Sugar Free (3 page)

Then I'm fucked…because there's no sane reason I should be out for a drive on my partner's street, see police cars, and turn around. An innocent partner would speed up to the scene of the crime and demand to know what's going on.

But I don't do that. I continue to drive away, terrified a cruiser will start after me, but ultimately making it away safe and hopefully without notice.

I head back to The Millennium, my mind now racing with all the things I need to do to get ready to face the shitstorm that's coming.

“I made you some tea,” Caroline says from the doorway of my bedroom. I sit up in the bed, brace my back against the pillows and headboard. I'd been lying here staring at the ceiling as the sky darkened, waiting for Beck to get back. Caroline hasn't said much to me since he left, and I watched her with a weird detachment as she cleaned out the shower and poured almost a full bottle of bleach down the drain. I think neither of us said anything because it seemed just terribly poor form to discuss disposing of murder evidence.

Caroline was washing a part of my sins away.

Beck was currently off wiping up the rest of them.

It was self-defense,
I remind myself.

Murder,
my guilty conscience says back.

My fingers involuntarily rub against the splotches of purple that rest at the base of my throat, compliments of JT's cast pressing down on me. I swallow and make myself take note of the slight pain that occurs as I do so.

I do this to remind myself that JT was choking me to death. I had no choice but to swing that letter opener. I hadn't planned it, but perhaps by the grace of God I found the strength to protect myself.

A repulsive half snicker, half sob explodes from my mouth and I immediately slap my hand over it. My eyes well up with tears even as a laugh bubbles up and tries to push its way out. So ironic that I killed him with a letter opener, since I had imagined using that exact implement when I visited his office to meet Karla for lunch all those months ago.

Caroline walks into the room, rounds the bed, and comes to my side, which sits closest to the window-wall. She looks at me without judgment for JT's murder and doesn't seem affronted that I'm trying hard not to laugh. She smells faintly of Clorox so she has no room to judge.

“What's so funny?” she asks carefully as she sets down the cup of tea on the night table beside me before sitting down on the edge of the bed near my hip.

I reach over for the tea, using the simple action to distract my rampant thoughts and get my bearings. I pick up the cup, bring it to my mouth, and blow on it before I take a tentative sip. It's hot and I don't even mind the slight scalding to my tongue and roof of my mouth, which also helps to distract me.

Peeking over the edge of the cup at Caroline, I say, “I once visited JT's office. He wasn't there but I looked inside and envisioned killing him in there with his own letter opener. It was a pipe dream then. It's just funny to me that little fantasy of mine came true.”

Caroline smiles at me with understanding. “Nothing wrong with a little inappropriate laughter. Or those types of fantasies.”

I smile back at her as best I can, but it's thin and without any genuine force behind it. She sees that. She knows it.

“It was more than fantasy,” I tell her with brutal honesty. Caroline just helped clean up evidence of my crime so she needs to know the full truth of what I did. That my original intention was not a silly dream but an actual plan to kill the man who destroyed my innocence.

Tears well up in my eyes again and I blink hard against them, taking another sip of my tea to ward them off.

It was self-defense,
I tell myself.

Murder,
my subconscious sneers at me.

Caroline turns slightly from me while I get myself under control and stares out the window, which overlooks the Financial District. She looks just like Beck. Same eyes, nose, and perfectly shaped smile.

Same moral character.

Although she wanted me to go to the police, she never hesitated to jump on board with Beck to help protect me by trying to erase my crime. The image of Caroline bent over with yellow rubber gloves on, scrubbing down the shower and then pouring bleach down the drain, ensured she became complicit in my crime.

That will be forever burned in my brain.

She's just helped me try to get away with murder, and she did so because she loves Beck and Beck loves me. It's overwhelming to me that I feel extraordinarily close to this woman that I hardly know at all.

“I'm sorry about what JT did to you,” Caroline says softly as she turns to face me.

I'm almost relieved by her statement and avoidance of the subject of blood and bleach, but it's still a sobering moment as I realize that I can't say those words back to her.

