Cityscape Affair Series: The Complete Box Set

by Hawkins, Jessica

  “How do you two know each other again?” I asked.

  “High school,” they answered in unison.

  So they were around the same age. Truth be told, I was more interested in hearing what David was like as a teen than recounting the distressing events of the night before.

  “Can we get started?” I asked. “I’m hosting a big event tonight, so I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Got it.” Cooper sat back in his seat and looked to David. “I’ll take Olivia’s statement first. You can go.”

  David turned, his expression crestfallen. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “That’s not up to you. It’s Olivia’s call.” Cooper opened a notepad on his desk, wet the tip of his index finger, and flipped the page. “Some of my guys are headed over to the crime scene now—”

  “The crime scene?” I asked. “You mean my office?”

  “Yep. They’ll brief your boss on last night’s events.”

  For the first time, I wondered if Bill should be here. I needed to call and fill him in. And how would he react to hearing I’d spent the night with another man?

  He wouldn’t hear it at all. It wasn’t the kind of honesty that served any purpose. And we weren’t the kind of couple that needed to share every damn thing.

  A statement was fairly straightforward anyway.

  David cleared books from a wood chair in one corner and picked it up by its seatback.

  “That’s not sturdy,” Cooper warned.

  David placed the chair next to mine, still gripping the back. “I’d like us to give our statements together.”

  I wanted David there. Just his presence comforted me. And his association with Cooper made this a safe space. “Stay.”

  His hardened features eased and his hand twitched, as if he’d been about to reach for me. Instead, he took a seat so each of us faced the desk.

  Cooper heaved a sigh and opened a drawer. “Alvarez number two is now in custody for violating his parole,” he explained, rummaging through the drawer. “He not only had a gun on him, but cocaine as well. Dumbass. Since he’s a felon, he’s going to get it even worse.” Cooper looked from me to David. “Between us, he’ll probably take a plea bargain.”

  “What about retaliation?” David asked.

  “Unlikely at this point.” Cooper shook his head. “When Lou and Mark went away, their gang fragmented. I’ve heard rumblings they think Mark gave the cops info to reduce his charges. It’s not true, but that doesn’t matter. The Alvarez family is out, and that’s why Mark is so worked up. He’s got no one left.”

  “So you don’t think they’ll come after us?” I asked.

  “They got no reason to stir up trouble with our department for two guys who’ll be locked up for a while. But first, let’s make sure Mark stays put.”

  The detective held up a tape recorder, hit a button, and spoke into it. “Witnesses Olivia Germaine and Lucas Dylan, incident involving Mark B. Alvarez on May seventeenth,” he said into the recorder.

  May seventeenth? I’d completely forgotten it was almost my thirtieth birthday. I supposed that everyone else had, too, since nobody had mentioned it.

  “All right, Miss Germaine,” he began.

  “Olivia, please,” I said.

  “Olivia. Can you give me a general recount of what happened?”

  “I was working late when I heard the elevator. I got up to see who it was. When I opened my office door, Mark was standing there.”

  “So your office door was shut?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Is that important?”

  “It must be a loud elevator.”

  “Coop,” David said, his brows lowering.

  “Just trying to get the facts as straight as possible. That’s why it would’ve been better to do this last night, while her memory was fresh.”

  I cleared my throat. “Yes, from my desk, I probably wouldn’t have heard it. But, now that I think about it, I was actually standing against the door.”

  Listening. Waiting. Hoping against all sense you’d come back . . .

  I raised my gaze to David’s.

  He seemed to read everything in mine.

  “What happened in the time it took for Mark to walk from the elevator to your office?” Cooper asked, then lowered his voice to the recorder. “By my estimation, it’s about twenty-five to thirty yards.”

  “I—I just stood there,” I said. “I guess I should’ve called security, but it never crossed my mind I was in danger.”

  “Who’d you think would arrive at the office that late?” he asked. “A co-worker?”

