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.”
There’s a car missing.”
I blink up at Eli but he’s staring at the photos and his shoulders are rising, tight and stiff under his button down.
“What car? The old lady’s was in the shop, Crystal’s is in the driveway. All accounted for.”
“Beth. Look.”
Eli slides the photo he’s staring at across the small desk and I glance at it.
Beth Griffin’s purse is emptied out and cataloged here, for later use and I frown at it. We’ve been looking at photos and crime scene analysis for hours. Everything is blurring together. “The hell am I looking at, Eli?” I demand and he huffs a quick sigh.
Leans over and taps.
There is, on the bottom, a small key fob with two plain key on the ring, attached to the keyless entry for a Jeep.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
“We need to interview Beth’s parents,” Eli says. And I nod. Because yeah.
Shit.
“How the fuck did we miss this?”
“We didn’t look at her. Not the way we looked at Crystal. Wrong place, wrong time. Why the hell would we look at her?” Eli says, his voice laced with as much as disgust as I’m feeling.
It’s a stupid, careless mistake. I just hope it won’t cost us.
I glance at phone while I shrug into my suit coat and Eli gathers his shit. He catches my frown and pauses. “What’s wrong?”
“Hazel. I text her to check in and I haven’t heard back. Just a little worried.”
Eli frowns and grabs his phone. “I’ll call Gabe,” he says, already moving and even though I know there’s nothing to worry about, some of my worry unravels.
I know she can take care of herself. I do. I know that she’ll be furious that Gabriel is hovering, and that even if he would lie to her, she would see through it. She would see the truth behind it, see me.
She’s gonna be pissed.
A smirk tugs at my lips, despite everything.
Beth Griffin lived in a small house on the edge of Green County, with a neatly trimmed yard and shady trees and a silver, fourdoor sedan in the front yard.
There’s a sticker on the back, stick figures of a family, and I stare at it for a long moment, while Eli unfolds himself from the Roadrunner.
Because the stick figure family will be missing someone now.
“I hate this,” I mutter to no one, and join Eli on the front porch.
He looks vaguely ill as we knock and I nudge his arm, just a little. Get it together, Eli. He nods, and take a deep breath as the door opens slowly.
The girl is young. Maybe middle school, and her eyes are bloodshot and red.
“Cops,” she says, dully. “More cops.” She pulls the door the rest of way open and gestures weakly at the living room. It’s dark and crowded, with four women sitting in various states of closeness and contact with a blond with dirty hair and a curl of stooped shoulders and hands tight fists of desperation as they cling to the toddler in her lap.
She stares at us, Beth Griffin’s mother, her eyes blank and unseeing.
It’s always awkward as hell, intruding on the grief that is too raw, intruding on the scant comfort that family can offer.
I hate this. I fucking hate all of it.
“Mrs. Griffin?” Eli asks, softly. She makes a low noise in her throat, and curls into the baby more, away from us.
“What can I do for you?”
It’s a red-haired woman, her eyes sharp and assessing. She’s just now entering the room, and puts a cup of coffee down in front of Christie Griffin before scooping the toddler off her lap as well. Tucks the child onto her hip and directs her attention to the girls still sitting around the room. “Go. The kitchen needs cleanin’ and there’s still the matter of pickin’ Bethie’s dress. Grace, you do that, please. I’ll be up in a few minutes to see how things are going.”
“We don’t have to listen to you, Chasity,” one of them snipes. One, Grace probably, gives the room a wide-eyed stare before darting from the room. Chasity slowly turns to the one who snapped at her.
“I’m sorry, Patience. Have you been takin’ care of Christian? Have you been makin’ sure the girls are still upright and the baby has been fed and that the funeral is put together? Because I’d love to let someone else do somethin’ other than sit in this damn room and hold each other’s hands. Right now, Christian needs to talk to these nice cops and you need to go do the damn dishes.”
They glare at each other for a long minute before Patience jerks up, snarling under her breath and stalks into the kitchen. The remaining two sisters trail her, and then it’s just us. Two cops and a still, unseeing mother, and a woman holding a baby and, by all appearances, the household together.
“Sorry about that. My sisters tend to congregate where the most drama is. And they like pretty cops.” She flashes a smile with no real interest behind it and sits down next to Christian Griffin. Adjusts the baby and produces a handful of Cheerios.
“So, what do you want to know about Bethie?”
Once.
There was a little girl.
That’s where the story starts. Really. With a little girl. Because everything that came before was forgotten when she arrived. And everything that came after revolved around her.
