“Well?” said Worth.
“It’s not happening,” said Dawson. “I don’t actually have any desire to see that, and furthermore, I would never subject Liam to that.”
Liam’s eyes widened even more.
“Liam wouldn’t mind,” said Worth in a low voice. “Would you, Liam?”
“The sooner you come to terms with the fact that it’s not happening, the better,” said Dawson.
“This isn’t the way, detective,” Worth said, her tone almost wistful. “You should know better, really. This sort of defiance from you, it’s only going to make me angry, and things will go worse for you. So, two weeks. You have two weeks to get that video to me. Or else, Ricky here dies.”
“What?” exploded Liam.
But Worth had ended the meeting.
Dawson turned to look at Liam. “Listen, I was going to tell you. It’s just that with everything going on right now, there hasn’t been any time.”
Liam folded his arms over his chest. “Tell me what?”
Dawson sighed heavily.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LIAM was sitting in the passenger’s seat of Dawson’s car as they drove back to the city limits of Cape Christopher. They’d been out at the scene for hours after the communication from Destiny, hours after Dawson had explained it.
It was only now that they were alone, and they could talk about it.
“We have to make the video,” he said.
She was so startled that she turned the wheel with her head as she whipped it over to look at him, and the car swerved.
He reached out and caught the wheel, forcing her back into her lane.
“Sorry,” she said.
“No, I’m sorry.” He let go of the wheel. “I should have maybe worked up to that. I can see why it caught you by surprise.”
“Liam, I know you are feeling guilty about this Hernandez thing, but the solution to that is not to agree to make pornography with your rapist.”
“Could we do it? It is possible to get those cameras turned off in his cell?”
“No,” she said.
He was quiet for several minutes. “There’s got to be a way. I mean, we bribe someone, or we get permission from the top—”
“You want to go to Captain Moore with this?”
He sighed.
“We’re not doing it. End of story.”
“But Haysle, we have two weeks. She’s going to kill him. I can’t… I’ve already survived every disgusting thing that Finn has done to me. I can handle it. Let’s just do it and save Hernandez.”
“No,” she said. “We’ll save him, but we will find another way.”
“Like what?” he said.
“I was talking about the list of properties—”
“We’ve had lists of properties, and they’ve never done us any good in the past.”
“Well, maybe we haven’t been aggressive enough. Hernandez is one of our own, and he’s in danger, and it’s going to make a difference.”
“Okay, but I say we just make the video anyway. We don’t necessarily have to send it, but if we get down to the wire, and we have nothing, then—”
“Do you want this?” She shot him a glance. “What did he say to you when you were in there? When you showed him your scar, did it arouse you?”
“Oh, fuck you.” He scooted down in his seat and glared out the window.
“So, it did.” Her voice was resigned and bland.
“It didn’t,” he snapped. “And even if it had, it wouldn’t have meant anything. You know, arousal is a physical thing, and it’s not entirely within my control. He’s… you know… the way he is. You going to tell me that you’ve never felt aroused around him?”
“It’s not the same,” she said.
“It is,” he said.
“I’ve never had sex with him.”
“You ate for him. It’s the same,” he said.
“No, it’s not.” There was steel in her tone.
“You surrendered to him, Haysle. You let him in. I think you’re dead set against doing the video because you want to watch me with him and you don’t want to admit it to yourself.”
“I do not.”
“You came to my house and threw yourself at me after you watched me and him together, so—”
“It wasn’t because of that, though.”
“Oh, no? How do you figure that?”
“I already liked you. We already had a connection. And Liam, it would be torture for you. If you think that I could ever derive pleasure from that, you don’t even know me.”
He was quiet.
She drew in a breath, as if she was going to say something else, but then she let it out, shaking her head.
He shut his eyes. “Sorry.”
“He’d like it,” said Dawson. “Slater would think it was great. And that’s why we’re not doing it. He doesn’t get any kind of pleasure ever again, not from either of us. And he definitely doesn’t get to touch you again.”
Liam suddenly felt like crying. His lower lip trembled and he forced himself to breathe through it, to breathe in and out until the sob that was forming in his throat dissipated. When he did speak, his voice wasn’t strong. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For protecting me,” he murmured. “I keep trying to protect you, but you’re the one who… It’s just, it’s nice that you’re looking out for me.”
“You know, you’re not very good at looking out for yourself.”
He let out a low, harsh laugh. “Well, you may not have noticed, but I don’t really like myself. I don’t deserve to be looked out for.”
“Sure you do,” she said.
This made that lump rise in this throat again. “How do you figure?” His voice cracked.
“Just because,” she said. “Because you’re a human being. Because you exist. Because I like you.”
“Fuck.” He scrubbed at his eye with his fist. The tears were escaping despite his best efforts.
She reached across the car and seized his hand. She gripped it tightly.
He squeezed back, too hard, harder than he would have squeezed any other woman’s hand. But Dawson wasn’t like any other woman he’d ever met, and besides, whatever it was between them, it was more than following lockstep in social gender roles. They were beyond that.
