I wasn’t sure if he was looking for me to reply or just letting off steam, but I squeaked, “No?”
When his eyes moved to me, and I was now on the receiving end of the glare, I wanted to sink into the couch and hide.
“No, they fucking don’t.” Then he stood up and started pacing. “Like your dad could’ve prevented the guy from slipping. Yeah, he shouldn’t have been up there with her in the first place, but the guy—”
“Cevdet Gjorka.”
Frowning at me, he repeated, “Cevdet Gjorka should be taking a huge chunk of the responsibility for this on his shoulders. He was the one who went into business with the man, and the man was holding the daughter on the roof because of that business. And why hasn’t he been arrested?”
This was the truly fucked up bit. “There’s no evidence that it’s him. He’s been arrested and questioned but was released without charge on all of the occasions. He always had a solid alibi, and nothing was ever found to tie him to it,” I sighed.
“And corruption,” he guessed correctly.
“And we think corruption.”
“Fuck,” he hissed. “So, where does that leave your dad?”
“I haven’t spoken to him in a year, but Dave and Alex have told me that he and Mom are still alive. That’s all I know.” My stomach turned saying it, but it’s all that I was safe knowing.
“Is he still in New York?”
“As far as I’m aware.”
“Jesus Christ!”
I was so focused on watching him walk around in circles that I missed it when Clyde got up and carefully sank his teeth into the bottom of Garrett’s pants, then started tugging on them. Initially, it looked like he was playing, but then I realized he was trying to stop him from walking around. When Garrett did what he wanted, he got up on his hind legs and lay his head on his stomach with a groan.
Looking up at him wide-eyed, I asked, “Is that his training? Like he hugs you when you’re upset?”
Garrett looked just as shocked and confused as I was. “I’ve got no idea, but I have to say it kinda worked.”
“Better than a baby with diarrhea?”
Shuddering, he hugged Clyde back and scratched behind his ear. “Okay, man, we’re good. I just needed a moment to vent and let some steam off. Thanks for the hug.”
With another groan, Clyde was back down again and walking toward me to put his head back in my lap.
I really needed to look the breed up because I wanted to know what he was going to look like once he was fully grown, plus it might give me an idea what kind of personality they had, too.
Growing up in New York, we’d had an apartment with no space or time for a pet. My neighbors had cats and tiny dogs, but I never really had time to learn about what breeds they were, or even dog and cat breeds in general. I wasn’t dumb, they came in all shapes and sizes, their coats were all different, and their personalities were as well.
Still, I could only really name and identify the most common ones like chihuahuas—thank you, Taco Bell—and Labradors. Oh, and German Shepherds.
This time when Garrett sat down, he took his usual seat beside me on the sofa. “So, where does this leave you?”
“With the name Zuri Hadid, working as a phlebotomist at Piersville Hospital, with a cool broken arm—again,” I joked, waving my cast around.
“Am I allowed to know your real name?” he looked hurt as he asked the question like I wasn’t going to tell him.
“I’d love it if you did,” I told him honestly. “It’s Tamsin Elizabeth Waite, age twenty-four, and I was born on December twenty-fifth at ten o’clock in the morning, even though Mom tried to keep her knees together, so I didn’t have Christmas as a birthday.”
A new light came into his eyes as he burst out laughing. Then, holding out a hand, he replied, “Garrett Mendez Evans, age thirty-two, born on January fifth at ten o’clock at night.”
Because he’d automatically held out his right hand, I put my casted hand in it and awkwardly tried to shake it.
“Do you want me to reel off my statistics, too, so you know most of my identifying details? I’d rather not give my weight, but I’m proud of my height.”
“Go for it,” he snickered, gently stroking his thumb along the part of my palm that wasn’t under the cast.
“I’m five feet and seven whole inches tall.”
With his head tipped slightly back, Garrett burst out laughing, getting a round of applause from Clyde’s tail against the side of the couch, who apparently loved it when he did that as much as I did.
When it left him, he lowered it back down again, but the humor was still making his eyes shine. “Hate to say, pretty girl, but you’re still short in comparison to my six foot four inches.”