responder, but I’d rather be safe than sorry. Carlyle purchased a woman on the black market. His stability has already been discredited and don’t get me started on his daughter. People only go that crazy when they’ve been subjected to unimaginable things.
The churns of my stomach overtake the heaving of my lungs when I break through a partially cracked open barn door on Isaac’s heel. The smell vaping off the rotting corpse hanging off the second story of the barn is inconceivable. I have an iron stomach, yet even it is struggling. Think of the worst smell you’ve ever imagined. Now triple it, and you’re not even halfway there yet.
My neck cranks to the side when a pained sob tears through my ears. The expression on Isabelle’s face when she buries her head into Hugo’s pecs has me picturing what Melody’s response would have been when she saw Joey hanging lifeless from the oak tree she climbed every week from the age of eight until almost eighteen.
Is that why she fled that night?
Was the image too much for her to bear?
I almost wanted to run that night, but since Joey’s skin wasn’t lifeless and unnatural like the man hanging from the beam, I tried to save him. My attempts were woeful, but at least I tried.
If only I could say the same thing about my relationship with Melody.
12
Brandon
When Phillipa leans back in her bed, exposing more of the silk negligee she’s wearing, I pretend not to notice the way the frilled lace edging grips at the generous swell of her breasts. She’s drinking wine like she was the first time we FaceTimed, but she only just cracked open the bottle for our debrief.
I thought yesterday was a clusterfuck, but it had nothing on today. Isabelle is distraught after seeing her first dead body. I can’t get Joey out of my head, and I’m stuck in this bumfuckville town for another night in case the agent brought in to investigate Carlyle’s death wants to ask me any questions. I gave him my cell phone number and told him to call me any time, day or night, but like some 1950s black and white old-town sheriff movie, he doesn’t like cell phones. He prefers face-to-face meetings.
“Who was called in?” Phillipa asks before taking another generous sip of her wine.
The bedding ripples around my backside when I scoot up the bed to rest my back on the headboard. I’ve seen the mess hotels like this one have on their sheets, so I refuse to slip between them—even when fully clothed. “Harvey Rose.”
Phillipa’s nose screws up. “I thought he retired?” When I pull a face as if to say, he’s well past retirement age, she laughs. “I’ve heard he’s a hard-ass. How’d you go about requesting to be kept in the loop on this case?”
Air whizzes out of my nose. “He said, I quote, ‘Kid, we’ve got no time for mollycoddling around these parts. If you need a babysitter, I suggest you go back to the academy’ unquote. But he came around… eventually.”
Phillipa hears something in my words I didn’t mean to express. “What did you give him?”
“Nothing.” I roll my eyes like she can’t see me. It doubles her glare. “I dropped some names that had him gasping like Marilyn Monroe was giving him head. No big deal.”
Her mouth falls open. “You told him your father is Vincent McGee?”
I scoff. “What? No! Don’t be ridiculous. I may have mentioned an Agent P. Russell,” I mumble out my last sentence with a yawn. I’m tired, but that isn’t the reason I yawned. I’m hoping it will have Phillipa missing my confession.
She doesn’t—regretfully. “You used my name? Brandon! Shame on you.”
Spit flies out of my mouth when I blow a raspberry. “I didn’t use your name. I used your father’s name.”
Her eye roll is more sophisticated than mine. “Same thing. I’m named after him.”
“But mercifully, you look nothing like him.”
We both freeze, stunned by my compliment, but Phillipa isn’t as willing to let it slide as I am. “Thank you for finally noticing, can’t-take-a-hint McGee.”
I love her playfulness. Her nickname, not so much. “Please don’t call me that.”
“Why not? It’s your name, isn’t it?”
I shake my head. “It’s not my name. It’s my father’s name, and I hate it.”
The jeering on her face is instantly replaced with sympathy. “Wanna talk about it?”
“Do you have five years?”
She leans in close to the screen before replying, “I could if you need me to.”