Where the Truth Lives

by Mia Sheridan

  “I’m glad you agreed to stay at my place for a couple days.”

  She nodded, biting her lip. “I hope I’m not taking advantage. I know you have a life.”

  He made a small sound in the back of his throat. “Yeah, my life is this case right now.” He squeezed her hand gently. “And like I said, I’m glad you’re staying with me.”

  They walked in silence for a block before she said, “Can I be honest?” She glanced at him and he nodded.

  “I appreciate the fact that I feel so safe at your place. But it’s also . . .” She sighed as if she were having trouble finding the right words. “I’m almost dreading going back to my apartment. I feel this deep sense of . . . loss when I think about it.” She gave him another small glance and he sensed embarrassment in it. Hesitancy. “It’s where I allowed myself to talk to Mady.” She was quiet for a minute and he waited as she gathered her thoughts. “I’ve used talking to her as a coping mechanism, but also . . . it’s been a way to keep from forgetting her.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “I don’t have any photos of her, Reed, no one else who loved her to reminisce with.” She took a moment before continuing. “I’ve avoided letting go in all the ways I should have because I wanted so badly to keep her with me,” she said, bringing her hand to her heart and tapping lightly. “I’ve . . . held on and I know I need to let go. But it’s going to be so . . .”

  “Painful. Yes, I understand, Liza. I do.” Sadness made his heart feel heavy. He halted and she did too as he turned toward her. “I hope you’ll consider my place a refuge for as long as you need it.”

  Her eyes searched his and she gave him a grateful smile, nodding almost shyly. “Thank you.”

  They walked the remainder of the block in silence, turning into the main entrance of his building, and stepping onto the elevator together. Despite the heaviness of their recent conversation, tension built in the small enclosed space where they had once kissed and groped as it rose toward his apartment. He knew they were both remembering together by the way their gazes clashed and her pulse thumped steadily at her throat.

  When the doors opened, they both moved toward the exit at the same time, laughing as they collided in front of the door. “After you,” he said.

  He opened the apartment door and they went inside, Reed punching in the alarm code before they both hung their jackets on the hooks by his door. The tension swirled, thickened, coalesced. He felt it as a tangible thing and yet he didn’t want to acknowledge it because he’d promised himself he’d go slow. Give her time, even if the tension building between them demanded now. He turned back to Liza who had two high points of color on her cheeks. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked. “There’s still half a bottle—”

  She stepped toward him, taking his face in her hands, and bringing her lips to his. Soft. Full. Lips that were made to be kissed, he thought as their mouths met and they both groaned. Their tongues tangled and he tasted her sweetness, familiar yet so new, something he wanted to explore for hours. He wrapped his arms around her, letting them trail down her spine, his fingers finding each vertebra, wanting to know every small part that formed her. She shivered, pressing her body to his, molding her soft contours to his hard lines. God, I could lose myself in you. It would be so easy.

  She grappled with his belt as they kissed, a small sound of impatience emanating from her throat as she pulled him forward a few steps until her back hit the wall, and then broke her lips from his, turning so she was facing away from him. She looked back over her shoulder, bringing her hands up and bracing them on the wall. She pressed her ass back against him, an invitation and he grasped the hem of her dress, beginning to raise it, while simultaneously unzipping his jeans. She let out a moan, glancing over her shoulder again, anticipation clear in her expression, even though he could only see her profile.

  Quick and dirty, that’s how she wanted it. Reed paused, his mind clearing ever so slightly. Quick and dirty . . . just like the first time.

  He held himself in his hand, so hard he ached, his breath coming fast and sharp in lust-filled pants as he grappled for control. She looked over her shoulder again, confused now. “What’s wrong?”

  Reed released a shudder of breath. He placed his lips on the side of her exposed throat and kissed her as he lowered her dress. “Not like this,” he whispered, tucking himself back into his pants.

  Her body stilled, and for a moment she didn’t move. When she did finally turn, she looked uncertain, embarrassed. They stared at each other for an awkward moment. Liza looked down. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” He pushed away from her, zipping his pants. He needed space if he had any chance of holding on to the tenuous control he’d managed to grasp. He took another deep breath, running his hand through his hair. It didn’t matter how far away he ran. She was in his nostrils, under his skin, in his heart, though he wasn’t completely certain he wanted to consider how much just yet. And she looked so damned rejected, so wounded, and yet somehow resigned, that he almost took her into his arms again just to comfort her.

  “Is it because of what you know about me? I understand if it’s hard to want to touch me after—”

  “God, no. It’s hard not to touch you. I want this, Liza. I want you. Christ”—he looked off to the side—“you have no idea how much.” He looked back, straight into her eyes. “But not like this. I want to take it slow. I want to look in your eyes. I want to watch your face so I know what you like and what you don’t. I want to enjoy it, but mostly, I want you to enjoy it too.” He might be an idiot. Because God knew he needed a release. Needed it so badly he felt like he might crack. But he wanted more from her than just a quick fuck against his apartment wall. He wanted more than she’d given other strangers she’d met in bars, more than just an exercise in power that she managed to get through to prove to herself she could.

