Lost Souls

by AJ Lange

  Matt rode the elevator up to their apartment, nervous stomach jumping with anxiety. He shouldn’t have left. He knew how insecure Gavin was, and despite his own frustration with never getting to see him, always feeling like he was second to Gavin’s job...he knew Gavin loved him. And he never should have implied there had been someone else. There would never be anyone else. Not for Matt.

  They were both idiots.

  He pushed his key in the door and turned it, frowning when he realized it was unlocked. The apartment was quiet; Gavin must have gone to bed. He sighed when he saw the two empty bottles on the coffee table. So he would have a grumpy, hungover Gavin to deal with in the morning. Awesome.

  He stripped his shirt over his head and tossed it through his open bedroom door when he passed, heading instead for Gavin’s room. His body craved the closeness of Gavin’s, liquor-soaked or not, even if it was merely to sleep next to him, content in his presence.

  Gavin must have fallen asleep with the light on, Matt mused, and he pushed the door open as quietly as he could, pausing when he heard a soft groan.

  His heart stopped at the sight that awaited him inside the room.

  Nikki’s bright hair fell across Gavin’s abdomen as her head bobbed up and down above his groin.

  Gavin groaned again, and Matt felt his stomach lurch; he was going to be sick.

  “Nikki,” he rasped, shock and horror stealing the power he wanted to thrust behind the word.

  She froze and scrambled off of the bed, grabbing the sheet to cover her nudity. “Matt,” she whispered. “Matt—”

  “Get out,” Matt ground out. “Get out!” Sheer, blind, aching fury burned through him and he had to clench his fists tight to prevent himself from lashing out, from throwing her against the wall.

  “Matty,” Gavin groaned, rolling off the side of the bed, struggling to stand. “Nikki?” He fell to his knees.

  Nikki grabbed her clothes from the floor and slunk past him. He was still staring at Gavin, the evidence of the night’s activity prominently displayed in all of his nude glory, when he heard the front door close.

  “Matt,” Gavin moaned again before lurching into the corner and vomiting.

  Matt walked away, stopping only to grab his car keys and his shirt. This will break me, he thought as he drove into the dark night. This is why we never love. They were the words he had had drilled into him, sometimes with painful consequences, as far back as he had memory for.

  For the first time in his life, Matt thought maybe Isaiah had been right all along.

  Present

  The man looped the seatbelt through Gina’s handcuffs before he fastened it, effectively pinning her hands to her lap. He tightened the strap until it bit into her hips.

  “Don’t want you sliding around now, do we?”

  Gina flinched away when his face loomed close and he laughed darkly.

  “You wish,” he whispered against her cheek. He slammed the door and she watched him walk serenely around the front of the truck. She could hear the refrigeration unit in the back. The vehicle was unmarked, unidentifiable. She understood that there was a reason she was allowed to see it and her surroundings now.

  He didn’t expect anyone to have the opportunity to ask her what she remembered.

  He backed out of the garage easily and turned the big truck onto the highway. They were in a small, older subdivision, built when housing included large yards suitable for children’s swing sets and wading pools, plenty of room to play and roam. It was the kind of neighborhood she and Dom had wanted to find, when they started a family of their own.

  Gina bit back a sob.

  “Now, now,” he murmured, reaching over to pat her shoulder. “Do you know why I chose you Gina?” He waited but when she didn’t answer, he continued. “I’ve been waiting, you see. For five, long years I’ve waited for the perfect opportunity to avenge my father’s death.”

  He knew he had her attention when she glanced over at him, and he nodded. “Yes, you are curious aren’t you? As well you should be. She who sacrifices her life in the noblest of causes should be rewarded.” He patted her again. “I’m only sorry that your reward is not more pleasant nor lasting. You will rest easy in the knowledge that you have died an honorable death.”

  “Fuck you,” Gina whispered, looking out of the window again. He wasn’t making any sense and she needed to concentrate on getting the hell out of this truck before they stopped. Because when they stopped, it was over; she understood that implicitly.

