Page 17 of The Devil's Bargain
“She cared about Bruce,” Mitri argued. “She wasn’t close with any of the other victims. It just doesn’t make sense she’d want him dead.”
“Yes, it does. He was on to her.”
“We don’t know—”
“Okay,” Calix cut him off. “We’re here to find the truth. If Amory was responsible somehow, we’ll figure that out.”
“Thank you.” Mitri sighed, defeated. “Look, I know it won’t change anything. She’s still on the run, so clearly she was guilty of those things with Rhett. But this…I have to believe she wouldn’t do that to Bruce. Hell, she spent holiday dinners with his family. She used to babysit his kids…”
“I get it.” A part of him felt guilty for allowing Aodhan and Mercy to drag her into this.
But the other part still wasn’t sure she was entirely innocent.
They’d found her near the spot where he’d been killed. There’d been no reason for her to be around that area, and all of the evidence they did have, though it wasn’t much, pointed to her as the culprit.
She’d planned a late meeting with Bruce.
Bruce had told Calix he’d talk to her after Cal had presented his suspicions thanks to Aodhan.
On paper, it seemed pretty clear-cut, only no one else here knew what he knew. That Amory hadn’t actually been working with Rhett and therefore wouldn’t have a reason to killBruce to keep him quiet. She would have denied her involvement instead and insisted on clearing her name.
As much as he wanted to believe it was her to help justify seeing her shot at point-blank range and doing nothing to avenge her, Calix had to admit that it wasn’t adding up.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this together.” Calix didn’t know if he’d really stick with this job afterward, but for now, his goal was to solve this. It wasn’t lost on him that he had Mercy to thank for the chance to do so, or that it was the director’s quiet way of trying to make up for Amory, since he must know Cal had sort of liked her as a friend.
There was something wrong with him since that was enough to satisfy any lingering anger he’d felt about it. But Calix wasn’t going to turn away from the truths about himself, even if they were ugly. Maybe, on some level, Sister Grace had been right about him. He was broken and twisted.
But that was fine.
The universe wasn’t exactly heaven, and angels didn’t often survive.
Devils did.
* * *
“All of these are unsolved?” Calix flipped through the stack of open case files, a feeling of dread growing with each passing second.
What the hell had he gotten himself into?
“We lost a lot of contacts when Bruce passed,” Reed explained, dropping his gaze when Cal looked over at where he sat across the table. “Many of them had secret identities and only spoke with him. Many of the drug-related cases are getting out of hand now without them there to give us leads.”
“So, what you’re saying is this department has been relying on civilians to do their work for them for a while now?”He didn’t mean for it to sound as harsh as it did, but he couldn’t help calling a spade a spade. “This is a mess.”
“You see now why no one else stepped up to the position, despite the cushy paycheck,” Mitri said.
“Good health insurance, too,” Reed added.
Calix didn’t need either of those things. His boyfriends worked at the hospital and were richer than rich. He’d taken this job for two reasons, to find out what really happened to Bruce, and to get himself out of that massive house Aodhan and Mercy wanted to lock him up in.
They’d do it too. There was no questioning that. Their motives had been clear from the start, and if Cal hadn’t insisted on working, they would have taken the job away just as easily as they’d gotten him the position. It’d been an olive branch they’d both hoped not to use; Cal had seen right through them.
Being someone’s Third was one thing, but he would never be a pet. Never allow himself to be reduced to a ward that was forced to rely on the kindness, or lack thereof, of his owner. He’d already lived that kind of life before with Sister Grace. Never again.
Which meant gritting his teeth and putting up with this bullshit at the station. Pretending like he cared about…He picked up a file and almost rolled his eyes.
A twenty-three-year-old junky who’d lost her wallet in a restaurant downtown.
He shoved the pile to the center of the table and motioned to Saz. “Organize this, please. Half of these cases should never have come to us in the first place.” They were the severe crimes division, not lost and found.
