Dirty Sexy Secret (Green County Book 1) (13 page)

The thing that bothers me about the murders is that things like this
don’t
happen here.

I know that there’s more to Green County than meets the eye.

I know that the prostitution outside the base is a front for trafficking.

I know that we’re not a hotspot for drugs but we are corridor for them and that someone big is behind the scenes, funding a meth operation in the county.

But for all of our problems, and we have them, we don’t have brutal murders. And when we do have murder, it’s never
this
. The massacre of an entire family.

I can’t wrap my head around what happened. And even though I know that Archer wants me to leave it alone, I can’t. I dig out my phone and start jotting down notes as Smith splashes through the creek bed.

Archer doesn’t have to like it. Hell, he dislikes a lot of things I do. But. I came back to Green County to come home and blow the lid off of all of the corruption that’s been sitting underneath the surface of the County since I was a little girl. This seems like the perfect fucking place to start.

We spend almost an hour at the creek, until Smith is exhausted and I have pages of notes and questions that need to be answered. My brain is going in a million directions at once as we walk home.

I love this part, the high of chasing a new story. Digging into the story that I wasn’t expecting. Boston almost killed all of my love for journalism. Being shoved into a tiny box and stories that didn’t
matter
almost killed me. And the one time I chased a story that wasn’t mine, I lost my job.

That’s the dirty ugly secret.

Coming home wasn’t a choice, it was a necessity. I investigated the wrong person, exposed the wrong secrets and I lost everything because of it.

And I spent six months grieving, mad, bitter as hell that I was forced to come home. But now that I’m here and Archer and Eli are pulling me back in to the family that we’ve always had I don’t resent it as much.

It almost feels nice.

When he asks later what the hell I was thinking, I’ll honestly be able to say
everything.

I wasn’t paying attention because my mind was everywhere but
here
.

Smith, never a good guard dog, was exhausted.

And enough people—Gabriel, Archer, Eli, Mama—had my key that the door being unlocked wasn’t anything to be alarmed by.

My alarm came when I saw Michael and Raphael sitting bloody in my kitchen.

“Come inside, Hazel,” Michael says, a bloody smile playing across his lips.

Raphael stands and comes behind me, pushing the door closed and blocking me in. Michael leans back and says, softly, “We have a little story to tell you.”

I
don’t like leaving while she’s asleep.

But duty calls and four dead bodies means I don’t get to pick and choose when I leave. Elijah is miraculously not hungover but he looks like shit. When I say as much, he rolls his eyes and says, “Because you look so much fucking better?”

Little bastard has a point.

We swing by our house and dress quickly. And then I head to Calhoun Funeral Home.

The medical examiner is finishing the autopsy. Not that it will tell us anything we don’t already know except maybe the order of the kills and if there was sexual assault at play. Green County is small enough, with a low enough crime rate that we don’t have a morgue. The murdered bodies share space with a naturally dead.

Pamela says that it doesn’t matter how they died, they have to either get cut up or dolled up and that can both happen in the same basement. Elijah says she’s too lazy to go between two buildings to do her work. I think the mayor doesn’t push for a more official space because of budget as much as she’s scared of Pam.

Not that I blame her. Pamela knows how to work a scalpel and a bone saw better than anyone I’ve ever met. She’s feisty, horny, and quick to anger. I’m more than a little scared of her myself.

“Tell me what we got, Pam,” I say as we enter the room. She gives me a look and even exhausted, Elijah manages to laugh at me. I glare at him before I refocus on Pam. With four dead bodies in the room, the least I can do is act like a professional.

“Well, there’s not much that you don’t know,” she says, “Gunshot wounds for three of the victims. The grandmother was first and, you know, it played out exactly as the scene said it did. She got shot running away. It’s clean through and through. They knew what they were doing. All of this was very well done.”

“Really, Pam?” Elijah says, in disbelief.

“Look, just because I don’t like the results doesn’t mean I can’t see good work. I admire professionals and whoever this was they
were
a professional. If they hadn’t been, they wouldn’t have come in with silencers. They wouldn’t have come in and killed methodically. They knew exactly what they wanted.”

“And what’s that?” I ask quietly.

“Her,” Pamela points to the girl who was beaten to death. The body—remains?—I’ve been avoiding looking at because it’s hard to see something like this. Even here. Even in a clinical setting instead of the pale carpet and bright walls of her private home.

“They beat her to death,” Pam says, softly. “Before that, they worked her over with a blade. She’s got over a dozen wounds that I can say come from a knife and not the barbell. And the beating probably obscured some of them.” She takes a breath and then, “And there was sexual assault.”

Fuck
.

They wanted her to suffer, whoever the hell was behind this.

The question is—
why?

When we leave Pam and the dead bodies, we head back to the station. Elijah is staring at the small file Pam handed us before we left. It lists all of the victim. Ages. Cause of death.

It’s very little to go on.

I swallow down my irritation.

“Where to?” Elijah asks.

“We need to check in with the Chief,” I say.

