Chapter 42

CHAPTER

FORTY-TWO

DETECTIVE MICHALES

Pushing back from the gun pressed to my face, I quickly realize that my room is full of the men I’ve been investigating.

Grant.

William.

Samuel.

And Edmund.

The four of them surrounding my bed. They are clearly not here with good intentions.

“Up.” William gestures with the gun.

I climb from the bed, and they escort me to my office and turn on the light. Their eyes roam over the photos pinned to my wall as William shoves me into the seat behind my desk.

“You got this one wrong.” Samuel taps his finger against a photo of a pretty brunette hung beneath the photo of him. Kaylie. “This one wasn’t me.”

“That one was Liz actually,” William divulges. “She was less than pleased to come home to find my cock inside of someone without her.”

“I thought she looked familiar,” Edmund imparts before asking. “921 Ruby Ridge?”

William gives a nod, silently blowing my entire case wide open.

The girls.

The Preserves.

Every last one of them. They’ve been right in front of us this entire time. Slowly being buried beneath properties Edmund is constructing.

“All of you.” I shake my head. “You’re all the depraved pieces of shit I’ve been ranting about. Everything. You’re all guilty as fucking sin.”

“You aren’t exactly innocent.” Grant tosses a folder on the desk before me, photos spilling from it when it hits Michales’ chest.

I lift the the small stack and rifle through it before exclaiming, “I don’t know any of these women. Except?—”

“You should,” Grant interrupts. “You’ve been so entangled in our lives that I was quite disappointed to learn how many of our indiscretions you had missed when I came by earlier today. Shoddy fucking police work, if you want my opinion.”

Dropping the photos onto the desk, I attempt to stand, pausing when William presses the gun to the back of my neck and shoves me back into my seat.

“But now,” Samuel removes his photo from the wall and replaces it with two of the women from the desk, “they’re your indiscretions.”

“It will never stick!” I exclaim as he removes each of the men’s photos from my wall. Taking his time, he slowly papers the wall with photos of gorgeous coeds.

“This town has been watching you spiral,” Grant taunts me. “Losing your wife. Your kids. Even your job. All while trying to convince everyone that the rich, upstanding men of this town were responsible for the crimes you were committing.”

“No one will ever fucking believe that!” I shake my head

“Who’s going to tell them otherwise?” Edmund questions as Samuel presses a pin through a final photograph.

Harper.

“This wall is riddled with your fingerprints.” Samuel shoves the pictures of each of them into his pocket. “And you mailed your confession to the Adelaide Cove PD earlier today. They’ll probably receive it by lunch tomorrow.”

My eyes dart around the room, bouncing between each of the men looming over me and the dozens of women pinned to the wall.

They’re going to fucking get away with everything…

William fists the back of my shirt and lifts me from the chair forcibly. With the muzzle of the gun firmly pressed into my back, he shoves me through the house and out the front door.

“Move.” William painfully jabs the barrel into me when I stutter as the gravel driveway digs into the soles of my bare feet.

“No one will ever believe I killed myself when I have muzzle bruises all over my back,” I sneer. My vision quickly blackens at the edges when the butt of the gun cracks against my skull.

“No one is ever going to find your body,” Edmund threatens as the four of them lead me to the trees lining my property.

“What is it that you said,” Edmund steps before me when we reach them, “to Harper as I listened to you beat her within an inch of her life?”

He drops a duffel bag at his feet and unzips it before bending down and rifling through it. He pulls out two bundles of rope and hands them to Grant as he continues to dig in the bag.

“Oh, yes,” he sighs as he slides a whip from it. “I thought you liked it rough.”