by Layla Reyne
“No signs of forced entry. We should get the alarm company records.”
“I’ll get Diego on it.”
“Laundry room was flooded. Looked like the washer overflowed. Maybe someone trying to hide something?”
“Zero trace evidence left at the first crime scene,” Charlie said. “Just the note.”
“Which they left here too?”
She nodded. “Assuming it’s the same perp, I doubt they’d be that sloppy with the washer. It was probably Julian trying to hide his misdeeds.”
Sean almost missed the next step. “You think he was cheating on Tracy? Already? They’ve been married, what, six months at most?” He knew from his snooping that Tracy’s divorce from Trevor had only been finalized in November.
“Five months. Married on Valentine’s Day.” She dug two sets of surgical gloves out of her coat pocket and handed a pair to him. “She’d been sleeping with Julian for two years.”
Sean focused on the next step to make sure he landed it. “Did Trevor know?”
“He knew.” They crested the top of the stairs, and Charlie halted several feet from the crime scene techs gathered outside the master bedroom. “Even offered to bring Julian into their marriage, despite the complications it would cause.”
Sean raised a brow as he snapped on the gloves. “What complications?”
“Julian was a classics professor at HU and dean of the Humanities Department.”
“Trevor’s boss.” Sean whistled low. “This Julian guy sounds like a piece of work.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Was Trevor in love with him too?”
Charlie shook her head. “No, but he would have tried to make it work. I doubt Julian would have objected either.”
“So Tracy decided she wanted to be married to Julian instead?”
“Only to Julian, for numerous reasons.” Charlie could pull off the spitting mad face too. “And the fact she wasn’t poly was at the bottom of the list.”
“Charlie, that you?” a woman called from the direction of the bedroom.
It had been years since Sean had heard that voice, but it hadn’t changed much. Maybe a little hoarser, probably from bossing everyone around, a husband and three kids added to her list of cats to herd.
“Yeah, Mags, it’s me,” Charlie returned.
A freckled face popped out from behind the doorframe, and Maggie Perez, née Reardon, smiled wide, her green eyes bright and her auburn curls bouncing despite the early hour and reportedly gruesome crime scene. Her pleasant demeanor, however, vanished as soon as her gaze landed on him. Eyes widening, she yanked off her gloves and barreled toward him, five and a half feet of blistering Southern fury.
Charlie moved to intercept, but Sean stepped in front of her and held out a hand, aiming for polite, same as Charlie had done with Tracy downstairs. “Hey, Maggie, good to see you again.”
Worked about as well on Maggie as it had on Tracy. “Hey?” Her open palm connected with the side of his face, right where Trevor had decked him on Saturday. “Hey yourself, asshole.”
Okay, worse than the run-in with Tracy. He flexed his jaw and held a hand over the aching spot. The whole side of his face was going to be a rainbow at the rate things were going. “I probably deserved that.”
“You bet your sorry ass you did.” She crowded into his personal space and stabbed his chest with a manicured nail. “You wrecked the lives of two people I care about.”
And just like that, he was back in the graveyard, regret and remorse rushing back in. He had to work twice as hard to keep his shoulders and spine straight, to stop from deflating on the spot for everyone to see.
As if sensing his deterioration, Charlie stepped around him and lightly clasped her friend’s elbow. “Maggie, let it go.”
“I will not.” Maggie shrugged her off and came at Sean again. “You left them on a night that was supposed to be a celebration. Just left. You deserve a whole lot worse than a slap and a few bruises.”
He ran a shaky hand through his hair. “Believe me, I know.”
“And just because she’s tolerating your presence on this investigation doesn’t mean I have to. You’ve got a steep hill to climb, mister.” She shoved him hard, two hands to his chest. “One more fuckup, even a tiny one, and it’ll be my fist next time. You got me?”
Sean held up his hands. “I got you.”
“All right.” Charlie slipped all the way between them, facing Maggie. “Now that you’ve said your piece, can we please get back to the crime scene?”
