SUSPECTS AND STAGING
Ipaused on the threshold of my home the next morning, staring down the steps at the round black brim of the detective's hat. He looked up as the door clicked shut behind me, a flicker of surprise brightening his features, and I was struck again by how handsome he was. My tastes had shifted away from humans' softer features since I'd started working at the theaters, but DS Piper was undeniably striking. Beautiful, even.
"Miss Nix."
"Detective Sergeant," I greeted with a dip of my head.
This isn't good. He shouldn't want to speak to me again.
"How well do you know Miss O'Mahony's roommates?"
Confusion sent me hurrying down the stairs. "Her roommates? I knew… I knew she had roommates, but I'd never met them."
"You weren't friends."
"We're…we were friends at the theater. I liked Beth," I said softly, turning away from the detective. Let him follow me through the park again, I decided. "But we only walked home together in the evening."
"From the Bawdy Row?" he asked, the sharp tone of his question raising alarms in my head.
"Yes."
"Did you know what Miss O'Mahony's roommates did for a living?"
"You think they had something to do with her death?" I looked at him, but he only stared back, that pale blue stare promising to not answer any of my questions. "She never said."
"But you guessed," he said.
"I guessed as much as anyone in the neighborhood guessed about Beth, and me too," I said, shrugging through the lie. Beth had told us how relieved she was to find work off the street, unlike the girls she lived with. "I never met them."
"So you wouldn't recognize them if you saw them?"
I slowed, searching for clues in his questions and on the cool, impassive stone of his face. "I wouldn't."
"And they don't work at the Bawdy Row?" he asked, almost mocking.
I glared at him, afraid with every step that I was walking into an unseen trap he'd already laid for me. "They don't."
"And how long have you worked there?"
"Eight years."
"And what have you been doing in the four months since it closed?"
Fuck.
I was mindlessly marching forward, gaze focused on the tall trees of the park across the way, as if they might provide me sanctuary from this interview. Would I need to stay at the theater, avoid coming back to the flat where this detective might find and interview me? That was if he even let me make it to work today without hauling me into a cell.
A bright honk startled me out of my thoughts at the same moment a strong arm banded around my waist, yanking me into a wall of a chest and out of the way of a galloping cart rushing down the road.
I caught my breath, aware I was being held against DS Piper, that his breath was rustling the back of my hair, that we were frozen with his arm squeezing a little tighter around me rather than letting go.
"Tell me the name of your pimp."
Mr. Reddy, I thought dizzily, but I yanked myself away from the man, spinning to face him.
"I don't have one. Neither did Beth."
"You don't work at the Bawdy Row. I assume you never did," he answered back sharply. We stared at one another for a long moment, and I tried not to study the dazzling cut of his jaw. His eyes flicked out around us before he grabbed me by the elbow, hauling me across the road to the peaceful shade of the park. His head ducked close to mine, and his hand on my elbow was too tight to pull away. "I don't care what you do, but I'm trying to find out what happened to your friend. You want that, or you wouldn't keep asking questions."
"Can't you see I'm asking questions because I don't know?" I hissed.
"You know something!"
"Nothing to do with her death!"
His lips pressed flat, the needles of silver in his stare blazing bright as a newly minted crown. He glanced around us and released my arm at last, marching forward into the park. I debated circling back to my flat, but he was walking in the direction I needed to go to get to the theater. He paused and looked back over his shoulder, raising his eyebrow expectantly. Ronan had once offered to teach me to punch, and I wished in that moment I'd learned the skill.
I followed, and he waited until I reached his shoulder before speaking again.
"Her roommates have vanished."
"Because there are police swarming the neighborhood," I said, shrugging.
"Maybe," he said with a nod. "Mostly likely. Or perhaps they know something and are being kept quiet."
I chewed over that as we walked. "I know it seems like the most obvious answer, but Beth wasn't a prostitute." Not in that way, I allowed privately. "She didn't have a pimp. We…really do work at a theater."
"Which one?"
I shook my head and shrugged. "Are you going to arrest me? I won't tell you. I can't."
DS Piper's pretty eyes narrowed and his jaw ticked. "You expect me to believe you work for a theater you can't talk about, and it would have absolutely nothing to do with her murder?"
I'd talked myself into a hole, and if I dug any further, I would lead the London police straight to the company, Myra and Mr. Reddy and all the monsters. I slowed to a stop, and DS Piper matched me.
"I won't talk anymore," I said.
"And if I say yes, you're arrested?" he asked, voice lowering, and he leaned in.
I shrugged again.
His eyes narrowed. "Will you be safer in a cell?"
I laughed, rough and uncomfortable. "Not remotely."