  “I thought it was David,” I said frankly.

  Cooper’s eyes shifted between us. He turned off the recorder. “You two dating?”

  “Olivia’s married,” David said.

  “Fuck.” Cooper leaned back in his seat and rubbed his hands over his face. “You’re going to make this complicated, aren’t you, Dylan?”

  “It’s not like that,” I said. “David’s part of a feature I’m spearheading for the magazine, so he and I have been working together.”

  Cooper’s frown gave away his skepticism, but he pressed Record. “Victim is referencing Lucas David Dylan, who goes by David. Go on, Olivia. Why would you think he’d come to the office at that time of night?”

  “The magazine is featuring him as one of our most eligible bachelors of the year.”

  Cooper rolled his eyes hard, and David flipped him off.

  “David’s extremely busy and difficult to pin down—” Pin down, straddle, lower my face to his and stay just outside his reach as he tried to capture my lips with his . . .

  I lost my breath at the fantasy—and my words.

  Luckily, David picked up where I’d trailed off. “She asked me to come by when I had a few spare moments to go over things,” he said.

  “And that’s what you did?” Cooper asked.

  “Yes,” we answered in unison.

  Cooper looked between us.

  I didn’t want to lie and possibly muddle the details of the case against Mark, but I couldn’t exactly explain that we’d been arguing over the fact that a man I’d just met wanted me to choose him over my husband of years.

  “Sounds like you knew who Mark Alvarez was,” Cooper said.

  “He’s threatened her before,” David said.

  Cooper raised his eyebrows as he took notes. “Did you file a report?”

  “My husband didn’t think it was necessary.”

  David’s chair creaked as he shifted.

  “Tell me about that encounter.”

  “I was walking home one evening—”

  “When?”

  I paused to calculate. “A few weeks ago. He stopped me outside my apartment building, looking for my husband. Bill was the prosecutor against Mark’s brother, Lou.”

  Cooper nodded. “Got it. Bill Germaine? I’m not familiar.”

  “Wilson.”

  “Oh. Right.” Cooper looked up. “I know Bill.”

  That was why the organized crime unit on Cooper’s card had stuck out to me the night before. Bill’s case had relied heavily on gang violence specialists. It was likely that he’d worked closely with CPD during the trial.

  Whatever I said here today, and David, too, could potentially get back to Bill. “Can I, um, get some water?” I asked.

  Cooper tossed his notepad down but left the recorder going as he rounded the desk and went to the door. “Sally,” he yelled across the office. “Water.”

  As Cooper returned to his desk, David said, “He assaulted her that first night.”

  “Mark?” Cooper asked, rubbing an eyebrow.

  I nodded. “He tried—”

  “He put his hands on her and left marks,” David said, his chair creaking as he sat forward and then back, unable to get comfortable.

  “Mark said he wanted Bill to get his brother out of prison,” I explained.

  “Lou’s serving a life sentence. Why—and how—would Mark think Bill could do t
hat?”

  “Mark said he and Lou committed the same crime but that Bill must’ve ‘fucked up’ and got Lou a worse sentence.”

  Cooper’s pen flew across his notepad. “Sounds like Bill did exactly what he was supposed to.”

  “He takes his work seriously,” I said. “He worked really hard on that case.”

  “Yeah. Good guy far as I know.” Cooper glanced at David, whose uncharacteristic silence did nothing to dampen his presence. “What else?”

  “After that, I didn’t hear from Mark again,” I said. “Until now.”

  “We’ll come back to that night. What happened next at the office?” Cooper asked, eyes on his notes. “When did he put his hands on you? Be specific.”

  I steeled myself to recount everything, but the words wouldn’t come. Why not? I’d been spared. David had prevented anything bad that might’ve happened.

  When he visibly tensed beside me, I wondered if I should make him the leave room. He seemed to be struggling with his own internal monologue. “Are you sure you want to stay for this?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Take your time.”

