Chapter Eighteen

Griffin

Ben was off and running before I'd even processed what was happening. By the time I went after him, I faced a sea of people sensible enough to be running away from danger rather than toward it, coming in the opposite direction. The shout had come from the second floor, Ben taking the stairs two at a time in his haste to reach the top.

Not everyone had escaped. There was a large crowd of people trapped behind the man waving a knife around, none of them daring to pass in case he used it on them. It took a moment to realize that I recognized him. Mainly because with sweat plastering his hair to his brow and the frenzied look in his eye, he looked nothing like the man Ben and I had only interviewed a week ago. Yet, Douglas—Dougie—Elrod, it most certainly was. Did his mother know he was here? I almost laughed at the absurdity of the thought.

Harry was trying to reason with Dougie, one hand outstretched while he edged closer. One tap on the shoulder from Ben, and he conceded his position to a superior officer. No doubt he was relieved to pass on the mantle of responsibility. I know I would have been.

Ben slid his hand into his jacket pocket and produced his badge as a couple of bouncers appeared at the top of the stairs. He held it up without taking his eyes off Dougie. "DCI Ben Weaver." They, too, were happy to step back and leave him to it. They remained in the background, presumably in case a bit of muscle was required. Someone had apparently informed the DJ that there was a bit of a situation, the music stopping abruptly mid-song, the silence jarring.

"Don't come any closer!" Dougie screeched. "I know how to use this thing, and I'll cut you."

"Do you remember me?" Ben asked calmly. "We spoke last week." From the look on Dougie's face, he seemed to be having trouble remembering who he was, never mind someone else. "We came round to your house because we needed to ask you a few questions about your ex-boyfriend, Rupert Shaw."

"He died," Dougie said. "I killed him. I warned him he didn't want to break up with me, that we weren't done, but he wouldn't listen. Nobody ever listens to me."

The confession hit like a slug to the chest. Was Dougie really Satanic Romeo? If so, Ben and I had both discounted him, and for reasons that had nothing to do with him having an alibi. We'd both recognized how easy that would be to get from his mother, who obviously doted on him.

"I'm listening to you," Ben said as he inched forward another step. "Why don't you give me the knife, and then we can sit and talk."

Dougie shook his head. "You don't want to talk to me. Not really. "

"I do. I came round to talk to you, remember? We had tea and biscuits together."

Something flickered in Dougie's expression. "You didn't eat any. My mother was offended."

Despite the frantic thud of my heartbeat, and ignoring Ben's expression telling me not to, I stepped forward so Dougie could see me. If I left Ben to deal with this on his own, and he got stabbed, I'd never forgive myself. I might not have any police training, but I'd dealt with difficult people before. Hell, I was one. "I had a biscuit. A custard cream. Do you remember me?"

Dougie's panicked gaze met and held mine. I gave him an encouraging nod as his brow furrowed. His gaze soon swung back to Ben, though. "I didn't want to kill him. Not really. I just wanted things to be like they used to between us."

In the background, Olivia was recording the conversation on her phone.

"I understand that," Ben said soothingly. "And we can talk about it. You can tell me everything that happened that night."

"I killed the rest as well," Dougie said, a shocked gasp going up from the people trapped behind him. A guy who didn't look to be any older than nineteen decided he'd had enough at that point and tried to get by Dougie. He shrank back when Dougie turned in his direction and he found himself the recipient of some wild knife slashes.

"Stay where you are!" Ben said, his instruction aimed at the group of people at Dougie's back rather than at Dougie himself. "Look at me, Dougie." Dougie turned slowly back to face him. "How about you give me the knife?" Ben advanced another step, only a couple of meters separating them now.

I held my breath, fear for Ben making me sweat almost as much as Dougie was .

"Rupert and I were meant to be together. I loved him, and he knew that. He said I suffocated him, that I was too much for him and he couldn't take it anymore, that I loved him too much. How can you love someone too much? How is that possible?"

"It isn't," Ben said, clearly prepared to say whatever Dougie needed to hear. "Some men just can't see what's right in front of them." Was that a dig at me? Probably not. Even Ben couldn't be so calm and collected when faced with a self-confessed serial killer waving a knife around, that he could take time out to make veiled digs. "He should have appreciated you more. He should have realized how lucky he was."

"He should!" Dougie straightened, forgetting to wave the knife around in his newfound enthusiasm at someone agreeing with him. "And I told him that. I told him until I was blue in the face." He laughed. "What a ridiculous saying. Who goes blue in the face?"

Someone that's dead. I didn't say it, but I could tell I wasn't the only person thinking it. And if Dougie was telling the truth, he should have seen enough dead men to know that. Although, maybe he'd been too busy sawing their fingers off to pay much attention to what their face looked like.

"An incredibly ridiculous saying," Ben said, keeping up his agreement. No doubt if Dougie said the sky was green, Ben would come out in full support of that statement. It was working, though, less than half a meter separating them as Ben kept shuffling forward. Close enough that if Dougie lashed out, he could do a lot of damage. I willed Ben to be careful, wishing I possessed some of the freaky mind-reading powers of the psychics at the PPB. If I did, I could transmit a message to him, telling him to be careful, and reminding him that although my behavior for the last three years might not have shown it, that I loved him, and didn't want to spend any more days without him.

