Page 4

FOUR

Liam

“She has the victim’s blood on her hand and bottom of her shoe,” Penny says as I sit in the corner of the office with my arms folded over my chest. My plan is to look grumpy enough that no one bothers me for the rest of my life.

“And insists on speaking with Liam,” Chris adds.

Matthew scoffs. “You know it’s a really bad day when someone chooses to speak to Liam. Like I totally get choosing to not speak to him. I wish every day that I didn’t have to speak to him. It’d be a blissful day at work if Liam didn’t come.”

Who am I kidding, I can’t keep my mouth shut for that long. I mean… really, the world would suffer without my voice.

“That’s not what your mom said, Matthew,” I say with a wicked grin.

His face scrunches up in disgust. “No. Just… no.”

Gabriel, who’d spoken to the woman with Matthew, looks over at me. “She claims that she knows the owner of the house the man was stabbed in and came by to drop something off. We haven’t been able to contact the homeowner yet, but the dead guy inside definitely wasn’t the owner. She said that when she saw the dead guy, she panicked and ran out of fear that the killer was still in the house.”

I nod, as though I understand. “When I see dead people, I definitely fling a bag with an iPad up where no one will see it and then run next door and break a window open to hide inside a vacant house,” I say with much sarcasm. “Sometimes I even stop to rub my fingers all over the dead guy because I like the way the blood makes them pretty, and then I rub them on things and choose to not call the police.”

“Well… you can see why it’s a bit… hard to think she’s innocent,” Gabriel says. “But we need more proof that she was involved in the actual killing. She said that she will explain more if she can speak to Liam.”

“Suspicious,” Matthew comments.

“How do you know her?” Gabriel asks me, like he’s expecting me to spill all my dirty secrets in front of my nemeses.

“What’d she look like again?” I ask, as if I don’t already know.

Gabriel clearly knows I’m procrastinating because he jabs a finger at the bathroom. “I’m going to the bathroom, and while I do, decide whether or not you’re going to talk to her,” he says before heading off.

Chris, Matthew, and Penny all stare at me like they’re expecting something either juicy or fascinating to happen. I stand up. “I’m going to go help him piss. He generally has his support cat to hold, and I don’t want him to get stage fright.”

I hurry to the bathroom and hammer on the door. “Hey, Gabriel. I feel uncomfortable out here and would feel more comfortable in there.”

He sighs and opens the door. “I really do have to take a piss.”

I slip inside and close and lock the door. “We have a problem.”

“Okay? So you do know the woman that you’re pretending you can’t remember?”

“We were in the same foster home together.”

“Oh,” he says, sounding surprised. “I never thought of that. I mean… it’s not like you generally pay attention to people enough to remember them.”

I grin, pleased at how well he knows me. “Right… but there’s a teeny-tiny little issue. Like it’s so tiny that you’re going to laugh at how tiny it is.”

Gabriel oddly looks more concerned and less like laughing. “Yeah? I feel a bit panicked now because your teeny-tiny issues are generally super-big issues,” he says. “Please let it be teeny-tiny.”

I step forward and wrap him up in my arms.

“Oh dear god. It’s getting bigger by the second.”

“I really love you.”

“Fucking hell. This is bad. How bad is this? Liam, just fucking spit it out.”

I press my lips against his ear so I can whisper it to him. “She knows I’ve killed people.”

His entire body stiffens. “She could tell someone? Fucking hell, Liam.”

“She only knows about two people. The man who killed my mom and… then one other.”

Gabriel’s body is so tense that I’m afraid he’s going to pull away from me. He seems prepared to flee, but where the hell is he going to go? “What if she tells someone? She’s going to fucking tell someone. Oh my god. Fucking hell, Liam. It’s why she wants to talk to you? She’s going to use this against you. If she’s the killer… oh fuck.”

I squeeze him tight and rub his back as I try to calm him down. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not fucking okay!” Gabriel says, sounding more panicked by the second. “This is why I can’t move in with you. Because I’m going to fall so fucking far in love with you, and then someone’s going to realize what you are and you’re going to be taken from me. Or what if you’re killed running after killers? What the fuck have I done? What have I done? I’m going to lose you. I can’t lose you.”

Shit. I shouldn’t have said anything to him, but I sure as fuck don’t like leaving huge secrets between us. I just don’t want him to leave me. I don’t want him to question why he’s with me. And I don’t ever want him to regret being with me.

