The Sudden Love (Hudson Brothers #3)

by Emma Vikes

  I tugged at my right ear- something I did whenever I was flustered- and took a deep breath. “Look, Everett. I’m sorry. I just…it just feels awkward to be working with you after running out on you that night.”

  “You ran out on me twice,” Everett pointed out, jutting his chin in the air. “Earlier today, at the coffee shop, you couldn’t wait to leave. All I wanted to do was put a name to your face.”

  I made a face and tried to act nonchalant. I wasn’t sure how to explain to him why I had suddenly dashed off after kissing him. I mean, I was the one who instigated the kiss. Hell, I was the one who instigated the whole thing. We were having a fairly decent conversation but he was so damn attractive and I kept wondering what would happen if I took the risk just for one night.

  A knock on our office door cut off our conversation and the detective that I was briefly introduced to earlier sauntered in. He looked at me and smiled in a sleazy way, and sat on Everett’s table, as Everett tried to swat him away. “Wang, get off my table.”

  But Wang didn’t seem to hear him, since his attention was focused on me. “We have a crime scene at the bank downtown. Seems like an overnight burglary, but CCTV didn’t show any signs of entry. A security guard was shot dead, but the gun probably had a silencer, since no one within a mile heard a thing. The owner has asked for forensic assistance from the department to see if there were traces of fingerprints left. Can’t blame him, they stole more than a million.”

  The last place that I had worked in, I wasn’t a forensic scientist. Well, I didn’t even work in a police department for that matter. I used to intern with a pathologist who usually did autopsies of victims for accidents, murder and apparent suicides. I knew most of the things that I needed to do on a field but I didn’t really have that much experience. As much as I didn’t want to, my eyes flickered behind Wang, to where Everett was looking at me.

  His gray eyes looked soft in the hazy morning light that seemed to pass through the window of our shared office. “I’ll come with.”

  I could feel the growing balloon of tension and anxiety inside of me deflate when Everett said that. Wang looked at the both of us, taking note of the silent exchange. “Is there something that I don’t know…?”

  But neither Everett nor I gave him an answer. Instead, Everett clamped his shoulder with a strong hand, grinning. “Alexa’s new, Wang. When I was new, the former scientist here took me under his wing and made sure that I knew the works each time I went to a crime scene. The same goes for her.”

  Wang looked at me as he stood up, both men facing me and I felt like sinking into my seat in embarrassment because I felt like I couldn’t live up to their expectations. A rough reminder of how my father used to tell me that I would never live up to the standard that my older sister had set, and it was unfortunate that she had to die.

  It should’ve been you.

  “Alexa?” Everett was looking at me with curiosity in his eyes. “You okay?”

  Of all the days that I wanted to be reminded of my sister’s tragic death, and how harsh my father had been to me after, today was certainly not one of them.

  “Alexa?”

  I looked up at Everett and flashed him a small smile. “Yes. Sorry, I zoned off just a bit. So, where did this money heist occur?”

  Everett stared at me for a moment and then shook his head, a small amused smile on his face. “Bank downtown. I’m not sure if we have another kit for you to bring, since there’s always been just one, since you know, there used to be just one scientist.”

  I pouted, then took the kit that he pointed at me and opened it. There were gloves, brushes, a handful of Ziplocs, and other protective equipment, as well as kits used to collect blood, fingerprint, and the works. “So, are you trying to tell me that we have to wear the suits?”

  Suddenly, I heard a chuckle from right behind me. My heart raced, involuntarily, and I turned around abruptly, meeting him face to face, his lips just a few inches from mine. My eyes widened, as did his, as he stared at me for a moment before he took a step back. He visibly swallowed, and I could almost see a sheen of sweat on his forehead. I couldn’t help but chuckle in amusement, forgetting my own anxiety that had built up over the sudden closeness.

  Everett cleared his throat, scratching the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Only at murder scenes”, he answered, “I think just the gloves will do for the one that we have to check now.”