“Sure,” she replied brightly as if a light switch had been flipped. “Fair warning, it ain’t pretty.” She snapped on another pair of gloves and headed toward the bedroom. Sean marveled at how easily she’d swapped the best friend hat for her medical examiner one.
“Show’s over, folks,” Charlie said to the crowd that had gathered to observe the ruckus. “Clear out.” She waited for the last tech to descend the stairs before turning back to Sean. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He rubbed his hand across his cheek again, trying and failing to reduce the sting. “She still scares the shit out of me.”
Smiling, Charlie brushed aside his hand to inspect the damage herself, her fingertips lightly grasping his stubbled jaw and setting off a totally different kind of sting. “Some things never change.”
“No, they don’t.” His response was low, husky, and it drew her gaze to his lips. Not intended but unmistakable, and a rush of warmth spread up his neck and down to places he had no business thinking about at a crime scene.
“Yo!” Maggie called, shattering the charged moment. “There’s a dead body in here.”
Charlie removed her hand, and Sean reined in his careening desire. Pulling up his agent persona, he willed his id to behave and stepped into the room.
Diego wasn’t kidding, and Sean was in the same boat as Jaylen. He hadn’t seen worse than this either. The sight would replay in his nightmares forever.
Stripped naked, Julian Hirsch had been positioned spread-eagle on the bed, a limb tied to each post. Blood coated the ropes, the bedposts, and his thighs and groin that had been scored. Blood was smeared around his mouth, red on his pale, slack face, like someone had covered his mouth and pinched shut his nose.
“Smothered,” Maggie confirmed. “By hand, then pillow.”
And to think, Tracy had come home from the hospital to find her husband dead in their bed, bloodied and butchered. Based on first impressions downstairs, Sean wasn’t a fan, but he wouldn’t wish this discovery on anyone. That thought, more than the scene itself, made his stomach lurch. He turned his back on the room and braced a hand against the bathroom doorjamb. Eyes closed, he struggled to catch a breath, afraid the deep inhale he needed would make his stomach churn worse.
Beside him, Charlie snapped her fingers Maggie’s direction. “Vicks.”
Pocket contents jangled, then a moment later, Charlie shoved a travel-sized metal can into his hand. “Under the nose,” she said.
He stripped off a glove, popped open the canister, and dabbed the strong-smelling balm beneath his nostrils. He handed the canister back to Charlie and breathed deep, letting the menthol do its work. Charlie settled against the wall to his left, giving him space to pull himself together but letting him know she was there. Sean wrestled his gut and mind into check, and when all was stable, relatively, he glared at Maggie from beneath a raised brow. “‘Ain’t pretty’?”
“Sorry.” She tossed them each a new pair of gloves. “I might have understated that a bit.”
Charlie joined him beside the bed. “Just a wee bit.”
“You got the note?” Sean asked.
The ME withdrew a plastic bag out of the evidence case on the dresser and handed it across the bed to him.
“Where was it?” Charlie asked from over his shoulder.
“Tacked to that pillow”—she jutted her chin at a bagged bloodied pillow on the other end of the dresser—“over his face.�
�
Sean studied the newest note. Same paper, same red block letters, but with the next number and a new quote:
#2 – SO SWEET WAS NE’ER SO FATAL.
“Desdemona,” Charlie said.
Sean whipped around, brow raised even higher.
“HU’s Repertory Theatre put on Othello last year,” she said with a shrug. “Annie and Trevor dragged me with them. Desdemona was falsely accused of adultery.”
“Nothing false about this one,” Maggie quipped. “That man was the walking definition of can’t keep his dick in his pants. Now”—she gestured at the bed—“no pants.”
Sean groaned.
“Sorry, sorry,” Maggie said.
“I don’t know how Diego does it,” Charlie said with a chuckle. “Speaking of, can you go downstairs and tell your husband and Jaylen to gather everyone in the dining room for a debrief? Looks like we’ve officially got a serial case.”
“Sure thing.” Maggie covered Julian’s body with a sheet and removed her gloves. She paused halfway to the door and pointed at Sean. “I’m watching you.”
