“They’re going to say that someone was you. He killed himself. Accept that you didn’t understand him as well as you thought you did and thank fuck for that. None of us need to understand him that well.”
“You’re not hearing me.”
“I don’t know what your problem is here. I might not have gone through all your profile training, but I know this. Killers kill themselves when they get trapped. It happens.” He starts naming serial killers who killed themselves. “Joe Ball. Bitter Blood. Charlie Brandt. Dallen—”
“Stop. I get it. It happens. It didn’t happen here.”
“He was obsessed with you. Now you’re obsessed. It’s over. Let it be over.”
“I just—”
“Let it go. Who cares if some family member sought vengeance? Who cares? He’s gone. Thank the good Lord, and let’s get busy on the next one.”
“Something is off.” My jaw sets hard. “Maybe he wasn’t working alone.”
“That’s not your profile,” he profiles.
“Him controlling someone else, like Newman, that would fit. Him killing himself does not fit. The door was open. Someone shut it. And I know this because I can describe everything I saw inside that minivan. And you won’t find my fingerprints because I didn’t have to open the door. It was open. I leaned in.”
“Or you killed him and that’s how you know. That’s what the investigators are going to say. Protect yourself. You saw the blood on the window. You called it in.”
My heart begins to drum a rock concert in my chest all over again, almost as fiercely as it had when I ran toward that minivan. He’s right. I’m going to be looked at, investigated, accused, and through all of it, I will remember my job over his death. It will drive a guilty response, it will be torture, but I will survive. And it’s not like I’m going down the rabbit hole he’s trying to drag me down anyway. “Even if I lied, and you know that’s not who I am, I didn’t let the emergency vehicle help him. I knew he was dead.”
He draws in a sharp breath. “Fuck.”
“Yes. That word, a bunch of times.”
“It’s okay if you say it. Your father damn sure would have.”
He would have, and that’s why I won’t. “The door was open. That’s the truth. It’s the story I need to stick to. It’s the story that proves someone else was there.”
“Yes, you. The door was shut. And you were never in this room alone. I was here. We found the scrubbed feed together.”
“No,” I reject. “No. I’m telling the truth. You’re telling the truth. Lies backfire.” I think of the joy I’d felt earlier knowing The Poet was dead. I tell myself it’s human. I tell myself it has nothing to do with me being my father’s daughter, a man who did morning laps in a pool of lies. “Lies don’t die. You will not lie for me.”
He closes the space between us and shocks me by blasting into me and shoving me against the wall, knocking the breath out me. I’m trapped against a wall, a prisoner, at least momentarily, to a man twice my size, who has never, ever, gotten physical with me. “Time to wake up and smell the bloody fucking roses, Detective Jazz.”
Adrenaline courses through me, anger spiked with confusion. He doesn’t act like this. He doesn’t do things like this. “What the hell are you doing, Lang?”
“I’m protecting you,” he repeats. “Like I told your father I’d protect you, at all costs.”
I blanch and go cold inside. “What did you just say?”
“I always promised him I’d protect you. I didn’t know how damn hard that would be.”
I laugh incredulously. “You’re the reason I’ve almost been killed too many times?”
“Are you dead?”
“No, but—”
“And you aren’t going to jail for this, either.”
Realization comes at me in that brutal way it always does when it hits close to home. “So let me get this straight. My dirty cop father wanted you to protect me and you drive a Mustang while the rest of us use government vehicles at work. Your story about that car never made sense to me. We all do undercover work. We don’t get Mustangs in exchange. The captain was my father and the chief’s my godfather, and I don’t drive a Mustang.”
“I can’t even believe you just said that to me.”
My mind tracks back in time, to the exact point when Lang and I became partners. I’d started to read my father, the real man, not my hero. I’d seen things. I’d questioned things. And then came Lang, who may or may not be protecting me as he claims, but it feels more like he’s protecting my father. I just don’t know why. What I do know is that he’s not the man that I thought he was. He’s dirty. He’s manhandling me.
And those two things are all I need to know. Anger surges through me and mixes with a sense of betrayal I can barely contain. I knee him in the groin.
He doubles over, grunts. “What the fuck? Why would you even think I would take a car to protect you? We’re friends.”
It’s right then, with me standing over my six-foot-three hulkish partner, who is presently howling like a whale giving birth, that the door flies open again and Captain Moore explodes into the room.
Chapter 86
Captain Moore slams the door to the security booth behind himself, shrinking the already tiny room to the size of a closet rather than a small bedroom. “What in high heaven are you doing here, Detective Jazz?” That question, spoken low and tight, still manages to crackle with anger.
“Captain,” I greet, completely dodging his question, my mind picking through my best strategy. There isn’t a best strategy. Lord help me, what am I doing here?
The captain arches a brow. “I’m still waiting for the words that are going to come out of your mouth to explain yourself, Detective Jazz.”
Words that I will have to live with for the rest of my life. A life I don’t want to be spent behind bars.
Lang grunts his way to his feet. “I can explain.”
“She can explain,” the captain amends, pointing at me. “Talk.”
But I don’t get a chance. Lang is already talking again. “She went jogging,” he says. “I followed her here.”
It’s a lie that transforms into a possible truth in my mind. Did he? Is that how he got here so fast? “We were standing at the grassy mound just off the parking lot,” he continues, “talking about why she shouldn’t be here when Newman drove up.”