Taylor immediately curled into him. Eagle grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch with one hand and covered her. Only then did he speak.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
“It’s okay,” Taylor said. “I’m not your mom—you don’t have to tell me where you are or when you’re having a shit day.”
“But as a friend, I should’ve at least texted.”
Taylor nodded in agreement. He should’ve. But she wasn’t going to hold a grudge. “I was worried about you.”
She heard him inhale deeply through his nose before he said, “If the shoe had been on the other foot, I wouldn’t have been happy if you didn’t call me when you had a bad day.”
Taylor didn’t respond. She wasn’t sure how to. She hadn’t had any bad days since she’d met Eagle. But if she had, she was pretty sure the first person she’d want to talk to about it would be him.
“I’ve seen a lot of awful shit in my life,” he said. “Babies lying dead in the dirt with their heads cut off. Women who have been so abused they’re nothing but walking zombies. Men who’ve been tortured so badly they aren’t recognizable as human beings anymore. I’ve seen more ways of killing someone than you could even imagine. Burning, stabbing, burying someone alive, shooting, beheading, hanging, starving someone to death, cutting out someone’s heart while they’re still alive . . . you name it, I’ve seen it.”
Taylor shuddered but didn’t interrupt him.
“But I’ll never understand it. Never understand how someone can feel so much hate that they purposely want to torture someone else. We’ve been following the case of a serial killer in Albuquerque. He’s been targeting sex workers. He kills them and takes them out to the desert and buries them in shallow graves. There’s nothing particularly new about that. Men have been killing prostitutes for centuries. They feel as if they won’t be missed, or that they’re somehow ‘less’ of a person, which is bullshit. Anyway . . . the authorities believe it’s been a while since he’s killed. They thought he’d either moved or died. But we got the file today of a recent DB that was found just outside the city.”
“DB?” Taylor asked quietly.
“Dead body. She was pregnant. Eight months. The killer cut the baby out of her body. The police suspect the mother was alive for that, as well . . . and that he possibly made her watch as he strangled her baby. Then he forced the victim to drink her own blood before sexually assaulting and killing her.
“I mean . . . think about that,” Eagle said in a voice so tortured it made Taylor want to cry. “She was covered in blood from her baby being cut out, surely in utter agony, and he raped her.” Eagle shook his head and closed his eyes. “I can’t imagine what she was thinking—and that’s what gets to me. What was she thinking? Was she wondering why no one was coming to help her? Why she’d been targeted? If he was going to do even more unspeakable things to her and her dead child when he was done getting his rocks off?”
Tears leaked from Taylor’s eyes. His words were horrific, there was no doubt, but she cared more about the absolute agony Eagle was clearly feeling.
“I want to find him. To make him hurt as badly as he made his victims hurt,” Eagle said. “But the police don’t have enough information to track him down. It’s almost unbelievable in this day and age that they can’t find him. He needs to pay, Taylor. I want to make him pay, but I can’t do that if I don’t know who he is.”
She buried her head in his chest and tried to hide her tears. She had no idea what to say to make him feel better, so all she could do was hold him.
“He could be anyone. He could be the guy in the grocery store bagging your shit up. He could be the nice middle-aged guy who lives next door. The man everyone thinks is quiet and introverted. All I need is a name and a face, and I’ll hunt him down. He won’t be able to hide from me,” Eagle said, his voice breaking.
Then, as if he’d just realized he wasn’t alone, his arms tightened around Taylor. She did her best to keep her sobs under control, but it was no use. Eagle lifted her chin with his hand and swore when he saw the tears on her face.
“Fuck. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Now you’re going to have nightmares about this shit.”
Taylor shook her head. “I’m not crying because of what you said,” she told him honestly. “I’m crying because you feel so bad. I don’t know what to say to make you feel better.”
He stared at her for a long moment before admitting, “You don’t have to say anything. Just you being here is helping.”
Taylor rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, I can see how much it’s helping.”
His lips twitched. He didn’t exactly smile, but at least he wasn’t scowling anymore. “It does. If you hadn’t come over, I’d probably have drunk that entire bottle of Jack. You fed me, and now you’re holding me. Just feeling you in my arms makes me remember that the entire world isn’t all bad. But it scares the hell out of me that there are people out there who could do that to another human being. I just don’t get it.”
He gently wiped her cheeks with his thumbs before guiding her head back to his chest once more. Then he surprised her by twisting and lying on his back, taking her with him. She was sandwiched between him and the back of the couch, but there was nowhere Taylor would rather be.
She moved her hand so it was resting under her cheek, and they both lay there in silence for a long few minutes.
“On Sundays, I go to the Dementia Senior Care Center,” she said quietly. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you before. It’s not a big deal. I volunteer there a few hours every week. I feel a connection with the residents. I visit the same people week after week, and yet they never remember me. Every time I show up, I’m a stranger to them.”
Eagle ran a gentle hand over her hair, his fingers getting trapped in her curls.
“I always explain why I’m there when I arrive, because I never recognize the person working at the desk, and I know they’re probably exasperated or laughing behind my back because they know who I am, since I’ve been there so many times. I hate that, but not for myself . . . for the residents. Are the same staff members laughing at them too? One of the biggest fears I have is being put in a home like that. Being surrounded by strangers who don’t bother to introduce themselves to me when they come into my room. Having them pull down my gown to listen to my heart or whatever, and having no idea if they’re really a doctor or some pervert who just wants to get his jollies by looking at an old woman’s tits.
“It’s stupid, I know, but these are the things I think about. So I go every Sunday. I tell everyone I sit with who I am, and why I’m there. That seems to calm them, even if they don’t remember me. Sometimes we have a conversation about something they remember from their pasts, but other times we just sit in silence.”
Taylor felt stupid going on and on, but after Eagle had opened himself up to her, she felt compelled to do the same. And she’d told him one of her greatest fears, something she’d never told anyone else.
“Elder abuse is abhorrently real,” he said quietly. “And I imagine it’s even worse when the patients can’t verbalize what’s happening to them or can’t really remember it. Those men and women are lucky to have you on their side.”