THE CORBIN BROTHERS: The Complete 5-Books Series

by Lexie Ray

  “Whoa.”

  I worked him back and forth a little, and he winced.

  “Does that hurt?”

  “No, it’s just that I’m too big and the space is too little,” Toby said.

  “More butter,” I murmured. “Okay. I need you to take a deep breath and suck in that gut as far as it goes, all right?”

  “Gut?”

  I pinched his belly and tickled him. “Your belly. Suck it in. I want to see how flat it can get. Ready? One, two…”

  And with Toby preoccupied with flattening his stomach, I yanked him out in one swift movement — too quick to pain him.

  “I’m free!” he shouted, dancing around and spraying droplets of oil and chunks of butter everywhere.

  “Bath time immediately, mister!” Zoe said, seizing him by the back of his shirt as he came bolting out of the crawl space. “Tuck, Chance is coming over right now.”

  “You need to tell him what happened,” I said. “I have to go.”

  “Please don’t leave,” Zoe said, looking terrified. “What if he comes back? What if he realizes we were in here and he doesn’t want any witnesses?”

  “He’s not going to come back,” I said. “He has who he wants. And if I follow his directions, he’ll leave us alone forever.”

  “He’ll hurt you. I know it.” Zoe noticed that Toby was listening, and gave him a gentle pat on the butt. “Go on, what did I tell you? Plug the tub and run the bath, and I’ll be up there in a minute.”

  “I don’t have a choice but to go,” I said, both of us watching Toby as he dashed up the stairs, making a huge mess in the process. “He’ll kill her otherwise. She doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “Amelia’s stronger than she looks,” Zoe said. “She’ll hold her own.”

  “She’ll try as long as she can,” I said, stripping off my oil-and-butter-covered shirt. “But he’ll have his way if I don’t show up.”

  I followed Toby’s path up the stairs, nearly slipping on one glob of butter, and grabbed another shirt, the note, and my pistol from my room.

  “She was very scared,” Zoe whispered, and I realized she’d followed me without me noticing it. I had complete and utter tunnel vision. I knew what needed to be done, and exactly where I needed to go.

  “I’m going to do my best,” I said. “Keep everyone together around here.”

  I was back down the stairs and grabbing the keys to the truck when Chance burst in.

  “What’s happened?” he demanded, but there wasn’t any time.

  “Green came for Amelia,” I said. “I’m going. I have to go. Talk to Zoe if you have any questions. And lock this place down.”

  Sensing the urgency of the situation, Chance clapped me on the shoulder and nodded, and I raced out the door, terrified that I had taken too long in leaving.

  Scared to death that I would arrive too late to save her.

  Chapter 7

  I didn’t care for Dallas. I hadn’t in a long time. If there was an errand to be run into the city, or something that had to be completed that I couldn’t pawn off on one of my brothers, I made the long drive back, cars gradually clogging the roadway, the ribbons of pavement more vehicle than asphalt, stuck in traffic jams that made my heart rise to my throat, a crush of humanity I wasn’t ready to face again. Give me an open field and not a soul within miles. That was my favorite state of being.

  But this time, I really was the only person who could do anything in Dallas.

  I was the only person who could do anything about Oscar Green.

  I hated to even think the name, the simple syllables like stingers in my brain. I knew I’d have to think a lot more about them, about the man they belonged to, whether I liked it or not. I’d have to communicate with people I’d abandoned, ease back into the mind of a killer to try and figure out what he’d do next. I’d have to play his game if I ever wanted to see Amelia alive again.

  And even if I did play the game, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t kill her. I’d interrupted his game before, and he had wanted her even more badly ever since.

  I shuddered at the thought of my past idiocy, at the remembrance of trying to turn her away from the safety she sought, trying to keep her from my family’s home. I should’ve been better, stronger, but it was a waste of time to think like that. What was done was done. I was a fool, and I’d tried to make it up to her. In the end, though, our house hadn’t been safe enough. Oscar had figured out just where Amelia had fled to, in spite of her new appearance, the fact that she hadn’t left a trace.

  Because I was easier to find.

  It gave me chills to realize that I had taken virtually no precautions to keep myself or my family safe. It wasn’t as if Corbin was a common name, as if I could blend in to a crowd with relative anonymity. I had put every single person in my family in danger because of that. Amelia was in dire straits right now because of it. I should’ve taken more careful measures, should’ve seen about changing the name to the ranch to something that didn’t link it back to me.

  Should’ve caught Oscar Green in the first place.

  That’s what should’ve happened. I should’ve dug myself out of that grave, trusted the fact that Amelia was less injured than I was, and followed Oscar to end it right then and there, on that night. I didn’t care if it wasn’t feasible. Only two of the rounds had gone through my vest. I hadn’t bled out. I could’ve pulled myself together and gotten the job done.

  But since there wasn’t a way to get back to that time anymore, I had to save Amelia now by some good, old fashioned police work.

  And that meant returning to Dallas.

  The cityscape had changed since I last saw it, but it was familiar enough to stir something inside of me. This place had been home, once, when I thought I was done with ranching, ready to strike out on my own and pursue my own fortune. I didn’t think I’d ever gotten used to it, though — the bustle and congestion and traffic. The world was so big I sometimes didn’t understand why people saw the need to pile up on one another.

