A Tangled Truth (Stonewall Investigations Book 3) Read online

  It touched me, deep in my chest, past even my heart. I could hear the sincerity in his words, the pain in his declaration. “I know, Mark. But you’re here now—that’s what matters.”

  “I want to visit her if that’s all right.”

  “She’s really not…” It was hard to even say out loud. Thankfully Mark didn’t need me to.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “Even if it’s just for a few minutes.”

  My lip twitched, my heart full. I nodded. “Okay, yeah, we can go this weekend.”

  “Good,” Mark said. He got up and put the frame back on the dresser. He walked back, the moonlight breaking through at the perfect moment, casting a spotlight on his good form as he came back to bed, his muscles highlighted by dark shadows.

  He got back in bed, his phone now in his hand. I settled in, getting ready to snuggle with Mark until we went to sleep. It was literally becoming a favorite pastime of mine, holding on to his big, muscular, warm form. It was paradise. And then when he’d hold me—shit, I think I liked that even better.

  Little spoon for life.

  Except, tonight, there’d be no spooning. “Holy shit,” Mark said, sitting up. I followed suit, trying to look at whatever set him off.

  “What, what happened?”

  “It’s Gina… she found the photo.”

  “Holy shit!” I almost grabbed the phone from his hand but held back. “What’s it show?”

  “Umm,” Mark said, fumbling with something on the phone. “It’s umm… Shit, it’s not downloading.”

  “Ughh,” I groaned, throwing off the sheets. I got off the bed and went to my closet, where I grabbed my laptop bag and brought it back to bed. I unzipped the bag and pulled out my MacBook, opening it and thanking the electricity gods that it still had charge. “Forward it to my email.”

  Mark got to forwarding. My heartbeat was pounding. My fingers were trembling. This was big. It had the potential of being the final nail in Johnny’s coffin. The cops may have looked at it, but they clearly hadn’t done shit with it. If we went over the photo with a fine-toothed comb and found something undoubtedly incriminating, then we could take it past the local police department, take it to someone who would do something. Hell, I’d go straight to the feds. They wouldn’t be able to ignore the proof.

  I hoped.

  If that didn’t work, Twitter would have a field day with it.

  “Okay, sent.”

  A few moments later, the email popped up in my inbox. I opened it, following the link inside to another website where we could download the photo.

  “Come on, come on,” I said, watching the rainbow wheel spin. For a bitch of a second I thought the entire laptop was going to crash on us, but it pulled through and the photo opened up on the screen. Just like that. Zero fanfare, zero effects. I half expected confetti and air horns to go off as the picture opened.

  The photo was taken quickly and had a slight blur effect to it, but it was still pretty clear what was in the photo. It was a beaten-up laptop sitting on a table, and on the screen was what looked like a basic web browser, but not one I’ve ever seen before, and the website it was open to appeared to be a shopping cart of sorts. And, sure enough, the one item that was just ordered was GHB, the date rape drug. Whoever ordered it hadn’t closed out of the website before they shut their laptop. There didn’t seem to be any shipping or ordering information though, just a banner that said “order placed.”

  Immediately, Mark’s sharp eyes noticed something I didn’t, his finger flying toward the screen. “Look.”

  I followed his finger and saw what grabbed his attention. The keyboard was broken, particularly the I key. It was cracked. Someone had tried to tape it, but that wouldn’t fix it.

  “The typos,” Mark said, matching my thoughts. “The typos in the suicide note and the anonymous emails all had to do with an I missing. They were both written on this laptop.”

  I could barely believe what was happening. Things were finally falling into focus.

  “But whose laptop is it?” I asked, the question pumping the brakes on any feelings of progress. “I don’t think Johnny would own that beat-up piece of crap. He can say it was just some cheap thing Gina bought as a plant.”

  I looked to Mark, whose eyes were scanning every millimeter of the photo. “There has to be something else…” He grabbed my laptop and lifted it up toward his face, looking even closer. I was beginning to feel frustrated. We could have been reaching the end of it all, except we still didn’t have anything concrete at all.

