AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Steve was dead. He’d been stabbed to death in his Northgate apartment on Saturday.
No.
Miranda knew she should explore more, go to the news sites. Call someone. Scream for her father, but all she could think was that she needed air.
She got up, trembling, and stumbled to the glass sliders out to the balcony. She flung them open and stepped out into birdsong, warm breeze, and blazing sun. All inappropriate for how she felt right now—paradoxically terrified, sickened, and numb. She heaved. She clutched the rail and held in a scream, but not her tears.
“What’s wrong?” Daddy. Behind her.
She turned and saw the concern on his face. Concern for her, she was certain. He had no idea, and she didn’t know how to say the words she needed to say, to let him know the only man he’d ever really loved was dead.
Murdered.
Oh. My. God.
All she could do was go to him and pull him into her arms.
She sobbed and sobbed, simply holding him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE WIND OFFLake Union chilled him, but not enough to force Connor to get up, to abandon the portable folding chair he’d brought with him, and to go back inside his condo, where it was warm, where there was light, music, and just about any form of entertainment his heart desired.
But he wanted none of that.
That world, although accessible, seemed forever closed off to him now.
He had what he craved right here on this desolate stretch of grass on a bluff above Lake Union in the deepest night—cold, drizzle, and the lonely lights of a barge as it crossed the black expanse headed for the Crittenden Locks over in Ballard.
Connor needed to be miserable, to hurt. It was how he knew he was alive.
Because this little strip of land, with its wet grass and lonely pine tree, was at the end of a dead-end street, Connor also got what he wanted—solitude. He’d lived a life heavy with isolation—it was a pitfall or an advantage of his profession, depending on how one looked at it—and right now it definitely seemed like an advantage. Precious. One that wouldn’t last long.
His eyes felt dry, scratchy. He’d cried too many tears. The ducts were dry and all he could manage were heaving sobs, but even those had left him, replaced by a curious tingling numbness.
Other than his daughter, he didn’t know if he wanted contact with people ever again.
He stared once more across the water at the lights of the Eastlake neighborhood, wishing he was in one of those homes. He craved a time before he knew Trey, or Bruno, or whatever his name really was.
Steve was gone.
Throat slit.
It was too much to bear. It felt like a dream, and if Connor had but one wish, he would project it on to Steve, that he might still draw breath. He didn’t deserve what had happened to him.
Connor blamed himself.
But Steve had been stabbed to death in his apartment, the first home he’d had on his own in years. He’d only lived there for a few weeks. What dreams had been quashed as his life seemed out of him, crimson drop by crimson drop?
Connor couldn’t bear to think of it. And yet horror movie, nightmare images continued to play against his will in his head. Steve’s throat slit, gushing blood. The terror he must have felt just before the blade pressed to his throat. What had he thought of in that final, blessedly quick moment?
The other stuff, the pictures of him, or Alfred Knox, on social media, seemed inconsequential in light of Steve’s gruesome and tragic death.
But to distract himself from the psychic terror the love of his life had experienced in his final moments, Connordidlet himself think about how the compromising nude pictures circulated even now on the gleeful hatefest known as social media—the place where tearing someone down was akin to the blood sport of the old days of the Roman Colosseum.
His publicist had gone through Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, scrubbing the images from the sites, upping privacy settings. She’d issued an explanation, as much as something so heinous and hurtful could be explained, and even apologized, even though there was nothing for Connor to be sorry for, other than his lousy taste in men. Ha! That taste had made him a laughing stock of the world and most likely ruined what was once a promising career.
See, even though all the pics had been taken down, they were still out there. People had screenshotted them. As soon as they were down, they were back up. An enterprising YouTuber had even done a montage, scored illegally to Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
