Riley Thorn and the Dead Guy Next Door

by Lucy Score

  He yanked her hand down and probed at what she could only assume was a gaping wound that would horribly disfigure her for life.

  “It’s barely a scratch,” he promised. “You’re only going to need a couple of stitches.”

  “Scratches don’t need stitches.”

  “Maybe just some superglue then. Let’s see if you can stand,” he said.

  “Ask the police to send their most handsome officers,” Lily yelled to her brother.

  “Just leave me,” Riley begged. “Go check on Dickie.”

  “Let’s get you on your feet first,” Nick said. Despite the raging inferno of pain, Riley realized there wasn’t going to be a rush to get into Dickie’s apartment.

  “Okay,” she sighed. The spinning slowed to the speed of a drunken, lopsided merry-go-round. Nick held her against him when she swayed. “Put your arm around me.”

  She tried to lift her arm and felt the nausea rise. “It’s not working.”

  “Shit, honey. I think your shoulder’s dislocated. We need to get you to a hospital.”

  “No hospital.” She winced as her arm flopped uselessly. “At least, not till after…”

  They both looked up the stairs again.

  “I’m coming up,” Mrs. Penny shouted unnecessarily from ten feet away.

  “What did she say?” Lily hollered. “Should I come upstairs?”

  “Stay in your rooms,” Riley insisted.

  Nick slid one arm around her waist and the other under her knees, scooping her up like a bride. “Try to keep your arm still, okay?” he said, starting up the stairs.

  Her shoulder felt like it had been trampled by a runaway elephant. The rest of her felt like a small pickup truck had backed over her a few times. “What are you doing here?” she asked him, gritting her teeth.

  “I heard gunshots,” he said again.

  Riley could feel his heart thumping steadily against her. She wondered if it was adrenaline or the fact that he was lugging an adult woman up a flight of stairs.

  “He had a visitor,” she said. “I thought the guy went down the stairs, but if you didn’t pass him—”

  “Must have gone out the fire escape,” he said, holding her against his very nice, warm, safe chest. “What the hell were you doing throwing yourself down the stairs with a hockey stick after a shooter?”

  “Ah, crap! My Bears stick!” She peered over Nick’s shoulder. Her hockey stick was splintered in pieces on the landing. “Wait. Why were you even here to hear gunshots?”

  “Frick gave me the slip at Nature Girls. Thought I’d swing by and see if his car was here.”

  “It’s a million o’clock in the morning,” she pointed out, wincing.

  “Yeah, well. He pissed me off. Had his bartender give me the run around while he ducked out the back. Figured I could ruin his night here.”

  “Pretty sure someone else beat you to it,” she said.

  They got to the top of the stairs, and Nick hauled her into her room. Propping her against the wall, he flipped on the lights and did a quick, sexy sweep of the room with his gun drawn and his back pressing her into the plaster.

  Even with pain and adrenaline having a finger snap West Side Story battle in her nervous system, Riley still managed to feel the hormonal “zing” with his weight against her.

  “Lock your door,” he ordered gruffly, stepping back into the hall.

  “Why? What are you going to do?” she whispered, limping after him.

  “I’m going to check on Frick.”

  They both stared at the closed door across the hall for a beat. It was deathly quiet on the other side.

  “What if someone’s still in there?” she hissed, clutching at his arm with her working hand.

  He looked down and cupped her face. “It’s going to be fine. I’m just going to open the door and look around inside. Ten seconds tops.”

  “I really like your dimples,” she confessed, then frowned. Apparently pain made her loopy.

  His grin was quick but strained. “Stay focused, Thorn. I want you to close and lock the door. Don’t let anyone in but me.”

  She shook her head. It seemed cowardly to retreat now. But she was also pretty sure that Dickie Frick was dead behind that door, and she didn’t want to be haunted by his real-life death. The vision had been bad enough.

  “I’ll stay in the hall while you go take a look,” she decided. A decent compromise. “If you find a dead Dickie, I’ll call 911 and tell them it definitely wasn’t river pirates.”

  He gave her a long look then nodded.

  He crossed the hall and pressed his ear to the door just like she had only a few days earlier.

