Page 65 of Secret
Picking up the phone, he called work, telling them he'd been out with a migraine, and wouldn't be in again today. He needed the day to recover, the day to think. Not that he hadn't already had two full days to think, but being drunk didn't count. He had to sober up and seriously decide how he was going to handle the situation. Maybe, if he was lucky, give Kasey time to flee so he wouldn't have to make the decision himself.
After making a fresh pot of coffee, Noam sat down at the kitchen table with his laptop. All he wanted to do was sleep, but he needed to gather all the information he could. He had no way of knowing how many of the 'Castrator' cases were ones Kasey had done. Up until the Nevada crime scene, they'd thought it was two men who worked alone, but reports from Nevada talked of four men. Everything they thought they knew about the castration cases was based on a two-man team, because they'd never had witnesses talk about more than two until now.
That explained how some nights that castrations happened, Kasey had been with him. Fuck, he'd even talked about Faith's case, talked about how hard it was to deal with some of the scenes he had to see, and Kasey had known exactly what he was talking about all along. Kasey had created some of those scenes.
If he'd been smart, he'd have arrested him as soon as he knew for sure. It would have saved him all this thinking. Once Kasey was arrested, there was nothing more Noam could do for him. It would be up to the Attorney General's office to build a case.
Now, he'd let Kasey go and was stuck thinking about everything, questioning everything, and thinking about doing things he wished he wasn't. He gave an oath to obey the law, protect the innocent, but the thing was, the men that Kasey went after were far from innocent. They were some of the worst criminals in the world. That was the issue. He supported what Kasey did. Right or wrong, it made sense to him. What Kasey did was make Noam's job easier by bringing the men to the police's attention and making sure they physically couldn't reoffend again. Every single case that Kasey and his team had left them had ended in a conviction. The information they gave them always checked out and was more than enough to send the men to prison once they healed enough to leave the hospital.
Without Kasey and the information his group got, they wouldn't catch half of the pedophiles they did. They wouldn't bring the kids home to their families. What they did was wrong, but it was also right on so many levels. He couldn't blame Kasey for doing what he did. Not after seeing his sister raped, not after dealing with all the things he had to have seen and heard going after pedophiles for years.
Noam spent the next few hours looking at all the information they had on the 'Castrator', looking for any information he didn't already know about. There wasn't much. Kasey and whoever he was working with were professionals. Even when things had gone wrong, they covered their tracks in ways that even the best forensics couldn't find evidence. Whoever Kasey worked with they knew what they were doing.
It made Noam wonder how well he really knew Kasey. Was he really into IT or was it someone else who hacked the cameras and delved into the dark web? How much work with the group did Kasey do? He didn't work a lot of hours, but talked about meetings and things all the time. There had been so many clues. How had he not seen it sooner?
When he'd stayed the night at Kasey's, he'd never seen a computer. If he was in IT, it would make sense he'd have computers and things at home. Which meant that he didn't work from home when he got the information for the pedophiles. Where did he go?
Did he really want to know?
He had no desire to go digging into Kasey's life and find the people working with him. In fact, he hoped that the others would continue what they did. Maybe not here in his city anymore, but there were still so many out there who needed help, so many perverts to take down. Right or wrong, what Kasey did made a difference. And that was the problem. That was why he didn't arrest him the other night. Why he hadn't told anyone else what he knew.
He rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the tension, but nothing was working. What he needed was a hot shower and some food. Maybe once he started to feel somewhat human again, he could figure out how to handle the situation.
With his head still pounding, and Casper at his heels begging for attention, he made his way into the shower and stripped off his clothes. Looking in the mirror was a mistake, just as he expected it would be. Dark circles lined his eyes, and his skin was pale, even with his olive skin tone. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying hard not to think about Kasey, but he was all he could think about.
He was hurt, angry, deceived, and frustrated, but that didn't change the fact he still cared about Kasey. Loved him. How was he supposed to put the only man he'd ever dared see a future with in prison? How was he supposed to spend the rest of his life knowing that the man who completed him, his perfect other half, was sitting in a prison cell?
As he stepped into the shower, he wondered if he should be the one to leave town. Maybe go back to Israel and start over. It sounded good until he realized that no matter how far he ran, his heart would still be with Kasey.
