Page 68 of Dancing in the Dark

“I’m not letting this go.” Anger burns hot in my gut, scorching every nerve ending I possess. “Absolutely fucking not.”

“Please, Charlie. He’s just⁠—”

“Someone you work with?” I shake my head. “Nah. Bullshit.” I fry the cowardly prick with my glare. “That wasn’t business. That was personal. So now I’m involving myself.”

“This is who you’ve been dating?” Anderson circles the couch and sneers. “The one who stood you up?”

My temper flares as I swing my eyes down to hers. You told him? Yon confided in him?

“You’re dating a fucking cop?” he laughs. “And not just any old cop. A married cop.” His eyes swing to mine. “But she’s dead now, isn’t she, Detective Fletcher?”

“Oh, God.” Sera spins and slams her back to my belly, digging her feet into the floor and pushing me back. “Leave, Anderson!”

“Single dad. Motherless daughter. Ohhhh…” He nods, too fucking smug. “I see now. And he’s best friends with the mafia.” The arrogant prick tut-tut-tuts. “Not a good look, babe.”

“Fletch?” Archer’s voice floats through the still-open door, my name bouncing in the stairwell in time with his pounding footsteps. “Fletch! Where are you?”

“We’re up here,” Sera cries out, her voice crackling with nerves. With exertion. With a million other emotions I’m not sure I can label. “Archer?”

“Interesting.” Anderson glances toward the door. “Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.”

“Leave!” Sera roars. “Right now!”

“I’m leaving.” He drops his hands into his pockets and whistles a tune on his tongue, too fucking relaxed despite the bullet I want so badly to put between his eyes.

I turn as he moves. I keep him in view for every second he’s here, but as Archer bursts through the doorway, Anderson ducks out, leaving us with a boatload of unused adrenaline, two cops, and two drawn guns, my blackened bad mood translates to rough hands as I spin Sera and stare down into her eyes. “What the fuck?”

“Uh… do I even wanna know?” Checking back through the door, Archer re-holsters his gun and stalks across the apartment. He pokes his head into each room. The bathroom. The linen closet. “Markum decide to take up high-octane sports since we last judged him for being a ball-less beanbag? Doesn’t he realize he could die if he pisses us off too much?”

Sera’s lips tremble, and tears sparkle on her cheeks. “W-where’s Mia?”

“What was that about? What’s going on between you and Markum?”

“Nothing! He just…” Gulping, she cautiously brushes my left hand off her arm. Then she looks to the right, the one still holding my gun, and hesitantly peels my thumb back. “He’s nothing. Where’s Mia?”

“Outside with Cato, and that was not nothing!” I shoot a dangerous glare toward the door. “That was way fucking more than nothing.”

“Charl—”

“I need you to be straight with me.” I re-holster my gun and grab her arms. But gentler this time. Carefully. “Communication is important, right? That was the deal we made.”

“I don’t⁠—”

“Remember that bit where I told you I love you?”

Her eyes flash with… something. A million somethings.

In my peripherals, Arch’s do the same.

“Love means we take care of each other, Sera. It means we tell the truth. You and Markum are not just colleagues, and unless you tell me what you are, I’ll assume the worst. I’ll assume all the life-ending, world-shattering, soul-destroying things that’ll make it impossible for me to sleep ever again. So please, baby. Please, tell me⁠—”

“He was my fiancé.” She says it fast. Cold. Unfeeling. And then I guess my hands fall from her arms, because she jumps forward on a sob and takes them between her palms. “Was my fiancé. Many years ago.” She casts soaked eyes across to Archer. “Remember how I said I was engaged a long time ago? And it came undone because he cheated.”

“Miranda London.” He closes her front door and presses his back to the wood. “Yeah.” Swallowing, he scrubs a hand over his face. “Yeah. I remember.”

“Exactly.” She brings her focus back to me. “We used to be together, but now we’re not. This stupid deal with China has brought him into my professional orbit more than usual, which means he’s been around. My polite detachment at work was, evidently, received on his end as ‘she wants to be my pal. Now I just have to badger her until she admits it’.” She shakes her head. “He and I are not friends. We’re not friendly. We’re not anything, except a couple of people who used to be something.”

“And tonight?”