“Why are you here? What is your connection to Anderson?” she peppered.

“Duh. He’s my boyfriend. We’ve been dating for 370

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over a year. What’s it to you? Why are you here? What do you want from Henry? He hasn’t done anything wrong, has he?”

Taylor stayed standing, looming over Michelle.

“You are dating Henry Anderson. You’re kidding me, right?” Baldwin had sidled up beside her.

“Marcus has Anderson cuffed and in custody, has him Mirandized with me as a witness. Patrols are on their way to execute the search warrant. He’s lawyered up.”

“You arrested Henry? For what?”

“Oh, let’s see, Baldwin, what all do we have him on?

Child pornography, for starters. Libel, slander, breaking parole, falsifying information about his whereabouts to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations, falsifying his information on the sexual offenders database. That’s just for starters, I’m sure the D.A.’s office will have an indictment the length of my arm when they get done with him. Federal and state charges. Your Henry is going away for a long time. Oh, and there’s that other pesky little thing. Your sister’s murder.”

Michelle shook her head, swatting her hand in front of her face like she was shooing away a bee. “Wait, wait, wait. Todd killed Corinne. You arrested him. All the evidence pointed right at him. They are working on a trial date, for God’s sake. Henry has never met my sister in his life. There’s no way he could be involved. And what are you talking about, the sexual offenders’

database? Henry isn’t a sex offender. I live here, you think I could miss it if he had a problem?”

“You’re so sure about that, Michelle?”

Taylor heard the boots of the additional patrol Judas Kiss

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officers arriving. The house was quickly teeming with officers. Henry Anderson was already stashed in the back of a patrol car, awaiting a ride down to the CJC. Taylor hadn’t even seen him brought out of his house. She stowed the disappointment, there was plenty of time to deal with him.

Michelle met Taylor’s gaze without flinching. “Yes, I am sure. I’d like to see Henry now,” she answered. She might as well have been sucking on ice cubes, the words were so cold.

Jesus. The woman didn’t have a clue. How was that possible? Her lover was a full-time video pimp, running a massive, diverse organization of smut, and she didn’t know? Taylor found that extremely hard to believe.

“Why don’t you come downtown with us, Michelle. You can tell me more about Henry.”

Taylor reached for Michelle’s arm. It was one step too far. Michelle snatched her arm away and turned on Taylor so swiftly that three weapons were drawn.

“You know, I trusted you. That first day, in Mrs. Manchini’s living room, when you’d just come from Corinne’s house. All I saw was a kind woman, a woman I could trust to bring justice for Corinne. Now look at you. Tilting at windmills, discredited, demeaned. You’re the laughingstock of Nashville, you know that? Can’t even keep your own playthings off the air. Not to mention solve a predictable murder. Henry told me what you did to him. I hate you, you…you… SLUT!”

Michelle stormed out of the room, leaving Taylor stunned.

She’d only focused on one line in Michelle’s tirade. 372

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The laughingstock of Nashville?

Could that be true?

Stop it, girl. Look at the source. Michelle was obvi- ously disturbed. First her sister is murdered, then she finds out her boyfriend is a liar. If anything, she was the sad case here. She’s having an awfully tough week. Just wait until she finds out her beloved boyfriend was banging her dead sister. Might make me a little testy, too.

Taylor swallowed hard, then followed Michelle out the front door of Anderson’s home. One way or another, it was time for some answers.

Thirty-Nine

Taylor was in Interrogation two, Henry Anderson across from her. He’d aged since she last saw him. The close-cropped hair was prematurely white, his skin tanned but starting to go crepey around his eyes and mouth, his teeth flashing under a still black goatee. He still had those icy green eyes too, the ones that made her so uncomfortable all those years ago when she was putting the cuffs around his wrists the very first time. The eyes that distracted her just long enough for him to try to escape. Back then, she didn’t know the difference between lust and hate. She wasn’t intimately familiar with the seductiveness of evil. Now she was. And there was no question which emotion Anderson was feeling right now.

Hate was probably too gentle a word. Absolute and complete abhorrence, that was a better description of the daggers he was shooting at her.

“You know, bitch, I’m gonna be out on bail before you finish sucking your boyfriend’s dick tonight.”

“Henry, shut up.” Miles Rose was seated next to 374

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Anderson, looking decidedly less jovial than when he was last in the room with Todd Wolff.

Taylor’s opinion of Rose had shifted one hundred and eighty degrees. Rose was on the direct retainer of The September Group, Henry Anderson’s umbrella company that housed his illicit video empire. Selectnet was just one of the companies he operated, staying anonymous through multiple layers of business bullshit.

It was a damn shame Henry Anderson was such a lowlife criminal. If he were straight, he could be president.

“You still like your pussy licked, Lieutenant? I always liked watching those boys go down on you. Hard to come that way for you though, isn’t it? Givin’

up too much control, I expect. ’Cept for with that new boy. He’s quite the artiste, if you know what I mean. That why you’re marryin’ him? He makes you cream?”

Rose had the decency to blush. “That is enough, Henry.”

“No, Miles, it’s fine. This is the only way Henry can get off.” Taylor met the frosty eyes. “Isn’t it, Henry? I should have known you’d be a watcher. Still having those impotency issues? Hit or miss, huh? Poor thing. Though I guess that works out well for Michelle Harris, doesn’t it? She’s not that into men anyway. Since you aren’t much of a threat in the bedroom, that must be a sweet setup for you. You have a pretty woman to give you legitimacy, and you don’t have to get it up for her. Did she ask you why?”

“Lieutenant, I think that’s enough from you, too.”

Miles tapped his hand on the table, palm down. The slap echoed, but it didn’t work. Taylor’s and Henry’s Judas Kiss

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eyes were locked, pure venom shooting from his, something akin to gloating streaming back from hers. Taylor held Henry’s gaze for a heartbeat longer, then smiled. “Hope it doesn’t hurt too bad, Henry. Do you have that phantom limb pain when you can’t get it up? Tch. Sorry about that. I might have gotten a bit carried away way back when. Maybe I shouldn’t have kicked you in the balls when you tried to run. But I see you’ve found new and different ways to inflict pain. Apparently you didn’t need to use your prick to screw people. Too bad you blew it again.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am golden.”

“You’re shit. We have everything. The whole setup. Every company, all the records. All the videos, all the studios. Todd Wolff gave you up. And you just admitted, on tape, mind you, that you’ve seen the videos.”

Anderson leaned back in his chair. If he wasn’t cuffed to the table, he would have crossed his arms in nonchalance. “Pppft. Little pussy knows nothing. Though I will miss that little wife of his. She was quite a piece of ass. Had her every which way from Sunday, and then some.”

“Too bad your son died with her.”

“I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about, Lieutenant. I’m impotent, remember?”