  Zach had said she would need to come to him, but this was not her doing that. This was her playing a role, going through the motions of an exercise she believed would help heal her. It wasn’t about him. It wasn’t even really about her. It was only about her horrific and violent past. It was as though she switched off as soon as things became sexual. Reed had felt it. Her body was there, but she’d looked away, retreated into herself. He couldn’t blame her. God, how could he? But he also couldn’t use her body, when her soul was missing. “I can wait,” he said. “Until you’re ready.”

  She frowned, beginning to open her mouth as if to argue the point, but then closing it as her eyes moved away. Her shoulders rose and fell on a breath and Liza shifted on her feet. Her lashes fluttered down and then she looked back up at him. Her eyes held so much seriousness, that his heart twisted. “I don’t know how to do anything else, Reed,” she said, so softly that if he hadn’t been standing directly in front of her, he wouldn’t have been able to make out the words. “I’m walking through the dark alone.”

  He shook his head, reaching out for her hand. She gave it to him and he grasped it tightly in his own. “No,” he said. “You’re not.” He led her toward the living room and switched the TV on to a music station. The low strains of some eighties love song came on. Journey.

  “Oh God, you’re not going to sing, are you?” she asked. “I think I’ve been brutalized enough.”

  Reed let out a small surprised laugh but his brow followed that into a frown. Gallows humor. Damn if she didn’t have every right to it. Liza gave him a teary smile. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to sing. Not tonight anyway.” He stepped close, taking her in his arms. She was stiff and a minute later when he caught a glimpse of her face reflected in the window, her eyes were wide, expression unsure. Tenderness blossomed inside him. She was so beautiful and so afraid, and a protectiveness he’d never experienced before gripped his insides. He began swaying slowly and she moved with him awkwardly, breathing out a small embarrassed laugh when she stepped on his toes. “Sorry. I don’t really know how to dance.”

  “It’s easy,”
he said. “Just follow me.”

  She pressed into him, wrapping her arms around his neck, her breath warm against his skin and to Reed, the moment felt tender, intimate. New.

  “He ruined me,” she whispered. “Sometimes that’s how I feel.”

  He turned his head very slightly. “No other person can ruin you. It’s not possible.”

  She leaned back, looking in his eyes. “Do you believe that?”

  “Yeah,” he answered with all the conviction in his heart. “I do.”

  She stared at him for another moment as though looking for the truth of his statement in his eyes. Apparently convinced of it, she put her head on his shoulder, allowing him to hold her. “I just . . .” She looked up at him again. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to take part in fixing what’s broken in me.”

  He shook his head. “No, I can’t do that. It sounds like a big job and frankly, I’m kind of busy at the moment.”

  She paused and then laughed, shaking her head. “I’m serious.”

  He met her eyes. “You have to do that work, Liza. You already are. All I’m saying is that if you need to climb stairs in the dark, then you do that. And if you’ll let me, I’ll be waiting for you on the other side, and I’ll be cheering you on.”

  A small burst of breath escaped her mouth and she nodded, the movement jerky. She put her head back on his shoulder as they continued to sway together. Baby steps. I can do that with her. Hold her. Comfort her. Help her learn how strong she is. Because, as it turned out, when it came to dancing, she was a natural. She’d just never tried before. And in that moment, Reed knew that he wanted to be there with her—for her—whenever she would allow it.

  I’m all in, Liza. All in.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Reed pulled onto the street where Milo Ortiz, the sanitation worker who’d found the body of Toby Resnick, lived in an older neighborhood in Delhi. The houses on the street were well maintained for the most part, though many of them showed signs of their age, and the fact that that particular neighborhood was right on the edge of a high-crime area. Reed hoped something could be done to stop it from spilling over onto this quiet, tree-lined street, but he wasn’t optimistic.

  He pulled up to the curb and got out of his vehicle, walking up the concrete path to the front door of the address Jennifer Pagett had written down for him. He heard some shuffling on the other side of the door and waited a minute before the door was pulled open, and a man who looked to be in his mid to late twenties stood before him in a white T-shirt and track pants, his eyes red-rimmed and puffy as if he’d just been woken from a long sleep. Reed had assumed the man would be Hispanic considering his last name, but Milo Ortiz appeared to be half black. “Yeah?”

  Reed unclipped his badge and flashed it at the man. “Milo Ortiz?”

  His eyes shot to the badge. “Uh-huh,” he said haltingly.

  “Detective Reed Davies. You called in finding a body on your shift several days ago?”

  Milo’s shoulders seemed to relax slightly. “Yeah. That’s right.” He scrubbed at his face. “I thought I was being pranked for a minute, you know? It didn’t look real. But I walked right up to it and it was real, all right. I went back to my truck and used my cell to call it in.”

  Reed nodded. “Can we chat inside for a minute?”

  “Oh, yeah sure.” Milo stepped back allowing Reed entrance and he walked into the ranch style house, turning as Milo closed the door behind him. “That way,” he said, gesturing his hand down a short hall that looked to open up into a living room.

  As they walked past the open doorway of a kitchen, Reed glanced in, spotting a couple of marijuana plants growing on the windowsill.

  “Shit,” he heard Milo say softly from his right.

