Chapter 11
Ethan
The lift doors shut between the only person I want to be with and me, and I nearly put my fist through the panel.
This is fucking wrong.
Every instinct I have is screaming at me to go back upstairs, barricade the door, drag Annabelle into my lap, and keep her there until this whole city burns itself out.
Instead, I stand in a steel box dropping floor by floor, jaw locked, spare gun tucked into the back of my jeans, phone in my hand, and force myself to keep moving.
Because she is right.
I hate that almost as much as I hate leaving her.
The doors open into the underground car park. I step out fast, scan the concrete expanse, and head for my Porsche. My thumb is already over my phone. I ring Aidan first.
Voicemail.
I hang up and ring Callan.
Voicemail.
“Fuckers,” I mutter, yanking open the driver’s door. “Two useless cunts who are making me leave Annabelle. I’m going to kick their arses so hard, dead or not.”
I get in and start the engine, then call Annabelle before I even pull out.
She answers on the second ring. “Hello?”
The sound of her voice loosens something vicious in my chest. “First ring. Leave it longer, and I turn around. Are you in the bathroom?”
“Yes.”
“Do not move.” I hang up and leave it about thirty seconds before I dial back.
This time, she answers on the first ring. “Ethan.”
“Good girl,” I grit out and hang up. I pull up the data I have on Callan’s phone and when he was last online. I head straight to the spot, which, as it turns out, is a fucking crime scene with a blown camper van on the side of the road.
There are still law enforcement milling about, so I keep rolling. Callan must’ve lost his phone in whatever the hell happened here. Aidan’s hasn’t been on since he called to say he was bringing Jack to the apartment.
I drive two streets over, cut into a side road, and stop under a row of dead office windows. Either they torched the van themselves, or they were ambushed. I’m leaning towards an ambush. They would’ve had to move fast, but with Aidan injured, that wouldn’t have been easy.
My gaze scans the area, and I bring it up on my phone to see it from overhead.
The passenger door opens, and I sit forward, hand going around the back to my gun, when a woman slides in. Dark shades on, hair under a beanie hat. “Oh fuck, right off,” I snarl and pull the gun, levelling it at her face. “You have two seconds to tell me what you did to my brothers.”
“Drive, Ethan,” Maeve says, putting her seatbelt on. “They haven’t reached the warehouse yet, and when they do, they are going to find a dead Detective Inspector.”
Cursing her, I slam the car into gear and drive with my knee and one hand while the other keeps the gun levelled at my mother. “Talk now, or I blow your head clean off and walk away a happy man.”
Maeve turns her head slowly towards the gun as if it bores her. “You were always dramatic.”
“I get that from you.” I take the next corner too fast and force the Porsche back into line. “Where are Aidan and Callan?”
“Alive when I last saw them.”
I laugh once. It is cold even to my own ears. “That is a piss-poor explanation.”
“I didn’t kill them.”
“The window in my penthouse says otherwise.”
She gives a tiny sigh, like I am a tedious child. “That shot was for Jack.”
I tighten my hand around the gun. “You miss my girl by inches, and I’m meant to take comfort in your fucking accuracy?”
Her head turns a fraction. “Your girl.”
“Don’t.”
“No, I think I will. You’ve all gone remarkably primitive over her.”
Every muscle in my body goes hard. “Say another word about Annabelle, and I redecorate the windows.”
“You won’t. You need information.”
I put my foot down harder instead. Maeve does not even blink.
“Start with Detective Inspector who?”
“Tony Briggs.” She adjusts the seat as if we are on some civil little drive through the city. “He killed Christa.”
I nearly drop the gun. Jesus. This is the blame game played with the highest stakes.
She turns her head towards me. Dark glasses. Blank face. Poison under the skin. “You believe me.”
“I plead the right to remain silent. Why did he kill Christa when Jack thought it was you?”
“You’d have to ask Jack. I had nothing to do with it. Christa and I were friends. We were working together.”
“On what?” I loathe myself, but I’m curious.
“To bring down corrupt police officers.”
I can’t help the eyeroll. “Oh, the fucking irony.”
“Be glib, Ethan, but it’s true. I am not innocent, never was. But I am not a fucking serial killer. Briggs deserved what he got. He killed Christa, countless other women and was stalking Annabelle.”
“And you weren’t?”
