by Anne Calhoun
He appeared in the doorway, dressed in cotton shorts and nothing else, and just the sight of his torso made her want to fuel up and start all over again.
“What?” he asked when he saw her still on the floor.
“Nothing,” she said. “Still up for pizza and the game?”
“Sure,” he said as he helped her to her feet and picked up her skirt, “but it’s a working dinner.”
“A working dinner?” She clutched her clothes to her belly and turned for the bathroom.
He gave her a smile that managed to be both rueful and energized at the same time. “Playtime’s over. We’ve got twenty-four hours to get you ready for a prolonged undercover operation.”
And with that, reality began to seep into the fantasy. “Right,” she said. “Just let me get dressed.”
* * *
On Tuesday reality returned with a vengeance. While Eve washed the lunch dishes, Matt sat down at the dining room table and armed himself. He pulled the leg of his jeans over the knife and stood up to find Eve watching him with wide eyes.
“Were you wearing all of that every time you came to work?” she asked while she wrung out the dishcloth.
“Not the Sig,” he said, trying to gauge her reaction. Sometimes women found it sexy, which was a little on the weird side, and sometimes they thought he was paranoid, which was probably true. But the stakes were higher now. Eve was putting herself in danger to help them. They’d install a radio in her apartment, but most of the time it was just him and his wits against a deadly threat that appeared with no warning. There was no room for mistakes. Things were different now. She was his to protect, for real.
She pressed her lips together and draped the dishcloth over the faucet to dry.
“The concealed weapons law doesn’t apply to law enforcement,” he pointed out. “I need a longer T-shirt too.”
“You can try a few of them on,” she said doubtfully, “but they’re designed to show off your body, not hide a gun in the back of your jeans.”
When the dishes were done she packed up her few toiletries and her clothes, gathering her things from around Matt’s bedroom and bathroom and zipping them into her overnight case. She was unusually silent as she worked, so he used the spare minutes for a pop quiz.
“My real cell.”
She shot him a look as the bag’s zipper caught on something inside, but recited the phone number.
“When do you call that?”
“It’s my ‘oh shit’ phone,” she said. “I use it only if I’m in trouble and you’re not with me so there’s no way to trace Matt Dorchester to Chad Henderson.”
“And you’ll never have to use it because from now on out, you’re stuck with me. Chad’s cell.”
She jerked at the stuck zipper before calming down enough to slide the zip back, shove the fabric fully into the case, and close it, all while rattling off the number.
“Call that anytime. Sorenson’s numbers. Cell, work, home.”
She folded her arms across her chest, recited them, then added McCormick’s, and dispatch in a flat tone. He ignored the attitude. “Good. All of them backup “oh shit” phones. McCormick will get there faster than Sorenson; she’s in court the next few weeks but he’s assigned to patrol. Don’t call Ian. He’s in meetings most days.”
He’d done his best to prepare her, drilling her on Chad Henderson’s backstory, talking through what she should do when Lyle showed up, talking through a dozen other ways to respond to any kind of threat. She’d let him show her how a semiautomatic worked and, at his insistence, picked it up and showed him she could thumb off the safety and jack a round into the chamber, but she’d flatly refused to go to the firing range with him.
Everyone had boundaries they established to define who they were, and for Eve, handling a gun clearly crossed a line. They’d had a short argument about it at one in the morning. He’d lost, and he wasn’t happy about it.
A car door slammed in the driveway. Matt moved through the living room to the window, one hand automatically moving to the small of his back while the other parted the slats of the blinds covering the front windows. He peered out, then let them close. “It’s Luke,” he said, and opened the door.
Shoulders and arm muscles bunching with effort, his brother rolled up the ramp and into the foyer. He stopped in the act of removing fingerless leather gloves when he saw Eve standing in the hallway.
Wide-eyed, he looked at Matt, then at Eve, then at Matt again. “I’m gone for three days and this is what I come home to?” A broad smile spread across his face as Eve held out her hand and looked to Matt for an introduction.
