Chapter Eighteen
Johnson hadn’t been kidding, I thought as I opened the car door and took in the sight of Mac, huddled into himself in the passenger seat of the car. He turned his head, and when he spotted me attempted a smile which failed miserably. He averted his head so I didn’t see the stark look of terror on his face and the wildness in his eyes. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. There had to be a reason he acted like this around dead bodies. If he knew he was this way, why did he even join the police force?
I sat in the driver’s seat and shut the door, giving us privacy. I should be out there tending to the crime scene, but I couldn’t leave him alone like this. Johnson was experienced enough to handle the examiners until I was through.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his hands balling into fists on his thighs. He was breathing so hard I feared he would hyperventilate. “I tried. I really did try to keep it down this time, but I couldn’t do it.”
“Hey, it’s fine,” I tried to reach out for him, but he shrank away from me. I tried to lighten the mood with a joke. “It’ll get better with time, and then you’ll join a team of unfeeling s.o.b’s who’ve seen too many to be bothered.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s always been this way. I can see it on the television, but once I’m close to it, everything just comes back.”
I reached across the console to place a comforting hand to his thigh. “Talk to me, Mac. Let me know what’s going on with you. You always put on this happy smiling face, and I never even sensed you were keeping back something from me. If I don’t know I can’t make it better.”
He chuckled. “You’re always trying to fix people’s problems. You can’t fix this, though. It’s been too long.”
I moved my hand from his thigh to the back of his head and massaged his skull. He leaned back into my touch, relaxing.
“I’m not trying to fix you, just be there for you. Tell me what’s the problem.”
He inhaled a deep breath, and when he released it, he shuddered. “You know I grew up with my grandparents.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s because I lost my parents when I was young,” he answered, his body shaking so hard I doubted he was even aware. He looked straight ahead seeing into a past that didn’t want to leave him alone. “My mom and dad were wonderful people. I remember the love and happiness between them. Dad always made my mom laugh. They were so in love that even an eight-year-old boy could see it.”
“What happened?”
“A burglar happened. I didn’t know what was going on, just that my mom entered my bedroom and told me to be quiet. I could hear my dad arguing with someone before the gun went off. I heard the footsteps on the stairs. Mom pushed me under the bed.” His voice hitched, and I couldn’t bear having him apart from me while he was so anguished. I pulled him into my arms, hugging him hard while he clutched me.
“It’s okay.” I stroked his hair to calm him down.
“Mom told me to be quiet, and that I shouldn’t make a sound,” he continued. “She said no matter what I heard or what happened, I should be brave. He killed her, strangled her. I failed her and climbed out from under the bed to try to stop him. Mom screamed at me to run, but I couldn’t leave her, so I watched him kill her. Then he threw her body in the closet like she was nothing and stuffed me inside with her, locking the door. I was inside with her for three days before they found me.”
“Oh my God.” Now it made sense. Knowing what I did about a corpse my heart tugged for the poor boy who had been forced to see his mother decompose in that way.
“I had to go through counseling, and it helped some.” His hand tightened on my shoulder. “But it was easy to think I was better when I didn’t have to face dead bodies on a daily basis. I was fine until I encountered my first body at the academy. I held it in, but afterward, when I was alone, it was like reliving the horror. I’m sorry I can’t be the officer you need.”
My heart pounded in my chest as I headed for the front door of the office building. My career would be over after this, but I didn’t care. I had to get to Mac and Paulie. I had to ensure they were safe. Mac couldn’t have pulled that trigger, not when he knew what he would face if someone died at his hands. Later in the night on that same day he had told me about his mother, he had explained to me about his wish to be a police officer after surviving that ordeal, but now not sure he was cut out for the job.
I ignored the booted footfalls of officers behind me. I pulled my gun from the holster of my waistband and pushed the glass door with my shoulder. It rotated, spitting me into the room at how hard I pushed against it.
“Charlestown Police Department, nobody move!” I shouted, scanning the lobby of people lying on the floor. My eyes swept over them and came to rest on Mac, who was standing. His gun was still trained, his finger holding down the trigger. A few feet away from him lay an unmoving man wearing a ski mask.
I stepped into his line of vision, blocking his view from the body to gain his focus. “Mac, baby, look at me. It’s okay.”
“I shot him.” The blood had drained from his lips. “I killed him.”
“And you saved a lot of lives. Look around you. You're everybody's hero. Now give me the gun.”
I reached for the gun and removed it from his tight grip. “I need to use the restroom,” he murmured and took off in what I assumed was the direction of the bathroom. I wanted to go after him, but I had already dismissed protocol in my concern for him. If Mac was the one who had been shot, by bursting into the lobby I could have caused injury to several of the hostages. Police officers streamed into the lobby, their guns out and asking the hostages to stay down.
There was no need. I walked over to the body and removed the mask from the dead man. I had no idea who he was, and I had never seen him before in my life. As I continued to stare at him, something about his features looked familiar but not that I could put my hands on at that moment.
