by Sarina Wilde
Kevin huffed out a breath. “It struck me when I walked in and saw the Justin Timberlake poster. Heather Stevens and Jill would be about the same age. Hell, I think Jill even had that same poster in her room.” He stared out the window. “Who keeps a woman for ten years before he kills her?”
“We don’t know he kept her.”
“No,” Kevin cut in, “but it’s where we’re headed. You and I both know it. Whoever this asshole is…he’s not only sick, he’s sadistic. And how the hell would you hide someone that long? Have you thought about it?”
Adam glanced over at him. “Yeah. I have. And I think it narrows our field of suspects even more.”
Chapter Eight
Jill had thought Kevin would call. By now, she’d expected it. In fact she’d expected him to call last night, but he hadn’t. For the first time she could remember, she had slept the entire night in their bed alone.
“Ramsey!” one of the docs barked. “Someone’s out here to see you.” She’d volunteered to work an extra shift, realizing work was better than sitting at home thinking about her husband.
She shook her head and blinked. A glance at her watch told her it was dinner time. Could it be Kevin? Her heart pounded. Even though she knew she’d been in the right, she didn’t want this hanging between them. She needed to find some way back to where they had been.
She should have talked to him. Several times during the morning, she’d been tempted to call, but she’d forced herself to stop. He would have to make the first move. He was the one in the wrong. Maybe he was here now to do that.
When she entered the lobby, instead of Kevin, Adam waited for her. Jill stiffened. His expression was somber. “Is there someplace we can speak privately?”
“Outside’s about as private as it’s going to get,” Jill told him. “I’m on duty.”
Adam nodded and stood aside for her to precede him. She walked to a bench at the end of the portico, conscious of Adam’s catlike steps behind her. Rather than sit, she stood with her hands jammed in her pockets, fighting the urge to touch him and beg him to tell her that Kevin was okay, that he was too.
“Why are you here, detective?”
She didn’t miss the flash of annoyance in his dark gaze. “Don’t try to distance me. Things have gone much too far for that.”
“Maybe I need distance from the man who’s been fucking my husband.” She pressed her lips together. Yelling at him wouldn’t solve anything, but she was frightened of what had happened between the two of them, frightened that she’d lose control.
His mouth thinned and he scowled, his eyes staring off into the distance for a while before he brought his gaze back to her. There was such sadness there for an instant before he masked it that Jill nearly took a step forward to comfort him as she often comforted the families of patients.
“If you would just listen to him, Jill,” he said quietly and quickly as though he feared she would cut him off or walk away. “He loves you. Everything he did was out of love for you, yes, even his fear of having you hook up with a stranger. It was so obvious to me—”
“Because you were already sucking his dick?” They had lied to her. She needed to hang on to her anger because she wasn’t nearly ready to explore her feelings from that night. So she struck out, wanting to hurt him as he’d hurt her.
The annoyance she’d noticed earlier morphed into anger. Now Jill was ready to take a step back.
“You know, if that’s what you truly believe, then you don’t have a clue who Kevin Ramsey is.”
“And you do?”
His lips pressed in a thin line, but this time Jill read pain rather than anger. “If he’d even hinted over the last month…but he never did. Even when I offered to do this threesome, his concern—his sole focus—was you. Everything was for you. He was afraid he might not be able to perform with me there, but he wanted to try it for you.”
“It didn’t appear either of you suffered any extreme torture.” Jill’s throat ached. She needed to know what Kevin thought. “Did he ask you to talk to me?”
Adam’s eyes widened. “Hell no. He’d deck me if he knew I was here, but he’s hurting, Jill—”
“He hurt me!” she was goaded into snapping. “You both did. You set out to deceive me. And then last night, when it was just you and me. Couldn’t you have told me, hinted? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be taken advantage of?”
Adam’s jaw hardened and now his expression filled with contempt. “As a matter of fact, I do. Sure, I volunteered for it, but the two of you using me was what Saturday night was all about. I was just the extra dick to fulfill your fantasy.”
And with that, he started to walk away, leaving her gaping after him. That wasn’t it at all. And when they’d made love later—and yes, that’s what it had been—she had felt so connected, exactly how she always felt with Kevin. She had to say something. “Adam! Wait.”
He stopped, his back still to her, and said nothing. Jill swallowed, trying to get something past the lump in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she whispered at last. His words had hit entirely too close to home. She had thought of whoever they found for the third in their threesome as simply a spare dick. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He looked over his shoulder. “Neither did we.” And then he did walk away.
His parting words kept going through her mind during the rest of her shift. Had she ever considered Adam’s emotions? Adam’s or Kevin’s? If she were fair, she would have to admit the one issue Kevin had balked about to begin with was making arrangements to do a threesome with a stranger, but Jill had pushed it and pushed it, saying she couldn’t possibly have sex with anyone they already knew. The truth was there’d been no one they already knew who she found attractive enough.
Would she have thought differently had she already met her husband’s partner? He was obviously concerned about Kevin. She sucked in a deep breath. And he’d been an amazing lover. She had felt almost as instantly connected to him as she did to Kevin.
