“Oh.” A long pause ensues. I can hear the ocean in the background. Waves. Louder than they sound from her rental house. Is she on the beach? I don’t know, but the longer the silence stretches, the guiltier I’m feeling for being so abrupt with her. If my guilt isn’t a red flag that this woman has the ability to make me feel shit I don’t want to feel, what is? “Well I don’t want to interrupt whatever you’re doing…”
Thinking of you in red panties.
Thinking of you moaning, telling me my dick is the perfect size.
“I’m working a case, Taylor.”
“Right.” She sighs and another arrow of guilt nails me in the stomach. “So I should just bag the murder weapon myself and bring it to the police?”
My brain snaps into focus like a rubber band. “What?”
“Sorry to bother you—”
“Taylor.”
“Hmm?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the beach, maybe a quarter mile from our house?” The wind carries her words away slightly and I don’t like it. I don’t like her standing on a windy beach in front of a gun, especially after the sun has set. Not without me there. “Jude met some surfers today and they invited us over for burgers. They have a really good view of the ocean and it looked so beautiful, so I brought my drink down here. I was just going to get my feet wet, but I started walking. I saw something shiny in the brush. Before you ask me, I haven’t touched it.”
I’m already halfway out the door of my motel room, keys in hand. “Do you know the name of the street you’re on?”
“No. We walked here on the beach. We didn’t drive.”
Why is my skin suddenly layered with clammy sweat underneath my T-shirt? “Call your brother and tell him to come wait with you until I get there, Taylor.”
“Oh no.” Her tone suggests that whole idea is preposterous. “I don’t want to interrupt his good time. He’s finally beginning to relax. Myles, losing Bartholomew has been very hard on him. This would only stress him out again.”
“Ahh. God forbid we get stressed.” I switch to Bluetooth on my jog through the parking lot. “There hasn’t been a murder or anything.”
She sniffs. “You should know that sarcasm makes me shut down. There was a very sarcastic bully who lived next door to us growing up. He called me Shaquille O’Neal in front of the whole neighborhood. All because I was short. I couldn’t walk by without him demanding I dunk on their hoop in the street. To this day, I cry every time I see Shaq, which is very unfair. By all accounts, he’s a lovely man.”
My teeth are grinding together.
To keep from growling or laughing, I have no idea. I’ve lost my fucking mind.
Now I’m also roaring out of the motel parking lot at fifty miles an hour, skidding sideways on the main road and correcting my bike in the direction of Coriander Lane. “Did you walk east or west on the beach?”
“What am I? A compass?” I can picture her wrinkled nose. It makes me ride faster. “We walked down the staircase that leads from the end of our block down to the beach. And we hung a right. Does that help?”
“Send me a pin of your location.”
“Oh yeah. I can do that.” My phone buzzes in my pocket a moment later and I pull over long enough to map a route to the closest block to where she’s waiting on the beach. “Do you have all of the necessary equipment for evidence collection?”
Do not even think of smiling. You’re on a slippery slope. “Yes, Taylor,” I sigh.
“Fabulous. Then I’ll see you in a while—”
“Oh no.” My hand tightens on the handlebars. “Don’t you dare hang up.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re alone in the dark and there might be a murderer in the area.”
“Are you worried about me, Myles? Not only am I out here alone and defenseless. But I should mention that my emergency stash of panties has been mysteriously depleted. I’m worried we might have two criminals on our hands. A murderer and a panty thief. This has to be some kind of record for Cape Cod.”
“You’re very funny, half pint.” Red lace. My thumb pressing through the material right there, rubbing until she’s wet. God. “You just found the potential murder weapon and you want to discuss underwear?”
“I just find it curious that you are clearly a thief and yet I am a murder suspect.”
“I don’t suspect you. There just hasn’t been cause to eliminate you yet. And if you want to get technical, miraculously finding the murder weapon doesn’t exactly exonerate a person.”
“I wish I hadn’t called you.”
That statement definitely shouldn’t make me feel like I swallowed a lit candle, right? “That’s fine, Shaquille,” I say, to play defense against the burn. “Just don’t hang up.”