Текст книги "Tethered Bond"

Автор книги: Emma Hart

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

The interview was a bust.

Mr. Rivers, the leader of the sect, couldn’t tell us anything we don’t already know. Satanism isn’t evil, they don’t blood sacrifice, they use orgasm and consensual virgin sacrifice, yada yada yada.

I wanted to point out that virgin sacrifice is technically also blood sacrifice, given that most women bleed a little, but yeah. My brain-to-mouth filter is clearly present today.

I’m still thinking about what Drake said outside the church—about Alex. I get the feeling he knows something about him that I don’t, and it’s bugging the heck outta me. Why wouldn’t he tell me? He’s quick to remove Alex as involved with the murders, but I’m not. He knows too much, and he always seems to pop up in my suspect areas.

I wonder if he has alibis…

Then again, if there’s no proof he’s involved, he doesn’t need an alibi. Ugh. How frustrating.

“So, what did Jessica really want this morning?” I ask, twirling some spaghetti around my fork.

Drake lifts an eyebrow. “To give me evidence. And ask me to brunch.”

“I’m gonna have to shoot her soon, you know.”

“Or I can just have her banned from my office.”

“Didn’t that already happen?”

He pauses. “Crap.”

“Besides, she’ll just try to come to your house,” I say around a mouthful of food.

He throws a napkin at me. “I can get a restraining order, you know. I am a police officer.”

I swallow. “Yes. Let’s get Holly Woods’ leading homicide detective a restraining order against the mayor’s assistant. I can see Judge Barnes signing that in an instant. He wouldn’t be up to lose his job at all.”

“You’re so dramatic. Obviously, I’m not going to get a restraining order against her.”

“So that means I can shoot her.”

“No. It does not mean you can shoot her.”

I huff and reach for my glass of water. “You’re so…law abiding. Go on. One little bullet to the foot accidentally. No one will know.”

“You have a serious obsession with shooting people in the feet.”

“A matching scar for you is always up for grabs. If Jessica is lucky, I’ll give her the pair at the same time.”

“You’re insane.”

“It runs in my family.” I set my glass down and twirl spaghetti again. “I could implicate her in murder. Would you help me cover one up?”

Drake looks at me flatly.

“That’s a no,” I mutter.

“You’re kind of obsessed with Jessica. You know that, right?” Drake finally says. “She does nothing but annoy me. She’s like the fly that keeps banging into the closed window, but you just… Well, she incenses you. You don’t even get this mad at me.”

“If anyone is obsessed with anyone, it’s her with you! Why can’t she get the message? This is why I need to shoot her.”

“You can’t go around shooting people just because they won’t listen to you.”

“That’s your opinion.” I smack my lips together and bite into a meatball.

“Noelle, that’s the law.”

“Well, the law is dumb. Smart people should be able to shoot idiots. We’d be doing the world a favor.”

Drake scrubs his hand across his forehead. “You’re impossible when you’re jealous.”

I point my fork at him, a meatball still impaled on the end. “I am not jealous. Being jealous would imply that I want something she has. I’m territorial over something that belongs to me. That’s a massive difference.”

“So I’m a something now?”

I want to yell, but he has that teasing twinkle in his eye. “You’re my something. That changes everything.”

He laughs. “I see your point.”

“Of course you do. It’s an excellent point.” I eat the rest of my meatball and put my fork down. “Honestly, she annoys me and she knows it. She goes out of her way to get under my skin, and she knows the best way to do that is you.”

“She also tried it on with Brody,” he says.

“I’m sorry. What?”

“Shouldn’t have said that,” he mutters. “Fuck.”

“She did what?”

“You heard me. Don’t make me repeat myself. He told her where to go.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Like your brother would ever entertain my ex.”

There’s no telling with Brody. He would if he didn’t have any better offers. Thankfully, he always has plenty.

“Mmph.” I pick my fork up, stab it into another meatball, and then push it around my plate.

I think I just discovered how to lose weight: discuss your boyfriend’s ex-fiancée over dinner.

