Текст книги "Tangled Bond"

Автор книги: Emma Hart

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“Maybe I haven’t said it yet.”

“Spit it out, then.”

“I see not killing each other is going real well,” Alison remarks with an amused twist of her lips.

“Hey,” Drake protests. “We lasted, what, maybe two hours?”

“Give or take a few minutes, pretty much,” I agree. “I think we’re about due for a fight.”

He laughs, and I hear Nonna’s cackle from the kitchen. Then Drake’s phone rings, and he pulls it from his pocket.

“It’s Tim,” he says, glancing at the screen. “Excuse me a second.” He walks into the hall and opens the front door, saying, “Nash,” into the phone.

Brody, Trent, and I all stop, our eyes meeting. Tim wouldn’t call Drake on a Saturday evening about the autopsy unless something came up in it—something that could change this investigation. My stomach rolls as the minutes tick by and he doesn’t come back in.

“Dinner is-a ready,” Nonna calls.

We all make our way into the dining room where the long table is set, and Trent lifts Silvio onto his chair.

“Thanks, buddy,” he says, wrenching the Innotab from his hands. Silvio narrows his eyes as he takes it and puts it on the top shelf of the bookcase.

My four-year-old nephew points his fork in Trent’s direction and yells, “Pew-pew!”

A fork gun. Now, I’ve seen it all.

“Put the fork down, Sil,” Alison orders. “The longer you play with the forks at dinner, the longer Mommy keeps your Nerf gun.”

“No fair,” he grumbles. “Everyone else has guns.”

“Everyone else is grown up, pal,” Dad reminds him. “And when you’re grown up, you can have one too.”

“Promise?”

“What the heck? Sure. I’ll buy you one.”

“Excellent,” Mom drawls. “Another generation of gun-loving Bonds. There simply aren’t enough of those in this family.”

And everyone wonders where my sass comes from. Really.

“For-a once, I-a agree.” Nonna sets the large bowl of creamy pasta in the middle of the table and scoops a portion onto Silvio’s plate with a wink, then Aria’s. “Too-a many guns. Noella, why-a do you need-a three?”

“Because I forget stuff all the time, and this way, I always have one I can get,” I reply, digging my fork straight into the bowl and spearing a piece of pasta.

“No!” She taps my hand. “We-a wait for Drake!”

Devin grabs the spoon from her. “Don’t worry, Nonna. If he’s still on the phone, he’s probably walked his way down to the station to carry his conversation on in person.”

“I still don’t understand why Bates moved the morgue to the station basement,” Dad adds.

“Because the mayor cut the funding, remember?” Trent takes the spoon. “It was either his driver or the morgue.”

“Why does the mayor need a driver?” Alison asks.

“More worryingly, why do his driver costs equal the morgue’s?” Brody counters.

“Why does he even need a driver? You can walk anywhere in Holly Woods in five minutes. Hell, even Nonna can get across town in ten.” I take the spoon from Trent and point it in her direction.

“Hey-a,” she protests.

“Why do you have a car, then?” Dev asks me.

“Because there isn’t a Gigi’s in Holly Woods. Duh.”

Dad is shaking his head in resignation when Drake comes back in the house. He enters the dining room with a grim look on his face, and Dad, my brothers, and I all look at him, frozen.

“We need to go to the station. Now,” he tells us.

“What’s happened?” Trent asks, already moving to stand.

“She was murdered,” he answers. “That’s all I can say here.”

Brody and Trent get up, but Dev shrugs.

“Dev,” Drake says. “You took her stalker call. We might need you.”

“All right.” He gets up without argument and follows the other guys to the door.

I kiss Dad’s cheek. “I’ll call you later. Promise.”

He taps my arm. “I know.”

I follow Drake out of the house and to his truck. He holds the door open for me, and I sit, but then I pause before he shuts it.

“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t as simple as her stalker being her killer?”

“Because murder is rarely simple.” He shuts the door and walks around the truck. When he’s in and the engine has started, he continues. “Are you working tomorrow?”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” I guess it looks like I have to change my plans.

