Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
He turned his computer screen to face toward all of us, and then he hit play.
There was a black screen for a long moment before John’s face appeared as he flipped the phone up.
He looked haggard.
Not the John he always appeared to be.
“I’m guessing if you’re seeing this, Haze, this means I’m dead.” He scrubbed his hands down his face. “I tried really fuckin’ hard to make this okay, but I don’t think I got the chance. I have a gambling problem. A bad one. I got into it with the wrong people, and they demanded money I didn’t have. To fix things, I broke up with Sutton and forced her to think I was cheating so that she would leave. The men I owed money to didn’t try to chase after her, luckily, and only took my stupidity out on me. When they tried to come after you, I killed them. That was the unsolved murder that’s on the right-hand side of your desk that we ‘couldn’t find any leads on.’”
My mouth might as well have hit the floor.
“I know, I know. I’m so fuckin’ sorry. Really I am. But when they threatened Desi, I just…snapped. I killed them. I’m so fuckin’ sorry.” He looked haunted. “The thing is, I solved one problem only to attract another.”
He stayed silent for a really long time before beginning again.
“A couple of months ago, Senator Kennedy came to me and asked me to fabricate evidence to frame Shasha Semyonov. He even killed his mistress, asking me to have evidence point toward the sister, Nastya Semyonov. He’s done this two other times, actually. All of them to get what he wanted out of a man before he killed the detective that he blackmailed. That’s why the killer’s detective on the case always dies. When I wouldn’t do it, the senator, and his goon, Frank Ketron, started to lean into me. My financials were frozen. My lease was terminated. I’ve been living in my fuckin’ cruiser, showering at the station. I barely have any food to eat other than what I can find at the station in the breakroom.” He scrubbed at his face again. “I’m sorry. I tried to stop it, and if you’re seeing it, that attempt didn’t work.”
Sick.
I was sick to my stomach.
“I love you, man. You have no idea how low I got, and you were the only one that was consistently there for me. I’m sorry.”
The screen went black, and we all sat there in silence.
“Since your partner did me a favor, I helped clean things up for him. That’s why you haven’t found any evidence on that case,” Shasha said into the silence. “It’s going to always be cold.”
I swallowed hard. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he wasn’t sure where you stood,” Sutton said. “He didn’t want to pull you under. He felt on some level that you’d understand, but he couldn’t take that chance. Not with…”
Not with who he’d killed to protect me.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“What now?” I asked. “How do I fix this?”
“There’s more,” she said. “I felt like I should explain the serial killer thing a little better, because John’s words were jumbled.”
“Okay,” I said, stomach in knots.
I knew what happened.
But I waited for her to explain.
“The senator is the original serial killer that the FBI has been chasing. He’s working with multiple accomplices to take out people he doesn’t like. He’s using the reviewers to pin as the scape goat. Or at least cloud the judgment, so to speak. With both the detective and the victim dead, no one has really been able to pin anything on anyone. It’s the perfect crime, so to speak. If the senator hadn’t gotten cocky. See, he thought that John would just fall in line. John didn’t, and then started taking out a few of the other men that were helping the senator, then framed the murders to look like the original Amazon Reviewer Killer.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “And you just went along with this?”
She laughed. “Since when has John ever done anything that I want? He broke up with me, Haze. That’s the ultimate proof you need that John did what he wanted and damn the consequences.”
She had a point.
“Do you have any evidence that it was the senator?” I asked.
“Not more than what John was able to record on his cell phone of the conversations. You can clearly make out the senator’s voice. But no solid evidence that would be irrefutable.”
“Do you have anything else to add?” Shasha asked. “Because after you leave this building, you’re done. You don’t have any more to do with any of this.”
The threat was there.
He would not allow her to talk to anyone else.
I was in agreement.
Though, I trusted Sutton.
She’d been good for John, and I’d thought him fuckin’ stupid for letting her go.