But as I get into Liam’s car, I have to ask. “Was it you texting me?” I look over as he puts the car in drive.
“Of course, baby. Who else would it have been?” he says lightly. In reality, though, I had thought it was Maguire stalking me.
Looking out the window as we drive to Liam’s new place, I try to settle my nerves by repeating silently that he’s back in my life and that I love him. The past is over with and all I want is for things to get back to normal with us. I don’t want grudges or uneasiness. I want Liam. Forever.
Maguire
IF HE WERE
planning to make my life a miserable hell, I’d be sure to return the favor.
Liam thinks he holds all the power. I know for a fact that the next time he’s fucking her, he’ll be thinking about how I was the last man inside her. If he was watching us as close as he said he was, I’m sure he got front row seats to our hot and heavy fucking.
He thinks he figured out the puzzle. That he caught the bad guy.
There’s so much he has no clue about, though. The women, the deceit. They weren’t innocent. They were stained with promiscuity and lies. And they thought there were no consequences for their actions.
Everyone should know by now—for every action, there is a reaction.
Some learned the hard way.
Liam thinks he’s put away the bad guy and that I’ll spill all my secrets. I’m not alone, though. He grew up with a monster like me and was oblivious.
One day, I might let him in on what I know, on what I’ve seen. Until then, he’ll be in the dark with no knowledge of a man more evil than I am and of his child who he may or may not meet.
Liam
TINSLEY’S RESTLESS.
She can’t sleep without terrors waking her up in cold sweats and tears. I watch her. She’s scared to sleep, but over the past week, it’s wearing her down.
Shannon’s been over every day. When I go to work, Shannon takes my place. I hadn’t thought it was necessary since she was doing well in the hospital, but now that she’s out, there’s been a regression.
Noah’s been by twice after being discharged from the hospital. Tinsley let him know he can come over any time, but he’s been busy managing the bars for Tinsley. She isn’t ready to go back to work yet. She still needs us.
As long as Shannon or I am with her, she’s good to go. Tinsley acts as if nothing happened to her, that she didn’t experience a traumatic event. It’s the times I run an errand or go for a jog. The first time I left her alone, I ran to pick up sushi for us. I got back and realized she had waited by the door for me to return.
I get that she’s scared of me leaving again. With time, though, I think she’ll relax, knowing that every night I’ll be home for her.
I’m mostly worried about the nightmares. They’re not about me; they’re about him. I caught her trying to scratch her tattoo off in her sleep a while ago. When I turned on the lights, she had blood streaming down her hip. Once it healed enough, we made a visit to a tattoo shop, and he managed to turn the skeleton key into two bluebirds surrounded by roses.
The scratching stopped, but the nightmares have persisted.
She whimpers and thrashes on the bed until she wakes herself up. He’s gotten to her, and by stealing her freedom, he’s taken away her sense of peace.
Guilt consumes me that I allowed him to get that far with her. I should have made them lock the fucker away as soon as he tried to murder me. It was enough to lock him away for a long time, but no, we wanted to connect him to his previous crimes too.
I have guys looking into Nora’s accident. If we can tie him to her death, it’d be ammunition in court. I’m selfish in hoping that if we’re able to close Nora’s case, it’ll allow Tinsley to let go of some of the demons that haunt her. She wasn’t able to save the others, but I’m praying that the justice in it will help her heal.
It terrifies me that we don’t know how many women Maguire’s hurt or murdered. Men like him are scum and deserve to rot in hell. They lead seemingly normal lives but behind closed doors, the malicious possibilities are endless when they are that far over the edge.
They have no morals. Punishment or risk of being caught doesn’t faze them. They focus on their innocent prey as if it’s a game to them. Not as if there are lives at stake.
This makes my job even more difficult, yet at the same time, more rewarding. Men like Maguire need to be locked away. That knowledge is what allows me to leave Tinsley for nine hours a day, five days a week.
Shannon’s our rock. She brings the twins over, and they have a girls’ day every time I’m gone.
It’s our new normal.
