Her Brother's Best Friend - Aching Hearts Series #2

Rye

CHAPTER 47 - RYE

Murtaugh slammed his vigorous hand onto the table, roaring: "For God's sakes, just speak up! Every fucking minute is essential!"

The young man sitting at the other side of the table in the interrogatory room merely looked up, his forest green eyes lifeless, barely even seeing what was ahead of him. He'd been like that since they'd fished him in the water over two hours ago, and the detective was starting to lose his patience. How could the man remain like that while his girlfriend's life was at stake?

He hadn't spoken one single word, nothing, as soon as the officer had pushed him into the car, the young man had balled up in a distraught bubble, and it seemed there was nothing that would get him out. Murtaugh had tried all his techniques, Carter had resorted to her charms as well as her maternal instincts, but nothing. The guy wasn't responding, it was as if he'd travelled into another dimension and wasn't showing any sign of life except for the movement of his eyes and head.

The sight was miserable, to say the least, Murtaugh would have spared him such treatment, but the minutes were counted, and he surely was the sole person able to guess where that psychotic woman had taken his girlfriend.

Desperate times call for desperate methods, Murtaugh reminded himself, one mere inch away from shaking up the boy to wake him the hell up. "Don't you care about your girlfriend?! Don't you want to save her?!"

Riley stared into the man's dark eyes, expressionless, his face blank, as if he hadn't heard a single word. He had been maintaining a silence since over two hours now, a silence that Murtaugh called stubborn and reckless, while it was merely hopeless.

Riley had lost every hope for a miracle, henceforth, he had given in to shock, which had simply reduced him to mutism, making him unable to relate to the outside world, better said, it had triggered a defensive reaction of his organism, which consisted in, simply, ignoring the real dimension. The one where his Honeybee was gone. Forever.

He was not ready to face such world, such eventuality, therefore his subconscious reacted accordingly, creating some sort of bubble where all the shenanigans with Lydia never existed. Right now, Riley was numb. To everything and everyone. Reality was no more worth living for him, not as long as Emily wasn't part of it.

***

"She bled out in the woods, sir." The young officer confirmed. Murtaugh rubbed his chin, pensive. "We followed her thanks to the trails her blood left behind, but once we got there, she was already dead, sir, sorry."

The detective nodded, absentmindedly. Carter instructed the young officer to fill the report about it, without missing a single detail, and so the boy scuttled away. She then fixed her eyes on her partner, knowing full well that he was thinking the same as she was.

Carter sighed, and took a step closer to the glass that gave them view to the interrogatory room, where Riley was held, at the moment alone with himself. She pitied him, poor boy, how much he was suffering right now, it was so evident, no matter the blank expression shock had brought on his face.

"It's over, isn't it?" Carter murmured, conscious that her partner had come to the same conclusion. Sighing, she turned to him.

"The killer is dead, we've got no clue how to find the girl. We may as well give up." Murtaugh stated coldly.

Carter sent him a dirty look, but she knew he was right. They'd been scanning the whole place, even the portion of ocean until a few miles away from the next bay, but there was no sign of the girl. Nothing. It was as if she'd disappeared out of the Earth, and because now her perpetrator was dead, the chances they would find her were close to none. Only the killer could know where had she left the eventual body.