by Elle Thorpe
I did as I was told, giving the young cop time to get his gun out and point it at me. “Take it easy. I’m not going to do anything.”
“Get on your knees. And uh…put your hands up!”
I wondered if this was the first time he’d ever actually arrested anyone.
I dropped and lowered my gaze to the dirty ground beneath my knees.
“What the fuck?” Another voice, this one older and deeper, questioned as he came out of my apartment.
The weight of the rookie’s gun trained on my chest was practically palpable. Even though I wasn’t looking at him, I knew his finger trembled over the trigger. One tiny movement, and he’d send a bullet through my heart.
It already felt like he had. I was as dead inside as if my heart had stopped beating the moment I’d realized Jayela was gone. I might not have been in love with her, but I never wanted to see anyone like that. Especially not someone I’d once cared about.
I could only imagine what this was doing to Mae.
“Fucking hell, it’s him. You son of a bitch. Get him in here before all the neighbors see and someone calls the news for a quick payout.”
Rough hands wrapped around my wrists, yanking my arms down and securing them behind my back with cold metal cuffs. The older officer hauled me to my feet and shoved me toward the door. My chest touched the barrel of the rookie’s gun, that he seemed unable to lower, frozen into position by shock or maybe fear.
The man behind me pressed in closer, his burly chest pushing against my back and shoving me further into the gun barrel. “He should put one of those right through your chest for what you’ve done,” he snarled. “Move, cop killer.”
The rookie, slightly more composed now that I was in cuffs and his older partner had taken over, watched me walk by him, his earlier bewilderment morphing into something stronger. “Fucking piece of scum,” he taunted.
Obviously not his first day on the job, then. He’d been around long enough for his partner to teach him how cops rolled around here.
I didn’t say anything. This wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before. The police treated anyone with a Saint View address like they were barely better than dogshit on their shoe. We all knew to just shut up and go along with it. Mouthing off only made things worse. So I followed them into my apartment, noting the kicked-in door. I doubted they’d bothered with a warrant. When one of their own was the victim, I had a pretty strong feeling that all rules went out the window.
That theory proved correct just seconds after making it through the doorway. The older man shoved me into a kitchen chair so roughly it nearly toppled backward. The two front legs lifted off the floor, and it was only my own sense of self-preservation that had me leaning forward enough to counterbalance and keep the chair upright.
The older cop paced the floor in front of me, his fingers clenched into fists at his side. Barely concealed rage poured off him in waves. “Why’d you do it?” he finally managed to spit out. He stopped pacing and stared at me. “Fucking tell me why? Why her?”
“I didn’t.” I knew it to my core. I couldn’t have. It didn’t matter what I’d done in the past. I wasn’t that man anymore. And I would have never hurt a woman. Never.
The older officer bent down, so his gaze was level with mine. And then he spat in my face. “Bullshit. Her fucking blood is all over you.”
I had no way of wiping the spit from between my eyes with my hands cuffed behind my back, so I had no choice but to ignore it. I tried to remain calm and only tell the officer the things I knew for sure. “I woke up in bed with her this morning—”
“Shut up. We all know what you did. You charmed your way into her sister’s pants, waited for Jayela to fall asleep, and then took your opportunity for revenge.”
I blinked. “Revenge? For what?”
“She broke up with you a few years back. I remember wondering why, because the two of you seemed like the perfect couple.” He reared back and laughed, the sound hard and cruel. “It’s always the perfect-looking ones who hide the deepest sins, isn’t it? She knew. She knew you were fucking rotten.”
I studied his face again, and recognition flickered in the back of my mind. I’d met this man before. Maybe more than once. We’d shared a big round table at a police ball, the night Jaye had received her medal. Jayela had introduced us, and I’d shaken the man’s hand. But I didn’t remember his name. Johns? Johnson?
I did remember the way he’d looked at Jayela. It had been with barely concealed lust, though when I’d pointed it out on the way home, she’d laughed it off as ridiculous. I hadn’t pushed it because I was used to other men wanting her. She was fucking beautiful, of course they stared. Did I like it? No. But in the scheme of things, a middle-aged man with a wife was no threat to me.