She was pretty. Long red hair that curled and waved. Crystal clear blue eyes, and a smile, shy but shining.
She was an angel.
And her brothers, twins, older by eight months, adored her. She was frail, sick, even from the first time they brought her home. But they doted on her.
They were happy, even.
The little girl and her brothers grew up in a big city, but they grew up happy, in a high rise apartment where she could watch the sunrise and the moon glitter across the sky, where her brothers could sneak into her bedroom when she cried in the still silence of the night.
Their mother was ambitious and distant.
Their father was long dead and when it came down to it,
they were alone more than they weren’t.
Which was fine. The twins preferred to be alone to care for each other, and more importantly—their sister.
She was twelve when their mother’s job changed. They moved from their penthouse apartment close to the stars to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.
The girl hated it there. She hid from her mother brothers, hid in her room wrapped in blankets and stories, wrapped in paintings and pillows. And when the twins tried to come close to her, they found the way locked.
The little girl was slipping away from her brothers.
And that terrified them.
It was a month after they moved that the twins made their move.
Because the little girl loved the stars, and they could give her that.
The older twin wrapped her up in blankets and carried her through the dark house, out across the wide field to a decrepit barn. The other brother was there, with blankets and pillows and a jug of weak hot chocolate that he made with the very last of the powder.
There was a hole in the roof of the barn, and they positioned their sister there, with hot chocolate in her hand, and braced on either side of her, and then they gave her the stars.
All of the wide Kansas sky, sprawled out like a black velvet and shining diamonds.
They gave her the universe, a gift rolled out at her feet, and even though she hated the new town, and how isolated they were—she was happy.
It didn’t last.
She was prone to fits of anger and depression, and as the years slipped by and the girl grew up, she grew prettier and quieter, and it became harder to pull her from her moods.
The twins grew up as well. Angry and cold, and concerned only with each other and their sister.
Their mother was deeper than ever in her work, and some of it spilled into their home.
The first one to touch it, was the girl.
It was one of the nights where even the stars couldn’t sooth the panic clawing at her, even her brother’s soft presences in her barn couldn’t ease the roiling emotions. The twins were drunk, and it was easy. Too easy. To slip out of the barn and into the house, to find a small pill in stash their mother kept, and pop it. And let the chemicals take it away. Sooth the pain and anxiety and everything until there was only numbness.
The brothers were furious. And more than furious, they were terrified.
The oldest confronted their mother, about the drugs and the job that never seemed legit, that flirted with danger and the way the cops side-eyed them, and the girl’s depression.
She’s slipping, he argued.
Then hold her up, the mother ordered, and gave him a supply of drugs to keep her steady.
The twins hated their mother. As much as they adored and doted on their sister, they hated their mother. Hated her callous disregard and the distance in her that left her children alone, with only each other to lean on.
They hated her for letting the girl fight her demons alone, and for giving them the drugs that would numb that fight, and leave her addicted.
But as much as they hated their mother, and the drugs. They would never hate anyone quite as much as they hated each other, for giving those drugs to their sister.
Things changed, after that. After she started medicating. It didn’t happen often. First, it was only once a month or so.
Then it was every month.
Twice a month.
Weekly.
Until it was nightly. A routine, that left her numb and staring, into the sky and the stars and smiling, soft.
She was the one who took the next step, too.
The one who pushed then, gently, over the line that none had ever thought to cross.
It was when she was high, and sweet. The twins could never resist her when she was like that. When she was dreamy-eyed and pliant and whispering the myths of the constellations, and the sister they loved more than life.
One of them leaned over her, in the barn. Reaching for a beer. Or a pillow. God only knows what.
He froze when she arched under him, her lips brushing, feather light against his skin, catching salty sweat and the drag of stubble.
It was easy.
To fall into each other, the way they always had found themselves in each other.
Another change. But not the last one.
There was a three-month window, when their mother disappeared. She didn’t leave enough product for the girl, and the brothers had to get inventive.
The oldest sold what they had, everything she didn’t take. And then he went to see a man.
Morningstar.
And that—that was the change that mattered the most.
Nothing was ever the same after the girl and her brothers met Morningstar and became his tools.
It becomes apparent, that Christian Griffin is not going to be any help when it comes to telling us about her daughter. She’s not completely catatonic, but it’s a damn close thing, and she sits there, placid and quiet as Chasity quiets the baby and looks at us.
“Everything,” Eli says. “How long was she friends with Crystal?”
“Most of high school. Crystal was one of the only girls who didn’t disappear when Bethie got pregnant.”
