THE CORBIN BROTHERS: The Complete 5-Books Series

by Lexie Ray

  I stepped out of the truck and locked it as a reflex, even though there probably wasn’t a living soul for miles to get into it. Then, I walked inside the warehouse.

  It was a big place, and seemingly stretched on forever. Did Green already know I was here? Had he heard my truck pull up? I was torn between walking quietly and walking quickly, my footfalls echoing throughout the space. I remembered feeling the same way that night of the grave, fighting myself on whether I wanted to sneak up on the movement I was approaching or hurry to stop whatever was happening. My heart thudded in my chest at the prospect that history was repeating itself, that I would make the same mistakes as in the past. It didn’t matter anymore, though. The mistake I’d made all those years ago was letting Green go. This time, I didn’t care about catching him. All I cared about was saving Amelia. I didn’t even care about dying. If it came down to it, and I had to choose between my own life and hers, I knew the decision I would make. It was the only decision I could make. I loved her too much to consider the possibility of living without her.

  “Detective Corbin — welcome.”

  I stopped as the voice rang out through the room, then shielded my eyes as the entirety was illuminated with long fluorescent lights on the ceiling. The warehouse was completely empty except from some wood pallets scattered around, the concrete floor crumbling underfoot, the dinginess of disuse. It had probably housed machinery, or shipments, but it didn’t matter anymore. Now, it was the site of something terrible, something inescapable, something I had to do exactly right.

  I’d never gotten a good look at Oscar Green that night before. I hadn’t even cared to see the police sketches Amelia’s shaky testimony had provided. But now, faced with him, locking eyes with the man who had nearly driven me to madness all those years ago, I had to admit that I was a little … disappointed. I couldn’t quite put a name to the feeling that seeped into me and dulled my adrenaline, but everything seemed almost anticlimactic. He had terrorized the Dallas area and the police force so thoroughly that I’d expected some terrible appearance to accompany those actions.

  Instead, he looked almost normal.

  It was difficult to name the exact color of his eyes, though I’d put it somewhere in the range of hazel and brown, a sort of muddy gold. He was pale, as if he didn’t go out in the sun very often, and perhaps he didn’t, more interested in keeping a low profile. He could’ve been anyone. I could’ve passed this man in the street and not so much as considered the possibility that he was a serial killer responsible for the black mark left on the Dallas police and the deaths of more than a dozen women. He was slighter than I was, and shorter, too. In hand-to-hand combat with me, he would’ve been easily outmatched. But right now, I was the one with the distinct disadvantage.

  Green was leveling a gun at me.

  I was moved to recall the feeling of bullets embedding themselves in my body, the trigger pulled by the same man standing in front of me. If at all possible, I wanted to avoid that happening again. But something deep within me understood that if it was necessary, I’d get shot again for Amelia. I’d do anything to save her. Even die.

  “No gun, I hope, Detective Corbin,” Green said. “That would be breaking the rules of my little game.”

  “No gun.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I put my hands up slowly, and did a deliberately slow spin. “No weapon. I’m showing you.”

  “Strip.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not going to be satisfied until I can be completely sure you’re not breaking the rules. Take off your clothes.”

  Doing that would fuck with my head, make me feel even more vulnerable than I already was, walking into the lion’s den without a single hope of walking out again. But there wasn’t anything I could do but obey. This was all for Amelia. Everything was for her.

  “Detective Corbin … you’re stalling. Don’t tell me you’re shy.” The idea seemed to greatly amuse him.

  “You know, it’s just Tucker Corbin now,” I said, easing my T-shirt over my head and letting it drop to the floor. “I haven’t been a detective in a long time.”

  “I know,” he said. “I followed the news. Early retirement? How is that working out for you?”

  “Working out just fine,” I said, toeing off my shoes and stepping out of my jeans. It surprised me how easy it was to talk to him. Something about not caring what would happen to me as long as I could help Amelia helped to dispel any lingering terror I had of Oscar Green.

  “I thought I was retired for a time,” he said, his eyes drinking me in. “Boxers, too.”

  I swallowed hard and divested myself of them in a pile beside my pants. “See? No gun. No wires. No police backup because I’m not a cop anymore. I’m just a man.”

  “I can see that very well,” Green said. “I’m happy you’re following the rules.”

  “You should’ve thought harder about retiring,” I said. “I don’t think this is going to end well for you.”

  “Said the naked, unarmed man to the man with the gun and the plan,” he said, chortling. “That is rich. I like that very much.”

  “Can I put my clothes back on, now that I’ve proven I don’t have any weapons?”

  “No, no.” He smiled, and it sent chills down my spine. “I think I like you just like that. Well, would you look at that? Those scars are my handiwork, aren’t they? It’s like looking at a work of art I completed some time ago and being impressed all over again.”

  He was looking at the old bullet wounds studding my abs, and I wasn’t sure what to say to that — or whether I’d add a few new ones to the collection. I was so vulnerable right now, and both of us knew it. He’d stripped away more than just my clothes. He’d robbed me of whatever confidence I had coming in. I was going to have to work to get it back, to pretend like nothing was wrong.

