Page 133 of Fall Into Me

No, my beast was something else entirely.

Silent. Purposeful. Intentional. Patient.

So, here I sat, still absentmindedly rubbing the spot on my wrist where the cuffs had pinched, waiting for someone to come in.

I’d been here for going on six hours, and I knew that they could hold me here for another forty-two. If I were a betting man, I’d say that they were trying to get me on edge—hours alone in a silent room. Desperate to get out, to speak to anyone, that I was willing to confess to something when I wasn’t even fully aware of what even happened.

Too bad they didn’t know that was my fucking happy place.

Well, almost.

I’d been read my rights, but whatever lawyer I was promised hadn’t shown up and they’d taken my phone even though it had died about an hour after I’d called Ash.

The only thing that delayed me leaving Artington was checking my truck. I’d been separated from it for a good portion of the day while it sat in the parking lot of the Mackenzie Co. high-rise downtown. Declan wasn’t a particularly smart guy, so figuring out what he—or someone working for him—had done to my truck only took half an hour.

That was thirty minutes that kept me from Cali. Thirty minutes I couldn’t get back. But after tightening the lug nuts on the tires that had been loosened and removing the wad of cloth stuffed into the tailpipe, I was on my way, driving as fast as I could.

I swallowed down the way my vision turned red at the knowledge this was exactly what I knew he wanted to happen, that he was keeping me from getting to her even now. Even after he was dead.

And I knew that he was. Dead.

There wasn’t a single doubt in my mind that the second Ash set foot into that house, Declan’s seconds had become numbered.

My head snapped to the side when the door to the room opened and the two men who had arrested me walked in, grim looks already on their haggard faces.

“Mr. Mackenzie, my name is Detective Dozen, and this is Detective Ambros.” He stared at me like he was waiting for me to let them know what a pleasure it was to finally have them introduce themselves.

I just stared at them and waited for him to spit out whatever he was here to say.

“You were arrested for the murder of Tinsley Benshaw. Do you know who that is?” He opened the folder he’d brought in with him and slid out a picture before setting it in front of me.

The girl couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. Blue eyes, not as bright as Ash’s but close. I flicked my eyes from the photo up to the man who had to have the stupidest-looking mustache I’d ever fucking seen.

“No.”

“Does she look familiar to you here?” He pulled out another image of the same girl, except in this image, she didn’t have a single item of clothing on her. Her skin was a gray hue, those same blue eyes were open, unseeing, dull. Her body was littered with bloody bite marks and bruises and there was a laceration just below her right collarbone.

I lifted my eyes from the image back to the detective’s milky-brown ones. “No.”

They were silent for a second before the other detective leaned forward onto the desk. “We obtained a warrant to go through your phone, to search your car, the whole nine yards, Fane. Do you know that your DNA is all over that young girl?”

“What DNA?”

“Your hair.” He spoke so seriously that it took real effort not to fucking laugh in his face. “I’ll admit, it was odd to see hair sprinkled all along Miss Benshaw’s body, but it wouldn’t be the first time a killer has left such an idiotic calling card.”

“When did she die?”

“Thursday afternoon.”

“I wasn’t even in Artington then.”

“We know.”

I knew I was looking at them like they were the stupidest that Artington Law Enforcement had to offer. “You arrested me for a crime youknewI didn’t commit?”

They looked at each other before Mustache spoke to me again. “Do you know anyone that might want to frame you for murder, Fane?”

“No.” That wasn’t wholly true, and the reality of it made me clench my fists. “If you know I didn’t kill her, why am I still here?”

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