Free Broken by Shiloh Walker

from their wedding day—she’d looked lovely, her dark brown eyes sparkling with happiness, a shy, sweet smile on her lips as she rested her head against his chest.
    His hand closed into a fist. He refrained from hurling the picture out the window, just as he had so often in the past two years. The time to put it away was coming. He hadn’t been making idle threats when he told Don that his patience was coming to an end.
    It was time that he moved on with his life, and he couldn’t do that until he’d dealt with his wife.
    He would have done so long before now except it had proven harder to find her than he had originally anticipated.
    Much harder.
    If Don didn’t find her soon, then James would take matters into his own hands.

    IT was hotter than hell outside, but Quinn was cold.
    Almost shaking with it, he was so cold.
    Too close.
    Way too close.
    His hands had a fine tremor to them as he climbed off his bike. He stood there, staring at them. They were clean, but he could still see blood.
    Still smell it.
    “God, please, mister . . . don’t hurt him. He didn’t mean nothing by it.”
    The girl’s words had been hard to understand, because her lower lip was bruised and swollen. As was her left eye. She had bruises ringing her arms and wrists.
    Quinn had been sitting in the agency car, waiting outside for one Marc D’Angelo to leave his latest girlfriend’s apartment. D’Angelo had a nice little rap sheet, ranging from petty theft to assault. He was all of twenty-three and so far, it looked like he had the makings of a career criminal.
    By all rights, Quinn could have just taken the door down. A reliable witness had seen D’Angelo entering the house. But Quinn hated doing it that way. He had seen a few little toys littering the cracked sidewalk in front of the apartment. As he had parked his car, he’d heard a baby crying from inside.
    So he’d waited.
    But then he’d heard a sound that turned his blood cold—a child’s cry, followed by a woman’s desperate scream, “ Marc, don’t, please!”
    That scream was one he already knew was going to haunt his dreams. One more guilty weight he’d have to bear. He should have gone in. Because he hadn’t wanted to take down some thug in front of kids, those kids had seen that thug pounding on their mom.
    God.
    He’d gone through the door and found a child huddling by the couch, holding a crying baby in his arms and sniffling, while across the room, his mother lay on the floor, huddled in a ball.
    Something had snapped. Even now, he couldn’t quite remember what he’d done. A blur—grabbing D’Angelo. Taking him down. The satisfaction of flesh striking flesh.
    Then a hand on his arm—“ Oh, God. Please. You’re gonna kill him . . . he didn’t mean nothing by it.”
    “Does she really believe that?” he muttered to himself. Three hours later and he could still see the tears in her dark eyes as she begged him not to hurt her boyfriend. Begging him not to hurt the bastard who had hurt her.
    He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes, trying to drive the memory out, but another one replaced it. A memory even darker, even uglier than seeing a man beat on a woman.
    Elena. Lying on the ground while her blood mixed with the dirt.
    Bruises covered her body. Blood. Semen.
    In death, her face had been a terrified mask, so severely beaten, he barely recognized her.
    A laugh shattered the spell, and Quinn flinched, spinning around. But there was nobody there. The laugh came again and recognition hit. Nausea pooled inside him as he recognized it as Sara’s. Distantly, he could hear her voice, and Theresa’s.
    “Shit.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and then jammed them deep in his pockets. He didn’t want to see them right now—didn’t want to see anybody, talk to anybody, not until he got his head together.
    Then you need to move to Antarctica, man. You aren’t ever going to get your head together.
    He slid through the door, keeping his gaze on the