Page 3 of A Simple Mistake (Deadly Mistakes #1)

THREE

Liam

Present

Gabriel’s house is always set up in a homey manner. Bright colors, plush pillows on the couch, warm blankets.

I haven’t been to his house much. The first time was because he forgot the charger for his laptop, and while he told me I could wait in the car, I wanted to be nosy. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t little cat knickknacks tucked here and there. I swear the uglier the knickknack, the more he liked it. As long as it had a cat on it, he was buying it.

But nothing was as ugly as the real-life cat he adored and who hated my very existence. She tried gutting me that first day when all I did was reach down and pick her up to prove to Gabriel that I wasn’t a complete monster and could pretend to like his cat.

Gabriel apologized profusely and claimed she only liked him and that she had a severe distrust toward strangers.

I had to hand it to her because there’s definitely been more than one occasion when I’ve wished I could bat the shit out of someone just because they irritated me.

The second time he asked me to feed his cat because he couldn’t get home early enough, and I remember the wretched black-and-white ball of hatred hissing at me.

I considered hissing back.

The third time he fed me. Gabriel told me that the dinner he’d made was just okay, that he should have seasoned it better, but it was the best damn food I’d eaten in a long time. I can’t even remember if I told him that.

It wasn’t long afterward that he caught me, and he was ripped out of my life forever.

And now, the fourth time, I find myself using the key he’d given me back when I fed his cat so long ago. It’d fallen between the car seat and the console, and I’d been far too lazy to fish it out and had told him I’d bring it next time.

He’d stopped asking after that, though.

Two nights ago, Gabriel went missing sometime between ten p.m. and seven a.m. He’d sent a text to his sister at ten, then wasn’t heard from again. The house was closed up tight when the police came to investigate. No locks seemed to have been broken, the windows were all closed and latched, the screens untouched.

Everything in place but Gabriel.

I walk through each room, investigating every inch of it, but nothing really seems out of place. The police report claimed that nothing was disrupted or removed, but Gabriel’s car was in the driveway, the house door was locked, and Gabriel was gone.

Did he step outside? If he did, what for? Why not take the car? He lives in the suburbs. Of course he could walk to the store, but who would walk three miles to a convenience store that was already closed? The nearest open location would have been two miles beyond that.

Something or someone made him leave the house.

I scour every inch of his house, looking for something the others might have missed, but there’s nothing. I step into his bedroom and look over at the bed that’s still made because of course he makes his bed every morning.

“Fuck,” I hiss as I turn away and yank open his closet. There’s nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

A whole load of nothing.

The detectives couldn’t find anything either… did I really think I was so much better that I’d find something immediately?

No, I’m getting frustrated, and I’m rarely frustrated. But that’s Gabriel’s fault for making me feel things I didn’t even know I was capable of feeling.

I walk outside, and as I step off the porch, something rattles. Shining my phone’s flashlight on it, I see a small mouse toy, the one that Gabriel claimed his ball of fury and fluff loved. He said it was the only toy the cat enjoyed, so why the hell would it be out here?

I stoop down and pick it up, rotating it before sticking it in my pocket and heading back into the house. I go over to the cat’s food bowl and kneel down, but it looks completely undisturbed.

His mother is allergic to cats, which means that if someone took or was caring for the cat, it couldn’t have been her. But if someone else took the cat, why wouldn’t they have taken the container of food? So is the cat still in the house? Hiding after days of dealing with strangers?

Or is the cat outside and Gabriel had taken the wretched thing’s favorite toy out with him in an attempt to catch her?

I go back out to where I’d found the toy and kneel down so I can shine my light where latticework stretches along the bottom of the porch. I follow along it but there’s no spots for the cat to even fit through. Even so, I shine the light through the small holes in the latticework until I see the glow of eyes.

Well, that explains where his wretched furball is… but it doesn’t explain how she got under there. I tug at the latticework, looking for a spot she could have slipped through, but none of it budges until I get to the spot where the toy had lain in the grass. I work it free with gloved hands before looking down.

I mean… how much easier could you get? The victim would be fixated on the cat, likely calling her name or talking to her loud enough he wouldn’t hear someone coming up from behind. His head would have been stuffed under the porch with the light of his flashlight making his perception of anything in his periphery weak. The man who took him could have held a gun to his head, hit him in the back of the head, or choked him with ease. There are so many different scenarios for how this could have gone.

And then the killer simply replaced the latticework, did something with the flashlight or phone he’d been using, locked up the house and gone about his day. But it begs the question… how did the cat get out? I can’t fathom she slipped through the door at ten p.m. because what would Gabriel have been doing opening the door? Had the killer let the cat out previously? Then when Gabriel couldn’t find her, he went outside to look? The killer had been waiting for the moment Gabriel left the house to grab him in the dark.

It’s not uncommon for the cat to be off fucking around—Gabriel had said she’d sleep for hours without a care in the world—but I can’t imagine him never going to look for her in the four hours he’d have been home.