I don't think she should know what JT told me in those last moments before I killed him. I can't think of any good reason why I should visit that pain upon her, and I'm sorry…closure just isn't a good enough reason. She's better off not knowing who her rapist was than to know it was her half brother.

So while I can't divulge the horror of that knowledge to her, I can reach out and accept her offer of sisterhood that we now share.

“I'm sorry you went through the same thing,” I murmur.

“Beck was my rock,” she says as she leans a little closer to me, her blue eyes focused intently on mine. “I wouldn't have survived if it wasn't for him. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for him.”

Her message is clear.

“Including helping him cover up the fact I murdered someone,” I whisper the obvious.

She shakes her head. “Including helping him protect what's his. And JT got what he deserved. It was either kill or be killed, Sela, and you did what you had to do to survive. It's not the first time in your life you've endured something horrible, and it probably won't be the last.”

I stare at her, my eyes threatening to fill with tears again, but I command them to stay at bay. It's time to move past what I did.

“We should have gone to the police,” I say with a sigh, still struggling with my biggest doubt. It would have been risky, and yes, there was a good chance they wouldn't have believed me. But by staying silent, I ensured that Beck and Caroline just became my partners in crime, and I never wanted them at risk.

Caroline shrugs and stands up from the bed. She turns to me, slipping her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Looking down at me, she says, “What's done is done. Beck's handling it now and we need to trust in what he's doing.”

I nod in agreement but hating every minute we wait for him to return from what could be either a fool's or a hero's mission.

“Why don't you come into the kitchen,” Caroline says. “I made some tuna fish salad. I'll fix you a sandwich.”

My stomach rumbles, and it hits me I haven't eaten since breakfast. While you would think the fact I murdered someone in a grisly fashion not five hours ago would suppress my appetite, I find myself strangely famished.

I nod and roll off the bed. Grabbing a pair of jeans from the dresser, I slip them on and follow Caroline down the hall.

“Is Ally okay?” I ask hesitantly. When I came into the condo, she was too consumed with TV to do much more than give me a sideways glance and mumble, “Hey, Sela,” before turning her eyes back to the flat screen. Luckily, the hoodie I stole from JT covered the blood, so even if she had paid more attention to me, it's unlikely she would have seen anything to traumatize her.

“She's fine,” Caroline assures me in an undertone. “She's a smart kid and senses something, but she's also happily watching her favorite show. I fed her while you were in the shower and she'll probably fall asleep on the couch before too long.”

I glance at the couch as we walk into the living room, and Ally is lying there with a soft chenille blanket, normally kept in the hall closet, tucked around her. Her eyes are drowsy looking as she stares at
Sofia the First.
I want to go over to her, stroke her soft hair and act as if nothing's wrong. I want to joke with her, see her dimples and bask in the joy of a little girl just hanging out at her Uncle Beck's for the night.

But I don't because I'm afraid I might crumble from just her sweet ordinary child ways, which would be too much goodness for me to comprehend right now. Ally
is
the one good thing that came out of all this family's horror.

So I walk past her and follow Caroline to the kitchen, but just as we cross in front of the foyer, I hear the key slipping into the dead bolt of the door and I pause to see Beck walking in.

My heart slams to almost a complete halt, my chest constricting and the breath going stale in my lungs. He looks scared and stressed, and while there's probably a million different possibilities that could cause that, my first thought is that JT isn't dead.

Caroline stops in midstep, but rather than freeze to inaction, she turns to grab my elbow and pulls me three steps into the foyer so we are almost toe-to-toe with Beck as he closes the door and engages the lock.

“What's wrong?” she whispers so Ally doesn't hear us.

Beck's tired eyes pass over Caroline briefly, but then slide to me where they shimmer with frustration. “The police are at JT's house. They've found him.”

“But how—” I start to say, because how in the fuck was he found so fast?

Beck ignores me, turning to Caroline. “Get Ally and get out of here now. I expect the police will come to pay me a visit. Could be tomorrow, could be in five minutes, so get out of here now.”

“But—” Caroline says in astonishment.