“You are now,” he says, confirming my suspicions. “Natalie’s house hasn’t been searched yet. I want us there early tomorrow. Then we’ll interview Madison and the mayor and try to track Nick Lucas.”

There’s an ‘and.’

“Do you have a new tech guy?”

“I was going to call the last guy I interviewed on Monday and offer him the job.”

“Have Grecia do it tomorrow. I think he’ll be needed first thing on Monday if my suspicions are correct.”

“You’re being very cryptic, Detective, and I don’t like it.”

He smiles, looking at me. “Trust me. It’s about to make a whole lot more sense.”

He pulls up outside the station and parks in his usual spot. My brothers are right behind us in Dev’s truck, and they part next to us in Trent’s spot.

Drake takes my hand and holds it while I get out of his truck. He really needs to get a smaller truck or get me a stepping stool or something. I think it’s a borderline monster truck.

I pull my hand from his as my brothers get out of Dev’s truck. I mean, it’s weird. Plus, he is Trent’s closest friend.

God, that really is weird, isn’t it?

Drake doesn’t take offense though, merely shaking his head with an amused smirk on his face. I look away, nowhere near as amused as he is, and drop back to walk with Brody.

“It’s hilarious when you get embarrassed,” he whispers with light laughter.

“Shut your face,” I mutter.

Dear teenage me, the whole relationship thing doesn’t get easier. They lied. Love, adult Noelle.

We take the stairs down to the converted basement, where Tim is, and instantly, I’m hit with the smell of death. It’s rancid and awful, and I force myself to breathe through my nose instead of my mouth. I hate the morgue. I always have. Knowing that beyond a door or two are the dead bodies of people stuffed into freezers has always seriously bothered me.

Tim is sitting at the desk in his office, holding his glasses to the side and pinching the bridge of his nose. He isn’t a particularly young man, anyway—fifty-something. But right now, he looks like he should have retired ten years ago.

“Excellent,” he says tiredly, looking up with gray eyes. “Is it party time?”

“When at Bond family dinner,” I tease.

“Should have guessed.” He smiles. “Take a seat…if you can all fit.”

His office is tiny and packed with papers and various things I don’t really care for—like that model of a torso with half of it showing its organs. Or the brain I seriously hope is fake in a jar. Or that hand curved on top of the bookshelf, which I also hope is fake.

Long story short, this is my first visit to Tim’s office, and it’s probably gonna be my last.

Drake grabs my shoulders and propels me into one of the chairs in front of Tim’s desk while Brody takes the other. Drake stays standing behind me, leaning forward, with his hands on the back of my chair.

“Tell them what you told me,” he orders, his voice gentler than normal.

Tim rubs the bridge of his nose once more before putting his glasses on. Then he looks at us all in turn, one by one. “Natalie Owens was murdered without a shadow of a doubt. While it isn’t uncommon for autoerotic asphyxiation users to accidentally take it too far, it rarely happens with a partner. With her hands and feet bound, she was completely powerless to whoever strangled her under the guise of that particular fetish.” He opens a brown envelope and pulls some Polaroid photos out. “She suffered numerous lashes to her body, some of which opened up old welts from previous whippings. Whoever Natalie was in public was not who she was in private, as is typically the case.”

More photos are laid out, these ones under UV light.

“There are clear signs of sexual activity before her death. Ninety-nine percent of it is internal, but there are very light traces of semen on her stomach and thighs, which have been sent for DNA testing. Of course, that doesn’t mean that whoever she slept with killed her.”

“Sounds like it could have been anyone,” Brody remarks.

“It could have. But we have more. I pulled skin from beneath her fingernails and swabbed in and around her mouth for saliva traces. The chances of us getting a DNA match for at least her last sexual companion is high, and they are likely to be her killer.”

“Would they really be that careless though? To let her touch them and not clean her?” I ask.