  I just had to relay the facts. That was all. With another breath, I said, “Mark wasn’t there to warn Bill. This time, he wanted to send a message. He ripped open my blouse. When I screamed, he hit me across the face.”

  With a knock at Cooper’s door, David shot up from his chair. Mumbling to himself, he strode to the back of the room and whipped open the door. A short, elderly woman with a pitcher and three plastic cups stared back at him.

  “Thank you, Sally,” Coop called.

  David took everything from her, shoved Cooper’s files aside, and nearly slammed the pitcher on the desk. After pouring a glass, David handed it to me.

  Cooper watched all this with narrowed eyes, then turned to me. “Do you think Mark’s intent was to scare you or to sexually assault you?”

  “What the fuck does it matter?” David barked, back to pacing. “What kind of question is that?”

  “Details,” Cooper said simply. “They matter. Intent matters.”

  “I should’ve shot the motherfucker. Fuck him,” David said as he grabbed the back of his chair and slammed it down. With a thunderous crack, two of the legs broke off, and the rest toppled onto the ground.

  Cooper jumped up, his office chair rolling back into the wall of books. “What the hell—?”

  “Sorry.” David tossed the broken legs into the trash and sat against a windowsill, massaging the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I’ll pay for the chair. Continue.”

  Cooper sat back down while grumbling a string of curses. “Another outburst, and I’ll kick you out, Dylan,” Cooper said. “This is about her, not you.”

  My heart pounded as David’s words reverberated through the room. It’d definitely been a mistake to do this with him here. “You should leave.”

  “No. Not unless you need me to.” David pinched the inside corners of his eyes. “Go on.”

  I turned my attention back to Cooper. “David stopped the attack before it could go any further.”

  Cooper blinked a few times at his friend. “Olivia said you were there for a meeting, but that you’d left. Why were you still in the building?”

  I took an extra-long sip of water to hide my face.

  “I’d left,” David said. “But as I said last night, when I saw Mark in the lobby, I thought I recognized him and turned back.”

  Cooper eased back in his rolling chair. “I see.”

  David’s simmering anger was almost as hard to watch as reliving the attack. “It’s okay,” I reassured him. “Everything turned out fine.”

  “Fine? It’s not fine to me.” His jaw sharpened. Veins corded his forearms as he fisted his hands. “You could have been seriously hurt or—or worse. And if anything had happened to you, I . . .”

  The room stilled. Confusion marred Cooper’s face at David’s extreme reaction. We barely knew each other. There was no denying our attraction, but I wasn’t his to protect. I wasn’t his responsibility. And this wasn’t his fault. So why was David acting as if none of that was true?

  As if I belonged to him?

  21

  Outside the Chicago Police Department, I squinted up at blue sky, waiting for David since Cooper had asked for a moment alone with him.

  When my handbag vibrated, I took out my phone. The screen flashed with Bill’s name. I checked over my shoulder to make sure I was alone before answering.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you,” Bill said, urgency in his voice.

  News traveled fast. Not too surprising—the legal community here wasn’t as big as one might think. I took a deep breath. “You heard?”

  “Yeah. Why didn’t you let me know when you found out? You haven’t picked up anyone’s calls.”

  “Cooper had me put my phone on silent,” I said. “And what do you mean when I ‘found out’?”

  He sighed, sounding . . . irritated? “Look, I know you’ve been raised to keep things like this inside. I’ve learned to deal with that. But this is huge, Liv—you can’t shut me out.”

  Twin threads of relief and surprise worked their way through me. My first encounter with Mark had worried Bill, but in truth, part of me had questioned how much of it was concern for my well-being . . . and how much was him seeing an opportunity to get me to leave the city.

  “I’m sorry I worried you,” I said. “But I’m okay. How’d you find out?”

  “Mack.”

  “Mack?” I asked. “Mack Donovan?”

  “Well, yeah,” Bill said as if it were obvious. “He called me when he couldn’t reach you.”

  I frowned. “How’d he find out?”

