Hush - Anne Malcom Page 0,55
his hand. “She’s doing better than she should be,” she said softly. “Which is, she’s not swinging from the rafters, injecting herself with drugs, or painting the walls with her bodily fluids. She’s coping, Maddox. On her own. So, let her be.”
“Kind of like you are,” he had snapped back, but he turned and left before she could give him a dose of attitude in return.
He knew April was only half joking, her light tone to try to mask the hurt he knew she was feeling. Maddox fucking hated that, seeing his little sister in any kind of pain and not being able to protect her. Fuck, that was the reason he’d moved her into his apartment, because he was usually never there. His parents gave him the down payment—he paid the mortgage. April had a knack for trouble. Whether or not she might’ve chosen the path she was on if Orion hadn’t been taken wasn’t worth thinking about. Because she was taken. And there was no point in thinking about shit like that. Shit he couldn’t change. Had no power over.
What he did have power over was his job. This case.
He’d been working himself to the bone to find answers. To find justice. And, if he was honest, a little fucking vengeance. Or a lot. Maddox craved the blood of the men that had done this to Orion. To all of those girls.
They found remains of six girls in that backyard. Had to make calls to parents who had long thought their children had run off, forgotten about them.
Part of the job was delivering ugly news. Maddox had done it plenty of times. But it didn’t get any easier. It was acid, sitting in his stomach, ready to come up with the words he had to utter to a family member, friend, spouse. Then he had to watch them break down, split apart, or worse, just shut down. Watch as life scooped something whole out of them, leaving nothing behind.
And that was happening to Orion right now.
After he’d uttered the news he’d been sick about delivering. Telling her that her main torturer, jailer, rapist, and would-be-murderer (if she hadn’t fought her way out), took the coward’s way out before any real justice could be served.
“Orion?” he said, taking care to make his voice soft but firm. It had been two minutes since he told her the bad news. Two minutes since any words were spoken.
She blinked rapidly, as if coming out of a trance. “He’s dead,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but he answered as if it were anyway. “That bastard’s dead.”
“He hung himself last night.”
“You don’t have any other leads?” she asked. “On the others? The clients?”
Maddox found it strange, the way she asked. Not in the way a fearful victim might, to make sure she didn’t have to look over her shoulder or check the locks three times before going to sleep. In his experience, most victims did that long after the perp was caught.
No, Orion wasn’t asking like a victim. She was asking like a . . . criminal. Like she didn’t want the obvious answer. Like she didn’t want him to have caught anyone. Fuck, his lack of sleep was catching up to him.
“No,” he said, ashamed at having to admit it. Ashamed that he was failing her once again. “Despite seeming like they were slobs and addicts, in addition to being animals, the house didn’t have any evidence that could lead us to the others. We’ve got the computer forensic team digging through hard drives and phones. It’s only a matter of time before we link these guys to something larger. This isn’t over yet, Orion. My job isn’t done. And it won’t be until I get all these fucks who did this to you.”
The house had plenty of evidence of other things though. Torture. Horror. Hardened cops he looked up to had gotten sick at the sight of it. At the evidence of what was done there. And Orion was standing in front of him, having had all of that shit done to her. She was healthy, she was sober, she was upright, she was strong—physically, at least.
Orion nodded calmly, as if she wasn’t hearing that the men who had tortured and raped her were still walking free. Like he was telling her the store was out of her favorite fucking cereal.
“I’m sorry, Orion,” he said, voice catching. It hit him then how fucking weak those two words were, how much he’d