Luc groaned. “Go home, Lopez.”
“And leave you two to wallow in all this sexual tension? Never.”
Ava froze, her eyes flying to Sawyer’s, but he merely gave her a friendly wink.
Then she turned to Luc and glared. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t tell him shit.”
Sawyer pounced. “There’s something to tell?”
Just a kiss that forever ruined all future kisses with its sheer perfection.
“No,” Ava said, turning back around to face Sawyer, her face composed. “There is nothing to tell.”
Luc laughed. “You are a terrible liar.”
“I am an excellent liar,” she shot back.
“Not really,” Sawyer said, giving her an apologetic pat on the hand. “So. Who wants to tell me? Are we talking accidental boob brush?”
Ava gave him a glare.
Sawyer’s eyebrow lifted. “Full-on cop-a-feel? Duuude.” He reached over to fist-bump Luc, who batted his hand out of the way.
Luc’s partner grinned and drained his beer. “This is nice. Me, Superman, Lois Lane, and unfulfilled lust.”
“It’s not…” Ava made a huffing noise and did what any skilled conversationalist knew how to do.
She changed the subject.
“So, I can’t believe I haven’t asked this before, but how long have you two fine officers been involved in your bromance here?”
“’Bout a year,” Lopez said. “I was doing the Brooklyn thing for a while, but got sick of looking at all the hipsters. There was a spot in Luc’s precinct, so…”
“Only a year?” Ava asked, genuinely surprised. She’d assumed that they’d been together since the police academy, not only because of their easy relationship, but because Luc had never mentioned having any other partner.
“Who was your partner before this?” she asked Luc.
If she thought she’d seen Luc Moretti’s emotional shutters slam down before, it was nothing like the ice-cold shutdown she was witnessing now. His eyes went cold and dead before he pushed his chair back. “I’ll get us another round.”
“Oh God,” Ava said, horror flooding her as she put the pieces together.
She turned to Sawyer.
“When you said a spot in Luc’s precinct opened up, you meant that…”
“Mike Jensen,” Lopez said, his face uncharacteristically somber. “I didn’t know him, but he and Luc were solid partners, you know? Luc knew his wife and kid and everything.”
For a second, Ava’s mind caught on the name, because Mike Jensen sounded familiar for some reason, but that thought was flooded by the horribleness of the reality as she put the pieces together.
Luc’s former partner had died.
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
Sawyer opened his mouth but hesitated, his eyes searching her face as though looking for something and finding her lacking. “You’ll have to ask him.”
“He doesn’t exactly look like he wants to talk about it,” she said, her eyes finding Luc’s broad back at the bar as he waited to get the bartender’s attention.
Only after Luc had returned to the table and let Sawyer coax him into a good-natured argument on Mets (Sawyer) vs. Yankees (Luc) did Ava realize why the name Mike Jensen was so familiar.
It was the name of the officer killed in the Shayna Johnson case.
The one whose death had gotten the barest mention in the media coverage, as though the newsperson on duty had been reporting the weather instead of an officer who’d died in the line of fire.
There was no doubt that Luc Moretti was very, very wrapped up in the Shayna Johnson case, and she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to talk about it.
But the question was…
Why was it nobody else seemed to have talked about it either?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I still don’t understand how the hell you got her phone number,” Luc said, pushing his fingers to his temples and trying to assess whether the urge to yell at his own grandmother was a first-class ticket to hell or not.
“You’re scowling, Luca,” Nonna said, patting his shoulder before starting to unroll her yoga mat.