Unhinged(Necessary Evils #1)(5)

“Even the—”

“Yeah, even that,” Adam snapped before taking a deep breath and letting it out. “Sorry, Cali. It’s been a long night. Can you please send it?”

“Yeah. You got it, dollface. Give me five.”

With that, she disconnected, leaving Adam and the boy far closer without a gun barrel between them. “You should go,” Adam said, his voice pleading. “You don’t want to see what we’ve seen. I promise you, we had more than enough evidence to convict your father.”

Noah’s face contorted, almost like Adam’s words caused physical pain. “Then why didn’t you go to the cops?”

“Your father was good at covering his tracks. The police have to worry about warrants and chain of custody. My people don’t. We just have to find the truth.”

“We? Who even are you? You aren’t much older than me. You were barely old enough to drive when you killed my dad. I’ve done my research. What idiot would hire a kid to kill an adult?”

“Nobody hired me. This isn’t a job. I don’t have benefits and a 401k. Please, Noah. Just go.”

Adam’s phone chirped. He flicked to his email and the encrypted file blinking at the bottom of it. “Last chance.”

Noah snatched the phone from Adam and stabbed a finger against the play button. Adam turned away. He couldn’t watch the video again or the boy’s reaction to it. Luckily, the video had no sound. Hearing Noah’s reaction was bad enough. The way he sucked in a sharp breath, the strangled cry that sounded like a wounded animal, and, finally, vomit splashing onto the concrete as Noah lost the contents of his stomach.

Adam fought the urge to comfort him. What the fuck would he even say? Hallmark didn’t make ‘sorry your dad was a piece of shit’ cards. Though, given the prevalence of shit dads out there, maybe they were really missing out on something. He turned back around and gently took his phone back. It slipped easily from the boy’s fingers. “He’s not worth your tears or your vengeance. Even if he never touched you. He needed to go. I’m sorry you got hurt in the process.”

Noah glowered at him. “Yeah, I’m sure it’ll keep you up at night.”

Adam just stared as the boy turned and walked away, shoulders slumped, head down. He reminded Adam of a dog who’d been beaten.

Noah’s face was a constant companion on Adam’s walk home and even hours later as he lay in bed. What had happened to him after his father died? Was he fed? Did he have a roof over his head? Was he somewhere alone, two seconds away from swallowing a bullet?

Adam knew better than anybody that childhood trauma came back to haunt you at the most inopportune moments, in the most incongruous ways. And once somebody turned the key on that part of the brain where those memories lived, it was almost impossible to stuff them back down again.

When the sun came up, Adam hadn’t slept a wink. He ground his palms into his eyes until sparks danced behind his lids. He was supposed to meet his father and Atticus at the club for breakfast. He knew he should tell them about Noah. They needed to know that someone out there knew who Adam really was. But he didn’t want to tell them. He didn’t want to tell anyone. Some weird part of him wanted to keep Noah all to himself.

He stumbled to the shower, letting the molten water blast along his back and shoulders, thinking of big, brown eyes and freckles sprinkled over pale skin. He felt weirdly responsible for the boy. He didn’t know why he kept thinking of him as a boy. They couldn’t be more than six years apart, but Adam felt like he’d been born an old man—had lived a hundred lives in the twenty-seven years he’d been alive. Noah’s life had clearly not been easy, but there’d been a vulnerability, a quiet desperation that had tugged at something buried so deep down inside Adam. Something he didn’t know even existed inside him. His conscience.

Would it bring Noah any comfort knowing he had, in fact, kept Adam up all night?





He was watching him again. It was an almost nightly occurrence now. At first, Noah thought he was going crazy, imagining phantoms in the shadows. But no, it was him. Adam Mulvaney. The man who killed his father. His father…the child predator. Noah’s stomach lurched at the thought, the images from that video trying to claw their way back into his brain. But he wouldn’t let them in and had found a million creative ways to keep them out.

Noah could feel his eyes on him even now. Despite the throbbing bass of the dance music, the dizzying display of neon beams shooting across darkened walls, and the sea of bodies moving in one cohesive wave, Noah could feel Adam’s eyes on him. He had no idea what Adam wanted.

At first, he thought maybe he was coming for his revenge or maybe just taking out a witness, but Noah had given him a million chances to end his misery, and the bastard never took them. Instead, he just watched him. Maybe he got some kind of sick thrill seeing Noah suffer. The joke was on him, though, because Noah was too high to feel anything but good.

He fell out the side door of the club into the brisk night air. He didn’t bundle up. The synthetic happiness coursing through him made him hot all over. The alley smelled like rotting garbage and piss, but Noah twirled along the alley like a ballet dancer, stumbling when he heard the alley door open and slam shut behind him. He didn’t look, didn’t acknowledge his stalker in any way. Just stumbled out of the alley and into the parking lot.