Dean was in shape. Excellent shape. But he wasn’t me.

So when he raised both arms, reared back, and pushed me, I only went back inches.

Whereas when I did the same, he fell flat on his ass.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” I snarled, looking down at Dean.

Dean glared and stood up, brushing off his ass and his ‘brand new suit’ he just got.

“What I want is permission. I want to make sure this won’t cause any contention when she marries me,” he insisted.

I sighed and raised my hands up to my face, letting my fingers curl into what little hair I had.

“It’s not a bone of contention, Dean. I don’t love her and I haven’t for some time. When she cheated on me, that was it. Any and all love I felt for her was wiped off the face of the earth,” I said tiredly.

I never should’ve let Torres have my shift.

I should’ve taken the overtime and stayed at work.

This was bullshit.

I’d rather be doing anything but this right now.

He’d ruined a perfectly good day with his insistence that I wasn’t ‘okay.’

Dean looked stunned. “You’re lying. She told me you wouldn’t have a kid with her, that’s why y’all got divorced.”

I laughed humorlessly.

“I wouldn’t have a kid with her, that’s true. But what made me divorce her wasn’t that she wanted kids. It was because she slept with about fifteen men while we were married, and I only found out because she was sloppy and let some new doctor call her at home. He left a voicemail telling his ‘girl’ that he couldn’t make dinner, and that they needed a raincheck. Which got me curious since she was supposed to be at work at the time,” I told him honestly.

And damn but it felt good to get that shit off my chest!

I’d been holding that inside for a long time now.

It was hard to let my family think I was the bad guy for not wanting kids.

My mom resented me for that, I could tell. But I didn’t know how else to not tell anybody what had happened without Joslin being shunned from the family, so I kept my mouth shut.

“You’re lying,” Dean said without venom.

I could tell he believed me.

“Want the private dick’s files? I’ve got about two hundred photos of it happening in real time, too,” I offered.

He narrowed his eyes. “Why would you not tell us this? Why let us think badly of you?”

I smiled without humor.

“Mom loves Joslin. And Joslin has nobody else. I was just being nice,” I told him.

He sighed. “Goddammit. That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

I shrugged. “Sorry man.”

He looked at me for a few long moments before he said, “I love her, man.”

I nodded. “If you want to be with her, that’s good with me. I don’t care. Just be aware of her faults. And I won’t tell you I told you so.”

He flipped me off. “Fuck off.”

I smiled and patted him lightly on the back. “Now get the fuck out of here and let me enjoy the rest of my day.”

Grudgingly he left, and I couldn’t help but smile at the big brown stain on his ass from where he’d fallen in the dirt.

Served the fucker right for pestering me.

Turning around, I loaded my gun once again and started firing off shots at the piece of paper floating down range.

I was having a damn good time until I got a call, and what I heard made my stomach nearly drop to my feet.

***

“What’s going on, Luke?” I asked him as we walked, side by side, down the hallway to our conference room.

Luke opened the door and ushered me inside ahead of him.

I came to a stop just past the entrance when I was faced with multiple men in suits.

“What’s going on?” I asked again.

Luke walked past me and had a seat next to Chief Rhodes, who I was surprised to see was also in attendance.

“Take a seat, Perez. We have some things to discuss with you. Nothing you did wrong, though, so stop looking at me like that,” The Chief grumbled.

Smiling slightly, I walked to the chair on the other side of the chief and took a seat, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms over my chest.

The chief pushed over a file folder that was nearly an inch thick, and I took that to mean that he wanted me to open it and have a look.

And when I did, I wished I’d at least braced myself first.

“Goddammit, chief. Fuck you,” I said, pushing the file away from me and closing my eyes to control my urge to vomit.

“He’ll do,” the man I sat across from said.

He was in his early fifties and had brown hair peppered with gray throughout.

He was a thin man, and probably didn’t reach much over five and a half feet tall.

The other man at his side was burly with black hair and a deep tan. He was in his mid to late thirties with green eyes and a goatee.

I glared at the two of them.

“What the fuck is going on?” I growled.

I hated fucking games.

Just tell me what the fuck is going on already.

“This is Special Agent Troy Palmer, and this,” The Chief said, indicating the black man. “Is Special Agent Dane Elliott. They’re here to speak with you about the Cox case.”

The Cox Case was the murder suicide I’d first responded to.

“Yeah, so?” I asked tiredly.

Hell, was I tired. I was living off of only hours of sleep, and I could really use a few hours of shut eye before I had to deal with them and their shit.

Crime, however, didn’t wait for it to be convenient for all those involved.

Which Agent Palmer explained in the next second.

“We’ve discovered a few similarities in about ten murders throughout the Ark-La-Tex involving cops and their pregnant wives,” Agent Palmer said without preamble.

I blinked. “What?”

He pushed the file back to me, and I looked down at it, only now realizing what I’d thought was the murder I’d walked in on just two days prior wasn’t the one I’d thought it was.

It was a different one.

“Holy shit,” I said, surprised. “Are they all positioned this way?”

It was nearly identical.

The only thing different was the color of the tile floor they were laying on.

“We have reason to believe that you might have seen the man who did this on your way to the scene. We’ve had three witnesses saying they saw a man walking his dog down the street just down the road from the crime scene. Black hoodie. Black jeans. Black dog.”

I thought back to the day I’d driven to the crime scene.

Remembered passing the mobile home park sign, then seeing a black dog off to the side of the road that I passed.

I remembered thinking that the owner needed to get the dog the fuck out of the way when he heard lights and sirens blaring.

“Yeah, I saw him,” I confirmed, thinking back to the man in question. “Black hoodie. Black pants. Red shoe strings in the shoes. Dog had a red collar with black lettering on it. Black lab.”

Agent Elliott took notes on his pad of paper as I spoke.

The other one just watched me closely.

“Any cars in the area?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Actually, no. I passed four houses before I got to theirs and hadn’t seen a single one. The couple had two cars in the driveway as well as a red mid-sized sedan belonging to the elderly couple. I did pass an abandoned car with hazard lights on pointing in the opposite direction I’d been going, but I also saw a man walking away from the car in a white t-shirt and khaki pants.”

The agent nodded. “Good. Thanks.”

“We have reason to believe that the man’s a practicing doctor in the area. Or a nurse. Or a midwife. Possibly a registrar at the hospital. Each woman that’s been killed, their only connection, is them being in the same doctor’s office that practices in the Ark-La-Tex. It’s a large one that has over eight offices and seven doctors serving it. Only four of the doctors travel over the state line, and we’ve made a note of those four in this chart,” Agent Palmer said, sliding the three of us a stack of papers.