Page 49 of The Devil's Embrace

Everyone knew that.

“I’m serious,” Bruce insisted when Cal merely chuckled. “A good agent like you would be wasted if you didn’t stick with enforcing the law. What’s the plan anyway, kid? Retire from the I.P.F. and, what? Go fish on some water planet? You’re twenty-six, not sixty-two. You’ve got to make something of your life before you give up on it, and you’ve got plenty of that left.”

“I’m not giving up on myself,” he said. On the contrary, he was finally allowing himself to be free, but the chief wouldn’t understand that, so he didn’t bother trying to explain. It didn’t matter anyway; he’d already made up his mind.

Calix was going to start over somewhere fresh. In a galaxy where no one knew his name, and no one knew the things he’d done, be that the incident in high school or the merits he’d achieved in the I.P.F. Hell, maybe he’d even change his name, ensure it really was a clean break.

“There aren’t many people that I’ll miss,” he ended up saying, “but I will miss you, Bruce.”

He huffed. “I’m not giving up on you, but all right, all right. We’ll let it rest for now.” He glanced at the closed door separating them from the prisoner concealed inside. “Do you need me to go in with you? Aodhan wouldn’t say what your injuries were the night of the reunion, but it must have been bad if he’d felt the need to rush you to the ER. He’s not the worrying sort, looks at everything very rationally, that one.”

Cal had long since realized everyone had a different opinion when it came to the doctor, but no matter what words they used to describe him, it always boiled down to one thing. “You like him a lot, don’t you.”

“Of course,” Bruce agreed, even though it had been rhetorical. “I tried to set him up with my oldest once, but he politely declined. I’m not the only parent to try it. People come in with their sons and daughters all the time, playing it off like they’re visiting with them after surgery or whatever. Aodhan never gives any of them the time of day—He’s polite and charming, sure, but he draws a clear line. He’s married to his work. Very dedicated.”

Calix felt a rush of self-satisfaction, which he quickly dashed away. There was nothing to be proud of. They’d slept together one time. It didn’t mean the doctor had chosen him when he’d seemingly turned down everyone else.

“I’ll try and get him to talk,” Cal said, putting an end to the conversation before his mind could get further carried away with itself. He opened the door and entered the small room, ignoring the two-way mirror as he took the empty metal seat across from the man cuffed to the other side of the table. “I heard you wanted to speak to me?”

Heathe rattled the short chains around his wrists when he leaned forward, staring wildly at Cal. “You’ve got to get me out of here! It wasn’t my fault!”

Calix pressed his thumb to the table, accessing the built-in holographic screen, which switched on. A projection of data flooded the surface area before him, and he shook his head as he read. “Says here you hit your girlfriend on the back of the head with a hammer. That’s not exactly an ‘Oops, I slipped’ sort of accident.”

“No, I—” He growled, clearly frustrated. “I did do that, okay? But I didn’t mean to! I don’t know. It just happened. Onesecond, we were talking just fine, and in the next, I was so angry for no reason. She wouldn’t shut up when I told her I needed a minute. And the next thing I knew…”

“So you couldn’t control your temper,” Calix drawled, “killed your girlfriend, and then after you realized the mistake you’d made, you tried covering it up?”

“I’m telling you, something came over me. Like it took over my body! I wasn’t in my right mind!”

“Are you trying to plead insanity? Because that’s not my wheelhouse, Heathe. There’s nothing I can do for you aside from getting your account of the events as they accurately took place.” He tapped the screen to enlarge a quote. “You told one of the officers there was someone else there? You heard them on the stairs?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t matter,” he stated. “That officer already told me as much.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m still the one who killed Molly. If anything, whoever was there listening to us, if found, would only hurt my case.”

“That’s why you stopped mentioning them?” Calix’s colleagues were hoping to get more of a lead on this mystery person. If they could find them and their theories of that day’s events could be corroborated, the case would be open and shut.

Of course, having realized this, Heathe had stopped talking about the person he’d sworn was present, and after a week of being pushed, had finally agreed to talk, but only to Cal.

Technically, this wasn’t his problem, but he’d been curious and had wanted to make things easier on Bruce if at all possible. Things with his own case were going nowhere, so it wasn’t like he was super busy or anything, either. On the contrary, they’d hit another dead end. All they had to go on wasAodhan’s comment about a potential female suspect, and that wasn’t much.

Especially when taking into account the gruesome ways in which the victims of the serial murderer had been killed. Calix one hundred percent believed a woman could have it in her. But some of the coroner reports had come back indicating they’d been beheaded in one stroke. That seemed rather difficult for an Emergence female to pull off, but what did he know.

There were stranger things.

Like the beloved, Prince-Charming-type doctor being into kink play and bloodletting.

Now that he was aware of it, Cal shifted in the chair, even though the capital A Aodhan had carved into his ass cheek that night had already healed. There was a very fine scar left behind, one Calix had caught himself staring at in the bathroom mirror before and after a shower one too many times. A twisted part of himself didn’t want the mark to disappear, as if being branded with a scalpel had some romantic connotation to it that eluded the average person.

Cal had always thought there was something wrong with him, something dark. The things he was into, the things that he fantasized about…They certainly weren’t the types of things a boy who’d been raised at Safe Divinity Orphanage by someone as faithful to Light as Sister Grace should be attracted to.

In only a handful of hours, Aodhan had shown him maybe he wasn’t so abnormal after all. Everyone adored the doctor. Sung his praises and thought he could do no wrong. He’d saved more people in his line of work than Cal had managed to save in his own, and he was practically revered for it. A guy like that couldn’t be flawed, surely, someone would have noticed by now.

If Aodhan didn’t think there was anything wrong with his sexual proclivities, then that had to mean Calix’s guilt andmisgivings were misplaced, right? They were two consenting adults, after all.

He pressed down into the seat, wishing the wound hadn’t already healed so he could feel the comforting sting where the A had been carved into his flesh.

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