Breaking Free Read Online Free Page A

hell.
    I listened to the cop’s lies, refusing to lose my temper. I knew that’s what he wanted.
    “Just admit it, Cooper. You kidnapped and raped her. You were the last one to see her. Your skin was under her fingernails. Your semen was inside her. There’s no one else to pin this on.”
    I tried to control my urge to heave all over the table. Maura had been kidnapped, raped… brutalized. I did this . My anger had driven her into the arms of a psychopath. I let her leave my building alone.
    The cop and I had been going in circles for hours. I was tired, hungry, and mad as hell, but he wasn’t going to break me. I refused to tell him what he wanted to hear. I hadn’t done it, and nothing he said would get me to say I had.
    “I think it’s time for me to lawyer up.” I knew I should have asked for a lawyer the minute they brought me in. As the son of a career cop, I knew their tactics too well, but I’d foolishly believed honesty would set me free. Obviously I was wrong.
    The detective glared at me as he got up and tapped on the two-way mirror. He slowly turned to face me. “Just tell me why you let her go. You killed all the others. Why not her?”
    The detective and I both knew he was crossing the line. I’d asked for a lawyer and anything I said from this point on would be inadmissible in court, but that didn’t prevent him from hounding me, which told me they believed they’d found their man and had no intention of looking elsewhere.
    I didn’t have much use for the police since they’d shot and killed my brother during a high-speed chase three years ago. Billy was high and behind the wheel. He needed to be taken off the streets because he was a danger to himself and others, but he didn’t deserve to die. He was just a kid who’d fallen in with the wrong crowd.
    Bile rose in my throat, and I had to swallow it back. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I fisted my hands, thinking how much I’d love to be inside the ring and taking my aggression out on an opponent. “I didn’t kidnap anybody. I didn’t rape anybody. I sure as fuck didn’t murder anybody.”
    A slow smile spread across his face as he ran his tongue over yellowing teeth. “We’ve been looking for you for a long time. You were good at evading us, but I knew you’d screw up eventually. You messed with the wrong woman. This one was tough. She fought back. Is that how she got away?”
    “We had sex. She liked it rough.” So did I . “My skin was under her nails because she scratched my back.” I turned around, unbuttoning my plaid work shirt before peeling it off. “See?”
    “That could have easily happened during the attack.” The cop sounded unimpressed.
    I rolled my eyes as I sat down. “She’d have clawed my face, my chest, my arms, not my back.” I knew I was wasting my breath. Nothing I said was going to change his mind. “My semen was inside her because she hates condoms. She’s on the pill.”
    The image of someone taking Maura forcibly charged through my mind again. If I found him before the police did, he’d wish he were dead. I’d show the bastard no mercy. He hurt the woman I loved. No way would he get away with it, and he sure as hell wouldn’t pin it on me.
    The cop sat across from me and leaned in. “Okay, Cooper, let’s say I believe your story. Why’d all those people say you went ballistic at the bar when she rejected you?”
    “She didn’t reject me.” I drew a deep breath. We’d covered this already, but he obviously wasn’t satisfied. He hoped to trip me up, thought I’d get confused with my lies. But I was telling the truth. “I saw her slow dancing with her ex-boyfriend. I got pissed. We argued. That’s what people saw.”
    He narrowed his eyes. “You expect me to believe Maura Lancaster was slumming with you?”
    Maura’s family owned half the town, and she’d been bred for success. Class oozed from her pores, and everyone knew her name.
    “I don’t care what you believe.