Page 119 of The Dearly Departed

Tim didn't respond in the traditional sense, but I imagined he'd have a lot to say about the things he had accomplished that were truly worthy of his pride.

His father's construction business, where he, too, had made a living.

The sweet but ordinary life he'd built with his young wife.

The sheer moments in which he'd held his newborn baby, the living, breathing proof of the love he'd once experienced.

I hung my head, thinking about that now, and shamefully, an envy flourished from somewhere deep inside my core.

"You're lucky," I muttered, shaken by what I was about to say to the dead man before I even uttered the words. "I've … had feelings for one woman in my entire life. Only one. And she doesn't even know my name. She doesn’t even know my face."

I tipped my head back, staring into the fluorescent lights overhead.

"She's getting married tomorrow," I went on as an overwhelming sense of helpless despair crushed against my chest. "She's getting married to this fucking asshole who is, apparently, our fucking cousin—who knew I had a cousin, right? Gerald just happened to withhold that tidbit of information this whole time. I guess it doesn't matter who he is when he's as good as dead to me otherwise, but still."

Analise hadn't confirmed or denied that Benjamin was the one to hurt her. But I saw the way she flinched whenever he touched her, saw the way she became withdrawn and tense whenever he was around. I wasn't sure Gerald hadn't hurt her either, but she didn't act with him the way she did with Benjamin, and what that meant …

Well, I wasn't sure, but I could make an educated guess.

"Maybe Gerry hurt her once upon a time, long ago," I muttered, trying the theory on for size. "I wouldn't put it past him. Or … maybe it wasn't him who hurt her at all. Maybe, as fucked up as he is, he wasn't the one to do it himself, but …"

He had no problem handing people off in exchange for something that he wanted. I knew that firsthand.

"Hmm …" I sucked at my teeth, considering the thought.

I glanced down at Tim, who didn't seem to have much input on the topic.

"Maybe a stray bullet will take me out before I ever put this shit together," I considered with a sigh. "I'd like that, I think, but then I'd have unfinished business, and I'd have to spend the rest of eternity haunting the hell out of my father, and who wants to waste their time like that?"

No, I had to get to the bottom of this shit before that happened, and I had to make sure Analise was taken care of. I couldn't let myself die before I knew she was, at the very least, safe and okay, along with my brothers.

"It was easier when I had just them to worry about," I muttered, brushing the hair from off my forehead.

I'd always known having feelings for a woman would be a royal pain in my ass.

I just hadn’t expected that it could eventually lead to the end of my life … if I wasn't careful.

***

Unlike Tim Murphy, Brody Mathers did deserve to die, and I didn’t need Dean to show me the photo albums of child pornography Brody kept displayed on the bookshelf in his living room to prove it.

I knew it the moment I looked at him and didn’t see an ounce of fear or surprise in his eyes.

He had known I’d come for him eventually, and that told me he knew he deserved this fate.

“I’ve heard about you,” he said as I silently taped his bare ankles to the legs of the chair he sat in. “A couple of the guys … they’ve mentioned seein’ you around before. They said you were one creepy motherfucker, and I believed them, but I wasn’t expectin’ this. What the fuck are you supposed to be anyway?”

“Have you never seen a plague doctor before?” I inquired casually, setting the duct tape aside on Brody’s kitchen table and taking a step back to assess my handiwork.

After arriving at his house, I had found him in his basement den, watching a home video with his dick in his hand. The image on the TV screen was enough to make a grown man vomit—if that man possessed any kind of moral soul—and I’d promptly grabbed the remote to pause his movie long enough to secure him to his chair.

“A plague doctor,” Brody repeated, muttering the words like they left a bad taste in his mouth. “The fuck is that? You don’t look like any doctor I’ve ever seen.”

I smiled beneath the mask, remembering a time when I had explained to someone else what a plague doctor was, as I pulled my butterfly knife out of my back pocket and flipped it open.

“Plague doctors date back to the seventeenth century, during epidemics of the bubonic plague,” I explained as I hypnotically watched the blade in my hand spinning around my gloved fingers. “Unlike regular physicians, they weren’t afraid to face the diseased because of the garments and mask they wore, which they believed would prevent them from falling ill themselves.

“Now, I didn’t think much about it when I first started to wear this thing. I was just thinking I needed to conceal my identity, and it was all that I had on hand. But, man, it’s turned out to be fitting, hasn’t it? Because you are sick, wouldn’t you say?”