Weight Watchers, eat your heart out. Or don’t. I don’t know how calorific hearts are.

“Don’t think about her, okay? I don’t think about any of your exes.”

“You don’t know any of my exes.”

“I know Messina.”

“He isn’t an ex. He’s an old one-time date. You knew him before anyway.”

“We trained together.” Drake shrugs. “Never got along.” His jaw ticks.

“Liar,” I mutter.

“What?”

“You’re lying. Or you’re hiding something.” I shrug. “Whatever.”

“There’s no winning with you today.”

“I know.”

He sets his cutlery down and rests his forearms on the table, focusing on me. “You really want to know why I don’t get along with Giorgio Messina?”

“It’s none of my business.” I hold my hands up and grab my empty glass of water. I take it to the fridge and press the thing in the door to fill it.

Drake comes up behind me, takes the glass, then sets it on the counter. “He was the guy I found Jessica with. We didn’t like each other anyway, and that just solidified it.”

Way to go, Noelle.

I turn around. “I’m sorry,” I say to his chest.

“I told you,” he says, threading his hand through my hair and tilting my head back. Our eyes meet, and his are clear with honesty. “I don’t care. Even if I cared then, I wouldn’t now.”

I turn my cheek into his hand. “Now, your reaction to our date makes total sense.”

“If you’re implying I was jealous…”

My lips tug to one side. “You were so jealous. You practically turned into Shrek you were so green.”

He stares at me.

“Admit it. You were jealous.”

He shakes his head, then leans in, a smile on his lips. “No, I was territorial. You were mine then. You just didn’t know it.”

“Yeah… We didn’t even like each other.”

“I told you before: I don’t have to like you for you to be mine.” He takes my bottom lip between his teeth, grazing them across my tender skin.

I shiver.

“See?” he asks.

“Are you saying you don’t like me?” I inhale sharply when he yanks me against him.

“You’ve been a pain in my ass all day,” he responds, his breath coating my lips. “So…I’m undecided.”

“Undecided,” I breathe.

His fingers tighten their grip on my hair, and he touches his mouth to mine, but he’s smiling. “Mhmm.”

“Dinner’s cold,” I mumble against him.

“Don’t care.” The smile is gone, and there’s nothing but his kiss.

It consumes me. It always does. It’s like a hurricane and a tornado swirling inside me, washing through me like a tsunami. All sugar obsessions aside, I’ve never been truly addicted to anything.

If I had to pick one thing to be addicted to for the rest of my life, it’d be his kiss.

He grabs my thighs and hoists me onto the counter. I scream at the suddenness of the movement, and my hand hits my glass. It goes flying off the counter and lands on the floor with a smash, water and glass shards spreading across the floor.

Drake stills, stares at me for a second, then looks at the mess. His erection is pressing into my thigh, and I can see he’s weighing his options.

Clean or sex?

He wraps his arms around my waist and hauls me onto his shoulder.

Fuck. Holy fuck.

Instead of screaming, I laugh. I have no idea what else I’m supposed to do, really.

“And the mess?” I ask.

“You can clean it up later,” he answers, carrying me upstairs.

“That’s the first time you’ve ever left a mess anywhere.”

Unlike me. He’s the sponge to my dirt.

“What can I say?” He drops me onto his bed and leans over me, his eyes glinting devilishly in the lower light of his bedroom. “I’m stressed the fuck out, and if it’s between cleaning a smashed glass or being inside you, I know which one I’d rather pick.”

Heat coils in my lower stomach, settling into a throbbing ache I feel right through my pussy. I curl my fingers around the collar of his shirt and pull his face down to mine.

“Fine.” I pull his face down to mine. “But if you’re stressed, then we do it my way.”

He can’t say a word as I wrap my legs around his waist and use all of my strength to drag him over onto the bed. He laughs as I land on top of him, grinning, and straddle him.