  “Where is Amelia?” I asked, looking to get things back on track — as strange as that was.

  “You’ve gotten here just in time,” Green said, stepping to the side, still keeping the business end of the gun trained on me. “Amelia is getting very tired. I was afraid you might miss seeing her.”

  My heart jumped into my throat. I had been so engrossed in analyzing Green and the threat I was facing that I had neglected to see perhaps the biggest threat of all.

  Amelia had been blindfolded and gagged, her hands tied together, and she was balanced precariously on the very tips of her toes on a rickety stool. The most shocking part was a noose wrapped around her neck and attached to a beam on the ceiling above. If Amelia’s footing faltered, she would hang herself. I wanted to rush over there and support her weight in my arms, but Green reminded me of his presence with a chuckle.

  “You’re going to need to stay where you are,” he said. “That’s not how this game works.”

  I knew I should’ve been keeping my eyes on Green, but I couldn’t look away from Amelia. I was horrified as she wavered, obviously tired.

  “It’s okay, Amelia,” I said, forcing my voice not to shake. “I’m here, now. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  If she heard me, she didn’t give any indication. She was just fighting to keep breathing, to stay balanced, to do everything she could to survive this even as her strength flagged.

  “Oh, yes, I like that very much,” Green crowed. “Hope can be the cruelest emotion, especially when everything ends in disappointment.”

  How many shots could Green land on me if I rushed him? Would the smaller caliber give me more time to act if I was shot? Could I overpower him and still get to Amelia? Or should I forget all about the gun and disarming him and simply go to get that noose from around her neck? She still wouldn’t be much of a match for a man with a gun if I died in the process, but it would at least give her a fighting chance.

  Green was still going on and on about hope. “Just like the cops hoped they’d figure out who I was and find me. Just like Amelia hoped that I would never come looking for her again. Just like you hoped your
life could be normal again.”

  “Just like you hope you’re going to get away with this,” I said in an effort to keep him talking, to buy a little time until I could figure out what to do to save Amelia. I would die, and that would be okay if she lived. I just needed to make sure I lived until I was sure she would, too. The only real problem was gauging just how much more time Amelia had in her.

  “Good, good,” Green said, clearly delighted. “It’s so nice to be able to relate to someone for a change. That’s exactly what I mean.”

  The idea that a serial killer related to me was repugnant.

  “You’ve already made some errors,” I told him, wondering if I could talk to him enough to distract him. Distraction would give me a leg up on the gun, if I decided to rush him before going to Amelia.

  “I don’t make mistakes,” he said, cold. I’d apparently offended him.

  “You’re careless this time,” I said, shrugging as if it should be obvious. “Careless and arrogant. Over-confident.”

  “I’ve constructed the perfect conundrum,” he argued. “You’ve been weighing whether to take me on or to save the girl. I’m dying to know what you’re going to do.”

  So that was his game. It gave me a little pause that Green was so casual in its revelation, and I resisted the urge to get frustrated. Green had come here knowing that he might fail. It was different in every way from the events of the past. He had always been so careful, so secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t get caught. Now, he had reconciled himself with the fact that his plan might fail and that he might die in the process.

  “You know, I told you to hurry along because I’ve had Amelia like this ever since I got here into this warehouse,” Green said. “She’s been balancing like that for, let’s see here … going on 24 hours already, isn’t it? More? Less? I have no concept of the time when I’m excited like this. It’s a weakness.”

  I swallowed hard and tried not to show my worry or horror. “Amelia is very strong,” I said.

  “That impressed me, too,” he remarked. “I don’t think the Amelia from all those years ago would’ve been able to stand like that for so long. The game probably would’ve been over a lot faster, and I would’ve been disappointed. You would have, too. You’d have shown up here and just found a hanging body and no game.”

  “What’s your endgame here?” I asked, trying not to look at the way Amelia’s entire body was shaking, taut with the effort of keeping herself alive. “What are you hoping to achieve?”

  “I’m just tying up a few loose strings here,” Green said. “I’ve had lots of fun — though you spoiled it that night. Who knows where I would be today, or what I would be doing, if I’d succeeded in my game that night. I could’ve been the most prolific killer of all time, maybe.”

  Was that his twisted game? He just wanted to be the best at killing? That admission made me realize just how depraved he was. He didn’t care about anything else but a body count, was completely disconnected from the idea that he was actually ending lives. It had been a worst case scenario for the detectives working up the profiles on a possible suspect back in Green’s heyday. A man without remorse is a frightening thing, and so far, the only remorse I could detect in him was that he regretted not killing more women.

  “So why the women, then?” I asked, shifting my weight from foot to foot and discreetly shuffling forward a bit. “What was it about them? Tough relationship with your mother?” That had been a theory floated around in the profiles.

  “No mother, actually.” And that had been another theory. “No parent figure of any kind, really.” If the upbringing brought him sadness, there wasn’t any sort of indication of it. “Just me. And my little games. Women are weaker than men. Easier to terrify. Easier to control.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” I said. “I know plenty of strong women, and Amelia’s one of them.”

