City of the Lost (42 page)

“You
did
stop.”

“Only after you said it twice and pushed me away. I heard you the first time, and I don’t know why I didn’t stop.” He shakes his head. “Fuck, yeah, I know. I was pretending I didn’t hear in case you didn’t mean it, and if you did mean it, then you’d say it again, only you shouldn’t
need
to say it again and…” He exhales. “I fucked up, Casey. I really fucked up, and all I can say is that I’m sorry, and it’ll never happen again.”

I’m quiet for a moment, considering my words, then say, carefully, “I
did
reciprocate, Eric. You’re the one who didn’t want it.”

“I—”

“Twice you said—very clearly—that you didn’t want it. I’m not going to have sex with a guy who’ll regret it ten minutes later. I’m especially not going to have sex with my boss if he’ll regret it ten minutes later.”

He frowns, and I can see he’s honestly working through why that would be a bigger problem.

“Oh,” he says after a moment. “Yeah, I guess … I hadn’t thought— Fuck, I wasn’t thinking
at all
.”

“You were stressed, and that was the outlet. I understand.”

“I … No, it wasn’t…” He’s working this through, too, furiously. I’m suddenly exhausted, and I want to say,
Go, Eric. Just go.

“Regardless of why you kissed me,” I say, “I didn’t have a problem with it. I didn’t have a problem with it taking a second no to stop you. At that speed, it’s harder to throw on the brakes. I did have a problem with you walking off because I thought you just got pissy at me saying no. If that isn’t the case—”

“It’s not.
At all.
I was angry with myself—”

“Then I accept that, and I’d like to move on. My next interview should be here any second.”

“I wanted to kiss you,” he blurts. “When I said I didn’t, I…” More hands-through-hair. Then hands-shoved-in-pockets. “What I meant is that as much as I wanted what we were doing, I know we shouldn’t. It’s just a really bad idea for you and me to start something, and yeah, maybe that wasn’t starting something for you, maybe it was just sex, but it was different for me and—” He exhales hard. “Shit. Stop babbling. Okay. The point is that even if you were interested, there’s a lot of crap in my life, and you don’t need to share that.”

Silence ticks past as I mentally vacillate between saying what I want to say and keeping my mouth shut.

Mentally vacillate? Hell, no. That makes it sound so calm and reasoned. My brain swirls, half of it screaming at me to do it, just do it, stop being such a wimp and take the leap, and the other half screaming at me to keep my mouth shut, don’t go there, don’t open myself up.

I raise my gaze to his. “And what if I want to share that?”

A one-second pause. A split second of surprise and something I can’t quite catch. Then he looks away, and I feel that break like a punch.
See? See? I told you to keep your damned mouth shut, Casey.

“You tell me I need to go after what I want,” I say. “But this isn’t about what I want, is it? It’s not about whether I’m willing to share your shit. You don’t want to share it.”

“It’s isn’t—”

“My next interview will be here any moment. Please go down and let him in.”

“I—”

“Go, Eric. Now.”

Back to the case. Because despite all the personal drama, there’s still a killer to be found. Possibly two.

I already know Kenny had seen both Mick and a woman matching Diana’s description heading into the woodshed. I question him thoroughly, but there’s little more to get than that. One other person saw Mick heading toward that side of town. Another saw Diana. Again, not terribly useful, though I do glean a few more details. First, Mick and Diana were not seen together. Second, the witness who saw Diana definitely spotted her alone, meaning no one forced her there.

I continue interviewing people all day, but I don’t get much farther. I confirm that Diana had been with the people she’d claimed to be with. She’d left at the time she’d claimed to leave. She’d been alone. She’d been seen heading in the direction she’d indicated, also alone. As for Mick, those at the Roc that night had seen it play out as Isabel claimed—Mick left at eleven, about an hour after they disappeared into the backroom together.

Dalton stays downstairs during my interviews. Whenever he has to leave, Anders stops by, and I suspect that’s no accident. Dalton isn’t taking chances. There’s a killer in town and so his injured detective is under full-time guard.

It’s Dalton who’s there when Petra comes by partway through my interviews. I hear them talking and I sit upright. One thing I haven’t had so far is actual visitors, so while it’s possible Petra just needed to talk to Dalton, I’m hoping …

Light footsteps sound on the stairs and then a head peeks through the half-open door. “Hey, heard you’re playing hooky, faking a knife attack.”

“It’s the only way to get out of work around here.”

