Deceptions (Cainsville 3)

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm--" He sat beside me. "Sorry, you don't need my shit right now. I know that. I just can't . . . I can't keep . . ."

"Ricky . . . ?"

"We need to talk, and I know this isn't the time, and I've been trying to push this off, but I can't."

"Do you want to step outside?" I asked.

He nodded.

"We'll tease the desk officer," I said. "Make him think we've actually given up our vigil."

I smiled, but his expression stayed dead serious. My heart started to thump.

When we were in the parking lot, I said again, "What's wrong?"

He glanced back toward the police station. "I shouldn't do this now. It's just . . . I managed all day, but then night comes, and what I can put off during the day . . . I can't anymore."

"Let me guess," I said. "It's over."

"What?"

"You and me. You were looking for easy and comfortable, and that's not what you're getting. Between your father and James, and now this . . ."

"Hell, no. I do not want that. At all."

"Well, it's obviously something you'd rather wait to tell me, and that's the only thing that came to mind."

"I don't want to lose you, Liv," he said. "I really, really do not, and I'm afraid . . ." He exhaled hard. "I just want you to know that I thought I was doing the right thing. Obviously, my solution was the wrong one--the worst possible one--and if I could go back and change it, I would. In a heartbeat."

"Okay, now you're freaking me out."

He exhaled again, and I could see the fear in his eyes, and I wanted to slap my hand over his mouth and say, No, don't tell me. Whatever it is, if you're this afraid to say it, don't, because I don't want to mess this up. I really do not want to mess this up. Instead, I took his hands, pulled him in front of me, and said, "Tell me."

"It's James. His death. I think--I think it might have been me."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I was still asleep. I had to be.

I had no doubt Ricky was capable of violence. He'd put a man in the hospital two weeks ago. Like Gabriel, he'd grown up in a world where that was a reasonable way to solve your problems and, indeed, sometimes it was the only way.

My mother taught me that there was never any excuse for violence. I remember her horror when my private school principal called after I slugged a fellow third-grader because he tripped me on purpose. And I remember my father taking the phone and saying he sure as hell hoped the boy's parents had gotten the first call, and that if someone lashed out at me, I had the right to hit back. Guess whose words I took to heart?

But now Ricky stood there saying he thought he'd killed James, and I was one hundred percent certain I was still asleep in the police station. Whatever Ricky was capable of, it didn't include murdering James. It just didn't.

I squeezed my eyes shut and waited to drift out of this nightmare.

"Liv?" Ricky's voice at my ear. "Can I explain? I know there's no excuse, but just hear me out. Then you can go. I won't stop you."

I was still holding his hands, which were trembling now. When I looked, he was right there, his hazel eyes bright with panic, and I knew this wasn't a dream.

I ran my fingertips over his knuckles and felt the scabs there. Scabs from the scrapes I'd seen Wednesday morning. After James died. They were still there, his knuckles rough.

James had been beaten. I hadn't more than briefly noted that, because what mattered were those bruises around his neck and the symbols carved into . . .

My head jerked up. "He'd been strangled--like the other victims. And he had the marks. The ones my parents--"