  “Language,” he warned. “My father was a pious, righteous man. And he was struck down in his prime by one of his own sons.” His voice dipped dangerously, dark. “I’ve waited a long time to get my hands on Matthew. I thought, for a time, I had lost my chance. Or that fate had a poetic sense of humor.”

  He began to laugh and Gina watched him, fascinated by the handsome transformation in his face. Sweet Jesus, he was out of his mind. She shuddered when she imagined again all those who had been fooled by him in the past.

  “You know, the last job my father and I did together was for Matt. Incidentally,” he mused, smiling in memory, “it was the first job we allowed Nikki to help us with.”

  “Nikki?” Gina remembered something she had heard on a victim’s crime story show: if she could keep her attacker talking, forge a personal connection, she might have a chance, impart a sense of empathy. She held Dom’s sweet face close to her heart and cleared her throat. “Matt’s sister?”

  “And mine,” the man nodded his head approvingly. “Yes. Matt had left the fold, you see, too happy and too settled for father’s taste. Father never did get over the fact that two of his lambs had refused to join us.”

  “Two,” Gina asked sharply. “Who besides Matt?”

  “Drew.”

  Gina wracked her brain but couldn’t remember having ever heard of another brother. She knew so little about Matt’s history, so little about Matt himself. “What happened?”

  “To Drew? It doesn’t matter,” the man said dismissively. “Although, there’s a fun bit of mistaken identities I may share with you a little later. But what you want to know about is Nikki, am I right?”

  Gina nodded. She had no idea what he was talking about, but if he was talking about Nikki, he wasn’t talking about killing her. That was good enough for now.

  “We sent beautiful, virginal Nikki to seduce Gavin.”

  Gina gasped, thinking back to when Gavin and Matt had split up. Dom would never tell her what had happened, but she had seen for herself how broken Gavin had been afterward. “Gavin would never have cheated on Matt,” she said firmly.

  He snorted in disgust. “I hate to admit it, but you’re probably right. God knows I sent enough hookers and decoys over the years to try and tempt him away.” He smiled and the expression was pure evil. Gina shivered. “So we didn’t send Nikki in unarmed.”

  Gina watched him thoughtfully and she knew he was waiting, testing her ability to puzzle it out. “She drugged him,” she said finally.

  He tapped the side of his nose. “Very nicely done, Mrs. Lorello.”

  “You’re a bastard.”

  He laughed. “So I’ve been told,” he said, amused. “As luck would have it though, the eldest DeLuca prodigy had already fucked things up a bit that night all on his own. Nikki was nearly apoplectic when she returned home.” He shook his head remembering. “She thought Matt was going to murder her.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “What always happens, angel,” the man sighed in contentment. “Then, I win.”

  Chapter 15

  “Did Matt know? The truth about Nikki?” Gina held her breath, wondering just how deep this rabbit hole went. She knew Nikki and Matt’s father had died in the fire that had destroyed their childhood home.

  “No,” the man said tersely. “Perhaps I would have had the opportunity to enlighten him, had he not murdered both of them that very night.”

  Gina’s eyes widened in disbelief.

  He sm
iled. “You look surprised. Well, it’s true.” He shook his head, a faint look of pride on his face. “I never would have thought he had it in him. He had certainly never shown a proclivity for it before. He lit that place up like the fourth of July.”

  “And you? How did you manage to escape unscathed?”

  He shrugged. “He thought I was in the basement.” He winked at her. “I wasn’t.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Gina whispered, thinking of Matt’s sweet face and gentle disposition.

  “Well,” he dragged the word out. “Nikki was casualty of a war she knew little about. And Matt had always had a soft spot for her, so it’s possible I helped in that regard. But father?” His expression hardened. “He murdered my father in cold blood. The debt for a soul lost prematurely is difficult to ascertain, and even harder to repay.”

  He reached for her and she shrunk away from his hand. He laughed and grabbed her anyway, squeezing the fleshy part of her upper arm hard enough to make her gasp.

  “You want to know the real irony here? I had almost given up on the boring bastard, living his apple pie life in the suburbs, no Gavin in sight. Until his wife came calling and presented me with the perfect opening.”