Sean waited until she left the room to shiver dramatically. “Yep, definitely hates me.” Charlie didn’t smile at his joke, which meant she was taking this one harder than usual. “You okay?”
“It’s hard seeing someone I know butchered like that.” Her eyes flitted to the bed and back. “You okay?”
“Just don’t tell anyone I cracked.”
That got him a half smirk. “Pretty sure Mags will tell everyone.”
He hung his head back and groaned, drawing a fuller smile from Charlie. She only wore it as far as the hallway, though, as Jaylen came rushing up the stairs, alarm written all over his face. He careened to a halt in front of them, and Sean clasped Charlie’s shoulder, preparing for another hit. She didn’t shrug him off; she sensed it too. “What is it?” she asked the officer.
“Abel called. Trevor’s in the wind.”
Curveball.
Done with his records search on Diego’s borrowed computer, Sean perched on the corner of the officer’s desk, taking advantage of the bird’s-eye view into Charlie’s office. Jacket and heels gone, she made another circuit around her desk as she tapped the screen of her phone. At the rate she was circling, she was going to wear a hole in the floor. He’d still be wearing his own in the conference room floor if he hadn’t needed a break from the gruesome crime scene photos. Unfortunately, his searches had proved fruitless, and with mounting frustration came mounting worry for the person who no doubt had Charlie worried too.
Following the report that Trevor was missing, he and Charlie had left Jaylen and Diego to brief the other officers while they’d sped through the streets of Hanover Oaks. Julian’s refurbished house was at the center of the subdivision. Trevor’s house was among the smaller, well-kept homes toward the back of the neighborhood, an addition built five years ago. According to Charlie, Trevor had bought the house as a wedding gift for Tracy.
Sean’s sympathy for the other woman had waned. He still hated that she’d come home to that awful sight, but he’d hate that for anyone. Tracy, though, from what he’d gathered, had practically rubbed her affair with Julian in Trevor’s face. No wonder Trevor had wanted to move on. The move to DC, the job at Georgetown, suddenly made a whole hell of a lot more sense.
What didn’t make sense was the state of Trevor’s house that morning. The bulk of it had been packed up, similar to the beach house a month ago, but in the kitchen, a half pot of cold coffee and damp coffee grounds left a bitter smell in the air, and upstairs, in Trevor’s bedroom, a set of luggage was thrown open on the unmade bed, the smallest size missing. Several drawers were open, clothes rummaged through, and his travel kit, like the middle suitcase, was nowhere to be found, even though his toothbrush was still in its holder. He’d left in a hurry sometime early that morning, and all calls—from them, from HPD, from HU when he didn’t show up for class—were going straight to voicemail. He’d either switched off his phone or had no service wherever he’d taken off to.
Or been taken to.
Sean didn’t want to consider either possibility and mentally mounted evidence against each. If Trevor had been taken, if he were the killer’s next victim, why would he pack a suitcase? If Trevor had taken off, if he were the killer, why would he get sloppy all of a sudden? He knew enough about police work to cover his tracks like at the crime scenes. Why leave that morning in a way that made him look guilty? Not to mention Sean hadn’t detected any guilt the other night in his hotel room when Trevor had first glimpsed the crime scene photos. Only surprise. And he fucking knew Trevor. Yes, he’d been gone a while, but there was no way someone that empathetic, with that big a heart, could commit cold-blooded murder. All that said, Trevor’s connections to the case couldn’t be dismissed—Jeff was stalling his tenure; Julian was fucking his wife; and the murders were fitting—poetic, even—for an English lit professor.
Trevor was involved, whether he knew it or not, and every second he was gone was a second he was potentially in danger, and fuck if Sean would let anything happen to him, selfishly and for Charlie’s sake. Even if he couldn’t be with them, he owed them that much, their chance at a new life in DC, one Sean was coming to realize how much they both needed.
“Can’t take your eyes off her, can you?” Abel’s deep voice and the acrid scent of station sludge jostled Sean out of his thoughts. The older man handed him a mug, then sank into Diego’s chair with a cup of his own.
“Of course I can’t.” Sean took a swig of the bitter brew. “She’s the girl—the woman—who held half my heart.”
