21. Diem

“Detective.” Tallus was calm and cool as always, but I recognized a snide edge creeping under the syrupy tone. “Please, come in.”

Sweat covered my palms, and I wiped them on my jeans before standing. Aslan Doyle had moved into the office but hovered by the open door. The stance he took was one I knew well. The cop stance. The I’m-above-you stance. The we’re-going-to-play-this-game-my-way stance. It instantly put my nose out of joint.

I knew Doyle, but not well. During my short stint working in the headquarters building when I’d been on probation, I’d witnessed the too-high-on-himself playboy detective sauntering around the office like he was god’s gift to men and women alike. The man’s reputation rivaled my own but in a different way.

Apparently, he’d settled down and gotten married. It was hard to believe he could keep it in his pants long enough to commit to anyone, but what did I know. He still carried arrogance on his shoulders. Didn’t all detectives? They were all too high on themselves. Doyle was no exception.

Aslan saw me in the doorway between rooms and offered a slight tip of the head. “Krause.”

“Doyle.”

He glanced at Tallus, sizing him up and down in a way I didn’t like. “I see you’ve got yourself a partner.”

“He’s not my partner.”

“Interesting.” Doyle smirked. “Does he know that?”

Tallus propped his hands on his hips in the cocksure way he had, scoffing. “I’m in training, and what’s it to you?”

“You’re not in—” I bit my tongue, unwilling to argue the issue when we should be taking a united stance in front of Doyle. “What do you want?” I asked the detective with no less growl in my voice.

“I have a few questions.”

“Ask them.”

“I’m curious what you’re investigating.”

“None of your business.”

“Except, I think it is my business since you were nosing around the university today, asking questions about David Shore. I saw you both, and I strongly suspect you were in places you shouldn’t have been, tampering with things you shouldn’t have been tampering with. There are laws against breaking and entering, Krause. You know that.”

I held Doyle’s glare. He was no longer smirking, but he also wasn’t backing down. A schoolyard pissing contest neither of us was willing to lose.

“I also suspect,” he added, “that if I was so inclined to check prints in Mr. Shore’s office, I might find yours.”

Tallus tried to catch my eye, but I refused to tear my gaze from Doyle. I didn’t intimidate him any more than I intimidated Tallus.

“Talk to me right now, or I’ll drag you both into an interview room under the pretense of tampering with an investigation.”

I ground my teeth and flexed my hands. “My cases are confidential. You’ll need a warrant.”

Aslan huffed, and that time, it was he who rested his hands on his hips. “Oh, do I?”

Tallus appeared beside me and touched my arm. A feverish chill rolled over my skin with the contact. Instinct wanted me to pull away, but his touch did something different than I expected. It settled me. It made me want to step closer and steal whatever recipe he had that made it possible for him to be calm and cool in the face of animosity.

Tallus lifted his chin. “What are the charges against David Shore?”

When Doyle didn’t answer, Tallus stood his ground, tightening his hold on my bicep, warning me to stay quiet. “It’s public information, Detective.” The snark was back. “You read him his rights. Therefore, I assume he’s officially been charged. He isn’t a suspect anymore. What are the charges?”

“Feisty little thing, aren’t you?”

I growled and moved to step forward, but Tallus stopped me with a quiet, “Down boy.”

Aslan chuckled. “You’re in over your head, Tallus. Be careful who you associate with.”

“I’m a big boy.”

Aslan’s gaze traveled from me to Tallus and back. “If I answer your questions, then you answer some of mine.”

“Provided it doesn’t break confidentiality for our case,” Tallus said.

My case, I wanted to retort but didn’t.

Doyle considered and shifted his weight, crossing his arms over his chest. “Vehicular homicide.”

I frowned, and Tallus vocalized my thought with a “huh?”

It was not what we were expecting. Not drugs. Not rape or having sex with minors. Not Beth’s murder. Vehicular homicide?

Doyle noticed our confusion, flicking his attention between us for a second. “I take it that isn’t what you expected.”

“We’re way off base, D,” Tallus muttered.

“Why are you looking into Shore?” Doyle asked. “Why are you crawling all over campus and breaking into his office?” He nodded at Tallus but kept his attention on me. “The other day, your sidekick was inquiring about the Rowell woman’s death. Help me out here.”

“He’s not my sidekick.”

Tallus elbowed me in the ribs.

“He’s… my assistant.”

“I don’t give a fuck who he is to you. I want to know why you’ve got your nose in two of my cases.”

“Two?” Again, Tallus vocalized my thoughts. We needed to work on his inner monologue.