Did he not notice she was missing until after ten, when he’d finally gone outside to look? I drop down to my hands and knees and shine the light around, hoping to see something the detectives missed. I can see a spot where Gabriel had dug his fingers into the dirt, and when I flip onto my back and shine the light up, I can see traces of blood on the wood that makes up the overhang the latticework attaches to.

A growl escapes me as my eyes fixate on the blood. Some monster thinks that Gabriel is his? He is mine . I will find the killer, and I will destroy him for touching what doesn’t belong to him.

I don’t see any more clues, but there is still that cat to contend with. I’m sure if I leave the latticework off, she’ll find her way out… but the image of Gabriel’s sad expression fills my mind. He really does love that awful thing.

I glance at the cat that immediately hisses at me. “You are Satan’s spawn,” I declare as I put everything back and go into the house to grab the cat carrier. As soon as the monster sees me shimmying my way under, she starts hissing up a storm.

“I’m doing this for Gabriel and not for you, you sassy ass,” I growl.

The thing clearly has no heart or love for anyone but Gabriel, but maybe we aren’t so different after all.

How foolish is this? Being reduced to a cat wrangler, all for some man who won’t even allow me to see him any longer. Oh, how far I’ve fallen.

The cat rushes forward, prepared to strike, and I snatch her by the scruff of her neck before she can nail me, but boy does she put up a fight. She’s pissed, screaming and yowling as I drag her out. Her long hair poofs out as her tail swishes back and forth.

Once I finally get the scruffed cat out from under the porch, I start to lower her into the carrier before I see a smudge of something on the white patch of fur on her paw.

Blood.

She doesn’t appear to be hurt, and she’s filthy, but I would bet anything that’s blood on the edge of her paw.

Is it Gabriel’s?

No… she’d never hurt Gabriel. She’s an angel in his arms.

But did she scratch the man who took Gabriel from me?

I pull out the plush bedding from the carrier so she can’t rub the blood off her paw or nails if any is present, and then drop her in before zipping her in tight. It’s not like she’s going to clean herself up now if she hasn’t in the two days she’s been under the porch, probably too terrified to do anything but glower.

I load her into my car and then grudgingly go back inside and get the container of food and her bed. When I return to the vehicle, she’s kicked up a song of despair and I am immediately thanked for saving her by having to listen to the wretched yowling as I drive to the department that I once worked at.

“You sound like you’re at death’s door,” I say.

In response she stuffs her face against the mesh of the carrier and yowls even louder.

“You only have me until Gabriel’s back, you hear? So you better be thrilled.”

She stops for a second, and I realize it’s just to get a breath so she can show me her range as my patience diminishes. I’ve never seen what is so pleasant about animals.

When I reach the department, I have to go in through the front where a lady sits behind a glass window. “Oh! Detective Paige?” she asks, telling me I should know her, but I can’t remember a single thing about her. I think there’s a possibility that I punched her ex in the face for harassing her, but I’m going to be real honest… I don’t remember whether it was her or not.

“Is one of the techs in?”

“I… don’t know who is up in homicide tonight, but just sign right in and you can head up,” she says.

I scribble something that semi resembles my name before catching the elevator where the cat’s despair eats at my ears some more.

“What is dying in here?” Detective Robinson asks as I step out onto the third floor. He’s a man I don’t know well, but I am aware that he took over my position as Gabriel’s partner when I quit. The main thing I remember about him is that his parents loved him enough to grace him with the name Robin Robinson. I feel like he made some excuse about his mother marrying into the name, but I listened to absolutely none of that and made sure to use both his first and last name every time I spoke to him until Michaels snapped at me and told me I would call him by his last name out of respect since I was “irritatingly difficult.” And then he forced everyone else to follow his new rule. “Can I help you?”

Just looking at him disgusts me.

“No,” I say as I head back toward one of the techs.

“Excuse me, do you have permission to be here? What do you have there?”

The door opens and a woman named Penny peers out before giving me a look of surprise. “Liam?”

“I need you to swab this blood.”

“What? You work here again or something?”

“It’s Gabriel’s cat. There’s blood on her paw and there could be some on her nails. I have reason to believe that the cat scratched the assailant.”

“H-How did you get Gabriel’s cat?” Robinson asks. “I think we need to get someone higher up to approve this.”

“Oh shit,” Penny says, ignoring Robinson. “Yeah, okay. I’ll get a swab. We’ll get it run and check that it’s not Gabriel’s first. Where the hell did you find this cat?”

“Outside his house.”

“What were you doing outside the crime scene?” Robinson asks with a growl. He’s clearly annoyed by my presence. Does he think I’m going to move back in and replace him?

I spare him a glance as he catches the button of his sleeve with a finger and tugs at it, like he’s taking his anger toward me out on his clothing.

“Trampling evidence, mostly. Making sure to rub in any traces of DNA that could be used,” I say with a wink.

The man looks a bit irritated, but I ignore him and turn to Penny as she comes out with gloves on, swab in hand. “Okay, you wanna grab the little kitty?”

