I couldn’t get his warnings out of my head as I showered, nor as I drove to work, nor as I settled at my desk and assumed the mask of mild-mannered cop.
“Meeting room,” Frank said, and snapped his fingers under my nose to underscore the message.
“Do I have time to get more coffee?”
He chuckled and pointed at the aging coffee machine, where three detectives were already in line. Well, fuck. So much for caffeine to get through another day at the office.
Stanton was last into the briefing room with a stack of files under his arm and a face that screamed he’d already hit his limit for the day— which, honestly, was his baseline mood on any given morning. Tess followed and came to stand next to me, knocking my elbow in a silent hello.
The low chatter stopped when Stanton hit a button on the big screen, and it filled with the image of a young man in scrubs slumped back in the driver’s seat of a car, throat opened in a single brutal line, blood soaking his collar and pooling down his chest. I’d seen Alejandro’s cleaner do that exact slice, sickeningly efficient. I hated even thinking this wasn’t the worst crime scene photo and wondered when I’d become so numb to it all.
The victim looked almost peaceful, as if he’d drifted off behind the wheel—eyes half-lidded, mouth slack, the kind of soft expression people wore in sleep. If not for the ruin of his throat and the slow, syrup-thick blood drying on his skin, he could’ve passed for a man taking a break, not a man who’d bled out. This man hadn’t been tortured the same as the victim the cleaner had killed; he’d been dispatched.
I’m making connections where there are none.
“Victim,” Stanton said, “Alex Dryden-Wells.” He paused, cast a glance around the room, and my stomach dropped. It seemed like we’d found our missing surgeon. “Thirty-one. Surgical resident at St. Patrick’s. Found two nights ago behind an abandoned warehouse in the Lowstat district.”
Shit.The location of the kill space was where I’d witnessed the knife across the throat.
“The coroner has the body—no estimated time of death yet. This happened outside our primary jurisdiction but intersects with an active investigation. Consulting detectives identified aconnection and routed it to us per procedure when the last name matched an ongoing case from our team.”
Stanton clicked to the next photo, of an older man, frail, lying on the floor, a white sheet up to his neck.
“And the reason we’ve been kept in the loop is that here we haveOscarDryden-Wells, father to our dead body in Lowstat. Found deceased this morning; his carer was missing and later found unconscious in a staff bathroom, all hall cameras were disabled, and a syringe containing insulin was recovered at the scene. The coroner is conducting a full review, but the initial suspicion is murder with an insulin overdose being the primary cause.” Stanton clicked back to the son’s murder photo. “Two generations of surgeons turn up on our board, murdered two days apart. Not random.”
I half listened to Stanton and the rest as they threw out potential theories, but all I could think about was Dryden-Wells junior with his throat cut, and a syringe of insulin found with the older Dryden-Wells. Yes, the syringe left behind was too clumsy for Alejandro, right? But I’d seen someone killed with a knife to the throat. Had that same persontidiedup the two doctors?
The people started to break apart—a low ripple of unease moving through the space, chairs scraping, eyes cutting sideways, everyone wearing the same tight, wary look that said we were all thinking the same thing, but no one wanted to say it out loud—yes it was connected, and yes it was fucked up—chairs scraping, detectives muttering, and I snapped back to the here and now. My cell vibrated, and I glanced at the screen.
“What?” Frank asked, straight to the point, and I blinked to see there was no one else in the room.
I couldn’t focus.
Someone, or some people, had killed two men with precision, and the thought was a cold punch to the gut that made my pulse stutter. My mind went straight to Alejandro, uninvited.
I felt sick. I’d fooled myself into thinking it was more than sex—that I could ignore the cold darkness in him, the way he shut the world out like it didn’t exist. The idea that we were the same was bullshit. It was sex. That’s all. I didn’t have feelings for him. He was just someone who wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone. Right?
But…were these two murders connected to Alejandro?
He’s not someone I need to protect—he’s the bad guy.
I’d been living in a damn dream world, drawn to the one man I should’ve been cuffing, not touching. Attracted to the bad guy as if I didn’t know any better. As if I hadn’t seen enough bodies to recognize what real monsters looked like. And what did I do? I let him get close. I let myself want him. Christ. What the hell was wrong with me?
My skin crawled, heat and cold scraping over each other under my ribs, bile climbing my throat. I’d walked blind into a nightmare with my eyes wide open, wanting the man I should’ve been hunting. Wanting him like a fucking idiot. Like a coward. Like someone so desperate for connection, I’d ignored the blood on his hands. I felt filthy. Contaminated.
There was no universe where this ended with anything but me destroying myself.
SIXTEEN
Alejandro
The tension had been buildingat the back of my neck for days—every time Marisol stepped outside, every time the kids walked to school, every time the world got too quiet. I’d told myself I was imagining it. Paranoia. Leftover ghosts.
Then she called.
I was halfway through refilling my medical bags from my supplier when my family burner lit up with her name.
“Alli—” Her voice shook. Just once. Enough to turn my blood to ice. “I’m home. I’m okay. But… something happened.”
