by Anne Malcom
Maddox snorted at the “old” part of that sentence. Eric was the same age as him, but in a way, he was right. The fucker was an old soul.
Eric didn’t acknowledge the snort. “I’m a cynic, but I’m not blind. Orion is more than a victim. Fuck, looking at her, that label doesn’t fit. She has no one, Maddox. No family, except you and April. The two of you . . . it’s dangerous. I’m gonna tell you to tread fucking lightly. Not just because of what she’s been through, that goes without saying. But because of your history. You’ve carried her with you all these years. That’s why you haven’t had a woman in your bed for longer than a night, no matter what you tell yourself.”
Maddox stared at his partner who was the brother he never had. He was his best friend. Eric knew about Orion. Maddox went to Thanksgiving at his house when he lied to his parents and said he had to work. But they did not have deep and meaningful “talk about your feelings” conversations like this one.
Eric came from a family of cops. His dad had just retired and was well respected in the force and the community. His grandfather had been one of the first black cops in St. Louis, speaking English as a second language. The Baptistes had emigrated from Haiti two generations ago, coming to the country with nothing but the clothes on their backs and generations of slavery and atrocity fresh in their minds. They promised to honor their people in this new land.
Eric was fluent in French because his father was determined for his son to hold on to his past, his heritage. As did all of his sisters, one of which was a beat cop.
His sisters doted on him, which made him sensitive and good with women. Too fucking sensitive, it seemed. They’d never gone this deep with their conversations before. It was an unspoken agreement between them, not to be honest about how deep a toll this job really took. You couldn’t get too introspective about that shit. It’d ruin you.
Maddox’s first instinct was to get mad. Defensive. His fists clenched in preparation for just that. Eric was probably half expecting it. But fuck, he was tired. Tired of pretending shit. Tired of hoping for a stroke of luck that only murderers and pedophiles seemed to get these days.
He sighed, running his hand through his hair, remembering the tentative, scared way that Orion had done the same thing to her long hair. He’d had to lock himself down, hold on to every single one of his natural born instincts to let her do that, let her stay in control. Go slow. Because as much as his mind told him he needed to go slow after what she’d been through, his dick and his heart didn’t get that same message. He could lie to himself and say he hadn’t been tempted that night two months ago, but he wouldn’t.
“Yeah,” Maddox said. “I became a cop because of her.” That much he’d told Eric before, without all the details. “Because I wanted to make a difference, make it so that shit didn’t happen again. I did carry her with me. That fourteen-year-old girl called Ri. She’s not that girl anymore.”
“No, she’s not,” Eric agreed. “Don’t work too hard.”
Then walked off.
He was tired. They both were. This was not the only murder they were working on. And this case was months old. Missouri was experiencing a crime wave. They were normally busy on an “ordinary day” but there had been a lot of missing persons lately. That was technically not in the homicide detective’s department, but Maddox had a theory about the disappearances, considering they had a lot in common. They were all men on the sex offender registry. All vanished without a trace. No signs of foul play in their houses.
Looking at their crimes, Maddox failed to feel any sympathy for the men he suspected of being murdered. But no matter whether he personally was sickened with these men or not—more so than ever with Orion back in his life—this was his job. He was not the morals police—he was the police, here to enforce the law. He didn’t agree with it a lot of the time, but it wasn’t about that. It was about a country free from anarchy. It was about the code he lived by, the vow he took. Plenty of police in this country abused their power, abused their badge, but it would never be him, even if he believed betraying the badge was the “right” thing to do.
Right was subjective.
And it was a slippery slope.
If a man didn’t have his honor, he had nothing.
And there was something else. He wanted to be the man that Orion could count on. A steadfast, capable, and dependable man. All she knew were monsters. All she knew was violence. So as much as he would love to wipe his hands of monsters being taken care of by someone, he couldn’t. He was in love with Orion.
As doomed as such a thing was, he couldn’t change it. He wanted to sometimes, when she looked at him with those cold, empty eyes, when he woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, knowing that nothing would ever be easy between them. It made him a weak man in those moments when he wished to want an uncomplicated woman who would give him children, a safe haven from the life of wearing a badge and looking at horrors.
But as much as he craved that, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. So he’d continue to torture himself. He’d continue to wait for her.
The phone rang and Eric picked it up, speaking for a few minutes. He threw in a “yeah” and “uh huh” here and there. When he hung up, he glanced toward Maddox, excitement in his eyes like a kid on Christmas morning.
“Looks like St. Louis PD has video of the possible suspect,” Eric said gleefully.
Maddox’s eyes went wide. “You gotta be shitting me.”
“No, sir. Cameras from a business a few blocks away. Some pawn shop. They have video of someone hooded, running to an SUV. They’re guessing it’s a Range Rover. From the outfit, they’re thinking female, five foot five to five foot eight.”
“A female?”
“A female.”
“Any video of the perp’s face?”
“They said it’s grainy. Hard to make out much of anything with her hood up. But it’s something.”
Maddox nodded along. “Okay, see if you can get those videos.”
Eric shot him a finger gun. “Already in your inbox, buddy.”
