Page 70 of No Broken Promises

“I don’t get it, Parker.” Spit flies from her mouth as she says 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, begins to push its way through my body, forcing a reaction that I didn’t think I was capable of.

I march into the bullpen, ignoring the way Remy tries to grab me and how others step in my way, and stop right in front of the other woman, looking up in order to meet her gaze.

“You’re fucking crazy, Taylor.” Her eyes flash with malice at my words, but I keep going. “Artie’s never been anything to me but a friend.”

“Yeah.” Taylor scoffs and more spit forms in the corner of her mouth as she rants. “We all know what happened the last time you had someone in your life that was just a friend, don’t we?”

Crack.

I slap her as hard as I can, and I enjoy the way her head snaps with the force of it.

“Do you think we should stop them?” Dom’s question fills the eerily quiet room around us. “I need to speak to Taylor about last night.”

“Nah, Parker can handle herself,” Linc whisper-yells. “Taylor said some fucked-up shit.”

“I think she deserves it,” Remy adds thoughtfully. “Taylor, I mean.”

My cheeks flush with embarrassment, and I open my mouth to apologize for hitting her. There is never an excuse to hit someone, especially when Taylor has to be freaking out that Artie is a suspect in Nox’s disappearance.

And then she smiles at me again, and every feeling of remorse I have vanishes.

“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 look 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 shakes his head in the negative. “He was on a video call all night for work. It was recorded. Taylor, though, might know more.” He steps to my side and lowers his voice. “He does want to speak to you.”

Taylor hears him and an outraged cry leaves her lips. In the next instant, she has her hands wrapped around my throat, and I find myself with the weirdest sensation.

She’s strong, her fingers tightening on my neck, squeezing for all she is worth, but I don’t feel a thing. Strong arms band around her, pulling her away from me, and I stare into her lifeless eyes.

“You did it, didn’t you?”

Her mouth twists into a macabre semblance of what a smile would look like on a corpse, and she bares 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 spits at me, too far away to make contact. Instead, Linc is there, putting her in handcuffs.

“You know you’re talking about my nephew, right?” His gruff, desolate voice knocks the smile off Taylor’s face. “You hurt a child, a little boy that I love more than almost anything else in this world, Taylor. Do you know what they do to child abusers in prison?”

Taylor blinks up at him owlishly. “I didn’t do anything, Linc. Your sister-in-law did it.” Every hint of malice in her voice is gone, a mask of innocence in its place. “Didn’t you hear her?”

“She’s completely fucking lost it.” I look away to find Remy standing next to me, with Dom at his side.

“That’s not what’s bothering me,” Dom admits to the room as a whole. “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 already turned clammy an hour ago and stayed that way, but my stomach churns at his words. “What does that mean?”

“It means she’s not going to tell us where he is,” Remy answers sadly.

“Artie,” I say quietly. “You said that Artie wants to talk to me. Maybe he does know something.” I push both men out of my way, which would have been impossible if they expected me to move, but they didn’t.

I open the door to the interrogation room and close it behind me, resting against it so that neither of them can follow me in.

“What do you know?” The question burns as I look at the man who’s been my friend for almost as long as Remy has. “You’ve got to know something.”

His hair is tussled, and the circles under his eyes are dark. He looks like he hasn’t been sleeping. His skin is paler than mine, and he trembles with the screams coming from the bullpen as Taylor is taken away.

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