“Be back around dinner time?” Shannon asks as she walks her little ones into the living room, one on each side of her, holding her pointer fingers. With her laptop in her diaper bag, she’s able to bring her work with her, all while managing the toddlers and Tinsley.
I seriously need to buy her a nice Christmas present.
“Yep. I’ll bring Chinese home for everyone. What do the girls eat?” I bend down to give both of them big squeezes, causing them to giggle in delight.
“Chicken nuggets and chocolate milk,” she tells me in all seriousness.
“So a side trip to Mickie D’s then. Sounds like a plan. See you tonight.” I stand and give her hug before grabbing my coat and keys. “Tinsley’s still asleep if you want to let the minions go wake her up.” I look around but I’m beaten to the punch. I see Emmie and Charlee toddling through the hallway and toward our bedroom.
They know the drill.
I head out and pray for a good day. We’re switching up tactics with Maguire today since we have a tip that he isn’t the only serial killer of sorts in town. We hadn’t pieced it together before, but there’s been a slew of missing women over the past fourteen years. Nothing confirmed, but it’s enough to reopen a few cases.
There’s a stack of files and boxes on my desk when I get to work. Fingering through some of the files, I see name after name of women who were no longer with us. I had no idea the number was this high.
This is a month’s worth of work ahead of me if I tackle it alone. Walking out of my office, I ask my assistant, Sue Ellen, to get me a cup of coffee while I go and have a chat with the chief. I need manpower, and he has the ability to get it for me.
“Good Morning, Sir.” I knock on his open door and wait for him to invite me in.
“You saw the files.” He waves me into his office, and I take a seat in front of him. Duncan has been chief ever since I started out of college. He’s serious about his job but doesn’t mind when matters shift into the gray. It’s part of what I admire about him. Knowing that to get the criminals, we can’t always go by the book, and at the end of the day, as long as good beats the shit out of evil, then it’s a win.
“I did. It seems like they’ve been swept under a rug after they’ve been labeled as missing for longer than a few days. These women, though, I don’t think all of them simply left on their own will. I need to look harder into each file, but Chief, I need more eyes on this.” I hope to hell that my hunch is wrong and that these women left town on their own will and are living happily somewhere else. I cringe thinking about the deception and suffering they went through if they were with a man like Maguire.
“Pull Borton, Fitzpatrick, and Miller. They’ll help you out. Let them go through the boxes today. Right now, I have a professional interrogator over at county to hopefully get more out of the son of a bitch. Head on over and maybe you can get some useful intel out of him.” He nods his head, and it’s my cue to go.
I wasn’t able to get shit out of Maguire, but maybe the other guy can. At this point, I wouldn’t mind bringing in a black market interrogator who uses less conventional ways to get the man to talk. I doubted even Duncan would go for that, though.
I make my way down yet again to see Maguire. Just looking at him makes me see red. It’s his casual arrogance—as if he knows so much more than we do. He’s calm and intelligent, much unlike our normal criminals who’ve been caught. When I see him, I see him and Tinsley together. She had no idea who she was in bed with, and I was helpless to tell her. Having to force myself not to interfere was the hardest damn thing I’ve ever had to do. Knowing who he was and what he was capable of doing, yet still letting her fall for him?
I let her down. I was supposed to protect her, but I failed her on so many levels all because of my job. Having to pretend to be someone I’m not around her changed me. I started believing the lies I was telling. I hadn’t planned to fall for her as hard as I did. She was a long-term task that turned into love. So cliché, but I would do it all over again if I got her in the end.
Watching behind the two-way mirror, I’m doubtful of any reliable results from our interrogator who looks like a lingerie model, only she’s wearing a perfectly fitted, black pantsuit. Her hands are on the table while she leans over Maguire, trying to break him in a way I couldn’t.
“She knows what she’s doing,” Lachlan, my partner, tells me as we both stand with our arms crossed, watching the interaction between the two. Lachlan is like me; he wants to get the bad guys and almost itches to do things our own way to get the job done.
We can hear her prying. Trying to get information out of him like that won’t work, though. When I hear her ask about Tinsley, I cringe. His smile and rapt attention to her name makes me want to punch through the glass and slice his neck with a shard.
