AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It sounds like you know him quite well,” Paige said.
“He’s come in here for years. He started coming in again after he got out of prison. I told him that he should get clean, take it all as a warning. I told him that he couldn’t get away with living the same life forever.” He shook his head a little sadly.
“Was he in here earlier?” Paige asked.
The barkeep nodded at that. “He was.”
“What time?” Paige didn’t want to give him a timeframe to work with because there was a chance that the barkeep was a good enough friend to Fabiano to try to cover for him.
“This afternoon, maybe into the early evening. I think he came in about half-past two and stayed until . . . maybe seven? He was here a while.”
“Could he have slipped out in that time?” Christopher asked.
The barkeep shook his head. “He was sitting in that corner over there the whole time. I would have seen if he left.”
In one way, it was good that he was so certain because it meant that they could have a clear answer. At the same time, though, Paige felt a wave of disappointment running through her. They hadn’t found the killer they were looking for. Instead, they’d just found a violent mugger. It was still a good arrest, but the killer was still out there somewhere, and the time they’d spent looking for Fabiano was time the killer could have spent plotting his next murder.
They needed to find him before he had a chance to strike again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I can’t believe that you almost got killed for a guy who wasn’t even the killer.”
Paige could hear the frustration in Christopher’s voice as they headed out of the bar, but she wasn’t about to let a comment like that go, not after the conversation they’d had outside Fabiano’s hospital room.
“I wasn’t almost killed,” Paige said. “I wasn’t hurt at all.”
“But you could have been.”
Paige heard herself sigh. “Are we really going to have this conversation again?”
“You know that Sauer doesn’t like some of the risks you take,” Christopher said. “He thinks you put people in danger with some of the things you try.”
“And you?” Paige asked. “What do you think about me?”
She could see the wariness on Christopher’s face as soon as she said it.
“What do you mean?” Christopher asked, taking a step back along the boardwalk.
“Things have been completely different between us ever since we kissed,” Paige said. “You haven’t agreed with me about anything. You’ve barely been able to bring yourself to be in the same room as me, let alone actually let yourself get close to me.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?” Christopher snapped back. “I can’t . . .wecan’t do anything. We’re partners, and I’m married.”
“You’re getting divorced,” Paige pointed out.
“But I’m not divorcedyet. And even if I were, then I don’t want to mess up our partnership by bringing feelings into it.”
That made anger rise in Paige a little. “There arealreadyfeelings in all of this! I’ve been attracted to you from the moment I first saw you. Are you going to tell me that it wasn’t the same for you?”
She wasn’t sure if she could handle it if he said that no, he hadn’t felt anything. Instead, she saw Christopher hesitating, obviously wrestling with all the things that he felt. “I—we can’t do this, Paige, not now. Not when we’re working a case. This is exactly what I was worried about. And when you went running off after Fabiano . . . I should be fine with it. Ishouldbe saying to myself ‘it’s fine, she’s an agent, she can handle herself.’ But that’s not what I felt. I want to protect you. I want to keep you safe, and that’s not how this job works.”
He was confessing to feelings in his own way, but that wasn’t enough for Paige. She took a step towards him, reaching out for him, but Christopher took a step back.
“No, Paige, I can’t. I can’t do this right now. I need space. I need to be able to think.”
Paige took a step back, hurt.
Christopher’s face had emotions flowing across it that she was having a hard time reading in spite of all her expertise as a psychologist. She spotted the moment when Christopher shut all of that down, though, his face becoming a mask as he carefully got control of himself.