She woke up in the middle of the night to banging.
No, pounding.
Her sleep was thin at best, so it didn’t go on for long before she opened the door. She didn’t have anything in her hands to defend herself, but if someone was intent on hurting her, they wouldn’t be banging like this, announcing themselves to all of her neighbors.
She also had a vague idea of who this was. She’d been expecting this. Maddox was a good cop. He was observant, more than most. If there was anyone who could catch the connection, it would be him. Which is what she had been counting on.
She knew there was no such thing as a perfect crime. Orion wasn’t a perfect criminal. It took ten thousand hours to become an expert at something. She did not have ten thousand hours under her belt. Not yet at least.
But she was pretty darned good.
Because she had planned for failure. For getting caught. She’d gambled on Maddox figuring it out. And she’d gambled on him coming here first, too tangled up in his feelings for her to arrest her. He was a good man and a good cop, but he loved her. So it could go either way. She was manipulating him just like April did.
She should’ve cared more, but she didn’t. There was something broken in her.
The light in the hall was harsh and bright, but his anger, his fury, made it look like a fucking single match next to an inferno.
He pushed past her.
Physically.
She had never seen that from Maddox before. She’d never seen the fury, never seen him so close to the edge that his awareness of her, his instinct to protect her was swallowed.
Some sick part of her liked it, the ugliness of this. At least it was honest.
Orion stared at the empty hall for a beat, took a breath, and closed the door.
When she made it to the living room, Maddox was pacing. He stopped when her eyes locked on his.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
His v
oice was so soft it was the sharpest blade she’d come in contact with.
Orion took great pains to jut her chin upward, to maintain eye contact. Keep her dignity. She had planned for this. She knew Maddox looking at her like this was a possibility.
With everything she’d planned, Orion thought the killing part would be the hardest. That it would hit her soul, fracture the remaining pieces. But if she were being honest with herself, it didn’t bother her that much. What bothered her was how little it bothered her.
But Maddox, standing here in the living room his sister designed, looking at her like she was a monster, that was the hardest.
And she was a monster.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Maddox repeated. His voice was rougher this time. There was something else in it too. He’d turned it into almost a plea.
Orion stayed silent. That was something else. She couldn’t rule out the fact he might be wearing a wire. She wasn’t about to incriminate herself.
“Fuck,” he whispered. He paced the living room. “Fuck!” he roared.
Orion didn’t think she had any fear left in her. She didn’t think she had the ability to flinch away. But she did. She knew it wasn’t possible, but she was sure that the walls had rattled.
Then he advanced. He prowled forward with murder and violence in his eyes.
She wasn’t proud of it, the fact she retreated until her back hit the wall. Maddox got close enough to box her in with his body. And he didn’t stop. He didn’t respect her space, her aversion to body contact. He had no concern for her in that moment.
“What the fuck are you thinking, Ri?”
“It’s Orion,” she said, almost on autopilot.
His eyes flared. “You’re right. It is Orion. Because I have no idea who the fuck I’m looking at right now. Do you know what would’ve happened to you if anyone else but me could pick you out of those videos?”
Something moved inside her. A little hope. Not just for herself, but for them. For her and Maddox. She could’ve been wrong, but it sounded like . . .
“Did anyone else recognize me?”
His face cleared of all fury and went blank. For a few moments, he didn’t speak at all—nothing but a cold and violent stare. His breath was hot on her face.
“No. The video was shit. And circumstantial at best, because nothing puts you at the crime scene. But, my God, Orion. What the hell were you thinking?”
His eyes cleared, and he looked at his arms, framing her body and caging her in, as if they were foreign and not his. Maddox quickly stepped back, putting space between them.
Orion exhaled in relief, but also with the loss of him. She had been so sure that she hated any human being in her space, and she had hated Maddox there, but she needed him too. It made her feel whole.
“I was thinking how that monster didn’t deserve to live anymore, not for what he did to me . . . to all of us,” she said.
He sighed. It was not a soft expelling of breath that most sighs were. Somehow, it was violent, almost painful. It had years of suffering woven into it. His eyes met Orion’s. They were hard, almost hateful. She was glad for that. She liked it.
“Let’s forget, for just a fucking moment, about the fact that vigilante justice, in any form is illegal. Let’s forget that Missouri still has the death penalty as punishment for murder, though I’m finding it real hard to forget those things because I’m a fuckin’ cop, but I’ll try.”
He gritted his teeth. Expelled another violent sigh.
Orion figured he was trying to hold himself together, stop himself from giving into the rage, from screaming at her and spewing ugly things. She wished for that, but Maddox was too much of a good man to give her that, despite the fact she deserved it.
“Forgetting all of that, how about the fact you’re fucking with some dangerous people, if what you’re telling me is true. You survived them once, Orion.”
She bristled. “Not once,” she hissed. “Not twice. Thousands of times. Thousands of beatings, assaults, punishments. I survived these monsters for ten years, Maddox. I can handle it.”
