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“Will you put in your report that I cooperated?”
“Why would I need to do that?”
“Well,” he says, chewing on the inside of his cheek before speaking again. “Will I get into trouble for turning my camera to face the bar?”
“The tapes, Curtis,” she says rather than answering his question.
He stops the video and ejects the VHS tape. “I have a tape for each of the past thirty days. I start recording over them after that. It’s hard to find tapes these days. The rest are in that box.”
“Because your system is a dinosaur,” Lennox mutters, taking the proffered tape from his grasp and adding it to the box.
“Should I turn the camera back now?”
She shakes her head. “Do you have a new tape to start recording?”
“Yes.”
“Put it in and then let it run.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyes dart to mine as if she was looking for a certain reaction from me. It tells me she noticed my not-so-impressed reaction when she said sir to Chief Monahan.
The look she gives me is murderous when I attempt to take the box of tapes from her hands when she turns to leave the office.
I feel more and more like a failure as we leave the store and head back to her car. I spoke with the hospital this morning, but it wasn’t surprising that my toxicology report came back clean. It’s been more than a week since the incident in the parking lot at Jake’s.
I understand the science of it. I know that whatever I was injected with kept me from being capable of saving her. I also know that it was probably intended for her. I know the outcome could still be the same even if I wasn’t close that night, but it also makes me consider that she went through more pain than she had to because it was wasted on me.
I’m silent, lost in my head, as she starts the car and pulls away from the gas station.
“What’s your fucking deal?” she snaps as she rolls up to a red light.
“What do you mean?” I ask without pulling my eyes from the passenger side window. I’m looking without really seeing anything because scenario after scenario is playing in my head, and the outcome doesn’t change.
Rather than speaking, she waits for the light to turn green before driving a few blocks down and turning into the parking lot of an old warehouse. She doesn’t park out front, choosing to go around to the side instead.
“Get out of my fucking car,” she snaps.
I do, but only after she climbs out on her side.
“Explain yourself!” she yells out of thin air, surprising me. She doesn’t give me the chance to answer before she’s in my face, the tip of her index finger jabbing me in the sternum. “Were you involved? Is this how you fucking get away with it? Who was your partner? Did you meet up later, get a piece of her yourself? Did you rape and kill Elizabeth?”
Unable to take one more fucking poke from this woman, I growl, reaching up and clasping my hand at her throat before pressing her into the side of the building.
Chapter 11
Lennox
My hands are trembling before he can even swing me around fully.
I pushed him too far.
“Not a fucking chance,” he snaps, his hand pressing against my forearm and locking it against the building before I can get to my gun.
His body is locked against mine, leaving no room for me to knee him in the balls. I’ve had so many hours of self-defense training, yet in the blink of an eye, this man has left me with no physical recourse to help myself.
I know he’s tracking the raging pulse in my throat despite him not exactly squeezing my neck as he leans in close.
I was wrong, so very wrong, but there’s still an argument in my head. After Elle’s death, I always erred on the side of caution. I judge quickly, and if I’m wrong so what. I’m safe.
I didn’t get a hint of a negative vibe off this man that night at the gym. Even when he issued commands in the hotel room that I wasn’t instantly certain I’d obey, it never threw up a red flag that made me want to bolt out the door and never look back.
Yet, he was with her the night she died. One guy showed up the second he disappeared. I know it’s not him in the confrontation with Elizabeth by her car because the footage from Jake’s is ten times better than the gas station video I just procured, but there could be a chance he was involved, right?
I swallow, his eyes darting to my throat as it works under his palm.
“You going to kill me too?” I manage, refusing to back down despite the evidence pointing away from this man. That’s how smart criminals work though, isn’t it?
