Capricorn: Zodiac Killers, #2

By WL Knightly

Being a suspect in a murder case never happens at a good time, but for Capricorn, Tad Halston, a recovering addict and former male escort who is on the verge of reclaiming his place as an in-demand male model, the timing couldn't be worse.

 

With bodies piling up and more evidence pointing to him for the murders, the last thing he needs is a series of anonymous messages demanding he make the next kill for vengeance. Can he murder the uncle who abused him and sent his life hurtling down this dark path, or will his sister become the real killer's next victim? For Tad, time is running out.

 

Now that Darek Blake has hired Bay "The Slayer" Collins as his divorce attorney, he realizes the man's help will come at a much higher price. Becoming an informant was never part of the deal, but with new evidence hitting too close to home, Darek is left with no other choice. With the killer targeting Darek's old friends, he has to decide which side is most important, his role as a detective, or his past as part of the Zodiac Society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BrixBaxter Publishing
• Release date: Jan 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386801665

Book preview

Chapter 1

Tad

Tad Halston forced himself to smile as he greeted a well-dressed couple. Welcome to Bakes. Table for two?

The woman eyed Tad appreciatively, and the man beside her caught her admiring him. He put a protective arm around her as he glared at Tad, signaling she was his property. Yeah, the man said gruffly.

Tad would have rolled his eyes if it wouldn’t get him in trouble with his manager. The man’s date held no interest for Tad. His mind was focused on only two women right now, and both of them were dead.

He led the couple to their table, remaining polite the entire time, and then he returned to his station behind the host’s stand at the front of the restaurant. His reflection stared back at him from the glass window in front of him, just like it had for his entire eight-hour shift. With five more minutes of work to go, he could barely stand to look at it.

Tad knew he was a good-looking man. He didn’t think this out of pride or vanity. It was just something he knew about himself, the way he knew his hair was black and his eyes were blue. Far from being proud of his looks, he considered them a curse. It had brought him nothing but trouble his entire life. Sure, his charming face had gotten him some modeling jobs, but those jobs had led to a crippling cocaine addiction, which had led him into the seedy world of prostitution.

While working as an escort, he’d met Alicia David. Now, she was dead, the victim of a brutal murder, and Tad couldn’t help but feel like it was his fault. Too much of the evidence linked to him, although he wasn’t sure who had killed her or why.

He couldn’t get Alicia’s face out of his mind. He remembered her body, her smile, and her young, sexy voice. She was the only escort down at Arm Candies who had gotten repeat requests just because of her voice. The owner once told him it was because the older men liked the sound of jailbait without the risk.

Tad knew not all men worried about risk. If there was something they wanted, they’d get it, or take it, whenever they pleased. Or at least, they would try.

Alicia might have been a victim to something of that sort, and he hoped Darek Blake, his old friend and NYPD homicide detective, would find out who had cut her up. When he did, Tad hoped all the connections he had to the murder would turn out to be mere coincidence.

Waiting was the hardest part. He hated not knowing if his past in Virginia, that stupid and twisted thing he’d done, would come back to haunt him. However hard, living with this kind of dread wasn’t something new to him. He’d done it for years.

Why aren’t you smiling? Tad’s manager Lewis asked. We’re paying you to look pretty, aren’t we?

Tad turned toward the man, and he was met with glaring eyes and a snotty, curled-lip expression. It wasn’t front page news that Lewis didn’t like him. He’d begrudgingly hired him at the owner’s request and hadn’t forgiven him for existing since. Or for being straight.

I smile when people come in, Tad said. But there’s no one up here but me and you.

You can smile for me, can’t you? Lewis asked. He looked Tad up and down, but it wasn’t in the way most people looked him up and down. Lewis was well past wanting to fuck him. Now he seemed to want to do him bodily harm.

Tad shook his head. Careful, Lewis. I’ll have to report you to Mr. Collins for sexual harassment.

Lewis’s mouth popped open, and Tad walked away, letting his manager chew on that threat. Lewis was an asshole, and even though Tad had only been working at the restaurant for a week, he was sick of the man’s shit. Tad already had one asshole trying to control his life, and he didn’t need another.