  I followed Everett out of our office and then to the elevator. Outside, there was a van waiting for us and we both got in with Detective Wang. It took us about ten minutes to get to the crime scene, where the first responders had already taped the area to make sure that no one got in. Detective Wang got out first and then talked to the police who had called us in. Everett motioned for me to get under the tape and I did.

  “Seems like they were pretty clean for thieves,” Everett commented, putting on gloves, and I did the same.

  I scanned the area and then began to unpack the fingerprint kit. “But maybe the evidence just can’t be seen with the naked eye”, I said with a wink, “Besides, there should be some gun residue left on the security guard. Don’t you think?”

  For the next thirty minutes, Everett and I worked side by side in silence, gathering as much forensic evidence as we could. He had been right. The place was left pretty clean, and aside from the clean hole made on the vault it was impossible to say that there had been a break-in.

  Just as we were about to wrap up, something caught my eyes. It was by the vault. I picked it up cautiously, lifting it close to my face for further inspection. It was a black glove, medium sized. But there was something weighing it down just a little bit. It was also a little bit wet, and I almost dropped it when I noticed a red liquid coming out of it.

  “What’s that?” Everett asked, coming up behind me, as he peered at the glove in my hand. He took it from me and then turned it inside out, just as something fell out of it. We both crouched down simultaneously to look at what it was.

  “It’s a finger!” I exclaimed in a whisper, looking at Everett in shock.

  Surprisingly, Everett didn’t even look fazed. Instead, he looked almost relieved. He grabbed a pair of tongs, crouched back down and picked up the stubbed finger with it, dropped it into a Ziploc bag, and then marked it as evidence. He turned to me and grinned. “Our job is going to be much easier now that we have an actual finger to find the suspect.”

  I stared at Everett, and then back at the finger inside the Ziploc that he was dangling in front of me.

  I wasn’t sure if I was meant to laugh at his wry humor, because I was still silently freaking out at the fact that there was a finger wrapped in the glove. I stared at Everett blankly, and then looked at the transparent bag. “How did that even…?”

  Everett glanced at the vault and said, “No matter how cleanly they’d managed to cut through that thing, it was still a heavy object for them to lift. The other guy must’ve dropped it and cut his finger when it happened.”

  I cringed, imagining the pain that he must’ve gone through. “Oh.”

  Everett nudged me. “You better get used to this, Alexa. You’re going to end up seeing a lot worse when you work with us.”

  It wasn’t that I was disgusted and not used to the sight of mangled and mutilated bodies. Still, seeing things like this left me unsettled. I merely nodded at Everett, and helped him pack up. When we got back to the van, Wang asked Everett if we’d found any substantial evidence, and we told him about the finger.

  “As lucky as we seem for finding the finger as evidence, it’s been flattened. We might encounter a problem with the scanning system for the fingerprint analysis,” Everett said the moment the van door was shut.

  I stared at him as I leaned my head against the window of the van, “We can figure it out later”

  “We have time,” he agreed. He proceeded to open the kit and fish out the evidence. He kept looking at it over and over again, turning it around as he did.

  “This guy
won’t stop until he gets everything done in his own time,” Wang said, glancing back at us. He shook his head in amusement, as he looked at Everett engrossed with the evidence. “If that guy could figure out a way to trade sleep for more time, I’m certain he would use it to finish all the cases in the world.”

  “I can hear you, Wang.”

  But Detective Wang ignored Everett and winked at me. “With him, you’re never going to have any fun. So, you’ve been warned, Alexa. If you want to add a little sparkle to your life then you’d better leave right after work ends, or else you’ll be stuck with that Grinch and forced to work. I can’t even count the number of times he woke me up in the middle of the night because he figured out a case.”

  I looked at Everett and he had a smirk on his face, but didn’t seem bothered by Wang’s words. Instead, he pulled up his laptop and turned it on. I peered at the screen as Everett opened the fingerprint database.

