She never would have dared to ask the question pre-Dayton. During the time she had known him, she’d gradually metamorphosed into a brazen young woman whose light voice had adopted a dangerous edge. A razor blade cutting through silk. It wasn’t an entirely new version of herself.
Instead, it was a part she kept hidden, called upon as a last defense when she felt like the whole world was collapsing around her. She’d experienced that feeling on two occasions.
Fleeing the farm to leave on a Greyhound bus in the middle of the night and sitting across from Detective Reynolds in a seedy diner.
“Let’s just say I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
His spoon clanked against the walls of the mug as he stirred in sugar substitute and the loud, ensuing noise made Kenna shift atop the vinyl-upholstered bench.
“Look, my lieutenant’s about ready to hang me over zeroing in on the search for Sanders so we can extradite him. We have something pretty damning on Merino, but the LT doesn’t think it’s enough to carry the court case on its own and we’re working with a body and dump site that are clean as a whistle. That being said, he wouldn’t approve of me using resources to question you in an official capacity. So here we are. I just want to ask you a few harmless questions, see if it gets me anywhere.”
“No one believes you?”
He held her gaze a moment too long, perhaps cogitating in amusement over her words, before whipping a tiny notebook and pen out of his pocket. “You know what they say, it’s always the husband. Or in this case, the boyfriend.”
“Can I ask you one thing first?”
“Fair enough.”
“What does your wife think about all of this? What you do for a living, I mean? Is she ever … afraid?”
“I wouldn’t know. She died nine years ago. But I have her to thank for my career. Identifying your wife’s body after she’s been murdered in cold blood is enough to make any sane man take on the badge.”
“I had no idea. I am so terribly—”
“Save it. I’ve heard it all.”
He asked to see her license so he could record it as part of his record for the case and she wordlessly complied. A stack of pancakes arrived at the table. Reynolds held a fork in one hand and his pen in the other. Kenna was disastrously unprepared for whatever lay ahead, but if Dayton had taught her anything it was to think on her feet.
After a couple of bites, he broke into the questioning. “Would you describe your boyfriend as someone who’s meticulous?”
“He isn’t my boyfriend.”
“He seems to think otherwise. Answer the question.”
“Yes, he’s meticulous.”
“You spend the night at his place pretty often. Good sex life?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant or even appropriate here, detective.”
“Let me rephrase that. Does he cause physical harm to you while you’re in bed? Biting? Choking? Restraints? Anything like that?”
Phantom sensations assailed her body. Dayton’s teeth sinking into her skin. His bruising fingers branding her flesh.
Physical harm. Is that how she would’ve described it?
“No, nothing like that.”
“You know how she died?”
She shook her head.
“Asphyxiation.” He said this while examining her neck. “Nice scarf.” Reynolds looked at her through his lashes, a wolf on the prowl, and it was that subtle incline of his head that transformed him from good cop to bad cop. “You know what an accessory is, Miss O’Callaghan? And I don’t mean that pretty little thing tied around your neck. If you conceal a crime, you’re guilty under perjury of the law.”
“I have a firm grasp on the law, sir.”
“Your fake driver’s license says otherwise.”