“Luke, Eve. Eve, my brother,” he said, and went back down the hall to the bedroom.
Luke went back to removing his gloves. “Hi, Eve. Yes, I’m his brother, and you are…?”
Matt brushed past both of them, Eve’s case in one hand, his own duffle in the other. “She’s a friend,” he said as he walked down the ramp to his Jeep.
A friend? After the events of the last two weeks, specifically sex both frequent and hot enough to melt steel, if he were Eve he would have kicked his ass. But he couldn’t think of any other way to describe “I pretended to be her bartender, nearly slept with her, saved her from gunfire, did sleep with her, then talked her into working on the investigation with us.”
He tossed the bags into the backseat of the Jeep. When he walked back through the door, Eve gave him that glinting little smile again, then Luke spun to face him, his eyes dark. “She says she owns a bar and you’re working for her. Goddammit Matt, you said things weren’t that bad,” he said, his voice rising.
One hand on his hip, Matt rubbed his forehead with his thumbnail, his keys under the curled fingers of his hand. “They’re not. No worse than usual. She’s part of a case I’m on. I’m staying with her for a while.” Matt snagged the gym bag sitting on Luke’s lap and brushed past Eve to toss it into Luke’s room.
His brother was no fool. Luke lifted one eyebrow and opened his mouth, but Matt cut him off. “I’ve got my cell. If you need to talk, leave a message and I’ll call back when I can. If it’s an emergency, call Sorenson or the LT. They’ll get in touch with me.”
“How long are you going to be gone?” Luke asked.
“I’m not sure.” He turned to go.
“Give me the number for the AC guy,” his brother said. “I’ll get an estimate, call around to comparison shop.”
“I’ll do it when I get back,” he said.
“For fuck’s sake, Matt,” Luke said, resigned. “It’s a couple of phone calls. I won’t sign anything.”
“I’ll take care of it later,” he said tightly. “We have to leave. I’ll check in when I can.”
Luke muttered something Matt pretended not to hear as he guided Eve down the ramp and into the Jeep.
“It sounds like he just wants to help you,” she observed.
“He shouldn’t have to help,” Matt said. “His adolescence disappeared when he was fourteen years old. He deserves to have as normal a life as possible, and that means not worrying about mortgages or HVAC systems or medical bills when he can’t find a full-time job.”
Eve shifted her weight away from him and crossed her legs, and he regretted the way he barked at her. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “It’s none of my business.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s just … complicated.”
Silence reigned for the rest of the trip to Eye Candy. Noonday heat blistered the blacktop parking lot, the smell of fresh asphalt rising in shimmering waves. Eve reached for her small rolling suitcase and hefted it out of the back of the Jeep. Matt grabbed both her bag and his duffle in one hand and said, “Up the stairs. Now,” scanning the parking lot then the rooftops, looking for slow-moving SUVs, hiding places, any threat, letting the sixth sense he’d honed over the years put out feelers into his surroundings.
She hurried up the stairs, him hard on her heels.
“Keys.”
He unlocked
her apartment door and entered first; at his okay she stepped inside. First things first. She hurried into the bathroom and turned on her curling iron. Then she looked around. New glass gleamed in her kitchen and bedroom windows. When Matt emerged from looking around her bedroom, she was picking up the pieces of her speakers.
“I’ll play music on my computer for a while,” she said, trying to make the best of it.
“That was a Bose SoundDock,” he said. “You’re going to notice the drop in sound quality.”
She looked at him, eyebrows raised ever so slightly, then swept the fragments into the trash. “It’ll have to do. I can’t afford a new dock.”
Her apartment was a shoebox, but she shoved clothes to one side to make space for his stuff in her crammed closet, and cleared a two-square-inch spot on the sink for his electric razor. While attempting to wedge his toothbrush into the caddy on her sink he burned his hand on her curling iron, and cursed under his breath as he ran cold water over the reddening strip of skin.