“Do you love her?” she asks him as she takes a seat in a metal chair. “Is that why you didn’t kill her? Why was she different than the others?” With each question, her voice becomes more steady and powerful.
“We love each other. She understood that I was better than her
other
flings,” Maguire tells her with a smile, and the way he dismissed Tinsley’s and my relationship as if it were casual makes me wonder if he knows I’m watching and he’s trying to get under my skin.
I won’t allow it. I’m better than he is.
“And the other women? Why’d you kill them?”
He licks his lips before answering. “They were too tainted, too far gone. I tried to help them, but they were all cheaters who hadn’t learned their lesson.”
“Just like your mother? She was murdered, and rumor had it, she wasn’t the faithful type.” Her words strike a chord with Maguire, causing him to slam his hands on the table and scream out at her.
“Shut up!”
“Who ingrained it into your brain that cheaters don’t deserve to live? Who gave you the right to make that decision!?”
“Stop it. Just stop talking!”
Maguire’s starting to shake, his veins pulsing in his neck. She’s getting to him. She hit him in a weak spot and is twisting and grabbing until he breaks. I can hear his breathing becoming deeper, louder.
Shaking his head, he clamps his eyes shut, muttering words I can’t make out. She’s close. She knows it. He knows it.
“What about Nora? She was pregnant, and you killed her.” She’s reaching, but maybe he’ll give her what we all know.
“She got pregnant with his child. I’d seen them together, and when I brought it up, she lied right to my face. A lesson had to be taught. For every action, there is a reaction.” His face is red, and he’s no longer looking at her in the eye. Instead, he’s focusing on the two-way mirror behind her. “He taught me from a young age that those who are disloyal have to pay the price. That’s why he killed my mom but not Liam’s.”
There’s a hint of a smile on his face as he says the last few words. Furrowing my brows together, I slowly piece together what he’s talking about, but he helps me along. He’s staring right at me, and it’s then that I realize my whole world’s about to be turned upside down.
“My father’s name is Rick. I know, I know. We’re just about the same age. You see, while he had his perfect life at home with your pregnant mom, he couldn’t stop his obsession. He was careless with my mom, though, and knocked her up. Gave her enough money to get by but after I was born, it was time for her retribution. He knew about her whore ways, and he wasn’t going to give her a free pass. I was two months old when he killed her, and I ended up living with my maternal grandparents. Rick visited once a year, and once I was old enough, he started telling me about why Momma had to die.”
I’m going to be sick. The cheesy grin needs to be ripped off his face. I want to say he’s lying, but that’s not like him. It’d be dishonest.
The interrogator looks behind her with a questioning look, unsure what to do with the news that affects me and gives suspicion to look into my father about the missing women. I unlock her door and allow her out.
Rubbing my hand over my face, I contemplate what to do next. Thoughts are running rampant in my head regarding my father, but I can’t even begin to process what Maguire said about his hobbies.
Maguire and I are half-brothers. How the hell did that happen? I know he went to school with Tinsley and was fascinated with her before I ever came along. Before he could act on anything, I came into play, and Tinsley and I became serious about each other.
I got in his way probably at the perfect time.
He’s my brother.
My father groomed him to be just like him. I knew my dad had faults but was oblivious to his disturbing way of thinking.
I want Tinsley by my side. I need her support, but the fact that I’m related to such filthy, inferior individuals makes me feel weak. I’m not deserving of her love.
“You okay, man?” Lachlan touches my shoulder, and I had forgotten he was in here.
“Yeah. Can you handle this? Bring Rick in while I’m gone and question him. I don’t want to deal with him right now. I’ve gotta go.” I give him a look, and he nods his head knowingly. I need to get out of here and away from Maguire.
Before I even realize it, I’m walking back into my apartment. I don’t recall any part of the drive, which scares the shit out of me. The twins are asleep on the couch with Shannon and Tinsley blocking them in with their legs up on the edge of it, making a barrier for them not to roll off.
“Hey, baby. You never come home for lunch? We have some pizza rolls left if you want.” Tinsley carefully breaks free. She comes over and wraps her arms around my neck before giving me a slow kiss.