  “What are you talking about? She’s his wife,” Bill said. “And who’s Cooper?”

  His wife? “Davena?” I asked. “What does she have to do with this?”

  With Bill’s answering silence, the hair on the back of my neck rose. Was there news about Davena? That could be anything from remission to . . .

  “Is—is she okay?” I asked, panic threading my words. “Is she back in the hospital?”

  “Olivia,” Bill said gently. “She passed last night. She’s gone.”

  Gone? I froze. Or, I thought I had. I somehow found my ass landing hard on the metal seat of a bench. “What . . . how?”

  “I don’t think Mack or Davena wanted us to know how advanced the cancer was.”

  “Last time I saw her, she said the doctors weren’t optimistic. She was trying to tell me . . . and I never got to say . . .”

  Could it be? All that life, light, love—gone? Without so much as a good-bye?

  What about Mack? He had to be utterly shattered.

  I gripped the arm of the bench as my chest collapsed. Davena had warned me I’d only have one shot at life. She must’ve known it was the end.

  I waited for tears as I stared at the mottled, gray sidewalk under my feet. Despite watching her grow frailer, it’d never occurred to me that . . . that she’d actually die.

  How could this happen? How could someone leave, just like that? How could she let that happen, when we needed her here? How, how, how—

  I wanted Bill. To hug him, to have him tell me it would be okay, to come home so we could cry together. And I wanted to be alone. To hide my emptiness from him. Because I couldn’t cry. I didn’t even have the urge. Was I too cold and hardened? How could I feel everything and nothing?

  I opened my mouth to tell him all of it. How much it hurt to lose someone who’d been a mother to me when my own couldn’t. How I hated that we hadn’t been there when she’d passed, or that I’d missed the true meaning in her words last week. Then maybe, when he got home tonight, I’d even share the truth behind the scar on my side, all the ugly details.

  The weight of everything I held inside was suddenly greater than the pain I avoided by keeping Bill at a distance.

  “Olivia?” Bill asked. “You still there?”

&nbs
p; People passed on the sidewalk. Potted trees at the curb smelled of damp soil. Beneath me, the bench was strong and supportive.

  I needed someone else to carry this grief. And maybe Bill just . . . couldn’t. Maybe that was why I shielded him from the things that haunted me most. He’d try to rationalize it all away, slipping and sliding over the parts he didn’t get so he could solve this and move on. I didn’t want that. But I shouldn’t have to do it on my own. It wasn’t fair.

  Davena had asked me to try to open up. Before it was too late.

  I put my head between my knees. Sometimes I could hardly keep from crying out because of all the things I held inside. Bill might think I was cold, but fear, pain, beauty, love—I felt it all. It was too much to keep inside, but I didn’t know how to speak it. I couldn’t tell Bill I was scared to love him the way he deserved. If I told my mom all the ways she’d hurt me, she’d just respond with all the fabricated ways my father was to blame. There wasn’t room for two victims in our relationship. And my dad had dealt with enough of that from her for a lifetime. He expected the emotional strength he’d instilled in me.

  I steeled myself, sat up, and looked over my shoulder toward the station. I met David’s concerned gaze as he stood near the doors. He was giving me distance. To speak to my husband. Who was waiting for me to respond.

  “I’m at the police station,” I said.

  “What?” Bill asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Mark Alvarez came to my office last night. I thought you were calling about that.” David didn’t take his eyes off me for a second. “Mark was more aggressive this time, but the cops arrived just in time.”

  “Holy shit, Olivia. Did he hurt you?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll tell you the whole story later, but I just gave a statement, and he’s in custody.”

  “I knew that bastard would break his parole,” Bill said. “You said earlier you’re with Cooper? The detective?”

  “He said he knows you.”

  “I’ll give him a call now,” Bill said. “But you really shouldn’t talk to the police without me present.”

  “It all happened so fast, and Cooper called us in first thing—”

  “Us?”