“Want to tell me about it?” He leaned back in his chair. “Starting with when you came to work this morning?”
Juliana produced an exhausted sigh, and was quiet for several moments. He was afraid that she’d shut down on him. Her shoulders rose and fell with deep breaths. She began to run through the events that she had seen. Juliana was an excellent witness - thoughtful, clear, concise, and whether she knew it or not, she was providing an excellent account of the events. “…And his eyes. I’ll never forget his eyes for as long as I live. Can’t you get this from the other officers?”
“I’d like to hear it directly from you.” He knew that the more she told the story, the better the chance she would remember it on the witness stand. “And you saw his face?” he asked her again, trying to get her to picture him in her mind. It was a trick that would help her remember it, and ID him when she looked at mugshots or had to pick from a line-up.
“Yeah, as clear as day. I pulled away from the peephole briefly, out of shock, and when I looked back he was looking straight at the door. Like he was looking at me through the peephole.”
Mitch sat back, satisfied to have a reliable witness. This is going to be easy. “Joe’s going to compile some mugshots for you to look at. Think you can do that?”
She nodded quickly. “Absolutely.”
Mitch smiled and pushed away from the table. “That’s great! Thanks Juliana. I’ll be right back, okay? I’m going to see if Peter and Steve have found anything useful.” He stood and walked over to a nearby officer. “Keep an eye on her,” he said, gesturing in Juliana’s direction, before heading back outside
When he was gone, Juliana took a heavy breath and dropped her head onto the table in front of her. Under the best, most normal circumstances, speaking with Mitch was an intense experience. But in addition to everything that had happened that morning, it was a practice in mental calisthenics to hold it all together in front of him. The man was gorgeous, but hard. His voice was low and intense, and held a razor-sharp edge that she knew was dangerous.
The second that Mitch walked out the door, however, Juliana missed him. When he’d first arrived, she’d been in shock, terrified, and sought comfort from him. And he’d delivered. The minute that his arms wrapped around her, she felt safe and secure. Every morning she woke up anticipating his daily early-morning visit to Brewed Moon where they would enjoy small talk over coffee. She’d soon realized that underneath his tough exterior, he was a good man.
She watched Mitch through the front windows, as he spoke to Peter and Steve outside. His mouth was set in a firm line. She didn’t know what they were saying, but from both men’s posture, she figured it wasn’t good. She tried to focus on reading their lips, but she rolled her eyes, giving up. That wasn’t even a skill she possessed. As she watched the uniformed officers move about them, Juliana noted that Mitch didn’t act like the other cops, in fact none of the men on his team did. They were sharp, but casual, with a confident, composed, unaffected air about them. They didn’t buzz about like the other officers, but that didn’t mean they didn’t see things. Perhaps they saw more than they let on.
Because of the beat Mitch and his team worked on the street, they dressed casually so they didn’t stand out. But she didn’t know how well men like them blended in. Even in simple jeans and t-shirts they showed off every muscle in their well-formed upper bodies, and during Mitch’s early morning café visits, she enjoyed seeing how the material of his clothing stretched over his broad shoulders, thick biceps and strong chest. She also couldn’t miss the way his jeans were filled out with muscular thighs and what she imagined to be an extremely firm, round ass. She watched him from her seat, and Juliana knew that there should have been other things on her mind at that moment, but goddamn, he looked good.
As Juliana admire him from afar, Mitch turned around, catching her staring. She looked away quickly. Relegating to her dreams, any relationship she could have with the man. She didn’t have time for a man. She had to focus on her livelihood, and now with a heinous crime having taken place on her grounds, she didn’t know exactly how it would affect business, but probably not favourably. Thank God for her meet-ups with Mr. Fox at Leather & Lace. Still, as she stole another look at Mitch, with his trim beard and strong body, she couldn’t help but conflate the two men in her head, and she flushed when she imagined Mitch doing those things to her, setting her body on fire.
She looked past Mitch, out the large store-front windows at the police officers and emergency vehicles that crowded the sidewalk. She ducked her head when she saw some of her regular customers stop to look around, and try to get a peak inside before they no doubt headed down the street to her competitor for their caffeine fix. This definitely will not be good for business she sighed. But at least Brewed Moon will the newest stop on the Haunted Hike this summer, she thought with a frown, disappointed with her own dark sense of humour.
Juliana closed her eyes and suddenly needed her apartment, her bed, a hot bubble bath, and a glass – no, a bottle – of wine. “Do you have any idea when I can go home?” she asked the watchman.
“No, ma’am,” he answered, his tone succinct, and he offered no more than that.
Losing patience, Juliana exhaled heavily. “I told them what I saw, what more do you guys want from me? Why can’t I leave?”
The cop said nothing for a while. “Ma’am, you’re a witness to a murder. Detective Swanson told me to keep you here. That’s all I can tell you.”
