Springfield, Illinois

Springfield Police Department

“Durango!”

Gracie came rushing down the corridor ahead of the beat cop escorting her to the holding cell, her hands reaching out for him despite the bars that separated them. He moved to the bars and took her hands, holding them tight for a long moment, relieved to see a familiar face.

“What are you doing here?”

“I had to come. Why didn’t you call anyone?”

“I called Axel.”

She nodded, a cloud floating over her eyes for a second. “He held a meeting and announced that he was the new head of operations. He said you’d be out for a few days, and that everyone was to report to him.”

“Yeah. We were going to make the announcement this afternoon, but, obviously, that’s not going to happen.”

He started to pull his hands away, but she held on, refusing to let him let go. “He said that a detective working Kyle’s case was killed?”

Durango nodded. What else was there to say?

“Why did they arrest you?”

“It’s complicated, Gracie.”

She tilted her head slightly, a glare touching on her glasses from the overhead lights. “When you say something’s complicated, I know there’s trouble coming.”

“I think trouble has already arrived.”

She squeezed his hands, her plain pink lips parting slightly as if she was about to say something. But then they were interrupted by the arrival of another beat cop.

“You’re being released, Masters.”

Durango stepped back from the bars as the cop began working his key into the lock, too shocked to ask questions.

“What’s happening?” Gracie demanded.

The cop looked at Durango with all the disgust and anger that could fit in his tall, thin body. “Someone alibied him.”

“An alibi? Who?”

The cop just shook his head. “I’m sure they’ll eventually find a hole in it. But, until then, Cap says we have to let him go.”

The cop opened the cell door and gestured for Durango to walk out. Gracie grabbed his hand as he stepped out, moving her body close to his side as they walked together toward the doors at the end of the corridor. When they stepped through, Durango found himself wishing they’d take him back.

His father, all tall and Hollywood looking, was sitting with Detective Fedor at a desk across the room.

“Fuck me,” he whispered under his breath.

“Who is that?” Gracie asked.

“Jackson Chamberlain.”

She was quiet for a second. “Who is that?”

He glanced at her, surprised she wasn’t flustered, all awed to be in the same space with the famed Hollywood director. But she seemed genuinely confused as to who he was.

“My father,” he finally answered her.

She just nodded, her eyes moving back to Jackson’s face. He could almost see her trying to find the resemblance between them. Durango knew, logically, there probably was some. But he always believed he looked more like his mother than his father.

Fedor stood and came over, his entire body seething with rage.

“I will prove it was you, asshole,” he said in a low, steady voice. “I don’t know how you keep walking away from these things, but I will find the answer, and I will make sure you pay for what you’ve done.”

Durango couldn’t let that go unanswered. He stepped forward and said in a low, hard voice, “The only thing I’m guilty of, asshole, is showing your partner a damn good time, something I’m sure you wanted to do, but you weren’t exactly her type.”

Fedor punched him, slamming him into the floor. Then he followed, kneeling beside him to land a few more punches before his friends managed to pull him off.

“Get out of here, Masters!” Weller yelled at him.

Gracie was immediately at his side, helping him to his feet. He stumbled a little, more out of shape than he’d thought. But he’d gotten what he needed. They’d have to think long and hard before they arrested him again.

They’d just handed Durango perfect grounds for an assault and police brutality lawsuit.

Gracie drove him home, not speaking a word the entire drive. She followed him inside, her nose turning up at the stale scent of old tequila that permeated every corner of the downstairs rooms.

“You don’t have to stick around.”

She didn’t respond. She simply went into the kitchen and gathered up the empty bottles that were hanging out there, placing them in the trash and taking them out to the can in the backyard. Then she came back inside and broke out the cleaning supplies, scrubbing down the counters as he stood there and watched.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s better than doing the same thing to you that you goaded the cop into doing.”

“I was just trying to keep him off me.”

“Didn’t look like it to me.”

“If he ever comes to arrest me again, he’d have to have some serious evidence or I could cry harassment.”

“Yeah? It seems like they had some pretty serious evidence this time.”

Durango’s eyebrows rose. “What do you know about it?”

She stopped mid scrub, pulled out her phone and handed it to him. Already pulled up was an article from the local papers describing the scene of Hyde’s murder. It mentioned sexual assault as well as the t-shirt found wrapped around her throat.

