Page 56 of The Butterfly Killer

He didn’t like feeling weak.

Roman turned back toward the bed. This was it, Marcus thought. He was coming back to finish what he started. Fuck what Roman’s original plans were. Roman couldn’t stand Marcus to live for another second.

Marcus was just as disgusted with himself as he surely thought Roman was with him. He had other things to worry about though than his increasingly worrisome turn-ons.

But Roman didn’t do anything other than stand there. He waited a minute, letting Marcus simmer in the silence that was so loud his ears were about to bleed.

Roman let out a soft chuckle. “I’m not going to chase after you if that’s what you think.”

His footsteps made Marcus’s heartbeat spike as he walked around the bed. The bed frame squeaked as he lowered himself down onto the mattress. Marcus could just imagine Roman getting comfortable as the mattress dipped close to Marcus’s back. Just a little more and Roman would be crushing him under it.

His leg ached as he thought about the bed collapsing and it falling right where he was wounded.

“When you want to let loose, I’ll be here.”

Marcus ground his teeth together. That was never going to fucking happen.

His breaths were becoming more even. However, he didn’t have the strength to pull himself from under the bed. Roman never moved from the bed and with him lurking so close, Marcusdidn’t want to find out if Roman would end up doing something to him or not.

He fell asleep and dreamed of Roman breaking his leg over and over. Each time he helped heal the damage he’d done, only to break it again.

16

Agent Burns flickedthrough the microfilm machine, skimming the newspaper articles for anything that could link the Butterfly Killings to the cartel. What he had found was a pattern of drug busts and then a Butterfly Killer death. There were however more drug busts and alleged cartel killings than there were Butterfly Killings. Trying to differentiate the two was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

He rubbed his burning eyes. He yawned as he flicked through a couple more slides before his vision became blurry. He called it quits when his eyes jumped over two paragraphs.

He wasn’t going to get anywhere if he accidentally looked over something.

He turned off the machine and stood from the rickety chair that made his ass go numb. He stretched and then grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. He’d just thrown it on when he heard footsteps from outside the door. He paused with his hands holding the collar.

A black silhouette emerged from behind the frosted glass window of the door. No one but the night security guard posted at the front was here so late at night.

Burns lowered his hands, his right edging to his gun holstered at his side. The sleep that had been overtaking him had receded to the back of his mind. He zoned in on the person on the other side of the door.

They knocked.

“Agent Burns. It’s me.”

Burns dropped his hand away from his gun and grabbed the handle of the door. He opened it to find Detective Blevins standing on the other side.

Burns’s brows furrowed. “Did something happen?”

He reached for his phone. He looked down briefly to see if he got any messages. Mercer would have been the first person to let him know if another body had been found.

Blevins pushed the door the rest of the way open and walked inside. Burns stepped back as the man came inside like he owned the space. Burns glanced back down at his phone as if Mercer was going to message him angrily that he’d forgotten something.

“No. I thought you might want some help,” Blevins said as he moved toward the long table in the middle of the room. He crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned against the table’s edge.

He looked around, pausing on the microfilm machine. He nodded toward it. “Find anything interesting?”

Burns slowly put his phone away. “Not really. Who told you I was here?”

Blevins still scanned the room before his eyes rested back on Burns. “Agent Mercer did. Said he was worried you were working so late.”

Burns went rigid. Mercer would absolutely say no fucking such thing. He was the type of partner who couldn’t stop himself from working and would order Burns around—sometimes just to get a sick sense of dominance out of it.

“He did, huh?” Burns didn’t buy the lie for a second, but he didn’t call Blevins out.

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