“It could have been an opportunistic moment,” Drake explains, brushing his thumb across the space between my shoulder blades. I fight my shiver. “She was there… Tied… Too easy. If it were premeditated, then no, her killer wouldn’t have allowed her to touch them at all.”

“So, what does this mean?” Trent leans forward. “We have nothing to go on except a definite murder charge until we get the DNA results?”

“Which might not even show anything conclusive,” Tim concedes. “But no. That’s not all. You have another huge factor that threw me.” He scoots his chair back and pulls another envelope from her drawer. “The first thing I did was draw blood from her and send it to Austin for testing with a rush from Judge Barnes. The results were…interesting.”

“You didn’t tell me this.” Drake’s thumb stills.

“No.” Tim removes sheets of paper stapled together in the corner. “I was surprised, given the lashings she’d taken. I expected to see high alcohol or drug levels. Perhaps even poison, but I saw none of that. What she did have was an extremely high level of hCG in her blood.”

I take a deep breath.

“What is that?” Dev asks. “Like a legal drug or something?”

“No,” Tim says simply. “Natalie Owens was four months pregnant.”

I pick at the banana muffin in front of me. I haven’t eaten a thing since last night. After we left Tim, Drake gave me a ride home and left me at my front door with nothing more than a peck on my cheek and a reminder that he’ll be here at seven a.m.

It’s seven fifteen and I’m still waiting. He’d be late to his own funeral given half a chance. Actually, screw half. Give him the sniff of the possibility of a chance and he’d be late.

I hit his name on my call list and tap the speaker button, still aimlessly picking bits of banana out of the muffin and dropping them down onto the open wrapper. It rolls over to voicemail as the sound of a truck rumbles outside. I sit up straight and peek over my windowsill, and when I see his truck, it’s the first time in my life that I’ve been thankful to walk away from cake.

I grab my purse and cell, set my alarm, and lock my door behind me. Dark sunglasses shield Drake’s eyes from the sun peeking out from behind the clouds low in the sky, and the tight set of his jaw tells me that he’s pissed.

Oh, goodie.

“Morning,” I say softly, closing the door to the truck.

He grunts a reply.

“You were up all night, weren’t you?”

He shrugs and starts the engine again.

I put my hand over his and he stills, turning his face toward mine slightly.

“Have you had coffee?” I ask. “Breakfast? I have muffins inside.”

“Coffee and cake don’t solve the world’s problems, Noelle.”

“No, but neither does going without them, so why not have them anyway?”

“Your reasoning is incredibly hard to argue with.”

“I know.” I smile. “Give me two minutes.”

I dig my keys from my purse and jump out. I jog back to the front door and make sure to disable the alarm. Damn thing really is a pain in the ass for situations like this. Then I stop in the middle of the kitchen.

Crap. Natalie was supposed to get her alarm set up today on an emergency call.

I guess she won’t be needing that.

Drake’s footsteps echo behind me, and I turn to remind him, but before I can, he frames my face with his hands and presses his lips to mine. It’s short and sweet and, oddly, completely welcome.

“Morning,” he mumbles quietly, his sunglasses presumably left in the car.

I smile. “I see you woke up.”

“Have you seen your ass in those shorts? They’d wake up the entire graveyard if you walked through.”

I laugh and move my attention to the coffee machine. I pull two takeout mugs from the cupboard, ’cause, you know, doesn’t everyone have those in their kitchen?

“You have reusable takeout cups in your kitchen?”

Apparently not. “Uh, yeah. I have to run out early a ton of times, especially if clients think their spouses are lying about where they’re going. I once had to go follow some guy in my pajamas at six a.m. because his wife thought he was lying about his earlier flight to New York for some business meeting.”

“Was he?”

“Yeah. He went and bonked his mistress before he went to the airport.”

“It’s a wonder you’ve never been arrested for invasion of privacy, you know that?”

I fill one mug and smile sweetly over my shoulder. Then I slide the cup along the counter to him. He picks it up and sniffs.