“Get the fuck out of here now,” Beck whispers harshly but still so low that Ally is oblivious to us. “I want you far away from here when they show up. I don't want you becoming a potential witness to anything associated with JT.”

“What's that mean?” I ask, stepping into him and putting a hand on his chest.

His gaze comes back to me. “By virtue of my long relationship with him, I'm going to be a potential suspect. They're going to come and talk to me. I don't want Caroline involved.”

I spin toward her and give a quick jerk of my head toward the living room. “He's right. Get Ally and get going.”

Caroline's no fool. She doesn't spare us even a second more before turning away and hurrying into the living room. I hear her say, “Come on, honey. Let's get your shoes on and head home. It's getting late.”

“I don't suppose I could talk you into packing a bag and heading to your dad's?” Beck says softly, and I turn back to look at him with raised eyebrows. He doesn't look apologetic over his suggestion. “We'll say you went there right after school to spend a few days with him. Your dad would cover.”

I shake my head almost violently and practically growl at him. “Don't even fucking think about trying to shield me from this, Beck. If they come, then I'll be here by your side, and if they even think you had anything to do with this, I'm telling them every goddamn thing that happened.”

I expect him to argue.

I expect him to be angry at me, because I know he's in full-blown protective mode.

I expect—at the very least—for him to look annoyed at me, because after the mess I've created, he deserves to at least look a bit put out.

Instead, he snatches me to him so roughly my head snaps, but then I'm engulfed in his arms, which wrap around me tight. He squeezes me hard and his voice is desperate. “We'll get through this. I swear we will.”

I nod against him, not because I believe what he's saying, but because he needs to believe that I trust in him right now.

The sad truth, however, is that I think that both of us are getting ready to fall down the rabbit hole and there's not going to be any way out for us.

The knock on the door comes sooner than I expected, and only a little over an hour since Caroline and Ally left. I've been lying on the couch spooning with Sela, waiting for the other shoe to drop when they show up. The TV's been on, but neither one of us is absorbing. My hand is idly stroking her hip, wanting nothing more than to carry her into bed and for us to pretend none of this happened.

That means I could strip her down, eat her out, fuck her hard. All of the stuff that's been so damn good and that I've taken completely for granted.

But instead, Sela gives a quavering sigh when she hears the confident knock and we both push up and off the couch. Our eyes meet briefly and we both take a deep breath.

“Just do as we discussed earlier and it will be okay,” I whisper.

She nods, her face pale but her gaze determined.

I turn away from her, square my shoulders, and head toward the foyer. I hear the creak of leather as Sela lies back down on the couch, presenting the picture of lazy Monday evening happiness of just vegging out in front of the TV and streaming some mindless comedy we found on Netflix.

I present the same, and it was done intentionally. I'd put on a pair of sweatpants, a ratty T-shirt, and my hair was flattened on one side from resting against the pillow on the couch. I hoped to look like a guy who wasn't just a few hours ago getting ready to wipe down a murder scene and potentially sink a body deep into Richardson Bay.

Putting my eye to the peephole, I need to determine who would be sent to my house.

Uniformed cops or plainclothes.

I see a white, middle-aged man and a black woman probably in her late twenties. Both in dress pants and shirts without jackets, the man sporting a loosely knotted tie. Both are clearly detectives; I know this not because I can see their badges, but by the somber yet superior looks on their faces. Still, I school my features and try not to look overly surprised when I open the door.

Had they been uniformed cops, my eyes would be wide with concern.

But I think the best tactic at this point is to feign ignorance because for all I know, they could be Amway salesmen.

I look at them expectantly as I swing the door open, but add a tinge of annoyance to my voice. “Can I help you?”

The male cop, who has dark receding hair and a slight belly, pulls a badge I now see firmly clasped to his belt and holds it up to me. “Mr. North…I'm Detective Paul DeLatemer with the Sausalito PD.”

My gaze lands hard on the badge he holds up and then I pinch my eyebrows inward. A pained expression takes over my face. I go on the offense and blurt out, “Something's happened to JT, hasn't it?”

