Either way he was glad when she didn’t press the issue and left him on his own back at his apartment.
The air around him was silent, no sounds aside from that of his own ragged breaths. He hadn’t slept in days, not really, and he was wishing exhaustion would overtake him now. It didn’t. Instead, his mind seemed to be stuck on a continuous loop, his thoughts of nothing but what Buffy must be going through now.
His life had been full of injustices. Despite the fact he’d technically been born into wealth and privilege, he’d suffered neglect throughout his childhood. If it hadn’t been for a few kindhearted housekeepers, he honestly wasn’t sure he would’ve survived his early years, his parents often too preoccupied to remember he was too young to feed or clean himself.
He’d learned early, however. Never once had he been able to turn to his parents for comfort, be it from a bad dream or a scraped knee. He’d learned to cope, learned to deal. Learned to find what he needed in other places.
But somehow, this struck him as the biggest injustice of all. His life, well, it had grown to simply feel as if it were his lot in life. He’d come to accept the world he’d been born into. But Buffy… She’d known something else once. She’d had happiness, had love. And now it had all been taken from her by no fault of her own.
She’d once been a little girl in a loving home. She’d once been happy. And slowly, it had all been stripped from her until she was left to rot away in a cell for a crime she shouldn’t even been punished for.
He rose, his anger at it all outweighing his heartbreak. With a loud roar, he struck out, knocking everything off his bedside table. From there, he moved to the bed, ripping off the sheets and overturning the mattress.
He didn’t stop until everything in the room was turned over, until the outside matched what he felt inside.
Only then did he crumple to the ground and let himself cry.
A loud chirping sound came from the bedside table and Gunn groaned, not awake enough to move towards it until a tired female voice spoke from behind him.
“I think that’s yours. Mine plays the Dixie Chicks.”
Gunn’s eyes opened as he reached for his cell phone. Events from the night before played in his mind and he smiled. Who knew waffles could lead to that?
And oh, what a night it had been, too. There was more to that shy, brainy criminologist than met the eye…
He looked at the caller ID then flipped the phone open. “Gunn here. You have something for me, Lockley?”
“Yeah. The name of the person who called Angelus that night.”
Gunn sat straight up, any vestiges of sleep now gone. “Who?”
“Lindsey McDonald.”
“His lawyer?” Gunn asked. Suddenly, he got a sinking feeling that maybe this wasn’t going to be the break they’d thought it would be. Of course a man who’d just found out his wife was sleeping around with his son would call his lawyer.
“Yeah, and get this – they don’t just keep records of who had the phone. They keep records of what calls come in and go out, too. Seems right after he got off the phone with the vic, McDonald made a phone call. To Darla Angelus.”
And with that, Gunn went from thinking they might not be on the right path to knowing they were. “He called the first ex-wife?”
“Yep. I did a little more digging, and it turns out the rumor around the office was that they were having an affair right under the boss man’s nose.”
“Bring McDonald in for questioning.”
“Already on it,” Kate replied. “I’m outside his house with a warrant now.”
Gunn smiled. “You’re good, Katie.”
“Yeah, I know I am. Now you get your ass down to the station.”
“On it.” The line went dead and Gunn clicked the cell phone shut. Fred was sitting next to him, her expression interested and eager.
“Good news?”
“I think so. They know who Angelus called.”
She bounced a little, vibrating with barely-contained excitement, and Gunn had to remind himself he had somewhere to be and couldn’t roll her back over now. “He called his lawyer. Who apparently then immediately called the women who office gossip puts in his bed – Darla Angelus.”
Fred’s eyes widened. “The first wife?”
“Yep. Kate’s at McDonald’s house now with a warrant. My guess is they’re going to be searching for that murder weapon, too. She wants me at the station and you better get to the lab.”
“On it.” Fred gave him a mock salute then hurried out of the bed, presenting him with a very nice view of her naked backside as she did.
Gunn shook his head, once again telling himself later.
Right now, they had a murder to solve.
Lindsey sat in the interrogation room refusing to speak. Granted, it had been in another capacity, but he’d done this before. Before he’d become in-house counsel for Liam Angelus, he’d spent time as a defense attorney, and had sat in on many an interrogation.
This would be a piece of cake. The wife had confessed. This would all fall on her.
Detective Kate Lockley was staring across the table at him, but he just smirked.
Kate, however, didn’t flinch. He was refusing to talk, but that didn’t weaken her resolve in the least. Unlike she had been when questioning Buffy, Detective Lockley was in her element now. She knew how to break smug little bastards like Lindsey McDonald.
