And I Love You the Most (This Love Hurts 3)

Some form of an answer begs to escape, but I can’t respond. All I can think is that maybe they did hear, maybe they knew. Maybe they’re going to send me back.

I can’t think, I can’t answer, I can’t do anything but run.

I need to speak first, though. Just in case they’re truly unaware, they need to know about the other boy, but the words don’t come. How can I speak the truth when it kills me even to think of what happened?

I think of Marcus and what he’d say. He’d be brave enough.

My jaw is sore when I yell out, “The yellow house! They’re in the yellow house on the corner!”

It’s enough, just run!

The voice isn’t my own and I take off as the two older men, only feet away, exchange puzzled glances. The alleyway is narrow, far too narrow for them to follow me, but I dart through the darkness, my bare feet stumbling over broken bottles, trash and muck. I would run through the fires of hell to get away, to be far away from all this.

I can’t bear the thought of being back there and telling them what happened.

Telling them what I did and what happened because of it.

Run. Just run.

I run as far as I can. I run to what I thought was his home. I was wrong.

I was wrong about entirely too much.

Cody

“You’ve got to be fucking shitting me,” Skov hisses, slapping the papers off the steel table.

“That’s what the lieutenant said.” From where I sit in the steel chair, the shrug of Detective Gallinger’s shoulders appears nonchalant. I know better.

I watch the two men argue in hushed tones, one standing in the hallway leading to the interrogation room and the former barely a foot inside. His white-knuckled grip on the door and bitter inflection have me on edge. Even if they’re being forced to release me, Skov could pull some shit and keep me here. Trapped in this room, I’m useless. With every second that ticks by, all I can do is hope the door will burst open and someone will announce they’ve found Delilah. Half the time I imagine it, there’s a sense of relief that follows. The other half of the time I’ve stared at the clock as these two cops drone on has led to me imagining they’ve found her lifeless body. All the while I did nothing to save her, because of them. My gaze narrows as I stare at the back of Skov’s wrinkled button-down.

“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet.” The statement comes out with a guttural groan from Detective Skov. He’s a fucking idiot and so is his partner, Detective Gallinger, if either of them think I’m going to fall for this good cop, bad cop shtick. I’m an FBI agent, for fuck’s sake.

There’s only one piece of this act that’s based in reality: Detective Skov wants me to go down for all of it. For every whisper of Marcus there’s ever been. He’s decided I am Marcus. That I created him and I’ve been the one responsible for the deeds attributed to Marcus. That part isn’t entirely untrue. I’m responsible for more than anyone could possibly know. Even if they managed to find any evidence and could put the pieces together, there’s so much that’s gone unwritten. So many moments where I played a part in pawns being moved across the chessboard. The weight of that blame would have buried me alive over the past few hours if not for my constant monitoring of the clock while the names of men who could have possibly taken Delilah continued to pile up.

Skov’s got a hunch I’m behind it all. He’s made that more than clear. Even worse, he thinks Delilah’s involved with Marcus’s crimes. The dull pain in my chest aches from rage every time he speaks her name. He should be searching every inch of Cadence’s place with a fine-tooth comb. Looking for any evidence in the woods behind her apartment complex. Checking for any signs of a struggle from her mother who was also taken.

Anything at all other than wasting his time interrogating me and throwing out every accusation he can. If anything happens to Delilah, I’ll murder them myself. All of them. The men who took her and the detectives who kept me in this cage so I couldn’t go after her.

Picking at the dry skin on my knuckles, the two go back and forth over whether or not I should be released. Whether or not they can hold me against the lieutenant’s orders. Whether or not the case is about to “break wide open.”

As if I can’t hear them over the groan of the ancient heater tucked into the drop ceiling above.

All the while, my frustration and anger simmers. I’ve sat here far too long, answering questions from men who know far too little. The weight of my sins pressing against my chest is heavy as I breathe in as deeply as I can, yet what’s happened still feels suffocating.