  Nick glanced over his shoulder at her and winked. She rolled her eyes.

  The doorknob turned silently in his hand, and he was inside in a second. From her sagging position against the opposite wall, she watched him sweep the room with a level of competence that screamed cop.

  “Make the call, Thorn.” His voice was calm and firm.

  Riley’s hands shook so she wedged the phone in her relatively useless right hand and used her left to dial 911. “What do I say?” she hissed.

  “Tell the operator you heard gunshots in your building.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “How upset are you going to be?”

  13

  1:55 a.m., Sunday, June 21

  In the fourteen minutes it took to have lights and sirens surrounding the mansion, Nick got Riley onto her couch, pressed a wad of paper towels to the cut on her forehead, and secured her bad arm to her side with the tie of a bathrobe.

  He wasn’t going to think about the fear that had gripped him when he’d heard the shots fired. He had just pulled into the lot and confirmed Frick’s shit-mobile was there when he’d heard the shots. All he’d been able to think about was getting to her.

  There was something about Riley Thorn that made him feel a lot of really stupid feelings he didn’t want to feel.

  Prior to the two slugs to Dickie Frick’s head, he would have said those feelings fit neatly in the lust box. After? Well, now he wasn’t so sure. The woman had hurled herself down the stairs after someone she thought was a murderer.

  Stupidly brave was apparently quite the turn-on for him.

  Even now, with him standing between her and anyone that came up those stairs, his hands still weren’t completely steady. Her face was pale, which made the blood on her forehead stand out even more. Head wounds bled. A lot. Rationally, he knew this, but it did nothing to squash the blooming rage in his gut.

  She was in pain and needed a doctor. But there was fucking protocol.

  He glared and paced as the EMT checked her pupils.

  “How’s our girl doing?” Mrs. Penny, the purple-haired tenant from the parking lot, tottered into the room wearing a set of men’s pajamas and holding a glass of bourbon. She had gamer headphones around her neck.

  “Mrs. Penny, you should stay downstairs,” Riley called out wearily. Her voice sounded strained, and Nick cursed the investigating officers for taking their sweet fucking time arriving on scene.

  “I had to come up and see what all the fuss was,” Mrs. Penny harrumphed. “Willicott says some pirate firebombed Dickie’s apartment.”

  “There was no firebombing and no pirates,” Riley told her. “You should go downstairs and tell Mr. Willicott that.”

  Instead, Mrs. Penny made herself comfortable on the couch next to Riley. “Well, since I’m here and you have that Netflix thingy on this TV, I’ll just keep an eye on you. Young man, mind scooching over?” she asked the EMT.

  “Well, if it isn’t Nick ‘The Forehead’ Santiago,” came a familiar voice from the doorway.

  “Sergeant Jones. Always a pleasure,” he said with a genuine smile. Mabel Jones was a short, curvy uniformed cop with a foghorn laugh and a pretty cute snore. They’d been on a few dates back in the day. Their parting had been amicable. Thankfully. Last time he’d checked, she was the best marksman in the department.

>   “How the hell did you land yourself in the middle of this mess, Nicky?” she asked.

  Despite the friendly tone, it was a professional question, and he knew better than to give too much information. He was standing ten feet from a homicide. Like it or not, he was a suspect. A situation that wasn’t going to surprise half the Harrisburg PD.

  “How about we go out in the hall?” he suggested, jerking his chin in the direction of the open door.

  Jones gave him an all-knowing look that traveled to the bleeding, battered Riley, who was watching them while the EMT sealed a second butterfly bandage to her forehead.

  “Sure,” Jones agreed, leading the way.

  She waited for Nick’s feet to cross the threshold before going all cop on him. “You wanna tell me how you just happened upon a DB in a house you don’t live in in the middle of the night?”

  “Nick was just visiting his girlfriend Riley,” a voice called out over the whir of the lift chair. “We were worried she’d given up on men after being married to that camera-ready robot, you know,” she shouted.

  The woman’s white hair stood up in tufts. Her fuzzy bathrobe was open over an almost sheer pink house dress.

