Page 60 of Risky Passion

Confusion crashed through my relief like a tidal wave. “What are you doing up here?”

Eddie Walsh was a cop from Risky Shores, and was hundreds of miles away from his beat.

He stood near his open door, and in the moonlight, his expressionwas unreadable. But there was something off—a tightness to his jaw, a tension in his shoulders.

“Jaxson. Am I glad to see you.” Eddie’s gaze flicked to Tory. “And you.”

“Yeah,” I said, still catching my breath and scrambling to make sense of how he could be here.

He turned to face me. His shoulders squared and his hand snapped up, aiming a gun at my face. “Don’t fucking move.”

CHAPTER 17

B

I hatedhow the moonlight pierced through the grubby windows of the orphanage, illuminating everything I didn’t want to see: tiny finger smudges on the edges of doorframes, peeling wallpaper, shadows that clung to the corners like they were alive. We shouldn’t be here. Nobody should. This place should have been burned to the ground a fucking long time ago.

As Cooper and I carried Alice’s body through the dilapidated halls, the stale, suffocating air clawed at my throat. The wind still slipped through the cracks in the walls, just like it had all those years ago; whispering, moaning, making Alice believe it was the ghosts of the children who’d lived and died here.

The ghosts weren’t real, but they felt real. No matter how much I’d tried to stay strong for Alice back then, they always had a way of getting under my skin, burrowing into me like splinters I couldn’t dig out.

Cooper grunted ahead of me, walking backward with Alice’s legs in his grip. His breaths were loud, ragged, breaking the stillness with every step he took.

“This place gives me the creeps,” he muttered, scowling.

“Shut up,” I snapped. I didn’t need his fear adding to the relentless noise already screaming in my head.

He squinted at me, his gaze lingering too long. He was thinking too much. His fucking thinking was going to get him killed.

The moonlight spilled through shattered windows, carving jagged shadows across the checkered floor. As we passed the laundry room doorway, a memory clawed its way up from the depths I'd tried to bury.

Thomas Wexler.

His face haunted me still, pale and tear-streaked as his small body shook while he stood in the classroom that day. He’d been seven, maybe eight years old, and trembling as Miss Hargrave towered over him, screaming until he lost control and the dark stain had spread down his legs and pooled at his feet.

"You're disgusting," Hargrave had spat, her thin lips twisting like a knife wound. "Clean it up. Now."

The classroom erupted in snickers, but Fred Kincaid's laugh cut the deepest. Fred and those four brothers of his, hulking assholes with dead eyes and heavy fists. They found Thomas later in the courtyard, cornering him like a pack of wolves.

"Piss pants Wexler," Fred had said with a sneer, grinding dirt into Thomas's face. "Even the toilets smell better than you."

Thomas didn’t fight back. He couldn’t. He just lay there, sobbing, as Fred and his brothers circled him like vultures.

I’d stayed hidden, watching from the shadows, my nails digging half-moons into my palms. I wanted to move. To do something. But I didn’t dare. We all knew what happened to kids who crossed the Kincaid brothers. The bruises. The broken bones. The ones who disappeared and were never spoken of again.

So I stayed silent, and lucky I did, because Fred Kincaid grew up to become Frank Morgan, head of ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Fucking ironic. He changed his name, traded his bloodied boots for polished leather shoes, and pretended he was better than the thug who grew up in Angelsong. But it didn’t matter. He was still the same sadistic bastard who beat Thomas Wexler to death and buried him in an unmarked grave in the back paddock, along with all the others.

For twenty-one years after Angelsong, I kept my head down and lived a quiet, clean life with my beautiful Alice by my side. I didn’t killanyone. Didn’t break the law. It was just me and Alice, savoring the simple things . . . stunning sunsets, barbequing under open skies, sleeping tangled together in a hammock we’d tied between two trees or the softest mattress in the world that Alice had begged me to buy her. Watching her paint and draw her art that came straight from her beautiful soul, and filled our little world with color.

I worked as a receptionist at a doctor’s office and came home to Alice’s cooking, whenever she was healthy enough to scrape together a meal with what we had. Our little home wasn’t much more than a shack, but it was ours. And for a while, life was perfect.

Then Alice got sick. Really sick. And I couldn’t afford her treatment.

Desperation makes you brave. Or reckless.

I thought I could blackmail Frank. Thought the truth would be enough to bring him down. I knew where Thomas Wexler was buried. I knew about the other kids, too. The ones who never made it out of Angelsong. I reminded him of the skeletons he thought he’d buried for good. I threatened to drag his name, and his brother’s names through every filthy secret they’d tried to hide. I told him I would go public, bring the media down on him like an avalanche, and watch him squirm unless he paid for her treatment.

But I’d underestimated Frank.

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