“I’ll tell you in the morning.”
He’s taken off his helmet, but he’s still in his body armor.I look him over.No blood, but the black surface might just hide it well.
“No, tell me now.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Sir,” Hamish calls.
“Later,” Rex answers and keeps walking.I hear and feel the whir of the elevator.
I must fall asleep again in the elevator because the next thing I know, I’m in bed in Rex’s bedroom.I’m naked except for my panties, and the shower’s running nearby.
When Rex walks out, he’s in nothing but a towel.I search him for bruises but see none.
I scoot over to make room for him on the bed but put a hand on his shoulder before he can sink back into the bed.“Tell me.I won’t be able to sleep until you do.”
Rex’s shoulders slump, and I know he wants to spare me from whatever he’s about to say.“He started talking as soon as we secured him.But he didn’t have much to say.He swears he’s also a victim.”
“What?”I try to reconcile that with the moment tonight when Ted approached me.His eager energy.
“The Bondage Killer sent him things with explicit instructions to deliver them to you.The first was the photo you found at your desk at work, which came to his work mailbox at the paper.The letter he had tonight was slid under his apartment door.He felt threatened, so he did BK’s bidding and sought you out.”
My brain is fuzzy, so it takes me some time to sort through this.“So he’s innocent.”
Rex’s lip curls.“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“But he’s a victim, like me.”
“He seems to think so.He spent the rest of the time begging us to protect him from the serial killer.”
The disdain in Rex’s voice makes my stomach twist.
“Did you kill him?”I’m afraid of the answer but I ask anyway.Rex hasn’t hidden his murderous side from me, and I won’t shrink away from it.
“I wanted to.He has no business breathing the same air as the decent people of New Rome.”He takes a strand of my hair into his fist and clenches it like he wants to absorb it into his palm.I wait for the painful tug on my scalp, but it never comes.
“But no, I didn’t kill him.”
My breath eases out of me.
“I have people watching him and his place to see if the Bondage Killer contacts him.But he’s still breathing.We let him go.”
“We?”I remember the bikers in the alley.It makes me uneasy that Rex is allied with a criminal gang.
“I had an audience.A few useful acquaintances.”
“St.James?”
“Some of his brothers.Fraternitas loaned us a space to question him.Don’t worry, we didn’t torture him.”A small smile touches his lips.
“Thank gods.”I’m already wrestling with a crisis of conscience.I’m willing to bend protocol, but the ends don’t justify all means.
Rex angles his body more to face me.“Why do you care about him?”
“He’s innocent.”
“He’s sewage in human form.He was all too willing to do a murderer’s bidding.The world would be a better place without him.”
