Page 17

SEVENTEEN

Liam

When we pull up outside of Cameron’s home, Gabriel gets to see why we can’t just “roll on by.” We can’t even see Cameron’s house that’s a good distance off the road and hidden by trees. There’s a pasture to the side where cattle roam and a couple of barns out back. One looks like an old milking parlor, even though the cattle he now has aren’t dairy.

“Alright… we saw enough. Let’s go home and be good,” Gabriel says.

“What if we called it in and said we heard a gunshot and someone screaming, ‘Help, Cameron the Shithead shot me after he abducted me, and I need that hot detective to come save me.’ She’s talking about you, of course. Everyone will know that. There will be no confusion.”

“I just… strangely, I feel like that might be one hundred percent illegal.”

“How hot you are? I mean… maybe, but they can cry about it all they want.”

Gabriel gives me a look as he raises his eyebrow. “No. Calling in a fake gunshot,” he says, which is foolish of him to believe, but I love him, so he can pretend. “Let’s call the department and see if they have anything more on him. Maybe see if this wife of his will come in?”

“She said she had no reason to, and we had no way to force her,” I remind him.

Gabriel’s quiet for a moment. “We can’t just walk up there. If either of us got caught, the case would be ruined. We can’t chance that.”

“Fine, fine. Then we might as well head home and stare at each other there,” I say as I put the car in drive right before I hear a gunshot.

“Gabriel… Gabriel, I heard a gunshot.” I’m trying my absolute hardest not to look so goddamn excited about this, but it’s rather difficult. I just don’t want Gabriel to be left questioning my manic grin.

Gabriel shakes his head. “There’s no way that was a gunshot.”

“It was very much a gunshot.”

He sighs, having no legit way to convince me otherwise when we both clearly know what a gunshot sounds like. “Did you stage this? To get me to cave?”

“I would never!”

“Yet the grin on your face is wildly unconvincing,” he decides.

“Perhaps… but for once, I didn’t do anything bad.”

Gabriel sighs again as he quickly calls Michaels, who he puts on speaker. “Sergeant Michaels, we have a situation. Liam and I just… happened… to be driving by Cameron’s home when we heard a gunshot. We’re going to be moving onto the property, but we need backup.”

“What the hell were you doing at Cameron’s? What is Paige doing to you?”

“We’re currently on the road, sir,” Gabriel says. “But we will be moving up to the house to see why there was a gunshot.”

“Gabriel likes it when I taint him,” I assure Michaels, who… weirdly doesn’t seem to think that’s funny.

“For the love of god, don’t get shot or hurt,” Michaels says.

“But if I get shot, I won’t have to go to Gabriel’s Terrifying Thanksgiving of Torture. Do you think someone would shoot me just a little?” I ask.

“I swear I’m about ready to if you don’t listen and be careful,” Michaels warns.

“I made sure to record that so if I ever need to blackmail you I can. Alright, bye! Love you!” I say before pressing the big red button to get rid of that nuisance. “Gabriel, we have an issue.”

“What? The fact that we’re suspiciously outside the suspect’s house when we shouldn’t be?”

“No, that Michaels didn’t say ‘I love you’ back.”

“Maybe it’s because you hung up on him, or maybe he only barely tolerates you.”

“I did blackmail him into getting me reinstated as a detective when I threatened to tell everyone about his affair, but I’m sure that’s not it,” I say.

“You did what ?”

“Darling. My sweets. My honey bun. You have to realize that the more people you blackmail, the more people you have to manipulate,” I say as I get out of the car. If we drive up, we’ll likely scare away whoever is involved. “Stay in the vehicle and run over anyone you see, especially if it’s Cameron or Donna.”

“Why the fuck would Donna be here?”

“I’m just saying that if you are ever in a position to run her over, you have my permission,” I inform him.

Weirdly, Gabriel ignores everything I’ve asked as he follows me up the driveway. The sun has long since set, so our view is rather limited, but it also means someone wouldn’t immediately see us as we make our way up to the door.

But we don’t see or hear any movement as we reach the old farmhouse. What I do see is the lights going out on the second floor.

“They clearly know we’re here,” I say.

“I see that. We don’t want to spook them before we can catch them. Can you see the side of the house from over there? If I knock, can you watch the back without being too far from me?” Gabriel asks. “I mean… they could run the other way, but they’d be running straight out into an open field with no cover.”

“I’m watching,” I confirm as he knocks on the door.

When he gets no response, he starts to demand they open up, but I don’t sense any movement from inside the house. It seems like their only duty had been to turn some lights off.

I walk out around the side of the house a moment before I hear a commotion from the larger of the barns. I shift my gun, using the side of the house for cover as I make my way back toward Gabriel who noticed the same thing.