  The truck stopped at the gated entrance to an empty field. They had not passed a single home or building for miles and Gina fought a rising sense of panicked despair. She was out of time. She was out of time.

  The man hopped from the truck and unlocked the gate, swinging it wide so that he could drive the truck through the opening. The terrain was uneven, jarring, and the highway disappeared from Gina’s view in the side mirror. She swallowed a whimper when he parked next to a grove of trees and turned off the ignition.

  “We’re here,” he said cheerfully.

  “You were going to tell me about Matt’s wife,” Gina blurted, scrambling for something, anything, to keep him talking.

  “What?” He cocked his head. “Oh, yes. She was planning a secret brotherly reunion, needed to make her amends.”

  He slammed out of the truck and Gina could hear him in the back, metal clanging against the floor or the walls of the bed. She started when he opened the passenger door.

  He calmly unhooked her seatbelt and disentangled her wrists. She was knocked against him when he pulled her from the cab.

  “She was dying, as it turned out,” he continued conversationally, pulling Gina behind him, a shovel gripped in the other fist. Gina looked frantically around her for something, anything to use as a weapon or give her the upper hand.

  “Some genetic thing. Her mother had it, committed suicide.” They were deep into the trees now and he stopped next to a newly turned grave. Gina began to cry when she spotted bones in the bottom of a rectangular wooden box wedged down in the pit.

  He studied her, watching the tears track down in her face in morbid fascination. “Still beautiful,” he murmured, tracing one wet drop with a fingertip, then sucking it into his mouth.

  Gina’s stomach rolled.

  “She wanted Gavin for him,” he said softly. “Even his wife could see how hopelessly devoted my brother was to the DeLuca’s. Five years they had been apart,” he spat angrily. “Five years, and he still pined for him.”

  His jaw clenched, vein jumping along the ridge. Then just as quickly, his face relaxed, the tension easing from his shoulders.

  “But Matt never got over seeing our baby sister fuck his boyfriend.” His eyes twinkled with spiteful glee. “Which, as you can imagine, put a rather large kink in Leanne’s plan of not leaving him alone after she was gone.” He shoved down hard on Gina’s shoulders, surprising her and forcing her to her knees. “Drew was plan B,” he continued pleasantly. “Her private investigator found me instead.”

  He moved to push her into the grave.

  “No,” Gina cried out, shaking her head and swinging wildly with her cuffed hands. He batted her away easily, kicking her hip hard enough that she fell, hanging precariously over the ledge of soil. “No!”

  Gina used her legs, strong from years of running, in a last ditch effort to escape. She kicked violently, heart singing when she connected with flesh and heard him grunt in pain, and she was able to scramble to her knees. Her hopes were swiftly crushed when he slammed her to the forest floor, the knee at her back grinding her into the ground.

  “I gave nature a hand with Leanne, eased her suffering,” he whispered against her ear. “Because if there’s one thing I know about Gavin DeLuca, it’s that he can’t resist rescuing his beloved Matthew.”

  He rolled her over roughly and she swallowed a scream when she saw the syringe in his hand. He straddled her hips, clamping her powerful legs between his own. He pried her mouth open, fingers digging into her cheeks, and shoved a thick rag between her teeth. He held it in place with a filthy strip of fabric, wrapping the length around her head. Gina could feel dirt and leaves in what remained of her hair and realized the stocking cap was missing, discarded in the struggle.

  “It’s poetic really. Matt took from me the most precious thing in my life.” He loomed close, nose brushing her cheek when he growled in her ear. “He ripped out my heart.”

  He lifted her by her shoulders and slammed her into the hard packed earth, jarring her teeth. Her head bounced painfully off of the ground and she blinked, vision blurring.

  The man’s chest was heaving, eyes wild and Gina felt a peaceful sense of finality settle over her. Her fear dispersed, a physical thing, and she imagined it seeping from her bones and into the soil beneath her. She wondered idly if dying was painful.

