“I’m on the task force now, too.” Brit looked at the clock. “I’ll see you tomorrow at ten.”
As Brit walked out, he decided to give Payne a call—see about meeting him again. Maybe Payne had gotten the gang wrong. Back in his office, he got Payne on his cell phone. As usual, the man only wanted to gripe about how he was putting his life on the line.
“We offered you police protection,” Brit insisted when Payne balked about meeting him.
“Then they’d find out for sure,” Payne snapped.
Brit got the feeling that Payne refused protection because he was doing his own shady business, not because of being fingered as a snitch. “They wouldn’t,” Brit said.
“I don’t want to have a cop up my ass.”
“Then if you get hurt, it’s on you.” After a few more minutes of dialogue, Brit jotted down the address where Payne finally agreed to meet him. “You be there at midnight or I’ll come looking for you. And if I have to look for you, I swear to God, I’ll find some reason for you to do time.”
When he hung up, he remembered that last night, he and Quarles had spent most of the night combing through the files and going through mug shots at the diner across the street from the hotel. He’d kept an eye on Cali’s hotel door all night.
He wouldn’t be able to do that tonight. And that thought didn’t sit well with him. The fact that he cared didn’t sit well either. The fact that he wanted to be in that hotel room with her, both of them naked, annoyed the hell out of him.
Fighting back a jumble of emotions he blamed on lack of sleep, he headed out. He was almost in his car, when he saw the cat darting across the parking lot toward him.
She stopped a few feet away, stared, and then slowly inched closer. Her gold eyes studied him, and she let out a soft purr.
“I left food earlier. It’s over there.”
She did a figure eight around his leg, gazing up at him with a needy expression.
“Don’t do this.” He scowled. “We’re not buddies. I’m not the attaching kind.”
He squatted down and held out his hand. She moved in and rubbed the side of her face on the tip of his fingers. When he turned his hand over, she darted back a foot. “Still don’t trust me, huh?”
She moved a bit closer. “Okay, since we’re talking, the white Buick isn’t a litter box. Crap on Adams’ car again, and the shit will hit the fan.” He glanced at his watch. “Now go. I got another woman to see about.”
~
Brit called her when he parked in front of the school. Then, hungry to see her, he got out and waited by the glass doors. When she came strolling down the hall, he watched her body move toward him, and his blood thickened with sexual awareness. He smiled. The smile she returned appeared forced, and he remembered how she’d looked today. Terrified. But of what? Was he right that she was hiding something?
She pushed the doors open and as she got closer, his gaze moved to her lips, and he was hit with the longing to kiss her. He didn’t do it, but he did put his hand on her lower back.
He felt her flinch and she stepped away from his touch. For some reason, her reaction reminded him of the cat. Scared. Jumpy. She didn’t trust him. The thought hurt. Then he recalled how he’d been an ass to her in the beginning. Trust needed to be earned.
“Bad day?” he asked when he caught up with her. Hoping he would find the answer to what she might be hiding.
“Bad day, bad week, bad month. Bad few years.”
“How can I make it better?” he asked and meant it. Because damn it, he understood how she felt. Grief wasn’t easy to deal with.
“Tell me I can go home to my apartment. I just want to get back home and start my life over.”
“You will soon enough.” They walked, only their footsteps filling the silence. When they got to their cars, he glanced around again. While there wasn’t a white pickup in sight, Brit had decided to drive around a while to make sure no one followed them. Leaving her tonight would be difficult, but it would be impossible if he didn’t do everything in his power to make sure that Stan couldn’t find her.
Still aching to touch her, he cratered. He reached up and brushed his hand down her cheek to her neck. This time she didn’t pull away. A few strands of blonde hair on her neck caught in his fingers. He remembered how it had looked that first night at her apartment—all loose and soft, shimmering around her shoulders. What he wouldn’t give to yank that clip from her hair; what he wouldn’t give to feel her hair on his naked chest.
“You follow me, okay? I’m not going straight to the motel. I want to make sure no one is trailing us.” He brushed his hand to the back of her neck, mesmerized at how his palm fit perfectly into the curve of her neck. He wanted to touch her like this everywhere, without clothes. To know every dip and sway of her body.
“We’re going to catch this guy,” he said.
She caught his hand, pulled it away, and released it, but she continued to stare up at him. “Do you ever sleep?”