She grabbed the curling wand, intending to move it to the back of the toilet, except he’d put his shaving kit on the tank. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, missing the knuckles of his other hand by millimeters as she set the hot iron down in its original position.
“Forget shaving. Women like the scruffy look,” he said, then backed into the door. As the stopper twanged, he said, “Jesus. I’ll be downstairs. I want to check the alley and interior.”
He checked the storeroom and dish room, then opened the door to the alley. All quiet. Nothing suspicious. When he came back through the storeroom, Eve was making her way down the stairs from her office. She wore the black skirt she’d worn the day she interviewed him, a green silk blouse, and her boots.
“I need keys to all the doors and a list of who else has them.”
“I’ve got a spare set locked in my desk. We can make copies while we’re out this afternoon.”
He looked at the rubber pouch on top of a three-inch stack of paperwork. “Deposit?”
“Including Lyle’s first deposit,” she said, wishing she’d worn gloves to handle the dirty money.
He put down the knife and wiped his hands on a wet towel. “I’ll drive. The bathrooms are clean. I checked stock. You’re low on gin and rye whiskey, and you’re really low on vodka. When’s your next liquor delivery?”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “You really worked in a bar? You must have … you could mix drinks, or did you practice before applying?”
“My Academy class didn’t start until almost a year after the accident,” he said. “I worked private security, bartended, EMT shifts. Anything I could scrounge together with late afternoon or overnight hours. Doctors and physical therapists work nine to five,” he said and dug his car keys from his front pocket.
She was giving him that look again, the look that looked right through him. Somehow, despite relaying what felt to him like bare-bones details about his life, every time he opened his mouth he gave something else away. But what? Nothing about his life was closed; the background check for the Academy took care of that. So what did Eve see that no one else saw?
They duped her keys at the corner hardware store, then doubled back down Thirteenth Street to get to the bank. “I know her,” Eve said as they walked into the lobby and headed for the only available teller. The sound of her heels, staccato and sharp, rapid-fire against the floor, paused for a second.
“Close friend?” he asked, his hand shifting to the small of her back to urge her forward.
“She thinks so, but for our purposes, she’s actually better than that,” she said, regaining her stride. “She’s the biggest gossip on the East Side.”
Stella slid Matt a look through thickly mascaraed eyelashes, and took in his Eye Candy T-shirt, his hand at her back, and the possessive tilt of his body as Eve slid Saturday night’s take through the window. “Who’s your friend, Eve?”
“Stella, meet Chad,” she said, giving Matt’s arm a possessive little pat. Her every move screamed boyfriend, the way she leaned into his body, let the curve of her hip nestle into his, and Matt felt an odd shift in his consciousness, like one of those posters for sale at the mall, the kind that if you stared at long enough, you saw something else in the colors and shapes. Old woman, young woman. Undersea garden or dolphin. Eve as a community-oriented partner in the investigation or Eve as his lover.
Eve as his.
“Stella and I went to high school together,” Eve said, snapping him back into reality. “Chad’s working for me at Eye Candy.”
Her gaze slid over Matt as she double-checked the deposit. “Must be nice to be the boss. You from around here, Chad?”
“L.A.,” he said, neither discouraging, nor encouraging, just enough to answer the question.
Stella ran the money through the machines and slid Eve a deposit slip. “I keep meaning to come by, but getting George to watch the kids is like pulling teeth,” she said as Eve picked up a pen. It spun from her fingers, the ball-chain slithering against the wooden counter.
“I’m clumsy today,” Eve said with a bright, false laugh. Matt dropped a hand to her hip and stroked his thumb over the soft curve. Her shoulders relaxed. She picked up the pen again, signed the slip, the movements casual and precise. Normal.
She calms down when you touch her. Touch her a lot. To keep her calm.
“You won’t believe what I heard. Guess who’s back in town?”
“Who?”
Arms folded on the counter, Stella leaned into the window like she was sharing state secrets. “Lyle. Murphy. Can you believe it?”
