Page 15 of A Simple Mistake (Deadly Mistakes #1)

FIFTEEN

Gabriel

Present

I watch Liam’s back as he heads out of the room before giving Michaels a smile and a nod. “We will inform you as soon as we find something,” I say, hoping that the confidence of “finding something” will make him more agreeable.

“Thank you,” he responds, but I can tell he’s on edge with Liam. Not that I feel like he ever truly liked the man. The thing about Liam is that ever since I started working here, he’s always done what he’s wanted to a point. But it’s hard to put a stop to that when Liam clearly gets results, and he rarely pushes against the laws that are in place in a way that would get him into too much trouble. He’s smart. He knows how to make sure the information he acquires can be used in court, so it’s hard to tell him no when you know there’s a high possibility he’ll come back with something useful.

So, for now, I’ll follow Liam and hope he can find answers the rest of us have been unable to since the first known victim was killed four months ago.

I haven’t been back to the house I was held in since I was taken away in the ambulance. I know the location is being thoroughly investigated and watched, but it doesn’t sound like they’ve found anything substantial.

We also know that after the killer ran, he rushed out into the road, causing a woman to stop. She’s a nurse who saw that he was bleeding, so she got out to help him, assuming he’d been in a car accident, and he took her vehicle.

A few traffic cameras caught him in her car heading out of the city where he was quickly lost.

“Matthew, you really don’t need to go with us,” Liam says. “I’d honestly prefer you didn’t.”

“I’m well aware of that, you don’t even have to say it out loud,” Matthew comments as he grabs his light fall jacket and pulls it on.

“I like a person who understands me.”

“I thought you didn’t like any people,” Matthew says.

“I never realized you were actually smart,” Liam decides as he grabs his jacket and heads for the elevator. I get in it with Liam, and before Matthew can get in, Liam starts jabbing the close door button. He’s even looking Matthew in the eyes while doing it.

Matthew isn’t bothered in the slightest as he steps in and zips up his coat. “So happy you’re back. While you were gone, Michaels had to take over as the most annoying person in the office.”

“Don’t flatter me so much.”

“I’m definitely not.”

I sigh, breaking up their bickering. “This is going to be delightful.”

“I’m not going to lie, I am glad you’re back on,” Matthew tells Liam. “The idea of someone coming for me doesn’t necessarily suit me, you know? I mean… I’m confident in my team, but I hate to say I’m more confident in you.”

“Aww, how sweet,” Liam says as he stops and peers into the room where the police officers work on the first floor.

“What are you looking for?” I ask.

“Nothing in particular,” he says as he heads into their department. Quite a few people look up when he enters with us trailing after him. I realize that it’s not the department itself that’s drawn his attention but the fact that Officer Carlos Hernandez, the officer who’d been taken, can be seen through a glass window. He appears to be talking to his boss, but just as he steps out, Liam catches him. I assume he’s going to question him or ask him to come with us, but instead he walks up and grabs Hernandez’s arm that isn’t wrapped up in a cast.

“I’m so glad you’re alright,” Liam says.

Is Liam ever glad about anything pertaining to others?

The man looks surprised. “Detective! I was thrilled to hear you were back. Oh, you brought me back to my wife and little boy. I just can’t thank you enough.” He grabs Liam in a hug, and I can’t help but wonder if I’m the only one who can see the look of disgust on Liam’s face when it happens, but Liam plays the part perfectly. He pats Hernandez on the back as he turns to face the other officers.

“I’m so relieved that your wife and son didn’t have to live the rest of their lives without you in it,” Liam says.

“Who the fuck is this guy?” Matthew whispers to me because Liam is not acting normal.

“I… I have to assume he’s playing a game here that I’m not quite privy to,” I murmur as I watch. I forgot how working with Liam was. Where he was always one step ahead of me, yet he oddly never made me feel dumb about it. No… he made me think. He made me scrutinize things I’d never scrutinized before. And while I always knew things weren’t black and white, I never knew how many shades of gray there could be until I learned how Liam saw things. He spotted things that I never could have without his help.

“I know I just came back,” Liam continues, “but I want you all to know that every one of you also played such a huge role in bringing Hernandez back to us. It’s… it’s awful that we weren’t able to save Detective Hughes, but working together, we were able to save Hernandez and Hyde.”

And with that, he lets go of him and walks toward the door.

Like what was that? Was I supposed to figure something out with that little bit? How?

