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