Page 15 of A Forgotten Mistake

Liam continues out the door and into the backyard where he surveys the area for a moment before staring at the house next door. “Huh.”

“What?”

“That house is for sale?”

“Looks like it. Why?”

“I just saw movement.”

I pull out my flashlight, aiming it toward the neighboring house, and spot a clearly broken window, making it quite possible that the killer fled there. But why not just run? If they’d left the premises before we got here, there’s a huge chance no one would have ever seen or noticed them.

I call for Matthew just as Chris, another detective, walks onto the scene.

“I’ll take the back door while you guys check out the window,” Chris says, seeing what we’ve noticed.

“Do we trust him?” Liam asks as he nods toward Chris. “I bet he’s the killer.”

“If Chris was the killer every time you claimed he was, he’d be quite the prolific killer,” I remind Liam. Honestly, we all know it’s because Liam is irritated that after Tobias had taken me, I’d gone to stay with Chris when Liam wanted me to stay with him. At the time, I was still trying my hardest to be annoyed by Liam because of the whole finding him killing Jon Davies in a barn thing. Really, Liam’s so fussy for the most ridiculous reasons.

Chris hammers on the back door where I can hear him calling out to whoever is inside the house to open the door.

Liam reaches through the window and switches off the lock before pushing it open and looking inside at the empty house. There’s not a single piece of furniture to be seen and all the lights are off, so there can’t be too many places to hide. He presses against the exterior wall and listens for a second, but I hear movement all too soon, and it’s moving away from the back door where Chris calls for them to open up again.

Liam pushes himself up and slips through the window with ease. “Stay here and look pretty,” he says, which is absolutelyridiculous for him to assume I’ll do. Ignoring that foolish request, I hoist myself in through the window as he carefully moves in deeper.

“Police, put your hands up and get on the ground,” he yells, but the person dashes through the house just before I hear a door slam shut. Liam kicks it hard, and since the door evidently didn’t have a good lock on it, it flings open as I see the person rush through a window. I can hear them hit something outside as Liam slides out that window with ease. Like how the fuck did he make that look so easy? Instead of following him, I run out through the front door in the hope of cutting the person off.

Luck is with me because the person speeds my way, not expecting someone else. The instant they zip around the porch, I guide them to the ground.

Swiftly, I catch their arms and pull them back so I have control and can confirm that they’re not holding a gun or weapon of any kind.

“Please! No! Please! I didn’t do it!” she says with a sob. “Please. No. Please.”

“Sexy tackle,” Liam comments, which I really don’t think is something that should be said at this moment, but he seems to get away with things that he really shouldn’t.

The woman’s head snaps back as soon she hears Liam’s voice and when her eyes catch his, she goes, “Liam?”

Liam freezes and it looks like he’s seen a ghost.

FOUR

Liam

“She has the victim’s blood on her hand and bottom of her shoe,” Penny says as I sit in the corner of the office with my arms folded over my chest. My plan is to look grumpy enough that no one bothers me for the rest of my life.

“And insists on speaking with Liam,” Chris adds.

Matthew scoffs. “You know it’s a really bad day when someonechoosesto speak to Liam. Like I totally get choosing tonotspeak to him. I wish every day that I didn’t have to speak to him. It’d be a blissful day at work if Liam didn’t come.”

Who am I kidding, I can’t keep my mouth shut for that long. I mean… really, the world would suffer without my voice.

“That’s not what your mom said, Matthew,” I say with a wicked grin.

His face scrunches up in disgust. “No. Just… no.”

Gabriel, who’d spoken to the woman with Matthew, looks over at me. “She claims that she knows the owner of the house the man was stabbed in and came by to drop something off. We haven’t been able to contact the homeowner yet, but the deadguy inside definitely wasn’t the owner. She said that when she saw the dead guy, she panicked and ran out of fear that the killer was still in the house.”

I nod, as though I understand. “When I see dead people, I definitely fling a bag with an iPad up where no one will see it and then run next door and break a window open to hide inside a vacant house,” I say with much sarcasm. “Sometimes I even stop to rub my fingers all over the dead guy because I like the way the blood makes them pretty, and then I rub them on things and choose to not call the police.”

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