“All right,” he agrees, sliding his hands up my legs. One stops on my butt, but the other trails all the way up my spine until his fingers are buried deep in my hair. He eases my face down to his and our lips come together easily, finding each other’s without as much as a second thought.

“Right,” I say, sitting up. “Roll over. Massage time.”

Drake stops. His cock is pushing right against my wet pussy through my panties, and I’m certain I’m flushed, but I do my best to keep a straight face. He yanks my dress up and his palm connects with my ass. I half gasp, half scream as he throws me off him, onto my back, and covers my body with his.

His eyes burn hotly, sending desire flooding through my body at lightning speed. His hands find mine, our fingers linking together, and he pins them above my head. I smile coyly, dragging my bottom lip between my teeth.

He says only three words.

“Fuck the massage.”

And fuck the massage he does.

His assault on my mouth is greedy. Every kiss is deeper and harder than the last, and I revel in each one. I didn’t know how much I needed him, how much he needed me, until right this second when the promise of each other is within touching distance.

The way he undresses us both is hurried, every item of clothing being thrown to a heap on the floor. Each touch we share is a blazing inferno that sets sparks flying across my skin, and the desperate way he plays my naked body until he teases my wet pussy with the head of his hard cock is almost cruel yet exciting.

When it gets to be too much, when I can’t take any more, I tilt my hips up.

He pushes inside me in one thrust, every single one of my nerves tingling in delight.

And he shows me exactly what he thinks of my fucking massage.

Since we did the chill before the Netflix, Drake fell asleep in the first ten minutes of the movie he picked.

If he asks, it still counts as his choice because I watched half an hour before I realized he wasn’t awake anymore.

Now, while I’d like to think his falling asleep is down to my epic skills of seduction, I know it’s because he’s overworking. I don’t blame him. I think everyone is. But still—everyone needs sleep, and I know how grouchy he gets when he doesn’t get sleep.

Honestly, tired men are like toddlers. Whiny, grumpy, and needy. Women? No. We get up, guns blazing, and tackle the world as if we’ve slept for days. Men could learn a lot from us.

Although I’m not so much guns-blazing right now. More like coffee-machine-blazing.

The rich scent of fresh beans being crushed fills the kitchen, and I hum to myself as I pull one mug from beneath the machine and set it up again. God, his coffee machine is so much better than mine. I really need to buy one that uses beans instead of pods. Or just steal his.

Somehow I doubt that’ll go down too well.

I add cream and sugar to Drake’s coffee and wait for mine to finish pouring. The quiet sound of a footstep hitting the tiled floor behind me makes my lips twitch, and it grows to a full smile as fingertips trail over the tops of my thighs.

“You know,” Drake murmurs, brushing his lips across the back of my neck, “if it were anyone but you wearing my shirt, I’d be really pissed off.”

“It’s not a clean one.” I roll my eyes and push some hair from my face. “It’s the one you wore yesterday. I know how you get about your shirts.” Plus, this one smells like him. But I’ll never tell him that.

He grins and kisses my jaw. “My shirts are to me what your shoes are to you.”

“Yeah, well, as long as you don’t try slipping into my Louboutins any time soon, I think we’ll be okay.” I meet his eyes and tap the rim of his mug. “That’s yours.”

“Sorry to break it to you, sweetheart, but I don’t think Louboutins are my style. I can’t imagine looking as sexy in them as you do in my shirt. Even if your hair does look like it was styled by Cousin It.”

I pull my mug from the machine and turn to him with narrowed eyes. “And here I was going for ‘I woke up like this.’”

He pauses with the mug just in front of his mouth. “You mean you didn’t wake up like this?”

“Have you looked in the mirror when you’ve woken up? I think you are Cousin It.” I reach over and tug on a lock of his messy bedhead hair. “You really, really need to get it cut.”

“I know, but I don’t have time. And no, you are not allowed anywhere near my hair with a pair of scissors,” he adds quickly.

“Please. I can just about cut a piece of paper.” I snort. “Mom can do hair though. She still does my brothers’. I’ll ask her to do it on Friday.”