Until now.
“I want a lawyer.”
The rookie cop snorted.
The older man reared back. “You’ll get a lawyer when I say you get a lawyer.”
Fuck this guy. He’d been waiting to take a shot at me for years, his jealousy written all over his face.
“I know my rights.”
He spun on me, getting in my face. “You have no rights, you piece of shit. You lost all rights when you murdered one of our own.”
I battled to stay calm, but the anger I’d learned how to keep a handle on ignited inside me. “I told you, I didn’t do it.”
The man roared in frustration. Despite knowing how the police treated anyone from this side of the Saint View/Providence border, the punch to my midsection still came as a surprise. His meaty fist drove deep into my already tender gut, knocking the wind out of me. I grunted but gnashed my teeth together to keep from saying anything.
“Do you even know what sort of cop she was?” he ranted. “She was the best. Smart and talented and beau—” The man clammed up and threw another punch into my unprotected gut for good measure.
His unrequited crush wasn’t lost on me. And that anger inside me picked up, swirling higher.
“Beautiful,” I wheezed. “She was beautiful.” The anger took hold of my tongue, even though my brain screamed for it to shut up. “And she didn’t know you were fucking alive, that sound about right? Jealous, much? She loved me, and she never gave you a second glance. Maybe it was you who killed her.”
The next punch cracked across my cheekbone, followed up by two more in quick succession. My head snapped to one side as the blows kept coming.
There wasn’t a thing I could do to protect myself.
From the corner of my swelling eye, I saw the rookie cop grin and pull out his phone.
But it was his partner who was the real problem. The man’s eyes were wild, spit balling at the corners of his mouth. “Admit what you did, you prick. Give her the respect she deserves.”
I wouldn’t. “I didn’t do it.” I could barely form the words around my swelling lips.
“You’re covered in her blood. They found the murder weapon. How long do you think it’ll be before they find your fingerprints on it?”
If I had any patience left, it disintegrated. “They won’t because I didn’t fucking do—”
The knife. The knife on the floor beside the bed had been the large silver knife I’d pulled from the block to cut up limes. They would find my prints on it. Whether I’d killed Jayela or not, my prints were all over it.
I froze. I might have had a chance when the evidence was all circumstantial. But my prints on the knife would be the nail in my coffin. Any flicker of hope was extinguished as if this cop had just taken a piss all over it.
“They will,” the cop taunted, getting so close to me his coffee-tainted breath mingled with my own. “They will. So admit it. Open your mouth and let the words free. Maybe it’ll ease some of that guilt sitting on your soul.” He threw two quick punches to my temple that made my head spin.
I gave up biting my tongue. What the hell did it matter now? I could already see how this would play out, in full terrifying color. It didn’t matter what I said or
what I did. My prints on that knife, my history with Jayela, and Mae’s testimony. It was an open-and-shut case. My heart ached for everything I was suddenly sure I would lose. And yet that was too hard to process. I let my anger swirl and rise instead, the feeling like a hug from an old friend I hadn’t seen in years. It welcomed me back into its embrace and whispered seductively that I was home. “Ease my guilt? Or ease your guilt over your fucking hard-on for her? Ease your guilt that you wanted in her panties, but she wouldn’t look twice at a man like you? Your jealousy reeks. You’re the one who should feel guilty. Did you tell your wife that while you fuck her with your tiny dick, you’re thinking of some hot piece of ass from the station?”
The man lunged, and his fingers closed around my throat. I threw myself backward, pushing off with my feet and sending the chair crashing to the cracked tiled floor. My arms twisted painfully behind me at the impact, and pain shot through my shoulder.
I ached to throw a punch. To feel my fist smash into this guy’s mouth, just so the anger had somewhere to go.
But the cop followed me down with a force I hadn’t reckoned on. And once he had me on the floor, I realized instantly how screwed I was. I kicked out with my legs, but the rookie was quick to jump on them, his phone scattering across the tiles in the process.
