Page 80 of Speak

Water fills my lungs, a delicious burn as I reminisce in thoughts of the only man I ever loved… who somehow ended up killing me twice.

Green eyes and curly hair, a faint smile and his laughter, his touch, his love… as the world turns black and I’m taken, taken to depths deeper than this bloody water.

Chapter Twenty

Damon.

“What was with the French accent,Le Douche?”

I throw my head back and laugh at Jonas. “IamFrench, Jonas. Well, half. My mother is from Butte-sux-Cailles. My father is English, born and raised in East Horsely Surrey. They met in Paris while my father was working and studying there as a surgeon. Came to the United States before I was born and raised in Westport. I went to school at Harvard and graduated with honors at twenty-one. Then, I went to medical school in Oxford and did my internal medicine and psychiatry residency which took almost five years in New York. Accepted a job straight out of residency at Lorne Wood.”

“Where you met Raven.”

“Where I met little bird.”

“Wait, so how old are you?”

“A decade or so older than our girl.”

“That’s it?” He eyes me curiously.

I grin. “That’s it.”

“How old is Maverick?”

I look down at my watch from the screen that shows the security cameras. Raven should be back by now. “I think a year older than me.”

“I researched him. One of the brightest minds the FBI ever had. Do you know he was on that Ackles Farm case in Wyoming? Herefused interviews with podcasts and media outlets and publishing houses were offering himbeaucoupamounts of money for him to write about it. He refused all of them. Quit literally the same day. Handed in his gun, his badge and walked off the farm. He walked ten miles to the Goshen County police department. Covered in mud and pig shit.”

I nod. I do know. That broke international headlines. What happened on that farm was told by his former partner, Tasha Williams, later on. They interviewed her, instead. Although she was there at the farm, she hadn’t been the one to find what was left of the victims. She was the one that barged into farmhouse with the police department to find the murderer running at her with a kitchen knife. It was suicide by cop. By the time she had gotten to Maverick, she'd found him on his ass in the pig pen holding one of the victim’s bodies while the pigs were still devouring them.

Those pigs were blue-ribbon winning pigs. Pigs that sold for a thousand dollars each when they went to market. William’s memoir kept Harrington out of it.

A mercy, I’m sure.

Through the screen, I spot Raven coming down the hallway, that scarlet wig on, oversized black hoodie, black sweatpants, and shoes two sizes too big. A limp in her gait tells me she’s over-exhausted herself.

Oh no, whatever she did can’t be good. I knew I should’ve stayed behind. I check the other cameras to find them still on a loop for the next twenty seconds.

Our extracurricular activities only took us about thirty minutes, so I’ve been continuously re-looping the same five minutes over and over again. Any longer than thirty minutes of an empty hallway of a busy hotel would alert security that their system had been breached.

“Open the door. Open the door. Jonas. She’s coming. Quick there’s only twelve seconds left on the loop.”

Jonas quickly gets up and runs to the door. I watch the timer as Raven steps inside, and the loop turns off. I breathe out a sigh of relief. He brings her inside but her makeup is ruined and her eyes are bloodshot and there are tears and snot that she wipes on hersleeves. I start the fire in the fireplace as Jonas gets her naked and we destroy all the evidence, including the wig and the shoes.

She’s trembling, standing on her non-tattooed leg, favoring the other. Fuck. After dropping Tyler off at his room and hijacking the security system so Raven could go into the penthouse suits, Jonas and I went back downstairs, changed in his car, put our clothes in bags to be burned later, and came back up separately.

Jonas picks her up and takes her straight to the shower.

“Doc I need help,” Jonas calls. I run to them. Raven is a mess, leaning against the tiled wall in the glass shower, and she’s signing.

We need to leave. I want to go home.

“Back to the dorms?”

No! I want to go home. Please. I want my cello. I need my books. I want my bed I don’t want to be here. Please.

“Your parent’s estate?”

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