“The stab victim,” I say, rising to my full height until I’m the one looking down at him. “Dr. Madden, she’s my girlfriend.”
His eyes widen in surprise, and the suspicion quickly falls from his features, replaced by horror. “Ahh, fuck. Sorry, man. I had no idea. I would have called if I knew,” he says.
“It’s alright. The hospital called before she went into surgery.”
He nods. “You know how she’s doing? I’ve been checking in with them on her surgery, but they haven’t given any updates.”
“She’s doing alright,” I say. “Banged up, but alright. It’ll be another few hours before she’s out of surgery and awake, though I’m sure she’ll have plenty to say. She’ll want to find the bastard who did this.”
Gray scoffs and shakes his head, frustration burning in his dark stare. “That could be easier said than done,” he tells me. “Not unless Dr. Madden can offer us a smoking gun, because so far, we’ve got nothing. This section of the parking garage isn’t covered by surveillance, and while we’ve only done preliminary checks for evidence, we’re not coming up with anything. Thereare no prints left on her car. Nothing seems out of place. No weapon. Nothing. It’s as though whoever did this is a ghost.”
I shake my head, looking over the crime scene before me. He’s wrong. There’s always evidence left behind. Always. It’s just a matter of finding it, and when I do, I’ll scrape it off the cold concrete with my teeth if it means finding the asshole who hurt my girl.
“Something will come up,” I say, unsure if I’m telling that to him or myself. “It has to.”
Gray lets out a heavy breath, and there’s the slightest drop in his shoulders, something only someone with my level of training would be able to pick up, but it’s a sign that he’s not hopeful. He doesn’t think we’re going to find this guy, and knowing Gray, that means he’s probably not going to put the effort in that’s required to find a ghost.
“What can you tell me?” he asks, looking back at her car. “Was she coming or going?”
“Going,” I tell him. “She clocked off at four, then sent me a text saying that she was about to get in the car and come home. I was leaving the station at the same time, and when she wasn’t home when I got there, I knew something must have been wrong.”
“Has she had any issues with anyone? Any arguments? Fallouts? Anyone in particular that you think is worth looking into?”
I shake my head. “Nothing that I haven’t already taken care of.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Last month, the temp night janitor jumped her outside a tattoo parlor with a few friends. Took her car and left her for dead in an alley. She barely survived, but I handled it and made sure he wouldn’t touch her, or anyone else, again.”
“Fuck, Slater. You know better than that,” he grunts as though my actions were the direct reason for what happened heretonight. “How could you be so reckless? Tell me exactly what happened.”
I resist knocking every last one of his teeth out of his fucking mouth. “As I said, I handled it. That’s all you need to know,” I confirm. “He is no longer a problem. Now, as for anyone else you should be looking into, I’m not sure. Harper has issues with her mother, and while the narcissistic bitch certainly enjoys sinking to new lows, she wouldn’t have done this.”
“No one else has it out for her?”
I shake my head. “Not that I’m aware of.”
Gray narrows his gaze on me again. “And you said you had left the station at four?”
“The fuck are you asking me, Gray?”
“Just trying to narrow the suspect pool.”
“Station surveillance. Dash cam and GPS tracking in my truck. Home security. My every move has been accounted for over the past forty-eight hours. Take me off your fucking suspect list before I have to rattle your brain for even suggesting that I could have anything to do with hurting my woman.”
His hands fly up in surrender. “You know how it goes, Slater. Just doing my job.”
I scoff. “Right.”
Gray finds some bullshit excuse to move away, and as he does, I turn my attention back to the bloodstains on the concrete before following the little numbered yellow evidence cones, moving from one to another and searching for anything they might have missed during their initial comb-through of the crime scene. If there’s something here to find, then I’ll be the one to find it.
Gray used to be an incredible detective. Ten years ago, when he was still trying to prove himself, he’d be closing cases left, right, and center, but since Blackstone has become overrun bycrime, his suspect pool continues to grow right along with his open cases.
He doesn’t have what it takes to find a ghost, nor does he have the motivation to do it. Unlike me. Because no other man would even consider crossing the kinds of lines I would cross just to keep my girl safe. I would stroll through the darkest pits of hell with a fucking smile on my face if she asked me to.
And as I glance back at the massive pool of blood one more time, I know without a doubt that the darkest pits of hell are exactly where the bastard who did this will end up, even if it means putting him there with my own fucking bare hands.
3