  “Wait, duh,” I said. “This thing has zoo—”

  That’s when Mark choked on a curse.

  “What?” I asked, trying to follow his gaze but not seeing anything except the broken laptop.

  “There,” he said, pointing to a corner of the picture. “What does that look like to you?”

  It was a section of the photo that showed a piece of whatever wallpaper was on the laptop from behind the browser window. I squinted, tilted my head, pursed my lips. I hit the combination of keys that would zoom in on the section of photo he was talking about. “Umm, a moldy slice of avocado?” I said, pretty positive no one had a wallpaper of rotting fruit, but who knew these days.

  It got a laugh out of Mark before his face set back into detective mode. “It’s a fin. A sea turtle’s fin, one with a white birthmark on the tip. And I know who took that photo. I know whose laptop this is, Liam.” Mark was already up and out of bed, going for his clothes that had been folded and left on my dresser. “It’s Diana’s. His assistant. She’s behind it—she’s been behind it this entire time. She took that photo on a scuba diving trip and has it tattooed on her leg. I saw it when I interviewed her.”

  It felt like the sky came crashing down on me. The moment of realization hit like a cement truck running at full speed. “Holy shit. She killed his wives… she’s a murderer. That girl’s killed people.” It was hard to wrap my head around it, especially since I’d already primed myself to believe it was Johnny.

  Wait… And that was when I realized something else. “Why are you getting dressed right now?”

  30 Mark Masters

  This was it. This was exactly what I needed to shut this case. I had photographic evidence that could tie this all to a single person, and that was something the police couldn’t ignore.

  Except… maybe they could.

  That thought scared me, and it was one reason why I was pulling up my jeans. I wanted to get Diana on record saying she did it, and showing her the links might very well get her shaken enough to spill it all. But that wasn’t the only reason why I was getting dressed. “I think Marah might be in danger.”

  “Sorry, what?” Liam was watching me from the bed, his eyes wide, his golden-brown head of hair slightly messy but short enough to hide it.

  “Diana told me Johnny wanted her to go over some lines with Marah, so they were going to have a sleepover thing at Johnny’s place while he’s out for a film. But the way she was talking about Marah, with what we know now, it makes me think she might do something to the girl before it even gets to the wife point.”

  Liam was shaking his head. Shock was displayed clear on his face. “This is insane. You have to call the cops. Let them go.”

  “If I try calling the NYPD right now, when they ask if it’s an emergency and I say no, I’ll be put on hold for an hour so that they can then say they’ll check in the morning.”

  “But this is an emergency!”

  “Which is why I’m going to go there and make sure everything is ok myself. If there isn’t a gunshot or someone bleeding on the ground, the cops won’t run over. Not here.”

  I already had my shirt on and wasn’t bothering with my socks. My shoes were at the front door. I came over to the bedside, grabbed Liam’s head in my hands, and kissed his forehead. I held the kiss for a moment, before moving down to his lips, quick and soft. “I’ll be back, okay?”

  “Mark, I don’t think this is a great idea…” he protested, but I
was already halfway out of his room. I knew this was the right thing to do; whether or not it was a great idea was still up for debate. There was just something in my bones that was telling me to go, to check up on the situation.

  I left Liam’s penthouse, taking the elevator down to the lobby, and by then I had ordered my car to take me to Johnny’s house. I knew the address from prior research, and had staked it out a few nights but never saw anything of note. It was a warm night, which was good considering I was wearing a thin gray T-shirt that may actually have been Liam’s, and barebacking a pair of jeans. The street outside of Liam’s building was relatively busy for eleven at night; then again, anywhere at any time in the city was relatively busy these days. I stood on the corner and waited for the black Corolla that was supposed to pick me up. Lily was the name displayed on my app. I spotted Lily two minutes later, waving her over as she pulled up to the corner.

  “Hi, Mark, right?” she asked as I got in, her voice not matching the ponytail-wearing facade.