“God, I feel disgusting,” Liam announces as he heads out the door and shivers.

“Because someone hugged you?” I ask.

He points a finger at me like I get it. “Maybe if you hug me, it’ll wash away the feeling of his touch.”

“Matthew will hug you,” I say.

Matthew lets out a noncommittal noise. “I don’t get paid enough to hug a porcupine.”

“Trust me, I wouldn’t be stabbing you with anything. You’re not that handsome,” Liam says, and with that image in our minds, he gets into the driver’s seat of the car.

“How did you work with him for a full year?” Matthew asks, sounding quite curious.

I don’t want to admit that I loved every second of it and quickly get into the back seat even though Matthew insists I take the front.

This seems to annoy Liam, who clearly would have preferred Matthew in the trunk or possibly just left behind in the parking lot.

“So what was that about in there?” Matthew asks.

“Just reminding Hernandez that he owes me his life, so if I ever need anyone to come over in the dead of night and change the channel for me because my remote’s batteries have died, he’ll be there for me like I was there for him.”

“I’m going to hate to know how much I owe you, then, since you not only saved my life but also have to watch my cat,” I say.

“It’s an unrepayable debt,” Liam replies as he drives to the house where I was held.

I hadn’t gotten a good look at it in the dark, but it’s a surprisingly nice-looking house that belongs to a man who was renting it out. He said a young couple rented it, but no one’s seen or heard from them. It’s hard to tell if that means they never existed or if they’re missing. Robinson told me that after looking into it some more, it became clear he was renting it under the table for cash, so the paper trail was quite limited. But because the guy wanted to cooperate with us as best as he could, he had no issues with Liam having basically broken in to save us when he wasn’t holding his badge.

I get out of the car when Liam does, but my eyes are fixated on that house.

“You don’t have to go inside,” he says, voice soft. It’s a tone I’ve become aware he only uses with me. I remember realizing it after we’d been working together for some time and thinking that maybe I was special to him… I guess I never knew just how special.

“No, I’m fine. I want to get to the bottom of this,” I insist. “I will do whatever it takes to do that.”

“It might trigger trauma if you do.”

“I’m fine,” I say stubbornly.

Liam watches me and can likely tell that I’m not “fine,” but he gives me a nod before heading to the door. And I do everything in my power not to admit that the reason I’m “fine” is because I feel so much safer with him by me.

Matthew has the door open by the time we reach it, and once we’re all wearing our protective gear, we head inside.

Everything looks so… natural. Anyone could look through the window and see a well-lived-in and loved house. Is it really all fake? Did the killer do something to the renters?

“Do you remember being brought into the house?” Liam asks.

“Not… really. I was very disoriented. Very confused. There was a… bag or something on my head. I couldn’t see, and every time I tried turning my head, my equilibrium was off and the world would spin. I remember being fully coherent down in the cellar. I could hear Rick… moving around. I could only see glimpses of him when the door opened, but otherwise it was completely dark.

“Then the killer would talk to us some. He’d also sit in this chair and just stare at us. He said he was keeping me for last because he liked how I didn’t irritate him. That I didn’t annoy him by whining.”

My stomach tightens at the thought, and I realize that maybe I really don’t want to see down there.

Still, I follow Liam over to the hole in the bedroom floor, honestly amazed that he found the place with such ease.

“How long was it between you figuring out I was taken and you finding me?” I ask.

Liam glances back at me. “I don’t know… hours? It definitely would have taken longer if you didn’t have the GPS tracker in your hand. I could hear a train…” He trails off.

“You heard a train?” I ask. “Oh, you mean the train behind the house? There was a second one?”

“No, I was going to say that Michaels was as obnoxious as a train. You know the ones that always show up when you’re busy but will make it to an important appointment on time as long as nothing stops you? That’s what dealing with Michaels is like.”

“Is that not what dealing with the whole human race is like to you?” I ask.

Liam throws me a grin that takes me back to old times. “Just stay up here and see if anything else jogs your memory.” And with that, he heads downstairs and out of sight with Matthew close behind.

I take a deep breath and follow after them.

I’d never been in this part of the cellar other than when the killer had dragged me inside and when I ran out after Liam.

“I was never in this outer area, but I have to assume this is where he’d take Rick out to,” I say. “I… I could hear it… from in that room.”

“Did he talk to him?”

“He talked to all of us.”

“Any dialect or anything you could tell from his voice?”

“No.”

“No part of it sounded familiar?”