Fuck.
Jill gathered her purse and her keys and drove home. She needed to think. She curled up on the couch in the family room with a cup of tea and a sandwich, flipping through the channels until she found the late local news.
“The discovery of a body early Sunday morning brings a ten-year-old missing person case to a close.”
Jill looked up from the magazine she’d started flipping through to see video of Adam and Kevin talking with an older man off to one side while investigators worked around an overgrown area cordoned off with yellow crime tape.
“Authorities have confirmed the body is that of Heather Stevens, now twenty-eight, who disappeared on her way home from her part-time job ten years ago. Investigators have not released the cause of death, saying it is part of their ongoing investigation.”
Suddenly Kevin was there, close-up on the TV screen. He looked pale and tired, his eyes red-rimmed. “Our investigation into the Stevens case continues,” he said. “While the outcome is not what anyone would have wanted, we have been able to bring some closure to her family.”
The newscaster came back on camera, adding Heather Stevens’ body had been found very near where Adelaide Brown disappeared a week earlier, but police weren’t commenting on the possibility the two cases were connected.
Jill stared out the window. Kevin had mentioned Addy Brown, how he was convinced something bad had happened to her, that she wasn’t just a disgruntled teen who’d taken off. From years married to a cop, she knew Adam and Kevin would have been the ones to tell the Stevens family about Heather.
No wonder Kevin had looked so pale. He’d always had a chink in his tough-guy armor for cases involving kids, and then to have to tell a mother and father their child would never be coming home? She wondered where he was. She’d checked their joint account online. Other than a gasoline purchase, there’d been no other charges, not even a cash advance.
Was he with Adam? As soon as the thought occurred to her, another realization did
too. That’s where she wanted him to be. Adam cared about him. She’d much rather he was there than sitting by himself in a motel room somewhere. And didn’t that blow a huge hole in her anger. How could she be angry with them, but want Kevin to be at Adam’s?
* * * * *
“What the fuck do you mean you went to see her?” Kevin exploded, barely restraining himself from putting a fist through Adam’s living room wall, or better yet Adam’s nose.
“Come on, Ramsey! You’re not sleeping, you’re hardly eating and since we left work this afternoon, you’ve been tossing back beer as if you bought stock in Miller.”
“My business,” Kevin snarled. “Not yours.”
Adam snatched the bottle from Kevin’s hand and tossed it in the sink. “You made it my business.”
“Why? Because you’ve had your dick in my ass and I liked it?” Kevin spun away, pulling at his hair with both hands. “I fucking liked it and now my wife won’t even talk to me! I told you she needed time to cool down. Why did you do it, Hell?”
When the silence continued, he turned to look at his partner. Adam had leaned against the counter, arms across his chest and his jaw set as he kept his gaze averted from him.
“Why, Adam?”
“It’s wrong, dude. You and Jill not being together. It’s wrong.”
“Look at me, man.”
“No.”
“Why does it matter to you?” The muscles in his partner’s jaw ticked. “Why, Adam?”
“Because I fucking care about you, all right, asshole? Because I would give almost anything to be where you are, to have a woman such as Jill love me, to have…” his voice trailed off into silence.
“A man such as you love me?” Kevin finished. He closed his eyes. God, what a mess. “You know I still can’t go there without Jill. She has to be part of the equation.”
Adam nodded, his face still averted.
“Will you look at me?”
“I can’t.” His voice was muffled.
Kevin took the two strides needed to bring him in front of Hell and then his gut clenched. His partner’s dark eyes were awash with tears he refused to let fall. Kevin closed his and sighed. “Christ, Adam, don’t. Don’t waste your tears on me.”
“Fuck you.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, his mouth still drawn in a thin line. “I pissed her off.”
Kevin cupped either side of Adam’s head, forcing him to look at him. “It couldn’t be that bad.”
“She told me I had no idea how used she felt. Fuck. I stared right back at her and said yeah…I knew exactly. Damn it, Ramsey. I gave her a fuck you, bitch and she got the message loud and clear. God. I’m so sorry. I told her we didn’t mean to hurt her, but we did.”
Kevin stared at his partner. They had done this to him. It didn’t matter that Adam had volunteered. Kevin realized now his partner had done it because he cared—for both of them—and they had used him. He leaned his forehead into Adam’s. “We’re the ones who should apologize to you.”
Hell jerked away. “You don’t get it. You gave me what I didn’t have the guts to go after on my own. Shit. I’m done with this.”
Before he realized what was going on, Adam had left the apartment. Kevin started to go after him and stopped. He’d never seen his partner—calm, cold-as-ice Hell—so torn out of his frame. Maybe they both needed a chance to decompress.
* * * * *
Adam parked his car in front of the house and simply stared. He’d already tried talking to her at the hospital and that hadn’t gone well. What the hell was he doing? Why couldn’t he simply leave it alone?
But he knew the answer to that. If he wanted to be entirely honest with himself, he’d known the answer since the first time he saw Kevin and Jill together. He wanted to be a part of that, but he just wasn’t sure there was room for him, room to make their couple a trio.
