Deep (Chicago Underground #8)(64)

He looked over my shoulder, and his eyes narrowed. I glanced back to see the cop, Barnes, hurrying down the steps—heading straight for us.

I tensed up, but Adrian shook his head with a faint smile. “Don’t worry about him.”

“Easy for you to say,” I muttered.

He just laughed, which seemed to make Barnes’s expression darken as he approached.

“You,” he said, accusing, as if I had Philip stashed away just to spite him. “I have questions for you.”

“And she’ll be happy to cooperate,” Adrian said smoothly, “as soon as her lawyer is present. He’s just over there speaking to your colleagues. Drew Laramie. I understand you’ve met.”

Barnes scoffed. “Philip’s lawyer? He can hardly represent her interests at the same time.”

“He’s not Philip’s lawyer anymore,” I said. “And I would trust Drew with my life.”

He’d already saved me once. And he’d saved Philip countless times. As if conjuring him, he circled a flashing police cruiser and spotted us. And I knew that I would be okay, at least physically.

Emotionally—that was a different story.

I had worked my whole life for acceptance from people who wouldn’t love me back, the princess of lost causes. They would never come true, not in this lifetime—but that pursuit had given me other friends, other family. My brother, Tyler. Adrian. Drew.

A car pulled to a stop outside the police tape, and I saw Shelly and Luke step out. I had acceptance. I was loved, even if it wasn’t by the man who had my heart.

“Why are you so determined to catch Philip?” I asked, unable to hide the censure in my voice. By violating the law, by blackmailing a judge, he had lost any right to the moral high ground.

Barnes narrowed his bloodshot eyes, receiving my message loud and clear—and he didn’t like it. “Philip Murphy is a knife lodged in the heart of this city. I will do anything to pull it out.”

I blinked. “Even if that stops the heart?”

“You believe that because you don’t know what Philip is capable of. You think he, what? Sells candy on the street corner? That the guns get sold to the CPD?”

My eyes narrowed. “I know more about the dark side of Chicago than you think.”

He studied me. “That might be true, but you don’t know the dark side of Philip Murphy. You don’t know what he’s truly capable of.”

“Then tell me,” I challenged.

“Fine.” He studied me. “You want to know what your boyfriend is capable of? A few years back we found a group of men in some abandoned tenements in the meat packing district. Lowlife types, picking up odd jobs from bigger criminals. Criminals like Murphy.”

There was only one phrase that rang in my head: the meat packing district. What were the odds this story about Philip’s evil deeds connected back to that place?

“He killed them. We don’t know what work they did for him—never found that link. But he must have decided he had no more use for them, because he had them killed. That wasn’t the worst part, though. We see death all the f*cking time. No, the worst part was the way they were killed—burned to a f*cking crisp. They had been chained to the pipes in the bathroom.”

The sunlight seemed too sharp suddenly, the air too thin. They had been chained to the pipes in the bathroom. A group of criminals, chained to the pipes of a bathroom.

Like the ones who had held me captive back then. Philip had avenged me.

Barnes’s eyes narrowed. “But that’s not why I’m really after him, and I’m guessing you figured that out. No my beef with Murphy is personal. He f*cked my daughter. He got her pregnant. And then he left her to die.”





Chapter Thirty-Seven

THE TALE IS as old as time—boy meets girl. Boy saves girl. Boy leaves.

A broken heart was usually the souvenir, but I was worried that he’d left behind something more. Worried, and maybe a little hopeful. Two months at home was long enough to know I was late but not long enough to show. If I were pregnant, he would come back, he would support me. That much I knew for sure, even if he never let me in emotionally, not really.

Girl pees on stick, the part the stories left out.

My gaze darted around the small bathroom, from the clean white tile to the bland oceanside print on the wall—anywhere but the little piece of plastic sitting on the back of the toilet. Finally, stomach a tight knot, I glanced at the pregnancy test.

And the screen was…blank.

Ugh.

It had probably been three seconds since I peed on it and set it down, not two minutes. My heart was racing so fast it was making time go slowly. I was going to go crazy like this.

I looked at the necklace in my hand. It had been my birth mother’s, a small and fragile legacy—the only piece I had of her. Suddenly it made me angry, the way she could have thrown me away, the way she still didn’t care. What was the point of blood if it didn’t protect me?

Philip had protected me.

Furious now, almost trembling with it, I took the necklace to the bathroom adjoining my bedroom. The old necklace hardly shone over the dull matting. It was a memento of my burnt heritage and the terrible ordeal I’d just come back from. Violence. Pain. Abandonment.

This necklace was everything that I hated.