My toasts pops just as he levels his gaze on me.

“You ever realized that I’ve been at dinner every week for the last couple of months?” he asks.

“Uh… Not particularly.” I spread butter on my toast, and it goes all melty just the way I like it. “What’s the point?”

“No point. Just an observation.”

“You don’t have to come to dinner. You know that.”

“I didn’t say that. I just—hang on.” He stops when his phone rings and carries his mug into the front room, where he left it yesterday. “Nash.”

Why would he bring that up? Doesn’t he want to come to dinner? Because he doesn’t have to. It’s not a requirement for dating me. Hell, if I could get out of dinner, I would. Maybe it’s because Amelia and Devin are getting married—eventually—and she doesn’t even go every week.

Oh Jesus. Relationships are hard, man.

“We have to go,” Drake says, downing the rest of his coffee then dropping the mug in the sink.

I wince at the clang as it makes contact with the stainless-steel surface. “Go where? What? When? Huh?”

His lips thin, and he doesn’t even need to say the words. I already know.

Victim number four.

Tracey Young: thirty-two years old, a married mother of three, and an English literature professor at the University of Texas. Also the wife of Daniel Young, the lawyer I followed just last week.

And my nine o’clock appointment today.

I guess she won’t be needing that anymore.

Her body was called in by the farmer this morning. Since the original crime scenes were cleared, he went to the field to see what damage control he could do and if he could allow his animals back in. He got his answer fairly swiftly, finding her body in much the same way Toni’s and Melissa’s were found.

By the time we arrive at the scene, it’s already surrounded by yellow tape and police officers are crawling the surrounding areas, presumably searching in case there’s another body like before.

I hope to hell there isn’t another body.

Please don’t let there be another body.

I call the office, tell Grecia that I won’t be in all day, and have her put me through to Carlton. I ask him to get me everything he can on Tracey Young, specifically her religion, and he hangs up without saying goodbye. I’ll be surprised if I don’t have it by the end of the day.

I haven’t seen Tracey’s body. Call me a wimp or a loser or whatever, but I already know what it’ll look like. She’ll have runes carved into her body, she’ll be stabbed, and she’ll be naked, lying on top of a pentagram that’s been burned into the ground.

I also know that, when Tim does her autopsy, he’ll find belladonna in her stomach and she’ll have been raped by two people. It’s just a formality now, isn’t it? Four bodies. All the same.

My theory of nine victims is getting realer and realer… And scarier.

My phone buzzes in my hand, and I open Carlton’s message.

Borrowed from the college server. She was Catholic. Working on the rest.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes. Just for one moment, in the midst of the chaos of the crime scene, everything goes quiet. Until my mind screams at me and reminds me that standing here isn’t going to help with this.

“Brody.” I walk up behind my little brother and touch his arm.

“What’s up? You won’t vomit or cut yourself again, will you?” He turns around, a somber look on his face despite his teasing tone.

“Shut up.” So I don’t like being reminded of my idiocies. Whatever. “Do you know where Drake is? It’s important.”

He points toward the tent, a cruel yet amused glint in his eye.

“Uh…” I hesitate, staring at the white fabric.

“I’ll get him.” He snorts and ducks into the tent.

I clasp my hands in front of my stomach and wring them. It seems like forever until Drake comes out, followed by Brody.

“What is it?” Drake asks, stopping in front of me.

“She was Catholic,” I say quietly.

Drake takes a deep breath and drops his eyes to the ground. “Fuck. I’d hoped…” He sighs out his breath. “I’d hoped she wasn’t. That it was coincidence.”

I shake my head slowly, and in a small voice, I say, “It’s a religious hate crime. Or, at least, it’s been turned into one.”

He clenches his jaw and looks away. His eyes are hard, his upper body taut, and I can almost see the frustration as it settles on his shoulders and seeps into his body.

“What are you doing today?” he asks.

I shrug one shoulder. “Whatever I’m needed to, I guess.”

He digs in his pocket for his keys and, finally looking back at me, throws them to me.

