Fatal Attraction (Love Kills Duet #2)

5. Five

Five

Charlotte

B laire was dead.

One of my best friends was dead.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t fucking breathe!

Another cry tore from my throat. Harley held me harder, sniffling despite how much she struggled not to break down right along with me. “Breathe, Charlotte,” she whispered, her hands rubbing up and down my back. “You have to breathe.”

That was easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one who’d found Blaire’s body hanging from a fucking fan with hundreds of bugs feasting on her rotting body.

And Carter…

Fuck.

He was on a plane right this very second, coming home to be with her.

“CHARLOTTE!”

I lifted my head, and before I had time to fully register what was happening, Harley had been torn away from me, and I was in Spike’s arms, his mouth pressed roughly against mine.

“Detective—”

“ You can fuck the hell off ,” Spike snapped when he tore his mouth away and glared dangerously at Harley. “Our relationship isn’t any of your fucking business. ”

“Be that as it may,” Harley said, her jaw set. “You cannot question her, Detective Hutch. Chief and Captain Burgess will have to take her statement.”

“We’re going to find him,” Spike promised, ignoring Harley as he stared deeply into my wet eyes. “I promise you we will. And if it’s the last thing we do, I swear to fucking God, we will kill him.”

“Detective—”

“Didn’t I tell you to fuck off ? Mind your fucking business and go process the scene yourself.”

Harley bellowed out a furious breath, her hands raised and balled into insanely tight fists, shaking. Instead of retorting, she bellowed out a hasty growl and then marched toward Blaire’s house. Phoenix had yet to come out.

“You can’t talk to her like that. You need to apologize.”

“Fuck her,” he chided, pulling me closer. “She isn’t the boss of me.”

Sirens wailing nearby cut off my retort, and as multiple patrol cars came storming in ahead of us, plus the EMTs, Spike released me and murmured that Chief’s Charger was zooming in from the opposite direction and that Captain Burgess was with him, likely the coroner too.

“I have to go, baby. I’m so sorry about Blaire. We’ll talk later, okay?”

I nodded, my tears still falling. Breathlessly, I watched as he ran back toward the house, entering just as Chief and Captain Burgess began stalking towards me, both wearing heavy frowns. The forensic squad, EMTs, and the coroner fled their vehicles next and then raced like bats flying straight out of hell towards the scene.

“I’m so sorry, Charlotte.” Chief hugged me first, then Captain Burgess.

“We need you to tell us what happened. We understand how hard this is for you. It’s hard for us too. We all knew Blaire and loved her like she was our own. ”

I drew in a breath, struggling to speak. It also didn’t help that there was a whole dam still pouring down my cheeks.

I had to get it together, though.

I didn’t have a choice.

Someone murdered Blaire and I had to give my side of the story, no matter how much it fucking hurt doing it.

“I… I was with her a few days ago. Harley benched me when Karl’s DNA matched in Amber Strickland’s case. Peter and Blaire came to my house to help cheer me up.”

“What day was this?” Chief asked.

“Three days—or in this case, nights ago.”

“Okay,” said Captain Burgess, who nodded as he raised his bushy brows at me. “And you say Peter was there too?”

“Yes. He was there. Blaire had too much to drink that night and told us she’d ordered an Uber home. She left, and then Peter left not long after her. I told her to message me when she got home, and she did. I can show it to you on my phone. She came back the next day to get her car. That’s the last time I saw her.”

“And you haven’t heard from her since then?” asked Captain Burgess.

I painfully shook my head. “No. I haven’t. Carter, her husband, called me not even an hour ago and told me he’d been trying to reach Blaire since last night. He also told me he called Harley, and she told him Blaire hadn’t shown up for work yesterday and today. Carter is in the Army and has been deployed in Iraq, but he’s coming home early. That’s why he called me. He asked me to come by and see if Blaire was home. When I got here, her car was here, and—”

I broke, trapping my face in my hands.

“Charlotte,” Chief said softly. “It’s okay. Take your time.”

All I could do was cry and shake my head.

“Blaire wouldn’t answer the door. Carter told me the spare key was kept under the flowerpot. I got the key and opened the door, and then…”

“And then what?” asked the chief .

“Heat,” I replied, sniffling as I reached up and wiped under my puffy eyes. “There was this huge wave of heat, and then there was the smell. I called for Blaire, but she wouldn’t answer. I went upstairs and found the door to her bedroom cracked open. That’s when I found her.”

“Did you touch anything? Did you touch the body?”

I immediately shook my head, knowing better than to do such a thing. “No, I swear I didn’t. I ran out to my car and called Harley after I found Blaire’s body. Just check my phone records… I swear I’m—”

“We believe you,” said the captain. “However, we’re going to need you to come down to the lab and submit a DNA test. Same with Peter. We’ll need his statement too.”

I started to ask why, then briefly clamped my mouth shut once the answer had all but struck me in the face, making my breath shudder as my chest squeezed excruciatingly tight. We still didn’t have all the facts. Blaire’s time of death and the cause hadn’t been determined yet. Until it was, and until Spike and Phoenix could dig deeper into the investigation, it was possible Peter and I were the last ones to see and speak with Blaire.

Oh my God…

Did we just become suspects in Blaire’s murder?

“I-I understand, Chief. I’ll phone Peter right now and have him meet us at the precinct.”