While the mayor was sworn in and the media circus snapped pictures of our city’s leaders, I was stuck inside this building, missing my chance to touch. To hold. To talk to the woman who tore my heart out and tossed it onto the street to be stomped on.
First time this homicide detective falls in love, and it had to be with a killer.
Stupid me.
“I’m gonna go home and shower first,” Fletch continues. “Sitting inside those rooms all day makes me feel smelly and gross.” He shakes his shoulders and blows white fog ahead of him as we walk through the cold air. “I’ll be ten minutes behind you. But I’ll tell you one thing, Arch…” He turns and points in my direction. “It’s a fucking good thing Fox is heading into the station and not over to Tim’s, or we might need bail money.”
I snort. “Being a cop and getting arrested is never a good look.”
On a final nod, I flip my collar up to shield my neck from the icy wind, then start in the opposite direction as Fletch, and move toward the bar.
I don’t want to go home yet. I don’t want to shower or change or visit my cat, like some kind of weird cat-lady, sulking after a breakup. I’m better than that.
And I haven’t had a proper meal since Mayet took me to bed and then tossed me on my ass like common trash.
With my head down and my chest warm from the fast clip at which I walk, I close the few blocks between the station and Tim’s bar in under ten minutes. I watch my feet as I move, and to forget about Minka, if only for a minute, I process Paul McGregor’s case through my mind.
Not quite middle-aged dude, successful business owner, pillar of society, charming, according to Emilie. Charismatic enough to raise money and keep the youth center chugging along.
Paul had no wife, no children to distract him from his work.
The kids at Chapel Hill were protective of the place the moment they laid eyes on me and Fletch, and Emilie’s passion for her center was apparent.
So what we’ve got is two guys who slaughtered a man, chopped off his limbs, flayed his cock, and beheaded the bastard… and a day later, they turned themselves in without a single ounce of aggression.
Or remorse.
What the fuck was their motive—either for killing, or for handing themselves in?
I keep my head down and my theories rolling through my mind, but just outside the bar, I lose the oxygen from my lungs when a body collides with mine. My hands immediately reach out, my fingers close around narrow arms, and then my gaze shoots to a pair of startled eyes with hints of honey and gold.
Her scent burns all the way down into my lungs, and her plump lips—so close, and yet, unreachable as she steps back—quiver when I can’t help but stare.
“Archer.” Minka’s voice is a little too squeaky. A little shocked and high-pitched. But then she deliberately reaches across her body and plucks my hands from her arms.
This is how we met; us not watching where we were going, her and I colliding, and for just a minute, a million words and secrets and plans and promises passed between two strangers.
Minka Mayet has always gone a million miles an hour, from the second we crashed. From having never laid eyes on each other before in our lives, to going to bed together, and to bed again, to bed a thousand times more. Work, Tim’s, friendship, love, secrets discussed, and medication given. And then… on my ass in her hallway.
“Um…” As she releases my hands, she folds hers across her chest and studies me through eyes that hold grief.
So it’s not all me. It’s just not possible that I’m the only one hurting, after what we shared.
“I’m sorry for bumping… I didn’t…” She stops and clears her throat. And in the time we stand out here, her lips turn a dangerous shade of blue. “I’m sorry.”
“Did I hurt you?” I move closer, if only to block the breeze currently whipping her hair back.
I’m the one breaking us, in a way. I’m the one who refuses to tell her it’s okay to kill people.
For fuck’s sake. Shekillspeople!
“Did I hurt you when we bumped into each other?”
Immediately, she tightens her arms around herself and shakes her head. “I’m not that delicate. You’re going into Tim’s?” She looks to the flashing neon sign above the door, then back to me so I catch a glimpse of her profile—her strong jaw, and her sinful dimples.
They don’t blinkonlywhen she’s smiling, but when they are popping because of a smile… that’s when she’s at her most stunning.
“Are you heading in?” she asks. “Or out?”