The older cop’s ruddy face loomed over me, the downward pressure of his weight on my neck cutting off my oxygen. “Admit what you did to her. Admit what you took from me.” His blows rained down, smashing against my head until the world swam around me.
The guy was completely unhinged. I couldn’t breathe. I thrashed harder, fighting to get out from beneath him, but I couldn’t budge his weight. Darkness flickered at the corners of my vision, panic coursing through my system. Fuzziness clouded my thoughts, making them slow and sluggish. Time ceased to exist, seconds morphing into days. The week becoming a year, the year becoming a decade, confusion scrambling my thoughts until I didn’t know up from down.
But there, in the budding darkness, my memories took hold.
Admit what you did.
They taunted me, faceless shapes that swirled with malice. The bad things I’d done. The people I’d hurt.
The one time I’d lost control and let my temper get the better of me.
Admit it. Admit it!
I saw his face. The face of the life I had taken all those years ago.
I let the guilt and the shame in. All those feelings I’d held at bay with the help of a therapist, I let them flood. I let them consume me in a way there’d be no coming back from. They dragged me under, merging the present with the past. A past I could never outrun, no matter how hard I tried. Remorse clogged my throat, but I forced the words past it. I had to let them out. Had to say them out loud.
They demanded it. They’d never leave me alone if I didn’t.
“I did it,” I screamed.
The memories laughed, like it wasn’t enough.
It was never enough.
I let them end me. “Is that what you want to hear? I did it. You fucking happy?”
Air suddenly rushed my lungs. I blinked as the present flowed back in, pushing out the memories once more, banishing them to the darkness. Light blinded me, and then came the pain, flooding my system while I choked and coughed.
The cop smiled a vicious grin, getting off my windpipe, leaving me beaten and broken on the floor. “Yeah. I’m happy.”
Horror dawned as I put two and two together. This cop’s smug expression. The fact he’d let me go.
He thought I’d confessed to Jayela’s murder.
Before I could choke out a word, he stamped a boot into the side of my head, and darkness covered everything once more.
I was glad for it. Because the darkness was what I knew. And it’s where I should have stayed.
Maybe if I had, Jayela would have still been alive.
7
Heath
The slam of a jail cell door ricocheted around my skull. I tried to stifle my automatic reaction to jump and instead forced myself to remain still. My ass was numb from sitting in the exact same spot for hours on end, but I had no desire to move. I stared at the flaking paint on the cell wall and tried not to replay the memories. But it was a losing battle. I’d let them back in, and now they consumed me. I deserved it. I deserved the pain.
I slowly peeled my fingers from my palms, straightening them out, and stared down at my now clean hands. But it didn’t matter that the blood had been washed away. It was still there. I could still see it, smell it. And my gut instinct told me over and over that they were the hands of a murderer. Not Jayela’s murderer, but a murderer nonetheless.
“You’re both really fucking boring, you know?”
Two other men shared this intake cell, waiting alongside me to be processed and moved deeper into the prison itself. One was a young, quiet guy who was so silent I couldn’t even hear him breathe. His long dark hair fell across his face, shielding him from the rest of the room. He’d been here when I arrived, and he hadn’t uttered a word since, other than to say his name was Vincent when I’d asked. He answered without making eye contact, his gaze trained firmly on his lap, his hands tucked beneath his thighs. The kid was probably terrified, but I hadn’t had it in me to try to reassure him in any way. His silence had been a blessing to the war raging inside me.
But the other guy…
I slowly raised my gaze to glance over at him. I’d heard him come in, heard him mouthing off to the guards, but I hadn’t cared to make conversation with him. But now apparently, he was sick of waiting for someone to make polite chitchat. I met his gaze with a solid one of my own. “Not here to entertain you.”
The man gave a throaty chuckle. He was a big guy, taller than me and a good few inches wider. Mouthing off was probably not my smartest idea, but I wasn’t in the mood for anyone’s shit. I just wanted to be left alone.
“What are you in for?”
