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And I had no right to be upset. Zero.
Matt and I weren’t together. I didn’t have a stake in who he batted his eyelashes for. And honestly, even if we were in a relationship, I didn’t think the flirting would have bothered me all that much. It would have been fine because at the end of the day, Matt would have been getting into bed with me and not Phill.
But—again—we weren’t in a relationship. He could easily fall into the handsome psychologist’s arms and ride off into the sunset on a comfortable couch together, perfect for cuddling and psychoanalyzing.
“And you go to the gym how often?” Phill asked while everyone settled back down.
“At least five time—”
I cleared my throat. “Okay, Stonewall team. This is Dr. Smith, a forensic psychologist who’s going to be working with us today.”
Phill waved at the surrounding group of detectives. I noticed he didn’t tell me to refer to him as just Phill.
“Do you need any time to get settled in?” I asked him.
“I’ve been briefed on the case by Agent Hale already, so I’m caught up. I think we can just dive in. This is certainly not a case I want to be wasting any time with.”
Then maybe stop drooling all over Matt?
The acidic quip dropped into my head from nowhere. The room felt hotter than it was before, so much so that I half considered asking for the window to be opened. The rotting green visage of jealousy slipped on so effortlessly, I had to make a conscious choice not to glare at the psychologist.
And—once again—I had zero right to even shoot him a sideways glance. If anything, I was the one who deserved the harsh looks. I’d been the one to push Matt away, and although I’d apologized, I wasn’t entirely sure that the wound between us had been fully healed yet. Past pain had a way to fester and rot without anyone taking any notice until it was too late. By then, the rot takes root and changes you, makes you guarded and wary and distant.
I feared that’s what I inflicted on Matthew all those years ago. Maybe there was no getting through the scar tissue left behind? It made that jealous fire rage even hotter; knowing that I could have prevented it all by just sitting my brother and my lover down for a heart-to-heart chat. I was barely in my twenties by then, I didn’t know how to handle much, especially not something as heavy as that.
One thing this burn in my chest made me realize was that I had to make a choice. A conscious, etched-in-stone choice and one that there’d be no turning back from.
For now though, I had to listen to Phill as he intermittently made puppy eyes toward Matt.
“Let’s start with the minds we could actually analyze. We’ve got Colton and Marco, the top two suspects,” Phillip said as he drew the blinds shut and turned on the projector sitting in the center of the table. A clear image of Colton’s scarred face and Marco’s grinning one filled the wall.
“What did Marco’s mom say about his alibi?” Marco asked me.
“She verified it,” I said, nodding. “Said he was over helping her set up for dinner at the time of the murder. No one else was in the house, so I’ve only got her word to go by for now. We’re trying to get tracking off his cell, but that’s taking a little bit.”
Phillip took out a laser pointer and aimed it directly at Marco. “After reading some of the things Marco has written online, I can see that he has an issue with most women, which strikes me as the first red flag. But that’s not the only issue he has—he also wrote negative things about queer folk. Marco presents like a smiley goofball, but there’s deep-seated hatred inside of him.”
Phillip clicked over to the next slide, depicting excerpts from the writings Marco had posted on a blog. It was heinous, talking about women not deserving him and how the gay agenda was ruining masculinity for everyone else. Completely vile and unhinged.
But still not a smoking gun.
“Colton’s trail isn’t that much harder to track,” Phillip said. The wall filled up from top to bottom with old warrants Colton had out for his arrest.
“Do Colton and Marco have any links together?” Austin asked.
I shook my head. “Marco knows about Colton because of his relationship with Sammy, but they don’t hang out or anything.”
“Looks like they’ve got a lot in common,” Ryan said, running a hand through his blond hair, the sunlight playing across the strands that fell on his forehead.
“Their profiles are similar, yes.” Phillip went on, his attention having completely shifted to the case at hand. No more puppy dog eyes or sneaky glances toward Matt.
Good.
“But if we move on to images from the crime scene, I’m more inclined to believe someone like Colton fits into the mold of who we’re looking for. He’s had a violent past, and someone like that doesn’t have many qualms about taking a life—or multiple. Marco’s type is seen more in cases that involve mass casualties or attacks at public venues.” The screen changed to an image of the Pegasus’s first victim, Wendy Farstone.