"What's going to happen to me?" Dougie asked, tears streaming down his face now. "They're going to put me in prison and throw away the key, aren't they?"

"It'll be alright," Ben lied as he slowly stretched a hand across the space. "Whatever you did, you did it because you had to. Right?"

"Right!" Dougie brightened. "He left me no choice. It was him or me."

Ben's fingertips were a hairsbreadth away from Dougie now. I felt sick as he began to prize the knife from his hand, Dougie too lost in thought about his beloved Rupert to realize what was happening. The man he'd loved so much, he'd murdered him and removed all his fingers. One wrong move and it would be Ben missing fingers. "I know what you need," Ben said, still using that same voice that oozed calm and reassurance. "A nice cup of tea. One with plenty of sugar in. And a biscuit. What's your favorite biscuit?"

"What?" Dougie's brow furrowed, and for one horrifying moment I thought Ben had misjudged it, that the question was just that bit too abstract for Dougie to get behind. And then he shook his head. "A chocolate hob nob, of course."

"Yeah?" Ben had injected just the right amount of surprise into his voice. "They're my favorite, too. Had your mother offered me one of those, there's no way I would have said no. What do you say to us getting some? A whole packet. Just for you and me."

Dougie blinked at him. "That would be nice."

"You've got to let go of the knife first. "

The moment stretched as Ben applied more pressure to easing the knife from Dougie's fingers and everyone held a collective breath. When Dougie let go, it was almost an anticlimax.

Things happened quickly after that, Ben stepping back as Harry and Olivia surged past him. Harry took Dougie down to the floor in a movement so seamless I suspected he'd once played rugby. He wrenched his hands behind his back, Olivia producing a pair of handcuffs from God only knew where—her skirt certainly hadn't concealed them—and fastening Dougie's hands behind his back with quick, practiced movements. Realizing that tea and biscuits weren't the order of the day after all, Dougie started crying.

The space filled with uniformed officers who'd presumably been called when it had all kicked off, but who'd had enough sense to stay out of the way during Ben's negotiation efforts. Two of them pulled Dougie to his feet and read him his rights, while another started taking statements from those who'd witnessed the whole thing. Evidence got collected efficiently, the knife bagged, and Olivia surrendering her phone with the recording on it. And all I could do was stand around and feel useless. Any attempt to get to Ben proved unsuccessful. As the hero of the hour, and the ranking officer, he was too much in demand. It was perhaps as well. I wasn't sure I could resist the urge to take him in my arms and tell him he'd been an idiot… a brave idiot, but an idiot nevertheless, and he wouldn't have thanked me for that in front of so many people.

In the end, I left him to it and returned to the lower level of the club where all the lights were on and the DJ was nowhere to be seen. Most club goers had accepted their night being over and had left, but a few still milled around. Either they held the vague hope of the lights going off and the music restarting once the police left, or they were simply enjoying having front row seats to the drama. No doubt there would be a plethora of wildly exaggerated stories given to the press by the end of the following day.

Spotting a bartender still behind the main bar, I headed over to it and took a seat on a stool. My arse had barely made contact before he was shaking his head. "We're not serving anymore. You know, on account of the…"

He left the rest unsaid, presumably reluctant to use the words knife-wielding or serial killer in his sentence. I jerked my head toward a huddle of uniformed police officers. "Even if I'm with them?"

He eyed me suspiciously until I gave in to the inevitable and extracted the temporary ID from my pocket and slid it across the bar toward him. He studied it for a few seconds before passing it back. "I suppose I can make an exception. What'll it be?"

My stock answer of whiskey was right there on my tongue. Ben wouldn't thank me for it, though, and he had enough on his plate without worrying about what I was up to. Perhaps I could do something nice for him. Something that told him I might have disappeared from the scene, but I was still thinking about him. "Ginger beer. It's my boyfriend's favorite."

I got a strange look for the bit I'd tagged on at the end, but he produced a bottle from the fridge, opening it for me before passing it across. When I tried to pay, he shook his head. "On the house." I raised the bottle in a silent toast, both of us watching the goings-on in silence for the next few minutes. There was no sign of Flynn in the thinning crowd. Either he'd left before it had all kicked off, or he'd left since then .

"Carl," the bartender said from behind me. I blinked, the word not making sense when my mind had been elsewhere. "My name," he explained. "It seems like something you should know when we're sharing a drink together." I hadn't registered we were, but sure enough, he had an open bottle of beer in his hand.

"Griffin," I provided, even though my name had been on the ID. Our focus shifted as they escorted Dougie down the stairs. He'd stopped crying, bemusement taking the place of upset, like he had no idea what was happening to him, or why.

"Do you think it's really him?" Carl asked.

I played dumb. "Him?"

"Satanic Romeo. I heard he confessed to it."