That makes me and Eli still, and Chasity smiles, a small thin thing. “Yeah, Maryse is Beth’s little girl. We’ll have a helluva time explaining all of this later in life.”
“Who’s the father?”
Chasity makes a vague dismissive motion with her hand. “She’s ours. The daddy signed away his rights to her when she was two days old. Maryse was Bethie’s and she was doin’ her damnedest to make somethin’ of herself to give her baby a good life. She went to Crystal’s because they hadn’t seen each other, really, in weeks. She hadn’t had a night out since the school year started. So I told her, me and Christie would watch the baby, and she should go hang out with her friend. They were gonna study some. Watch a movie. Bethie just needed a night to be a kid, before she went back to be a mama.”
Her lips press tight and her grip on the baby tightens until Maryse makes a low whimper and her aunt loosens her grip.
“What do you think happened?” she asks, and I blink at her.
“We don’t know. Not why, anyway. Was Beth or Crystal involved in anything illegal, do you know?”
“No sir. Both those girls walked the straight and narrow pretty good. Bethie smoked a little pot, drank some, back in high school before Maryse came along. And Crystal—well, all she wanted was to get out of the County. She was goin’ to school and damned set on making her way into Topeka or farther away. She wouldn’t have fucked that up with a little partyin’.”
I glance at Eli and see my frustration mirrored in his eyes.
“Do you know if Beth drove to Crystal’s house?” he asks and Chasity’s eyes narrow. “Of course she did.”
“We need the make and model of the Jeep, and the tag number, if you know it,” I say, and Chasity frowns, but writes it down.
Black. Jeep Wrangler with a hardtop. The first four digits of her license plate.
It’s a tiny lead. Barely a lead. But it’s all we’ve got.
“You need to talk to Crystal’s boyfriend,” Chasity says, and it jerks both of our attention to her, hard. She smiles, but it’s not warm.
This woman doesn’t know how to show warmth, not to anyone but the baby in her arms and her sister sitting, sobbing softly now, at her side.
“Bethie hated him. Partly why she and Crystal drifted apart so much. He was all around bad news. He was working with Morningstar,” she adds, “Or that’s the rumor I heard.”
Eli’s head jerks up at that, and his eyes are wide and angry. “Morningstar?”
Chasity doesn’t seem phased at all that my brother is looking at her like he wants to rip her apart. She just smiles and nods a little.
“Who is Morningstar?” I ask, my voice low.
Chasity laughs, a little brittle and a lot angry.
“Archer,” Eli snaps. “We’re leaving.
”
I resist his sharp tug on my arm and glare at her, “Who the fuck is Morningstar?”
“Figure that out, detective, and you’ll know who the hell killed my niece.”
Eli says something, and I can’t hear it over the roar in my head because Eli is hiding things from me. Again.
I’m reminded, suddenly, that we’re supposed to be investigating prostitutes and that Eli had a…something, an in….that I didn’t. I twist a little and pin my brother with a heavy glare but he ignores it and thanks Chasity before he leaves. Doesn’t even speak to me or acknowledge the fury I’m radiating.
Chasity gives me a sympathetic look before she walks me to the door. Because this is Green County, after all. And Eli’s temper is a thing that everyone knows, here.
Even a girl like Chasity, wrapped up in her grief and family.
“Thank you for talking to us,” I say, finally and she nods.
“Get the bastard who killed my niece, Detective, and keep your thanks.”
With that parting order, she shuts the door on me, shutting the family up with their deep grief and I turn to look at my brother, scowling and pacing next to the Roadrunner as he talks into his phone.
I take my time descending the stairs to flank him.
But when he hangs up and moves to slide into the car, I make a furious noise that stills him.
“We don’t have time for this,” he says sharply.
“We’re gonna make time,” I snap.
Eli snarls, a wordless noise of fury and I grab him by the collar, toss him against the Roadrunner. “Who the fuck is he?”
Eli shakes his head. Shrugs. “I don’t know, Archer. If I did, I’d tell you. But. Scarlett talked about him, sometimes. Not a lot. I got the feeling he’s a big player. But not the big player.”
Scarlett. It always circles back to that fucking whore. I want to reach into our past and rip her out like a tumor.
It’s not a bad description of the bitch.
And I’m too tired to deal with this shit, with Scarlett and the fall out that just keeps coming, right now. So I let my brother go and circle the car, climbing in.
Change the subject completely, “Have you heard from Gabe?”
Eli checks his phone and shakes his head. “She’s probably just writing, Archer. She’s fine.”
Dirty Sexy Secret (Green County Book 1) Page 10