Liam is quiet for a moment. “Before I met you? No. I wouldn’t have batted an eye. But I know you really like Jesse and would be very upset if he went to prison, especially over a man who deserved to die that he didn’t even kill.”
“And that’s why you would have? Because of me?” I ask, my eyes searching his.
“I think Jesse is tolerable,” he states.
I interpret that as Liam saying that he likes Jesse. I mean… he’s never actually going to admit that he’s made a friend or enjoys a person, is he? “We can’t fuck this up. So why this location for hiding the fake murder weapon and clothes? Why do you think it’s best?”
“You remember we had a job that took us there a little after we started working together?”
I raise an eyebrow. “No? We’ve gone to so many places that I feel like unless something significant happened there, I’m not going to remember.”
“It was a dead end, but there was this old guy who sat on his balcony and commented on everything. He ended up taking us on a wild goose chase because he swore he saw the killer riding by on a bike. Remember that?”
I pause as I realize with horror the exact man he’s speaking of. “I do remember that. Oh man, he had so many theories and absolutely none of them turned out to be true.”
“Right? The road is just past the zoo. There are no cameras. We know the garbage situation because we needed permission to dig through it back then. It was a whole thing, yet in the end it had nothing to do with anything.”
“Fucking hell, I remember that now.”
“No one else in the department really knows anything about it, at least not enough for them to remember. Hell, you barely remember and we were both tortured by it.”
“I only remember because it was such a waste of time and you weresofired up over it.” I grin at the memory of him trying his hardest not to snap at the older man who hadallof the theories. When he started telling us that he’d once seen a UFO, Liam just walked out without a word and slammed the door shut, leaving me inside with him. The man didn’t even miss a beat, and I was stuck feeling like it’d be rude to interrupt him but was unable to be as brutal as Liam and just vacate the premises. “You told me later that you almost, and I repeat, ‘slapped his cane out of his hand so he couldn’t follow us.’”
Liam smirks. “Huh. Did I say that?”
“You sure did. Don’t even pretend like you wouldn’t.”
“Strange.”
He drives for a bit before slowing down outside of an old barn.
“Do… you know this place?”
“Nope, but what I do know is that the barn is quite far from the house and that they will likely have an old rusty hammer that not a single person is ever going to notice is missing. We will chip some rust off, clean it thoroughly so no fingerprints remain, and stage it. I want to keep it simple. The more complex it is, the more threads we need to connect.”
“Okay,” I say, not loving this but trusting him. When he gets out of the car, I get out as well.
“What are you doing?” he asks, noticing me right behind him.
I shrug. “Looks like I’m illegally breaking into some person’s barn with my boyfriend. Date of the century right here.”
“Stay in the car.”
“Nah, you’ve dragged me over to the bad boy life. We’re going to crash and burn together. Do I look the part?”
Liam grins at me, his eyes running over me as if he’s actually assessing me. We barely make it across the road before he drags me into his arms, fingers gripping my hips tightly while he draws me in, and I feel the way his cock presses against me as he kisses me. “I happen to like how bad boy looks on you.”
My lips quirk. “Oh?”
He kisses me again before his lips move down to my neck. “How about a tussle in the hay?” he whispers in my ear.
“I think we probably shouldn’t keep Jesse waiting somewhere with a dead man’s clothes just so we can have sex in some stranger’s barn.”
Pulling back, Liam looks as though he’s weighing his options and appears to be heavily leaning toward the tussle. Of course he is because others’ suffering makes no difference. My suffering is the only thing that seems to count.
“How much do you love me?” he asks as he moves closer and sprinkles kisses down my cheek and neck. And boy does he know how to snag me, but I know that I must remain strong.
“I love you a lot, but it’s still not enough to keep Jesse waiting with some dead man’s clothes.”
