Chapter Twenty-Three

Nicole came awake slowly. She registered the throb in her ankle. The patter of rain on the windowsill. Then warm weight lodged against her side.

Slowly, she sat up and blinked into the dimness. Judging by the light, it was early. But maybe it only looked that way because of the rain. Lucy slept soundly beside her.

Nicole reached for the phone on the nightstand and flipped it over. Eight forty-two.

She flopped back against the pillow and stared up at the ceiling as the night came back to her in cinematic flashes. Emmet sliding off her clothes. Hovering over her. Kissing his way down her body.

Emmet leaning over her and whispering goodbye before slipping out in the dark.

Another throb started up, deep inside her. What time was that? Had it been in the wee hours of the morning, after she’d drifted away in an orgasm-and-drug-induced haze? Or had he spent the night? And what had he said to her before leaving? She wished she could remember his parting words.

That was it, no more pills. She hated that her brain felt fuzzy, and hated even more that the details of her night with him were probably lost to her forever.

Sitting up again, she looked around her messy room. She grabbed a T-shirt off the floor and pulled it on, then collected her crutches from the nightstand and positioned them carefully before pulling herself up. Lucy got to her feet and stretched her spine before jumping off the bed and racing to the kitchen.

Three full days of no work. What was she going to do with herself? She stopped in the bathroom for a minute and then made her way into the kitchen, where the cloying smell of roses seemed to taunt her.

Her open laptop reminded her of what she’d been doing when Emmet showed up at her door and dragged her into an argument.

She glanced at the beer bottles sitting on the coffee table, and a cold feeling of dread settled over her.

Is this a mistake?

She remembered his face in the dimness.

Maybe.

It couldn’t happen again. That was a given. There was no way she could maintain any kind of professional facade at work if she was secretly sleeping with Emmet. And there was no way for them to have a relationship openly while working for the same tiny police department. It wasn’t only distracting, it was flat-out dangerous, and Brady would never stand for it. One of them would have to leave, and that definitely wasn’t happening. Both of them lived for their job.

A sour ball formed in her stomach as reality sank in. She had become what she’d never wanted to be, one of Emmet’s hookups.

Her phone chimed from the bedroom, and she looked back over her shoulder. She really needed coffee, but what if it was Brady calling to say he had reconsidered and he wanted her back at work?

Yeah, sure. Because the chief was so wishy-washy once he’d made a decision.

She crutched back to the bedroom and grabbed the phone off the nightstand.

Kate.

She connected the call. “Hey.”

“Is he still there?” Kate whispered.

“Is who still here?”

“Nicole.”

“What?”

“I swung by your place last night and saw his truck.”

Nicole sighed. “He left this morning.”

A squeal pierced her ear.

“Oh my God! Yes!”

“Calm down,” Nicole said.

“Are you kidding me? You slept with Emmet, and you want me to calm down? You did sleep with him, right?”

She hesitated. But there was no getting out of it. “Yes.”

“Well? How did it happen?”

Nicole put the phone on speaker and carefully balanced it in her hand as she took small steps toward the kitchen. She needed caffeine for this.

“We got in a fight,” Nicole said.

“What?”

“We had this whole argument about—I don’t know—work, I guess.”

My heart fucking stopped.

Heat rippled through her as she remembered the look on his face when he told her that.

“Well, how was it?”

Nicole’s throat felt tight. “Good,” she said softly. “Really, really good. But then he left, so... I honestly don’t know.”

Silence on the other end.

“Hello?”

“Well. That’s to be expected,” Kate said. “It’s a workday. I mean, you’re not saying he sprinted out of there right after?”

“No, he stayed for a while.”

Actually, Nicole had no idea. It could have been right after. But she was embarrassed to tell even her own sister that the man she’d been fixated on for an entire decade had had sex with her and fled.

Nicole wouldn’t be able to look at him again. And yet she’d have to work with him every day. Side by side in cars. In meetings. In stuffy conference rooms surrounded by co-workers. Detectives, no less—people trained to pick up on cues and body language.

Who was she kidding? Even if Emmet kept his promise and stayed quiet, it was only a matter of time before everyone knew.

“Anyway, it was a one-off,” she told Kate.

“What? Why?”

“Because we work together. This can’t go anywhere.”

“It already is going somewhere.”

“No, it’s not.”

Kate sighed. “Nicole...”

“What?”

“Have you ever noticed that when bad things happen to you, Emmet is the first one to show up? Like when you were assaulted at that crime scene, or when you got rear-ended, or when you landed in the emergency room with a broken ankle?”

Nicole crutched across the kitchen, careful not to trip over Lucy, who was circling and making pitiful mewing noises. “That’s because we work together and he’s in the loop on my day-to-day.”