Witness to a murder. And that was when it hit her. It was real. She wasn’t still in her bed, having the longest, most-lifelike dream she’d ever had. The phrase rolled through Juliana’s head, making her dizzy. The room shifted in front of her. Her mouth dried and the unpleasant waves of nausea coursed from her stomach to her throat. Not able to hold it back, Juliana pushed herself back from the table and ran down the hallway for the restroom. She heard Officer Succinct call after her, and start to follow, but she didn’t care. She pushed open the door and threw herself inside, to kneel in front of the toilet. Her stomach emptied of all the coffee that she’d had… the only thing she’d ingested that morning, and when she was done, she leaned back, her knees tight to her chest, as she sat on the floor. And finally, she let the tears come - tears for the man who’d been killed and tears for herself, and what she’d had to endure by watching his murder. And then she cried because she felt guilty for worrying about herself. It was a vicious cycle, and it finally occurred to her that her life would never be the same. The café which she’d loved and put every ounce of blood, sweat and tears into would be forever tainted. For so many years this place had been her refuge, but today she was its hostage.
A soft knock on the door drew her attention away from her thoughts. “Jules?” a masculine voice called from the other side of the closed door. It was Mitch. He’d come back, just in time to hear her not only lose her breakfast (or lack thereof), but to hear her sob uncontrollably on the floor of her bathroom. While her closest friends called her Jules, Mitch had never done so. “Are you okay in there?”
“Yeah,” she called back. “Hold on.” She wiped her eyes and stood. She looked in the mirror and frowned at the wretched sight before her. She flushed the toilet and turned on the cold water, cupped a pool in her palms and splashed it on her face. The sting of the cold made her gasp and helped her focus on fixing her appearance as much she could before she opened the door. She pulled back her hair, dried her face with rough paper towels, and after several deep breaths felt ready to face him again. Opening the door, she saw Mitch standing in front of her, concern etching his handsome face.
“Are you okay?”
Juliana started to nod, but she stopped. It would have been a lie, and she knew that lying to him would be of no use. So, she just told him the truth. “Not really. Can I leave yet?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. Not yet. We’re working on getting you a collection of pictures for you to look at, so you can hopefully identify the murderers. Our othe
r option would be to take you to the station to wait.”
“That’s great,” she said, with little conviction. Deciding that she would rather wait inside her café than the police station, she sighed. “I’ll stay here, I guess.”
“Good choice,” he said with a grin, “your coffee’s much better than the swill they brew at the station.”
Feeling dizzy again, she leaned back on the wall to steady herself. Mitch was watching her, studying her. “Have you eaten anything yet this morning?”
She shook her head. “Just some coffee.”
“I haven’t eaten either. Why don’t I go out, get something to eat and bring it back here for you?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he cut her off, his voice firm, sending a small, inappropriate shiver throughout her. “You have to eat to keep your strength up. What would you like?”
As if on cue, her stomach rumbled, loudly, protesting with hunger she hadn’t known she felt. “I don’t care. I’m not picky.” She averted her eyes. She wanted to be strong, she didn’t want to appear vulnerable, but she needed Mitch. “I don’t want you to leave.”
He reached out and cupped her shoulder in one of his large hands, and her eyes snapped up to meet his. There was no way that she was imagining the heat that came from his touch. Briefly forgotten was the chaos that had brought Mitch to Brewed Moon that morning, and no matter what trauma Juliana had endured, she was still a woman and he, an unbelievably sexy man. Her breath hitched, conflicted emotions roiled throughout her. She was afraid, aroused, exhausted, exhilarated. She didn’t want to need him - Juliana didn’t want to need anybody – but for that moment, all of her composure rested on Mitch’s presence.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he assured her. “But I’m kind of hungry too, I’ll just send one of the guys out for some sandwiches for us, okay?”
She nodded, not taking her eyes from his steel blue gaze. “That sounds good.”
He released her from his touch, and she missed his warmth and comfort immediately as he took out his phone and his fingers flew over the keyboard. “Alright,” he said, pocketing the phone once again. “Food’s on the way.”
“Do people always do what you say?”
He smiled, showing bright, white teeth under his trim beard. “Most of the time.” He looked down the hallway casually, his gaze landing on the rear delivery door where she’d watched a man die just a couple of hours previous. She watched as his eyes sharpened and his smile fell as he stalked to the door.
“This is where you witnessed the murder right?”
“Uh, yeah.”
He looked through the peephole, stood back, and held his hand over it. He turned around and looked out the front windows. “What time was it? Around 6:30?”
“Yeah.”
“And the sun would have been rising over the hills and the water there, right?” he pointed out the front windows, and she remembered the beginning of the day, and the sharp lines of bright orange dawn light that had filled the café.
“That’s right.”
“Was it really bright in here?”
She nodded. “It was. The sun was shining in and the lights were on. What’s going on?”
Mitch didn’t answer her, and instead pulled open the door. He looked at one of the lab techs. “Tell me if the light changes in the peephole here.” He shut the door and placed his hand over the peephole again, removed it, replaced it, and removed it a second time. When he opened the door, Juliana craned her neck outside to see the answer. The man nodded.
Mitch also nodded in response. Men of few words. But when he turned back to her, a grave look had replaced the good-natured smile. “And you said it felt like he looked right at you through the peephole?”
