flashed it to the officer on the perimeter and walked into the house, wrinkling my nose.
The house was disgusting and it was obvious that it was from the way the victim lived and not anything the killer had done. Although, it could make finding anything the killer left behind all the more difficult.
“Well, this looks lovely.”
Victoria shot me a look as she shoulder checked her way past me.
“Tough crowd,” Ramirez joked as he came around the corner.
“You have no idea.” I sighed.
For the first time in a very long time, I felt restless. Maybe it was all the bullshit going on with Nate or maybe one person could only deal with so much death and murder before it really started to get to them.
Either way, I was starting to think I needed a vacation.
A really long one.
“Just as well,” he said with a shake of his head. “This one is baaad. The vic is actually up in his bed. But he wasn’t killed there. It’s definitely been staged.”
Fuck. I hated when we had to find a secondary location. Usually, it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
“Not only that,” he continued, “the body is in really bad shape. Guy’s been brutalized. Half of his face is gone. Preliminary ID will be based on the homeowner, but we’ll need DNA and dental records to confirm.”
I blinked at him in confusion.
“Sick fucker. Our guy is definitely devolving and spinning out of control,” Victoria muttered, popping up from out of nowhere. “He’d been going months between kills, and now it’s barely been a couple of weeks before another body dropped in our laps.”
I nodded as we walked from the foyer into the living room, my thoughts a million miles away.
Things weren’t sitting right with me over this one.
And it wasn’t just from the additional carnage done to the victim.
Something about the guy sent off warning bells as soon as I’d walked onto the scene and heard about his body.
“You check out down here and I’m going to go up and check out the body and see what forensics have to say.” I turned and walked away from her without giving her the opportunity to answer. While it might have been a dick move, I didn’t particularly care. I was feeling dickish.
“Casey,” I greeted the one tech who was leaning against the wall in the upstairs hall. “That bad?”
She nodded, her eyes looking haunted. “Yeah, Aiden. It’s that bad. I’m going to have nightmares about his face for a long fucking time.”
I grimaced. She was a tough cookie who didn’t toss her cookies easily. If she was spooked and feeling squeamish over the state of the body, it was definitely not pretty.
“Why don’t you go get some air?”
She nodded, though I didn’t think she really heard me. I pulled on a fresh pair of gloves and entered the bedroom where the victim was, but stayed back, since forensics was doing their thing and one of the guys was getting pictures.
I fist-bumped Oliver, their lead tech, who was standing back as a guy I didn’t know worked on getting the pictures they needed.
“What are we working with?”
“Hard to tell.” He shrugged and had the same look in his eyes as Casey. “I’d say they’re mid-thirties, maybe a little younger. Good shape. From what we could see, there were at least a dozen stab wounds, not counting the mess that was made of the guy’s face—or hands and…dick.”