  I exited the expressway with no small amount of relief and made my way through traffic lights and cyclists, down streets that I used to know like the back of my hand. It was always strange to return to a place you once knew. I’d left so abruptly that it magnified that phenomenon. There was so much unfinished business here that I started feeling worse than I did in traffic on the expressway — my pulse pounding in my temples, my chest tightening. It was something I’d avoided for too long, and Amelia had taken the fall for it.

  It was time to end it.

  I parked in the visitors’ lot of the precinct headquarters — another odd blip in my memories. The department-issued patrol cars gleamed in the lot, waiting to be rolled out into the streets by officers on duty. I’d driven one of those, once, before getting the unmarked car upon promotion to detective. I almost felt inadequate, stepping out of one of the fleet of pickup trucks we used on the ranch, but that was what my life had become after leaving Dallas, leaving the force. I was a different person now, with a different identity, but I needed to slip back into who I used to be before I left.

  I needed to crawl back inside of Oscar Green’s twisted mind.

  It was a necessary skill to have, something that all effective police officers were able to do — thinking like a criminal in order to anticipate next moves, stave off future disasters, make the arrest when it needed to happen. But it was an uncomfortable skill to have when I was forced to immerse myself in the case files, trying to unwind how Oscar Green ticked, subjecting myself to all sorts of nightmares and waking terrors and the distinct feeling that I was losing my mind while working on the case.

  I didn’t look forward to all of that again. What I looked forward to, however, was getting Amelia back — even if all the odds were against me. I at least needed to make an effort. I couldn’t turn my back on her like I had when she’d first showed up at the house.

  I loved her too much to do that.

  With one last deep breath — the
air quality nothing like the air on the ranch — I pushed my way into the doors of the precinct headquarters and was recognized instantly.

  “I’ll be goddamned. Detective Tucker Corbin.”

  “Just Tucker Corbin now,” I said, as a reflex, turning to see who’d called me out so immediately. I was surprised to see my former sergeant — Harriet Fritz — looking older but still solid. I would’ve bet money that I looked a lot older to her, too. The years hadn’t really been kind on either of us. “Howdy, Sergeant.”

  “It’s lieutenant now,” she said, preening a little for a moment. “But howdy, yourself.”

  “Congratulations on the promotion,” I said, meaning it. She was good — good for the department and the folks who worked in it.

  “Please tell me you’re coming back to work for us,” she said, clasping her hands together in a mock prayer. “It’s hard to find good people like you anymore.”

  I had to smile and shake my head at that. “Sorry. Not here to work. At least not permanently.”

  “Not permanently?” She frowned at me. “Not to diminish how nice it is to see you, but just what are you doing here? I’m assuming it’s not a nostalgic visit.”

  “It’s not,” I confirmed. “Who’s in charge of homicide these days?”

  Harriet ’s frown deepened. “What would you need homicide for?”

  There were so many people milling around in the entrance to headquarters — people inquiring about cases, cops walking from one end of the building to the other, a busy front desk dealing with phone calls and questions. This wasn’t the time or place to announce that the greatly feared serial killer Oscar Green had reemerged and kidnapped the woman I loved, the woman he had been denied all those years ago. That admission would only make me look crazy, or worse, cause a panic and the fallout of gossip following it. It would probably make the news, and I needed to deny Green all the publicity I could. He thrived on that. It was part of his very favorite game — public terror.

  “It’s difficult to talk about here,” I said finally, looking around pointedly at the milieu of foot traffic. “Did you get a pretty corner office with your promotion? Somewhere nice and comfortable where we can talk?”

  “Even have my own private coffee maker,” Harriet said, with humor, even as the frown lines remained on her face. She knew something was up. She’d been kind enough to understand why I had to leave after the incident with Green. She had to understand that I wouldn’t be back here unless it was something big.

  The office wasn’t too shabby — bigger than the space I remembered, but still stacked high with papers and files and a veritable office supply store of loose pens and paper clips and sticky notes.

  “You need an assistant,” I commented, looking around as she transferred an armful of folders from a chair to the floor beside her desk.

  “You know, didn’t come with the promotion,” she said wistfully. “You on the market for a new job?”

  “That’d be quite a demotion, wouldn’t it?” I joked. “From detective to secretary to the sergeant.”

  “You’re stalling, Tuck.”

  “I know I am.” There wasn’t any time to stall. I needed to just say what I needed to say and get to work. Amelia depended on me, and as much as I didn’t want to plunge back into this life, she needed me.

  “I know that this isn’t a pleasure trip.” Harriet gave up on clearing her own chair and carefully perched on the edge of her desk instead, a tower of papers swaying dangerously before she secured it with the tip of her elbow.

  “It’s not,” I confirmed. “I need to see the files from the Oscar Green case.”

  She exhaled. “You mean the Oscar Green debacle.”

  “I need to see them, Harriet.”

  “Why?” She peered critically at me. “Why would anyone want to see those again? It’s over. It almost killed you, and it lost us one of our best people on the force.”

  “Who?”

