back of his pants and shoving Finn further away with the heel of his boot.
He advances on me with desire burning in his eyes as he stares up and down my body and licks his lips.
“Just kill me!” I shout at him through my tears. “Just fucking kill me!”
I’d rather die than have his hands on me again. I’d rather close my eyes and never open them again than have him on top of me, taking something that isn’t his. This will ruin me. This will be much worse than dying or having my best friend betray me or my mother take away the one person in my life who ever loved me. This will be something I’ll never be able to stop seeing, stop feeling, or stop experiencing from now until the day I really do die. No amount of happiness will be able to erase from my mind what’s about to happen.
“Oh, you don’t really mean that,” Billy says with a laugh as he stands next to me and continues to look up and down my half-naked body. “You know, I usually like it when they struggle, but you’re kind of useless in that department,” Billy says as he takes his boot and presses it down hard on my injured thigh.
I close my eyes tight and clench my lips together, refusing to scream or let him know how much it hurts.
“Fuck you!” I spit out angrily, finally opening my eyes and staring at him with hatred.
He sighs and shakes his head at me.
“We really need to do something about that mouth of yours. I think this will be better for both of us if you just shut the fuck up,” he tells me before bringing his fist down against the side of my head.
“I should have known better than to tell you to stay put,” Adam tells me with a small laugh.
Austin had made it to my place in record time. I jumped in his car, turned on my portable police scanner, and quickly discovered the address the police department was searching.
Looking around the small mobile home, I curl my lip in disgust when I see the dirty dishes piled in the sink, the stains on the walls and carpet, and enough fast food wrappers to feed a small country littering every single surface.
“This is the third address we’ve found for Billy Marsh. The other two were apartments, and they were empty. The landlord for both places told us the guy hasn’t been there in months and if we see him to let him know he’s been evicted,” Adam explains as he turns and tells the fingerprint analyst to start in the back of the trailer and make his way forward. “There wasn’t anything in the other two places linking this guy to Layla, Finn, or Eve, so we’re hoping we’ll find something in here. Otherwise, we’re back to square one.”
Adam gives me a pat on the back, then walks away to talk to a detective who just came through the door after interviewing neighbors.
After Eve had confessed everything to Gwen and me, I immediately called Adam to fill him in. He knows Eve hired Ray/Billy to kill Jack, and he knows she kept the secret of Finn and Layla being siblings all these years. Adam had sent a patrol car to my house to pick Eve up and take her into the station. Surprisingly, after Eve unburdened herself of all her transgressions, she accepted responsibility for all of the things she’s done wrong and went with them willingly. She knows her life is pretty much over and there's nothing she could do about it but cooperate.
Adam comes back over to me and flips open his note pad.
“We found Finn’s vehicle. It was in a pretty bad hit and run accident just south of downtown on a side street that doesn’t get much traffic. The front end is completely smashed, and it was hit so hard that it was pushed into a telephone pole,” Adam explains as he reads the notes in his hand.
“Oh Jesus. Is Layla okay? Was she in there?” I ask frantically, hoping to God that she wasn’t hurt too bad.
Adam looks up from his pad and shakes his head.
“The vehicle was empty, Brady. There was some blood on the driver’s side and passenger side. The lab is running the samples right now just to make sure, but…”
Adam trails off and I’m glad he doesn’t continue. I know what he's about to say, and I