“I’ll keep you in the loop, Mr. Kesley.”
Aiden left the PI’s office and headed home, grabbing a takeaway dinner from the Asian place nearby. He atesome of it, but his stomach was too queasy to let him enjoy the sweet-sour curry, so he gave up. Chills crawling across his back, he settled on the couch in his lounge with his laptop and the data chip.
As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to start the recording immediately. He stared at the play button, his mind racing. Hope fluttered in his chest that maybe there would be something in the video that the police and his PI might have missed. A clue, a hint, as to why Darren Howe hadn’t stood down, and maybe an explanation about the weirdness of the entire case.
Because there had to be a reason for it. For why the justice system had let a murderer live when he should’ve been given the death penalty like everyone else who committed such crimes. Aiden had tried and tried to make sense of it, but his countless pleas to the authorities had failed to get him the closure he needed to move on from this, so he was done waiting and playing by the rules.
Aiden thought back to his call with Rick, a pang of guilt stirring within him. He toyed with the idea of calling his friend and confessing everything he had been up to so he could poke Rick’s mind, but he quickly shut it down. Rick would worry and try to convince him this wasn’t the way. That he needed to let his obsession with the truth go, say his goodbyes once and for all, and move on. And he would be right to do it, too.
Stroking the amber stone without taking it out of his pocket, Aiden took a deep breath. If he let go of the hunt for answers and revenge, his connection to Claudia would really be gone. And he couldn’t have that, not before he’d gotten to the bottom of her death and made the murderer pay. Then and only then could he allow himself to move on.
After blankly staring at the laptop for close to an hour, the visceral need to know what was on that data chip won, gluing him to the screen. The video was thirty minutes long, consisting of a coroner examining Claudia’s body. Aiden’s stomach churned at the first pass of the camera over her beautiful face. It was so much like her father’s—her brow, her straight nose, even the cut of her jaw. She was the spitting image of Marcus DuLaurent, aside from her gold-like eyes.
Maybe if Aiden had been the Aiden from two years ago, he would have lost it the moment the camera focused on her blank stare. But he wasn’t. He rarely felt anything other than numbness these days, didn’t really know how to anymore, and so he just sat there and watched, searching for anything that could shed some light on why Claudia had had to die.
She had been shot in the chest. The wound was dark against her beige skin, but other than it, nothing stood out. The same was true for the rest of the recording at first glance. Before Aiden could watch the video again, before he could scrutinize every second of it and reevaluate it, he ran out of time. Night had shifted to morning at some point without him realizing and his phone alarm was going off next to the laptop.
He grunted, but he didn’t really have a choice. As much as he wanted to stay home and find whatever missing piece was hiding in the recording, he had to catch the space shuttle to the Horizons Space Prison Station and pretend he was just a warden doing his job.
Chapter 6
The following few dayswere as uneventful as the ones before them, the only thing breaking Darren’s dull routine being the banging and drilling going on outside. At the rate the repairs were progressing every time he glanced out a window, the court and field were going to be ready sooner than expected.
Darren wasn’t the only one who’d noticed either, if the dozen men parked by the reinforced glass in the mess hall were anything to go by. He had been headed that way—‘Foundations of Interplanetary Economics’ textbook in hand—but the noisy crowd that already occupied the space made it less appealing for the studying he had in mind. Shame, really, since he’d been looking forward to the artificially fresh air the open windows with the bars offered.
Heaving a sigh, Darren changed his destination to the library down the main corridor. He greeted the twoguards stationed by the gates and had just scanned his ID bracelet at the entry/exit point when movement by the infirmary caught his eye.
With a bandage over his nose, Nyle walked out. He was the blond blue-eyed and fair-skinned twink without whose help Darren would still be stuck in the planning stages for his smuggling venture.
The delicate creature chuckled, his laugh a pleasant sound Darren was sure had charmed more than a few men. He thanked the doctor for the care and planted a kiss on his wrinkled forehead, earning himself a heartfelt scolding to be careful and not get in trouble again.
The request was unfair, Darren thought, given Nyle had done absolutely nothing wrong and Dave’s irritation from losing at cards had started everything. Not that Nyle’s affairs and wellbeing were usually Darren’s business... although it had been a while since he had last had Nyle alone for fun and not for something business-related.
“Darren!” the high-pitched voice of the cute twink interrupted his train of thought, but judging by the flirtatious smile the twenty-or-so-years-old flashed him, they were both on the same page already.
“How was your check-up?” Darren commented, his eyes on the graying doc as he disappeared inside his office.
Nyle pointed at his nose as he wrinkled it. “Doc said it’s healing well. As long as I don’t get in any more fights, it should be as good as new in a couple of days.”
“Glad to hear that.”
“Thanks!” Nyle smiled, cocking his chin at the book in Darren’s hand. “You off to read?”
“Yes. For tomorrow’s business class.”
Grazing Darren’s arm with his fingers, Nyle hummed. “How diligent.”
“And boring.”
As if he’d been waiting for the words, Nyle inched in, resting his hand on the side of Darren’s thigh. “Perhaps I could make it more fun for you?” He licked his plump lips. “After I catch you up on the latest… arrangements for our little side gig.”
Darren regarded him with a quirk of his mouth to one side. This was definitely more intriguing than business models and whatever else was in the lesson. He turned on his heel and was about to lead the delicious-looking devil to his cell, when more movement by the med office caught his attention. Wearing the warden’s uniform over his champagne shirt, Aiden Kesley stepped out. He said something to the doctor inside, making the old man laugh, then started down the hall. His gaze immediately locked on Darren, then bounced from him to Nyle, one of his brows twitching slightly in a restrained arch as it seemed to dawn on him what was taking place.
Darren felt a shiver down his back, each peak of his spine tingling with self-awareness at being caught in the act. He didn’t know why it had this effect on him when fucking between inmates was commonplace, but he was sure that whatever the trigger, it definitely had something to do with his interest in the new warden.
Bracing himself for a sharp remark, he waited.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Aiden said curtly as he walked past them.