“No. I tried. I really did. I was like… drowning in adrenaline, but I did everything I could to try to figure out anything unique about him. Yeah, hearing him walking into the room would elicit fear unlike anything I’d ever felt, but I doubt I could pick his footsteps out of a lineup. It’s like… I really… really don’t know and I feel like I’ve fucked up by not knowing. Just… nothing remarkable stood out, but there had to have been something .”

“You haven’t fucked up anything,” Liam assures me. “You were concussed, disoriented, and in a very vulnerable position.”

“Do you know how awful it is to be there… unable to do anything… never knowing when this monster who holds your life in his hands might destroy you?”

“It’s not a good feeling,” Liam says, and I hesitate.

Does he mean that he understands how hard that has to be to comprehend or does that mean he’s been in that type of situation before? If he has, he never shared it with me. Not that we ever got around to sharing our dark secrets… one of us clearly having more than the other.

Matthew pushes open the door to the room we were held in and hits the light before going, “What the fuck?”

Liam turns away from me as Matthew dashes across the room, fixated right on something.

My fear of the room dissipates as I step into it—feeling weirdly safe with Liam’s back placed in front of me—only to find the room very different from the last time I was in here. I’d stared at these bare brick walls for days, and even though it was often dark, when he’d open the door to let light spill in, I could see that there was nothing on them.

But right now, the room is covered in photographs scattered across all four walls with a table right in the middle. I watch as Matthew rushes to one of the photographs and reaches out with shaking fingers.

“Don’t touch it,” Liam barks, and Matthew’s hand freezes.

“It’s my sister. It’s my fucking sister,” he says, voice catching. “Does he have my sister? He has my sister.”

“Knock it off,” Liam orders. “It’s a mind game. Don’t you dare start playing it. This is how he gains control of the situation.”

My eyes trail over the photographs, probably a hundred or more of which are taped to the walls. At first, I don’t recognize any of them until I see a picture of Michaels’ wife and Donna’s son.

A phone starts ringing, and I realize that I’d been so distracted by the photographs that I hadn’t even noticed there was a phone sitting on the table. Of course Liam’s noticed it; he notices everything and wouldn’t get distracted by images.

But Matthew isn’t Liam.

“He has my sister. Oh god,” he cries as he hurries forward and grabs the phone like he’s planning on begging the man on the other end of the line to save his sister. Just as I see him go to accept the call, Liam shoves the table as hard as he can into Matthew’s side. It slams into him so forcefully that he ends up falling as the phone is flung from his hand, exploding midair. It’s not a big explosion, but if Matthew had been holding it in his hand when it’d gone off, it easily could have ruined his face or, at the very least, his hand.

The blast from it makes me jerk back as my ears ring since we’re in such a small room. I’m sure for Liam and Matthew, who’d both been significantly closer, it was even worse.

“Why yes, I’m going to grab the fucking bomb the serial killer left behind,” Liam shouts mockingly. “Let me even hold it up to my face. Might as well deep throat it while I’m at it.”

“I… I didn’t think… I didn’t think it’d be a bomb,” Matthew says. “He has my sister.”

“Oh yeah, I bet he does. I bet he has every single one of these people. All one hundred of them and not a single one of us knows that a loved one is missing. You think he’s Santa and just popped down the chimney after we went to work and sucked them all up into his sack and now has a super-huge facility built to hold a hundred people while he harasses the rest of us? Maybe he even hired kinky elves who specialize in rope bondage to tie them all up for him.”

Matthew looks a bit embarrassed now, and I notice he’s holding his hand to his chest, telling me he likely hurt it, but it could have been so much worse if Liam hadn’t saved him. It could have killed him if he’d put that phone up to his face.

“Is your hand hurt?” I ask.

“Just stings a little. It’s fine. I still have all of my fingers.”

“Go call this in before you lose a finger doing something else,” Liam says, and Matthew nods as he rushes out of the room.

“Liam, did you get hurt?” I ask.

He turns to me and points at the edge of his hair where a little fraction looks maybe a bit singed? Or maybe it’s just frizzy because he slept on it wrong. “Horrifically.”

“You got horrifically hurt?”

He drops to his knees right there, and at first, I’m rather confused. Did he actually get hurt? He was closer to the blast; it could have damaged his ears or eyes.

“Liam?” I ask as I rush over, and he wraps his arms around my legs.

“Rub off the touch from that man who hugged me,” he says.

