He stress cooks, and steals my computer and bitches when I refuse to let him run to his house. Smith whines and paces and acts like a little bastard, getting under foot, until Gabe finally throws himself on the couch and then the traitor crawls up on him and settles to his absent-minded caress.
“Do you know what happened?” Gabe asks, around three. By now, we’ve been together for almost four hours by the edict of my brother and we’re no longer antsy and snapping at each other. We’re just…waiting.
For what, I don’t think either of us knows.
“No,” I say, remembering that hesitation in Archer before he said triple homicide.
The one that is keeping me glued to my couch and not snatching my computer up to dig up all the fucking information I can, to find out what the hell could possibly be motivating it.
It keeps me glued here because I need Archer to know that I’d never betray his trust.
That’s what makes us work, what makes us special. That we trust each other.
Even after everything.
So I shove it all down and I propose a movie marathon and Gabriel jumps on that, making us messy buttery popcorn sprinkled with M&M’s while I find the cheesiest horror flick I can think of on Netflix, and queue it up for us.
We’re on the third movie, and Gabriel has broken into my whiskey stash when I hear the Roadrunner rumble up. The damn thing could wake the fucking dead. It jars both of us up on the couch, and Gabe’s glassy eyes clear as he stares speculatively at the door.
When I try to stand though, he jerks me back, holding me on the couch. “Gabe!” I snap, and he side eyes me, all golden sharp gaze.
“Just wait,” he says, soft and serious.
So I do and then Archer and Eli stumble in. Because of course they both have keys to my house.
And I swallow a scream.
Because they are both fucking covered in blood.
“Holy shit,” Gabriel breathes, and I choke back the inappropriate laugh.
Eli is swaying, so unsteady on his feet that for a second, I think he might be drunk.
He’s not though. He’s just so far past the point of dealing, he’s almost asleep, dead on his fucking feet. Archer though. Archer is all furious energy, exhaustion etched in long lines on his face, but he’s not falling asleep walking—he’s furious energy and crashing relief.
He steps forward, and jerks me off the couch and into his arms, a sigh of relief slipping free.
“Dude,” Eli slurs. “Get off Hazel. Your fucking filthy.”
He makes a noise that reminds me, vaguely, of a growl and my arms—when the fuck did I wrap my arms around him—tighten a little, holding him tight when he’d pull away.
I’m not ready to give up his warmth.
Even if he is disgusting right now. He stays where he is, a warm blanket of home.
“Someone gonna clue us in on why the hell you’re covered in blood?” Gabriel asks, his voice almost a grin. “Gotta say, boys, you look like you’ve been through a slaughterhouse.”
Archer flinches, a full body thing in my arms and I twist to glare at Gabriel as Eli starts to cackle hysterically. “Dude,” Archer says, grumpy and Eli shakes a hand, helplessly, still laughing as he stumbles out of the room. I pull away from Archer and he shakes his head. “Leave him, Hazel. Let him take a shower and get his shit together.”
I hate it. But I do what he says, and focus on Archer. “You should shower, too. Grab some of Eli’s shit, and go to my bathroom.”
Archer hesitates for a half a heartbeat, and then he nods and stumbles a few steps away, mumbling, “Thanks, Hazy Eyes.”
When we’re alone, I stare at Gabe, and he looks terrified. I’m not used to seeing Gabe so scared. “Make dinner. Sandwiches, maybe some tomato soup—Mama sent some home, it’s in the freezer.”
Gabe jerks a little, and nods, his fear fading. Because he has something to do—and he always functions better when he has something to do.
While he bustles around the kitchen, I retreat to my bedroom and change quickly, out of the now bloody tank top and yoga pants.
Archer really was filthy.
The door to my bathroom opens while I’m gathering up his dirty clothes, discarded haphazardly on the ground of my bedroom, and mine.
And I know I should retreat. I should get the hell out of here, because we’re both too raw today, too on edge from the day.
But I look at him. A tiny stolen glance.
And freeze.
He’s wearing a pair of Eli’s oversized sweat pants, hanging low and precarious on his hips, and water is dripping down his chest.