“Past tense?” Disbelief colored Abel’s voice. “According to Maggie, it didn’t look past tense at the crime scene today. It sure doesn’t with you sitting on the corner of this desk, watching Charlotte pace around her office.”
Sean sipped his coffee. “Any hits on the APB?”
“Nothing yet.”
“I know I’ve been gone a while and a lot has happened, but I don’t see Trevor as a murder suspect.”
“Neither can I nor can Charlie.” Abel took a long swallow from his mug. “She’s worried more than anything. We all are. Somethin’s not right here.” Sean couldn’t agree more, but before they could talk it out further, a commotion at the reception desk drew their attention, and Abel cursed. “Ah, hell.”
Petite, blond Rachel was arguing with a bruiser of a man in an ill-fitting suit, looming over her in a clear attempt to intimidate. Add to that the air of self-importance, and Sean immediately clocked him as a politician. “Mayor Rowan?” he asked Abel as the visitor bullied his way through the waist-high swinging reception door.
“The one and only.” Abel lowered his mug, stood, and stepped into Craig’s path.
Sean remained on the desk corner, not wanting to draw attention to himself yet. He also wanted to get a measure of the windbag. He’d heard stories, never the full one, but so far Craig Rowan was living up to every bad word Sean had ever heard about him, directly and indirectly.
“What kind of circus are you running here?” Craig lobbed at Abel.
“Now, Craig, if you’ll calm down,” Abel said, always the mediator. “I’ll get Charlie, and she’ll brief you on the case.”
The mayor wasn’t interested in rational conversation. Just more ranting. “I’ve got two dead professors and a campus crawling with press. My phone is ringing off the hook with calls from the media, university officials, and concerned parents, and I’ve got a line of constituents out the door at my office.”
Constituents.
Sean wondered if there was a word in the English language he hated more. Every politician he’d ever known, personally and professionally, used that word as an excuse for being a coward or a jackass. Or both. When Marie and Saul had backed, and matched, his decision to donate his inheritance to LGBTQ shelters in their hometown of Kansas City, constituents had blocked them at every turn. There was a reason they and Paxton Industries were headquartered in DC now, and
it wasn’t only because Saul’s doctors were there. And when his legat office had lobbied for more cross-agency cooperation, constituents had blocked the funding. He’d lost a colleague, a friend, in a terrorist attack the next year that might have been averted with better local training and cooperation. Craig Rowan, if Sean had to guess, was a bit of both—jackass and coward—and he had no qualms about using his constituents to get what he wanted. Judging by Charlie’s determined stride out of her office, she was about to make sure that didn’t happen today.
“You idiots over here are sitting on your hands doing nothing,” Craig continued to rant, oblivious to the fury closing in. “I want to see everything you have on this case, and I want to see it right now.”
“That’s enough, Craig,” Charlie snapped.
“That’s Mayor to you.”
“I don’t care what you call yourself,” she said from a good two inches above him with her heels back on. “If you disrespect my chief or my officers, then don’t expect me to show you any respect in return.”
“This is ridiculous.” Craig stepped back, clearly uncomfortable having to look up at her.
Sean shifted off the desk, uncomfortable for an entirely different reason. Charlie was stunning with that temper on full display.
“Wallace called first thing this morning, did he not?”
“Well, yes,” Craig stammered.
Charlie crowded into his space, forcing his gaze up again. “Then I’ll tell you what’s ridiculous. You barging into this station, wasting time that could be better spent on the investigation.”
“I’m the mayor of this town.” Craig fumed, his face growing redder by the second. “When I request a meeting with the police chief and the detective in charge of this case, that’s who I want to speak to. Not some minion.”
Sean sensed a loaded, angry undercurrent running between them that involved more than just this case. Seeking to diffuse the tension, he stepped forward. “Abel and Charlie were at a crime scene this morning, then all of us were chasing down leads. There hasn’t been time for a call, much less a meeting.”
Craig’s gaze shot to him, and his eyes grew wide when they landed on the sidearm at his hip. “Who are you?”
