AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Tyler edged closer, obviously worried my bitching might turn violent. I’m not sure if he was more worried for my safety or for Gabriel’s.
“But instead, you’re here.” His voice never faltered, and the hint of a smirk hung on his lips. Cocky bastard. He’d known all along I would come, and I hated that he knew me well enough for that.
“So, who are they saying you’ve killed?”
Tyler moved backwards, closer to the exit. He probably wanted to diminish his presence in case Gabriel was about to tell me something that might be useful. I doubt he would get anything helpful, but if he did, all the better.
“Some coed at Columbia. A girl named Trish Keller.”
“Do you know her?”
“I did, yes.”
“How well?”
“We fooled around a little sometimes. Nothing serious, you know, late-night booty calls. I’m a TA in one of her classes. It’s sort of frowned upon.”
“You’re a TA at Columbia?” I couldn’t hide the shock in my voice. He’d been in his senior year at NYU when we met, and he’d talked about doing his Master’s, but I’d thought he was too flighty to seriously do it. Apparently I’d been wrong.
“Yeah.”
“Why do they think you did it?”
“Well, they’re not really opening up to me about the case against me, you know? But I’m guessing it’s because I’m the last person who saw her alive. Well, me and whoever killed her,” he corrected quickly. “We met up at a pub, went back to my place, fucked, and she went home around two.” His callousness wasn’t doing much to help his case, but Gabriel always had been a little too blunt for his own good. “Someone found her sometime after that, and one of her friends told the cops she left the bar with me. So now, here I am, public enemy number one.”
I frowned. “Anything else?”
“No.” He stepped back from the bars, shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled. “You look good, Temple. I missed your disapproving face.”
The only man to give me a nickname, and he hadn’t forgotten it. He used to tease me mercilessly about how my hair made me look like Shirley Temple. It hadn’t helped that my love for old movies and the Turner Classic Movies channel meant he had a lot of opportunities to make the reference. I swallowed a mouthful of acid.
“Did you kill her?” I replied.
“No.”
“Okay.”
“You going to help me?”
“Seems like it.”
Chapter Eleven
“Desmond?” The apartment door closed with a quiet click, and silence rushed to greet me. I didn’t ne
ed to search the rooms to know I was home alone. Shucking off my jacket and boots, I left them in a heap in the foyer and made a beeline for the bathroom.
Under the dim lights and against the overwhelming pinkness of my fixtures, I looked sallow and exhausted. I’d left my hair down when I went to the station since everyone’s reactions to Lucas’s love bite had been so negative, but now I shoved my hair back over my shoulder to get a look at it myself.
It wasn’t terrible. Two red, raised rows showed the perfect impression of his teeth, and a bluish-purple bruise swelled out around the bite. I’d never had a hickey, at least not one that lasted long enough for me to see, so I gathered this was what they usually looked like. No big deal, right?
I rubbed the area and winced. The bite ridges were warm, and touching them made my neck throb. The bruises felt like a dull ache. How was it possible such a minor wound hadn’t healed in almost twenty-four hours? I could heal a bullet wound in the same amount of time. There was no reason these marks should still exist.
Back in the living room I paced the area in front of my couch. Rio, my sinewy white cat, came to perch on the edge of the loveseat. Her tail flicked with each step I took, and her head tilted to the left as she watched me with her slitted green eyes.
What a week this was turning into, and I was only three days in. My ex-boyfriend was being accused of murder; the queen of the were-ocelots was asking me to find her niece; Lucas had an impending invasion to deal with; and now one of my boyfriends wasn’t talking to me because of a bruise that refused to heal. My plate was more than a little full.
I’d need to wait to deal with Lucas and the bite. Obviously there was more to it than simple foreplay, and I’d need to know what was up so I could respond appropriately to Desmond’s irrational anger. But that was my personal life, and it had to take the back burner to more pressing matters. Lucy Renard was missing, and she attended the same school as Trish Keller, the girl Gabriel was accused of killing.