Broad and tattooed and god, I forgot.
I forgot how gorgeous he is.
His hair is wet, and his lips are bright red, like he’s been biting them, and his eyes—oh god, his eyes. He stares at me, so hard and bright and intent that my entire body trembles, because he looked at me like that, when he fucked me.
That one time, a thousand nights ago.
“Hazel,” he growls, and I stumble back a step. I can’t face him right now, not with Gabe and Eli down the hall. So I retreat, and the second I do, he goes still, shock flickering through his eyes.
“Gabe is making dinner,” I babble, and then I almost fall out of my bedroom, and slam the door shut behind me.
Dinner is a silent affair, while Archer watches me sidelong. Eli is almost asleep at the table, and part of me wants to know what the hell happened because, hello, journalist. The other part of me—the part that is all sister—wants to know what the actual fuck could knock my strong, unshakable brother on his ass like this.
But I don’t ask. I pick at my grilled cheese and stir my soup and trade glances with Gabe nervously until the food is gone and the silence is stretching too tight and tense and—
“I think that’s my cue. I’m going home.”
Gabe’s brisk announcement jerks Eli out of his doze and brings his head up, his hazel eyes wide and startled. “What? Why?”
“Because, Lijah, it’s almost midnight, and as lovely as being with Hazel is, I have a home and a life and, you know, a job.”
“Gabe,” Archer says, his voice a low warning.
“Archer,” Gabe mocks, his eyes laughing. “I understand you’re worried. I get that you want your little girl protected. But now it’s time for me to go home. You’re here. You keep her safe.”
“I’ll drive you,” Eli says standing. Archer flicks a glance at Eli but he doesn’t argue and if Gabe wants to protest, he’s keeping it to himself.
Something is playing out between these two and we are content to let it happen.
“Take the Roadrunner,” Archer says and Eli catches the keys that he throws over, before the door shut behind them both. Leaving us in silence and tension. I get up too quickly and almost run from the room carrying dirty dishes to the kitchen. Maybe Archer is too tired to chase me or maybe he knows I'll come back. Either way, he stays seated while I busy myself cleaning up Gabriel's mess.
When there's nothing left to do I finally sit across from him and slide a beer across the table, into his waiting hands. “Want to talk about it?” I ask and he shakes his head. I nod. “Okay. Come sit in the living room with me.”
It's stupid and dangerous and asking for trouble.
But it's also easy, effortless and so wonderfully relaxing after a long day of tension and worry and wondering where the hell he was and what the hell was happening. I'm with my Archer. My best friend.
He sits too close on the couch and I let myself lean against his warm. And for now, as his arm comes up around me, holding me to him as he falls apart, his big body shaking.
Not crying. Archer doesn't cry.
But shaking.
Like everything that happened, that he saw today, has finally hit him and he can't handle it anymore.
Here's the thing about Brandon Archer. He's the strongest man I've ever known.
Even when he was falling apart, ripped up by grief from losing his father. When he sa
w that other people needed him, all of that grief was shoved aside and forgotten. And all he cared about was the people around him.
As long as someone needs him to be strong, Archer won't allow himself to be anything but.
And maybe that's what makes us work.
Because he never felt the need to be strong around me. He meets me with as much honesty as I meet him. And if I see him falling apart, if I see him weak and shaking and broken. Well.
That's just another one of the secrets that I carry.
I don't know how long we sit there. But eventually his shaking calms, and his lips whisper against the top of my hair.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says.
“Don't apologize to me,” I order fiercely, and he laughs. It's weak and it dies almost as soon as it forms. But it's still there and that settles some of my nerves.
I lean up to look at him, not terribly surprised to find his bright green eyes watching me. Studying. Different now from the way he looked at me when we were growing up.
Now when he's not careful. When he's tired in moments like this, I can see what he doesn't want me to see. Lazy hunger, banked heat. It's the way he looks at someone he wants. It's the way he's been looking at me for years.
“What are we doing, Hazel?” he whispers. I give a miniscule shrug, something he feels more than you can actually see, lick my lips and he groans watching me.