  “Yup,” I said. I went to close the door but felt some resistance. For a second I thought I had caught it on the street. I looked and was surprised when the door pulled away from me.

  “Liam,” I said as he slid into the seat, a smug smile on his handsome face, the face that could do no wrong, except for sneaking along with me on a potentially dangerous case. “Liam, you can’t come.”

  “I’m not letting you go off and be stupid by yourself. Besides, what’s the worst she can do? Throw some pills at us? She’s a sniveling snake, but I don’t think she can actually look someone in the eye and kill them. I feel safe going with you. I want to help.”

  I was shaking my head. Something was telling me to refuse. An instinct was tugging at my gut, yelling at me.

  Tell him to get out! Don’t come.

  “You aren’t doing this alone,” he continued, pleading his case. “Besides, I need to be there so I can direct your Oscar-winning biopic through an authentic lens. I want to be there when Diana realizes you got her.”

  Don’t let him convince you!

  “Trust me”—his eyes were glinting—“I can defend myself if anything. You’re better off with some backup if things actually do take a turn.”

  “Fine.” I caved. “But if I tell you to get out of there at any point, you need to listen to me.” I had no idea what to expect. Ideally, I would have wanted Diana to admit she’d done it, see she had no way out, and agree to turn herself in. Clearly, that was in a world where everything went right and clouds were made of cotton candy and money fell out of the refrigerator every time you opened it. That world sounded real nice, but it wasn’t the one we lived in. So I really had no idea what to expect, but Liam did have a point that two people were better than one in this situation.

  “So…” Lily said in her deep voice. “Can I go?”

  “Oh, right, yeah yeah, go.”

  We settled in for the ride, neither of us speaking up again until about halfway to Johnny’s house. That was when Lily broke the silence. “Hey, guys, um, you’re both not going to murder anyone right now, right?”

  We both looked at each other and broke out laughing, which might have actually been a murdery thing to do to a third-party observer. “No, no,” I said, not sure if she was joking or not. “It’s eh…”

  “The truth is messy,” Liam said, cutting in. “Tangled. It’s a long story.”

  “GPS says we still got thirty minutes.”

  “We’d need longer than that,” Liam said.

  “Oh shit!” Lily said, jolting both of us upright. I looked out the windshield, but we were stopped at a red light, nothing in front of us that could have caused an outburst. Had we… run over something?

  “You’re Liam Wolfe. I follow you on Twitter!”

  I dropped my head back on the leather headrest. That was a much better alternative to what I thought happened. “Yup,” Liam answered, sounding unsure of where this was headed. “That’s me.”

  “God, Mr. Wolfe, sorry about all the crap you’re going through. I don’t believe any of it if it’s worth anything.”

  I looked to Liam, whose face was being highlighted by the passing streetlights as we drove. He smiled, genuinely. “Thanks for that. It does mean a lot.”

  “Oh, and can I just say, your movies Jewels on Demand and Mint, those are constantly on my list of top five films ever, and I watch a lot. You’d think the top five would change. Nope. Yours stay up there.” Lily put a hand up to the roof of her car, demonstrating just how high his films went. She had a rainbow wristband that caught my eye, not only because of the bright colors, but because of the unicorn faces smiling across the band. It was difficult, seeing imagery that reminded me of Collin, of the monster that was still out there.

  How twisted was that? I couldn’t even look at cute little unicorns without thinking of death and despair.

  I looked out my window, focusing instead on the storefronts we were driving past. It was Saks Fifth Avenue, so all the most expensive brands had their front windows decked out and glamorous, with all kinds of different art installations and ways to catch people’s eyes. It was the perfect way to distract myself from the brief moment of dread that had loomed over me. Liam talked to Lily for the rest of the drive, giving her some behind-the-scenes details on her two favorite movies. Time went by fast, which was good since Johnny’s estate was a ways out of the city. I ended up getting wrapped up in Liam’s conversation with Lilly. It was all really interesting and had me wanting to shadow Liam for a few days while he directed a film, just to see him in his element. When all this was over, I’d for sure do it. I could spend a day on set, then arrange for a nice dinner somewhere fancy, where he could unwind with a nice glass of wine, and then we’d go home and get lost in the bedsheets.