I run my fingers through his hair as he tucks his head against my neck. “Gabriel, my sweets, I don’t ever want to make you worry. That’s the last thing I ever want to do. She’s kept my secret this long. We don’t even know what she wants. But I’ll only talk to her if you’re okay with me doing it.”

I take his head in both of my hands before tipping it up until it’s not tucked against me so I can see him. “And if she ends up being the killer and threatens me, we’ll let her go, and I’ll take care of the issue myself.”

Gabriel seems so torn, but he lets me kiss his cheek.

“Please don’t draw away from me. I will do anything you want. I will fix this. Please just don’t pull away.”

Gabriel tips his head so his cheek is resting in my hand as he takes a deep breath. “I’m not going to pull away from you. Let’s deal with her. I’ll be out in one minute.”

“Okay,” I say as I try for his lips and am relieved when he gives me a gentle kiss back. I really don’t want to fuck this up.

“You’re going to make me fret to death,” he complains.

“I would never .”

“Never, my ass,” he grumbles as I step out of the bathroom. When he comes out, he looks like he’s not worried in the slightest. It’s convincing enough that no one seems to suspect a thing as we make our way to the room she’s being held in.

Her head, which had been lying on the table, snaps up the instant she sees me enter.

“I’m Detective Paige and I believe you’ve already met Detective Hyde,” I say, hoping she plays along and pretends she doesn’t know me overly well. Obviously, everyone knows she’s aware of my name, but just knowing my name doesn’t mean I’ll be removed from the case. But if they knew we were in the same foster home together, I would be moved off to another case.

She stares at me while I turn off the recording device and have a seat. The audio of the camera recording us is already muted, but they’re not aware at this moment.

“You have minutes before someone realizes the audio has been muted, Abby.”

Her eyes coated in thick eyeshadow latch on to mine. Clearly, she spent as much time applying her makeup as she did trampling around the crime scene. “I’m not the killer.”

“You can say that all day long, but at the end of the day, proof is the only thing that can talk.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Proof? We need proof? That’s what fixes everything? So… say my proof is twenty-two years old, what are your thoughts on that? Is it still proof?”

I grin as I lean forward. “Abby, Abby, Abby. You really don’t want to fuck with me.”

Her eyes narrow, like she’s prepared to fight me on this. “I will not go to prison.”

“Then prove that you’re not involved.”

She looks away before meeting my eyes again. “I… don’t know what more I can say or do to prove it. But I guess that’s what you’re here to do,” she says. “I mean… you’re a homicide detective? You? How cute.”

I give her a smirk, just daring her to say more.

“If you’re innocent, we will prove it. But we’re not going to be blackmailed,” Gabriel growls.

“Oh? He knows? Well, that’s fun,” she says.

“Abby, you’ve never been very good at asking for help. You think the only way anyone will ever help you is by conning them or seducing them. If you’re innocent, act it.”

She hesitates before looking away because she hates it when people know her. She always has, and evidently, she hasn’t changed. There’s a knock on the door, drawing our attention off each other as Chris comes in. “Excuse me. Technical issues,” he says. “You should be good now.”

“Thank you,” Gabriel responds.

Abby takes a deep breath and then rubs her face. She’s always been a good actor, so I have to pick through pieces of it to tell what’s the truth and what are lies. She’s conniving, manipulative, and feeds off others.

But that’s how she was able to survive.

“I was swinging by to see my friend Mitch. It’s his house. I knocked, but he didn’t answer, so I assumed he was playing video games. He knew I was coming over, so I let myself in like I usually would.”

“If he knew you were coming over, why wasn’t he there?” I ask.

“You’d have to ask him. I don’t know. I let myself in, and that’s when I saw the person in the chair. Thinking it was Mitch, I hurried over and grabbed him… that’s how I got the blood on my hand.”

“You didn’t see the blood on the floor?” Gabriel asks. “Or smell it when you walked into the room?”

“I don’t know, I guess I’m not used to the smell of blood,” Abby says, which is a lie. “And I was distracted, staring at my phone as I walked in. I just… I didn’t think anything was off, so I didn’t catch anything beforehand. When I touched him, I saw the blood and rushed around the chair where I saw… where I saw that it was a man I didn’t know… who was clearly dead.”

“What happened then?”

“I assumed the attacker was a robber, and I was afraid that if they saw me holding something, they’d attack me, so I threw my iPad on top of the cabinet and ran out the back door. I heard a gunshot, and in my panic, I broke the window to the neighbor’s house and hid inside.”

I hesitate as that gunshot resurfaces. “Was someone shooting at you?”