“Hey,” I say to him, “Normal coffee, no cream or sugar.”

His smile reflects in his eyes. “We already know how the other takes their coffee. Maybe there’s hope for us yet.”

I purse my lips, but he winks, exaggerating his smile, and I laugh at him. To be fair, Trent and Alison never really got it right until he finally learned how she takes her coffee on a morning before her shifts…and that took him eighteen months. So Drake does have a point there.

“What if one of us didn’t drink coffee? Then what?” I ask, fitting the lid on my cup.

“Let’s be honest here. You’d never be the one to not drink coffee, and if I didn’t drink coffee, I wouldn’t come near you before four in the afternoon. I wouldn’t be brave enough to face you until you were falling asleep.”

“I could so go without coffee,” I argue, grabbing a muffin and shoving it at him. “I’m not that much of a bitch without it.”

“Sweetheart, don’t take this the wrong way, but you can be that much of a bitch with coffee.”

I glance at the clock on my fireplace before I step outside. “Fifteen minutes into the day. I’m going to count myself as the bigger person here and not respond to that asinine comment.”

“Oooh, asinine. Big word for this early.”

I spin on the balls of my feet by his car. “Keep that sass up, Detective Nash…”

“And you’ll shoot me?” His eyes twinkle.

“No,” I say with a sassy half smile. “I can implicate a sex ban now. That’s way more threatening than shooting you.”

Drake snorts, getting back into the truck and putting his cup and muffin in the center console. “A sex ban? Yeah, all right, cupcake.”

“I’m dead serious.”

“Noelle, if you think your dumbass sex bans can stop me from touching you and turning you the fuck on whenever I want to, then clearly I need to fuck you again—and harder this time.” He lifts one eyebrow, almost running a red light.

“You need to pay attention to the road,” I scold him, but my mouth is dry.

Holy shit, and I thought I had no brain-to-mouth filter. Does Drake Nash spit out every sexy thought in that delightful little mind of his without a second thought?

Wait—delightful little mind? What kind of voodoo is this prick pulling on me?

Handsome, part Italian, a Catholic in theory, killer eyes, deadly kiss… Oh, that voodoo.

New Orleans, I need a cure, please and thank you.

“You’re mutterin’ to yourself, and you look like you have a headache. Are you thinkin’ too hard again?”

“One more word,” I warn. “One more word and I’m clamping your cock to your thigh.”

“If you can find a clamp big enough, I’m gonna say go ahead.”

“Cocky bastard.”

He slows before turning the corner toward Natalie’s street, and he looks at me with a grin that tells me that I walked straight into his trap. “I am, aren’t I?”

I exhale loudly, looking away. “Okay. We’re here to work. Let’s try to be professional.”

“Shouldn’ta worn those shorts.”

“I should be able to wear whatever I like to work and not be lusted over. Especially when I’m being dragged along on my day off.”

“You don’t get days off when people die, cupcake.”

“I don’t get them when they’re damn well living, either.” I jump out of the truck and slam the door shut. “It’d be real helpful if adulterers could schedule their trysts around my schedule.”

“I don’t think it works that way.” Drake gives me a half grin and inserts the key into the front door.

My skin prickles when he opens it. There’s a chill in the air, and if this were a horror movie, I’d say that Ms. Natalie Owens’s ghost was haunting this house to stop us from entering and potentially discovering a myriad of her secrets.

I don’t know whether Drake feels it or not, because he walks in as if he owns the place, while I’m still hovering on the threshold, a hand curled around the doorframe.

“What are you doing? Waiting for the spirits to cross from the other side and come answer your questions?”

I glare at him. “It feels…strange. Last time I was here, she was so scared and alive…and…alive,” I finish lamely before swallowing hard.

Two days.

Two days ago, I was here, and she was sick, which I now know wasn’t because of the breakdown. It was probably because of that sweet baby growing inside her.

A baby who’ll never know life because its momma was killed. A baby who didn’t deserve that ending.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

“Noelle.” Drake cups my face the way he did earlier. “One step. Inside. This isn’t the time to be the sweet Noelle I like. Now is when your badass gene can kick the fuck in.”

