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“Well, it looked like a wolf. But it was hard to see at first. It had Rafe cornered against my late-husband’s bar, which was all smashed. The floor was covered in broken glass and shredded magazines and the lights were low. But then I gasped and it heard me and came after me, so I ran back up the stairs and hid in the master bedroom. It clawed and scratched at the door for a while and then I heard it turn down the hall to go after Powderpuff.”
Officer Rosa stopped writing. “What?”
“Uh, my dog,” she said. “Powderpuff.”
He grimaced and wrote that down. “And then?”
“The dog went after me next and that was when Rafe beat its head in with a fire poker.”
She wondered if she shouldn’t have phrased it like that when Rosa’s mouth tightened. Maybe it wasn’t smart to connect their names with violence.
“Officer Corcoran told me that you’d received a couple threats earlier. Was that the one you were referring to? The one where someone said they would kill you?”
“Yes. It said ‘Two little bitches are going to die,’ in all caps. Like the messages I’d gotten on my door and my car. But there were photographs of a mangled white dog inside. Poor thing.” Her breath caught. “It looked like it had been—ripped apart. You could see . . . everything.”
“All right.” Officer Rosa gave her a firm pat on the shoulder. “Thanks for your help, Mrs. Blake. I’ll let you know if I have more questions.”
“Ms.,” said Donni.
He ignored that. “My team is just about finishing up. I’ll see what we can do about maybe getting some security for you. I can’t speak for my superiors, but this definitely seems like a credible threat to me. In the meantime, just sit here and keep out of the way for now. We’ll be out of your hair soon.”
Donni sat with her drink, working to keep her face pleasant. She didn’t like his condescending attitude and she would have appreciated an apology after the way they had dismissed her letter.
Rafe soon joined her in her out-of-the-way corner, perching on the arm of the chair she was sitting on. Close enough to smell the sweat on his skin and—perhaps—the musk of sex.
“Seems like they’re taking the threats a bit more seriously now,” he said dryly.
“Your fly is open,” she hissed.
He looked down and she could have sworn that he blushed a little before doing up the button of his jeans. “I wondered why that lady cop kept looking down. Do you think she was impressed?”
Donni ran her hands over her face. “Where is your shirt?”
“In a crumpled, bloody heap.” He twisted his torso. “I got my back all sliced up.”
“Oh myGod.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Yes, it is.” Her voice rose in alarm. “Was that from the dog?”
“No. Just the glass. I fell against the counter and it buckled under my weight.”
Donni could just imagine. “You’re lucky you didn’t pierce something. In fact, I think you might still have some glass inside.” She waved a hand, beckoning over one of the officers who just seemed to be standing around and doing nothing. “Do any of you have a first aid kit I can borrow? My stepson cut himself.”
Rafe winced at the word ‘stepson.’ “We don’t have to do this right now,” he said gruffly.
“Do you want glass in your ass? Thank you,” she said, taking the white lunchbox from the officer and feeling no small amount of pleasure at the sullen expression on Rafe’s face. “Turn around.” He pivoted obediently, and as she removed a set of 3D-printed tweezers from the kit, she wondered how a man who sat in front of a desk all day got a body like this.
She placed her fingers on either side of the wound, spreading the torn edges of flesh. Rafe hissed through his teeth and she saw something glitter. Carefully, she picked out a large, angular shard, cloudy with his blood, and set it on the other arm of the chair. There was a smaller piece, too, which had probably broken off from the first, but after that, the wound appeared clean. The low grunt he made when she spritzed the wound with alcohol sounded so much like the sounds that he had made during sex that her breath caught.
Moving faster now, she applied gauze over the wound, trying not to notice the silky texture of his skin as she smoothed down the adhesive. “There,” she said shortly. “Better?”
“Not at the moment, no. But thanks.” His eyes lit on the cup. “Is that coffee?”
“No—”
Too late. He’d taken the cup before she could stop him. Rolling her eyes, Donni looked away and saw Officer Corcoran watching them with steely eyes. Donni looked away, making a point of decontaminating the tweezers and swabbing them down before handing them back to the officer.