“No kidding, huh?” She sits on the edge of the bed and puts a rolled-up sheet of paper on the night stand. When I glance at it, she says, “Look later. I hate being around when people see my work. There’s that really awkward moment where they have to look excited no matter how much they hate it.”

“Doesn’t that go for any gift?”

She laughs. “If you’re a nice person, I guess it does. So, how are you doing?”

“Healing. As knife attacks go, it wasn’t too bad.”

She shakes her head. “And otherwise? How are you doing?”

“You mean…”

“Diana.”

I sigh and lean back against the pillows. “Besides feeling like a complete idiot? My best friend gets back together with her abusive ex, and I don’t realize it? They steal a million bucks, and I don’t know it? They have my lover shot, and I never suspect a thing? Some detective I am, huh?”

“I think you’re wearing that whip out.”

“I just feel so stupid. It’s like reading a detective novel and you hit the end and the killer is a complete surprise, but when you re-read, you realize all the clues were right there. Given what I do for a living, I should have seen them.”

“You did. I know you did.”

I shift position. “And doesn’t that make it worse?”

“No, it makes you human. She was your friend. You wanted to think the best of her. You saw flaws, but we all have flaws. It’s not as if she befriended you a few months ago to put this all in motion. You
were
friends. It just may not have been the healthiest friendship.”

“To put it mildly…”

Petra continues. “I’ve had toxic friends. I’ve even been the toxic friend, when things were bad, really bad, and I needed so much and I…” She stops and swallows. “And this is about you.”

I look at her. “It doesn’t have to be.”

She manages a smile. “It will be, for now. I know Isabel would say confession is good for the soul … though I suspect she means so she can use your secrets against you, rather than because it’s therapeutic.”

I laugh softly. “Probably.”

“But sometimes confessing trauma just feels like reliving it, you know?”

I think of all those times in a therapist’s chair, retelling my story. It wasn’t just about confessing. It wasn’t just about that magical thinking, testing fate to see if I deserved to be caught. It was about flagellating myself, exactly like Petra said. Reliving it so I could torment myself with every excruciating moment.

Petra says, “I think my ten minutes are up, which means Eric will come tromping up those stairs at any moment. You need to mourn Diana, Casey. Let yourself mourn her. She
was
your friend. No matter what.”

We hear Dalton’s footsteps then and Petra leaves, and while she’s talking to him downstairs, I open the sketch. It’s me on Cricket, racing Anders back to the stable. I’m grinning and I look so happy, hunched down in the saddle with my hair blowing back. There are others in the picture. Dalton on Blaze, following at a normal pace—I swear I can see him shaking his head at us. Petra’s there too, on the sidelines cheering us on with others from our bar group. Diana’s with them. She has her arms raised, pumping the air and shouting as I take the lead. I see her face lit up and I know that isn’t fake. There’d been no reason to pretend anymore—we were in Rockton and she’d gotten what she wanted from me and yet she’d still cheered me on in that race.

“Ready for the next interview?” Dalton calls up, and I wipe away a tear, quickly reroll the sketch and yell back, “Send her up!”

When my interviews are done, I nap. I have to—I’m still exhausted. I dream of the forest and of Jacob, and even asleep, my mind works the case. It’s possible that paranoid delusions drove Jacob to kill Abbygail, Powys, and Hastings in the forest. Irene could be a separate case, like Mick. But Abbygail died two months ago, and Dalton says Jacob was fine a few weeks ago.

I’m thinking of that and then dream I’m back in the forest, Jacob with the knife at my throat, and I feel his hand on my shoulder, and my eyes open, and I see his grey eyes right above mine, and I lash out, right hook catching him in the jaw, the left in the gut, and he falls onto me … onto the bed with me, and I realize it’s not Jacob I’ve hit. It’s Dalton.

He backs up fast, wincing.

“And you wonder why I don’t keep a gun under my pillow.”

“Yeah.” He rubs his jaw. “My mistake. I thought you saw me.” A strained half smile. “Well, unless you
did
. I probably deserve that.” The smile lingers another second. Then it falters. “Or did you think I was—?”

“I was just reacting to someone looming over me as I slept.”

“You were having a bad dream,” he says, and he waits, as if for me to explain.

I sit up and look around, blinking hard.

“I brought dinner,” he says.