“Oh my god. That’s how you’re hurt? You’re still cringing from kindness?” I ask as I try to pretend that I don’t like the way his arms wrap around me and the way his head is tucked against my thigh. I pluck at the wisp of hair and find that maybe it was singed a little bit since it feels damaged.

“Being a hero hurts, Gabriel. Especially when I’m forced to save dumb people. I should have allowed natural selection to take its course, but then I was like ‘Gabriel would be crying and sad.’”

“You saved him because I would be sad ?” I ask as I grab a handful of his hair.

“I tease! I tease! I’m the hero, Gabriel. Praise me.”

I raise an eyebrow at this ridiculous display. “You’re a monster.”

Liam looks up at me and grins. “I’m your monster.”

“Oh joy,” I say dryly as I loosen my grip on his hair, but I don’t let go. Instead, I keep my fingers tangled in it as I look down at the man who really seems prepared to move mountains for me. I want to ask him why. I want to know what’s so special about me, but maybe it’s best to pretend I don’t notice it… though it’s not like I can with the man attached to my legs muttering about how he’d burn the whole world down if I wished for it.

“Do you think I’d ever be like ‘You know what, Liam? Today I’m hungry for flames. Start burning’?”

“I’m just saying the option is there if you so choose it. I’m not going to limit your ambitions,” he says as I pick at his hair some more. I think the spot needs to be cut out, but obviously, I can’t do anything about that here. I drop the hold on his hair, and even though I don’t want to pull from him, I force myself to.

His hands draw off my legs as he’s left kneeling on the ground, eyes tracking me. It makes me want to rush back over to him, but why? Why the fuck would I go back to a man I know goes against everything I believe in?

I stomp those thoughts down. “We really should vacate the building in case there are more bombs.”

“The bombs weren’t for us,” Liam says.

“Did it say, ‘Liam and Gabriel, definitely don’t pick up,’ and I missed it?”

“Would you have picked up that phone?”

I hesitate before shaking my head. “I don’t think I would have. First off… I don’t think I could handle hearing his voice right now. Second… I know his mindset. There’s no fucking way he’d say something on that phone that would help us. It would all be a mind game that I’d want someone more knowledgeable about it to deal with.”

“Right. This was to fuck with someone he can manipulate. And there’s no satisfaction of a hunt if he kills his prey in a situation he can’t even watch. He’d never do that.”

“You’re probably right,” I agree. “So… he came in here after we were done going through it and decorated the place? I take it he wants to make sure we feel unsettled and anxious. The easiest way to get to a person is to make them believe their loved one is at risk.” I carefully examine the photographs. Some are damaged from the explosion, but the majority are still in place.

“It’s a form of manipulation for sure,” Liam says. “You would be surprised what people will do for someone they love. And some of the photographs were taken from ‘safe’ places, too. Homes, bedrooms… places where you’re supposed to feel safe. This is going to throw the whole department into turmoil. I won’t be surprised if they call the FBI in now that it’s clear it’s an attack against law enforcement.”

“And not just one department… it seems like all,” I observe before turning to look at him. “What about you? Is there someone on these walls for you?” I feel like I know nothing about his past or his family, but hasn’t he always avoided those questions?

“Nope. I must be special,” he says, and I think he’s telling the truth. Not about the special part, he can believe what he wants there, but that there’s no one on the walls for him. Does he not have anyone in his life?

“My parents were quite distraught over my disappearance. They begged me to back out. To get a safer job. I honestly feel awful for them.”

“Are they up here on the walls?”

“No.”

“Maybe it’s because he knows your cat is the only one for you but felt weird putting one cat picture up. It’d be almost embarrassing for him. Ooh, or maybe when he went to take the picture of Lucy Fur, her glower alone shattered his camera.”

“You’re funny.”

“Thank you. I would love to know who all of these match up with, you know? We have some damaged photographs, but Matthew has a body cam on. We can get the information about the damaged photographs from him and then match them to every officer in the precinct. And once we do… will everyone have a match?”

“Isn’t there surveillance in place to make sure the killer didn’t return to mess with something?” I ask, confused how he even got in here.

“Sure is.”

“So he’d be on one of the cameras.”

“You think he’d be that sloppy?”

“No, but one can hope, can’t they?” I ask. “But the look on your face is telling me you’re already onto something else and I’m still standing here twiddling my thumbs.”

“You’re also looking handsome,” Liam assures me.

“Thanks,” I say with a big heaping scoop of sarcasm.