She was getting too damn close. If he wanted to finish this, he needed to take her out, and then move on to the next one. The FBI wouldn’t catch him.
No, they weren’t going to put it together. He now realized that she would.
Sheriff Bishop Killion would work it out. She was already way too close to the truth.
He couldn’t let that happen—not until all seven were done.
So, that meant she had to die.
Just like her daddy had two years ago.
* * * O R A C L E * * *
Graymoor
Friday Night
Dusk
When she got there, she wanted to be sick. The drive there had been killer. That sick feeling in her gut was making her a nervous wreck. The only thing that kept her from freaking out, when she arrived, was that the gate code was still the same, so she was able to breathe.
If he was leaving her, it would have been changed.
Right?
Bishop began rationalizing everything to calm herself. It was the only way she was able to keep moving. Her heart was beating erratically, and for the first time in a long time, she was scared.
It was like that day she’d buzzed him at the gate and he told her he’d see her in hell first.
That fear was coming back, and she didn’t like it.
Bishop focused on that morning, and what they’d shared. There had to be a huge mistake.
Nate had to be wrong.
Lucian wouldn’t hurt her. She trusted him.
When she got to the door, it was open. Inside, there were bags being brought downstairs.
Suitcases.
On top of one was a letter in a fancy envelope, addressed to her.
She grabbed it and glanced around. Before she could read it, Bishop knew she had to find him. She had to give him the opportunity to explain.
If he had to leave, she’d go with him. She’d leave everything behind to be with Lucian. All he had to do was say the word. Bishop would hand the case over to the FBI and follow him.
When she saw Maura heading her way, she needed to know.
“Where is he?”
“He’s in his room. I’m sorry, Bishop.”
She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want her sympathy because there was no reason for it. Lucian wouldn’t do this.
He couldn’t.
She tucked the letter into her back pocket, saving it until later. She needed to see him face to face. For Lucian to leave, something had to have happened.
If he would just tell her, she could protect him, keep him safe, and love him until the end of her life. She raced up the staircase, heading toward his room.
At his door, she stopped dead in her tracks.
He was putting on his hoodie.
“Lucian?”
His whole body tensed at the sound of her voice. It was clear that he didn’t expect her to show up.
He didn’t think she’d come running. When she’d called him on Wendy’s phone, he knew he needed to leave before morning. That one call had escalated his plans. She would think the worst, and for him, it made it easier. He was going to be a bastard, so let her think he wanted his ex back. Wendy would have painted that picture.
“Hello, Sheriff.”
It stung that he didn’t use her name.
“What’s going on? Where are you going?”
He didn’t reply.
What could he say? That he was leaving and he couldn’t see her ever again? That he was about to break her heart, but it was for her own good?
She’d never believe him.
Bishop was a fighter.
He wasn’t. Fate and his past had beat it out of him.
Here was the proof.
Lucian Monroe was about to walk away from the best thing in his life to save her.
Life sucked.
“Is this about the call to Wendy? We can talk about it. I’m sure you have a very good reason. I’m not angry.”
She tried everything she could to get him to stay. Bishop trusted her gut. This was all off.
Lucian knew he didn’t have any choice. He was going to have to say the words.
They damaged him, and he couldn’t imagine what they were going to do to Bishop.
“I do have a very good reason. I asked her to take me back.”
It was as if he stabbed her in the chest.
“What?”
Did he just say…?
“I love her.”
Saying the words made him sick. Well, he wanted a way to make her hate him, to make her leave, to make her…hurt.
Here it was.
“No.”
She wouldn’t believe it. Something was going on.
“I’m leaving, Sheriff. It’s best I get away from you. This isn’t going to work. It was a mistake.”
He tried to keep his voice calm. It wasn’t easy. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to turn and pull Bishop against his body one last time.
He wanted to kiss her.
Lucian wanted to memorize the way she clung to him. It might chase away the long, cold nights coming.
“I need to leave.”
Yeah, he was running. In a few weeks, when the hate was gone, when she was safe, and Bishop wouldn’t be losing her career, he’d mail that letter he’d written her.
It held the truth.
It held his heart.
For now, she needed to believe he was a bastard. Maybe one day, she’d come back. One day, she’d ring that gate bell, and he’d be saved.
Again.
Finally.
Hurting her was going to be the death of him. It was already the death of the newly budding relationship they were trying to construct from two damaged lives.
“Why are you leaving?” She didn’t believe it was for the reason he said. This wasn’t her Lucian.
Something was very wrong.
“I told you, Sheriff. I’m leaving to get away from you.”
Her heart had never hurt this badly before. Never in all her life had she been so blindsided. He wanted to escape her.
He didn’t want to be near her.
“But last night…this morning…”
He had to force himself to say the words. They were the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. He couldn’t even look at her.
