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“I hit him. Got him good too,” I laughed dryly.
“That’s my girl,” Dad grinned.
“You need to ice that hand. It looks swollen,” Xander added, ever the doctor.
“I’m good guys, honestly. It hurts that he would do that and I’m pissed I didn’t realize what an asshole he is sooner, but at least I found out now and not when we were married with a house together. This is for the best.”
“I’m still gonna pay him a visit. He doesn’t get to treat you that way,” Kyle grumbled.
“Damn right. I never trusted that sonofabitch,” Kade agreed.
“No. No visits, Kyle. No scaring him. He’s not worth it. I just want to walk away and move on.” My tone was firm as I looked between all five of my brothers with a glare, daring them to argue with me.
“I don’t think so,” Kade growled, but Livy cut him off instantly.
“Kade. It’s not up to you. Evie wants to move on and you are going to listen to her wishes. You’re all going to listen to her wishes,” she looked between her husbands as she gave the veiled threat.
“Fine, but no promises if I bump into that asshole,” Kyle pouted as the others all nodded. It was amazing the way they did as Livy told them and it always made me smile to see it.
“I do need some help getting all of my stuff from his place tomorrow. I won’t fit it all in my Jeep,” I told them.
“Your dad and I can help, honey,” mom told me. They were both semi-retired and only worked two days a week. The rest of the time they did volunteer work and just generally enjoyed their lives together. They had both decided life was too short to spend it working sixty hour weeks.
“Kade and I will come too. We don’t have any meetings lined up, and Rob can handle shit in the office,” Kyle offered.
“I might need to move back in for a couple of months, if that’s okay?” I looked to mom and dad with a wince. Moving back in with them hadn’t exactly been in my life plan.
“Of course, sweetheart. This will always be your home. You know that,” Dad told me as he pulled me into a half hug and kissed the top of my head.
As everyone started to help Matt get food to the table and herd the kids into seats I let out a sigh of relief. Telling them all hadn’t been as bad as I expected. In fact it had made me feel better. I was still heart broken, but my mom was right – Dean didn’t deserve me, the cheating asshole. Maybe my life had taken a slightly different trajectory that day, but I still had the job I had always wanted and an amazing family surrounding me. I’d be okay. I’d find my way forward without Dean and the plans we’d made together. I knew I’d get past this and past him, but it still hurt like hell though.
CHAPTER 3
KADE
“Okay guys,” Kyle announced as he strode into the office. He turned to address all of the guys. “It’s official. CPD have just confirmed that the bodies found out near the highway are the work of ‘The Number Killer.’ We have a serial killer in the city and he’s looking for victim number seven.
“Fuck,” I uttered to myself. ‘The Number Killer’ had already moved across two states in recent months. He had left six bodies behind him and that was just the ones the authorities knew of. He abducted three victims from one state, then months later he left their bodies in another before taking his next three victims from that same state, then moving on. By moving across state lines he made the investigation difficult for the police and FBI.
“Are CPD asking for our help?” Rob asked. He was our business partner, though he played a smaller role nowadays. He was getting older and had decided to step back from the firm to spend time with his wife and three kids. He was still in the office a few days a week and we knew we could rely on him if we needed to, but he deserved to step back. He had worked hard to build his firm – Shepard security. We had two branches in the city and one in New York. Kyle and I had bought into the business years ago, but Robert had got it all started years before that. It was his baby really. Kyle and I were just trying not to fuck it all up.
“Not officially, but Kade’s guy from ‘Serious Crimes’ is on the FBI task force they’re setting up and has asked us to keep our eyes and ears open,” Kyle explained. Kowalski was the detective Kyle was referring to. He and I had worked together when I worked for the CPD as a detective years ago, and now he often asked our company for help on investigations if he hit a dead end.
“So what do we know?” I asked.
“Just like the last dump site – three bodies. No clothes. Signs of repeated torture on the bodies. Strangulation was the cause of death. Three blonde women in their mid-twenties with no I.D.”
“And the numbers?” Rob asked.
“Yep. Each woman was clutching a white glossy card with a number printed on it. First three were one, two, and three, and these ones were four, five, and six.”
“So it’s safe to assume he’s scouring the city looking for seven, eight, and nine now then?” Rob asked.
“Seems likely,” Kyle agreed. “The cops have nothing to go on – no witnesses to the kidnappings or body dumps. No DNA on any of the bodies. Nothing.”
“So this guy knows what he’s doing then,” I sighed. It didn’t give us a damned thing to go on to stop this fucker from taking three more innocent victims, and this time it was from our city.
“Kowalski is sending us what they have, but it’s obviously not much,” Kyle shrugged.