“You’re mistaken, this cat is out for blood. She feasts off it and will likely gut both of us before we easily get a swab of anything. If she’s not pleased with a disembowelment, she might go for the jugular. Do you think your friend back here would like to volunteer as a sacrifice to appease the cat gods?”

“Isn’t this Gabriel’s beloved cat Lucille Pawl? I think we’ll be fine. He raves about her like she’s a baby.”

“You have not seen hell until you’ve looked this cat in the eyes. You can see the fires burn in her pupils,” I say. “But can you blame a creature with such a stupid name?”

“And… this cute little kitty is hell in this situation? Besides, Lucille Pawl is a cute name! My grandma loves I Love Lucy. ”

“I still think our best bet would be to allow her to chew on the throat of this guy here while you do it, but if you lose any or all fingers, it’s not my fault,” I inform her as I open the carrier and snatch up the cat. Her claws whip around, tail flicking with a vengeance. She’s dreaming of the many ways to end our lives, but Penny is so quick the cat doesn’t even notice she’s got the swab. I’m pretty sure it’s because she was looking me in the eyes and wishing for my death when it happened.

“Got it,” Penny says as I lower the cat back into the carrier and zip it up.

“Is Gabriel’s desk still in the same spot? I’ll wait for the results.”

Penny hesitates. “Uh… I… don’t think… I can share the results with you.”

“Ah, of course. I’m going to wait to make sure what you got is sufficient before I leave,” I say. “I’ll set up at Gabriel’s desk since I’m sure the smell of him will make Lucille Pawl calmer.”

“That’s a sweet idea,” Penny responds.

“I’m just sweet like that,” I say as I head over to Gabriel’s desk that’s in the same spot as when I’d left. It’s quite easy to tell which one is his from all the obnoxious cat photos. When I reach out to the desk across from Gabriel’s, I push a photo frame around to face me and see that it’s Robinson with his disgustingly happy family.

I sink into Gabriel’s chair and set the cat on top of the desk as I fiddle with his stuff. I pull out a pen I’d gotten him because it had a cat wearing an ugly rainbow tuxedo on it. Of course he loved it and obviously still has the stupid thing. When I lean back, I realize his jacket is bunched up behind me. I grab it, pulling it close and pressing my face against it.

Fucking hell, how could I miss this smell so much?

Anger is racing through me. I hate waiting. I’ve never been a patient person. When there’s something I want, I want it now. But I’m aware that I should wait until the bloodwork is run before I do anything else.

“I suppose you’re hungry and thirsty. Would you like water or do you only drink the blood of virgins?” I ask the callous cat. She yowls at me in return.

I grab a mug off Robinson’s desk, positive he won’t mind sharing with the cat, and head out to the drinking fountain where I see Robinson stepping out of the lab as Penny talks to someone on the phone. He notices me looking and scowls when he sees that I’m filling his mug with water. “Don’t worry, I washed it out first since I didn’t want the cat to get sick from your germs,” I assure him.

He doesn’t answer, so I head back to the office and unzip the carrier enough to tip the cup in, but the cat is too pissed to even drink. Maybe this cat and I have more in common than I ever imagined. Afraid she might spill it in her anger and dilute the blood more than it already is, I pull the mug back out and set it next to the carrier.

Feeling like the cat is also probably pretty hungry after not eating for the two days she was under the porch, I head down the elevator and out to my car to retrieve the cat food. When I get back upstairs, I push the door to the office open and find Robinson quickly drawing his hand out of the carrier where the cat has started to sing about her life of misery.

“Why’s it so loud?” he asks as I walk in.

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the beautiful sound of her harmonies.”

He reaches for the zipper, but I put a hand on his chest, pushing him back.

“Back the fuck off. We can’t have you disturbing the evidence, now can we?” I ask.

“Then get it out of my office.”

“So feisty,” I say as I grab the carrier and hear something knock over. It takes me a moment to realize that the cup of water I’d taken out so it wouldn’t get spilled had been placed back in the carrier, and now the cat—and only evidence we have—is quite waterlogged.

“How nice of you to water the cat and me,” I comment as I look at the water dripping down my pants.

“She acted thirsty.”

“I bet she was,” I say. “Maybe I’ll put her in my car.”

“Why would you take her out of the building?” Robinson asks over the sound of her yowls. “Penny said to leave her here in case they need another sample from her fur. I’ll take her back to Penny.”

“I can’t hear you over her melody,” I call as I head off to the elevator and ride it down to the first floor before taking an immediate left and walking to the back of the facility, far from where others will hear this creature. Then I slide her into a supply closet and close the door. I walk back down the hallway and out the front door so I can get into the car sitting in the back row of the parking lot. The lights on the vehicle flash almost right on cue as I push open the back door and slide inside before quietly shutting it.

It takes a while before anyone joins me and when they do, they make the foolish mistake of never looking into the back seat.

As the car begins to move, I wait until we’re about five minutes away from the police department before I sit up and drape my arms around Robinson’s shoulders.

He jumps and jerks the wheel. “Fucking hell!” he screams.

I grab the man by the neck as I lean forward and press my mouth close to his ear. “Where the fuck is Gabriel?”