He couldn’t face her.
If he did, he’d crawl on his knees through his own blood to get Bishop to see what he felt inside for her.
Lucian had to save her from herself.
From him.
This was the only way.
“What about it?” he asked, trying to sound disinterested. He prayed she’d not come closer. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t beg her to forgive him.
“We made love.”
“It was sex, Bishop. It was nothing more than sex. Don’t get attached. I didn’t.” That lie was so hard to spit out.
The second she heard it, Bishop wanted to be sick.
Still, she fought for him. She fought to give him a chance to explain.
“It wasn’t just sex, Lucian. I was there. I know what I saw and what we shared.”
“I was horny, I needed to get off, and you were there. It was just pussy, Bishop. Don’t make more of it. Now I think you should go.”
She stared at him.
She wanted to die inside.
Yet, it didn’t make sense.
“I’m the beast, Sheriff. You just aren’t my beauty. Wendy was right. Now leave and never come here again. I don’t want to ever see you again.”
It was the last slash to her heart.
She moved toward him.
“Tell me to my face. If you want me to walk away, have the balls to say it to my face.”
He knew she was going to see the pain, but he had to follow through. When he turned, there were tears in her eyes. There was a large red handprint on her face.
Someone had hit her.
They’d hit his precious Bishop.
Jesus!
What he wouldn’t give to place his lips on
that mark and kiss away the pain.
Still, he couldn’t back down. In his head, he kept hearing Silas’s words. He kept seeing an angry Wendy on the screen. He didn’t want to break her, but he had no choice.
“Go away, Sheriff. I don’t love you.”
There was a quick intake of breath at his words. She couldn’t believe it.
He’d actually said it to her.
Lucian didn’t move.
Neither did she.
It was a standoff.
Finally, she gave up. Bishop had spent two years doing battle for him. There was no way she had more in her. That well of strength had been depleted a long time ago.
Lucian stared at her, praying she’d say that she wasn’t going. If she threw herself on him, he’d crumble. He’d cave and beg to be hers.
She was his beauty.
He knew no one could love him but her. He belonged to Bishop.
He always had.
Finally, she let him win. After waging battle after battle, Bishop threw in the towel. This game of chess was over. The king was on his own.
“If that’s what you want,” she said. Going up on her toes, she took his face in her hands. “It wasn’t just sex to me. I’ll cherish it until the day I die. Thank you for that one moment. I choose to believe in my heart it mattered, even if it didn’t to you. Goodbye, Lucian.”
She left a soft kiss on his lips, and then walked away. When his bedroom door closed softly behind her, Lucian saw his fate sealed.
It was over.
Dropping to his bed, he covered his face. That had been the most horrible thing he’d ever had to do in his life.
He deserved her anger.
She didn’t give it to him.
He deserved her hate.
She wouldn’t dump it on him.
He knew what he’d just lost.
Avalon had been right.
He’d lost the woman he was meant to marry. She’d just walked out the door, and like a fool, he let her.
And he’d never get her back.
Never.
He was damned to live the rest of his miserable existence alone, haunted by what might have been, and it sucked.
Bishop got halfway down the stairs when her cell began ringing. It was dispatch.
There was another body.
She couldn’t deal with Lucian right now. It she did, it would mess her up. She wanted to curl into a ball and weep until she couldn’t weep any more.
Only she didn’t have that luxury. She was a cop, and she had her duty to do.
“Are you okay?” Maura asked.
Avalon was beside her, and even she looked concerned for the woman.
“Yeah, I’m peachy. I have a body. I have to go.”
“Lucian…”
She cut Avalon off.
“He told me to go, so I won’t be back. Tomorrow, you’ll have to find me at my place or my office. I can’t come back here. I’m not wanted near him. I won’t chase him anymore. He’s going back to Wendy, and he’s not my problem anymore.”
There.
She said it.
The words were a bitter pill to swallow, but somehow, she managed to get them out.
Maura’s heart ached for her.
Avalon spoke up, “You can’t leave him. Bishop, you need to fight.”
“I don’t have a choice. I can’t force Lucian to love me. I can’t force him to give me more than he can. I’d rather hurt than hurt him. I’m going to give him what he wanted. I’m leaving.”
They heard her pain.
You’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to see it.
“You can’t go by yourself to the scene.”
“I have a deputy and the team meeting me there. I’ll be fine.”
Maura whistled for Jagger. It didn’t take long before he exited Lucian’s family room.
“Yo?”
He looked just as miserable as Bishop.
Maybe Graymoor was cursed.
“She needs a buddy on a body find. Are you in for a ride along and protection duty?”
Yeah, he was.
Bishop was going to argue, only Jagger cut her off before she could say a single word.
“Let’s roll. I need some air.”
He headed toward the door.
“Are you coming, Sheriff?” he asked.
