Chapter Three
Eric
The plainclothes officer WPS had on Marcus Forrester reported back with shots of all of the biker’s stops the night before. The Speakeasy bar, where the biker disappeared through the back door and came out with a bulge under his leather jacket. Quinn’s Paint and Body, where he sauntered through the front door into the manager’s office and came out without the bulge. Eric would have given his next paycheque to know what that bulge was. Then, Booker reported Forrester had pulled over to take a call, then shot straight to the Voyage Inn by the convention centre, where he approached a woman at the bar. Since this was a huge deviation from Forrester’s normal Tuesday night activities, Booker followed him inside and took photos.
Bree. Again. Twice in the same day after months of nothing. He picked the clearest shot and sent it to himself. Once again, she was in the middle of one of his cases when she shouldn’t know anything about it. At least this time he’d caught it early. His unit had been watching Forrester for months, trying to tie him or his club to the shootings of two Nasty Boyz members when the two enemies had vied for ownership of the city’s underground enterprises. Ice Road Warriors had come up on top, and the few Nasty Boyz that hadn’t been swept up and incarcerated in the gunrunning trial hadn’t survived long on the outside. Today was the first time Bree had popped up in their investigation.
Booker reported the interaction lasted a minute, but that was sixty seconds too long for Eric’s liking. Forrester shouldn’t be anywhere near Bree. Eric didn’t care how far they went back; she had no clue who she was getting involved with.
At least she’d given him a legitimate reason to approach her. Not only did Eric want to know what was going on with her, he needed to know what Forrester had said.
He could bring her in to the station, if he wanted to piss her off and cement her opinion of him being a power-abusing asshole. Or he could do the adult thing and simply go to her and politely ask her to talk to him.
Bringing her in was probably going to be more effective.
He parked on the street and waited for her to come to her car. Her driver’s licence showed she was in the basement apartment of a rental house near the university. It was a huge step down from the place they’d shared. Eric didn’t want to imagine the noise of living beneath a bunch of students.
She took her sweet time leaving for the day. Bree already had her sunglasses on when she came around the corner from the back entrance, so Eric couldn’t tell if, or for how long, she stared at him. He did know she didn’t miss a step. Didn’t turn her head. Didn’t acknowledge him at all.
It burned. Love or hate or anger meant she still felt something. Complete indifference meant he didn’t matter to her either way. That what they’d had no longer mattered. He’d proposed to her once, for fuck’s sake. That ought to get him something.
“Bree!”
He finally got a reaction. She deigned to turn her head in his direction. Then she kept walking.
“Dammit, Bree.”
She beeped the electronic locks on her car.
“Bree, I need to talk to you.”
“Am I under arrest?” she asked.
“No.”
“Am I being brought in for questioning?”
“Are you really going to play it like this?” he asked, his voice dropping into a growl. Losing his shit in less than thirty seconds was no way to win her back. “I would like to speak to you about the guy you were talking to last night,” he said, wrenching his temper back under control.
Bree rolled her eyes at him. “You don’t get a say about who I talk to.”
“Marcus Forrester is dangerous. He’s a criminal.”
She slammed the trunk shut, not giving him any warning. “You’ll probably be shocked to learn this, but I knew that. I’m not an idiot. The good old boy who was John Junior’s friend is long gone. This is a new Marcus with motorcycle club patches all over his jacket screams that he’s bad news, which is why I haven’t spoken to him in years. Tell me, was the cop in the corner of the bar looking for me or for him?”
He was surprised she’d spotted Booker. He hadn’t been working in the Homicide unit when she left. But Eric had learned the hard way that Bree saw much more than she should and had an uncanny knack of turning a few random pieces into the whole picture. “Him. I didn’t know you were in there until I saw the pictures. Why did you meet with him?”
“I don’t owe you a single thing, Eric. But I’ll give you this for free in the hopes that it will be the last time I see you. What did Marcus want? You. He wanted me to pass a message along to my friends in Homicide. I told him I didn’t have any friends there. He left. Now, with you showing up here, you’ve made me look like a liar. If you want to know what his message was, he said you could call him at the Speakeasy. Call, don’t call, I don’t care. I’m not your intermediary. I’m nothing to you, I believe your exact words were. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment at the CancerCare building I cannot miss.”
Bree had always had the subtlety of a brick to the face when she was pissed. Eric stepped out of her way as he tried to mentally organize all the information she’d thrown at him. Forrester had initiated contact with Bree. He did it because he wanted to get a message to Eric. And Bree might have cancer? By the time that last one fully processed, she was gone.