I divert my gaze while I swallow down the lump in my throat. He’s right. I can’t be emotionally connected to this. I have to come in and look at this house with a critical eye, even if that means being a bitch to him.

“I’m okay,” I reassure him, forcing my arm to pull me inside the house. Then I briefly close my eyes, breathing in.

Work, Noelle. Forget everything else.

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything,” Drake answers, shutting the front door. “Anything that seems out of place. Diaries. Planners. Calendars. Anything that might relate to her pregnancy.”

I hold my hand out, and he passes me a pair of latex gloves. I wriggle my fingers into them because it’s really not the easy snap the TV makes it out to be. I practically have my pinkie finger make love to its empty finger space before it goes in. Jesus. If someone wants to make hand-friendly latex gloves, it’d be real appreciated.

I do, however, snap the latex against my wrist. Because. I won’t be doing it again though because it does kinda sting a little.

’Kay. A lot. Ouch.

“You take upstairs,” Drake says. “I’ll do downstairs.”

“Got it.” I put my foot on the bottom step and start slowly walking up. There are two bookcases on the U-turn of the stairs, each of them filled bottom to top with books. Some are fiction, popular romance and fantasy novels and the like, and others are nonfiction books.

How to Change Your Life in Ten Easy Steps. The Art of Feng Shui. Confessions of a Female Stripper. 50 Easy Recipes for Chicken.

Well, she had a varied reading taste, huh?

I comb my fingers across some of the hardcovers on the middle shelf as I walk past. Such a random mixture of books. I wonder if there’s a parenting one in there covered by another book’s dust jacket.

I stop halfway up the second set of stairs and turn back to the shelf. One by one, I pull each hardcover down and open the fronts of the dust jackets, leaving them in a haphazard kind of pile by my feet as I sit on the bottom stair.

“Come on, come on,” I mutter to the books, starting on the second shelf.

“What are you talkin’ to?”

I ignore him and continue on my quest. I’m going to look like a total dick if my gut feeling proves to be wrong.

Except it isn’t.

So You’re Having a Baby? is hiding beneath a dust jacket for homemade Chinese meals.

“Yes!” I fist-pump the air. “Sneaky!”

“What is?” Drake appears on the stairs, his face peeking out around the corner.

“This.” I hold the book out. “She knew she was pregnant, for sure.”

He takes it, briefly flicking through its pages. “So, why let someone whip her stomach the way she did?”

“People don’t necessary want the babies they carry.” I gather a few books and put them back on the shelf in the order I took them off in. “Maybe she was too afraid to have the baby but too afraid to have an abortion, too. Maybe she thought continuing on her sexual lifestyle, the whippings and abuse to her body, would kill the baby. It’s not beyond the realms of possibilities. She could have drunk lots and taken drugs and done whatever to kill the baby in a way she deemed natural without having to risk the condemnation of nurses at the clinic…and the medical bills.”

“What about the father?”

“He didn’t have to know. She told me that Nick was cheating on her, but if she was the one cheating, then it’d make sense that there wasn’t another man on the scene to help her.”

“Do you think she was cheating?”

I slot the last book onto the shelf and pause. “I don’t know. The only person who does is Nick Lucas, and he’s annoyingly absent right now.”

Drake nods. “Carry on up and see if you can find out anything else. Here.” He pulls a couple of evidence bags from his pocket and hands them to me. “Just in case.”

I take them and stuff them into my own pocket, focusing on moving upward. Her bedroom, the spare room, and the bathroom. The spare room gives me nothing, and her bedroom gives me nothing other than a tiny desk calendar with stars marked onto it and a half-eaten package of crispy M&Ms. With a huff, I take to her bathroom, pulling her medicine cabinet open.

Everyone has secrets in that thing.

And bingo.

Contraceptive pill packets are in abundance here. When I turn each foil strip over, each pill is labeled with the date. I look to the trash can, and one totally empty strip stares back at me.