  “What if the thieves are from another city?” I asked randomly, still peering at his computer, disregarding Wang who seemed to be waiting for a response from me.

  “Everett’s smart enough to hack in to the systems of the other police departments and make up a good excuse on how he found out the crook was in that city,” Wang replied.

  Everett paused and looked at the detective, his eyes hidden behind thick glasses, the smirk still on his face. “In the end, I make your work easier, Wang. You wouldn’t be a top detective if it wasn’t for me.”

  I waited for Wang’s response, wondering if he would feel insulted by Everett’s remark, but he merely grinned and nodded. “Couldn’t do this whole thing without your help, nerd.”

  I recalled being told when I was hired that I might have trouble working with the other scientist, since he had been working on his own for quite a while. I also had the feeling that Everett wasn’t the kind of person who liked working with anyone but himself, not unless he managed to get comfortable.

  When we got back to the office, Everett spun into action, donning the white laboratory gown, and starting work on the other evidence we had gathered. For a moment, it felt like he had forgotten that he had another scientist in the room who was supposed to do the work for him. But he surprised me by pulling out another white laboratory gown from the cabinet and tossing it to me.

  He cocked his head to the side and said, “It’ won’t be as comfortable as my jacket was, but it’s part of protocol.”

  At the mention of his jacket, I felt blood flood my cheeks and I looked down. “I’ll give it back to you first thing tomorrow. I actually packed it with me when I moved here.”

  But Everett shook his head and smiled at me, making a dimple appear on the side of his face. The sight of it weirdly made my heart skip a beat. “Keep it. It looked better on you anyway.”

  I tugged at my ear, my heart racing, the kiss we’d shared that night playing in my mind over and over again. “About that night…”

  He shook his head. “One-time thing. Never going to happen. I know. Don’t worry. I’m not a fan of dating co-workers either.”

  I quietly slipped on the lab coat and joined him at the work station. I flashed him a small smile and nodded my head. “Good. Because I don’t want to complicate things either.”

  But as I said that, I looked at Everett while he was working; and for a brief moment, my mind flashed back to the way his lips had felt against mine. Soft but slightly chapped. His firm body pressed against mine.

  I’m not a fan of dating co-workers either.

  And just like that, I felt a slight pang in my heart.

  3

  Everett

  “How come you never let Alexa come along?” Wang asked, as we exited the pathologist’s office. We had just had a meeting with Dr. Webber, and she had tried her best to figure out what drugs were in the system of the victim. But I felt like something was missing. I’d been working this case ever since Milo’s wedding, but still had not found a break.

  I ran a hand through my hair. Thinking about the case was giving me a headache. When I was assigned the case a few weeks ago, I thought it would be fairly simple. No body had been found at the crime scene. However, the department had left the crime scene untouched until I had gotten back from Chicago. The crime had happened Saturday night. I had gone to this particular crime scene right after attending to the burglary case with Alexa.

  There was evidence of a struggle at the scene of the crime. But neither the blood samples nor the fingerprints we had managed to lift had pointed to any possible suspect. We thought we were out of leads. Until, we found the body of the victim floating in a lake on the outskirts of town.

  “We can’t have two forensics on the case, Wang,” I said, sighing as we got to his car. He turned on the ignition and looked at me pointedly, waiting for me to explain. “And I’ve got it, alright? There’s another investigation that she’s involved in. It’s not as big as this case, but she has her own work to do.”

  “Right. Then why have I been seeing her just randomly chatting with Reese during work hours and even volunteering to photocopy some of the documents, since she doesn’t have much else to do.”

  I pursed my lips. So maybe I was making up the fact that Alexa had a case to work on, when she didn’t. She had one two weeks ago, but the case had been a simple bike accident; and she had finished it up within a week and a half. Irving wasn’t that dangerous a town to live in and to be honest, on lazy days like these, I utilized the time- and the materials- to work on some research that had been given to me by the research institute, where I worked part-time on Saturdays.