  He sat up, studying her, reaching down to gently adjust the knot that held her gag in place. “I’m going to cut out Gavin DeLuca’s heart and deliver it personally into Matt’s hands.”

  He winked at Gina’s calm stare. “And I don’t mean that metaphorically.”

  He stood, brushing the dirt and leaves from his knees, cruel smile in place on his handsome face. Serene again, steady.

  Merciless, Gina thought.

  “I would have preferred you were lucid for this, but maybe it’s better this way. You’ll wake soon enough, with a remarkably long-lasting bit of oxygen left in which to contemplate your surroundings.”

  Despite her new calm, Gina winced at the sharp pinch in her thigh. When he tried to help her to her knees, her movements felt uncoordinated, thick.

  Her lids were heavy, eyes blessedly closed by the time he finally rolled her over the edge, and her back thudded painfully against the bones in the plain wooden box. Gina’s last conscious thought was of Dom, and how she hoped one day he would get over this.

  “You’re not coming.” Gavin’s voice was firm.

  “I’m not arguing with you,” Matt stated quietly. “You don’t know him, not the way I do. You need me there.”

  “We don’t even know for sure we’re talking about Micah,” Gavin shouted, frustrated. The flurry of activity in the precinct halted, all eyes trained on the pair.

  “Come on,” Gavin grumbled, pulling Matt’s down the hall to Bud’s office. He shut the door behind him, ignoring the raised eyebrows of Bud’s secretary.

  Matt’s face was pale, beads of sweat dotting his forehead when Gavin turned to face him. “You’re barely standing,” Gavin ground out, but his hands were gentle when they reached for him.

  “I’m—”

  “Fine,” Gavin interrupted. “I know. You’re so fine you look like I could knock you over with a stiff drink.” He sighed heavily. “Look, Matt, I can’t. Okay? I can’t do this and be worried about you at the same time.”

  “I’m going.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Gavin groaned, whirling away and ripping at his hair.

  “Gavin,” Matt said softly.

  Gavin ignored him, inhaling deep, calming breaths, willing his heart into a steadier, more sustainable rhythm. He turned back.

  “Okay. But.” He held up a hand to stop whatever Matt was going to say next. “You are with me or Dom or Burke. Every second. You don’t go anywhere alone.
You don’t play the hero. You drop the fuck to the ground at the first whiff of flying objects that could impale you.”

  Matt huffed a quiet laugh. “No flying objects. Got it.” He held out a hand to Gavin. “Come here.”

  Gavin clasped the fingers tight and let Matt rein him in. They kissed, desperate longing and a lingering anxiety shaking Gavin to his core.

  “I love you,” he whispered into Matt’s mouth, pressing the words into the skin of his cheek, willing him to believe, to know the truth of the declaration.

  “And I love you,” Matt answered.

  They studied each other soberly, and Gavin realized that here, now, after five long years, they had finally grown the fuck up and discovered how inconsequential the past became when the future was in jeopardy. It simply didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was this, the touch of a hand, a mouth, the beating of two hearts in time together, blue eyes on green. Love.

  There was a sharp rap on the window glass.

  “Gavin?” It was Dom’s voice and Gavin swung the door open quickly, enveloping his partner in a tight hug.

  “Dom, God, I’m sorry it took us so long.”

  Dom shook his head. “I’m just glad you’re here now.” He straightened, nodding at Matt. “You too, Matt. Are you all right?” He noted the stiff way Matt was holding his left arm.

  “I’ll be okay, Dom. What about Gina? Where’s the letter?”

  MaryBeth had called them as they were entering the city limits. She had relayed the note to Gavin over the phone and was now down in forensics, dusting it for latent prints.

  “I have a copy,” Dom said, handing over a crumpled slip of paper.

  Gavin frowned when Dom passed it to Matt first and had to crowd them both to read over Matt’s shoulder. The brief poem made no sense to him. “I don’t understand. Is it a riddle?”

  “It’s a poem,” Matt said, swaying.

  Gavin grabbed his arm, concerned. “You okay?”

  Matt nodded, shaking him off. “I know this. It’s by Anne Sexton. It’s called Earthworm.”