Page 109 of Cain

“Don’t touch anything sounds like there’s a mess that needs to be cleaned up,” Spike said. “I’ll grab the fake plates for the SUV and the cleanup kit.”

“How many sets of hands are you going to need?” Briggs asked. “Gonna need two for the cleanup and the digging. And you’re gonna need to stay with your woman.”

“If you’re offering, I’m accepting.” I turned back to Croft and the others. “Can you talk to Fallon for me?”

“Yep,” Croft said. “If you need anything, shoot me a text.”

“We’re ready,” Spike said, coming in from the garage with a sweatshirt on, the hood pulled up over his head.

With that, the three of us piled into the SUV and made our way to Georgie’s mom’s place.

I didn’t know much about the woman other than that she was a chain smoker and chain dater who was usually too busy doing her own thing to do the motherhood thing. From the few stories Georgie told me, her mom wasn’t abusive, per se, just absent. And they’d mostly fallen out of touch since Georgie got married.

So I didn’t know what to expect as the three of us piled in through the front door of her mobile home.

Before I noticed anything else about her, though, I noticed the blood covering her chest, stomach, and the hand she kept bringing to her mouth to take pulls of her cigarette. Her other arm was cradled to her chest.

“Cain!” Georgie called, rushing across the room to plow right into me, her arms wrapping me so tightly it was hard to breathe.

“Hey, it’s okay, babe,” I assured her even as my gaze finally found the source of the blood.

Perry.

With a knife still sticking out of his chest.

Well.

That was one problem off my list.

And judging by the blood, it had been Georgie’s mom to deliver the fatal blow. While surprising, I figured that was probably for the best. Georgie was too soft, too sweet, too prone to overthinking. She would never be able to get over killing someone.

Meanwhile, everything about the woman sitting at the table said she was rough, tough, and capable of compartmentalizing hard things.

“So, you’re Cain,” she said, looking me over. “I’m Dotty.”

“Dotty. Nice to meet you. Wish it were under other circumstances, but we work with what we got. Is your wrist hurt?”

“He grabbed it and twisted.”

I winced at that.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No.”

“Glad to hear that. Babe?”

“I’m okay,” she said, her voice muffled by my shirt.

“Good. Now, can someone tell me what happened here?”

Dotty’s gaze cut away at that question.

“That’s on me, too. That bastard convinced me that he and Gigi were just having marital problems and she wouldn’t meet with him to work it out. I thought… I thought I was helping.”

Without meaning to, she had.

Though I hated that an innocent woman had to be pulled into the whole situation and then take a life, Perry being gone made life a lot easier. No more looking over our shoulders. No more worries about a drawn-out and ugly divorce.