“We need the paramedics in here right away!” I called out, hearing the moans of pain from those he had shot. No sooner had I mentioned it than they rushed through the front door. The security guard didn’t look as though he had survived, but there were two people lying on the floor wounded and needed to be attended to right away. My heart longed to go after Mac, but I had to take care of the crime scene first. Then I could see to him.
I had the police officers check each person and send them out of the office building in a single file. We wanted no surprises even though it looked like a solo operation. I was relieved when I saw Johnson enter.
“I’ve to go check on Mac,” I explained to him. “He shot the perp.”
He nodded in understanding. “Go ahead. Everything is under control.”
I stopped a man who looked dazed from the entire debacle and asked him which way was the bathroom. He pointed me in the right direction, and I jogged toward the door. I had enough time to check on Mac but couldn’t abandon the investigation for long. I just needed to see that he was okay and not hurt.
I was about to push the bathroom door open when I heard a grunt of pain. My hand hovered over the knob as I listened with a frown.
“…useless piece of shit. You shot and killed my brother!”
Holy shit. My blood ran cold as I recognized the voice. Miller. I was at a loss at how he was involved in this mess, but now I knew why someone was always one step ahead of us in our investigation.
I cocked the barrel of my gun and inched the bathroom door open, hoping it wouldn’t creak. I was prepared to shoot first and ask questions later. I needed no further answers anyway when I peeked inside and found Paulie on the floor, a nasty cut above his eye and his lip bleeding. Mac stood facing me, but Miller had his back to the door. I felt disgusted to see he was even wearing his uniform.
Paulie glimpsed me from the floor, and I placed my finger to my lip for him to be quiet. The look of relief on his face tugged at my heart. I’d protect these two with the last of my breath.
“Why are you doing this?” Mac a
sked. “You’re supposed to be one of the good guys.”
“Except this job pays shit,” Miller replied. “I’ve been dealing drugs since I was a teenager. Just never been caught. I thought the best way to get away with this was to join the police force. Everything was going fine until you found the money that bitch thought she could hide from me.”
“That was you? How could you take someone else’s life like that?”
“You mean the way you just took my brother’s?” Miller head-butted Mac hard in the face with his gun, driving him into the wall at his back. The hand holding the gun lowered from the momentum of his swing. It was just the break I was looking for.
“Drop the fucking gun, or I’ll drop you right where you’re standing.”
Miller froze, but his hand on the gun shifted. He didn’t lower it but neither did he raise it. I meant it. I’d been trained as a marksman and could sever his spinal cord from his brain with one clean shot and drop him like the gnat he was.
“Captain to the rescue,” he said, his back still to me. “I should have known you wouldn’t be far.”
"That's right. You're messing with the wrong people here, Miller. Do you honestly think you would get away with this? How were you planning to get out of here after killing them?”
“Easy enough. I found them dead. I’m a cop. Do you think anyone would think I did it?”
“And when we dig into the background of the guy Mac shot and found out you were related to him?"
"Easy enough. We aren't blood brothers, but we've been in this thing for years, so yeah, I still see him as a brother."
"Too bad that didn’t work for you. You’ve fooled us all long enough. For the last time drop the gun.”
“Fine. Fine.” He made to lower the gun to the floor, but I was watching him. I saw the second he tried to point the barrel at the man I loved. Mac, sweetheart, I’m so sorry, I thought as I fired one shot to the back of Miller's head. His body jerked from the impact. He dropped to the floor, his own gun going off and lodging in the wall. I lowered my gun and holstered it just in time to catch Mac, who threw himself at me. He was splattered in Miller's blood, shaken, and a fucking mess, but he was alive. Today had to be hell for him, but I would help him to get through it. I glanced at Paulie who rose from the floor. I opened my arm to him, and he fitted himself right beside Mac. I hugged them both to me, clinging tightly to them.
Today I had marked what was mine. I would die before I let anyone hurt them.
Chapter Nineteen
As early as twelve years old, way back before I confessed to my parents I was gay, and everything had been right with our relationship, I decided I would become a police officer. My father had taken me to see the Police Memorial Parade, and the fascination of it all had left an impression on my mind. When we returned home, I wanted to watch everything there was, age appropriate and then some about law enforcement. I grew up on detective shows, and never once did I change my mind about what I wanted to do.
At forty years old, I was about to walk away from it all, and I wasn’t as nostalgic about it as I thought I would be. The truth was that seeing the police officers reminded me of a family unit, and I wanted to be a part of that. Now, Paulie and Mac were my unit, and I was okay with that.
“Marks, wait up!”
Standing at my truck, key in hand, I turned to acknowledge Wellman, the Chief of Police. When he’d taken me to task for the hostage situation, I had simply accepted that I had been in the wrong. I had let my emotions drive my actions that day instead of operating under the guidelines of my training. He had sought to discipline me for my behavior. I had handed in my resignation effective as soon as I wrapped up the case involving Miller and his brother. Other key players were still out there on the large, but that would now be Johnson's problem. I had recommended him for my replacement.
