CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

TROY

MARIA PRETENDED NOT to speak English, but I knew her game. She did it so that no one would speak to her. Not at my mother’s house in Sparrow’s neighborhood where she originally started cleaning for us, and not at my place in Back Bay. It worked for the most part, but then I caught her at the mall, speaking fluent English to a cashier. She almost swallowed her tongue when she saw me waiting in line behind her, but I just smiled and let it slide.

She didn’t want to converse, and it’s not like I fucking needed her intellectual input in my life.

When I walked into my penthouse and saw that she wasn’t alone, I almost lost my shit completely. It was only by a miracle that I pulled myself together. I bit my toothpick so hard, the wood crushed like tissue paper.

“Mr. Brennan…” A short man with no-nonsense clothes and small eyes got up from my sofa—my fucking sofa—and reached to shake my hand. “I’m detective Phil Stratham. My partner is on his way here, as well. I’m here to ask you a few questions about the disappearance of Flynn Van Horn.”

This time it didn’t even take me a second to do the math.

Brock. The fucker tipped the police about Flynn’s death. This was orchestrated carefully. Wasn’t a coincidence. Red was with him and not only did he not want me to find them, he deliberately put an obstacle in front of me. He wanted to serve me my ass on a plate.

Well played, Kavanagh. Too bad I invented the game.

“We have a very strong reason to believe Van Horn was with you the last few hours before his, er, disappearance.”

The detective knew he was dead…and I had a feeling his death was a deliberate “accident” on Brock’s part. You didn’t leave a detoxing junkie alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods. His body was still fresh when I found him. Brock never answered my calls.

The walls were inching in. Closer…closer…

“Got a warrant?” My lips thinned as I walked straight to Maria. Her eyes widened. That was a good thing. She was scared. Maybe she knew something.

“Look, we got a tip and—”

“Got. A. Fucking. Warrant?” I repeated slowly, watching as the hair on his arms stood on end. “If not, get the hell out of my place right now. I won’t ask twice.”

“Brennan…” His voice pitched high. “Don’t talk to me like that. I’m just here for—”

“Someone’s fed you a pack of lies,” I cut him off. “I don’t know if Brock Greystone called you, or if he sent someone else to do his dirty work for him, but I didn’t do shit to Flynn Van Horn other than to deliver him to Greystone. He was the one detoxing him, not me.”

Pretty accurate. I got rid of the body, but for obvious reasons, that wasn’t something I wanted to mention. “Look, I really have shit to do. Our little friendly talk will have to wait.”

With that, I dragged Maria by the arm into the guest room, not caring about raising eyebrows. Pinning her against the closet, I got in her face, opening my eyes wide and giving her my crazy motherfucker look.

“Where’s your son in law?”

“Que?”

“Cut the crap. I know you understand me. I know you speak English when you fucking feel like it, and you better feel like it right now, if you want to get out of this place with your tongue not ripped out of your mouth. Tell me where he is, now.”

Maria started stuttering, a mish-mash of English and Spanish, throwing glances behind my head, hoping Detective Shithead would walk in and save the day. I was losing my patience, diving deeper into despair. Where the fuck could he be? Where could he take her?

“I don’t know!” she shouted. “I don’t know! He never to tell me anything!”

“You lie,” I screamed into her face, losing every ounce of control I had left in me. Time was not on my side. Hell, no one else was, either. “You lie and Sparrow’s life’s in danger because of the fucker. Answer me now, bitch!” I slammed my open palms into the wall. “Answer!”

I wasn’t proud of it, of course I wasn’t. Maria was twice my age, and regardless, the word “bitch” wasn’t really my style. I was more into the “fuck” business. But I’d lost it. Officially and genuinely lost my shit.

“You no see my Catalina anymore?” She blinked fast, checking me out from underneath her lashes.

Was this blackmail? Was my housekeeper extorting me so I would dump her daughter?

“I haven’t seen her in months. It’s over. Maria. Look, please…” I tried another tactic, pressing my palms together. Hell, I would have gotten down on my knees if I thought it would help. “Tell me anything. Tell me. I need to know where he is. Please. Just…please.”

She looked left and right, ashamed and anxious. Finally, a fucking breakthrough. She was going to give me something. Something was better than nothing. At this point, I would take anything.

“He came on Saturday to home…” She cleared her throat, coughing a little. “My home. He taking the thing.” She started making digging movements with her hands. “Then leave.”

“The what? The what? The shovel? Did he take a shovel?”

She stared at me helplessly, unblinking. I fished my phone out of my pocket, the battery almost dead, and punched the word shovel into the search engine. I thrust the picture in her face.

“Is this what he took? That’s what he left with?”

She nodded slowly, gulping. “This,” she confirmed.

Fuck.

He took her to the woods. More than likely, to the place where I buried any chance of us ever making it as a couple. He took her to the woods, and I knew exactly where, because it was the last place I wanted her to be. Because it was the place that’d hurt her the most.

I stalked out of the guest room, praying that detective Fuck Face hadn’t left the building yet. He hadn’t. He was still in my living room, his arms crossed over his chest, planted on my sofa like a punished kid. Goddamn. This was a guy in charge of finding potential criminals and murderers? No wonder I was still on the loose.

“Can you spare me five minutes?” he asked, darting up and moving in my direction.

I nodded, passing by him as I headed straight for the door. “I can give you even more, but I need your car, and I need it now.”