Doyle glared between us, clearly displeased and wanting answers.

Sensing Tallus was ready to spew a hundred questions and risk my client’s confidentiality, I slipped out of his hold and snagged his upper arm, using the same squeeze to warn him to shut up.

When he flashed me a disapproving glare, I loosened my grip.

“I can’t comment on my case,” I said to Doyle, “but I will tell you that if you haven’t connected Shore to the Rowell woman yet, you might want to do some digging. She met with him Friday night before she died. That’s all I’ll say.”

The information seemed to take Doyle off guard. So the department hadn’t connected Beth and David. Interesting. Yet David was being charged for something else entirely. What were the chances?

What were we missing?

Aslan pointed a finger in my face. “You be on call if I have more questions.”

“I’m not your bitch.”

He huffed. “No. You were never my type.” He left, slamming the door behind him.

***

After a short debate, Tallus and I ended up ordering food and sitting back on the love seat with the tablet while we waited for it to arrive.

Tallus had taken control of the device, sitting it on his lap as he typed endless searches into the bar, trying to discover who David Shore had apparently killed with his vehicle.

“It will be on my desk tomorrow morning for the website, but I don’t want to wait that long, and they may not reveal details to the public, depending on what they know. This whole case is giving me a serious boner. Is it always like this? Your job is exciting. Mine’s shit…”

I was barely listening, still trying to sort out how we’d gone from marital affairs, to sexual misconduct and drugs, to homicide. Two different homicides. Tallus’s chatter was background noise but not nearly as annoying as it had been in the past. It was nice to bounce around ideas with someone else.

“The students claimed Shore’s car was impounded weeks ago, so it wouldn’t be super recent.” Tallus scrolled, shaking his head, puckering his beautiful lips—ones that had been wrapped around my cock earlier—and clucking his tongue. “Man, a lot of people die from being hit by cars in this city. This is insane. How are we ever going to figure out who this is about?”

I sat closer than before so I could secretly inhale Tallus’s scent—bodywash and hair product that day since he hadn’t bothered with cologne. It was intoxicating, nonetheless.

“D? Thoughts?”

I tried to focus. “Are any of them from the university?”

“Oh. Good thought.” Tallus typed Vehicular homicide + York University into the search bar and hit Enter. A new list appeared, and the handful of results on the top all focused on one incident, but it was far from recent.

“Shit. Look.” Tallus placed a finger on the screen over the article’s date. “2010.”

“Click it.” Now we were getting somewhere.

When the article filled the screen, we read silently, shoulders connected. I was aware of every inch not separating us. I was sure Tallus noticed since it was me who took the initiative and leaned closer. My insides jittered, but I didn’t want to move away.

The write-up covered the death of eighteen-year-old Roan Guterson, a first-year chemistry student who had been killed while walking back to his dorm late one night after studying at a campus café. Roan had been involved in a hit-and-run. He was still clinging to life when an early morning jogger found him bloody, broken, and unconscious the following morning, several hours after he was hit, but the teen died later that day in the hospital from blood loss and head trauma. The police were involved in an extensive investigation, asking anyone with information to come forward.

Without the need to confer, we read a few follow-up articles from the weeks after Roan’s death, but the police had never caught the person responsible. The kid’s father protested and caused a lot of issues and disturbances at the university, demanding answers and claiming the police weren’t looking hard enough. Tallus did further searches, but the case didn’t seem to have ever been solved. Eventually, news about the investigation dried up.

“This is it,” Tallus said. “It has to be.”

“We don’t know for sure.”

“Oh, come on, Guns. It makes sense. And the date. 2010. That’s the same year Beth, Noah, and Olivia went to school there, and… Jesus,” Tallus said on an exhale before spinning to face me. Our knees knocked. “And now Beth and Noah are dead. That can’t be a coincidence. They knew. Shore killed them to keep them quiet.”

“Noah’s death was suicide.”

“Was it, though? Could it have been murder?”

“Pills and alcohol?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible. Where did Noah get the pills?”

I grunted.

“Plus, Beth’s death was made to look like suicide, kinda, only sloppier and less convincing, so the police saw through it.”

“You’re reaching.”

“I’m not. And I bet the only reason Olivia isn’t dead is because she surrounded herself with bodyguards. Diem, holy shit. This makes sense. Can’t you see it?”

But did it? I unpacked the information one piece at a time, fitting what we knew into the equation. When I considered the original emails we’d found on Olivia’s office computer, correspondence between her and Beth involving Noah and the elusive bastard—David—I couldn’t deny it vaguely worked.

