Chapter Nine
He was still mad. Big mad. Mad enough that even sitting in the cab of his truck half an hour after her admission, Darius was still giving her the cold shoulder.
And Eve couldn’t take it anymore.
“I said I was sorry,” she tried. “I’m big enough to admit that maybe I crossed a line by coming to you with this now.”
Darius snorted.
“You mean breaking and entering into my house and bed and then casually telling me you’ve been lying about a homicide case? Eve, you couldn’t even turn around and see the line you’ve crossed, because it’s so far back.”
He turned off the engine and slid the key into his front pocket.
“The window was unlocked so it was entering, not breaking. And I lied to you about Gary because I didn’t even think about it until last night when I was in bed.
So it wasn’t really a lie. It was just a connection that I hadn’t made yet.
” She held up her finger. “Though, I have to remind you, as soon as I made it, I came over to you.”
“And instead of waking me up, you got under my sheets.”
The memory of the bare-chested Darius popped into Eve’s head so quick that she stumbled in her response.
“I—Well—I—” She took a breath. Her cheeks grew warm.
Darius was a looker, no contest, but she hadn’t expected looking at him like that would do as much as it had done to her.
Eve fought the urge to try and wipe the blush that was no doubt turning her cheeks as red as a Stop sign and powered through her defense.
“I figured it was better to let you sleep since this didn’t seem like a problem that would get worse with a few hours.
Plus, if I’m being honest, I haven’t been getting the best sleep over the last month or so, and your bed is a memory foam.
It would have been harder to stay awake. ”
An expression she couldn’t read flashed across his face before Darius turned to look out the windshield. In all of Seven Roads this was probably the one spot he hadn’t expected her to direct them toward.
To be fair, it had been a surprise to Eve too when she had thought about it.
“You said you think you got Gary Whittaker killed here?”
The former Grayton Steel Mill, now owned by a company called Bellview Tech, stood sentry at the edge of Seven Roads as it had since the town’s inception.
The small town could survive the earth cracking in two beneath them, but they couldn’t make it a week if the steel mill ever went out of business.
Even Eve knew this, despite being away for years.
As the employer for most of Seven Roads, it would probably outlast all of them, their children and their children.
It was one reason why she knew Darius was so hesitant to believe that Gary Whittaker had been killed inside the back quarter of the mill’s residence hall. Gary wasn’t a local. He would have had no reason to be at the steel mill, never mind the residence hall.
“Most of the dorms are empty, minus a few night workers and the weekend crews who come in twice a month,” he added before she could answer. “There’s no reason Gary should have been here.”
The residence halls were in two long buildings wrapped in brick abutting the edge of one of the steel mill’s wire fences. They were parked at the side of the dirt road that led in from the main one. It looked as unused as the buildings themselves.
Eve squared her jaw.
“Because I told someone once this is the last place even a local would go for trouble.”
“Someone? Do you mean Mitchell?”
Eve opened the truck door. All humor and teasing she’d had in her for the man behind the wheel was gone. The blush at her cheeks had already cooled before the cold outside met her.
“If I’m right, I’ll explain everything,” she said skirting his retort. “Until then, can you trust me?”
She formed it as a question but didn’t wait for an answer. Eve shut the door before he could respond. She was crossing the line again, she was sure. A detective was asking her valid and reasonable questions.
And she was telling him all hands inside the cart until the ride has come to a complete stop.
Even if he hadn’t been the law, it was asking a lot given the situation.
What could she do but go forward?
Darius, at least, didn’t fight her on it.
He walked around the hood of the truck and fixed his belt.
In between Eve sneaking back out of his window and across the side yard to his truck and him leaving the house, he had put himself into a good pair of jeans and a gray-and-black bomber jacket.
Along with his height, it created a look of casual but potent intimidation.
That went double when his voice ground out low.
“Let’s go, then.”
The gate wasn’t anything to speak of, and the same went for any security cameras or guards in the area. Darius commented on it as he nudged the gate open with his shoulder and motioned her through.
“Theo used to work here part-time in the cafeteria and said the new management cares as much as the old crew about keeping the back quarter guarded.”
“So they don’t care at all either.”
He nodded.
“No reason to waste money watching nothing,” he said. “Honestly, I’m surprised they haven’t shut this entire section down. Or at least demolished it to build something else here. The new company that took it over seems to have more than enough funds to do it.”
So she had been right after all. Her off-the-cuff story about the residence halls had stayed true even after she had left town.
“Dad used to hate staying in them during his long shifts,” she said.
“He said he imagined it was like being in a college dorm, but instead of a bunch of guys goofing around and having fun in their gym shorts, the men’s residence hall was filled with grouchy men in sweaty coveralls.
And they always stole his lunch out of the fridge. ”
Darius slowed as they approached the first pathway leading to the women’s residence hall to their right. She quieted. Other than their footsteps, there were no other sounds.
The one-story building was an eerie setting against the cold silence.
She waited for Darius to make a silent decision. Once he kept moving to the path that led to the men’s residence hall to the left, she followed.
