Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(42)

“Sir! You can’t expect me to stop working on this case,” Harper tells him, the wind knocked out of her.

Morelli looks at her. “Who said anything about doing that? I’m saying I don’t want to see you in this station for forty-eight hours. Understand?”

“Captain!” Stu stands and Harper knows what’s coming. “Dudley—”

“Is a competent detective,” Harper cuts in. Stu looks at her, unsure of what she’s doing. “More than capable of continuing the investigation.”

Morelli frowns as he regards the both of them. “I don’t appreciate the personal lives of my detectives disrupting an ongoing investigation. Especially a high-profile one like this is turning into. Or the drama you’ve brought into my station. I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but I want you to sort your shit out.”

“We will.”

“Great. Now will the both of you please get the fuck out of here?”



Stu shakes his head as they walk away from Morelli’s office, everyone watching them, neither of them caring about the looks they’re getting.

“I don’t understand you,” he says.

Harper scans the office, spots Dudley over in a corner, on the phone. “I didn’t think you would. Look, go grab what we need. Slip out the back, okay? I’ll pick you up from there so the reporters don’t see you coming and add more fuel to the fire.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

She doesn’t answer him, just heads for John Dudley, aware of how disheveled she looks, how she has been humiliated in front of all her colleagues, and really not caring. She glances back to make sure Stu hasn’t followed her. He hasn’t.

“Dudley?”

He turns the phone away. “Yes, Jane?”

“Can I have a word?”

His tongue flicks out over his top lip, lizardlike. “Sure,” he says, voice not so cocksure as usual. Harper leads him to one of the interview rooms and shuts the door. “What’s this about?”

“You know what the hell this is about, John,” Harper says, hands on her hips. “It’s about you telling Stu’s ex-wife that we were having an affair when we weren’t.”

Dudley doesn’t even try to deny it. His tongue flicks out again. “Look, I didn’t mean it like that. I bumped into her, we got to talking—”

Harper slaps him in the face. Dudley recoils, his hand to his cheek. “Christ! What was that for?”

She jabs him in the chest. “Interfere in my personal business again, I’ll make it my purpose in life to fuck you, alright?”

“Y-y-yes,” he stammers, blood rushing to his head.

She opens the door and looks back at him. “Why did you do it? What made you start this, John? Is this some kind of joke to you?”

Dudley can’t maintain eye contact with her. He has to look away, look down at the floor, one hand clamped to the side of his face. Harper already feels a pang of guilt for hitting him so hard.

“I saw you with Raley and . . . I suppose I thought . . . we . . .”

Harper looks him up and down. “You’re pathetic,” she says, slamming the door behind her.



Lester has Mack down on the ground, hands around his throat, squeezing so hard his fingers almost break the flesh. Mack’s last gargled breaths come sputtering out, his eyes bulging. Lester smiles behind the mask. The release is the same as when he takes the life from his girls. When he sees the light drain from their eyes, sees it dwindle to nothing, it’s the biggest thrill he’s ever known. A sense of greatness. The power of his own hands, bringing death, ending their journey.

But it’s not the only thing that’s the same. His cock is stiff in his shorts, throbbing against the constricting material, aching to be let free.

That there is a man . . .

Lester loosens his grip on Mack’s throat. Now he’s not sure.

You gettin’ hard for a man are you turned on?

He lets go altogether. Mack gasps for breath, coughing and spluttering as Lester rolls off him.

If you get a hard-on from a man then you’re one of them queers! What will people think if you’re one of them, huh? Remember what i said about queers?

Mack thinks he has a chance. He thinks Lester will let him go.

“No!”

Lester stands, drags Mack out to the yard. He looks around. He sees the swing set. He hauls him over to it, grabs Mack’s head in both hands, and screams as he proceeds to bash Mack’s head against the rusted metal. The sound hurtling out of Lester’s mouth is guttural, primal, from someplace deep inside. He breaks Mack’s skull open, continues to crash his head against the frame of the swing until there are brains and blood. Until Mack’s legs have stopped kicking.

Lester screams like a savage long after he is finished. When the scream has died in his throat, he reaches down to rub his softening cock. Lester feels wet, examines his fingers, and finds them covered in sticky semen.

He holds his hands out in front of him and they’re shaking.





10


“Come in,” Stu tells Harper, unlocking his door. “Let me pour you a drink or something.”

Harper thinks about it and is about to tell him no, she should really get back, when she finds herself saying the complete opposite. Why not? It’s been a shitty kind of day. I mean, could this day get any worse?