A knock on the two-way mirror had Kate looking up, and she dismissed herself without a word, leaving Lindsey to stew.
“What have you got?” she asked the officer she found waiting for her outside the room.
“We found a gun, buried in his flower bed of all places.” The man shook his head. “You’d think a lawyer would have more sense than that. He’s got to have seen what trying shit like that gets you. The gun’s with ballistics now. Visually, the bullets seem to match the ones in the body, but they’re running more tests now.”
Kate nodded. “Thanks. Let me know as soon as you hear anything else.”
“There is one thing, ma’am.”
“Yeah?”
“That gun, it’s not registered to him. It’s registered to Darla Angelus.”
Kate’s eyes lit up for a moment before her face grew emotionless again. “Bring her in.”
Where Lindsey hadn’t been willing to say a word, Darla had hardly been able to wait before she spilled her version of events.
Tearfully, she sat across from Kate, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.
Kate had to admit Darla Angelus was a damn good liar, and it wouldn’t surprise her if the woman was able to sway a jury. After too many years in this seat, however, Detective Lockely was not swayed.
Still, she listened.
“Lindsey called me that night. He told me that Liam had just called him and said he wanted him to come over so he could cut mine and Liam’s son, William, off completely. No support, out of the will, everything.” Darla paused, adding another well-practiced sob. “Apparently William had dropped out of school and was having an affair with Liam’s latest wife. Some trampy ex-stripper who would go around seducing sweet boys like my William. I…I had no idea. My perfect little boy… I just couldn’t imagine what that woman did to make him behave like that.”
“Just get to the facts, please.”
“William had a trust fund, and Lindsey was the executor of that. Lindsey told me that night he’d been taking money from the trust fund, using the money that was set aside for my son to support his own lavish lifestyle.”
“And you had no idea this was going on?”
Darla looked at Kate, wide-eyed, and shook her head. “No! William is my baby boy! He’s the most important thing in the world to me, and I want nothing more than to make sure he’s taken care of. I was furious with Lindsey when he told me that, but he said it didn’t matter, because he wasn’t going to let Liam take this away from him. He…he hung up on me then and the next thing I heard, Liam was dead.”
“Do you realize the gun that shot your ex-husband was one registered to you?”
“I…I thought it might be. I kept a gun in my nightstand for protection – I live alone, you know – but when I went to look for it after what happened to Liam, it was gone. Lindsey must have taken it.”
“There’s one thing I want to know,” Kate said, her eyes hard.
“Yes?”
“You say your son is the most important thing in the world to you?”
“Yes, of course.”
Kate leaned forward, staring Darla down. “Then why did you let him sit in here and face charges for a murder he didn’t commit? If you knew Lindsey had done it, and, as you say, you were ‘furious’ with Lindsey for stealing from your son, then why didn’t you come clean? Tell me, who were you really trying to protect?”
Darla’s face grew pale, her eyes wide.
For once, she was at a loss for words.
Spike sat alone in the wreckage of his bedroom, a bottle in his hand. More than half of it was gone, but the pain was still there.
He didn’t think all the liquor in the world could numb it. What he was feeling now went beyond emotional pain. It was a physical ache, tearing at his insides, ripping at his heart.
This was all his fault. He’d waited too long, been too slow. He should’ve taken Buffy away from Liam months before. They should’ve run that night, when they’d first talked about it. Just gotten in his car and drove, never looking back.
He was a stupid, foolish boy, and his mistake had cost Buffy everything.
Spike could never forgive himself for this, and he wouldn’t blame Buffy if she never could either. His idiocy had brought all of this down on both of them, driven them apart and banished her to a life without freedom. A life without sunshine…
He hated himself, hated how weak he was. Hated how he couldn’t…
“Couldn’t save the girl,” he said aloud, the words followed by a near-hysterical laugh.
He’d tried to become someone new, but it hadn’t made him any stronger, any better. He was still the same pathetic boy he’d always been. New clothes, different hair, but still only William…
He sneered and took another swig from the bottle.
A knock on the door pulled attention to the present, but he ignored it, not wanting to be bothered. Whoever it was, they could just go. Leave him to suffer in peace.
Yet they didn’t go, the pounding growing more and more insistent, until finally he stood, determined to make them go the hell away.
He stalked to the door, threw it open.
He gasped and the bottle fell from his hands, the rest of its contents spilling all over his carpet. He blinked, not believing his eyes, wondering if he was hallucinating something in his drunken state.
Yet he stared and she went nowhere, the image of her crisp and clear. He reached out, touched her, and felt the warmth of her skin beneath his fingertips.
Softly, he breathed her name.
“Buffy…”
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