  “You, idiot. You were a good cop. You did a lot of good before that asshole came along — and during. But he ruined you.”

  It was hard to respond to that. In a lot of ways, that entire experience had ruined me. I was never the same after they hauled me out of that grave — hell, since the first of Green’s spate of killings. It had taken me time to gather what remained of my wits, and to recover my strength, and I had Green to thank for all of that. I almost didn’t make it. It was working on the ranch and being around family again that brought me fully back into myself — or as much as I was ever going to be again. I was afraid for a long time that I might’ve really been ruined for life. That I would never be able to recapture the happiness I had before Oscar Green came along and played his games.

  “I really need to see the case files,” I said finally. “It’s very important.”

  “That part of your life is over,” Harriet tried again. “Why would you want to put yourself through that again?”

  She’d been my sergeant back then. She knew what was in those files, knew what that knowledge had done to my mind.

  “It’s Amelia Banks,” I said. “That’s why I need to see them again.”

  “You’re going to have to elaborate.”

  “There isn’t time to elaborate. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” The panic had begun to rise in my chest again. I felt pulled in several different directions. I needed to hurry, needed to figure out what Green was planning, needed to see the old case files and didn’t want to, wanted to wash my hands of all of this and knew I couldn’t. I would never forgive myself if something happened to Amelia. Not after she’d come to me for help and security.

  Not after we’d fallen in love.

  “Is something wrong?” Harriet leveled a look of no nonsense at me.

  “Of course it’s wrong. If everything was right, I’d never step foot inside this building again.”

  I’d come on a little too strong, but if the hotly delivered statement bothered her, she didn’t give me any indication.

  “What about Amelia Banks?” Harriet asked. “That was the final girl, right? The final victim? The one you nearly got killed saving?”

  “The one I saved by sheer luck, yes,” I said. “She came to me for help. She’d been threatened again. We were … She was living on the ranch, my family’s ranch, and now she’s gone missing.”

  Harriet gave me a sharp look. “Are you certain it was Amelia Banks?”

  “Yes, obviously.”

  “But did you get confirmation? You remember all the crazy shit people were pulling during that case.”

  “I do.” And I did. It had been crazy — people phoning in to headquarters at all hours of the day and night with tips both imagined and invented, repulsed but fascinated with the fact that there was a serial killer in our midst, eager to participate in this strangeness. People would come into the precinct hysterical, convinced that they would be Oscar Green’s next victims. A majority of them had to be escorted out and asked not to return unless they had pertinent evidence instead of a gut feeling. Something about Green’s craziness seeped out into the city and infected so many susceptible people. I had only been one of perhaps thousands to suffer mentally at the hands of the serial killer. It had been his favorite game of all, and one he’d been immensely successful at.

  “So how do you know it wasn’t just some crazy pretending?” Harriet asked. “Some super fan of Green’s who got caught up in a delusion that she was Banks?”

  “It was her,” I said, grim. “When you share a grave with a person, Harriet, you know.”

  “Okay, so you’ve been sheltering Amelia Banks,” she allowed. “But what makes you think Oscar Green is back? Everyone agreed after that final encounter that you’d spooked him so much that whatever drove him to commit his crimes was broken.”

  That had been a popular theory, though not one I had particularly believed. The man was sadistic. He was insane. He wanted to kill. I hadn’t frightened him away. He’d just … stopped. For a moment, a minute, a couple of months, a few
years. There was a part of me that always believed he would step back into the public eye when he was ready to. I just didn’t want to be there when he did it, didn’t want to be involved in any way, shape, or form anymore.

  “Amelia had proof that he was back,” I said. “He frightened her enough to make her change her appearance, seek me out.”

  “A copy cat,” Harriet suggested. I knew that she wanted Green to be back even less than I did. It had been a public relations nightmare. Dallas had enough to deal with without having a serial killer back in the mix.

  “There were two people in the house when Amelia was taken,” I told her. “They gave a description that matched our profile for Green.”

  “I don’t want to be hearing this, Tuck,” Harriet sighed. “What do you want me to do? You live in Nowhere, Texas. That’s not even in our jurisdiction. Have you alerted the police?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? I need the case files.”

  “You’re not going back after Green,” she said. “That’s not how this works. You’re not a detective anymore. You gave that up.”

  “I had to give it up.”

  “Because you almost got killed, and you damn near went crazy,” she reminded me. “You don’t have to do this anymore. Let the professionals take care of it — if there’s anything that needs to be taken care of.”

  I reached into my pocket and wordlessly handed the piece of paper Green had left at the house to Harriet.

  “It’s the same style,” I said. “I wanted to see the case files to be sure, to compare it to the evidence we saved. But I know it’s the same.”

  “Anybody with knowledge of the case, anyone who watched the news even casually when it happened could’ve written this,” Harriet said, but her shoulders sagged in defeat. She knew as well as I did exactly who had written that note, who had come after Amelia through me.

  “We never released the notes to the media,” I said. “No one knows about them except for us.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, reluctant to return the note to me. “You have to let the authorities handle this. You can’t just expect to reel in somebody like Oscar Green. You haven’t been a cop. You’ve been a rancher.”