“Stalking, protecting. Call it whatever. I promised Christa I would look out for her if anything ever happened to her. Just like she did with me and you three boys.”
“Jack tells a very different version of you.”
“Of course he does. He hates me. He never wanted to marry me in the first place. I got pregnant. We had you three. He felt trapped.”
“So now this becomes a tale of he said, she said.”
“And who do you believe?”
“I don’t believe the man who decided to let us all think he was a murdering fucker to try and build a case against you. I don’t believe the woman who claims she is some kind of fucking vigilante.”
“Christa was raped. The police let her down. Badly. We met in a therapy group.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I grit out. “If you are lying about this, that makes you the most despicable person on the planet, and trust me, the competition is high.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Who was it?”
“Briggs.”
“And she just shook that off and started fucking Jack? I don’t buy it.”
“It was about two years before she met Jack. She fell hard for him. I didn’t blame her. I wasn’t jealous; in fact, I was relieved.”
“You were meant to be dead.”
“Yes. So I could keep building my case against Briggs, Bennett, Arnold, Cooper and Fletcher.”
“A case.” I frown, but then shake my head. “This doesn’t explain why Jack thinks you are a serial killer and has evidence to back it up.”
“He thinks he has evidence. He can’t because I’m not a serial killer,” she says, so exasperated, I almost believe her.
“I have a headache,” I mutter and pull into a deserted parking lot on the other side of town.
“Welcome to the fucking club.”
“Why were you sending texts to Annabelle? Taunting her?”
Maeve turns her face towards me. “I wasn’t.”
“Bullshit.”
“I wasn’t sending them.” Her voice stays maddeningly level. “That was Briggs. He had a fixation on Christa that transferred to Annabelle. The butterfly thing came from a tattoo that Christa had on her wrist. He kept trophies. Notes. Photographs. He liked patterns.”
My stomach turns. “And you expect me to believe you found this all out to conveniently deny every fucked-up thing happening around Annabelle.”
“I expect you to consider that Jack has spent years building one story, and I have spent years trying to stay alive long enough to prove another.”
“This is fucked-up.”
“It is. But it doesn’t start with me. It starts with the police ring, thinking they can rape and kill and get away with it.”
So no one was paying them off. They were covering for each other. I feel sick because I believe her. I wish I didn’t. “You thought faking your death was the only way to bring them down?” I ask quietly.
Maeve looks out through the windscreen. “It was the only way to disappear from all of them at once. Jack included.”
I keep the gun aimed at her face. My arm aches. I don’t lower it. “That still doesn’t answer the bodies.”
Her jaw hardens. “Not every dead woman was killed by the same person.”
“That is a very careful fucking sentence.”
“Because this is a careful truth.” She turns back towards me. “Briggs killed some. Fletcher killed some. Bennett handled clean-up on two that I know of. Jack found pieces of things and stitched them together into the shape of me because it was easier than imagining the rot was wider.”
I stare at her. “You’re telling me there’s a group of bent police raping women, killing some of them, and somehow you’ve spent years dancing round them like a ghost instead of going public.”
“Christa wanted to go public, she died. If any of the other women went public, they got written off as unstable, promiscuous, drunk, hysterical, confused, vindictive, or dead. Pick whichever word makes you feel best. I was playing the long game.”
“And you let your sons think their father murdered you.”
“I had to.”
“Did they frame you? Is that why Jack thinks it’s you?”
“Possibly. I don’t really know. It hasn’t stopped. They’ve just been more careful.”
“And you came out of the woodwork now, because?”
“Because Briggs stopped waiting and started escalating. Because Jack dragged old bones into the light. Because one of us was going to die soon, and I’d prefer it not be me.”
“Where are Aidan and Callan now? And Jack?”
“We scattered when we heard the sirens. Briggs arranged for the van fire, herded them into the warehouse, but I was already tracking Briggs. I got to him before he got to them.”
“I hate you,” I mutter.
“Keep telling yourself that. Annabelle isn’t safe just because Briggs is dead.”
“She sent me to find Callan and Aidan.”
“They probably went out the back door like I did. If Aiden was bleeding out, maybe they kept going straight into the field out the back of the industrial estate.”
“And if they didn’t?”
“Then we find out,” Maeve says.
I want to put a bullet through her sunglasses, but instead, I turn the car around and head back the way we came.