Caleb’s gaze sharpened, and he scanned the room. Apparently Dorchester’s Eye Candy T-shirt hadn’t registered with her brother. She’d woken him out of a sound sleep, and even with an adrenaline rush spurred by her shaky words, it would take Caleb a few minutes to put all the pieces together. Eve dreaded the explosion coming when Caleb’s excellent brain became fully functional. For the moment, ignorance was bliss.
“Ian, what the actual fuck?” Caleb said to Hawthorn, going for the only familiar face in the room.
“We need to talk,” Ian said, voice even. Eve was once again reminded of how different Ian was from the boy she’d passed in the halls in high school. His expression was wary when it wasn’t entirely closed off.
Caleb looked around at the uniforms and the CSI team. “Somewhere quiet.”
“Use my office,” Eve said, and eased up out of the love seat she would sell at the earliest opportunity. She shoved through the officers and waited while Caleb, Sorenson, Hawthorn, and Detective Matt Dorchester, LPD, filed into the room after her. Caleb stood across from her, his eyes flickering between her and the police officers. Dorchester leaned against the back wall, as far away from her as he could get. No one else sat down, so Eve stayed on her feet too. Sorenson closed the door on the activity in the apartment, and for a minute, everyone looked at everyone else.
She felt Detective Dorchester’s eyes boring into her. He stood with his back to the wall, arms crossed over his chest. The gun, that damn gun, was back in his ankle holster. Knowing it was there made the Eye Candy T-shirt look ridiculous on him. No wonder he had such physical presence. How could she have mistaken him for a bartender?
Because he was an undercover cop.
Oh dear God. She’d offered to help him get a job.
A dark flush of humiliation crawled into her cheeks, blending with the anger simmering in the middle of her chest. She brushed her hair back out of her face and focused.
“Goddammit, someone start talking!” Caleb snapped.
“Lyle Murphy asked me to launder money for him,” Eve said, too angry to care about what the cops wanted kept quiet. “I told him I would, then went to the cops. They asked me to be an informant. Ian is my contact.” She looked at Detective Dorchester as she spoke, the implication clear. And who the fuck are you?
The cops looked at each other, engaging in some kind of unspoken communication. Still unusually silent, Caleb also waited, but Eve could see his shoulders tense as the puzzle pieces clicked together in his head.
Caleb knew Eye Candy well because he acted as Eve’s attorney. Sorenson and Hawthorn were in street clothes.
Detective Dorchester wore the Eye Candy T-shirt reserved for bartenders.
He’d been in her apartment when the shots came through the windows.
At two thirty in the morning.
Caleb leapt to the worst possible conclusion in a split second. His gaze went dull agate green. “You son of a bitch,” he said and surged toward Matt.
“Caleb, for God’s sake,” Eve said resignedly.
Lieutenant Hawthorn interceded, muscles bulging in his arms as he held Caleb in place. “Settle down, Caleb.”
Dorchester didn’t move, didn’t step into the scuffle or back away. Nothing in his expression or stance changed as Caleb shook off Hawthorn but held his ground.
Sorenson, the shortest, slightest person in the room, stepped up. “Settle down, Counselor,” she said, using the same words Hawthorn had, but in a much quieter, much less confrontational tone. Caleb looked at her for a long moment, then favored all three LPD officers with a venomous look, but stepped away, hands on hips.
Dorchester remained unmoving through the entire altercation, but Eve knew it wasn’t from fear. Even across the room, even without looking at him she felt energy seething under his skin, his muscles tensed in restraint. All that tightly leashed sexual energy would mix combustibly with adrenaline from the gunfire. Fear and shock eddied across her back, roiled in her gut, but deep underneath those reactions something inherently female inside her responded to Dorchester’s energy.
What would happen when the fear and shock wore off, and the desire surged to the surface again?
Caleb didn’t miss a beat. “How the fuck long has this been going on?”
“A couple of months,” Eve said.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“He said not to tell anyone,” she said, nodding at Ian.
He swung to face Ian. “You put my sister in danger? Did you not trust her to finish what she started? Or is this some fucked-up idea of police protection? Either way, the lawsuit’s going to be spectacular. Lengthy. Public.”
“Caleb,” she said resignedly. “I’m not suing anyone. That won’t help. The point is to help.”
“They’re helping themselves, Eve. It’s what cops do.” The words, fueled by Caleb’s short, bitter experience with criminal law, were directed at Hawthorn. “Jesus fucking Christ, Ian! What kinds of games are you playing with Eve’s life?”
“No games, Caleb. There’s a hit out on her life.”
“Why didn’t you tell her? Or me?”
Hawthorn lifted one eyebrow, taking in Eye Candy, reminding without words of Eve’s impulsive reputation, Caleb’s temper. “Because I knew her. And you.”