This throws the cop off, as I'd hoped, and he turns to look at his partner, who shoots him a look of wary surprise before she turns to me. She also holds up a badge and says, “I'm Detective Amber Denning and yes…something's happened. May we come in?”

I appear stunned for a moment, and then remember my manners, my voice sounding high pitched as I step back and wave them hurriedly in the door. “Yes, I'm sorry…please come in.”

They step into the foyer and I close the door behind them.

“Sela,” I call out, letting a touch of fear coat my words as I turn toward the living room. She pops up from the couch, as we'd discussed, and looks confused for a moment to see the detectives standing there. It's an amazing piece of acting if I do say so myself.

Her throat is covered by a lightweight turtleneck she put on, because if we were going through with this whole charade of denial to the police, then they couldn't see the bruises on her throat. Sure, they could have been from a fall or even a sex choking game that got out of hand, but it was best for there not to be any notice or questions about it. Doesn't mean I didn't take pictures with my cellphone though, which I downloaded into an encrypted file on my computer. Just in case we needed the proof later.

Sela's worried gaze flies to mine and I croak, “They're here about JT.”

“Oh no,” she whispers, hand flying to her mouth to cover it.

She looks so worried for the man who raped her, I almost burst into a spontaneous round of applause. I hold my hand out to her, and she scurries toward me in a move of solidarity and support. My arm goes around her waist and we both turn to face the detective with worried expectation.

Both of them look at us in empathy for the impending bad news they're going to deliver, but I don't have a doubt in the world they're scrutinizing every word out of our mouth and every bit of body language we're conveying.

“Can we sit down?” Detective Denning says. Her voice is crisp and forged with authority. She may be young, but I can tell she's a professional when it comes to awkward situations.

“Of course,” I say as I gesture to the dining room table.

Denning takes the end chair, which I find to be a subtle indication that she's the partner in charge, despite being the younger of the two and a minority as a black female. DeLatemer takes the seat to her right, on the far side of the table, while Sela and I sit to her left.

I scrub my hands over my face, back through my hair, and then huff out a sigh filled with regret and fear as I pin a direct look at Detective Denning. “How bad is he?”

“Excuse me?” she responds.

“JT,” I say with a touch of frustration. “How bad did they beat him up this time?”

I don't need any heightened sense of awareness to know I've shocked the cops sitting at my dining room table, and I can tell that the direction of their early investigation may have just gotten a little more interesting at this tidbit. Sela and I had a quick but unanimous decision on how we were going to handle the cops when they showed up.

We could either wait for the bad news to be delivered and hope our manufactured reactions of grief for a dearly departed friend and business colleague would be genuine enough to fool them, or we could go on the offensive and lace enough truth into the story that it would throw the scent off of us.

“Mr. North,” Detective DeLatemer says from across the table in a gentle voice. My eyes slide over to him and I stare at him with a look of dread because I can hear it in his tone that he's getting ready to drop a bomb on two poor unsuspecting people. “Your partner, Jonathon Townsend…I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but he's dead.”

Sela lets out a gasp of horror and her hand comes to my shoulder to grip me in comfort. I make a choking sound and slump down in my chair where I mutter, “No…they wouldn't have killed him…”

My voice trails off…my eyes lower to the dark teak wood and I clasp my hands together tightly. I can feel the heavy stares of both detectives as they take in my reaction.

Perfectly on cue, Sela's fingers dig into my shoulder and she says, “It's not your fault, Beck.”

“I'm sorry,” Detective Denning says, her voice still firm and in control, but there is an edge of confusion that gives me heart she's buying our hasty act. “But what's not your fault?”

My eyes snap up to hers and I try to mix in some shades of self-loathing when I tell her the parts of the story I believe to be pertinent. “JT got into some gambling trouble. Owed four million dollars to someone in Vegas. They want to collect and they paid him a visit on Sunday. Beat him up pretty badly. He called me from the hospital—”

“Which hospital?” DeLatemer interrupts me as he pulls a small pad of paper from the breast pocket of his dress shirt along with a pen. He clicks it once and starts scribbling.