Bay Collins, the owner of the restaurant, liked to keep Tad on a short leash, pretending to do him favors while getting off on having Tad feel indebted to him. When Bay had offered him this job, Tad had accepted it begrudgingly. He didn’t like owing Bay any favors, but the job was better than being an escort. And with this murder investigation hitting too close to home, Tad needed a squeaky-clean image to avoid suspicion.

Tad had nothing to do with Alicia David’s murder—not directly—but the killer had made sure to link the crime to Tad and the zodiac club. The investigation was even digging up questions about Emily Johnson’s death twelve years prior, and Tad had very much been involved in that.

Every minute since Tad heard about it, he’d been waiting for someone to show up and haul his ass in for questioning. He just hoped Darek and Bay could keep the heat off his back. They both had a lot to lose, and if Tad went down, the other men would too.

Even though Bay and Darek were both blasts from his past, they were very different people. Darek was fighting his own demons and trying to get through life, but Bay was a demon, a vicious, manipulating puppet master who still had them all on his strings.

Trying to forget about the threats looming on the horizon, Tad punched his time card and headed out the back to find his car where he’d left it. His black GT Mustang was the only thing in his life that was truly his, and every single time he looked at it, he had hope that things could be better. He’d bought it back at a time in his life when everything was good. He’d been a male model for one of the top agencies in New York, and at one time, he’d been in high demand. Then the lifestyle, drugs, and pressure had gotten to him and tore him down.

He looked over his shoulder at Bakes and shook his head. That wasn’t where he wanted to be in life, stuck in some shitty job, working for Bay, and driving home to his sister Hannah’s house instead of his own. Now that he was clean and sober again, he wanted more from life.

There had to be something better than this. Something simpler and more fulfilling. If only he could figure out what that was.

He drove the twenty-minute commute home to Hannah’s and parked out front. His sister had done well for herself and had always wanted the same for Tad. Being older than him by a few years, she’d pushed him away as a teen but mothered him as an adult, especially when their own mother died from a drug overdose just two days after his twenty-first birthday.

He walked up the weed-grown path and realized he should probably mow the grass, but he wasn’t even sure if his sister owned a lawnmower. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done yard work. As he walked up to the front door and put his key in the door, the memory hit him. The last time he’d mowed the lawn was at his Uncle Roddy’s house.

When his old man had bailed, he went with his mother and Hannah to live with his uncle for a short time. Uncle Rod, his father’s brother, was a man’s man, tall and strong, a hard-working mechanic who loved to tinker with just about anything, including lawnmowers.

Tad remembered that first day, walking into the backyard and finding the man covered in sweat, his hands black with grease. His long, dark hair hung down his back in a ponytail that had about four different colored bands keeping it together, and a faded black bandana had been wrapped around his forehead.

Come over here, boy, he’d said, not even taking time to leave the project to welcome them to his home. I’ve already told your mama the rules, so I expect you to mind them. His mother had gone over the rules a hundred times while packing the other house, and then another hundred in the car on the way over.

Yes, sir. Tad was a tall and lanky kid, and so pretty his mother had often told him he should have been a girl.

His uncle looked him up and down. Tad could see the resemblance between his father, who had been a worthless piece of shit, and his uncle, whom he’d always admired. He could also see a little of himself in his uncle’s eyes.

That’s my boy. You’ll do good around here. I need you to help me with something. Do you think you can?

Yes, sir. I’ll try.

He stood up and pointed to the red mower he’d been working on. Give it a start.

Tad’s eyes widened. His old man had never trusted him enough to do anything, and since they didn’t own a lawnmower, he’d never started one before. Lucky for him, he’d seen the neighbors do it enough.

He walked over to the thing and yanked the string hard. After a couple of hard pulls, it fired right up. Uncle Roddy praised him. Great job, Tad.

It was the first time his uncle had called him by his actual name. You’ve never called me Tad before.

I figure Tadpole is for babies, but you’re a man now, Tad. Old enough to do a man’s job and make a man’s decision. Besides, you’re going to have to be a man for your sister and mother now that your father’s gone away, and I know you can do it.

You really think so?

I know so. His uncle had given him the warmest smile, and that was the first time he’d ever truly felt like a human being. Not just someone who could grow into a man one day, but an actual human being, living and breathing, with feelings.