“Motherfucker,” I muttered. “Okay, maybe.”

“Ha! See, I’m not just a pretty face.”

This had nothing to do with an affair. Noah, Beth, and Olivia had far worse skeletons in their closets. They knew David had killed someone, and they were helping to cover it up. How? Why? Had they witnessed it? Had David paid them off somehow? What was the subtext we were missing?

“We need to talk to David’s wife,” I said.

“Why? I thought you said—”

“Because women who don’t trust their husbands keep close tabs on them. Very close tabs. Bank accounts. Emails. Internet history. They spy. They ask questions. Look at Faye. She hired me after her husband died because she wanted confirmation that he was fucking around on her. Bitter, angry wives sometimes do better work than investigators because they can go through their husband’s things and don’t need warrants. They can get closer to the subject than anyone else.

“Doyle and Fox didn’t connect Beth to David until we opened that can of worms for them, so they wouldn’t have asked her the right questions when they interviewed her. Since it’s getting late in the day, I doubt they’ll reapproach her tonight. In fact, I know they won’t. They have him in custody. Their frantic chase is over, which means their investigation will slow down to a crawl. If we can—”

A knock sounded at the door.

“Time out, Guns. Food’s here, and I’m starving.” Tallus smirked. “But I’m impressed. I wasn’t counting, but that was a lot of words in a row. Bravo. I’ll make a talker out of you yet.”

I frowned as he rose to answer the door.

Taking a breather from the case was nice. Tallus unpacked the take-out bags—Thai, his choosing, my buck. It seemed to be a trend, and I got the feeling Tallus struggled financially more than I did.

My day had been a whirlwind, starting before the sun had risen with a phone call from Birdie. Nana’s night had been rough, and she was asking—crying—for Boone. I’d heard her in the background, and it broke my heart. Some days were worse than others, but repeatedly reliving the death of her husband took its toll.

I’d gone to settle her down, but I hadn’t managed to avoid Dad, who didn’t leave for work until nine and took it upon himself to launch his scalding coffee at my face because I dared step foot in his house without his permission to see his mother.

I’d avoided burns, and my iron jaw had stopped the mug dead in its tracks, breaking it and cutting my face in the process—not deeply, but enough it had bled off and on all day. One of those tricky, pain-in-the-ass cuts that were too shallow for stitches but didn’t want to clot.

It took two hours at the gym and a phone call to Dr. Peterson to calm down after I’d burned rubber away from my childhood home. I’d also caved and bought a pack of smokes. They were in my desk.

Miraculously untouched.

After the gym, I’d paced the office, working up the nerve to visit Tallus to see if he was feeling better. Bringing him soup felt stupid, and I second-guessed myself a thousand times before saying fuck it and going up to his apartment, take-out bag in hand. I did not expect the blow job in his bedroom, the confusing mess of thoughts afterward when he’d lain in my arms, nor had I expected to enjoy having him tag along with me all day as I chased clues for this godforsaken case.

But now what?

We were sharing another meal, and I couldn’t have felt more incompetent and awkward.

I didn’t do companionship. I didn’t have friends. I didn’t understand the intricacies of easy conversation. And if he was looking for romance or a relationship, that was a joke. Hadn’t he pieced it together that I was a train wreck and not worth salt?

Meals that didn’t revolve around discussing work were complicated enough, never mind cuddling in bed or sharing a shower. But there we were, taking a break from the case, splitting takeout—not for the first time—with an expectation hanging in the air.

Expectation.It always came down to expectations. That was where I failed people. Story of my life. Mom expected me to save her. Dad expected me to submit. Nana expected me to be Boone.

What did Tallus expect?

The real bugger? I liked Tallus. A lot. More than I should. He was vibrant and energetic. He was gorgeous, and despite his fine-boned frame, his ego didn’t bruise easily. The man had balls of steel. My miserable attitude rolled off his shoulders. He didn’t flinch at my anger, even if it was unfairly directed at him. In fact, there were times I thought it amused him. I’d never met anyone like Tallus, and I hardly knew where to put myself in his presence.

I’d stayed guarded my whole life, stuck in a perpetual state of fight or flight—one dominated my earlier years, and the other monopolized my adulthood. I’d long ago concluded I wasn’t meant to be with others. I was meant to be alone. I would surely drive a rusty nail into the middle of whatever this was if we let it go on for too long. My mouth would fail me like always. I’d lose my temper. He’d see the ugly that lived inside me as clearly as I’d seen it in my father every day growing up under his roof.