“Marin General in Greenbrae,” I supply helpfully.

“And he was beaten up?” Denning asks.

I nod effusively. “Yeah…bad. He didn't tell me what happened at first. Just wanted me to take him home, but then he eventually told me about owing the money.”

“Who did he owe the money to?” DeLatemer asks as he looks up from his writing.

I shrug. “He didn't say. Just that he owed the money for a gambling debt and that they threatened to kill him if he didn't pay up.”

“They give him a deadline?”

I nod at DeLatemer. “Three days, I think he said.”

“And you weren't worried about that?” Detective Denning asks, and I turn my gaze to her. Her expression is cool, perhaps even a bit doubtful.

“Of course I was worried about it,” I snap at her, maybe with too much force, because Sela's fingers dig down into my muscles in warning.

I blow out a frustrated breath, mutter a “sorry,” and then look to Detective DeLatemer with what I hope are bleak and guilt-filled eyes. “He asked me for the money and I didn't give it to him. If they killed him, then it's my fault for not bailing him out, right?”

The detective hunches over and writes more notes. I wait for another question, but nothing comes. I turn to look at Sela, and although my back is now to Denning, I still make sure to look at Sela with the same angst and guilt I just gave to the cops. “If I'd just given him the money…”

“Don't,” Sela says urgently. “You can't think like that.”

More silence while DeLatemer scribbles. I keep my mouth shut because I don't want to overdo it. Sela's hand falls from my shoulder and she grabs my hand. I smile at her and she squeezes me reflexively. We appear to be broken.

I think.

“I find it interesting you haven't even asked what happened to your partner,” Detective Denning asks, and I turn in my chair slightly to look at her.

I go for a hesitant but confused look. “What do you mean?”

Her brown, almond-shaped eyes could be considered soft looking. But now they hold reserved belief mixed with focused curiosity. “I mean I think most people would be curious as to how he was killed. I mean…it was one of the first things his parents asked when we went to see them.”

I curse internally for the oversight, but before I can defend my completely manufactured actions, Sela says, “What does it matter to Beck how JT died? Why would he even want those gory details when he's clearly blaming himself for it even happening in the first place?”

I want to turn to Sela and kiss her, but instead I let my shoulders sag with the weight of my guilt, and I don't even bother to answer Detective Denning's question. I let her think that I've got enough troubling my soul without needing to compound it.

She startles me though when she stands from the table, pushing the heavy end chair away with the backs of her legs. DeLatemer jots down one more thing and then stands up, cutting a curt smile down at me. Sela and I also stand up, on edge and waiting to see what happens next.

“Mr. North…I'd like you to come down to the station and give a formal statement,” Detective Denning tells me.

My mind races, and while I thought this was a small possibility from the start, I'm suddenly torn as to what to do. The stress of our charade is heavy, but we've maintained what I believe to be an easily believable story. But they'll want to dig more and they'll want alibis.

That's not in doubt.

“Actually,” I say with an apologetic smile but command in my voice—the voice of a man with an advanced degree who runs a multimillion-dollar company. “I'd be more than happy to come and give you a formal statement. But not tonight, and you'll have to arrange it with my attorney.”

“And why do you feel like you need an attorney?” Detective DeLatemer asks, and I'm surprised by the challenge in his voice. I thought of him as the good cop in this duo.

“I don't,” I reply smoothly without losing eye contact with him. “But right now, you've told me my childhood friend and business partner is dead. The only place I'm going to be tonight is at his parents' house, offering them comfort and taking it back from them. It's what family and friends do in times such as these.”

“But you want your attorney there?” DeLatemer presses, and while I refuse to take my eyes off him and look at Denning, I can feel her smirking.

I flash a grimace at him and make no secret of my disgust. “Detective DeLatemer…I get you want to solve JT's murder, and there's nothing more I want to do than help you achieve that goal. But whether I talk to you tonight or tomorrow, with or without an attorney, it's not going to change the fact that I have more important things to do tonight. I'm sure you understand.”