  “I’m not here for that,” Reed assured him.

  Milo let out a nervous laugh. “Cool. Thanks, man. Uh, Detective. In here,” he said. Reed followed him into the living room that featured army-green shag carpeting, a couple of plaid couches, and an easy chair with large patches of leather rubbed off the arms and headrest. Despite the furniture that clearly belonged to another decade and had seen its share of use, the room was neat and tidy.

  A cat was sleeping at the end of the couch and Reed sat down next to it, careful not to jostle the animal. It opened one eye, took him in, and, apparently unimpressed, went back to sleep.

  “Any suspects yet?” Milo asked, sitting down in the easy chair. “I’ve been following The Hollow-Eyed Killer case on the news.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe I found one of his victims.”

  “No, no suspects yet, unfortunately. I know you gave a statement to the officers who first arrived on the scene of the crime. I’m one of the detectives working the case, and I wanted to talk to you in person, make sure there was nothing you might have forgotten, or considered later that you didn’t think about at the time.”

  Milo shook his head. “No. What I told you at the door, and what I first told the officers, is pretty much exactly like it happened. I would have stuck around, but I was working a shift.”

  “I understand. You told the officers you didn’t recognize the victim, but being that it was almost dark and his face was . . . mutilated, would you mind looking at a photograph to confirm you’ve never seen him before?”

  Milo looked dubious. “It’s of the guy alive, right? I don’t have to look at another picture of his dead corpse?”

  “No. The victim is alive in this photo.” It was, in fact, his license photo from the BMV. Reed reached in the file folder he’d set down on the edge of the coffee table in front of him and handed it to Milo. Milo took a moment to study it, squinting before he shook his head, handing it back. “No. I don’t think so.”

  I don’t think so. Reed slipped it back in the folder and removed the ones beneath it. “Okay, thank you, Mr. Ortiz. Do you mind looking at the photos of the other victims as well? We haven’t released all the names to the news yet, and I’d like to rule out any possibility that you recognize these people.”

  “Is there any reason I would?”

  “Not unless you’re mistaken about not knowing the victim you found in that alley. We believe the other victims are connected in some way, and maybe seeing photos of them will jog your memory.”

  Milo shrugged. “Uh, sure, right.” He nodded down to the photographs in Reed’s hand. “Yeah, I can do that. You know, the newscasters keep speculating on what the connections between the victims might be.”

  Oh, Reed knew. He knew it well. He got no less than twenty calls a day asking him if he could give them details on the other victims after it’d been leaked that the ones who’d been named hadn’t been the only targets of The Hollow-Eyed Killer. The CPD was keeping the names of the falling victims out of the news for the moment though, hoping to hold on to some information only the killer would know.

  He handed Milo the photos and he looked through them, shaking his head non-committedly, but when he came to the last one, he flinched, dropping it on the coffee table. “Is this a joke?”

  Reed frowned. “You know her?”

  “That’s my fucking mother.”

  Reed stared at Milo for a minute and then glanced down at the photo of Margo Whiting, the prostitute who took a dive off the balcony of her apartment building. “Your mother?”

  “Not that she deserves the title,” Milo said. He appeared agitated suddenly, his knee bouncing rapidly as he ran his palms over his thighs. “How’d she die?”

  Reed’s mind was buzzing, whirring. “Margo Whiting fell to her death,” Reed said. “We have evidence that she was targeted and killed by The Hollow-Eyed Killer.”

  Milo’s face did a number of strange tics before settling into a deep frown. He rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair. “I have nothing to do with her. I haven’t seen Margo in over a decade.”

  “Why?” he asked. “She was your—”

  “That woman was never a mother.” He let out a small humorless laugh.

  Reed f
rowned, leaning back on the couch. “Can you tell me about your relationship with her?”

  Milo blew out a long breath as though he needed time to come up with the right words. “My mother was a whore, Detective. And not the Pretty Woman type, you know . . . good-hearted girl, down on her luck. Margo was a heroin addict who tricked for money and let her john’s do things to her in front of me I’ll never erase from my brain. If they offered enough cash and they were interested in me too, she tricked me out as well.”

  Reed flinched. “I’m sorry.”

  Milo shrugged. “Nothing for you to be sorry about. It is what it is. I’m not there anymore.” He leaned forward. “Child Protective Services eventually took me away because a neighbor complained about Margo leaving me alone in the house while she went out for days at a time.” He let out a humorless laugh. “That was the funniest part of all. I got taken away from her because she left me alone in the house. And the true joke? Those were the only times I had any peace.”

  Jesus. “What happened after that?”

  Milo sat back. “Margo had had a relationship with some loser for a couple months, so miracle of miracles, she knew who my sperm donor was. Some deadbeat I saw around the neighborhood here and there. But he’d had a daughter who was ten years older than me, married, living a decent life, and she took me in.”

  “That’s why you have a different last name?”

  “Yeah. Even though my sister, Yolanda, was really just my legal guardian, in essence she and her husband, Troy, adopted me. I took his last name.”

  Reed nodded. “Did you ever see Margo after that?”

  He shrugged. “She tried to come around for money sometimes. Yolanda told her to fuck off.”