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“I can stop, if you want.”
“Quit it with the reverse psychology,” I whisper and suckle on his lower lip, his blonde beard bristles tickling my chin. “You already had me at the forbidden fruit analogy. I’m hungry, Luke. Oh, so hungry.”
“We’re going to have to be quiet, my love.”
“Helen is a sound sleeper, and the girls have had a full day. A train could crash into the ground floor of this house, and they’d simply roll over in their dreams,” I say.
Luke’s gaze darkens as his fingers dig into my thigh. “Ah. Well, that’s good to know.”
Before long, our clothes are on the floor, and we’re making love like lunatics in hiding. Skin on skin, soul to soul, our hearts abandoned unto one another while we consume every drop of love offered and taken. I’ve missed him so much, and I will miss him even more tomorrow when we have to continue pretending.
25
Fallon
“Good news and bad news,” Kellan tells me as I walk into the sheriff’s office.
He’s seated behind his desk, a thick wall of glass separating him from the bullpen. His uniform gives him a posture of authority over the place, but he looks tired and downright drained. I can’t blame him. He’s been at this for weeks, barely sleeping, and eating whatever pops up along the way while he’s out driving, scouring the whole county for information about our attackers. But to hear him say he’s got any kind of news, I like the sound of that. It’s better than the silence we’ve been dealing with for far too long.
“Hit me,” I say. “I can’t take another day of nothing.”
“I know what you mean. The fingerprints we lifted came back with a match for both the drug den and the knife.”
“Same guy?”
This is more than good news. It’s one hell of a breakthrough. Kellan nods and turns his computer screen around showing me a mugshot, but the guy doesn’t seem familiar at all. A rough andfrazzled meth-head from Ohio who somehow ended up doing time here in Nebraska. I don’t recognize the name nor his gang affiliations.
“Owen Yates?” I say his name aloud, but still nothing comes to mind. “Who the fuck is Owen Yates?”
“Well bro, that’s the bad news. It’s more like who the fuckwasOwen Yates?” Kellan replies, leaning back into his chair after he opens a few crime scene photos for me to look at. “He was found dead earlier this morning outside of Sutherland. Dumped in the back of a car, to be specific. His prints were already in the system, but it wasn’t until this morning that we got a match on both attack locations.”
“How did he die?” I ask, staring at the lifeless eyes of a man who tried to kill my brother and me, briefly wishing it had been me who ended that fucker.
“Strangulation,” Kellan says. “The ME says a thin metal wire was used. Professional method, according to his expertise.”
“Professional?”
He gives me a dark look. “Hitman. Killer for hire. Mercenary. You pick.”
“How tall is he?” I ask, still trying to ascertain whether this really is the guy who came at me that night or not. My assailant was fast and focused, determined and agile. This Owen Yates fella looks like a fucking trainwreck. It doesn’t make sense.
“About five-eight,” Kellan says, and there it is. The doubt in his voice. He’s thinking the same thing.
“It’s not our guy.”
“It has to be,” my brother insists. “He was at the drug den, and he was holding the knife, too. Most importantly, both sets of fingerprints were fresh, so he was at both locations around the time of both of our attacks.”
I shake my head. “But that could be unrelated. The alleyway where I keep my car is public. Lots of folks pass through there of a questionable nature. Not to mention your drug den, Kellan.” I point to his computer. “Drug addict. Drug den. Hello.”
“Explain the metal wire, then,” my brother shoots back. “That’s sophisticated and calculated. Who the hell kills a meth head with that kind of technique? Out there in the streets, beefs get sorted with knives and guns with their serial numbers filed off, Fallon. This was something else, entirely.”
“It’s not our guy,” I shoot back.
“He could be connected. I say we dig into this and see where it leads.”
I can’t disagree with the possibility of a connection, though. “My guy was over six feet tall. Yours, too. And from both our experiences, it’s clear we’re talking about the same individual. Well versed in close combat. Fast. Light on his feet. Has some military and mixed martial arts training. And in both instances, he had an opportunity to kill but he wasn’t going for the kill. He was quiet. This guy,” I point at Owen’s mugshot again, “this guy I would’ve seen coming from miles away.”
“We have an even bigger problem at this point,” Kellan says.