  “Girlfriend?” That cracked Jones’s implacable good-cop facade. She grinned. “About damn time.”

  Nick skated a hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah.” He drew the word out. He was walking a fine line here. Lying to the cops was usually not a great idea. It was even worse when he was about to become a suspect.

  “It’s a new relationship,” the woman said, climbing off the lift chair. “But we’re hoping it sticks. We’ve all got our fingers crossed for a happily ever after.”

  “Lily, don’t say anything to them without your lawyer present!” Mrs. Penny tottered out of Riley’s apartment and into the hall. She waved her cane at the sergeant. “Anything you say will incriminate you, and they’ll throw your ass in jail.”

  “Are you up yet?” a male voice shouted from somewhere below.

  “I’m sending it back, Mr. Willicott,” Lily yelled back and stabbed at the buttons on the chair.

  Mrs. Penny peeked into Dickie Frick’s open door, where a tech from forensics was photographing the body.

  “Why don’t you two wait somewhere else?” Jones suggested trying to usher the women away from their dead neighbor.

  “Why don’t you make me, 5-0?” Mrs. Penny shot back.

  The third-floor hall was getting downright crowded, Nick thought.

  “What have we got, Sergeant?”

  Nick closed his eyes. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  “Santiago. I should have known.” Detective Kellen Weber looked just as douchey as the last time Nick had seen him. Even at two in the morning, the guy was wearing a fucking tie and that smug-ass smirk.

  “How’s the nose, Weber?” Nick asked.

  The detective’s eyes narrowed above an almost imperceptible twist to the otherwise straight blade of his nose.

  “DB with two GSWs to the head discovered in his own apartment,” Jonesy reported crisply.

  “What are you lookin’ at, copper?” Mrs. Penny demanded, giving the detective the evil eye.

  “That’s Detective Copper,” Weber said evenly.

  “Why don’t we go check on Riley?” Lily suggested at full volume, linking her arm through Mrs. Penny’s.

  Mrs. Penny glowered at Weber and Jones. She pointed two fingers at her giant lenses and then at the cops. “I’m watchin’ you two. So don’t even bother trying to plant evidence!”

  “No, ma’am,” Jones agreed.

  The two women tottered into Riley’s apartment. “You poor thing! Look at all that blood!” Lily howled.

  “You didn’t shoot Dickie over the underwear thing, did you?” Mrs. Penny asked Riley.

  Nick shut the door before Riley’s neighbors managed to fertilize any more seeds of suspicion.

  “What are you doing here, Santiago?” Weber demanded.

  Nick shrugged and gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Not much.”

  “Please, don’t elaborate,” Weber said. “I’d love nothing more than to slap cuffs on you and drag you downtown.”

  “You remember what happened last time you put cuffs on me,” Nick said darkly.

  “He’s dating the across-the-hall neighbor,” Jones filled in, shooting Nick a warning look.

  “Great-niece,” Mrs. Penny shouted as she wrenched open Riley’s door. “She’s our great-niece.”

  “All of you?” Weber looked skeptical.

  “You got a problem with family, po-po?” Mrs. Penny demanded.

  Nick felt the heat of her glare as it was magnified through her glasses.

  The hum of the lift chair was approaching the top of the stairs again. The grumpy, Denzel-esque Mr. Willicott was wearing a bathrobe over suit pants and a Feed Me Tacos and Tell Me I’m Pretty t-shirt. He was followed by toupeed Fred, the elderly yogi Nick had met on his last visit.

  “Gentlemen, we need you to wait in your own rooms,” Jones said, ignoring the futility of corralling elders.

  “Too late, cutie pie!” Fred said cheerfully. “Willicott already took the chair up. It’ll take him half an hour just to get back down there. I’m Fred, by the way. Single. Spry. Ready to mingle.”

  “Who is Riley Thorn to you?” Detective Fun Sucker asked Mr. Willicott, who was very obviously the only black man in the “family.”

  “Who?” Willicott asked.

  Fred elbowed him.

  “Oh, right,” Mr. Willicott grumbled. “He’s my great-nephew.”