I ground my molars together and ignored him.
“Going to make me guess then, are you? Car theft?”
I didn’t respond.
“No?” He rubbed his thick hands together. “Okay, okay. Robbery. No! Armed robbery. You seem the type. Muscles and tats and all that.”
I folded my arms and leaned back on the cement block wall. I let my gaze rest on him again, allowing my expression show exactly what I thought of this little game he was playing.
Apparently, that wasn’t clear enough. Because he continued on like nothing had happened.
“Not armed robbery, huh? Domestic violence? Oooh, hit-and-run? No? Tax evasion?”
My patience was wearing thin, and he obviously wasn’t stopping. “Murder.”
The kid glanced up, peeking at me through his wall of hair, but dropped his gaze once more when I looked in his direction.
The man let out a hoot of amusement. “Hoo boy, wouldn’t have picked that in a million years. You’re so pretty. I wouldn’t have thought you’d known how to get your hands dirty.”
I’d told him my charges in the hopes of shutting him up, but knowing my crimes only made him chattier.
“Did you do it?”
I raised one eyebrow in disgust. But hell, what was the point in staying silent? I’d already admitted to the police that I had. I’d be dead right now if I hadn’t. That cop wouldn’t have stopped until he got what he wanted. Didn’t matter that this time I hadn’t done it. Didn’t matter I’d been so starved of oxygen that I’d had no idea what I was even admitting to.
All the evidence was stacked against me. They might have forced the confession into my mouth, but my old guilt had taken the wheel and finished me off. I could practically feel the cool steel of the knife in my hand, and in my head, I drew a picture of some warped reality where I took that knife and ran it across Jayela’s throat. It sent chills down my spine, and I fought to get the images out, but the memories knew. They knew I had that inside me. That cold-hearted darkness that made me capable of taking a life. My temper, my lack of control, my anger
, they were all things I’d spent almost fifteen years trying to get under control. I thought I’d done it. I thought all the years of counseling had changed the man I was.
But leopards couldn’t change their spots, and neither could I. I couldn’t admit to killing Jayela, because I hadn’t. But I could admit to killing another. “Yeah. I did it.”
The man grinned, showing off a mouthful of yellowed teeth. “Who was it?”
I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Fuck off.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, becoming beady in his oversized face. “Now, now, you talk to your woman with a mouth like that?”
Every muscle in my body stiffened. Mae’s face flashed in my mind, taking me by surprise, because she wasn’t my woman, and I didn’t have any sort of claim over her. But she’d awoken something new inside me last night. Something that had felt full of promise for a tiny moment. Something that had been cruelly ripped away before I could even do anything about it. Anger rolled through my body like a tidal wave.
“Oh, so you’re a girlfriend killer then? What’d she do? Not put out enough? Nah, that couldn’t be the problem with you, being so good-looking and all. She cheat? She put her plump lips around another man’s dick?” His hand slid over his crotch, and he grabbed himself through his orange prison-issue jumpsuit and groaned. “Fuck, I’d love some of that right now.” He glanced over at Vincent. “Your mouth is almost as pretty as a woman’s, you know. And you’ve got all that long, dark hair…”
The kid stiffened, and I saw red. Fuck that. I’d never been one to stand around watching the strong try to lord it over the weak. Especially not like that. Men who made sexual threats were the worst kind of scum. The kid couldn’t have been more than twenty and was clearly terrified. He could have been one of my younger siblings. And if I was being completely honest? I was fucking itching for a fight. I was desperate for a way to unleash some of the pain inside me.
I exploded up from the bench and grabbed fistfuls of the man’s shirt, slamming him back against the wall, so his head cracked off the cinderblock. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” Anger seeped from my every pore, that wheeling rage inside me that was never too far from exploding threatening to burst my tentative hold on it. Would it even matter if I rammed my fist into this man’s flabby cheek? Would it even matter if I pummeled him until my knuckles bled and his face was barely recognizable? Wasn’t that what I did? Wasn’t that who I was? I’d spend the rest of my life paying for it.
