“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Cops!” he called. “Remember?”
Fuck, I hadn’t. I shifted and my right leg throbbed. “Stop in the bathroom and check yourself in the mirror again. Look for blood.”
“Okay!” he said from the other room.
I went over to the bed and Piers kept a good eye on me as I picked up the gun, which I assumed he’d used to shoot Vance. With the way he was crumpled on the floor on his front, there was no way Winter had done it, and besides, Winter wasn’t the type of guy to squeeze a trigger. I tucked this gun in my waistband, too. Damn it, I had too many weapons to keep track of while working, but there was nothing I could do about it.
“I’m sorry,” Piers mumbled. He stared at Vance’s gun until my suit coat fell and covered the flashy handle.
“Get dressed.” I didn’t want to turn my back on him, but I also didn’t like the idea of staring at him while he put his clothes on, so in the end, I went out into the other room and grabbed the fancy purple rug I’d spotted on the way in. I dragged it into the bedroom, and Piers was just pulling a red T-shirt over his head. It was chilly in the room and he rubbed his hands over his arms. “Don’t you have anything heavier than that?”
He shrugged and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “No.”
“Borrow something from Winter, then come help me with Vance.”
Wide eyed, he nodded, then rushed over to the rack of clothing along the wall. He snagged a black sweater almost exactly like the one Winter was wearing and pulled it on. I shook my head. Vance had found that kid somewhere, and he’d trained him to listen to orders. I wasn’t sure he would be okay on his own. This was just another fucking problem that I would have to deal with before I felt okay letting the situation go. I sighed.
“Why did Vance hate you?” Piers asked.
I turned to look at him and laughed. “You want the real reason or the bullshit one I tell myself?”
“Um....” The confused glance he gave me was almost painful.
I shrugged. “I’ll tell you what I really think happened. He was pissed off he couldn’t pull one over on me.” Swallowing hard, I stared at the wall instead of the corpse. “About twelve years ago we were assigned together on the police force in Chicago. We worked the larceny cases that were worth big bucks because we were good at our jobs. Rich people complained a lot and wanted to get their fancy shit back when someone made off with it. For two years we worked side by side. Then one night I was staking out a well-off neighborhood that kept getting hit by a cat burglar who had really good taste in jewelry. Guess who I saw sneaking into a house?”
“Vance?” Piers supplied helpfully.
I snorted. “Vance. We got into it. We’d been dating for about a year. He paid for a lot of nice things for us and said it was out of an inheritance. I’d believed him and never checked into it. I said I couldn’t live with someone who lied to me. He said that if I couldn’t live with him—”
“You wouldn’t live at all?” Piers asked with a wince, touching his nose.
“What stopped him from killing you?” I asked, tilting my head back so he could see my scar.
Piers shrugged. “I said I would stay and apologized. I’ve been apologizing for nine months, but it’s never enough.”
I stared at Vance’s blood-stained body and felt like shit. I’d imagined killing him over and over again throughout the years, but I supposed there was some sort of justice in the lover he’d been torturing shooting him, and with the haunted expression on Piers’s face as he stared at Vance along with me, I had no doubt their relationship had been toxic as fuck.
Piers sniffed and wiped at his face with the back of his hand.
“I’ll help you get on your feet, kid. I promise.”
He smiled. “I’m twenty-five. I’m not a kid. I should’ve known better.”
I shrugged. “Shouldn’t we all? Don’t be proud here.”
He nodded.
I thumped his arm lightly. My leg throbbed as I bent down to grab Vance’s shoulders, and Piers picked up his feet. The kid was pretty good at helping me position Vance on the carpet and seemed to have a method in mind when rolling it up.
This wasn’t his first body disposal, and since it wasn’t mine, either, I kept my mouth shut. When we were done, I was beginning to worry because Winter wasn’t back from his chitchat with the cops yet. Piers heaved a sigh and crossed his arms over his chest, looking at me again.
“Why do you want to help me?”
I gestured at the carpet roll. “You just did something for me, and I don’t mean helping me lug a piece of rotting meat around. I’m not sure I could’ve done it. Killed him. I wanted to do it. I meant to do it. But... I loved him once.”
Piers slipped his hand under his borrowed sweater and scratched at his belly. Was there dried cum there that Vance had fucked out of him earlier? “I never loved him. He didn’t give me a chance.” He bent and rested his hand on the carpet roll and closed his eyes. Maybe he was praying, which was also something I would never have been able to do, so I turned my back and gave Piers as much privacy as I was willing to allow. Until that money was found, he was going to stay somewhere I could keep an eye on him.