“Here.” Tallus handed me a plate with a little of everything and a fork. He’d taken it upon himself to root through the scant cupboards in my makeshift kitchen to find cutlery and dishes, all of them mismatched. He’d also returned with two bottles of water from the fridge.

Beer would have helped. Or bourbon.

Or the smokes still stowed away in a drawer.

I was exactly like the old man. Grasping for crutches. Numbing the pain.

My fingers twitched as I accepted the plate. “Thanks.”

I focused on eating, too uncomfortable to make eye contact. Memories of earlier in the day swirled on repeat inside my head: The weight of Tallus against my chest, his damp hair brushing my chin and nose, and his shower-fresh scent all around me.

It was like a dream, only it had really happened. For a brief minute, I had suffocated on everything Tallus, and I would have died happy if he’d stayed in my arms. My lungs might have burst. My skin might have ignited into red-hot flames. I might have turned into a pile of ash, but for a precious moment, I would have known joy and peace in another human being.

“Do you and Doyle have a history?” Tallus asked, jarring me from my thoughts.

I dashed a glance in his direction. “Doyle? No. Why?”

“He seemed snarly with you. Like there was… a past. I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”

“I’m not popular with anyone in the department.”

“I gathered.” Tallus tilted his head and frowned. His attention was on my face, and I squirmed. He set his plate aside and grabbed a water bottle and a brown napkin with the restaurant’s logo printed on it.

“Why are you staring?” I grumbled.

He cracked the lid and tipped the bottle over the napkin, wetting the corner. “At ease, soldier. I’m coming in.” He shifted closer.

I froze out of reflex, and when Tallus reached out and touched my face, I almost jerked away, but I caught myself at the last minute and remained motionless. His fingers were gentle as they angled my jaw to the side so he could evaluate the injury. Concern filled his face.

“You’re bleeding again.”

He touched the damp napkin to my most recent war wound and held it there, applying pressure. His hazel eyes—he wore contacts today, much to my dismay—searched my face knowingly.

I wanted to move out of his hold. I wanted to snarl and smack his hand away and tell him to mind his fucking business and stop drawing attention to things I didn’t want to talk about.

But I didn’t.

I stared back into his warm eyes, captivated by the prisms of green and gold reflected back at me. His long lashes. His expressive and manicured brows. His perfect mouth.

“Did you cut yourself shaving?” he asked.

“What?” It was the inanest assumption imaginable, especially when I had at least three days’ worth of growth on my face.

“Shaving. Is that how this happened?”

“Sure. Sounds about right.”

“Thought so. I’ve nicked myself before, and it can take all day to behave itself. Pain in the ass.”

Why was he doing this? Why was he giving me an out when he knew that wasn’t what had happened?

He lifted the napkin and examined the mark. “Looks like it stopped again. Try not to touch it.”

“I’m not.”

“You do it subconsciously. I’ve been watching all day.”

I grunted, unsure how else to respond.

The fingers that had so delicately taken care of me brushed along an age-old scar. One of the worst ones on my face. It traveled from my jaw to my mangled ear. The scar had been there since I was eighteen. The mangled ear happened when I was six.

Shame filled me, and I could hear Tallus saying She’s disgusting. I can’t even look at her without getting goose bumps.

He’d been referring to Baby, but I felt the sting as though he’d been saying the words to me. I’d heard it all my life.

From the kids at school.

From Dad.

From Mom when Dad insisted she agree.

Before I knew what was happening, Tallus cupped my jaw, and his thumb moved along my lower lip. I held my breath, my skin tingling. Then he drew me toward him. His tempting mouth advanced.

He was going to kiss me.

I turned away at the last minute, and Tallus’s forehead came to rest on my temple, his lips brushing my jaw instead.

He sighed, not with exasperation but with submission. “D?”

“You don’t want to do this with me.” My voice came out cracked and raw, barely audible.

“What if I do?”

“Trust me. You don’t.”

“Guns, I’m not asking for a wedding band. I’m not even asking for monogamy. I just want to…” He trailed his lips to my ear, and shivers coursed over my skin. I wanted to pull away.

“I just want…” His hand landed on my thigh, caressing ever so gently. “Fuck, I don’t know. I want to kiss you. Touch you. I want your hands all over me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I… I don’t know how to do this.” I lightly pushed him away and stood, gathering the leftovers and busying myself in the shitty excuse for a kitchen. When the agitation in my core got to be too much to handle, I escaped to the other room, found the new pack of cigarettes in my desk, and went outside.