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I hit the ropes and came back at him. “I dunno. It’s just that Danny and Asher’s deaths were at the center of why we came together. She was obsessed with the investigation.”
“And you helped her.”
“Of course I did. And not just because she was hot.”
Burke shook his head as I charged him. But he stopped me with a gloved fist to my jaw. The world blinked and I dropped like a stone.
Shoot.
He laughed as he grabbed me around the arm and pulled me to my feet. “But, she does need you today, even if she says she doesn’t.”
I don’t
know what he knows, but those words rang inside me and I debated, but finally took a shower, headed home, changed clothes, and turned up here.
The night is cool, the sky bruised and hurting and it conjures up the time we—well, she—sneaked into her house to talk her brother, Asher, into helping us crack the coffee shop bombing case. Asher was young and smart and would have made a dent on this world had he and his father not been gunned down at a local convenience store a few weeks later in a drive-by shooting.
It was a retaliation by a gang-boss for Danny’s on-the-job killing of his kid brother. At least, those were the whispers on the street. The shooters were never apprehended.
It occurs to me that it’s another cold case, one that is providentially sitting in my box of cold files back home.
The deaths of her father and brother unraveled Eve. It skimmed too close to the loss of her best friend, Julia, and for years she obsessed over their killers. She never handled the grief well and stumbled into her own method of mourning. Booker’s name was scrawled on the paperwork, but I ran the case and made the decision to file it away in the cold case basement, just trying to keep Eve sane. In a way, Ashley saved her—us, really. Eve finally loosed her grip on justice—or maybe vengeance, we never really got to the bottom of that—and started to embrace peace.
I have to wonder if Ashley’s death has loosed the darkness.
It’s the memory of her late nights that propels me out of the Porsche and into her driveway. The way she used to twist her hair when she was thinking until it was coarse, fragile, and broken at the ends, the bone-weary fatigue she carried, and the season she spent way too many late nights with Silas.
In those early days, I had to pry her from her lab, but even after that, when the anniversary of their deaths came around, I’d find her holed up, needing rescue.
The twenty-year impulse to save my wife doesn’t die with a flimsy stack of divorce papers, now currently dumped in my recycling bin.
Find the beginning. Overwrite.
I want my world back.
My wife back.
The door squeals on its hinges as I reach the front stoop and I stop just inside the pool of light on the bottom step, next to a pot of geraniums.
Samson Mulligan stands in the door frame wearing a pair of jeans and an oxford, the sleeves rolled up like he’s ready to rumble.
Perfect. Sams is a real estate investor, but before that, he ran a construction company and has the abs and biceps to prove it. Golden brown hair, blue eyes and a charmer, even now, Sams is single, although I wouldn’t be surprised to find a Miss Someone at the gig.
Usually, Sams and I get along. He’s Eve’s closest brother, so we have some history, back in the day when Eve and I were off and on. Let’s remember the idiot part, so I don’t blame him. Much. But we threw down once, early in the game, right after Danny’s death, which was more about Sams’ frustration than anger, but I have an extensive memory. It’s an asset in my long game as a detective. Not so much when it comes to family.
Still, I get how the accumulative roil of helplessness might make a person do something crazy.
I take a breath.
So does he. “Eve said you were sitting out there.”
She did? I shrug.
“She told me to come out here and…well, if you’re drunk, buddy, you’re not coming in.”
Drunk? “Not even an Irish coffee.” I hold up my hands. “Z, Y, X and W. V, U, T—”
“Get inside.” Sams holds the door open, his mouth a tight line, and I can’t tell if he’s hiding a smile.
