Page 93 of Staying for You

“And what are your thoughts?”

“Considering that his pregnant girl’s co-workers said she came in to work a week ago bruised up and making excuses then she was found sleeping in her fucking car, my thoughts are about where you can expect them to be.”

“What the fuck? He hit her? Was that shit happening to Cami, too?”

“Can’t say yes or no, there. Haven’t talked with her yet but you can bet, when she gets here, I’ll be doing just that.”

“Fuck me.”

“That’s about it. But, I should let you know.”

“What?” I growl.

This time he grins, bright white teeth beaming at me against his dark skin. “We got ‘im.”

“No shit?”

After I was taken to the hospital, Scott went missing. When David noticed that Scott had gone missing, he went looking for him. Found me instead. Called an ambulance. Sent a few of his crew out to look for Scott. No one could find him in town. He’d just shown up that day and said he was there to work. David said he could have a job if he proved himself. No numbers were exchanged, nothing. It was a mistake on David’s part that he feels bad about. Thing is, though, Scott was there whether he was pretending to work or not. He would have done exactly what he did no matter what. It’s no one’s fault… aside from Scott’s.

“No shit. He’s at the station, then?”

“He is.” He nods. “Raising all sorts of hell and screaming that he’ll sue us and we were harassing him.”

“Harassing him?”

He gives me a crooked grin. “Because we were looking for him. Apparently when you’re a suspect, if you’re looked for, that means you’re being harassed.”

“So he’s not only a special kind of dick, he’s a special kind of dumbass, too.”

“Correct.”

“Great.”

“That about sums it up.”

He leans back, lifts a leg and rests the ankle on his knee.

“So what now?”

“We have your official statement. We don’t have proof aside from his fingerprints all over your home, which my guess is enough considering his behavior once we got him and some of the shit he spewed probably not even realizing he was spewing it. And we have the statements from his pregnant girl’s co-workers regarding her showing up looking all kinds of banged up and so there’s some repeated violent behavior. We just have to get in touch with her, see if her story lines up, and we’ll be okay. But, we might have him right now, but we still need your girl away from him. Way I see it, if he can, he’ll turn this around on her and that shit ain’t cool and you know what I mean by this without me saying it.”

“She’s supposed to be here soon,” I remind him.

“And this is a good thing. She needs to know, though. Everything. Because my guess is she doesn’t have a clue as to what kind of man she was living with.”

“What do you mean by that?” The hair on the back of my neck prickles and I feel the heat building up inside me as my anger already threatens to bubble over.

“When we were digging around, we found that he’s a planner. Been putting money in a bank account that my guess is your girl doesn’t know about. It was little bits here and there. Nothing major at once that would be realized. This, of course, is on top of what he was earning as a fucking male escort, which is still a mind blowing part to this whole story I never saw coming. Anyway, he and Cami, they had wills drawn up, which didn’t make a ton of sense because they don’t have kids and typically people worry more about it then but your girl’s found some good success and she was a planner, too. So it does make sense, too. She took care of shit and loved her mom, her siblings, her nieces and nephews. Wanted them to have something if she wasn’t here. He got in there, somehow switched shit around so her family got nothing if something happened to her. Worst thing, though. It’s like a fucking movie, man, because this asshole took out a life insurance policy on her. Left him with a good bank of change if she died.”

“What the fuck?” I ask, exploding out of the bed as best I can with one leg still in a stupid fucking cast. He stands, too, lets me pace around the hospital room with my crutches while keeping a close eye on me. I fist my hands then lean over, feeling close to vomiting. Was this assfuck planning to kill her?

He guides me back to the edge of the bed, makes me sit down. “You need to know the rest.”

I’m looking down at the floor and at his words, my head jerks up. “How can there be more?”

“There’s more. The bank account Scott was putting money away into… been going on for four years now. Second name on the account. A guy well known for his work in a field I thankfully rarely touch because I live in the community where we live and bad shit like this doesn’t come at us. That doesn’t mean I don’t know about it, though.”

“What kind of field is that?”

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