his gut that he was useless. He’d walked away the first chance he’d gotten and he hadn’t looked back.
“Jared?”
“I’m not leaving town,” Jared said, his voice tight. “I know your friend put up the cash for my bail. I’ll have it back to him in the morning. I’m going to a hotel. I won’t leave until my new lawyer says I can. You’re safe. Your friends are safe, so you can leave me the fuck alone.”
What had happened? “I don’t think I deserve that. I’m trying to help you.”
Jared turned, his eyes staring right into Kai’s. “Are you? Or are you helping the FBI?”
He was going to kill Ethan Rush. “Jared, I have never once believed you did this.”
“Five women. Five women I liked. Five women I spent time with and talked to and thought they used me. They hadn’t. They couldn’t fucking call because they were dead. Someone’s killing the women around me and you didn’t bother to mention that you were a part of an investigation into me. I thought you were finally ready to talk. I thought, wow, after all this time Kai’s going to show me the ropes. He’s willing to be part of my life in some way. I should have known the only way you would ever let me back in was for some revenge.”
“This isn’t about revenge, Jared. Goddamn it, you’re never going to believe me, but I was going to tell you about the investigation tomorrow. Today. I don’t know. I was going to lay it all out for you, but I owed some people first.”
“Of course. Everyone comes before me,” Jared agreed sullenly.
“Don’t pull that shit on me. I spent my whole childhood putting you first.”
“And didn’t I know it?” Jared shot back. “Do you think I didn’t hear you tell your friends how much a burden I was, how you wished I didn’t exist half the time?”
“I didn’t mean it. Or maybe I did, but I was a kid, Jared. I was a child trying to fill an adult role. I also loved you. Maybe I didn’t show it enough, but I loved you. You were my brother. I’m sorry for what happened that day with Hannah. I can see now that you were acting out, trying to get my attention, and the truth of the matter is you deserved my attention. After Mom died, I shut down. I left you with Aunt Glenna and I shouldn’t have. I should have found another way to make money.”
Jared’s eyes narrowed, the first hint of dark emotion he could remember seeing in his brother. “Yes, you left me with Aunt Glenna. Such a lovely woman. Did you know she pimped me out to her friends? She took all the money and the only way I could stay in the house was if I entertained her friends. It was subtle at first. Just talk to them for a while. No big deal. And then one of them made a move on me. I turned her down. Our sweet aunt explained that if I didn’t fuck her friend she would kick me out.”
Kai felt like his whole world flipped over. “What?”
“She turned me into a whore,” Jared enunciated. “She did it to move up in her world. She said she was an event planner, but what she actually did was provide escort services for some of the wealthiest women on the West Coast. When she realized what a gold mine I was, she wasn’t about to let go.”
“What?” Kai could remember coming home and screaming at Jared for wasting money on designer clothes and all the shit he had in his room. Now it made sense. His brother didn’t care about suits. He preferred jeans and T-shirts. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
“I was ashamed. Why wouldn’t I tell you? Let’s see. Why wouldn’t I tell my high and mighty judgmental brother that I was stupid enough to get caught in a trap? I didn’t even realize what was happening. Why wouldn’t I tell you I was a whore? Because I knew what would happen. You would walk away from me. It still fucking happened.”
“Was Hannah a client?”
Jared laughed, but there was no humor at all in the sound. “No. Hannah was a drunken mistake. I met her at a bar. I wanted to obliterate myself. I wanted to get so fucking numb I couldn’t feel anything. And Hannah walked in and we started talking about you. That was the good part. The bad part