  The car came to a stop when the GPS on her phone dinged that they’d arrived. “And we’re here. This a good place to drop you off?”

  But first there was something else we had to do before we hit those sheets. “Yes, perfect, thank you.”

  “Thank you, guys!” Lily put an arm on her seat and leaned back so she could see us. “And seriously, if you’re going to kill someone tonight, just don’t say I was your Uber driver, okay?”

  We cracked up at that, the laughs in my chest originating as much from nerves as from thinking it was a funny joke. Normally I didn’t feel nervous, especially when I had things so airtight. But there was something different about tonight. A variable I never accounted for.

  Liam Wolfe, the man I was in absolute love with and the man who I would be completely destroyed by if something happened to him. I already lost someone dearly important to me, I don’t think I would be able to handle another.

  I was about to close the door when I heard a sudden “Wait!” It was Lily. I kept the door opened and popped my head in. She was looking at me, her eyes wide, almost apologetic. “I’m so sorry.” She put her phone up. “But can I get a picture with Liam?”

  “Oh yeah, of course,” I said. Liam, smiling, walked over to the driver’s side of the car where Lily had stepped out. I went over and took their picture, we said another goodbye, and this time Lily left to go find another fare, leaving us behind on an empty, quiet street with not much light and the chorus of cicadas in the air.

  Johnny lived in a huge plot of land right on the border of the Tibbetts Brook Park, a heavily wooded area that stretched out for miles. It was a place where families went for hiking and camping trips that weren’t a flight away from the city. It also had a mini waterpark and a golf course, along with a beautiful lake and a sports center. Lucy dropped us off at the entrance to Johnny’s estate, which was marked by a huge golden iron fence. Two massive oak doors stayed shut, barring our way. There were a couple of streetlights nearby, but most of the light came from two electric lanterns lit up on either side of the doors. There was an intercom system to talk with whoever was home, but I didn’t exactly want to give Diana a long lead time between knowing I was here and actually facing me. There was al
so the chance that she wouldn’t even answer the intercom, leaving us stranded outside.

  Liam walked up to the display, looking around the box. “I’m not even sure how we use this thing. Doesn’t have a director—Mark!” Liam said my name in a loud whisper. He hadn’t noticed me reaching up at the lowest part of the fence, where there was a dip in the wave like pattern. I hoisted myself up using my upper body before I lifted a leg and put my foot on the dip as well.

  “Mark! Holy shit, I didn’t realize we’d be trespassing.”

  “Do you want to call the neighborhood watch personally while you’re at it?” I whispered back, already on the other side of the fence. I looked down at the pale bricks underneath me and let go, dropping down, making sure my knees stayed loose and fluid to avoid any injury. I couldn’t see Liam anymore, but I could hear the whispers.

  “Okay, this is crazy.”

  “You didn’t have to come.”

  “I said it’s crazy; I didn’t say I wanted to do it.”

  “Well, it sounds like you don’t want to do it. That’s fine, go home. I’ll order you an Uber.”

  Liam appeared seconds later on the other side of the fence, falling down to the floor in a much less graceful fashion. He got up onto his feet and brushed the dirt off his palms on his jeans. He was wearing a black shirt and black jeans, which was actually pretty perfect considering the current situation. “You’re not ordering anything.”

  I smiled, matching Liam’s. For a moment, I let everything slip away and I pushed in for a kiss. It was a fast one, but it was one of the sweetest. I held him tight for a quick moment, relishing his body heat, happy that he was with me, that he was mine. I could have been happier if he were at home doing literally anything else than this, but I guess you couldn’t always get everything.

  “Okay,” I said, still whispering. I looked up the driveway which curved a few times through a path of tall trees; their rustling in the night wind sounding like a chorus of whispers falling on us. “Let’s see if there’s anything we can use as evidence before we make ourselves known.”