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I woke up with a start, my heart hammering like a freight train in my chest.
The sun was high, and Leia had already left for school. Sighing, I drank the coffee Thunder had left on the table.
"Agenda today?" he asked, appearing from nowhere.
I blinked fiercely.Survive.
"Can't do anything else until I go to the station and look over what the commander has on Juniper."
"Do we treat her the same?"
I nodded emphatically. "There's no way she can find out we're on to something. If she's guilty, she'll bolt."
It made me feel uncharacteristically guilty. Hell, I'd played roles before. I'd done them because in the line of justice, you did what you had to do to make ends meet. The bigger purpose was always the most important one.
"Are you okay?"
I was stumped by Thunder's question.Am I okay?
Do I have a choice?
I pushed the empty cup away. Thunder tried to tempt me with a plate of sausages and roasted tomatoes, but the sight of food made my stomach clench.
"Not right now," I told him gently. "I'll be back in a bit."
I took a quick shower, trying to forget the image of Cole's bleeding eyes. The cold water slapped my face, shocking all thoughts out of existence.
Another cup of coffee later, I called Rideshare and reached the Central Precinct Station.
Chuck took one look at me and pointed to a room on the left. "File on the desk. Good luck."
Bracing myself, I walked into what looked like a records room. It was dimly lit, a musty space filled with rows upon rows of imposing metal shelves crammed with files and folders.
The air was thick with the smell of stale paper. All I could hear was a soft rustling of pages and an occasional creek of a shelf. It felt like a labyrinth of steel and cardboard stretching for miles to no end.
Each file looked like an ancient relic, but that was expected in a town where everything went slowly. Their pages were yellowed and frayed with age, and every folder was bursting with reports—most of them holding puzzles the police hadn't "had the time" to get to yet.
I sat down by the only table in the room. A case file lay open in front of me.
Juniper Davis, suspect in the murder of Harold Montgomery.
Great.
The funny thing was, Juniper did not strike me as the type to favor excesses. I shuffled through the pages.
What the hell did she need the bespoke suits and theLa Golf Putterfor? I didn't even know she fucking played golf!
Her credit card debt had piled to a hundred and twenty thousand. No wonder her credit score was this poor.
At this rate, she wouldn't get any loans or cards to consolidate what she'd accrued. How could she—this was the peak of carelessness. Did she have a shopping addiction?
And had she been driven to secure a liaison with Montgomery so she could pay off her debt and continue spending his money? But she seemed ...so fucking unlike the image in my head right now!
I literally pictured a cougar in Louboutin and a fresh off-the-rack Versace dress, flitting about a city like New York. How had the three of us been this wrong?
Most of all, what annoyed me was that IknewI was missing something. I just couldn't tell what it was. I looked over the file once again.
I'd come over to the station with the sole intention that I would get to the bottom of this damned case no matter what happened.