“Is something wrong, Chief?” I asked him, trying not to show how impatient I was to get home. Paulie was back at college completing his final year, and Mac was waiting for me. He had promised to cook tonight, but I wasn’t certain yet if it was at my place or his. I smiled, thinking of how we skipped from one house to the next. One day we would have to talk about the back and forth. My place was bigger and more modern. With Paulie gone again and likely to move out once he finished with his studies, we had more than enough space. Not that I expected him to sell his house. He could rent it to a small family as a means of supplementing his income since he was now without a job too. He had finally admitted being a cop wasn’t the best for him.
“Are you sure you don’t want to consider staying on?” Chief Wellman inquired. “We all make mistakes, Marks. Your track record before this was impeccable. We need someone with your integrity to man the fort.”
“I think I’ve done my time, Chief,” I told him. “This wasn’t in my plans, but now that it’s happening I feel that it’s the best decision. I’ve done almost twenty years in the force, and it’s time to move on.”
“And what are you going to do with all this free time you’ll now have on your hands?”
I smiled at him because he clearly didn’t believe I’d thought this through. He couldn’t be more wrong. Mac and I had discussed this in great detail.
“I’m starting my own PI and security agency. Marksman Limited.”
His mouth fell open. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
“It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Chief. You’ll need to find a new captain.”
With a sigh, he extended his hand toward me, and I grasped it. He pumped mine in a vigorous handshake. “It was great having you work with us Marks. You did an excellent job, and I for one am going to miss you.”
We said our goodbyes, and I jumped in the truck, excited at the new chapter in my life that was about to begin. I had a new love interest and a new career underway. I felt more revived than I had in a long time.
Despite my eagerness, I took my time in driving home. This was the final time I would take this route from this job. Upon arriving home, I parked the truck in the garage and headed for the house next door without ever setting foot in mine. Mac didn’t have a doorbell so I raised my hand to knock. I never completed the action as the door pulled open from the inside, hands grabbed the front of my shirt and propelled me into the house. The door slammed shut and my back collided with it as Mac crowded me and kissed me.
The sensation of his lips rubbing over mine, causing friction that ignited my blood chased away my surprise. I cupped the back of his head and held him to me, kissing him back with all the love I felt for him.
Our lips slowly parted, and he smiled at me. “Hi.”
I stared in the mossy green eyes that had captivated me that first night we had met. In them, I saw possibilities of the fulfilling life I always desired, but which constantly managed to be nothing but an elusive dream I had given up on. Until I’d met him.
“Hi,” I returned, the salutation more than a greeting of happiness to see him. It was me greeting those possibilities I had glimpsed through the gateway of love shining in his eyes.
Thanks for reading Marking What’s Mine, the first installment in the Marksman series. Consider leaving a review here.
Lane’s Return
(A Halloween Special)
When the dead speaks, who’s willing to listen?
Ten years ago when Lane left Maple Pines he had only one regret. Leaving his best friend Cooper behind. But Lane's had enough of small-town living, and with his peculiarities, Cooper won't function in the big city. Now Lane's married and less than two weeks later filing for a divorce from his husband. When he gets the urgent message from Cooper of his father's death, going back to Maple Pines may just be the break Lane needs.
Cooper likes his life just fine. So what if his ex-lover and the one person who understood him abandoned him ten years ago? What if everyone in town is afraid of him and calls him Cuckoo Cooper? With his special gift of seeing dead people and sketching the way they are killed, Cooper’s quite comfortable
being the caretaker of the town’s cemetery. Cooper can handle his life and ghosts just fine. What he can't handle is the living, especially one who rides back into town in his BMW and tight designer jeans.
Can Cooper help Lane to solve the mystery of his father's murder? How can he respond to Lane's attempts to get him back when Lane's father's disapproving ghost hovers around them just as he did when he was still alive?
Read Chapter 1 on the next page
Chapter One
Cooper
“Lane’s coming home.”
Cooper’s gasp tainted the otherwise stillness of the night as he sat up in bed. He brushed the tangled mess of his long curly black hair from his face and reached across the bedside table to turn on the lamp. The pale yellow glow bathed the room, chasing away the darkness. Cooper’s heart knocked in his chest, and he was almost afraid to look. Very few things in life could inspire fear in Cooper, but the dream he woke up from terrified him. He glanced around his room for the presence that had woken him but saw nothing. He groaned, not appreciating having to go on a ghost hunt in the dead of the night.
Climbing out of bed, Cooper pushed his feet into his bedside slippers then went in search of the ghost that had appeared in his dream. Not all ghosts were as bare-faced as this one that had slipped into his cabin. Most took a while, allowing Cooper only a glimpse of them before feeling confident enough to approach him. The dead were, after all, used to being ignored by the living.
A part of Cooper prayed the dream he had was just that— a dream, but he already knew the deed was already done. Several months had passed since he had been needed by a ghost but Cooper never forgot. Not for once did he believe he would no longer see them. He just never anticipated the next ghost to be the man who hated Cooper more than anyone else in the world.
Cooper still followed the unfamiliar heavy presence that weighed down the aura of his home. He liked to keep things welcoming and peaceful, but the minute his house had been invaded tonight, everything was thrown off balance.
Marking What's Mine (A Marksman's Tale Book 1) Page 11