“You slept with her?”

Durango set the phone on the counter and went to the cupboard where he kept his booze, disappointed to discover he no longer had any tequila. He pulled down a bottle of sherry someone had given him as a gift and popped the top, taking a long swallow as he felt her eyes heavy on him.

“You are too smart to be such a fucking ass. Are you trying to ruin your life?”

“I’m trying to fucking survive!”

“It doesn’t look like it.”

She turned back to her cleaning. Durango took another swallow of the sherry before setting it down and moving up behind her, grabbing her arms to still her cleaning.

“I don’t want you to clean my house, Gracie. I don’t want you here, don’t want you getting involved in this insanity.”

“You’ve made that pretty clear.”

“Have I? Then why are you still here?”

“I don’t know.”

She pulled away, dropping the rag she’d been using on the floor. Then she thought better of it, reaching down to snatch it up, tossing it into the sink.

“I just . . .” She stopped, biting her bottom lip as she fought some emotion hidden behind those damn glasses. “I can’t stand to see you do this to yourself, Durango. You’re imploding, and all everyone can do is watch it happen.”

“I’m not doing this to myself. Some asshole is killing all the women in my life!”

“Yeah. But you’re handing him the weapon on a silver platter!”

“How am I doing that?”

“You drink too much. You act irresponsibly, going out sleeping with any and every woman who crosses your path! Sleeping with the detective investigating the case?” She shook her head, clearly outraged at the idea. “Why would you do that?”

“It wasn’t planned.”

“But you were there. You could have stopped it.”

“Why? Why should I have stopped it? She was a beautiful woman who came here and threw herself at me. Why should I walk away from that?”

“Because it was inappropriate! Because it landed you in jail!”

“I couldn’t have seen that coming.”

“You should have.”

Durango shook his head. “No one knew about us. No one could have known about us. How could he have known?”

“How did he know about Kyle? How did he know he could get close to her? How did he know about your fiancée? How did he know that she would let him in the apartment?” Gracie shook her head. “I don’t know, Durango. But surely you’ve realized that this guy knows things he shouldn’t, that he’s just waiting for you to fuck up so he can take advantage of it!”

Durango tilted his head, not sure what amazed him more: that Gracie knew so much about the strangler and his past, or that she’d used the f word. He’d never heard a curse word cross those perfect lips before, never imagined she was even capable of it.

“This is not my fault!”

“The murders? No, they’re not. But your drinking, your dangerous behavior—that’s your fault. You’re making a victim out of yourself!”

Rage turned his vision red. He moved into her, grabbed her by the throat as he pushed her back against the counter.

“You have no fucking idea what’s this has been like! Living with the guilt of what happened to Sarah, being put on trial by those fools in Chicago! Everyone looking at me like I’m the same category of scum that I used to put behind bars. You . . .” He squeezed hard at her throat for a second, before backing off, the fear and shock in her eyes enough to eat through the rage. He stepped back, ending on a weak note. “You have no idea.”

“If you think you’re the only person to ever suffer the way you have, then you’re a damn fool,” she said as she approached him, catching him by surprise. He couldn’t imagine why she’d want to come near him after what he’d just done. “You’re not alone, Durango. But you will be if you keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

She reached up and touched his nose, causing a flash of pain to burn through him. Her fingers moved down his jaw, sliding over the curve that led to his chin.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” she said.

He nodded. “I’m sorry, Gracie.”

He touched her throat, something breaking deep inside of him at the sight of the redness that would soon turn into a bruise. She pulled his hand away, holding it to her breast as she stepped into him.

She tilted her head up and he was a breath from kissing her when the front door suddenly burst open.

“Brother!”

Billy Chamberlain, Durango’s stepbrother, walked through the door with all the confidence and pompousness of a popular television star. Born Billy Grant, he’d adopted Jackson’s name when he went into acting, hoping the name alone would land him jobs. And it had. But it also cemented a connection that Durango had sought to avoid the same way Billy had embraced as though it were his birth right.

Perhaps it should have been.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Durango demanded as he rushed toward the shorter man. “No one told me you were in town!”

“We’re in Chicago shooting outdoor scenes, and I saw the article in the paper. Fuck, Durango, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

Durango shook his head even as he went into one of those manly embraces Billy never failed to offer whenever they met.