And then the next of kin needed to be interviewed. Fuck. How the hell did I sit down with the parents of a college girl who spent the night studying with her best friend and never left?

How do I explain that,
wrong place, wrong time
stole their living, breathing heart?

This is the part of being a cop that I loathe. That I’ve never been able to shake.

I want, suddenly and fiercely, Hazel.

Not sex.

Hazel.
The sharp smile and sarcasm that cover her softness and concern. Her, a steady presence that made me steady just because I couldn’t help but want to match her, when she was so calm.

I want to wrap up in the quiet of her house, on her couch, and sleep until the grief and shock and nauseous slips away.

Until Green County goes back to what it should be, something familiar and comforting, and
safe.

Where my biggest problem is my stupid little brother toeing the line of
off the reservation.

“Archer?” Elijah says, and I blink out of my thoughts, and realize we’re at the station. The Roadrunner is ticking slightly, the motor cooling—I make a mental note to deal with that when I get some time off—and I’m staring into space.

Blank.

I shiver and shake the feeling and nod. “Right. Let’s go.” I shove out of the car. What I want is not important right now. Not when there are dead bodies to deal with.

T
here are a very few moments in my life that are crystalline and clear. So much passes, foggy because everything else passes in a nebulous haze, lost in time and the feelings of home and anger and loss and happiness more than actual things that happened, moments that can be held on to.

But this.

This is one of those memories.

One that will stand sharp and clear and fucking devastating.

John, his hands covered is rusty, flaking blood, with spots of it still on his pants and splattered across his chest, leaning against the door to hold me in.

Michael, poised and perfect at the table, hands crossed and waiting, as patient as the devil himself, splattered with blood and reeking of death, gesturing me to sit across from him.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, and my voice shakes. They shouldn’t be here. My brother and Archer protect me. No one would dare lift a hand against me, because no one wants a pissed off Eli and Archer gunning for them.

They might be the law, but I’m under no delusions about my brothers playing legal when it comes to me and keeping me safe.

So why the hell are there two men covered in blood and vibrating with barely suppressed violence sitting in my kitchen? “Eli and Archer will kill you, if you touch me.”

That, at least, comes out steady and strong.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” Michael says, silky smooth and John makes a low noise in his throat behind me. Like a,
speak-for-yourself,-brother
and I roll my eyes to Michael, silently demanding.

“No one will hurt you, if you cooperate,” he amends and I tense. “How easy this is, Hazel depends entirely on you.”

I swallow hard and stare. “What do you want?”

Michael smiles and it’s a cruel, cold thing. “I want to tell you a story. And then I want you to tell ours.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, and that’s true. Not playing him at all. I don’t understand what the hell is happening here.

I don’t understand what they want.

Michael smiled then, and it’s tired but it’s not threatening. It’s the boy I went to school with. Bloody and dangerous but still Michael with his quick grin and aloof reserve. With his unnaturally close relationship to his brother and his sister.

“Did you kill those people?” I ask, softly.

The reaction is instant and explosive. John, almost forgotten, slams into me and I shriek as I fly forward until he jerks me back, against him, a sharp edge digging into my throat, my head yanked back by a too sharp grip on my hair.

Smith is snarling and barking, all fury and concern and Michael.

Michael.

He shifts in his seat, his eyes trained on his twin over my shoulder.

“Let her go, J,” he says, lowly.

“She won’t believe the truth. This is a fucking waste of time.”

Fury flares in his eyes and he slaps the table, hard enough to rattle the coffee cups, “I said, stand the fuck. Down.”

John releases me, muttering a curse under his breath as I stumble a step forward.

Michael refocuses on me, completely ignoring his twin as he stares at me. “I did nothing more than was required of me. How far would you go to protect your brothers? How far would they go to protect you? Is there a line they would not cross if someone hurt you?”

I smile, sharp and threatening, “Your about to find out, Mikey.”

He shrugs. “Perhaps. That presupposes that I want to hurt you. Or that your brother and Archer will know.”

I stiffen. “Why the hell would they not know?” I demand.

He smiles and I shiver a little. None of the kid I went to school with is in that smile. “Because if you tell them, what happened at that house will happen to them. And to Nora. And to Gabriel.”

I’m shaking because I know Michael. And I know that tone. John is a furious barely leashed storm of rage but he doesn’t scare me. He doesn’t do anything Michael doesn’t sanction and he is all rage with no thought.

Michael is precise and conniving, manipulative and deadly.

And he terrifies me.

He smiles and says, “Here’s the deal. You listen to my story. And then you tell one. And you don’t involve your brothers. Do that and you walk away from this unharmed. It’s easy, Hazel.”

I don’t have a choice. So I push away from the door and John, and sit across from Michael. Take my coffee and doctor it slowly to a drinkable state.

Sip it as I force my nerves back and slip into the role I wear best.

The reporter.

The girl who can tell amazing, unbelievable stories.

“Ok, Mike. Tell me a story.”