She stopped at Lucian’s suitcases. Reaching into her back pocket, she pulled out the letter. Bringing it to her lips, she left a kiss on it.
She stared at the lip marks from her lip gloss. She’d remember it for the rest of her life. She’d remember his words. She’d never love anyone else. Lucian Monroe had been her soul mate, and she knew it.
“Goodbye, Lucian. I love you.”
Bishop let the note fall from her fingers as she walked away from Graymoor for the last time.
And from the only man she’d ever love.
Chapter Seventeen
Friday Night
Dark
He waited not far from the bridge.
When the sheriff got there, he was going to make his move. There was only one way to handle this, and he had to make it right. Since the law in Ravenswood didn’t seem to care about punishing those who were guilty, he’d be the voice of the victims.
On that fateful day, when he’d lost love, he knew it was time to take up the charge against what was wrong in society.
He was going to fight for the weak.
He was going to end the tyranny.
It was time.
As soon as she arrived…
She was going to die.
* * * O R A C L E * * *
Neither of them spoke on the way there. Jagger rode shotgun, his sidearm strapped across his chest on top of the FBI gear.
Bishop wasn’t in the mood to be entertaining, since all she could think about was what had just happened.
She’d never seen this coming.
She was an excellent judge of character. It was her gift, as it had been her daddy’s before her.
Still…
Lucian had blindsided her.
When this was over, she was going to take a few days off. Maybe she’d go see her brother, the doctor, and lounge by his pool while he was at work.
Maybe she’d hang out with her other brother, the vet. He could always use some help in the country with all his animals.
Hell!
She could go to the Middle East and bunk down with her youngest brother there too. That might help her forget what the hell had just happened in her life.
Who was she kidding?
She’d never forget.
Lucian was the one who got away.
Make that walked away.
“I think this is it,” she said, breaking the silence.
“Are you going to be okay?” Jagger asked. “You look like you’re ready to cry.”
“Cops don’t cry.”
That was total BS. She wanted to weep. At some point, she wasn’t going to be able to hold them back. Bishop only prayed it didn’t happen while she was working.
The men would never let her live it down.
“That doesn’t answer my question. I work around women, I have a sister, and I’ve seen what happens. Just a yes or no will suffice.”
She shrugged. “Yes. For the record, I have to be okay.” Then she changed the subject or she wouldn’t make it. “Why do you smell like Roxy’s perfume? And you have a hickey on your neck.”
His hand covered it.
Yeah, he was well aware. The sexy brunette had given him one hell of a love bite. Oddly, he wasn’t embarrassed about it. If anything, it made him think about her.
“I had sex with her a couple of times.”
That admission broke the tension and made Bishop laugh. “Oh, Jagger, where do I even begin?” she asked, pulling over.
He didn’t know what she meant, but he was curious. When she got out, so did he.
“I don’t see a body,” Bishop offered, walking onto the one lane bridge. It was old, rickety, a
nd a death trap. “Maybe this was a prank.”
That made Jagger nervous.
His gut was screaming, and he didn’t know why. They were out in the middle of nowhere, over a river that looked like a churning brew from hell, and there wasn’t a body.
Something was up.
“Is it over the side?” he asked.
They headed out onto the bridge. Glancing over the side, that’s when they saw him.
There was their victim, swinging. He was hanging from a noose as he dangled precariously over the water.
This was going to suck.
“I’ll have to call in fire rescue. I can’t get to him, and Roxy won’t be able to either.”
At the mention of her name, he had the overwhelming need to touch that spot on his neck again.
“I’ll go over, tether myself to the side of the bridge, and help you hoist him back over.”
She didn’t think that sounded like a good idea.
“If you fall…”
He looked at the water.
“I can swim.”
“Not in that,” she offered. “It’s got one hell of an undercurrent. You go under in that murk, you’re staying under.”
Jagger laughed. “You get the rope and let me worry about how good of a swimmer I am.” He’d trained in the worst situations. He was aware how to handle a rip current. He’d been in more than his fair share.
“Okay, Marine. Suit yourself.”
She headed back toward her vehicle, and when she got to the truck, the hair on her arms stood up. Something was wrong.
She could feel it.
Grabbing the rope, she glanced at her watch.
Where the hell was her team?
As she approached Jagger, he took the rope, tied it around his waist, and then secured it to the side of the bridge.
He hoped it held.
Really, he didn’t want to get wet.
“Are you sure you want to do this? Rescue will be more than happy to save the day.”
“Yeah, I got this.” Part of it was masculine pride, and part was his desire to be the hero for Roxy. It was lame, stupid, and he didn’t understand why he was doing it.
She was just another woman.
He climbed over, and lowered himself down to the body.
Oracle Seeing (The Phoenix Files Book 2) Page 31