He takes a tray from the chair and brings it over and points out what he’s gotten for me. Soup, because it’s easy to eat if I’m not up to solid food. A sandwich if I am—peanut butter and jam, but he can get something different if he’s chosen wrong. And pie. Brian at the bakery asked what he could make for me, and Dalton remembered we’d talked about apple pie. The rest of it is downstairs for later.

I don’t want him to try this hard.

I want him to throw it off.
So, yeah, it’s been a shitty forty-eight hours, Butler, but what’s past is past, so let’s move on and I sure as hell hope you aren’t planning to lounge in this bed tomorrow.

I want Dalton’s snap and his growl and his swagger. Instead, I get apple pie and “Are you sure PB&J is okay? They were making shredded venison for tomorrow’s sandwiches. I could get you some of that if you want.”

“What I want is for you to stop apologizing.”

“I’m not—”

“Yeah, Eric. You are.”

He nods, settles onto the chair, and watches me eat. Then he stands abruptly and leaves without a word.

“Well, that’s more like it,” I mutter under my breath, as I dig into the pie.

Thirty seconds later, he’s back with the tequila and a shot glass.

“I don’t want—” I begin.

“Good, ’cause you can’t have it with the drugs. This is for me.”

He starts to open the bottle. Then he stops, sets it aside, and walks out again. I hear the distant click of the front door lock. Then the tramp of his boots as he goes to check the back door. He comes up and closes the bedroom one, too.

I say nothing. He pours a shot. Gulps it. Winces and shakes his head sharply, his eyes tearing at the corners.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Yep, you really should stick to beer.”

He shakes his head and pulls the chair over to the bed. Then he pours another shot.

“Umm,” I say. “That’s probably not a good—”

He downs it, and he’s hacking after that, his eyes watering. His hand, still clutching the shot glass, trembles. He notices and puts it down fast.

“We need to talk,” he says.

“That’s usually best done sober.”

“Not for this.” He wipes his mouth and straightens. “Diana said I’m fucked up. She may be a bitch, but she’s right. Everyone knows it. They think it’s because I grew up here. That’s only part of it.”

He rubs the back of his neck. “You said I don’t want to share my problems with you. You’re right. I don’t share this with anyone.
Anyone
. Because if they already treat me like a freak, this isn’t going to help.” He looks at the shot glass, his fingers still around it. “So I could just keep refusing to talk about it. Be the guy with the deep, dark secret.”

He smacks the shot glass down. “Fuck it. I’m not that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. Not with you. So this is your last chance. If you’d rather not hear it…”

“I want to.”

“Fine, but if you ever treat me differently because of this—”

“I’d like to think you know me better than that.”

He eases back, his voice lowering. “Yeah. Okay. So, Jacob … I was ten. He was seven. We’d wander in the woods for hours. Our parents taught us how to find our way, and we were always home by dark. Then one day we see these people. I’m curious. I make Jacob stay back while I check them out. It’s a group, camping and hunting. For three days, I come back to watch them. Jacob’s freaked out. He wants to tell our parents. I say no fucking way. I threaten to leave him at home next time. On the third day, he’s still whining, so I tell him to get out of my damned face, and I stomp off, exactly like you thought I did yesterday. And that’s when it happens.”

“They take him.”

“No.” He inhales and straightens and meets my gaze. “Not him. They take me.”

“And then what? You escape and…” I trail off. I mentally retrace his story, and I realize there’s more than one way of looking at it.

“Your parents…” I say. “The Daltons aren’t your parents. They took you. From the forest. From…”

“Yeah.”

I blink, and I’m trying so hard not to react, to act like this is no big deal.
Huh, guess I got that backward. Interesting.

But it is a big deal. A huge deal, because losing a little brother would be tough, but to be the one lost himself, to be taken from his family …

“So, yeah,” he says. “That’s where I come from. Out there. I was one of them. Still am, in a lot of ways. It’s not as if the Daltons rescued me from parents who beat and starved me. At first, I fought like a wolverine. I kept thinking my parents would come for me. But if they tried, I never knew it, so I figured they’d given up on me. I was pissed about that, and then, well … life
was
easier in Rockton. The Daltons were good people. I didn’t … I didn’t have the experience or the self-awareness to really understand that what they’d done was wrong. Everyone said they did a good thing, rescuing me from the savages, and how lucky I was, and by the time I was old enough to know that wasn’t true?” He shrugs. “The Daltons
were
my parents by then. There was no point going back, because I didn’t belong there anymore. I didn’t quite belong out here, either. I’m just … somewhere in between.”