Adrenaline pumped through my veins, causing a headache to appear on the right side of my head for the first time in a week.
“Where is he, that asshole?” Taylor’s voice echoed through the police station. “I know he’s here. If you don’t bring him out right now, I’m going to lose my shit.”
“Taylor,” I told Remy. “That’s Artie’s girlfriend.”
“Get him out here!” Taylor screeched at the top of her lungs. “I don’t care what you think he did to that whore’s son. Artie didn’t do anything.”
My fist clenched, and my mouth hung open as she continued ranting about me.
“Did she just call me a whore?” Remy didn’t even have to answer, because I knew the truth. Just like everyone else in Birch, Taylor had only pretended to like me, and probably because of the very man who was being interrogated about my son’s disappearance.
Remy opened the door so that we weren’t just watching through the broken window. I followed him into the bullpen and behind the half-wall so that I could watch without being in the line of fire.
“She’s a psychopath.”
Really, Taylor looked like something out of a bad movie. She wore a bright-red shirt that was too big for her—in a bad way—over a pair of skintight black leggings and matching black boots. Her hair was in a ponytail that wasn’t doing a good job of keeping the long black locks out of her face, and her eyes were dancing around the room wildly.
“You!” Her eyes landed on me and I fought the urge to hide behind Remy. “It’s all your fault. Artie wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your stupid whore ways.”
I cringed at the second mention of my past, but Remy was there, like always, to defend me.
“Stop talking, Taylor.” His booming voice caused the other woman to halt, dropping the chair she’d picked up in her fury.
Remy looked around the room, which was packed to the gills with people. A group of officers and volunteers were there using the station as a launching point in the search for Nox. Not only that but even Mallory, the catheter nurse that harassed me, was there too. Everyone stood there watching Taylor like she was a bomb ready to detonate.
“I feel like I’ve stepped into the twilight zone,” I whispered to no one in particular.
Remy didn’t turn in my direction, his eyes glued to Taylor, who in turn was staring at me like I was her worst enemy.
“I don’t get it, Parker.” Spit flew from her mouth as she said my name. “You didn’t take any of my hints. You should have left Birch, like you were planning. Instead, you had to go and fuck everything up, again. Why couldn’t you just leave my boyfriend alone?”
Rage, pure and deep, began to push its way through my body, forcing a reaction that I didn’t think I was capable of.
I marched into the bullpen, ignoring the way Remy tried to grab me and how others stepped into my way, and stopped right in front of the other woman.
“You’re fucking crazy, Taylor.” Her eyes flashed with malice at my words, but I kept going. “Artie’s never been anything to me but a friend.”
“Yeah.” Taylor scoffed and more spit formed in the corner of her mouth as she ranted. “We all know what happened the last time you had someone in your life that was just a friend, don’t we?”
Crack.
I slapped her, as hard as I could, and enjoyed the way her head snapped with the force of it.
“Do you think we should stop them?” Dom’s question filled the eerily quiet room around us. “I need to speak to Taylor about last night.”
“Nah, Parker can handle herself,” Linc whisper-yelled. “Taylor said some fucked-up shit.”
“I think she deserves it,” Remy added thoughtfully. “Taylor, I mean.”
My cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and I opened my mouth to apologize for hitting her. There was never an excuse to hit someone, especially when Taylor had to be freaking out that Artie was a suspect in Nox’s disappearance.
And then she smiled at me again, and every feeling of remorse I had vanished.
“You don’t know shit about me, Taylor. Not everything is what it looks like. Clearly, you look almost normal. But you’re an asshole.”
I looked at Dom out of the corner of my eye, not wanting to look away from the woman silently clutching her reddening cheek in front of me. “Did Artie know where Nox is?”
Dom shook his head in the negative. “He was on a video call all night for work. It was recorded. Taylor, though, might know more.” He stepped to my side and lowered his voice. “He does want to speak to you.”
Taylor heard him and an outraged cry left her lips. In the next instant, she had her hands wrapped around my throat, and I found myself with the weirdest sensation.
She was strong, her fingers tightening on my neck, squeezing for all she was worth, but I didn’t feel a thing. Strong arms banded around her, pulling her away from me, and I stared into her lifeless eyes.
“You did it, didn’t you?”
Her mouth twisted into a macabre semblance of what a smile would look like on a corpse, and she bared her teeth at me.
“Your little bastard is going to die, you know that, Parker, don’t you? He’s probably already dead, just like his father. It’s all your fault, too. You stupid, lying whore!” She spat at me, but was too far away to make contact. Instead, Linc was there, putting her into handcuffs.
“You know you’re talking about my nephew, right?” His gruff, desolate voice knocked the smile off Taylor’s face. “You hurt a child, a five-year-old child, Taylor. Do you know what they do to child abusers in prison?”
Taylor blinked up at him owlishly. “I didn’t do anything, Linc. Your sister-in-law did it.” Every hint of malice in her voice was gone, a mask of innocence in its place. “Didn’t you hear her?”
“She’s completely fucking lost it.” I looked away to find Remy standing next to me, with Dom at his side.
“That’s not what’s bothering me,” Dom admitted. “She’s definitely having a psychotic break. But what concerns me is that she’s not bragging about where we can find his body.”
My skin had already turned clammy, but my stomach churned at his words. “What does that mean?”
“It means she’s not going to tell us where he is,” Remy answered sadly.
“Artie,” I said quietly. “You said that Artie wants to talk to me. Maybe he does know something.” I pushed both men out of my way, which would have been impossible if they’d expected me to move, but they hadn’t.
I opened the door to the interrogation room and closed it behind me, resting against it so that neither of them could follow me in.
“What do you know?” The question burned as I looked at the man who’d been my friend for almost as long as Remy had.
His hair was tussled, and the circles under his eyes were dark. He looked like he hadn’t been sleeping. His skin was paler than mine was, and he trembled with the screams coming from the bullpen as Taylor was taken away.
“She killed Boo,” he told me. His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been crying. “I had that video, remember? Last night she left while I was in the office working, and she didn’t come back until almost five in the morning, covered in dirt and sweat. It was fucking weird, Parker. So I pulled the videos from the camera, and I saw her in the backyard, on the edge of the camera, with a fucking shovel, throwing something into the woods. It was creepy.” He laid his hands down on the metal table, palms down, and flexed his fingers nervously.