Caught in the Web Emmy Ellis (best ereader for textbooks txt) 📖

Burgess turned away.

They had the main confession. The details could come later. Emerson could deal with Varley overnight. Burgess was going the fuck home.

“I always wanted a brother,” Varley whispered. “Someone to hide under the spider quilt with me. But I’m glad you weren’t my brother. I wouldn’t have wanted you to get those smacks. I took them all for you instead.”

Burgess’ eyes stung. Fuck it.

It was pointless explaining to Varley he hadn’t taken the smacks for him. That there was no way in hell Burgess would ever have gone to live with Emily. The man wasn’t well.

Poor bastard.

Poor victims.

“I was a good boy, doing that for you, wasn’t I?” Varley asked.

“Yes,” Burgess said. “You were.”

He didn’t add that Varley was a bad boy for so many other things. If he did, he had a feeling Varley would go off on one. Sounded to Burgess like Varley had been labelled bad from the word go.

Burgess left the room.

Chapter Thirty-One

There was so much paperwork to do. Still so many things to do. Finding out who the two male victims were, for one, but there had been no further news on that. Somewhere out there were two families who had no idea their loved ones were dead, used as pawns in a game by a man who’d said his mother and stepfather had made him kill them. What kind of excuse was that? Did he even want to know?

Burgess sighed, leant back in his desk chair, his shoes off, feet propped on the desk, although his socks didn’t have holes in them. Yeah, he was giving it a go, being more like Shaw and loosening up, but he wasn’t entirely comfortable sprawling out like this. His mother would have a fit if she saw him.

He’d pick her up from the hotel tomorrow. Take her out for a meal and explain everything. An ideal place, a restaurant. She wouldn’t dare break down in public. But maybe she wouldn’t break down anyway, wherever he told her. She clearly had more mettle in her than Burgess had ever realised. Regardless, it was going to hurt her, but he’d bet his last quid she’d go home to lick her wounds, behind her starched net curtains where she’d again watch the world drift by without her. So many years wasted, doing that. Lost in her memories and the day-to-day workings of other people’s lives.

Burgess was the same as her in more ways than one. Only he didn’t look through net curtains. He had work as his shield, but he did immerse himself in other people’s lives all right. Helping them, being there for them.

Could he continue denying his past, though? He doubted it. Not now he’d discovered what he had about his father. That the idol his mother had created for herself and Burgess no longer existed, a paedophile standing in his place, something Burgess wouldn’t be able to get over easily, if at all. And he had no doubt whatsoever that Shaw would see to it that Burgess faced each snippet of pain, one at a time, until they were dealt with, buried all over again, but put to rest this time, a gravestone marking every one of them. It would be hard—terrible, in fact—but not as terrible as what Gordon would be going through. Had already been going through for endless years.

If what Burgess suspected was right, all that abuse and confusion, Gordon’s mind would be the biggest cemetery of them all.

“All right there?” Shaw asked from where he lounged on the other side of the desk, in the same position as Burgess, no holes in his socks either because, for fuck’s sake, they were brand-fucking-new and had once belonged to Burgess.

Get over it. So he’s got your socks on. Your whole outfit. Your special tie. Big deal. Nothing in the grand scheme of things.

“Yeah,” Burgess said. “Just thinking.”

“About?” Shaw rocked his chair.

He also circled his finger around the top of his cup, further reminding Burgess of his mother when she’d done the same thing.

“Mum. Dad. Gordon. Not sure I want to deal with everything.” Burgess’ mind filled with questions, and they jostled there, desperate to be answered immediately. But he couldn’t handle all that at once. Slow and steady would win the race. “How Mum’s going to deal with knowing Emily was fifteen when she was with Dad. How Dad could even think about going with someone so young—whether she lied about her age or not, had she been eighteen, she was still too young for him in my eyes. And how the hell Gordon is going to cope with the rest of his life. If I thought my past was bad, my dad being killed and all that…”

“Yeah, it’s going to be tough. Like I said before, I wouldn’t want to be Burgess Varley, but I’ll give it a good go at being your therapist, if you want. Maybe even help you get over your fear of those things you so dislike, too.”

“I know you will.” Burgess shuddered at the thought of the things. “Just don’t push too hard, too soon, all right?”

Shaw nodded. Stopped rocking. Stopped circling his cup. “Want to go and see him?”

“Who?” Burgess knew who.

“Gordon. Should have been seen by the doctor by now.”

Did Burgess want that? Should he visit with Gordon, see him as only his half-brother for a while instead of the mishmash of killer-brother he’d previously been in Burgess’ head? No, he didn’t want it, he needed it. Selfish of him, but he had to appease that part of himself that was crying out that he shouldn’t abandon family when they needed him the most. But Gordon wasn’t really family. Not in that sense.

Shit, it was all so confusing emotionally.

“Maybe for a