“Yes. That’s my point. He’s in the loop and he’s always looking out for you.”

“We’re cops. That’s part of the job.”

Another sigh. “Okay, whatever. Anyway, let’s talk soon. I really want to catch up. Are you free tonight? We could get together for drinks. Or are you seeing Emmet?”

“I’m not seeing anybody. I’m in the middle of a big case.” Her phone dinged with an incoming call. “Just a sec. That’s the crime lab. I need to call you back.”

“Don’t forget,” Kate said.

“I won’t.” She hung up and clicked over. “Hey, Miranda.”

“Hi.” She paused. “Did you get my text?”

Nicole looked down at her phone. She’d missed a slew of messages while she’d been sleeping in. Damn pills.

“I missed it. Sorry. What’s up?” Nicole leaned her crutch against the counter and reached for the cabinet where she kept the cat food.

“We got the labs back,” Miranda said. “They just came in.”

Lucy jumped onto the counter. Nicole had moved her bowls higher so she wouldn’t have to crouch down to feed her. She scooped food, and Lucy knocked her hand out of the way in her rush to the bowl.

“Which labs?” she asked Miranda.

“All of them.”

Nicole’s gaze landed on her coffee machine. The little green light was on, meaning someone had used it in the past two hours, before the automatic shutoff.

A spark of hope ignited inside her. He had stayed the night with her.

“Nicole? You there?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Well, you remember I swabbed the mirror, too, right? On the chance that even if he was wearing gloves, he might have touched his face or something, and deposited DNA on the mirror when he adjusted it.”

“Yes?”

“Well, today is your lucky day,” Miranda said. “We got a hit. This guy is in the system.”

Cassandra pulled the wool sweater over her head and tossed it on the bed. It was too heavy. And itchy. She would be sweating bullets in the meeting, which would make her look guilty as hell.

She returned to the closet and surveyed her other choices. What little clothing budget she had had been spent on yoga clothes for work. But she couldn’t show up for a meeting with the police in a hot-pink sport bra. Besides a wool sweater, her next best option was a long-sleeved workout shirt in a somber gray. She pulled it on and tucked it into her jeans, then stepped into the bathroom to check her reflection.

Her outfit was okay, but her face looked terrible. Her eyelids were puffy, and she was already getting that eye tic that happened when her nerves were frayed.

She stared at her reflection, and sure enough, there it was.

She squeezed her eyes shut. How was she going to do this? Alex’s plan was crazy. And she couldn’t believe she’d agreed to it. What had sounded so reasonable at eleven last night seemed ludicrous in the light of day. Alex Breda, with his deep voice and his trust me eyes, had persuaded her to scrap her plan and follow his instead. Using all his fancy legal terms, he’d convinced her that his plan had a chance of succeeding.

Not just a chance, a high probability.

But Cassandra didn’t see it—she was a pessimist. Maybe because she knew a few things that Alex didn’t.

Such as that her husband had no limits. There was nothing Malcom wouldn’t do to maintain control. He needed control over his money, control over his image, and—since Cassandra impacted both of those things—control over his wife. This was a man who took the underwear from her laundry hamper and had it tested for DNA because he believed—wrongly—that she was having an affair. This was a man who got his own brother fired from his job after he’d said something embarrassing about Malcom’s “humble roots” to a reporter. This was a man who had his accountant hit by a truck when he found out she planned to report his business to the feds.

Malcom’s response to any problem that threatened his ego or his bank account was to lash out, to clamp down, to exert control and exact punishment. And his wife leaving him was the mother of all problems because it threatened everything.

Cassandra had understood that divorcing him wouldn’t be easy, but she’d set this process in motion because she knew that the longer she waited, the more entangled they would become until she was neck-deep in his criminality and trapped in the marriage forever. She couldn’t live like that, beholden to a man who had that sort of leverage over her and who spied on her every move.

She went into the kitchen and grabbed some ice from the freezer. Tucking the cubes into a napkin, she made a pack and pressed it over her eyelids.

She sucked in a breath and held it in. Then blew it out. She repeated the process over and over while reviewing the day’s schedule in her head, envisioning every part of it going to plan. Maybe if she visualized success she could make it happen.

Her phone chimed from the bar, and she pulled the ice pack away.

Reese again.

Cassandra had told her she’d ride with her to the funeral tomorrow. They’d even agreed to go shopping together today for something to wear—which obviously wasn’t happening now.

Cassandra dropped the ice into the sink and grabbed the phone. “Hi. Sorry I didn’t call you back. I—”

“Cassie, did you hear?”

Her gut clenched. “No. What?”

“I just talked to Jeremy,” Reese said with a wet sniffle. “He said he’d call you.”

