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“How does it feel to be out?” one of them yelled.
“What do you have to say to your rescuers?” another reporter shouted.
Orion kept her gaze on Maddox’s back, like she had in the hospital.
An anchor.
One she didn’t want. But one she needed. Right now, at least. Soon she’d have to grow strong enough to lose him all over again. Strong enough to stain her hands and clean her soul.
The police separated them.
Orion should’ve been expecting that.
But she wasn’t.
All of her instincts were dull, her thoughts soft, but her nerves had a hard edge.
The room looked like an interrogation room in the movies. Desk in the middle. Mirror to the left. A D.A.R.E. poster on the wall.
She sipped a shitty coffee. She didn’t like coffee, but she hadn’t had the opportunity to grow to like it. Isn’t that what happened when you went to college, got a job? Became an adult? You started drinking coffee . . . and slowly, you started to enjoy it.
She drank it more for something to do than anything else, and the little buzz it gave her. She needed the energy after spending most of the night pretending to sleep amongst the giggles and loud whispers. She had quietly seethed at them all, but most of all at herself for not being able to join in, to be part of it.
But she couldn’t. Orion knew the second she saw Jaclyn’s face when she talked about what she wanted to do to the doctor. She knew that she was alone in her vengeance, in her anger. That something different was broken inside of her. Something that would serve as a barrier from ever being able to make any kind of human connections. She felt an unnatural evil simmering beneath the surface.
Maddox had affected her more than she could admit. His blue eyes were searing into her skin. The way he interacted with April. He had been mad at her, but there was a softness to that anger. A caring. She had been surprised at the mention they lived together. She didn’t want to be curious as to how that came about. She didn’t want to know about what had happened in their lives since she’d been gone.
But she was forced to with Maddox being the investigator on this case. Another cruel twist of fate.
She tried to sink into herself. Into her cold, hard interior, to the place where she retreated constantly these past ten years.
It didn’t work.
Especially not when the door opened and Maddox and Eric strolled in. Not when he smiled at her.
She narrowed her eyes as they sat down across from her. “You’re shitting me.”
Maddox’s eyebrows raised in question.
Orion forced herself to take one slow breath, keeping her gaze even and not look away from his stare. “You can’t be interviewing me. Isn’t that a conflict of interest or something?”
Something flickered on his face. He looked to his partner and then to the mirror. Orion wondered if there was a lineup of his superiors watching. She guessed this was a big case. It’s not every day that you find girls that had been missing for years, and the bodies of others. Not every day you find a house of horrors. A lot of publicity.
Maddox cleared his throat awkwardly. “I can leave, if you’re not comfortable.”
“No,” she said. Almost shouted. “No, it’s fine. We’re really strangers now anyway, aren’t we?” It was an effort to shrug her shoulders with disinterest, but she did it.
Maddox’s jaw stiffened and his hands balled into fists on top of the table. He wanted to argue with her, she saw it. But he held it together. If she had to guess, Orion would say that the only reason he was able to stay on this case—that is, if his superiors knew of their connection—was if he held on to his cop mask. Didn’t let emotions seep in. She decided it would be her personal challenge to goad him into a reaction, just so she would get a respite from him.
Eric cleared his throat, glancing to Maddox then back at her. “So, we want to go through this as painlessly as possible, but we do need to get as much information as you can remember.”
Orion laughed. “Don’t worry. I know there’s no such thing as painless. I can handle it.”
Maddox balled his fists tighter. He didn’t like the reminder that she knew pain as an unwelcome friend. Orion made a mental note of that.
She focused on Eric. His eyes were kind but detached. She liked that. That he knew he had to separate his humanity. She didn’t need it.
“We have been searching the house where you were . . . kept,” he said. “In our search, so far, we’ve found the remains of three persons. Yet to determine age or identity. But definitely three. Probably more. We’re wondering if you might know how many we’re gonna find . . . who they are.”