I see movement before something rushes out.

“It’s a fucking chicken,” Gabriel says as about six chickens come dashing out, wings flapping like they might have gained the ability of true flight without realizing it.

He turns back to the house, but my attention is now on the barn.

“Let’s go this way,” I urge.

“Someone turned the light off in the house. We know someone’s in there. That was just some chickens.”

“Right… but it’s well after dusk and chickens roost at dusk. So it takes a whole fucking lot to get them to move because they have horrible eyesight at night. Something was disruptive enough to drive them out from wherever they were roosting.”

“Okay, but what about the person in the house?” he asks.

I’m torn. Something is drawing me to that dark barn, door open wide, as if inviting me. There’s obviously something inside that’s scary enough to drive the animals out. But someone had to have turned off the light in the house… right?

I lean against the house as Gabriel watches me like I have all of the answers.

“Let’s go to the barn,” Gabriel says. “Your instincts are rarely wrong, so I vote that we go there.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m never wrong,” I remind him.

“It’s okay to be wrong. I mean… realistically, Cameron wouldn’t kill Liz in his house, especially when he knows we’re watching him. I would be amazed if he even decided to leave her on the property with us taking note of him like we are.”

“That’s true,” I say as we head toward the barn. One of the chickens looks quite displeased to be out and flies to the top of a fence where it decides this will be its new roost. It’s all black, and it seems like an odd type of omen as it watches us reach the large open barn door. I swing my light back and forth as I hold my gun at the ready.

There’s a stall covered in wire mesh right when we walk in. It was likely once used for a larger animal that has since become predator-proof for the chickens. The door is open and the wire that covers the opening is drawn back. When I shine my light over it, the blood that’s caught on the small twists of metal glistens.

I nod to Gabriel who picks up on what I’m looking at before the beam of his flashlight flicks to the floor, like he’s wanting to show me the drops of blood that the light catches.

Noise draws our attention, and Gabriel looks over in the direction it’s coming from, though I can’t help but wonder if there aren’t more animals in the barn making the noise that’s currently coming from our left.

We keep moving forward, and when Gabriel’s light sweeps to the left, I see a pig watching us curiously. It quickly gets bored and moves on, out of sight. The blood is getting harder to follow, telling me the wounded person either realized they were leaving tracks for the killer, or their bleeding was slowed by something.

Toward the middle of the barn, I realize two of the stalls are housing horses. One is watching us, curious about our arrival, but the other one doesn’t look up. There’s something more interesting than us inside that stall that makes the horse snort, like it’s smelling something. It could very well be hay or something a bit more… alive.

“Watch me,” I whisper.

Gabriel nods as I slowly slide the stall door open. It runs along a metal track which means no part of it is quiet, telling me that if someone is in the stall, they entered from above. Does the killer think their victim is up in the hayloft? I can’t see an opening to it from down here, but the hay and cobwebs hanging between the floorboards above me tell me that’s likely what it’s used for.

The door slides open just enough that I can look in and see a dark mass tucked against the wooden hay manger.

“Police,” I say quietly, assuming this is the victim but refusing to let my guard down. “Put your hands up.”

They lift their head, and in the light leaking in through the stall window, I realize that it’s not Liz, as I’d thought, but Cameron. His eyes are wild as he holds a hand against his bleeding side. Blood has darkened his shirt and pants.

“Hands up,” I order, having no idea whether he’s the victim or the assailant here. Did he attack Liz and she got the upper hand? Or is there more at play here?

He lifts his hand and launches at me. Pure stubbornness keeps me from shooting him. I want to know what the fuck’s going on here, and shooting him won’t give me the answers I need. I don’t realize what he’s swinging at me until I have a hay hook slamming into my side. He rushes behind the horse who is panicked at the quick movement and shies away from him toward me, seeing me as the lesser of two evils. Clearly… the horse isn’t a very good judge of character.

Gabriel yanks me back out of the stall. “What the fuck? Were you just going to get trampled so you could brawl him?”

“Maybe. Something’s not right.”

“He still went at you with a weapon!”

“I noticed,” I say since my side stings a little. Thankfully, it wasn’t a very sharp hook and will probably just leave a bruise.

“Come on,” I urge before I hear a board creak above me. I glance up as I realize that whoever had put Cameron in that state is still in the building.

With Gabriel behind me, I carefully walk back into the stall and look up. I notice that the hayloft is open above the stalls, likely so you can throw hay down from above, but instead of hay, I find a person staring back at me. A gun goes off and I shove Gabriel back as the horse panics and plows me through the door to get out. I’m thrown forward, sending Gabriel to the ground as I hear the horse’s shoes sound off the concrete while it bolts down the aisle and out the barn door.