“It’s a clusterfuck,” he admitted.

“Yeah, it is. I heard they only let you out because Jackson swore you were with him during the time the woman was killed?”

“I guess. I didn’t hang around to ask.”

Billy’s eyes shifted to Gracie where she stood in the archway to the kitchen. She was watching, her eyes cautious and curious. But, like when she saw Jackson in the police station, she didn’t seem to recognize Durango’s famous brother.

Did this woman not own a television?

“Who is this fine lady?” Billy asked, extracting himself from Durango and crossing the room to stand before her.

“Billy, this is Gracie Colson. She works for me at Mastiff.”

“Nice to meet you, Gracie from Mastiff.”

Gracie politely shook his hand, then ducked around him. “I should get back to the office. Axel will need help keeping things on track.”

“Gracie,” Durango said, reaching for her as she passed. But she moved just out of reach, and he didn’t think she’d appreciate him pursuing the situation. He watched her go, a part of him really wishing he could make her stay.

“Who is that, really, brother?”

Durango shook his head, regretfully closing the door behind her. “Just a friend. A good friend.”

“Hate to break it to you, but that woman has the hots for you. But you can’t really blame her, can you? We Chamberlain brothers are pretty charming.”

Durango just nodded.

“But she’s not really your type.”

“I don’t have a type.”

Durango walked around Billy to retrieve the bottle of sherry in the kitchen. But as he lifted it to his lips, he could see the disapproving look on Gracie’s face. On second thought, he capped it and put it back in the cabinet.

“You do have a type. Every woman I’ve ever seen you with is a blond with perfect blue eyes.”

“That’s not true.”

“Sure it is.”

Durango glanced at him. “That’s just a coincidence.”

“Is it? I can’t remember a woman you were with that wasn’t blond.”

Durango thought about it, searching his memory for a brunette or a redhead in his past. But he couldn’t think of a single one even though he was sure there had been. “What about you,” he finally said. “You’ve always chosen blonds, too. You even had a thing for Sarah there when we first met her.”

“True. But I’ve always emulated my big brother.”

Durango hit his arm as he passed him. “You need to get a mind of your own, Billy.”

Durango threw himself on the couch, trying not to think about the night he’d fucked Hyde on this very couch. He could almost see her, lying back against the cushions, that pleased smile on her lips.

“They’ve got you good this time, don’t they?”

Durango shook his head. “They think they do. But all they can prove is that I had sex with her, especially if Jackson went to them and told them that we were here when she was killed.”

“What is Jackson doing in town? When’s the last time you and he were even in the same room?”

“I don’t know.” Durango ran his fingers through his hair. “There was an article on the Internet talking about the night mom died. I think maybe it rattled him a little to see it.”

“So he showed up, out of the blue? He didn’t even go to Sarah’s funeral!”

“I asked him not to. I didn’t want it to turn into a circus. She deserved more than that.”

“Speaking of funerals . . .” Billy sat heaving on the couch beside Durango. “Why didn’t you call me when Kyle died? I would have liked to have attended the funeral.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just assumed you’d be in the middle of filming.”

“I was, but I would have dropped everything for that. You know that.”

Durango did know that. He knew his brother would do just about anything for him, which was why he couldn’t ask. Once again, he didn’t want to get the people he cared about wrapped up in the middle of this mess he’d somehow found himself in. Especially Billy.

He slapped his hand against Billy’s knee. “No offense, brother, but I didn’t want you here. I didn’t want you under the microscope of the cops looking into me. I didn’t want you taking the attention away from Kyle. And I didn’t want you getting caught up in my problems.”

“But we’re brothers. That’s what brothers do for each other.”

“Maybe. But not this time.”

“That’s what you said during your murder trial.” He leaned forward a little. “I could have helped you, brother.”

“And had your reputation smeared if the press had put together our relationship. It’s bad enough that that article about my mom connects me to Jackson. It won’t take long for some savvy reporter to put it all together. And then your press agent is going to have a hell of a time keeping you out of everything.”

“Don’t worry about my reputation. I have a whole list of people on my payroll who take care of that shit.”

“But I do worry.”

Billy sighed. “Always taking care of me. I don’t deserve it.”

Durango nodded. “True.”

Billy slugged him in the arm, but they both laughed. And it felt good.