His jaw hardened, calcified in place. He was getting better at hiding his reaction to her hurling her past in his face. It was the only weapon she really had. “Yeah, you did,” he agreed. “You did what I don’t think many other people, man or woman, adult or child, would be able to do. That doesn’t mean you’re invincible. You can still bleed. Just because you survived doesn’t mean you can’t still die. That they can’t throw you away in another cage and leave you there for what you’ve done.”
She heard it. The fear in his voice. The terror. This was a man who wanted to protect her. Who couldn’t. Who had attached himself to her and her wellbeing, despite all of her efforts. This was a man who loved her, despite even more of her efforts. She had tried to use what she had become to disgust him, to scare him and his concerns away. And it wasn’t working.
“I’ve accumulated enough currency for my own little half acre in hell,” Orion said. “So, I’m not afraid of death.” She eyed him. “And I’m not ever gonna be put back into a cell. Not by anyone, law or otherwise. So, they better kill me. You better kill me.”
He rolled his eyes, his thick hands meeting his hips. “I’m so fucking glad you’re not afraid, Orion,” he hissed, horror in his eyes. “But did you think for a second about what your death, or incarceration, might do to other people? What it might do to my fucking sister? She’s finally getting her shit together. To Shelby?”
That part hit her. Because she was worried about April. She hated that she was. She hated that she wasn’t worried enough about her to stop. And she was so proud of how far Shelby had come.
“What do you think is going to happen to me, Maddox?” she asked sharply. “Do you think I’m going to go to therapy for the rest of my life, heal my wounds, return to society, get married, have two point five kids and act like those ten years were just a bad nightmare?”
She waited for him to speak. To offer a real, honest answer. A real honest alternative.
He stayed silent.
“Exactly,” she said. “There is no happy ending for me. Not for Jaclyn. Shelby. We’ll never get out of The Cell, not really. So I’m doing what I can to live with that. And it sure as fuck isn’t getting myself a husband and a white picket fence. If it puts me in another cell, then whatever. I’ll sleep at night. So, you going to cuff me?”
He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. He also didn’t cuff her.
“You have a choice to make,” she said. “You can lock me up right now. You can take me downtown and fulfill all those oaths you took to get that badge. Or you can take that gun and shoot me in the head. Those are your two options. You don’t ask me to love you or to give anything up for you. Because I won’t. I care about you. I might love you with whatever I have left in me to do so. But I think I’m too broken. Whatever is left of me, whatever pieces I can cobble together, they’re yours. But that’s not enough to make me want to stop. If you ask me to give this up for you, I won’t. This is what keeps me going. But if you ask me to choose, you’ll lose. I’m going to keep doing this because this is all I can do.”
“There have been reports of disappearances from other departments in Missouri lately. Even a cop up in St. Louis. He eyed her suspiciously, an eyebrow arched. “It just so happens all of them were on the Missouri sex offender registry.” He let the words linger in the air.
She grinned at him, just slightly. Shrugged.
“Are you kidding me, Orion? Do you know how much heat that missing cop is bringing?”
“Do they know it was me?”
“They don’t know jack shit, Orion, but that’s not the point.” He shook his head. “What did you do to him? To them?”
“Don’t worry. The cops will never find the bodies. And I covered my tracks well,” she said proudly.
Maddox stared at her. She waited for that disgust. For hatred. But there wasn’t any of that. Not outright, at least. He looked shocked, to be sure. He’d co
me here with all the fanfare, the anger, but he’d been harboring a hope that he was wrong.
He’d been harboring a hope that he could resurrect Ri and kiss her on the porch again.
But the dead didn’t come back.
“Orion, you can’t do this. You can’t put me in this position,” he said finally. There was no slinging of hatred at the fact she was murdering people. No disgust at all, in fact.
“You’ve put yourself in this position,” Orion replied, happy her voice wasn’t shaking. Something inside her had breathed a sigh of relief the second Maddox pushed through her door. She was not alone in this anymore.
Despite what she’d thought, even monsters got lonely. Even monsters longed for love.
She longed for Maddox. She longed to make him a monster, just like her. Because she loved him. And she loved ruined people.
“There are only two ways this is ending,” Orion continued, her gaze not faltering, electricity shooting through her nerve endings. “Either you try and arrest me now, and I fight back and make you shoot me. Or you keep this between us, and let me continue doing what I’m doing.”
Orion eyed the gun on his hip. Maddox followed her gaze then snapped his back upward.
There it was. The horror she’d been waiting for. “Of course I’m not going to shoot you,” he said, as if it were outside the realm of possibility. As if he wasn’t a homicide cop talking to a murderer. “And I’m certainly not going to be the one throwing you back into a cage. But at some point, you’re gonna mess up, Orion, and someone else is gonna figure you out, and I won’t have a goddamn say in it. And the thought of losing you again, Ri . . . it fucking breaks me. I wouldn’t be able to handle it. I couldn’t go on.” Tears shimmered in his eyes, his voice breaking ever so slightly.
Orion held steady. With effort. She’d been so sure she could witness men suffering, and she had. She’d heard them scream for their mothers, plead for their lives, cry out while she tore the life from them. All the while, she’d felt nothing but satisfaction. Now she wanted to rip her insides out rather than see Maddox cry because of her.