Hmm.

I check each strip and finally find one with three days missing. The last day missing being Friday.

How did this get past her doctor? How was she prescribed the pill without being tested for pregnancy?

Of course, I know. You can go so many months without any kind of tests past blood pressure. And if Natalie had been taking this pill for a long period of time without any problems…

But if she was on the pill, how did she get pregnant? Antibiotics? A day missed? Carelessness?

Sweet shit.

I perch on the edge of the bathtub. All of these boxes—they don’t even have her name on them. Some of them don’t even have doctor’s labels.

She wasn’t being prescribed them. She was getting them illegally.

To try to kill her baby.

Why wouldn’t you take the easy route? If you don’t want a baby, why not get a medically safe abortion? Or put it up for adoption? Or anything other than try to to kill your baby at home.

Illegal pills and stomach lashes.

I drop the strip to the floor and press my mouth against my upper arm. What on Earth could drive her to do something that drastic? I don’t understand it, not for a second.

“Noelle?”

I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, because I can’t imagine the torture Natalie was going through—mentally or, indeed, physically. To do that… Gosh. It doesn’t even make sense, does it?

No, I answer. No, it doesn’t. It also tells me that the baby didn’t belong to her boyfriend. Unless there was an underlying veil of abuse she never passed on to me at her interview, but I didn’t get that feel.

The more I learn, the less certain I am that she was honest at all. Aside from the obvious in the form of her stalker. But who even knows if all of her claims were true?

I hate doubting people. I want to believe that every one of my clients has a spouse who isn’t cheating or they aren’t being followed or that lie their teenaged daughter told them was really a lie. I want to see the good in people, because where’s the use in going through life seeing the bad? Why would you look at a dark-gray, stormy sky if you had the option to stare at one where the sun’s light was filling it?

I’m sometimes harder than situations call for, but when it comes to truth and lies, I want to believe that lies don’t exist. That everyone can be honest. That lies are merely made up of misunderstandings and fears warping together.

I’m cynical, too, though, and I know that, sometimes, lies aren’t that simple. Lies can be intricate webs of deceitfulness so carefully woven that, soon enough, even the liar can’t distinguish between real and make-believe.

“She has several appointments with her gynecologist on her calendar in the kitchen. At least I’m assuming so. And a star every few weeks.”

“Her period,” I say softly. “Mom used to do that—mark on the calendar approximately when it was due so she knew to be ready. Except Natalie was marking when she should have been due. I don’t think her ex knew she was pregnant, Drake.” I turn my face and meet his eyes. “The pill strips—the last one taken was Friday, and none have her name on. She was trying to kill the baby.”

I could say it a hundred times and it’d never sink in.

He leans against the doorframe, his eyes moving between the cupboard, the trash can, and the strip I’ve dropped between my feet on the floor.

“Shit,” he breathes.

“We really need DNA on that baby.” I drop my eyes to the pills. “This could change everything. She wanted that baby dead, Drake. Dead. But not so badly that she’d get an abortion.”

“Which means the father wasn’t her boyfriend, but someone who could change her life without it being too bad. But who?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?”

A rock has settled in my lower stomach ever since we left Natalie’s house armed with evidence that’s already been handed over to forensics. The images we took are being copied and handed to Sheriff Bates to place onto his board.

I wasn’t expecting him to be involved, but apparently, when the mayor’s daughter is the one finding the body, it changes everything in the police hierarchy. The soft-spoken yet commanding gentleman who usually takes Sundays off to take his wife for dinner and dancing is dressed in a suit, wading through sex club memberships with my baby brother.

Meanwhile, Drake and I are on the way to the mayor’s house, and I’m trying to stop feeling so sick at the news we discovered in her house.