One thing was for sure. They couldn’t continue this way. He couldn’t and Kevin and Jill definitely couldn’t. Adam took a deep breath, realizing that if there was no other way, he would bow out and simply let them find their way back to being a couple. Right now, though, he had to give talking to Jill one more try.
Adam unfastened his seatbelt and opened the door.
The doorbell startled her. Jill was curled up on the couch in the family room flipping through a magazine, but her mind had been anywhere but on its contents. She jumped to her feet, for one second thinking it might be Kevin until common sense told her he would simply have used his key. She looked through the peephole and found herself staring into Adam’s distorted features.
Jill unbolted the door and pulled it open.
“May I come in?” His voice was husky, subdued. She nodded and backed up, opening the door wider to admit him. He looked uneasy, or maybe it was simply uncertain, his gaze skittering around the hallway, pausing on her and skittering away again. “Nice place.”
“Come into the kitchen. Would you like some coffee or something?” Jill felt awkward too. They were so much more than strangers, yet he had never been inside their home.
“That would be nice.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. He dug his hands in his pockets. “No, never mind. I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”
Jill didn’t respond until she’d reached the kitchen. “It’s no problem.”
“Maybe I should just get to the point.”
She raised her chin. “I thought we’d pretty much covered everything earlier. I mean, you made yourself pretty clear.”
“I was out of line.”
Jill couldn’t hold his gaze. She glanced at her bare feet and blew out a harsh breath. “No. You weren’t. You were right. Kevin and I used you. It was wrong.”
Silence stretched. Finally, when she wasn’t sure she could stand it anymore, she heard him murmur, “It didn’t feel wrong.”
She whipped her gaze back up to search his expression.
“For the most part it felt really, really right.” His dark eyes met hers, his gaze intense.
“What about how used you felt?” She had to ask because his words had haunted her. She was surprised when a faint flush stained his cheeks.
“I was guilty too. We all were. And I want you to know…I’m sorry.”
“Sorry it happened?”
He raked a hand back through his hair and stared at the far wall. “Not if we can find a way to all be okay with this. I would be sorry it happened if it messed up things for you and Kevin.”
Her throat tightened. “What about Kevin and you?”
He blew out his breath. “Jill, other than being friends, there was no Kevin and me. I need you to believe that.”
“I think I know that. At least, I know there wasn’t. What about now?”
Adam sighed. “I won’t lie. I want there to be, but I want you in on that too.”
And there it was, out there in the open. Her belly clenched with desire at his words and she realized that the idea, one that might have once shocked her, no longer did. This was different than imagining a night of sex, pure and simple. What Adam was talking about was a three-way relationship. She took a deep breath and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “What does Kevin want?”
“A chance to talk.” Adam stepped closer, put his hands on her shoulders and slowly pulled her to him. “Please forgive me. Give us both a chance.”
It was so tempting just to lean into him and let everything else fade away, but the idea he seemed to be proposing was so outside her normal frame of reference, uncertainty churned inside her. To have two men in her life? Could she really deal with that?
“I need some time, Adam. Can you both give me that?”
He released her. He didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “Whatever you need. I just don’t want anger to be the only common ground we find.”
* * * * *
Kevin wandered into the living room and sat, clicking the wall-mounted flat screen on and tuning in a baseball game. The season was winding down. The playoffs would come soon. But tonight
it just didn’t matter. Kevin watched it mindlessly, his thoughts scattering all over the place from his need to talk to Jill, wondering where Adam had gone and finally to the haunting similarities between Heather Stevens’ room and the room he remembered Jill had when she was that age. He hoped like hell they got something useful from the photos.
When eleven o’clock came and went, Kevin got ready for bed, stripping before he slid between the sheets. He’d always slept buck naked, something that had made Jill blush when they first got married until she too had figured out how much more comfortable it was. He tossed and turned, heard Adam come in around midnight and tossed and turned some more. He wasn’t used to sleeping in an empty bed without Jill next to him.
Around one, Kevin went in search of something to help him sleep. He thought he’d seen something in the kitchen next to a value-size ibuprofen bottle. From the light above the stove, he sorted through the bottles, at last coming across an over-the-counter sleep aid. That would do. He’d shaken out two tablets when a noise made him look over his shoulder.
Adam leaned against the doorjamb, his boxers hanging low on his hips. Kevin set the bottle down, pills in hand, conscious he stood in the middle of his partner’s kitchen without any clothes on. Also conscious this was the same place Adam had first gotten on his knees and taken him in his mouth.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Kevin muttered, feeling as though he had to say something.
“Neither could I.” Adam straightened and stalked toward him. For an instant, Kevin had the nervous urge to run, somehow knowing his life was about to change for good. Adam stopped before him, holding his gaze. “I can’t do this anymore, Kevin.”
“Can’t do what?”
“Can’t keep hiding, pretending. I have to get it out on the table, because if this,” he gestured between them, “and Jill is a nonstarter for you. I need to know now.”
“Why, Adam?”
“Because I want more than one night with you and with her.”