Page 62 of Conflicted Lies

And it again circles back to one family. The Ivanovs.

“Who would do this?!” Lucas screams, and those in the room try their hardest to usher him out. I clench my jaw and roll my shoulders as I lift his dead weight.

“No! No! No!” Lucas is screaming as I drag him out. “They took her! It’s because we’ve taken too long! They’re targeting us now!”

I throw him out into the hallway and pin him against the wall by the collar. “You need to get a grip. Right now.”

His eyes widen, and for the first time, I see the steady Lucas I know pull through, but it’s quickly covered by tears. This feels like a nail in the coffin, and that things will never be the same between us. We’ve failed, and it cost him the price of one of the most precious things in his life.

“Theytookher from me,” he squeaks. He stares at the floor, his mouth opening and shutting. Fuck, this is bad.

He begins to cry, and I stand there awkwardly as he hides his face in my shirt, his sobs echoing through the hall. Slowly, he slides down the wall, hanging his head between his knees.

I shut my feelings for him out. I can’t be emotionally invested in this case, and he’s most likely going to be kicked off the case because of it.

One of our colleagues comes out and she offers to assist him in my stead. Phone calls are already being made, and it’s only a matter of time before it hits the news.

I walk around the outside of the house, checking out the window that was broken into. There’s a small scrape mark where the person obviously went to the effort to chip away at the window seal to unlatch it. I can see inside from my height, and it really isn’t much of a jump from the ground to the windowsill.

A boot mark has been half covered up in the dirt. Whoever is doing this is good about not leaving any evidence besides the body, almost flaunting the fact they can’t be caught. I study the footprint. It looks narrow, but without the whole thing, I can’t tell if it’s a man’s or woman’s shoe.

“Fuck.” This is going to create chaos in the media tomorrow once they realize the latest victim is related to a detective who’s been working on the serial killer case. And, once again, a different method of killing. Not to mention, Kylie being killed ruins the consistency of the murderer only targeting men.

My phone buzzes, but I ignore it, scanning the bushes for hints of evidence. I look at the street and surrounding houses, hoping to spot any cameras, but in this part of town, it’s unlikely. My phone buzzes again, and this time, I take it from my pocket.

I’m disappointed when it’s not Hope returning my call. My eyebrows furrow as I notice it’s one of my colleagues calling for a third time. And a bad feeling sinks into my stomach.

“Braxton,” he says. “There’s another body.”

“Where?” I grit.

Two in one night? Are you fucking kidding me?

“A nightclub called Lucy’s.”

My jaw tics. Lucy’s is owned by Eli Monti, the fucking boss of the Italian mafia. It’s very rare a body is found at any of their establishments, and I’m certain the moment I arrive it’ll be gone.

“Who called it in?” I ask.

“A woman found it and called us, but I don’t think she’s local.”

No, because if she were, she wouldn’t have ever dared call the police while at a Monti establishment.

We can’t fucking touch them, and yet I don’t fucking care.

Someone’s getting ballsy about their kills, and they’ll have to answer for it.

CHAPTER34

Braxton

Aweek later, I attend Kylie’s funeral. Lucas hasn’t been in the office all week despite his efforts to try to work on the case. I stopped answering his calls, where he would claim to have made breakthroughs that are dead ends we’ve already marked off.

The media is eating us alive, and I’ve barely slept. I’ve done numerous interviews and given many statements. The official statement is that this is unrelated to the other murders. She was a female victim, so this was an entirely different matter. It doesn’t make it any easier to provide them with the answers they’re demanding, though.

As I suspected, on the same night I snooped around Lucy’s club, there was no body to be found. I took the woman’s statement, then informed her she’d better leave town. She was stricken, just another person caught in the crossfire. Apparently, the body she saw was a man in his twenties with a green mohawk. She recalled a distinct tattoo on his arm, however.

As Lady Luck would have it, I’d studied Hope Ivanov so thoroughly that a man with a similar description who attended one of her classes came to mind. For most, this detail might’ve slipped by, but I have a knack for remembering things after seeing them only once.

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