“We’d better not do anything until we’ve discussed the situation with her,” Sorenson said.
“Excellent point, Detective Sorenson,” Hawthorn said, and Matt braced himself. The LT used name and rank primarily when he wanted to make himself crystal clear. Hawthorn fixed his unblinking, all-seeing gaze on him. “I can see you’re exhausted, Detective Dorchester, so we’re not going to discuss this now, but I expect a complete, detailed, written accounting of your actions from the moment you set foot in Eye Candy up to and including the shooting. Because, as your partner so logically pointed out, right now the odds of Ms. Webber continuing to assist this investigation land somewhere between ‘Fuck, no’ and ‘I’m going to watch while my brother escorts every news outlet in town up the department’s ass with a grappling hook and a Maglite.’”
In that tone, statements required a response. “Yes, sir.”
“We’ve got her. We need to use her. She’s still our only link to Murphy, Detective. Fix this.”
Direct orders always demanded a response, even if he didn’t have the slightest fucking clue how he’d fix any of this. “Yes, sir.”
“We’ll meet here tomorrow,” Hawthorn said, and looked at his watch. “Christ, later today. Eighteen hundred hours.”
Matt locked up behind them, checked all the windows, then walked back down the hallway to brace his arm on the wall next to Luke’s closed door and listen for … he didn’t know what for. Some sign of her mental state. Some sign of life. For all he knew she’d crawled out the window and started walking.
Silence inside. He put his free hand on the knob because while Eve’s style was to march out the front door hurling grenades as she left, she might never want to see him again. The air was thick with thwarted emotions, and the sexual tension that had been simmering away between them since the moment he walked through Eye Candy’s front door.
Situational awareness smacked him like the shock wave from a bomb blast. From that moment his standard operating mode of don’t react had begun to fail, strands popping, tension cables buckling under the pressure. With the evening’s events, the last cable lashing down everything he didn’t want to feel and didn’t want to know about himself snapped.
He’d fallen for Eve Webber. He’d fallen for the woman who’d fallen for his lies, the woman who made him remember all kinds of things he didn’t want to remember.
Who he’d wanted to be.
How far he was from that man.
How thoroughly fucked the whole situation was.
Back to the wall, he slipped down until he was sitting on the floor outside her room, rested his forearms on his knees, and let out a soundless exhalation. Then he made himself sit there in the dark, listening to her sit in the silent darkness, until he heard a rustle of sheets and creaking bedsprings. He still didn’t move. The doors were hollow core, not solid wood, so he could hear her breathing, short, tense inhales, all but inaudible exhales. All this frustration and anger and treachery had to go somewhere. He knew that from long experience, from losing his parents, watching Luke’s childhood disappear into surgeries, physical therapy, a constant stream of adjustments to a world not made for disabled teens. He had to find a way to help her deal with what he’d done.
In her office she’d been moments away from hurling the stapler at his head. He could work with that. Plates. He’d pick up some secondhand dishes and let her go to town on them.
Only when the breathing evened out and deepened did he push himself to his feet and walk the rest of the short hallway and into his room. He pulled off the Eye Candy T-shirt, took his service weapon from his gun safe and put it on the nightstand with the rest of his arsenal, and eased onto the bed. Every muscle in his body ached, and the backs of his eyes prickled. From exhaustion, or so he told himself.
He should have been out cold in seconds. Instead, sleep was a long time coming.
*
Eve opened her eyes not to pale blue cinderblock walls and blackout shades but to posters of human anatomy and physiology renderings, and Sports Illustrated swimsuit models. A desk with a simple shelving unit above it sat in the corner. Standard-issue cream vinyl blinds covered the windows, and leaf-pattern shadows twitched and shimmied on the blinds.
This was not her room.
She closed her eyes, and opened them again. The room remained exactly as before, therefore she must not be dreaming. That meant that her skin-crawlingly humiliating memories of the night before were also real. She rubbed her eyes, then looked at her iPhone. Three forty-two p.m. Out of habit she scanned Facebook and Twitter. Nothing about the shooting. Thank God.