“No.”
“Where were thesedatestaking place?”Evan asked, sounding like the detective he was.
“I’m not on trial here,” Decker countered hotly.
Evan replied easily.“Maybe not, but if you expect us to believe you were having a sexual relationship with a married teacher for four plus years and no one knew about it, we’re gonna need more to go on.”
Reese appreciated Evan’s candor, as well as his professional demeanor.
“My dad was an alcoholic,” Decker said, his tone laced with fury.“When he wasn’t on the road and he wasn’t beating on me, he was out getting drunk.Most of the time, he was too fucked up to find his way to the house.”
“Meredith Pres—Eddie,” Evan corrected.“Was coming over to your house and having sex with you in your childhood bedroom.”
“It wasn’t like I had Superman posters on my fucking walls,” Decker snapped.“You try living with an alcoholic asshole and you’ll see how fucking fast you grow up.”
Reese could see Decker unraveling, knew they needed to pull this back some.
“So you and Eddie had a relationship for several years.You mentioned she did not witness a mob hit.I assume you’re her alibi for the night in question,” Reese mused.
“You could say that,” Decker said, looking at him for the first time.“Or you could say that I’m the reason the asshat FBI got their hooks in Eddie in the first place.”
“Blackmail,” Brantley said softly.
“Yeah.”Decker exhaled heavily.“There is no night in question.To my knowledge, Max didn’t kill anyone.At the time, his father, Samuel, was the head of the Adorite Crime Family.Max would’ve been nineteen years old.”
“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t capable of killing someone,” Baz noted.
“Sure he was,” Decker acknowledged.“But on the night in question, Eddie wasn’t strolling by some warehouse downtown.She didn’t happen upon a hit.”He swallowed hard, his eyes locked on the wall.“She was in bed with me.At my apartment, roughly twenty miles away.”
“Is this before or after she walked out on her husband and kids?”Brantley asked, and there was no disguising his disgust for Decker.
“Before.Eddie wanted to wait until Jessie graduated from high school before divorcing Joe.She didn’t love him but was trying to do right by her kids.”
“By fucking you on the side.”Brantley snorted.“Keep tellin’ yourself that.”
Decker narrowed his eyes on Brantley.“I don’t have to explain my actions to you, asshole.”
“The hell you don’t,” Brantley bit out, stepping forward.“If there’s even a remote chance you’re responsible for this...”
All eyes were on Brantley as he trailed off, making his way to the door.
“What?”Decker shouted.“If there’s a chance, thenwhat?”
Reese watched Brantley walk out the door without looking back.
“Give us a minute,” he told Baz before following.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Someone wanna tell me what we’re missin’ here?”Atticus asked when Reese tore out the door after Brantley.
“That could’ve gone better,” RT noted, glaring at Z.
“Hey.Don’t look at me.I’m just the messenger.”
“Seriously.What’re we missin’?”Atticus repeated, looking around the room.
Surely, he wasn’t the only one surprised by Brantley’s reaction.The man was always cool and calm in situations such as this.Yet, it was like he’d been in a pressure cooker for hours and was about to blow.Or maybe a teakettle and the whistle was getting louder and louder and…