“Where the fuck is the way up?” I hiss as I pull Gabriel up to his feet.

“I can see Cameron running,” he whispers.

The wood above us creaks again, a little farther down, and I feel mesmerized by it. I want to hunt. I want Gabriel to remove my leash so I can pursue… but no… no… the police are heading here. I have to do everything by the book. I can’t chance anyone finding me stalking my prey.

Gabriel grabs the front of my shirt and gives me a shake, snapping my focus back to him. “Cameron seems pretty unsteady. I doubt he’ll get far but we also don’t know who shot at you. It could be someone working with Cameron or it could be Liz. We’re not going up the ladder; they could be watching it. There’s some hay stacked over there that we could use to climb up. Please be careful.”

“I hear ya.” I turn my light off as I quietly start heading toward the bales.

But the second we begin moving, the gun goes off again. There’s a succession of three shots as I realize they’re shooting down into the floorboards above us, probably to force us to draw back. Given no other choice, I swiftly jerk Gabriel back as the animals inside the barn start to panic. The noise makes it hard to tell where the person above us is going until I hear a thud on the other side of the solid wall in front of us. I don’t see an opening to the far side of the barn, so I quickly rush up the haybales, into the loft above.

“Please be careful,” Gabriel says from where he’s right behind me.

“I am,” I assure him as I see right where they’d jumped down.

“There, I just saw them slip out there,” Gabriel says as he jumps down. I quickly follow him out to where the person just fled.

“Police, drop your weapon and get on the ground,” Gabriel orders a moment before I hear a gunshot, thankfully out of Gabriel’s gun this time.

The person falls through the wide strands of the fence and rushes into the herd of cattle that had been curious but are now a bit panicked, disrupting our view. Gabriel grabs the fence before jerking back. “Fuck, it’s electric,” he hisses as he hastens to slip through it again even after getting shocked. But the issue is when he’d jerked back, it drew my attention to him, so I didn’t notice the dark figure moving toward us.

I turn fast just as Cameron swings hard, but the shovel seems to be too heavy for him in his weakened state. I grab it from him, tearing it from his hands before yanking his arm down and slamming him against the ground.

“Where is Liz Marsh?” I demand.

He stops moving, so I flip him onto his side as he makes gasping noises.

“Is he trying to die?” Gabriel asks.

“Sure is,” I respond as I hear sirens. “The medical team is needed here immediately. We need to follow the assailant.”

“I did hit them; it should have slowed them down,” Gabriel says.

“Good job,” I praise him.

“Now I have to get shocked again, dammit. Yes, you’re cute, can I get through?” He waves at the curious cow standing in his way. “Fuckity fuck fuck,” he whines as he gets shocked a bit on the way back.

“Is this a kink I don’t know about yet? Because I’m willing to know about it,” I say as he raises an eyebrow.

“Only if I get to shock you,” he retorts as he quickly makes a call before taking over with Cameron. He’s definitely better at the keeping someone alive part than I am. While he balls something up to compress the wound, I scan our surroundings, looking for anything moving, but the area is so vast and dark it’s impossible to see much of anything.

Thankfully, backup arrives, and I send some of them out in their patrol cars to scan the roads surrounding the property. A group of officers also move out on foot as the medical team tries to revive Cameron to no avail. The gunshot we’d heard must have been the reason he was slowly bleeding out. I wonder if him coming at me exerted something to the point where it finally killed him.

“I’m quite surprised you’re not racing across the woods like a madman,” Gabriel comments.

“Because the rest of the team has a huge head start on us and something else has my attention,” I say, Gabriel following as I hurry back to the two-story farmhouse. “There are already enough officers out in those fields to find the killer.” I rush up to the front door and let myself in. It looks like there was a brawl in the kitchen where the table has been shoved back and there’s blood on the tiles. The dinner that they appear to have been enjoying is half on the floor.

The other officers spread out to check the first floor as my attention goes upward. Holding my gun steady, I head up the stairs to the room where the light went off. I turn the hallway light on and see that the door is partly closed.

“You hear that?” Gabriel asks. “Sounds like water running. I wonder if his wife Jessica was attacked. This is the police, is there anyone in there?”

He pushes against the door, but it refuses to open with something in front of it. I shine my flashlight through the crack in the door and see that the light switch is covered in blood. And beyond it, there’s blood smeared across the wall in a kind of arc.

“My guess is that what’s in front of the door is a body,” I say. “See the way the blood is smeared against the wall? The lights weren’t turned off on purpose… someone fell against the wall, hitting the switch.”