  “Ha! This one’s a comedian,” Fred said, twirling a finger around his ear as he shoved Willicott toward Riley’s apartment. “Willicott’s my ex-brother-in-law, but we love ’im like family.”

  “What’s that smell?” Willicott demanded.

  “Decomposing flesh,” Mrs. Penny announced.

  “Is that my t-shirt?” Nick heard Riley ask inside.

  “Back to why you’re calling in dead bodies,” Weber said, drawing Nick’s attention.

  Nick shoved his hands in his pockets. “I felt like it was something you’d want to know about.”

  Weber stepped in on him. “Drop the rebel without a clue act, Santiago.”

  “As soon as you drop the asshole routine.”

  “Loose fucking cannon,” Weber shot back.

  “Smug shit,” Nick growled.

  “Gentlemen, can we get back to our murder vic?” Jones suggested.

  “Detective, looks like the back door was kicked in,” another uniform, this one out of breath from the three-floor climb, announced.

  “Uh, yeah. That wasn’t the shooter. That was me,” Nick said.

  Jones rolled her eyes and he thought he heard her mutter, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  “You carrying?” Weber asked, all business.

  “Yes,” Nick snapped.

  “Turn over your weapon, smartass,” Weber said triumphantly.

  “Seriously?”

  “We’ve got a DB with a double tap. You’re on scene with a gun, and you just confessed to breaking in,” Weber pointed out.

  “He was in a hurry to get to his girlfriend on account of the sex they were gonna have. Right, Nick?” Lily called from the doorway, sending him an exaggerated wink none of the law enforcement officers missed.

  “Gimmie the gun, Santiago.”

  Nick stared hard at the detective’s ever so slightly crooked nose. Jones helpfully held out an open evidence bag.

  “Fine,” he said. “But I want a receipt and a formal fucking apology when I also turn over my dash cam footage that proves I was still in my truck when the shots were fired.”

  “Cry me a river, pretty boy,” Weber said snidely.

  “Kiss my ass, shithead.”

  “I hate to break up the bromance or whatever this is. But I think I’d like to go to the hospital.” Riley announced from the doorway. She was leaning against it like it was the only thing keeping her upright.

 
“Maybe you don’t have a problem withholding treatment, Detective, but I do,” Nick said, moving to Riley’s side and slipping his arm around her waist.

  “You can go as soon as you answer some questions,” Weber said, his tone marginally warmer when it was directed at Riley.

  “Save the charm, Detective Dick. She’s taken,” Nick announced, pulling her in closer and not minding at all the way she melted into him.

  “I’m sure you’ll do what you always do, Santiago. Get bored and move on to something more exciting,” Weber snapped.

  Nick bared his teeth and fantasized about shoving Weber ass over face down the stairs.

  “Why don’t we go inside?” Riley suggested, her grip on Nick’s waist tightening as if she knew exactly what he’d been considering.

  “Coroner’s on her way up, detective,” one of the uniforms reported.

  “Sit tight, Ms. Thorn, and I’ll be with you in a minute. Then we can get you to a doctor,” Weber said solicitously just to piss Nick off.

  14

  2:15 a.m., Sunday, June 21

  Riley leaned heavily on Nick as he helped her limp back to the couch. She wheezed out a sigh when he gently lowered her back onto the cushion.

  Everything hurt. Her shoulder. Her hip. Both knees. Her forehead. A wrist, a bicep. Her entire ass. The EMT reported that she didn’t appear to have broken anything but that she still needed a head-to-toe going over. Riley felt like she’d caught the flu, got hit by a city bus, and then was tossed in an industrial dryer with a load of bowling balls.

  Nick crammed himself onto the couch next to her and slung a protective arm around her. Giving in to the exhaustion, she sagged into his side and rested her head against him. Here she could focus on the low hum of relief that came from touching him. He was solid and warm and a very nice place to rest her weary, bloody head.

  “So someone finally offed the old sleazebag,” Mrs. Penny mused behind them. She’d picked up a stack of Riley’s unopened mail and was thumbing through it. Riley was too tired to protest.

  “Can’t say I’m surprised,” Fred said, from the floor where he sat pretzel legged.