“I… I don’t think so. I never heard or saw anyone. The gunshot freaked me out, though. I thought for sure it meant they saw me, so I broke into the house to break their line of sight.”

“Why not call the police then? You had your phone on you,” Gabriel questions.

“I don’t trust the police,” she says.

“You had marijuana on your person, is that why?” Gabriel asks. “Why not toss it and call?”

“The last one I’d ever call would be the police.”

“Why’d you run?”

“Because I didn’t trust you,” she tells him.

Gabriel glances at me, and I resume questioning Abby. “Let’s circle back to this gunshot. How many times was the gun fired?”

“Once.”

“Do you have a time?”

“No, I didn’t pause to look at my clock when running.”

“What time did you see the body? You said you were on the phone when you arrived. Had you sent a text message?”

“Oh! I was texting a friend who asked if she could drop by my apartment. I told her I probably wouldn’t be home. I was planning on going out with Mitch.”

“Can we have permission to look at your phone to prove what you’re saying is truthful? I will put it out there that if you say no, we’ll just get a warrant,” I assure her.

Abby hesitates. “Fine. There’s nothing of interest on there as long as I closed out that one tab. You know, the one tab that should be private but isn’t,” she teases.

“I’m sure we’ve seen worse,” Gabriel says.

I shrug. “As long as the tab isn’t ‘How to remove eyeballs from sockets,’ it shouldn’t be a huge deal.”

She snorts and gives me a look, and it reminds me a bit of our teenage years. The years I’m fucking thrilled are over with. The years I fucking hated with a passion. “That’s a bit dark.”

“My bad,” I say. “Can we have permission to search the iPad?”

“Of course. There’s nothing on there. Have at it.”

“We’ll be back. If you think of anything else, please let one of us know immediately,” I say as I stand up. Gabriel looks surprised we’re already done, but he follows after me. In the hallway, Michaels stops us.

“You didn’t talk to her very long.”

“No. I want a warrant to search the house she broke into. And I want every single neighbor to be contacted and questioned about the gunshot. If the man was already dead… who was someone shooting at? If they were shooting at her, why wouldn’t they have followed her into the other house? Breaking a window isn’t exactly a quiet escape. Were her hands swabbed for gunshot residue?”

“They were. Came back clean,” Michaels says. “Your intuition is always right… what are you thinking about her?”

“I think she’s both lying and telling the truth. If she mixes them together, what will we latch on to?”

“You’re latching on to the gunshot.”

“The man who owns the house the victim was found in… this Mitch person. I want to find him. And do we have an ID on the deceased?” I ask.

“He had nothing on him. No keys, no wallet, nothing.”

“It was taken?”

“I’m unsure.”

“Have Jesse examine his pockets when he goes over the body. There was enough blood on him that if someone retrieved his wallet or keys after his death, there could be signs of disruption of the flow of blood. I’m going back to the scene.”

“Alright. Be careful.”

Gabriel and I head out to the car, and I start driving after we both buckle in.

“She plans to hold this over you,” Gabriel says. “You two didn’t get along overly well?”

“It wasn’t about getting along for us. It was about surviving. It was the only thing that mattered. Nothing else did.”

“That had to have been hard.”

I hesitate, unsure how to respond to that. I guess it was hard, but I was so fixated on other shit at the time that I didn’t realize how hard it was. “Yeah… thanks.”

When we arrive at the crime scene, I exit the car, then stand outside of the house and stare at it. There are other houses quite close to it, so if a gun went off, someone else would have heard it.

“Who do you shoot at if the victim is already dead?”

“What if it was someone shooting at the killer?” Gabriel asks.

“Then why would they run?”

“Maybe it really was the killer shooting at Abby.”

“Then why wouldn’t they have gone into the other house after her?”

“Did the police arrive too quickly?”

“They would have had time. Maybe not much, but definitely enough to enter the house and find her. She clearly wasn’t hiding overly well. But if you knew her, you’d know that isn’t like her.”

“You mean you think it’s strange she made it so easy for us to find her? Like maybe she was afraid the killer would get her if we didn’t?”

“Or maybe she was distracting us from something,” I suggest.

“Well… if it was a person she was distracting us from, they’ve had plenty of time to get away at this point,” Gabriel says. “They’ve had time to remove the body and everything else, so there’s no way there’s still someone here… but Liam… how far do you go? What if you dig and dig and find something she doesn’t want you to find?”

I lean back against my car and continue staring at the house.

“What if she condemns you because you look too hard? I can’t lose you. But how the hell do we turn away if she won’t let us? I mean… if she’s involved, how far do we look the other way or mess with evidence to keep her happy?”

