“I’ve been racing that car since I was eighteen,” he said. “I know what it can do.”
“The point of a dial-in is to get as close to the time you choose without going over, right?” At his nod, she added, “So you were really close. Very consistent.”
He consistently failed to beat his dad’s time. “Yeah.”
The car purred up and down the wooded, rolling hills to the north of Lancaster, quiet, controlled but with a hint of menace to it. Or maybe that was just him, projecting. She pulled up to a second set of gates on the opposite side of the development and keyed in her code. She cruised through the streets. Conn studied the houses more closely: big, mostly brick but some modern architectural statement houses scattered throughout the lots. The big windows weren’t covered, the homeowners’ Saturday night on full display to anyone who drove by.
“Good thing you didn’t pick a house like that,” Conn said. “That would be a nightmare to secure.”
She glanced over. “That’s a Maud house,” Cady mused. “Maybe I’m not sophisticated enough, but that feels like a small museum to me, not a house. Where did you grow up?”
“Here.”
“I meant, where, here? Which neighborhood?”
“The South Side.”
“Oh. I don’t know that neighborhood as well.”
His monosyllabic approach worked, because Cady drove the rest of the way in silence. He waited while she parked the car then escorted her up the steps. Moving on autopilot, he left her in the kitchen filling her steamer, to hang up his jacket. When he came back, she was staring down at an open folder he’d left on the island. “I was thinking about some of these emails, and the website going down,” she said. Then her voice slowed. “What’s this?”
She’d opened the folder on Jordy, not the psychos folder. He wanted to leap across the table and tear it from her hand. Don’t show weakness. Don’t flinch. Instead, he shoved his fists in his jeans pockets, hunched his shoulders. She was reading it, flipping through the pages, the damning pictures.
Then she looked at him, her hazel eyes wide with disbelief. “You’re accused of doing this.”
It wasn’t a question. “Yeah,” he said. His voice sounded both rough and emotionless at the same time. He waited for the automatic question. Did you do this?
“You didn’t do this.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Obstinately chose the devil’s advocate role. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes. I do.”
“One trip to the drag races and a night in bed and you know me? You don’t know me. I’m capable of that. When I was a kid, I got into fights for the fun of it. I’ve got all kinds of anger issues.”
She looked at the close-up of Jordy’s face. “We all are. Everyone’s capable of violence if the right button’s pushed. But I know you a little. You’re not the kind of man who hurts someone else when he’s angry or in pain.”
He snorted to cover the hot rush inside him. “Sure I’m not.”
She paged through the report. It was official police business pertaining to an open case. She was a civilian. He should have confiscated it. He didn’t, although he couldn’t say why. Maybe because she deserved to know who was living in her house, sleeping in her bed. Maybe it was because he wanted her to know. “Most people look at me and see brutal.”
She looked up. Blinked. “Are they blind?”
“Why don’t you?”
She shrugged. “I’m not blind. You didn’t do this, so who did?”
“I don’t know,” he said, frustration surging again. His hands were jammed so far into his pockets he thought he might rip the seams at the bottom. “That’s why I’m here, with you. Hawthorn needed to get me out of sight while he investigates.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets, the denim scraping his knuckles before he shoved his hands over his head. “Fuck!”
“I can get someone else,” Cady said. “You’ve got better things to do than babysit me.”
“No way,” he shot back. Not without cameras or motion detectors.
“At least take a couple of hours off. Investigate on your own. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not leaving you. No way.”