News certainly traveled fast if that had reached him before I'd even made it downstairs. "I guess he must be if he confessed to it," I said. "People don't have a habit of confessing to things they haven't done." Especially when that something was multiple murders.

"He doesn't look like a serial killer."

He didn't. Stripped of the knife and having calmed down, he was back to looking like a lost little boy. But he'd certainly looked dangerous when he'd been waving a knife around with a crazed look in his eye. It had been easy enough to believe at that point that he'd murdered Rupert and the rest of them. "If most serial killers looked like a serial killer, they'd get caught a lot sooner."

Carl huffed out a laugh. "I suppose so. I've served him a few times, though, and he always seemed really sweet and polite."

I'd stopped listening to him, all my attention focused on the man making his way across the now almost empty club toward me. Ben looked like if he didn't get to a bed soon, he'd fall asleep where he stood. He'd lost his jacket during the fracas to leave his muscular arms bare, his casual clothes now seeming completely out of place despite us still being in the club. He stopped in front of me, his gaze dropping to the bottle I held. "Since when have you drunk ginger beer?" Even his voice sounded tired.

I held the bottle out, Ben finishing the rest in a series of long swallows before placing the empty bottle on the bar. Either for discretion's sake or because he'd thought of something better to do, Carl had done a disappearing act. "Since tonight," I said in response to the unanswered question. I checked over Ben's shoulder, relieved to find no sign of Harry or Olivia, the two PCs presumably still upstairs. "Can we get out of here, or do you need to stay?"

Ben's contemplation of the question took an age before he finally nodded and we made our way to the exit. I said a silent prayer that nobody would try to stop us. For once, I got my wish, Ben and I reaching the street awash with squad cars and uniforms without being intercepted. I paused on the threshold to drag in a breath of considerably fresher air, the stuffiness of the club only now becoming apparent when I was out of it.

There was an alley next to Eclipse, Ben looking bemused as I tugged him down it until we were out of sight. "Griff, I have to—"

Backing him against a wall, I silenced him with a kiss, concentrating on the reassuring feel of him against me. Our reunion might only be a recent one, but it didn't feel like it. It felt like the three-year separation had been nothing but a blip. One I'd caused, but a blip nevertheless.

"Griff!"

I released his lips, but kept my forehead pressed against his, the enveloping darkness cocooning us and making it feel like we'd traveled much farther from the club than we had. "Never do that again," I said.

"Do what?" Ben's tone suggested uncertainty between amusement and annoyance.

I lifted my head, just able to make out his features in the dark. "Take on a crazed lunatic single-handedly with a blade that could have gutted you in a matter of seconds."

"What else was I supposed to do? Leave it to Harry?"

The word yes hovered on my tongue, but I didn't say it. Deep down, I knew that had never been an option, but I wasn't driven by logic at this moment. I was driven by a deep-seated fear that had things turned out differently, I could have lost him, that those years I'd thrown away might have turned out to be the biggest regret of my life.

"I'm fine, Griff." He lifted his hands to palm my cheeks. "No cuts. No bruises. No injuries at all. And we have a lead. Something to investigate."

"Yeah… We do." It still seemed somewhat dreamlike, particularly the part where we'd just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Ben dragged me forward, our kiss this time more passionate. I gave myself up to it, my hands roaming over Ben's hard body and seeking skin until that wasn't enough and I pulled him tighter against me, hard cock against hard cock as we celebrated a breakthrough in our own inimitable style.

Just as I was prepared to fuck in an alley for the first time in nearly forty years of being on the planet, Ben drew back. "Hold that thought."

"Till when?"

He sighed. "Not a question I can answer, unfortunately. We might have caught him, but that's just the start. The hard work of proving it really was him starts now. "

I frowned. "Multiple witnesses, including three police officers, all heard him confess. Olivia recorded him saying it."

Ben laughed. "It's not that simple. He wouldn't be the first person to confess to something he hadn't done. You saw him in the club. Would you say he was in his right mind? And why would Dougie Elrod be trying to summon a demon? What was he going to do with one when he succeeded? Move it in with him and his mother?"

"Maybe he wasn't trying to summon one. Maybe he drew those symbols because he thought they looked cool and they took us down the wrong path, made us assume something that wasn't true. Or maybe he always meant them to be misdirection, in order to make it look like it wasn't him."

"Maybe. That's my point, though. There are still too many unanswered questions."

Much as I didn't appreciate Ben being the voice of reason, I got where he was coming from, and he was the expert. I stroked a hand through his hair. "You need sleep."

Ben snorted. "I wish."

"You're not going home?"

He shook his head. "I need to go to the station and see what Dougie has to say for himself. I should already be on my way there. I would be if someone hadn't dragged me down an alley."

"You're running on empty."

He extricated himself from me and I lamented the loss of his body warmth. "What's new? It's nothing that coffee won't solve." He pulled his phone out of his pocket. "I'll call a cab for you."

I pressed my hand over his to still his movements. "Don't. If you're going to the station, then I am too."

"You don't need to. "

I ignored him, knowing he was too tired to argue. Sure enough, when I started back to the street and all the chaos we'd left behind, Ben fell in step beside me.