Why hadn’t I been informed of the note before now? Did Jack know about it? If so, why hadn’t he brought it up to me? What kind of game was Grath playing, bringing it to me now? Gah—too many conflicting and confounding thoughts tossed in my head, and it started to pound.
I made my way back to the living room, barely looking at either man, and sat back down on the couch.
“What can you tell us, Ellie?”—that came from Steph.
“You sound like a cop or something. Are you?” I stalled.
Without moving his head, his eyes shot over to Grath’s, then came back to mine. “Yes, actually. I am a cop. Detective, actually. Homicide. But I’m also Grath’s partner, Jack’s friend, and your friend, too. But first and foremost, right now, I’m here just to help. Let us help. If you can explain this, so we can catch this guy, now would be a good time.”
Wow. This was a bit shocking on many levels. I took a moment to let it all sink in. That Grath—an MC guy—was partnered with a cop was, in and of itself, a strange thing. I guess opposites really do attract.
Beyond that, no one else could possibly know just how apropos it was that Steph worked Homicide. Because that was, I feared, exactly what it was about.
It was time for me to dump my info, and I was glad of it. I had been carrying it around for so long—the not knowing, the doubt, the guilt, the suspicion, the fear of what it all meant, the consequences, the pain. And the deep, deep regret.
“I…I don’t know this for sure, I wasn’t there…but now, seeing this, I think there’s a good chance…that Brian killed Keith.”
I lost it. I just broke down. Saying it out loud made it more real, like admitting it was true when I’d been lying to myself for nearly a year, trying to persuade myself that Brian could not have been that evil, that Keith’s death had not been connected to me at all, just a freak accident of place and circumstance.
Keith had been shot in the back, on a street in the neighborhood of his house and the Red Trick Pony. No one had ever been caught, there were no witnesses found, no trace of the gun, nothing. Just a late-night senseless shooting that had led to the death of a man.
Steph’s eyes had narrowed, and his body was leaned in toward me, his attention on full blast. “Grath has filled me in on what happened here the other day. I gotta say, you should have called the cops. You know that, right? That was your first mistake—this week. Hell, your first mistake was in not coming to the cops way back last year, when Keith went down. Why the fuck didn’t…”
“Yo, babe, go easy on her. Tone it down a notch. You’re freaking her out.” I was pretty sure Grath was observing my near-hyperventilating.
They got into it. “She should be freaked out! If what she’s saying is true, then we’ve got a known armed and dangerous killer out there with someone in his sights, and it doesn’t take too much thinking to figure out that that target is Jack. Beyond that, who knows who else…maybe the baby?”—and here Steph looked back at me, and my stomach about dropped out again. “But this stalker—Brian—I’m gonna need more info on him, by the way, honey,”—that was to me again—“if he did gun down Keith—and we will find out, because no way does his case stay open my entire fucking life—“
“McAfee goes down. Hard. Regardless. But especially so, yes, if what she’s sayin’ is true, if he’s the one what took down our man. Just, easy on the girl today.” Grath turned back to me. “Ellie hon, you gotta breathe. You need a paper bag?”
I shook my head, getting a handle on myself. Now that I was no longer the only person who had these thoughts haunting my mind, I felt somehow relieved. Not better—it was a living nightmare. I don’t know how, when, or even if it could ever get better—but by sharing it, at least I wasn’t alone with it.
“Okay, let’s start at the top. What do you know? What can you tell us?”
“Well, you know already about Brian, right? Jack explained all that happened in Portland, and how he’d followed me here last year?”
Steph piped in, ever the interrogator. “Yeah, sweetie, we got that part. But about Keith and Brian—and the note says that you made him do it once…”
“Steph! Stop.” They couldn’t think I would ever have asked for this, for Keith, or for anyone, could they? “Brian is crazy. You get that, right? I never asked for his crazy. Hell, I was trying to get away from him all this time. If he’s the one who shot Keith, he did it of his own volition. My God! Keith and I were friends. I liked him. He was awesome. I never wanted him to get hurt, to even be involved in the crazy that was Brian. I never wanted any of this.” Cue: tears. Damnit.