His own father had made him feel like an unwanted pet, and his own mother didn’t do much better. Hannah had been too busy with her friends back then, and he wished that she had paid closer attention to the things Uncle Roddy was teaching him.

By the time Tad had come out of his head, he had made it all the way into the kitchen. He spent some time sifting through the cabinets and wondering when Hannah would get the time to go grocery shopping again. She hadn’t gone in over a week, and though they were supposed to be taking turns, he was going to go ahead and pick something up the next time he went out. He settled for plain toast, not daring to go near the jar of peanut butter in the cabinet and wondering how his sister could still eat the stuff.

His mother had raised them on it, and sometimes, when things were bad before he’d moved in with Uncle Roddy, that was the only meal they’d have for weeks. Their mother never failed to buy cigarettes, though, but that was the only luxury afforded the family.

Hannah had learned to make and keep friends, but Tad was such a skinny little shit who had never been much for sports, and he hadn’t been accepted much by others. It wasn’t that he was an introvert—he longed for attention and for someone to notice him—but instead, because he was so small and his voice was really high, he was accused of being gay, which made him an outcast growing up. In the less enlightened times of his youth, no one wanted to be around him.

Having Uncle Roddy was a godsend. Or so he thought.

Tad’s stomach tightened, and the pain seared through him. It was worse than hunger pangs, and he remembered the first time he’d ever gotten it. His mother had told him that he wasn’t allowed in the basement. That was Roddy’s personal space, and he’d converted it into a master suite. But it was Roddy himself who had given him the tour.

It was a few days after they’d moved in, and Tad was in the kitchen cooking corndogs in the microwave when Roddy came in. What you got there, champ?

I hope it’s okay; they were in the freezer. With certain parts of the house off limits, he wasn’t sure what he could do, so he’d spent the first few days walking on eggshells. The last thing he wanted to do was upset his uncle.

Sure, it’s okay. Feel free to eat anything you want and make yourself at home. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking. There’s a whole other house under this one, and while I know I set the rules for that being my private place, I figure a fellow man like myself should be welcome. I know it’s not easy being the only guy with a bunch of women. Let’s face it, they just don’t understand us, do they? He gave a little laugh, and Tad joined in.

Not really. The microwave went off, and Tad took out his plate. He sat at the table with Roddy.

You’ll learn that there’s going to be some things that we men, as men, keep to ourselves. For instance, man food. He reached over and picked up a corndog. He pushed it toward Tad’s mouth. Tad recalled not realizing at the time what the gesture represented for his uncle, but that was how life went. Hindsight was everything.

His uncle was a special kind of abuser. He hadn’t ever laid a finger on Tad, not in any kind of sexual way, but he’d used him just the same, in every other way possible.

Go on. Open as wide as you can.

Looking back, Tad felt stupid that he’d been so naïve; he’d done exactly what his uncle asked. He opened his mouth wide, trying hard not to giggle too much. Then his uncle stuck the thing into his mouth.

There you are! Hannah walked into the kitchen, freeing Tad from the grip of his memory. I’ve been calling you. Did you not hear me?

I’m sorry. I was thinking. Tad tried to shake off the image and the manipulations that had happened next.

I hope you were thinking about how wonderful your sister is for getting you an interview.

Please tell me it’s not in the food industry. He’d had enough of working around food all day and the people who went out to eat it.

Nope. You know Lexa, right? She’s dating this guy, and he’s a photographer for Dos. He wants you to come in. I showed her a picture of you, and he recognized you from Jades.

Hannah walked over and gave him a big hug, and all the while, he couldn’t help but worry if he got back into modeling, would the addiction follow? He’d been clean now for almost a year, and he hadn’t modeled in two. With all the ghosts of his past appearing in one form or another, he wasn’t sure it was the right time, but he couldn’t tell her no.

That’s awesome, sis. I’ll look into it.

Chapter 2

Darek

Lizzy bent over the body of Victor Barnes, and Darek noticed the red stain blooming on her gauze-wrapped arm. A slow trickle of blood was finding its way to the surface. She finished her last statement to the medical examiner about transporting the body, and Darek leaned over and took her arm.

You’re bleeding. You might want to watch that.

She looked down at the seeping wound. The last thing she needed was to contaminate the crime scene.

"Son of a