  The moment that I got my hands on this case, I knew there was no way that I was going to let her butt in. One, because it was the first serious- and gruesome- case of the year. Two, I liked working alone. Technically, I wasn’t really alone, since I was working on the case with Wang. But I didn’t want to have to discuss the forensic results with anyone. I wasn’t sure how good Alexa was, or how fit she was for the job. Maybe she was, since she was hired by the Chief and she did show some skills while working on the first case with me.

  But I couldn’t put sensitive cases like this in the hands of a first-timer.

  “Or you’re just being a jerk about this whole thing. I mean, when I saw you two working together before, I honestly thought that this would work out...” Wang let his words trail along and shook his head, sighing. “But that was only for a day. I overheard her the other day, saying that you barely even talk to her. That you’re too focused on your case or on other research. I know you can be a workaholic, Everett, but I didn’t peg you to be rude.”

  We’d reached the department by this point and I sighed, turned to Wang and said, “Focusing on my work doesn’t mean that I’m being rude, Wang. I do the same thing to you and I don’t hear you complaining.”

  Wang smirked. “Maybe because she likes you and she’s bothered that you don’t talk to her.”

  I rolled my eyes and shook my head. So maybe we’d met before she was hired and maybe there had been a bit of chemistry going on there. Maybe, it could’ve been something to explore if I had the time to. But Alexa was my co-worker now, and I didn’t want to date a co-worker knowing that it would simply complicate things. “I don’t date people I work with, Wang.”

  Wang rolled his eyes. “You don’t date at all, Hudson.”

  The two of us went inside the department, and the moment that I got in, an intern approached us. “Mr. Hudson, Detective Wang, there was a crime reported on 4678, Stratford Court. The police responded to the call, but they’d asked the department to send someone.”

  Wang and I looked at each other. Wang cleared his throat, and asked the intern, “What was the crime reported?”

  “Police thinks it’s a homicide.”

  “Homicide?” I confirmed, my eyebrows furrowed. This would be the second murder case in Irving in a short period, and that was a rare case for us. Usually, it was just suicide and accidents. Sometimes, a shooting incident where someone was accidentally shot as a b
urglar or kidnapper tried to escape; but we rarely ever encountered such heinous crimes.

  “Ms. Stone hasn’t come back yet to confirm,” the intern answered, “but she did ask me to update you, once you came back.”

  I blinked, unsure of what I was meant to say as I stared at the intern. “Are you trying to tell me that Alexa went to the crime scene without even waiting for her senior?”

  Wang scoffed. “You’re her senior but you’re not her boss, Everett, in case you have it mixed up. She’s a forensic expert at the department. CSI was needed at a crime scene, so she was well within her rights to go there, especially since you were not here. It’s not a big deal.”

  I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth in irritation. “It is a big deal, Wang, because she was meant to inform me!”

  Wang pointed at the intern who was still standing in front of us, wide eyed. “He informed you. She did her part. Now let’s go back to your office and discuss lunch options, because I’m hungry; and I would most preferably want something to be delivered because I’m too lazy to head out and get lunch myself.”

  Ignoring Wang, I marched right past him and headed to my office. Wang followed, muttering curses underneath his breath. I ignored him. I was annoyed at the fact that Alexa had gone behind my back and was doing the investigation alone. Granted, I had been working on a case without her, but still.

  Did she even know what she was supposed to do? What if she forgot to collect fibers or if she couldn’t get fingerprint samples from everything in the room? What if she was unable to recreate the scene with the team that she was with because she was too overwhelmed by having to do it all by herself?

  I sank into my seat and hastily pulled out the report that Dr. Webber had given me earlier at the lab.

  “You’re genuinely upset that she went without you?” Wang asked, leaning against the blackboard that we had set up at the side. “Are you fucking serious right now, Everett?”