“And you’ll never have to use it because from now on out, you’re stuck with me. Chad’s cell.”
She jerked at the stuck zipper before calming down enough to slide the zip back, shove the fabric fully into the case, and close it, all while rattling off the number.
“Call that anytime. Sorenson’s numbers. Cell, work, home.”
She folded her arms across her chest, recited them, then added McCormick’s, and dispatch in a flat tone. He ignored the attitude. “Good. All of them backup “oh shit” phones. McCormick will get there faster than Sorenson; she’s in court the next few weeks but he’s assigned to patrol. Don’t call Ian. He’s in meetings most days.”
He’d done his best to prepare her, drilling her on Chad Henderson’s backstory, talking through what she should do when Lyle showed up, talking through a dozen other ways to respond to any kind of threat. She’d let him show her how a semiautomatic worked and, at his insistence, picked it up and showed him she could thumb off the safety and jack a round into the chamber, but she’d flatly refused to go to the firing range with him.
Everyone had boundaries they established to define who they were, and for Eve, handling a gun clearly crossed a line. They’d had a short argument about it at one in the morning. He’d lost, and he wasn’t happy about it.
A car door slammed in the driveway. Matt moved through the living room to the window, one hand automatically moving to the small of his back while the other parted the slats of the blinds covering the front windows. He peered out, then let them close. “It’s Luke,” he said, and opened the door.
Shoulders and arm muscles bunching with effort, his brother rolled up the ramp and into the foyer. He stopped in the act of removing fingerless leather gloves when he saw Eve standing in the hallway.
Wide-eyed, he looked at Matt, then at Eve, then at Matt again. “I’m gone for three days and this is what I come home to?” A broad smile spread across his face as Eve held out her hand and looked to Matt for an introduction.
“Luke, Eve. Eve, my brother,” he said, and went back down the hall to the bedroom.
Luke went back to removing his gloves. “Hi, Eve. Yes, I’m his brother, and you are…?”
Matt brushed past both of them, Eve’s case in one hand, his own duffle in the other. “She’s a friend,” he said as he walked down the ramp to his Jeep.
A friend? After the events of the last two weeks, specifically sex both frequent and hot enough to melt steel, if he were Eve he would have kicked his ass. But he couldn’t think of any other way to describe “I pretended to be her bartender, nearly slept with her, saved her from gunfire, did sleep with her, then talked her into working on the investigation with us.”
He tossed the bags into the backseat of the Jeep. When he walked back through the door, Eve gave him that glinting little smile again, then Luke spun to face him, his eyes dark. “She says she owns a bar and you’re working for her. Goddammit Matt, you said things weren’t that bad,” he said, his voice rising.
One hand on his hip, Matt rubbed his forehead with his thumbnail, his keys under the curled fingers of his hand. “They’re not. No worse than usual. She’s part of a case I’m on. I’m staying with her for a while.” Matt snagged the gym bag sitting on Luke’s lap and brushed past Eve to toss it into Luke’s room.
His brother was no fool. Luke lifted one eyebrow and opened his mouth, but Matt cut him off. “I’ve got my cell. If you need to talk, leave a message and I’ll call back when I can. If it’s an emergency, call Sorenson or the LT. They’ll get in touch with me.”
“How long are you going to be gone?” Luke asked.
“I’m not sure.” He turned to go.
“Give me the number for the AC guy,” his brother said. “I’ll get an estimate, call around to comparison shop.”
“I’ll do it when I get back,” he said.
“For fuck’s sake, Matt,” Luke said, resigned. “It’s a couple of phone calls. I won’t sign anything.”
“I’ll take care of it later,” he said tightly. “We have to leave. I’ll check in when I can.”
Luke muttered something Matt pretended not to hear as he guided Eve down the ramp and into the Jeep.
“It sounds like he just wants to help you,” she observed.
“He shouldn’t have to help,” Matt said. “His adolescence disappeared when he was fourteen years old. He deserves to have as normal a life as possible, and that means not worrying about mortgages or HVAC systems or medical bills when he can’t find a full-time job.”
Eve shifted her weight away from him and crossed her legs, and he regretted the way he barked at her. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “It’s none of my business.”