I turn my phone’s camera on and slip my hand in enough to see that my theory is right when the lens of my camera picks up the body in front of the door. Since we can’t tell whether it’s an alive or dead body, our duty is to reach it quickly to see if there’s something that can be done. I push against the door until it gives enough for Gabriel to slip into the room.

“She’s dead,” he says, but he calls for the medical team to verify. I look down at Jessica and kneel to get a closer look at her chest where she’d been stabbed multiple times. The blood coating the floor and walls tells me that she didn’t go down quickly.

“The tub is running,” Gabriel states, but why would she be taking a bath when she’s fully clothed and they were clearly in the middle of dinner?

“What was she trying to get rid of?” I ask as I get up.

“Exactly what I was wondering. If she and her husband were the victims… there’s no way he’d want to attack us unless there’s something he doesn’t want us to see.”

I follow him into the attached bathroom where a laptop sits submerged in the tub full of water.

“Well… can’t help but wonder what was on there.” Gabriel uses his sleeve so he doesn’t smudge any evidence and turns off the water that’s currently overflowing onto the floor. But the room is blood free. Did she run up here and destroy the computer before she was stabbed?

He picks up the plunger and uses it to push the laptop up onto the edge of the tub, but at this point, I can’t imagine it’s not ruined.

I pull out my phone and call Michaels.

“I heard you have a bit of a mess. A body and the killer got away,” he says.

“Two bodies,” I correct. “But if you send Donna—” Gabriel’s look makes my three bodies joke die before I even get it out. What the hell is he doing trying to make me a better person? “Anyway. Do me a favor? Get Liz’s daughter and that dog of hers over here.”

“Why?”

“Because we need to find Liz. I’m convinced now more than ever that Cameron had her. But he has a hundred acres out here. I can’t fathom he’d have chosen to keep her in one of the barns when he knew we were looking into him, though he probably wouldn’t have chanced moving her far. That comes with its own risks. But I want the dog and the daughter to help us find Liz.”

“That’s rather unorthodox, don’t you think?” Michaels asks. “You’re thinking the dog’s going to find her? Is it trained or something?”

“A bloodhound’s sense of smell is one thousand times better than a human’s. And if he likes her well enough, he’s going to find her well before we would.”

“This is ridiculous, Paige.”

“Fine, let her die out there. When you find her body all shriveled up from dehydration, I want another ‘I told you so’ cake.”

“You shouldn’t ask for cake when talking about bodies, or people might think you’re strange,” Gabriel says.

“I’ve worked here long enough that I can,” I assure him.

“Listen to your partner. But… I’ll see what I can do.”

“I knew you were good for something,” I say before hanging up on him again. I kind of enjoy it.

“Something made her panic and throw the laptop in the water…” Gabriel muses. “I noticed one plate was barely touched. The other was half eaten. Did Cameron’s wife know he was abducting women? So with us questioning his involvement, she threw it in the tub? Or was it thrown in the tub in response to the person who came here?”

I hesitate as I think that through. “It looks like Cameron was shot downstairs. There was no blood that I noticed leading upstairs or in the bathroom. But if her husband had been shot and the killer could be coming for her next, would Jessica have worried about the laptop in that instance? If you’re dead, you have literally nothing to worry about… I’d go for a weapon or a gun instead of a laptop.”

“Right,” Gabriel agrees. “If the killer was fixated on the laptop, they would have at least pulled it out of the water. A tub takes quite a bit to fill. They would have come up and pulled it out, even if they knew it was damaged beyond repair. Could Cameron and Jessica have known who the killer was? The person was invited in before they said something that spooked Jessica into trying to destroy evidence. And that’s when the person attacked them.”

“It’s an interesting theory,” I say as I slip past the door and head back down to the kitchen. And that’s where I see a glass sitting on the counter. A third glass.

“I think you’re right,” I tell Gabriel. “Why pour a third cup when the other two are already full?”

“So… they were civil with them enough to welcome them in.”

“Seems so,” I say. I wander back outside in time to see Matthew having a stare-off with the loose horse.

“He likes me as much as you do, Liam,” Matthew says as the horse swishes its tail.

“Oh joy, you’re here. Why did they call you?” I ask. “Don’t they have people on the clock they could call instead?”

“Michaels called me because he said I’m the only one besides Gabriel that you tolerate working with.”

“That’s not at all correct, but since you’re here, will you do me a solid and shoot me just a little so I don’t have to go to Gabriel’s Thanksgiving?”

“What are friends for if we can’t shoot each other a little? Go on now. Which limb? Or do you want me to pick?”

“Hmm… left arm, maybe?”

Gabriel gives me a light smack. “Knock it off. Even with a bullet wound, you’re going. It would change nothing.”

I grumble, unsure how my one true love could be so vicious.