Implicitly, Anne knew she had been dismissed and followed him out of the office. Jeffers was at their desk, twirling a pen and scrolling through his phone. Anne kicked his chair.
“Hey!” Jeffers objected.
“What have you been doing all morning?” Anne demanded.
“I’ll tell you what I haven’t been doing. I haven’t been wasting the morning getting up the nerve to go talk to the captain about an ex-con’s civil rights,” Jeffers said.
“Well. First, William isn’t technically an ex-con, and second, if we would like to make him a con, it would probably help to make sure we could make a clean conviction.” Anne jerked on the back of Jeffers’ collar. “So could we get to work, or did you need a few more minutes on Reddit?”
“Cut me some slack, Anne. We’ve been on this nonstop for days.”
“It’s our job. And Shaw ought to have completed his autopsy reports by now.” Anne reached over to her desk for the file. “I want to ask him some questions.”
“Everything you need is in the report. That’s why it’s there.” Jeffers swiveled around. “What’s with you lately? You’re so gung-ho.”
Anne sighed and considered going down to the morgue without him. “Look, on the Olivarez case, I had the answer. I was Davis’ secondary and did all of his paperwork, and I gave him the damn answer. And he got the credit and didn’t even mention me. Before that, I had it figured out on that campus murder we were all working on, and DeWinter snaked it from me and got the collar. I need to prove myself on this one.”
“You don’t though. Lopez knows that you’re a good cop. It’s why he promoted you,” Jeffers pointed out.
“I want him to see that. I want him to know that I deserved to be made detective. I want everyone here to know it.” Anne swatted his arm with the file. “So could you get up and help me?”
Jeffers grumbled as he got up. “Why don’t I just call Shaw and let him know we’re on our way down. I don’t want to catch the morgue crew doing anything weird.”
Anne stared at him for a moment. Did she want to know what he was talking about?
Just then, her own phone lit up. Internal message. She picked it up. “Sutton here.”
“Anne, you have a visitor,” Josh from the front desk said in a pained voice. His volume lowered. “Cute Brit looking for you.”
Anne felt her cheeks light on fire. William was here? “Oh, God. Josh, can you just keep him there? Do not let him slip past you and get back here in the bullpen.”
“I won—Hey!” Josh dropped the phone.
Anne wasted no time in heading up front. If Josh didn’t stop William, someone else would, but the last thing she needed was a suspect running around the station.
“Hullo, pet.” William’s silky smooth voice greeted her as she walked into the hallway. There he stood, sharp against the mundane surroundings of the intake desk. Over his well-cut trousers and blue silk shirt, he wore a long, black leather coat that almost came to his ankles. Josh was glaring at him and sweating.
“Why are you here?” Anne demanded. “You have another run-in with the highway patrol? Someone policing your broken windows?”
William licked his lips slowly as he raked his eyes over her and strolled closer. “I thought you and I might have something to talk about.”
Anne took a deep breath, hoping that her cheeks weren’t turning redder. It was like he was envisioning her naked. She clenched her jaw.
“I think we covered it all last time, Mr. Spencer. There was no need to come in.”
“Oh?” William lowered his voice and slipped his hands into his jacket pockets casually.
“I don’t believe that’s true.”
Anne wanted to slap that smirk off of his face.
“You can’t be here,” she ground out through her teeth.
He leaned over nearly to her ear. “I think it’s clear that I can be.”
“Listen, Will, this investigation—”
“You hold it!” Jeffers snapped from behind.
Anne turned to see a gun in the man’s hand. She blinked in disbelief. “What are you doing?”
“Hands where I can see ‘em!” Jeffers ordered.
William gave Anne a nonplussed look as he raised his hands into the air as told. He seemed almost bored by this display of pseudo-authority over him. Granted, he hadn’t done anything, but it said something that William was utterly unafraid of being shot.
Then again, he’d been stabbed before, so Anne had often wondered whether William’s sense of self-preservation was skewed beyond repair.
“You gonna read me my rights?” William said. “What am I meant to have done now?”