  “Strong in body, maybe,” he mused. “Stronger than she was, anyway. But not in mind. When I came for her, she cowered. Fear is the best antidote to strength, you know. All I had to do was leave her that little note and wait for her to get comfortable again. Wait for her to lose track of the things she learned in self-defense class. She cowered when she realized it was me again. That’s how frightened she was. She’d made all those changes to herself, all those preparations, and not a single one of them helped her, in the end.”

  I hated the image that lodged itself in my brain, of Amelia being taken, of her terror. I’d wanted her to fight. That was the thought I had comforted myself with. That maybe she’d at least gotten a good hit in on him, showed him that she wasn’t going to be so easily scooped out of her life this time. Amelia was only human. I had been scared, too. I just loathed the idea of her scared. I wanted to protect her from all of that, from everything.

  I should have kept her closer. We should have taken other steps to keep her safe. Someone should have been with her at all times. And that someone should’ve been me.

  Then again, I had to consider the fact that he had terrified me just as much as her. If I had seen him coming at me, I couldn’t be sure what my reaction would’ve been. Maybe I would’ve crumpled uselessly, cut down by bullets I couldn’t dodge, paralyzed by all those nights of dreaming. Maybe he would’ve known exactly what to do to render me useless to myself and everyone around me. Maybe I would’ve done nothing to change the outcome of this game of his.

  “How much longer do you think she’ll last?” Green asked almost conversationally, as if we were talking about the outcome of a sport competition, or a movie plot, or a current event that was developing. Amelia was panting and gagging, struggling, the stool wobbling dangerously. She didn’t have much longer. I had a decision to make.

  “I wouldn’t give her much more than five minutes of life left,” Green said. “If I was a betting man, that is. And I’m not.”

  I didn’t have a reply to that statement. I was afraid of provoking him, of losing my coolness and clarity. And goddammit, I just wanted Amelia to live through this.

  As it turned out, I didn’t need to respond to Oscar Green.

  A lot of things happened suddenly, and all at once.

  There was a burst of crashing sounds and shouting, Green fired his gun, Amelia’s legs finally gave out and toppled the stool, I sprang toward her, and more guns fired from behind me.

  I didn’t have the time or inclination to assess myself, to understand whether or not I had a bullet in me, or why there were more guns than just Green’s. All I could see in front of me was Amelia, her feet kicking even though they had been so tired before. All sound sort of faded into a dull roar as I dove over the rolling stool and captured Amelia’s legs, lifting her, supporting her weight in my arms, grabbing at the rope wound around her neck. Activity exploded around us as I lowered Amelia to the ground, cradled in my arms, ripping off the cords that had bound her hands, then the gag and blindfold. She was wild-eyed and shaking, and bruises were already mottling her neck, but she was alive, and I crushed her to me more in concern that she’d get struck by a bullet singing by than in genuine relief.

  I was still expecting to die.

  Life tends to slow way down in moments of peril, I’d learned. Bullets whizzing took on the lazy drone of bumblebees. Things that were less important than my immediate aims simply ceased. I couldn’t puzzle over the scuffle of shoes on concrete behind me because I was more invested in passing my hand over Amelia’s face, feeling her hair rippling beneath my palm, securing her to my chest as if I could simply press her body into mine and protect her within my own flesh and bones. She clung to me, her hands fisted against my bare chest, face buried in the crook of my neck, no more willing to watch what was going to happen to us than I was. I couldn’t even be concerned with my own vulnerability and nudity. The only thing that mattered to me was that I was holding the woman I loved. It gave me peace that I had achieved what I set out to do, faced down a fear I’d held for years, and would shield Amelia from anything else that might come to pass. If
this was the end for me, I supposed I accepted it.

  “Get them up — Tuck, are you hurt?”

  It took me a couple of long moments to understand what was happening, the friendly voice I heard, the sensation of being lifted to my feet. Someone tried to take Amelia from my arms, but we latched on to each other tightly.

  “It’s done, Tuck.” I had to blink hard a couple of times to believe what my eyes were seeing. Harriet, suited up in full SWAT gear, stood in front of me, flanked by at least a dozen other team members. I registered the sight of Green sprawled out on the ground, people stepping over him like he was just a pile of garbage, with a small amount of detachment. Not a minute earlier, he was threatening to kill me. Now, he was dead. It was a small price to pay for all the damage he had caused, and maybe it was the best justice we could’ve hoped for. Any kind of court case would’ve been both prolonged and sensationalized, and might’ve necessitated Amelia, me, or both of us to testify.

  But I couldn’t really fathom those kinds of things right now. I was just vaguely surprised to still be alive, and enormously shocked at the presence of my former coworkers.

  “How?” was the only word I could manage, genuinely bewildered at the progression of things.

  “Well, you’re not going to like it, but I have no regrets,” Harriet said, removing her helmet and tucking it under her arm. “It saw the two of you through alive, and got our man.” She looked over to where Green’s body still lay. No one had so much as draped a sheet over it. Maybe no one had thought to bring a sheet. “He’s so awfully … ordinary, isn’t he?”

  “How did you all know we were here?” I asked, finally able to articulate a little better.

  “When you were in the evidence room, I slipped my phone into your truck,” Harriet said. “That’s how we were able to keep tabs on you.”