for hurting women and scaring children.
But there was.
And now that Alex was no longer a child, he relished the day when he could teach his father that lesson in person.
Chapter Thirteen
The present…
Devlin stood in the condo unit’s entrance hall, his body numb. It was a crime scene now. No longer Tracy’s home. Now it was the place she’d died.
The place where she’d been murdered.
And, dammit, the place where Ellie had been threatened.
He realized his hands were clenched at his sides and forced himself to relax. This wasn’t a time for emotion—that could come later. Right now, he needed to assess the situation. To learn what he could.
And to start to plan his next steps.
Centered again, he looked down at the chalk outline in the tiled entryway. Adhesive tags on the wall identified the single bullet’s impact. It had gone through her skull, killed her instantly, then lodged in the wall. The ballistics team had retrieved it last night.
They’d also retrieved Tracy’s eye. It had been gouged out after she was dead, then placed in a small gift box by the sick fuck who’d killed her.
An eye for an eye.
Now, the entire Laguna Cortez police force was working round the clock to get to the bottom of the murder.
Devlin drew in a breath, then moved toward the living room where Ellie’s friend, Detective Lamar Gage, sat tense beside her. A large man who had once been a child star, he tended to carry himself with confidence, filling whatever space he occupied. Not today. Today, he seemed lost inside himself, and his dark skin had gone ashen with grief.
When Devlin and Ellie had arrived less than an hour ago, well after dark, Lamar had been pacing. He’d been on the scene for hours, and he’d still been barking orders, a river of motion churning with manic purpose, as if he’d fall over if he had to stand still. Then he’d seen Ellie, and he’d let the weight of grief bear down on him. He’d collapsed against her. She’d shot Devlin a look filled with infinite pain, then led the detective to the sofa.
“They were getting serious,” Tamra Danvers, his longtime friend and the DSF’s publicity director, had said, stating what Devlin already knew. Grief lined her face, and the one gray streak in her hair had seemed more pronounced. “He feels helpless.”
Devlin had only nodded. What more could he say? He felt helpless, too. More, he felt scared. Not an emotion he liked to cop to, but it was the truth. Because how the hell would he survive if that chalk mark had been outlining El’s body?
He wouldn’t, and as far as Devlin was concerned, that meant that Lamar Gage was one of the strongest men he knew.
Not that Tracy’s murder wasn’t hitting Devlin hard, too. It was. Tracy had been one of his, dammit. A member of his staff. An intern who would have undoubtedly been offered a permanent position when she graduated. She’d been a vibrant, caring women and someone had taken her from the world.
Worse, they’d taken her because of him.
Her blood was on his hands as sure as the target he’d painted on Ellie’s back. He knew it. And he was damn sure everyone in the room knew it, too.
“This isn’t your fault,” Tamra said, her soft voice at his side pulling him from his thoughts and memories.
“Isn’t it? I’m not so sure.”
“Devlin, you—”
He held up a hand. “Does it matter? Even if it’s not my fault, it’s still my burden.”
Her mouth pulled into a tight line as she nodded. “You’ve borne so much. I don’t want this on your shoulders, too.”
She placed a hand on one of those shoulders, and he felt his chest tighten with the weight of his grief. He had borne too much. So many years of loss and anger and pain. When Ellie had come back into his life, he’d let in a few wispy rays of hope that, finally, the pain would stop.
But it never stopped.
He was the man that destiny had made him. And he would always bear the mark of his father.
Tamra knew that as well as he did. She’d been a friend to his mother. Had come to him when he was still Alejandro. And she’d become an essential cog in the wheels that made up both the foundation and Saint’s Angels. She knew his secrets. More important, she understood why he had them.
“They killed her as a message to me.”
“I know.”
It was all so obvious. So wickedly simple.