I barely catch them against my chest. “What are these for?”

“Go to your parents’. Don’t leave until I get there,” he orders me, his icy eyes chilling with their ferocity. “Got it?”

Don’t argue, Noelle. Just do it.

“Excuse me?” is what comes out of my mouth. Fucking hell. “Go to my parents’? I’m not a child.”

“I know that, but you are a Catholic woman.”

“I’m an armed Catholic woman.”

He grabs my arm and drags me away from the scene, drawing the attention of a few officers, including Brody. My brother’s eyes narrow, and I wrench my arm away from Drake.

“Why do you have to argue on everything?” he asks me in a low voice. One that trembles with anger. “Why can’t you just do it?”

“Because you tell me what to do! Why don’t you ask me and explain why you want me to do it instead of ordering me around like I’m a five-year-old who needs to pick up their damn toys?” I want to stomp my foot, but that goes against my argument that I am not a five-year-old, doesn’t it?

“Have you ever thought I do it to keep you safe? That maybe I’m telling you to go to your parents’ because, despite your family’s eccentricities, I know you won’t get hurt there?”

Clearly, he’s forgotten the fucking parrot that’s in crazy in love with me.

“Then what the heck is wrong with saying, ‘Hey, you should probably go to your parents’ because I’m worried about you. If you need to go out, take your dad. I appreciate that you’re a strong, independent woman, but I need you to do this for me right now.’ Why is that so damn hard?”

His eye twitches. “Fine. Noelle, will you please go to your parents’ house? I’m worried that you’ll get hurt, but if you really need to leave, take your dad, okay? I need you to do this for me right now.”

“Oh, fuck you! Don’t mock me, Drake. That’s just insulting!” I need to leave right now before the HWPD have another body to deal with—his. “Here’s an idea. I’m going to go to my office, where I happen to have an ex-marine, an ex–FBI agent, and about five guns in the building. I’m safer there than anywhere and I can get some work done. And I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”

With that, I turn around and stalk toward his truck.

“Impossible. She’s fuckin’ impossible,” I hear him say to himself as I storm away.

“Keep walkin’,” Brody orders, taking Drake’s keys from my hand. He pockets them and pushes me in the direction of his squad car. “Get in.”

Oh, look. Team Protective is out in force today. They need a fucking alarm bell or a siren or something so I can run.

“Get in,” he repeats, hitting me with a look worthy of Nonna.

That alone makes me get in. I drop into the seat with a huff and slam the door behind me.

Brody sits down with a chuckle and a shake of his head. I cut him a dark look, but he ignores me and pulls away. I look out my window and cross my arms for the entire journey, except we don’t end up at my office or our parents’.

No, he pulls up outside my house.

“What are we doing here?” I turn to him.

He twists the key to turn the engine off and turns to face me. He rests his elbow on the back of his seat and grabs the corner of mine. “I’m…stuck in the middle. I know that, if I take you to the office, you’ll just get Bek to drive you wherever you want to go and she’ll agree because you two are the ultimate double trouble. If I take you to Mom and Dad’s, you’ll just end up arguing with Nonna and the parrot all day and beg Dad to drive you wherever you want to go. At least, this way, if you go missing, I know the number plate to put out for.”

“Oh, wow. Thanks. Here I was thinking you were all about me championing my independence, because you know, I’m twenty-eight and older than you.” I shake my head. “Thanks, Brodes, but don’t worry. I promise not to leave the office unless I have a chaperone who’s male. You can even escort me there to make sense.”

“Noelle,” he says, grabbing my hand so I can’t get out. “He’s just trying to protect you. You know that, right?”

“You don’t say,” I drawl. “So, why’d you look like you wanted to punch him back there?”

“Eh, still not used to someone else doing it,” he admits with a careless shrug. “And the problem still remains that y’all are both strong characters. Anyone else would have whimpered, taken his keys, and done exactly what he said. But you… Dammit, sis.”

