She shrugged. “It’s been bugging me.”
“I’m double-checking everything.” That wasn’t a lie. He was going through every statement, analyzing every angle. There wasn’t much about her father in the police files, and that bugged Wren. So did wasting time talking about the guy now. “Any chance we can focus on something other than your father for the rest of the night?”
“Depends. Do you think this chair will hold us if the dirty talk gets out of hand?” She put her hands on the back and shook it a little.
He righted them before they lost balance. “The condoms are upstairs.”
“We can still make out down here. Consider it foreplay.”
That sounded like the perfect solution to him. “I love the way you think.”
She lowered her mouth until it hovered over his. “Show me.”
CHAPTER 26
Wren dragged his exhausted body into the office over the weekend. This wasn’t fatigue. No, it was the good kind of loss of sleep, but still. For the first time in his adult life he needed a nap.
He pushed open the conference room door to find Rick Cryer and Garrett already sitting there. Files were piled around them. They both had coffee and there was a pot on the tray in the middle of the table.
Garrett looked up and smiled. “You look tired. Like shit actually.”
“Shut up or you’re fired.” Wren reached over Rick to get to the caffeine. He grabbed a mug and the pot and poured.
“It’s only ten.” Garrett looked at his watch. “And it’s Sunday, which is proof I need a raise.”
“I’m willing to fire you off schedule.” Wren downed the cup. Black, hot and strong. He wanted an intravenous tube pumping it directly into his veins.
“Threaten to fire.”
Wren ignored that as he took his seat at the head of the table. “How are you, Rick?”
The detective had driven in and brought some boxes with him. That was the only explanation for the extra ones piled on the chair next to him. The boxes Wren didn’t remember with the handwriting he didn’t recognize on the side.
“Working harder in retirement than I did on the job.”
“I doubt that.” Wren knew better. The man was a bit of a legend. He closed difficult cases. He worked on awful homicides. That’s probably why he stuck with Tiffany’s case. It was like the one that got away.
Rick stretched. “Getting old.”
“Some of us look older by the second,” Garrett said with a laugh.
Time to work. Wren looked at both of them. “Where are we?”
“Where’s Emery?” Garrett asked.
Wren’s mind flashed to an hour ago. She’d grumbled about getting out of bed. There was also some whining about not being able to find a sandal. It had been so long since he lived with a woman that he actually enjoyed the chaos of it all.
She had whipped through his house like a tornado. Not exactly neat and tidy in the way she ran her personal life. There were clothes all over the bedroom. He was pretty sure he saw her car keys on the steps, which made no sense at all. There was a place for those, but when he told her that her only response was “Uh-huh.”
Toiletries, bottles of stuff meant to prevent this and fix that, littered the countertop in the bathroom. He had no idea what any of it was. He’d poked around, but only waded in long enough to take the top off her shampoo and smell it. It was the scent he identified with her. And now it lingered in his sheets.
He loved that part. He loved seeing her there, feeling her presence. Smelling her.
“She’s at her friend Caroline’s house having brunch.” He’d been invited but passed. Meeting the boss, who was also a good friend, at the office was one thing. Taking on her entire family, including her psychologist partner, Ruth, and two kids was a bit more than he could handle. Fending off questions from that many people demanded more sleep. He’d almost preferred coming to work to that sort of baptism by fire. “There are two bodyguards there with her, which seemed to be an endless fascination for Caroline’s kids.”
Garrett made a face, kind of like what he might make in a horror movie. “Sounds festive.”
“It’s safe and that’s all I care about.” And Emery was happy, which apparently was a big issue for him these days. She smiled, he smiled. She’d been laughing and running after one of the kids when he drove away. But now they had much more sobering topics to discuss. “What did we find out?”
“We studied the security tapes.” Garrett opened the laptop next to him and hit a few buttons. Black-and-white, somewhat blurry video started playing. The clip was clear enough to show Tyler. “Apparently he got into Emery’s building by coming through a maintenance door near the garbage shoot.”