“I saw him last week,” Eve said like it was no big deal. Good girl, Matt thought. Calm, collected, laying the framework for any sightings with Lyle or his band of merry thugs and dealers.
“He had the total hots for you in high school,” Stella recalled.
“We were friends! Just friends,” Eve said. “My dad and Lyle’s dad go way back.”
“Honey, you are so blind,” Stella said, then turned to Matt. “Every guy in the school wanted to go out with Eve, but after what happened to Nate, none of them dared. You know Caleb?”
“We’ve met,” Matt said noncommittally, felt Eve swallow a laugh.
“I bet,” Stella said as she retrieved the deposit slip from Eve. “Be good, you two.”
“You think she’ll talk?” Matt said as they left the bank. Part of the plan was to generate as much buzz as they could about Eve and her new boyfriend and hope the gossip got back to Lyle.
“She’s probably group texting everyone we know from high school right now,” Eve said. “Why L.A.?”
He guided her down the empty sidewalk leading to the bank’s front door. “It’s big enough that if someone says “Do you know my aunt Millie?” I can easily say no, but I was stationed at Fort Irwin, so I know the city well enough to handle most conversations,” he said.
They rounded the railing protecting the landscaping from people cutting across the grass to the parking lot, and Eve reached for his hand as she scoped out the storefronts across the street. Lancaster Savings and Loan was located on a prime strip of the East Side, in the middle of local shops and restaurants. It was the middle of the afternoon, so gauging traffic from the lunch crowd wasn’t easy, but a few people sat at tables at the front of the new sandwich and coffee shop across the street, and the lot on the corner that provided free parking for shops along Thirteenth Street was better than half full.
A blue Escalade emerged from the parking lot and pulled into an on-street parking space across from the bank. Lyle Murphy got out.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Matt felt Eve stiffen next to him. He clasped her hand, gave it a squeeze meant to both soothe and warn her to stay cool. “I see him,” he said in an undertone. “Let’s make sure he sees us. Look around. Talk to me about the businesses like I’m new in town and you’re showing me around.”
“Good lunch traffic,” she said, only the slightest hint of a tremor in her voice. “Two Slices is
a new soup and sandwich place. They’ve been open for a month and got a really good write-up in the paper so Henry’s seeing quite a bit of downtown lunch traffic. I don’t think Cindy’s Cinful Sweets will last if the redevelopment effort collapses, but if we get the business park she might hold on. What’s he doing?”
“He’s staring at you.”
Lyle Murphy was more than staring at Eve. Even half a block down and on the opposite side of the street Matt felt waves of animosity eddying across the pavement, lapping at their ankles. He scanned the storefronts, taking advantage of his mirrored sunglasses and peripheral vision to look like he was giving each window a thorough examination while he memorized the Escalade’s plate and noted identifying dings.
And got his first up-close-and-in-person look at Lyle Murphy. He was tall, dressed in business casual, a long-sleeved golf shirt tucked into slacks, loafers on his feet. You could drop him into any office in Lancaster and he’d blend right in, except for his eyes. Light brown and fixed on Eve, Lyle had the eyes of a psychopath. Matt knew the look well from combat and years on the streets. It wasn’t the homeless crazy, the off-my-meds crazy, or even the I-can’t-take-it-anymore crazy. This was the subtle, evil psychopathology of a man who cared only about getting what he wanted. He’d watch Eve struggle and suffer for the sheer pleasure of it, then put a bullet in her brain when he got bored.
They’d been out of his house less than an hour, and already Eve was in the crosshairs. Every instinct Matt honed was screaming at him to get her away, to shove her behind a car like he’d shoved her into the bathtub, but that would effectively destroy everything they’d worked for so far. He fought down the emotion, forcing himself to slump his shoulders, keep his stance easy and relaxed, to play the role of Eve’s new boyfriend, a man who knew nothing about Lyle, drugs, cops, guns, who cared only about banging his hot new boss. Eve had to take the lead here. She was walking a tightrope, and had to take each step on her own. All he could do was help her balance.