“No. I know what he’s doing, but he has a terrible habit of patronizing me. He goes into cop mode instead of being himself and it just makes me mad.”

“No shit,” he breathes. “Sometimes, I just wanna put y’all in a small room and let you fight it out until you make sense.”

“That could work if we’d ever make sense.”

“There is that.”

I pat his hand, undo my belt, then push my door open. “Hey, Brodes? Thanks for bringing me home. Tell him I made you, yeah? I don’t want you getting in trouble just because he’s pissed at me.”

He salutes me. “That was the plan. Just promise me you’ll keep your gun on you at all times.”

“I promise.”

“And your phone on loud.”

“I promise.”

“And answer it every single time me, Dev, or Trent call you.”

I smile. “I promise.”

“Phew. Now, I won’t have to lie about that.” He winks just as I shut the door.

He pulls away as I get into my own car. I lock the doors from the inside.

See? I’m not totally careless. I do think about my own safety. I just do it in a way that doesn’t make me feel like a petulant child.

My forehead rests against the smooth leather of the steering wheel. Every time. Every time people die, this happens. Should I just do what he wants? Should I drive to my parents’ place and hand Dad my keys so I can’t leave?

God, I don’t want to. I want to drive to my office then go home and have Bek sleep over. I want to lock my doors, turn my phone off, and ignore him.

But that’s pathetic. That’s ridiculous and against every point I’m trying to make.

I get it. I do. I always do. I’m a woman who lives alone, who just happens to be Catholic. I’m in danger, but so is almost every other woman I know.

Ultimately, I think I know what I have to do. I have to tell Sheriff Bates I can’t work with them anymore. It just affects me and Drake to such an extent that you know what? It’s starting to hurt. The work fights are starting to hurt me.

I never thought they would. He said last time that we could split it, work and play, but we can’t. We couldn’t then and we can’t now. And this case is big. It’s bigger than anything we’ve ever dealt with before.

And you know what? I just don’t want to do it anymore.

I turn my head and look out my window at the trees that line my drive. The blossoms have long fallen away, bright-green leaves having taken their place through summer. The sun glints off the shiny surfaces, making them seem greener than they actually are. My eyes trace the veins of the leaves as they dart right down the center.

Kind of feels like my relationship is a leaf and this case is the thick vein down the middle. We’re held together, but it’d be all too easy to tear us away from the case.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I’m almost ashamed at the tears that sting the backs of my eyes, but my heart won’t let me be.

However, I refuse to let them drip over, so I blink them back, sit up, and start my car.

Time to work.

Bek stares at me flatly. “Why am I not surprised?”

I rest my chin in my hands. “This is why all the romance books don’t have alpha females. They have women who’ll swoon over the big, protective bossiness. It’s not until it pisses you off.”

“Okay, most women in romance novels don’t own three guns. You know that, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So you could never be a romance heroine. You’re too badass.”

“I take offense to that. I could totally be a romance heroine. I can swoon.”

“Unless you’re being told what to do.”

“Women shouldn’t like being told what to do. Unless they’re submissive, of course. But, otherwise, we shouldn’t. We should stand up for ourselves.”

“Which is why you’re at your office with your own car instead of at your parents’ with his truck,” she summarizes.

I suck my lower lip into my mouth. “No, I’m just being awkward. There’s a difference.” I grab my whiteboard marker, uncap it, and then throw it at her. “Are you going to help me or what?”

“Sure. It’s not like I have my own clients.”

“Do you want me to dock your wages for bitchiness?”

“You’d never do that. If you do, I’ll start my own business and we’ll be rivals.”

“Bek, I filled out your tax return this year. You won’t start your own business.”

She opens her mouth to argue, grimaces, and pushes her auburn hair from her face. “Damn. Okay. Let’s get started.” She puts my marker cap on the desk and grabs her own marker before walking to her own whiteboard.

I write Toni and Melissa at the top of my board, and she writes Annabelle and Tracey. I add Lilly Paul with a question mark since she hasn’t been found. We run through all the similarities we can think of.