The emotion in him crested and ebbed out. He released her fingers.
She didn’t move her hand. “I don’t want you to go back and see him again,” she whispered.
“I don’t want you to go either,” he said.
“Well, neither of us go alone, okay?” she said.
“Okay,” he said.
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” he said, but even as he said it, he knew it was a promise he was going to break.
THE first thing Hernandez tried to establish upon waking was where the hell he was.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to go on. He was in a small room with poured concrete floors and concrete block walls. The door to the room seemed to be made of metal, and Hernandez surmised that it was bolted shut from the outside, because he could turn the knob, but he couldn’t open the door. Something else was keeping it closed.
From the smell and the relative dampness, he determined he was underground somewhere.
This could be another bunker, like the others that Worth and Slater had used, or it could simply be someone’s basement.
He wasn’t going to be able to tell until he got out of the room.
That happened later.
There was a man—the one who’d had the gun trained on him in the house—who seemed to be following every one of Worth’s whims. She called him Tyler. Hernandez didn’t know if that was his real name or not, and he didn’t know if knowing anything about this guy would help him, but he determined that he was going to try to make friends with Tyler.
So, when Tyler came by later and banged on the door and said, “When I open this door, you better be on the floor, hands
where I can see them, face down,” Hernandez did it.
He prostrated himself on the floor, facing the door, forehead against the concrete, and he was hoping that Tyler would take the position as one of submission and respect.
Tyler stepped closer to him, but Hernandez could only see his shoes. He yanked Hernandez’s arms behind his back.
This hurt. Hernandez tried to squelch the whimper that wanted to come out and failed.
“Get up,” said Tyler, still holding his hands. Roughly, he yanked Hernandez to his feet.
“I’m not going to try anything,” said Hernandez. “I could never take you in a fight. You’re huge.” Tyler was bigger than Hernandez, but he wasn’t really huge. Still, Hernandez figured that flattering a guy’s strength? Never a bad thing.
Tyler snorted. “We’re going out the door and two doors down the hallway to your right to the shitter.”
Oh, good. Hernandez had been contemplating peeing in a corner. He knew that he would not be able to resist that degradation forever, but he had been holding out thus far. “Thank you,” he said.
“You get three bathroom breaks a day. When we get back, there’ll be food waiting in here for you,” said Tyler.
“Thank you,” said Hernandez again. He really was grateful, too. He guessed this was how Stockholm Syndrome started. Under this kind of stress, a small kindness felt huge. He tried to remind himself that access to a bathroom and food were not kindnesses but basic human rights.
“Let’s go,” said Tyler, nudging him.
“You don’t have to hold my wrists,” said Hernandez. He let his voice be as high-pitched as it wanted, which was his natural intonation. He’d learned to “butch it up” a bit in his professional life, or when he was dealing with car salesman and the like, but he was not the least bit intimidating, and he knew it. In this case, he was leaning into it, not because he thought he could fight his way out, but because…
Well, he wasn’t sure, not exactly, but it was instinctual. If Tyler did not see him as a threat, it could only work to Hernandez’s advantage.
He hadn’t formed anything like a plan yet, but he was sure this was the way to start.
“Let’s go,” repeated Tyler. He did not let go of Hernandez’s wrists.
They went down the hallway to the bathroom, which was small and smelled of lemon soap even though it didn’t look as though it had been cleaned, well, ever. Hernandez gazed at the rust-colored ring around the inside of the toilet as he relieved himself.
There was no mirror in there, and this was jarring to him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d come to associate looking at himself in the mirror in a restroom.
Tyler didn’t wait for him to come out. He yanked open the door while Hernandez was washing his hands and face. He wanted to strip down and wash himself everywhere. He stank of sweat—not because he’d been exerting himself, but because he’d been terrified.
Tyler didn’t take his wrists again.
Progress?
Instead, Tyler held him by the arm and marched him back to his room.
As promised, there was food in there. A bowl of cereal with milk and a spoon sticking out of it was sitting in the midst of the room. There was a package of freeze-dried fruit and a juice box.
Hernandez hesitated in the doorway. “How long have you been with Destiny?”
Tyler yanked on his arm. “Inside.”
“Are you guys, like, a couple?” said Hernandez.
Tyler shot him a look.
“Just making conversation,” said Hernandez. “If she wants me dead, are you going to be the one who does it?”
“Inside.”
“She strikes me as the kind of person who doesn’t like to get her hands dirty. Would you shoot yourself for her, like all the others? Do you love her?”
Tyler grabbed a handful of Hernandez’s shirt and forcibly tossed him into the room. Then he slammed the door, and Hernandez heard the bolt outside being engaged.
“Okay,” Hernandez murmured softly. “Well, nice getting to know you, Tyler.”
“YOU’RE not supposed to see him on your own,” said the guard at the Southeast Correctional Institution where Finn was housed. His voice was bland and he was looking at the computer screen inside his station.
