Chapter 15 #2
“He offered me a beer, clearly misinterpreting the tension in my body as nervousness over what he thought was a hookup. I declined, but there was a moment where I thought, what the fuck am I doing? I almost just left. Let it go and let the police deal with him.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t. Every time I thought about Sutton—”
“You really love her, don’t you?” he asked without a hint of judgement.
I nodded. “I have since I was nineteen.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “None of us knew.”
“You weren’t supposed to,” I said with a shrug. “Everything was so new. We became really good friends in our first year of college. One day, things…changed.”
My brother got a faraway look in his eyes. “Yeah. I get it.”
I bet you do.
“I had been about to leave Ryan, though. And then he opened his goddamn mouth.”
In the memory, I had my back to Ryan, so it took a moment for his words to penetrate my psyche, but I’d never forget them as long as I lived.
“How’d you feel about letting me tie you up later?” he asked, his voice in a low tone I was sure he thought was seductive. “I have a bit of a…kink. I like it more when they fight me.”
Even then, after landing in this mess of his own making, after being forced to hide out in a remote mountain cabin because he’d put his hands on something that didn’t belong to him and taken what hadn’t freely been given, he still hadn’t learned his goddamn lesson.
I decided I had to be the one to teach it to him.
With a calm I hadn’t felt, I’d turned around, my temper barely leashed.
After that, everything happened quickly.
I told him he could tie me up, but I wanted to take a walk first, wanted to talk.
He happily agreed, lacing up his boots and putting on a coat, hat, and gloves.
I rushed out into the March chill after him, and we walked a path along a ridge, high above a tree-filled valley, following his exact path, stepping exactly where he stepped.
“And when we got to the top…I pushed him.”
I’d felt zero remorse as I watched his body fall. In fact, my overwhelming emotion at the time had been relief, knowing he’d never be able to hurt another person.
“Fucking hell, man,” Trey said, slotting his fingers into his hair and tugging at the roots. “And you just…got away with it.”
“By the time they managed to find him, a few weeks had passed. Between scavengers and general decomp, there hadn’t been much left except his bones.
My guess is the investigators hadn’t seen any reason to question the scene they’d stumbled upon.
They’d chalked his death up to accidental and moved on.
Guess all my training with the department came in handy. ”
Trey barked out a laugh that startled me. “God, this county elected a sheriff who killed a guy. That’s…something, little bro.”
The irony of it was not lost on me, of course.
But I didn’t regret it. Not for a single second had I wished I could go back to those woods and not have pushed him off that cliff.
I slept better at night knowing one less predator stalked the streets, hiding in plain sight as a rich pretty boy frat asshat.
That night, when I’d been driving back to Boise, I’d made a vow to myself to do everything by the book from that moment forward. Sure, people called me uptight. My siblings ribbed me endlessly for the rigidity with which I managed my department and my life.
But I’d seen my darkest side, had allowed that beast free, and only my carefully constructed control and refusal to operate outside the law in any way kept it at bay now.
“Do you hate me?” I asked quietly, staring intently into my glass of bourbon like it could solve all of my problems.
“Of course not,” Trey said, and I flicked my gaze up to his to make sure he was telling the truth. I saw nothing but honesty on his face. “But what exactly do you need from me?”
“I need you to make sure this stays buried.”
My brother regarded me thoughtfully for a moment, then surprised me by heading for his kitchen to pull out ingredients for dinner.
“Hungry?” he asked me.
“Not really,” I said. It’d been a few hours since lunch, and I was known for a seemingly interminable appetite, but right now, the thought of food made me queasy.
Ignoring the ticking time bomb I’d dropped on his counter, my older brother worked methodically around the kitchen, chopping vegetables, then scraping the peppers, onions, and mushrooms into a pan sizzling with oil. In another, chicken fried, and his rice cooker steamed nearby.
We didn’t speak, but I had to admit, it smelled amazing, even if my stomach was all tied up in knots.
Seemingly hours later, Trey plated his stir fry and took the seat next to me at the island.
“You gonna tell me what that’s about?” he asked, jerking his chin at the envelope. “Or are you just here to enjoy my company?”
“I’ve never enjoyed your company a day in my life,” I quipped, but reached out and brought the envelope toward me.
Wordlessly, I pulled out the contents and arranged them chronologically in front of him, allowing him to peruse while he ate. When he finished, he slid his bowl to the side and brought an article closer, the one that first announced the sexual assault.
“He looks like a douche.”
I snorted, some of the tension leaving my shoulders, but quickly sobered. “He was a fucking predator masquerading as a preppy frat bro.”
“So what’s the problem?” he asked. “These yours?”
“Shit, I wish,” I said. “Unfortunately, this lovely little care package was delivered to my office today.” I flipped the index card, which I’d held onto until now, toward him. “With this.”
Trey lifted it and read the two lines, eyes wide when he angled his head to look at me.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“That makes two of us,” I agreed with a humorless chuckle, dropping my head into my hands. “The only person in the world who knows what I did is you.”
“You haven’t told anyone else? Not even Sutton?”
“Fuck no. And even if I had told her, she would never.”
I wasn’t sure about a lot these days, but I was sure about that. Like Trey, I knew if Sutton was aware of my deepest, darkest secret, she’d take it to the grave.
A long, extended silence descended, both Trey and I lost in our own thoughts until he broke it.
“Is there anyone from back then that could have figured out what you did? Someone who was part of the investigation or close to the family that just refused to let it go?”
One name immediately came to mind.
“Detective Chadwick. Boyd told me he was the one who tipped him off that the warrant for his arrest had been issued.”
Trey got up and reset his kitchen, putting the remaining stir fry into a container, clearing the stove and loading the dishwasher, while I ran a quick Google search on Detective Richard “Rip” Chadwick.
The good news: an obituary didn’t come up so he seemed to still be alive.
The bad news: he retired over a decade ago.
Conveniently, not long after Ryan Boyd was confirmed dead.
Once his kitchen was set to rights, Trey and I retreated to his bat cave. Seated in front of the bank of monitors, Trey tapped away at the keys, drawing up a dialogue box before looking at me.
“Name?” I provided it, and he typed it in. “Alright, what do you want me to do?”
“I want everything on this guy.”
Trey raised a brow at my tone. “Everything?”
“Everything,” I confirmed. “No stone unturned.”
“Could be opening a can of worms here, little bro,” he mused, though he went to work.
“Bring it on.”