I try Nick Lucas’s phone again, and this time, it rings before heading to voicemail. “Hi, Nick, this is Noelle Bond of Bond P.I. I’m working with the Holly Woods Police Department on an urgent matter concerning your ex-girlfriend, Natalie Owens. It’d be real helpful if you could give me a call back at seven-three-seven-six-five-three-nine-nine-eight-zero as soon as possible. Thank you.” I hang up and slap my phone onto my lap. “People shouldn’t have phones if they won’t answer them. Can’t we get his address and surprise him? I’ll bring the cookies.”

Drake snorts. “I’ve had Brody and Trent both drop by his apartment today. Brody asked some questions and it turns out Nick hasn’t been home in four days at least. According to his neighbors, he’s gone to see his folks in Arkansas for a few days. They know to call us if or when he gets home.”

“What about his parents? Can’t we call and see if he’s there?”

“Did Grecia call your new tech guy?”

“First thing this morning.”

“Wanna pay him overtime and charge it to the mayor?”

I cut my eyes to him. “Am I allowed to do that? The contract said necessary extras, but this doesn’t seem like it should be something necessary.”

“It’s not necessary to verify with a potential suspect’s parents’ if he’s where he claims—in their house?” Drake smiles slyly. “Sounds pretty necessary to me.”

“Oh, you are a bad influence, Detective Nash. I should tell the sheriff about your law-breakin’.”

“I seem to remember him giving you permission to do what you need to for information as long as he doesn’t know about it. I reckon he doesn’t need to know about this.”

Argh. “Okay. Detour to my office.”

He does, and by the time we reach the empty building, I’ve already texted Grecia and had her ask Carlton to come in to see me. He arrives moments after Drake and I do, when Drake is unsurprisingly raiding my coffee stash in the kitchen.

Carlton pushes his dirty-blond hair out of his eyes. “What’s up?”

“First, I’m sorry for dragging you here on a Sunday.”

“No worries. You said flexible, and I was doing nothing except screwing around on the computer.”

Speaking of computers… “Did you bring yours? Computer, I mean. My old guy had two laptops he’d bring in, and I’d like a chance to have Dean show you our system on the desktop in his office tomorrow.”

“Sure. It’s right here.” He pulls the newest Mac computer out of his messenger bag.

“Perfect.” I swallow and give Drake a grateful smile when he brings me a coffee. “Do you need a drink or anything before I get started?”

“No worries. I’m cool.”

“Great. So…” I give him the need-to-know facts about Natalie’s case. “This is a copy of the stalker case she opened with me before she died. It includes the details of her ex-boyfriend, the guy she thought was her stalker. I can’t get ahold of him, and neither can the police, but we’ve managed to work out that he’s at his parents’ place in Arkansas.”

“But you don’t have their details and you want me to find them,” he surmises correctly.

“Can you?”

“It might not be legal.” He cuts his eyes to Drake.

He promptly leaves the room.

I look down, smiling, before returning my gaze to Carlton. “Doesn’t matter. I do things my way in this building. My unofficial business tagline is ‘what the Holly Woods PD don’t know won’t hurt ’em.’ So, Carlton, can you do it?”

“What do you need?”

“Phone numbers. That’s it.”

“You got it.” He opens the computer, slinking down in his chair until his face is completely obscured by the screen.

“I’m just gonna…” I say awkwardly, sliding my chair back and picking my mug up, “leave you to it.”

He doesn’t acknowledge me, his fingers moving across his keyboard at a lightning speed.

Anyone who can type that fast cannot be trustworthy.

I join Drake in the spare meeting room adjacent to the one Carlton is proving his worth in. Perhaps a dining room before, it contains only a two-seater sofa, a couple of armchairs, and a small coffee table as well as a picture of the Austin skyline at night, as seen from the Hyatt hotel. Drake is standing by the window, his arms folded, the sun casting a shadow across the back of him.

I pause by the door, bringing the rim of my mug to my mouth but not drinking. That white shirt—that fucking white shirt. He must have a whole store’s worth of the damn things in his closet. It hugs every inch of his body, and the navy-blue jeans he’s wearing fit way too perfectly to be legal in any of the fifty states.