Liam blew out a noisy breath. He’d gotten this far, all the way down to the lower level, where the security was more intense. Usually, here, he’d be told to wait while they got Finn ready to meet him. Finn would be moved to an interrogation room and shackled down before Liam would be allowed in. Since Liam hadn’t gotten any resistance up until now, he’d started to think that he wouldn’t get any at all.
But Dawson had said that she had plugged that hole in the dam.
“Yeah, that was before,” said Liam. “It’s important I see him. There’s a cop who’s been captured, and he’s the only person who has any information to help us.” This was a pack of lies, but he didn’t think it would have the same impact if he called Hernandez a consultant. He was getting paid by the police department. He was like a cop.
“I don’t know,” said the guard.
“Call Detective Dawson,” said Liam. “Here, I’ll call her.” He got out his phone. This was a bluff. No way was it going to work. He made a show of scrolling and then touching the screen and then he put the phone to his ear. He was not actually calling anyone. He waited, tapping his foot against the floor.
“Oh, sure, fine,” said the guard. “Don’t bother her. You’ve been here before.”
“I have,” said Liam, letting his phone drop from his ear.
“All right, well, you can have a seat on the bench over there while we get him ready,” said the guard. He was talking to his screen again and typing. Everything in a prison had to be logged.
The bench was very small. When he and Dawson were there together, they barely fit. He sat down and waited.
Usually, he’d be scrolling through his phone while waiting, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that this time. He was too antsy.
He was thinking about seeing Finn. How was he going to handle it? He didn’t seem to have the capacity to completely resist the other man, it was true, but he needed to remain in control of himself. Especially considering he kept thinking about how he’d volunteered to fuck Finn on camera.
That thought made him feel a strange ache in his chest, a pain that seemed to crawl out of his pores and exist outside of him.
He shuddered.
This was stupid, and he could have involved Dawson, he supposed. He wasn’t here to protect her, not necessarily. He was here because he needed to do something.
Dawson, she was back at the station compiling her list of properties. She was getting reports on all the things from the scene, probably looking into identifying the bodies they’d found. She was doing her job.
And he was supposed to sit around twiddling his thumbs, but he couldn’t, because Hernandez was in danger.
He kept thinking about things, like the way Hernandez’s voice would get very high-pitched when he was excited about something, which was sort of endearing, and the way that Hernandez would sometimes pick up Liam’s arm and put it around his own shoulders, tucking his head against Liam’s chest and snuggling up there, and…
Fuck.
It was his fault, and he had to do something.
Finally, Finn was ready, and Liam went through a security checkpoint here. He left behind his cell phone and his keys and his wallet. He went through a metal detector.
Then he was led through the hallways, down steps, through the neutral-colored walls of the prison until he was led to the interrogation room where Finn was waiting.
The guard let him in.
He stepped inside.
Finn smiled widely at him. “Good to see you, tiger.”
Liam crossed the room and yanked out a chair. He sat down opposite Finn. “Look, you can never be in a mental health facility. You’re not crazy, and we both know it. So, think of something else. Think of something else you want that I
can give you.”
“I know I’m not crazy,” said Finn. “But I am mentally ill. I tried to explain this to you. It’s like a compulsion. It always starts out at the back of my brain, and I can ignore it. I can tell it to shut up. But then it just gets louder every day, and the only thing to do is give in. Otherwise, it’s so loud.”
“Look, I don’t want to debate this. Even if I believe that you are mentally ill or whatever, it doesn’t matter. Because it needs to be the legal definition of insanity, and you, my friend, know right from wrong.”
Finn scoffed. “What does that even mean?”
“Destiny has taken someone captive,” said Liam. “He’s just a kid, and he’s not… I mean, he can’t handle… He’s—”
“Oh, my God, is there anyone you haven’t been fucking while I’ve been locked up?” said Finn.
“I’m not… he and I aren’t…” Liam glared at him. “How can you even tell that?”
“I know you,” said Finn. “So, what is this, huh? You got the detective and some kid to replace Destiny and me? How’s that working out for you?”
“That is not what it is,” said Liam. “And I don’t even want to talk about it.”
“You’re kind of a slut. Has anyone ever told you that?”
Liam gave him a withering look.
“Sorry,” said Finn, shrugging. “But, I mean, it’s true. On the other hand, I was doing some research on PTSD, as a possible defense, and you might look into it, because promiscuity can be a symptom, did you know that? Risk-taking behavior? Destiny fucked with you, too, you know?”
“Are you serious?” said Liam. He did have PTSD. It was Finn’s fucking fault.
“I ultimately did discard it as a diagnosis for myself,” said Finn. “But everyone reacts differently to various stimuli, Liam, so don’t discount my reactions out of hand.”
“You know, I do find myself curious,” said Liam. “You’ve never really explained how it was that Destiny forced you to kill people.”
“Yes, I did. She let me have my way with the bodies and then she cut me off. She said the only way I could fuck another body was if I killed on my own. So, I had no choice.”
Liam simply gaped at him. That was… Finn really was mentally ill.
Blood Indulgence: a serial killer thriller (Phineas and Liam Book 3) Page 13