Her stomach started to twist as they got closer. Her nerves sharpened. Eve almost jumped when Darius spoke low again.
“How is your dad doing?” he asked. “I didn’t see him at the wedding.”
Eve had been asked countless times over the last few months why her father wasn’t attending the wedding. Why her family wasn’t there. If she realized how sad that would look in pictures. In the press.
Or how lucky she was to have no one there but Scott Keys and his family and associates.
She had had the same stock responses ready to go until they had become a reflex instead of a response.
It’s why the lie almost came out first.
Eve ran her thumb across the scar on her hand and pulled the truth out instead. At least, the truth about why he wasn’t there.
“He didn’t know about it, actually. The wedding, I mean.” Darius’s wide eyes swung her way at that. “That sounds bad, but it’s not that big of a deal. He’s met Mitchell and knows we’re engaged but never has been a fan of these flashy kinds of events. So I decided not to bother him with it.”
“Not to bother your dad with your wedding?”
Eve winced at the guilt that came from hearing that come right back to her.
“There’s layers to the situation,” she tried.
Darius’s eyebrow went sky-high.
“Layers,” he deadpanned.
She nodded.
“Yeah. You know every relationship is different with their own layers. Their own issues or complications. That’s me and Mitchell. No need to pull in my dad for something like this.”
They walked up the steps of the men’s residence hall, but he stopped at the door. Eve thought he was about to do some nifty law-enforcement move before entering a potential crime scene. Instead, he turned to face her head on.
“Complications like you and Mitchell not actually being a real couple.”
The lie never had a chance to form.
The truth was already in between them before Eve could clock it.
“Yeah.”
Darius didn’t flinch.
She opened her mouth to take it back, to try to cover it up—to do something—but all Eve could do was stare.
A different kind of blush crawled up her neck. Embarrassment.
She wanted to ask how he had figured it out so quickly, and she knew there was no way to convince him otherwise now, when something finally cut through the silence around them.
A car door shut in the distance behind them.
They both turned toward the direction of the gate. From where they were standing they couldn’t see the gate itself, never mind what car had pulled up.
Darius’s hand went to the inside of his jacket.
“Are you expecting anyone out here?” he asked.
Eve shook her head.
“I wasn’t even expecting us to be out here until late last night.”
She heard a button click as his hand moved within the jacket’s folds.
“And no one knows you’re out here?” Darius added. “What about Mitchell? You said you told him about this place once.”
She shook her head again. The sound of metal moving rattled from the direction they were staring. Someone had gone through the gate.
“No one knows I’m out here,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper. Darius had turned, and with the movement he pulled his service weapon from his shoulder holster. He kept it down as she grabbed at the elbow of his other arm.
Eve realized a few beats too late what he had said.
The need to correct him rose with an anxiousness that made her stomach grow cold.
“And it was Scott I told about this place by accident, not Mitchell.”
Footsteps could be heard crunching over some of the leaves that had been brave and quick enough to fall and change with the burst of cold weather. Soon whoever was coming would be in their field of vision.
However, Darius turned to her so fast that Eve nearly yelled in surprise.
When he spoke, his voice was so deep that the rumble felt like it went right through the fabric of his jacket and into the cold of her fingers.
“You’re after Scott, not Mitchell.”
Another truth, though there were some nuances missing. Now she could hear the footfalls. Still, it felt important to correct him once more.
“We’re both after him,” she clarified. “It’s the only way we can take him down.”
“Why?”
Relief flooded out with Eve’s next truth. Finally, she could tell someone else.
“Because all Scott Keys is is a monster in a suit.”
Darius’s eyes didn’t widen. He didn’t look shocked or mad or concerned. He didn’t look like the boy next door, and he didn’t look like the only detective in town.
He was just a man standing in front of a woman, looking as calm as could be wrapped up in a jacket and denim.
So before the gunshot went through them both, Eve couldn’t help but feel a sense of contentedness.
No matter why she was back in Seven Roads, it just felt nice to be standing on a front porch with a good man like Darius Williams.
HE KILLED THE man behind Eve in the time it took to blink. The hunting rifle in his hands hit the ground as his head tipped backward.
Darius didn’t have time to watch the unknown man’s body fall.
There was still the person approaching from the gate.
Darius used his free arm to swoop behind Eve to keep her upright and spun around enough to get his own gun aimed and ready.
The person who had been so noisy was already there with her own gun raised high. Darius’s body acted on an instinct that was much faster than any bullet would be. He threw himself and Eve back into the residence hall door with enough power that the old wood splintered at the bolt.
A gunshot cut through the air as the door gave way.
Where he should have had the time to find his balance, and Eve along with him, the world just kept turning.
He felt the floor beneath his feet crack no more than a few steps into the room. A yellow caution sticker on part of the broken door caught the corner of his eye. All Darius could do was hold Eve tight as the floor gave way.
And what he thought would be a quick fall into some kind of crawl space turned into a long plummet into darkness.