His eyes go lazy and half-lidded, watching. His thumb curves up over my chin, brushing, whisper soft, against my lips, and I feel his body jerk, a startled motion he tries to hide, when the tip of my tongue swipes over the pad of his thumb.
Then I catch his finger with my teeth, bite down just enough to make his breath catch, and his hands are suddenly hard. Demanding. Gripping my hair and yanking me across the tiny space and pulling me to his lips.
I make a tiny noise, a tiny protest or sigh and he shifts, pulling me from where I’m curled against him so that I’m straddling his lap, and my hands are braced against his shoulders as his tongue slips, sugar sweet, past my lips, licking deep and hungry, like I am the last meal of a dying man.
He kisses me like he will die without me, and like I am precious, and I feel it.
Even without his hand stroking over me—they stay, still and chaste, in my hair and at my hip—even without his cock rubbing against me.
I feel more. I feel wanted. Like, here. This. Is all he’s ever wanted, all either of us ever wanted, and I wonder why the hell I ever forgot that. His teeth nip at my lip, catching the low pout and tugging, this perfect blend of pain and pleasure that has me keening and arching against him and Archer groans against me.
The sound of the Roadrunner makes me jerk away from Archer, almost falling on the floor in my haste to get out of his lap. He curses and struggles to his feet, retreating to the bathroom before Eli comes inside. My brother finds me sitting on the couch alone and a little flushed.
If Eli notices, he doesn't say. Just looks at the beer sitting on the table and says, “Do you have anything stronger?”
We drink our way through two bottles of vodka, half-empty before we got our hands on them. Eli falls asleep quickly, while Archer and I keep drinking and slowly he tells me a little about what happened today.
“But that kind of thing doesn't happen here,” I protest.
He nods, “I know, Hazy Eyes.”
“This is why I moved home,” I say, “to get away from shit like this.” His eyebrow goes up.
It’s the first time I talked about home and about Boston. Which means I'm either too tired or too drunk to remember that I'm not supposed to be talking about Boston.
Archer isn't telling me everything and I'm not telling him everything. And I kind of hate it.
“Hey, Hazel,” he says. I look at him and he's watching me with that careful stare that has all of the emotions locked away. Blank. I hate that look. “You know this can't happen right?”
“I think it is happening right now,” I say, not bothering to pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about.
“Nora would kill me and Eli would let her do it.”
“Nora doesn't get to decide how I live my life. And she doesn't get to decide who makes me happy.”
The words linger on the table in silence and I wonder what he'll do with them.
“I make you happy?” he asks at last, and I shrug because, of course he does.
How does he not know that? How does he not know that everything I've done has been because of him?
I give him this sad smile and stand up. “I'm going to go to bed,” I say to myself. “I've had too much to drink and this-” I wave my hand between us vaguely, “this isn't something I want to do drunk.”
He watches me walk away. But his voice is soft and soothing caress when he calls, “Sweet dreams, baby.”
The boys are gone when I wake up, which I expect.
For a while I wander through the house, feeling a little discontent and then lost. Smith follows me, whining, and I grab his leash. Maybe fresh air will help clear my head.
Maybe it won't but it won't hurt.
And I need to get out of the house, even if it's just for a few minutes. Archer didn't leave orders for me to stay inside the house today. So I shove my feet into floppy shoes, and my dog and I step out into the country.
What I forgot that I loved about Kansas when I lived in Boston is the wide open spaces. County Line is farmland on the outskirts of the county, outside of Green County proper. It's all wheat fields waving and corn stalks wrestling in the soft breeze.
Right now the fields are still soft and quiet, but in a few months will be alive with the crops of the heartland and the air will be ripe with the scent of life. I wandered down the road, Smith prancing along at my side.
He doesn't like his leash but he knows that until we reach the grove of trees that leads to the river he has to stay on it.
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 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 John sitting bloody in my kitchen.
“Come inside, Hazel,” Michael says, a bloody smile playing across his lips.
John 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.”
Chapter 14
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.”
1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Twelve Page 40