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Desmond shook me lightly, ignoring my muffled protests and threats of violence until I relented and opened my eyes. When he shoved my cell phone in my face, I wished I’d pretended to still be sleeping.
“Too early,” I whined, batting the phone away and covering my head with a pillow.
Most people would say six in the evening was a perfectly normal time to call a friend, but for me it was barely thirty minutes after sunset, and I was in no mood to chat with anyone.
“It’s Mercedes,” he said, pushing the phone under the pillow. “She’s been calling here all damned day, and I can’t keep ignoring it. Your ringtone is driving me crazy.”
After he’d changed my ringer at Christmas to the annoyingly festive “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”, I’d gotten my revenge by making my post-holiday call alert Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”, which was potentially one of the most irritating and catchy earworms of all time.
In the middle of the chorus I hit talk and mumbled my greeting into the phone. “Fuckingwhat?”
“Nice to talk to you too, morning glory. Did you forget to have some fucking coffee? A cup or twelve might cure your attitude problem.”
I grunted.
“I will give you ten thousand dollars if you can guess what I’m going to say next.”
“‘Secret McQueen, your best friend is a psychopath who thinks you like guessing games. As a reward she is offering to never call you again.’”
“Close, but sorry, I guess I get to keep my retirement fund.”
“Point. Get to it.”
Desmond stood in the doorway wearing jeans and a gray cashmere sweater. There was a cup of hot coffee in his hand. Love is a beautiful man bearing caffeine. I sat up, letting the pillow fall to the floor, and held my hand out in the universal gesture for gimme. Desmond laughed and handed me the cup. Piping-hot and bitter-black as Satan’s soul. Just how I liked it.
“I’ve got bad news.”
“Cedes, the day you call me with good news I will die.”
“It’s about your boy.”
Gee, that narrowed things down. “Huh?” I took a big swig of coffee and made a face. A shot of whiskey had less potency.
“We found two more bodies. Columbia coeds. Same MO as Trish Keller.”
“Oh.” I finished the rest of the coffee and handed the mug back to Desmond. “But if you found them since he’s been in lockdown, wouldn’t that clear Gabriel?” My voice sounded a little too hopeful, and it made me feel stupid and guilty.
“It would if the corpses weren’t a week old.”
“Fuuuuuck.”
“A very concise summation, yes.”
“You need me to come down?”
“Tyler wants to see if Holbrook will talk to you, give something up. I know he was important to you, Secret, but we need to see if we can crack him.” The fact that she was calling him Holbrook instead of Gabe told me she’d already distanced herself from this case on a personal level. Cedes knew Gabriel. We’d spent time together when he and I had been a couple. They’d butted heads, but she’d only actively disliked him after he dumped me.
That made two of us.
“There’s still a chance he might be innocent.”
“I know how it works. Innocent until proven guilty. Remember which one of us is an officer of the law.”
“Then why are you so sure he did it?”
“Why are you so unwilling to admit he might be guilty?”
I sighed and wished I had more coffee. I scuttled out from under the covers and went to my closet in search of something suitable to wear to a lynching. “I don’t want to think someone I slept next to for months and months is capable of being a serial killer.”
