A STUDY IN BLACK ✓

XIV

Dallon took them down to the station so they could sleep in his office overnight while he tried to work out what they'd seen in Josh's apartment. Tyler wasn't losing his shit anymore, but the way he reacted wouldn't leave Josh's mind. It was like he saw a ghost. Josh wondered if he knew the girls, and if the words had any significance to his time with Heaven's Templar.

He only got an answer for the former after Dallon managed to identify the one of the girls.

"Alexandria Balan, age twenty one. Romanian immigrant. She was suspected to be kidnapped to be thrown into sex-trafficking," Dallon reported. "Died of asphyxiation. However, all the mutilation was done before death."

Josh shivered despite having the shock blanket still around his shoulders. "Jesus. That's terrible."

"How'd you ID her?" Tyler asked, huddling underneath his very own shock blanket. He'd insisted on sharing one, but Josh couldn't get the image of Tyler out of his head and needed some space to breath.

"Uh, fingerprints. Why?"

Tyler stared at his fingers. "The suicide victims- their fingerprints were burned off, weren't they? And their teeth were sometimes pulled. The only way to ID them was through their wallets."

"Your point?" Dallon asked.

"They wanted us to ID her. They wanted to connect me to her murder."

"But how?" Josh asked. "You don't even know her."

"You don't know that."

Josh laughed, but stopped when he saw Dallon's expression. "What. You- you know her?"

"I helped kidnap her."

"What the fuck?"

Josh unconsciously scooted away, which made Tyler's face fall even more. He scooted back.

"In my defense, I didn't know. I thought- I was told that she wouldn't get hurt. Romanians trust Romanians, so I was put on the task. It was easy to grab her, but I didn't- I never would intentionally hurt someone."

Josh believed him, but that didn't mean he wasn't reevaluating this guy he made out and got into a gun fight with. He knew he worked for some bad guys, but sex trafficking? That was a line that once you cross it, it's impossible to go back.

"And the blonde girl?" Josh asked.

"No teeth, no body, no ID," Dallon responded ruefully. "But I suspect that she was another sex traffic victim."

Tyler picked at the corner of the blanket, brows furrowed. "My past is catching up to me." He looked up at Josh. "I'm sorry I got you into this."

"Don't be sorry. You gave me a choice. It's my fault I'm caught up in this."

Dallon leaned against his desk, pulling out another cigarette. Tyler scowled playfully.

"Those things'll kill you, Damien."

"I," Dallon said. "am going to murder you."

Tyler gasped. "Is that a threat against my life?"

Dallon kicked them out after that.

Tyler offered to let Josh stay at his apartment seeing how his apartment was, yet again, a crime scene. Josh complied, but he knew that his wariness around Tyler was obvious.

"Do I scare you?" Tyler asked when they arrived to his apartment.

Josh shrugged, which was more or less how he was feeling. Tyler showed him a side of himself the moment he kissed him, but now that soft side was replaced by another layer of Tyler's past.

The flower petal murders, Jenna's disappearance, his time in the Templar, the the threat of the Way Brothers looming over them, and now this new layer of sex trafficking and the reaction Tyler had to the string of words written on the girl's body.

Before he could ask about any of that, Tyler answered.

"They're trigger words."

"Oh," Josh said. "Like, Winter Soldier trigger words or PTSD trigger words?"

"They're one and the same, buddy," Tyler responded.

"Oh."

He didn't know what else to say, so Tyler saw that as an opportunity to continue.

"I didn't just work for the Way Brothers. I was their mercenary. They saw me as somewhat of an apprentice, whether or not I was actually conscious for anything I did for them. Everything I did under their control- it wasn't really me. It was whatever they wanted me to be, all that brainwashing and those bullshit experiments."

"Brainwashing?" Josh echoed.

He was starting to connect the dots between Tyler and Josh's not-so-pristine military background.

Tyler tried to sound light hearted, but it fell flat and he resumed his normal, darker tone. "I didn't want to hurt people, and they made me hurt people. So those words- I guess they're proof that you can never completely erase your past."