Jeremy taught tae kwon do with Paula, and Cassandra braced herself for more bad news.

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure, but... some detective just showed up at his door. He’s interviewing everyone on staff, apparently. You and I are probably next on his list.”

Cassandra swallowed. “Interviewing everyone about what?”

“There’s a rumor going around that Danielle’s car accident wasn’t an accident at all. They’re saying her brakes were tampered with.”

Cassandra’s throat went dry. “Her brakes... what?”

“Cassie, people are saying she was murdered.”

Emmet swerved around a truck and sped through the yellow light. He was late for the meeting, which wasn’t a good look when he was supposed to be leading it.

His phone buzzed and he dug it from his pocket. Nicole.

“Hey, you’re up,” he said.

“I’ve been up.”

The knot in his chest loosened. He’d been worried things might be weird with her today, but she was prickly as ever.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Fine. Where are you?”

“Heading into the team meeting. I’m late, actually.”

“Well, I’m glad I caught you. Wait up, okay?”

“What?”

“I just pulled in.”

Emmet turned into the parking lot of the police station and spied Nicole’s pickup on the other side of the lot. Cursing, he parked on the end of the row as Nicole slid from the driver’s seat and tucked her crutches under her arms.

She glanced up as he strode over.

“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be home,” he said.

“I was. But the labs came in.”

He squeezed between her pickup and the neighboring car and took a moment to look her over. Her hair was damp, as though she’d just gotten out of the shower, and she wore her denim miniskirt again with a thick blue sweatshirt.

“I talked to Miranda,” she told him.

Her cheeks were flushed pink, and he had the sudden urge to kiss her—right in front of the police station, which she definitely wouldn’t appreciate since she’d made him promise to keep everything top secret.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He settled for tucking a coppery lock of hair behind her ear. “What did Miranda have?”

“We got a DNA hit,” she said excitedly. “Remember the mirror in Aubrey’s car? How it had been adjusted for someone taller?”

“Yeah?”

“Miranda took a swab and got touch DNA off the glass. This guy is in the system.” She reached across the seat and grabbed a file folder. “I printed him out.”

“Who is it?”

“John Krueger.” She handed him the file. “He’s got a rap sheet in Colorado. That’s Boulder, Colorado. He’s thirty-two, ex-military. He got arrested for aggravated assault after getting into a bar fight six years ago and putting two guys in the hospital.”

Emmet opened the file and scanned the arrest record, which included a mug shot. Krueger was white, heavyset, and had shaggy brown hair. He could have easily been the guy in the surveillance footage from Aubrey’s apartment. Or he could have just as easily not have been. Impossible to tell.

“And that’s not our only link to Boulder,” Nicole went on. “You know that, right? Cassandra Miller happens to be from Boulder, too. Don’t you think that’s interesting?”

He glanced up from the paper. Nicole’s eyes danced the way they did when she landed a big lead.

“Cassandra Miller, the yoga teacher,” he stated. She was still hung up on this woman?

“Yes. But that’s not her real name. Or not her full name, I should say. It’s Catherine Cassandra Miller, married name McVoy. Her husband is Malcom McVoy, and he owns this multimillion-dollar tech company. They make surveillance drones for the Defense Department. The guy’s loaded, it turns out. Which makes it weird that his wife is down in some Texas beach town teaching yoga.”

Emmet closed the file.

“How’s that for a coincidence?” she asked. “We need to tell Brady.”

“I will. But you’re not even supposed to be here. You’re off, remember?”

“But—”

“You can have all the credit,” he said, “but you’d better not show up to the team meeting.”

She thrust her chin out.

“I’m serious, Nicole. Brady will be pissed. He wants you on leave.”

“Fine.” She reached in and grabbed another file folder from the passenger seat. “There’s what I found on Cassandra Miller. No arrest record, but you need to look at her, too. I’m telling you, she’s involved in this somehow. She’s using a fake name, and the Boulder connection is too weird to be a coincidence.”

Nicole turned back to her truck, and he watched with suspicion as she stashed her crutches inside.

“Where are you going now?” he asked.

She hitched herself into the driver’s seat, and he held her elbow to steady her as she swung her boot inside.

“You said I’m not welcome at the team meeting. So fine. Go have your meeting. Just fill me in on any updates. The DNA is in, and they’re expecting to hear back from the FBI today, too. Brady’s contact was going to get those video clips analyzed, remember? Liam Shaunessy’s clip could be critical.”

Without further argument, she pulled on her seat belt.

Emmet rested his hand on the top of the door. “You’re going home now, right?”

“Sure.” She shrugged. “Brady’s orders.”

She definitely was not going home.

“Nicole—”

“You’re late for your meeting.” She reached for the door, and he stepped back. “Let me know how it goes.”