“Here’s what bothers me,” I say once we have everything we know written down. “Why Tracey?”

“She’s Catholic?”

“Aside from that. Why would they go for a married mother of three with a respectable job instead of another student? Or if they have gone for another student”—I tap my marker against Lilly’s name—“why haven’t we found her? That doesn’t make much sense.”

Bek shrugs. “Opportunity? Do you know if she went to church on Sunday? Maybe the younger girls are all sticking together right now, making them harder targets. It would make sense. And maybe Lilly really did run away.”

“Yeah… If I were a teenager, I wouldn’t go anywhere alone. Hell, I don’t want to anyway.” I nibble on the skin at the side of my thumbnail. “Now what though? Tracey’s being killed takes away the age as a common factor. Now, all we have is religion. I know I’ve said it a few times, but is that really a strong enough reason to kill so many people?”

“Of course it is. One word: terrorism.”

“But that’s just…interpretation of religion. Isn’t it?”

“And Satanism isn’t? Catholicism isn’t?”

“Point well made, my friend,” I agree. “So, what do we do, honestly? Our killers are extreme Satanists hell-bent on killing a bunch of Catholics. Oh sheesh. Sounds like the seventeen hundreds or something.”

She nods slowly. “You know what we need? Someone who knows a ton of stuff about religion.”

“Like…the library?”

“Yeah? How’s this working out for you and your research?” She snatches The Satanic Bible from my desk and holds it up.

“Shut up,” I mutter, grabbing it and throwing it down on my chaise. “We could go and see Alex… He did help before, after all. But…I don’t know.”

“Still don’t trust him, huh?”

“He just pops up everywhere.” I tell her about church yesterday. “Drake says he’s okay, so he must be…but…”

“Drake also said to go to your mom’s, and here you are. In your office.” She holds her arms out and spins. “Which shows how much you listen to him.”

“Hey! I listen to him.” I recap my marker and smack my lips together. “Occasionally.”

Bek rolls her eyes. “Come on. Alex can’t be that bad. I saw him at the fair—he seems like a nice guy.”

“How about…” I tap my marker against my lips. “How about we follow him? Then if he does nothing suspicious, we talk to him?”

“Isn’t that, like, going against absolutely everything Drake said to you?”

That’s kind of the point. “I believe it’s in the best interests of the case for me to follow my gut. So follow my gut I am. Anyway, he should have known better than to allow my little brother to take me away.”

He should know by now that Brody is pretty much my best friend, and despite my younger brother’s telling me that Bek and I are double trouble, we all know it’s really me and Brodes. Always has been.

Bek takes a deep breath. “Oh boy. I’m gonna regret this.”

“Well, that went well.”

We managed to find Alex at the Oleander. We followed him halfway around town—stealthily, of course—but thirty minutes into our great investigation, he entered the police station. We’ve now been waiting an hour, and it’s becoming painfully obvious that he isn’t coming out.

“What if they’ve arrested him?” I whisper.

“Why are you whispering?”

“Shut up. What if they have?”

She shrugs. “Why don’t you go in and find out?”

Because I’ll get in major trouble? My ass will be kicked? I’ll be super-duper hated?

Okay—maybe hated is a slightly strong word. I’ll still be in trouble though. It is blatantly flouting Drake’s ass-backward request.

Then again, he does know I’m working, and we are in Bek’s car, not mine. I could always say we came out for lunch and decided to swing by. Yeah—yeah, let’s do that. I explain this to Bek, and she agrees to wait outside and use that excuse if anyone asks.

This is ridiculous. I do it anyway. Of course I get out of the car and I walk toward the station and I open the door. Of course I do. I’m far nosier than I am sensible.

Charlotte looks at me with pursed lips. “Oh, you’re gonna be in trouble.”

“Seems like that’s the general mood of the day. Where is he?”

“In his office with some guy with black hair.”

“Did he arrest him?”

Her light eyebrows draw together. “Not that I know of. They’ve been in there a while though.”