I don’t know what to say or do, so I just keep thinking. I hate it when my lovely Gabriel is forced to fret. It’s really such a disappointing thing for him to have to do. “If she was distracting us away from someone else… it’s the exact thing we need to prove she wasn’t the killer. If we find proof there was someone else here, they’ll let her go. There’ll be no reason to hold her. Let’s go inside.”

Once we’re geared up, we enter the house. The body is gone, sent to the medical examiner who will inspect it at length when he gets in. Maybe Jesse will find something I missed.

I hesitate as my eyes are drawn down to the blood splatter. “What is this?”

Gabriel steps up next to me to get a look at what has snagged my attention. “Looks like the blood was disrupted right here in three spots… a tripod?”

“Someone recorded the whole thing. Why didn’t I notice this the first time? What was here?”

An officer notices me staring at the spot, so he walks over. “The coffee table was there. We moved it when we removed the body.”

“Did they use it to cover the spots from the tripod?” Gabriel asks. “But if you’re going to go to that much work, why not smear the marks? It’s pretty apparent we would move the coffee table at some point.”

“So what if they moved it for a different reason?” I say. “If they moved it to get it out of their way to kill him, they wouldn’t have moved it back. Why waste the time unless they didn’t want us to know they moved it, which means they moved it for a reason.”

“So they stood on it.”

“Likely.”

“Well, then, what’s up high?” Gabriel asks.

“While you look around, I’m going to ask someone to search the cameras on all of the vehicles that responded here first,” I say.

“Got it.”

I talk to a few officers to get an idea of who was initially here when we had first responded to the call. And then I reach out to the department so I can have someone looking through the video data from the vehicles.

When I make it back to the living room, Gabriel is standing on a step stool and pulling a vent apart that’s up toward the ceiling.

“Find something?”

“I don’t know. When I shine my flashlight, I don’t see anything, but the vent cover looks like it’s broken. Maybe it’s an old unit?” He shines the flashlight around and looks at it for a moment before waving me up. He climbs down to give me space, so I step up and see that the vent is empty, but it looks like something was dragged out of it.

“Well… something was kept up here,” I say.

“Was it enough to kill someone over or was it connected in some other way?” Gabriel mutters.

“I don’t know. I’ll be curious to find out.”

My phone rings and I see that it’s Matthew.

“Oh, you chose to call me? How lovely,” I say as I answer it.

“Gabriel wasn’t answering,” he grumbles. “Trust me, I definitely tried to not call you. So you were… I mean… the recordings… showed someone leaving the scene.”

“Excuse me, wind back. You were going to say, ‘You were right,’ weren’t you? How cute. Say it again.”

“Fuck off.”

“That’s ‘Fuck off, Your Majesty’ to you. Don’t forget you owe me your life after I saved it,” I say.

Matthew sighs. “My Lord, Liam the Compassionate, you were so right. There is a person leaving the scene. If I’m seeing things right, it appears like they made their escape when you arrested the woman; the attention of all officers shifted to the other building and a person rushes from the scene.”

“Interesting. Thank you, peasant. Can you send it to me?”

“Grudgingly,” he says before hanging up without a goodbye.

“I really think if you were nicer to Matthew, he’d be your friend,” Gabriel comments, which makes me laugh.

“You are delightfully funny,” I say. “I need no one but you.”

He gives me a look, which is rather unkind of him. “You can have friends.”

“Sounds dreadful.”

My work phone shows that I have a video from Matthew, so Gabriel and I scoot together to watch it. It’s not the best angle, since it’s from one of the cruisers, but it shows those who were in the area heading toward the house where we’d pinned Abby down. And once all attention is off the far side of the house, a single person clothed in black pushes away from the house and darts out of view.

“So they were here when we were,” Gabriel says.

“Sure were,” I agree. “I thought the police secured the area. What the fuck were they doing?”

“I thought so too,” Gabriel says as we head out and over to the area the person had come from. The video almost made them look like they were hiding in the bushes, but when I shine my flashlight, it seems like a horrible area to hide. No, I didn’t walk this way, but with officers surrounding the area… there’s no way they wouldn’t have been noticed. Had they somehow blended in with the crowd? Had they been somewhere safer and moved from there?

“I’m not writing off the fact that Abby was likely drawing attention off this person, but I’m sure not mentioning it. Hopefully, they send her on her way and won’t continue to hold her,” I say as I sweep my flashlight across the yard, unsure what I’m missing.

“It’s possible.”