With Ties That Bind (The Broken Bonds 4)

I hear one of them say, “Cop…” and that’s when I delicately maneuver Avery aside and push the door open. “Stop right—” I reach for my badge, but Avery clasps my forearm with a tight grip.

“Quinn, you can’t shoot them—”

And like that, the guys are hauling ass toward the back door and I’m staring down at her stunned face. “I’m not pulling my gun. Jesus, Avery.”

She releases a clipped breath and drops her hands. She’s shaking.

“What’s going on here?” I let my gaze travel around the dark room. Flatscreen on but muted; a topless girl giving a lap dance on the screen. A couple candles lit on an end table. On the other table, there’s another one of those baggies.

Avery follows my line of sight. “It’s not what you think…”

“You keep saying that.” I walk toward the table and take out a pen from my inseam to pick it up by the corner. “But if you really want me to believe you, then you need to talk.” My instincts say that I don’t actually want to know—that I’ve interrupted some kind of kinky sex party…and I really don’t need that image of Avery in my mind.

I hear her force out a long breath before she picks up the remote and clicks off the TV. She walks over to the end table, blows out the candles, and flips on the lamp. The room fills with a light. “It’s an aphrodisiac.”

This isn’t what I expect. Cocaine, molly, meth—all drugs I know about and how to handle when it comes to the user. What the fuck is an aphrodisiac? “Like Spanish fly?”

I face Avery and glimpse a hint of her smile. “Wow. You are old school. Spanish fly,” she repeats with mock humor as she sinks onto the couch. “No. Yes…it’s something in the realm, but more potent. Think red wine and chocolate on crack,” she says, pulling her robe more securely around her chest.

I lay the baggie on the table and pocket my pen. My mind starts deducing the facts. I can’t help it; there’s no Off switch for the detective in me. Avery has a boyfriend. At least, that’s been the gossip around the department. She keeps to herself, always professional, but I run a mental tab on everyone.

I’m sure transitioning back into her life hasn’t been easy since the abduction, but what I’ve seen of her the past couple of days goes against the grain of the Avery Johnson I know.

“And the two guys…?” I prompt.

She shrugs. “I tried to make it work with Rick,” she says, confirming my suspicion about the boyfriend. “He was so accepting. Completely willing to wait. Never pressuring me for—” she breaks off and looks up at me. “Sex.”

This conversation is entering a territory beyond my comfort zone. I shift my feet, glance back at the door, wondering if it’s too late to flee. Only as I look at Avery, I know I’m not going anywhere.

The downturned corners of her full lips is like a force reeling me in, and my feet are moving me toward her. “What a bastard,” I say, pleased when another small smile graces her mouth.

But she quickly covers it with her hand. “It wasn’t him,” she continues. “It was me. I just wanted everything to be normal again. I wanted to pick up where we left off. But being with him, seeing the commiseration in his eyes, the delicate way he handled me…it was a constant reminder that I’m broken. That I must now be treated differently.”

I try to think of something to say, wanting to denounce her very inaccurate assessment of herself, but she pushes past her statement. “Anyway,” she says, sitting forward and propping her elbows on her knees. “The two guys here…the guys at the bar last night…I don’t know them. They don’t know me. They have no knowledge of what I went through. I don’t see my pain reflected back at me in their eyes. Just lust. They just want me. And it…helps.” She lowers her gaze.

I tread carefully. “If that’s so, then why the need for an aphrodisiac?”

She visibly squirms. “I said that I wanted to be normal, not that I magically am. Ending things with Rick helped to forget some, but I still…” Her eyes capture mine. “Do you really want to hear all this, Quinn?”

She’s giving me an out. We work together, know certain details of each other’s lives, but there’s a line colleagues don’t cross. Shouldn’t cross. Once I go to that next level, once I offer myself as a confidant, it’s as good as making a promise to her. Which comes with a clause that gives her access to the intimate details of my life. These exchanges are never one-sided.

I glance around the room, seeking evidence that she already has a confidant. Pictures of parents, friends—but it’s disturbing how bare her walls are. They look like mine. Blank white slates. One obvious drawback of our careers is that they don’t leave much room for nurturing relationships.

I’m moving before I’ve even fully made a decision. Because, if I’m being honest with myself, I already crossed that line the first night I slipped into her hospital room despite the nurse’s bitching about visiting hours and took her hand. When I brushed

my fingers through her hair to calm her as she fought sleep, screaming against her nightmares.

I lower myself before her, eye-to-eye. “Yes.”

The glassy whites of her eyes shimmer in the dim lighting. Pressing her lips together, she sniffs hard, fortifying herself. “Okay.” She nods. “It’s like, I’m disgusted with myself because I can’t stop thinking about sex. Wanting to prove that what he did to me…that it didn’t ruin me. I need to have control over my body—to be able to get turned on and want to have sex when I say so. I want a man to touch me and not cringe at that touch. I want to stop flinching at something as harmless as a kiss. I want to close my eyes and not see his twisted smile. Not feel him…”

Her whole body is trembling. I move onto the couch and just sit next to her. It’s Avery who presses into my chest, clings to the lapels of my coat. My arms surround her of their own accord, and I let my chin rest on top of her head.

Having engrossed myself with the sadistic details of each of the serial killings in order to get inside the head of the man I was hunting, I know all the sick and twisted ways he tormented his victims. And when Avery was laying in that hospital bed, my mind spun on a continuous loop, like an old 70s movie reel. Envisioning her torment.

When it came time to interview her, it wasn’t me. If I confirmed the images in my head, I would never stop seeing them. Every time I’d look at her in the lab, I’d see her as a victim. And the perp was dead. I couldn’t kill him twice.

I can’t make her pain stop now. I can’t fix this for her. What the fuck good am I?