“Yeah,” she responded. She would never forget it.
He exhaled deeply, pulled out his cell phone and hit one button, presumably calling someone on his speed dial.
“What’s going on?” she asked him, knowing that he wouldn’t actually answer her.
He held up his hand to her, ignoring her question, and he spoke into his phone. “Peter, we’ve got a problem.”
Juliana gaped. A problem?
Mitch took a quick look at Juliana, as he spoke to Peter on the phone. “They saw her.”
Chapter 5
Goddammit. Goddammit! Mitch ran his hand through his hair, as he contemplated how an already bad situation had quickly taken a turn for the fucked up.
“They saw her? What makes you think that?” Peter asked him on the other end. Mitch gave him the rundown of what I’d just learned from his little experiment.
“What do you mean, they saw me?” he heard Juliana yell out beside him.
Mitch raised a finger to silence her while he talked to Peter. “We need to get a protective detail ready. See if there’s a safe house available, worst case scenario.”
“A safe house?” she bit out.
Mitch turned to face her. “Wait,” he commanded. By the way her face reddened and her eyes hardened, Mitch knew that Juliana was a woman who did not take kindly to being ordered around, especially when she wanted information.
“I will not wait.”
Mitch cringed internally as the volume of her voice rose with every syllable. He went back to his phone call. “Peter, work on getting a safe house ready,” he told his brother. “I’ll stay with her.” He ended the call and turned to see her staring at him, fists balled at her sides. “What?” he asked her.
“He saw me? A safe house? What’s going on?”
“You understand it well enough, it seems.” Mitch put his hand over the peephole once again. “But I think he may have seen the sunlight come through the peephole when you moved away from the door,” he removed his hand. “And then you blocked it again when you moved back. So, the killer might know that someone was watching, and that might be why he was staring at the door so intently.”
“So, he did see me,” she muttered, Mitch wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or herself. “I thought that I was shielded by the door, but I wasn’t.” She paused. “But if he thought there was a witness, why didn’t he come into the café to check it out? To get rid of me?”
Mitch watched as a shiver wracked through her body. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and keep her warm and safe forever. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully, thankful that the killer hadn’t. “Maybe it was because the sun was coming up, and they needed to get away. Maybe he didn’t know if there was surveillance equipment inside. But it shouldn’t be hard for them to figure out that you own this place, and that you were probably the person in here so early in the morning. Steve is on his way over to your apartment now,” he assured her. “He’ll check it out and report back.”
“So, what happens now?”
“We’re arranging for somewhere safe for you to go.”
“I can’t go home.” She whispered, more a statement than a question, as the gravity of the situation set in.
Mitch shook my head. “I’m sorry, but no. If Steve gives us the all-clear, I’ll go with you soon, so you can get some of your things. But we’re going to arrange some accommodations for you.”
“Why is this happening?”
Juliana’s despair affected him more than he wanted to admit, and Mitch realized with a sigh that Juliana might not be easy to protect. His phone pinged in his pocket and he pulled it out again to see the email that he was waiting for, a compilation of mugshots, including that of the higher players in the Irish and Russian mafia families. About time! Without answering Juliana’s question, he opened the attachment and I turned back to her. “Jules, this might be tough. But I need you to take a look at some pictures. They’re mugshots that Joe put together based on your description. Do you think you can take a look?”
“Sure, but after that, you’re going to have to answer some of my questions, okay?”
He smiled at her defiant streak. Juliana definitely would not be easy to protect. “Whatever I can te
ll you, I will,” he said, hoping he could keep that promise. He held out his phone and scrolled across the images one by one, but with no reaction from Juliana. “No,” she whispered. “I don’t know any of them.”
“Jules?” he asked, pressing toward her, watching the hopelessness take over her striking features. “Are you sure? Would you like to take another look?”
“No, I’m sure I won’t forget the face and I’m positive that none of these people are the men I saw,” she stated flatly as she leaned back against the wall, hands at her temples. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he told her, trying not to let his disappointment show. He’d hoped for a quick solution to the case, so they could find the killers and lock them up in no time. He’d hoped he would have an unquestionable link to Petrova that would keep Juliana out of harm’s way. But it would just take a little extra police work. Luckily, Mitch and his team were up for the challenge.
“We’ll just set you up with a sketch artist. We don’t have one at the department, we’ll have to call someone in, so it’ll take a little time. But we’ll get a picture and catch the killer soon enough. Thanks for being so strong, Jules. You did great. I know that none of this is easy.” He sounded confident, even though he knew that the hardest parts for Juliana were yet to come.
“Why can’t I go home? Is it really that bad?”
Mitch couldn’t tell whether he should go with the truth or not. His attachment to her made him want to soften the blow, to shield her from all of the nasty things in his world. But instead, he decided not to sugar-coat it. She was strong and she deserved to know the truth. “Juliana, we think that the murder you witnessed is linked to other crimes that we’re investigating. We have a hunch that the Russian mob is behind it, but we don’t know for sure. There have never been any witnesses, and the streets are pretty quiet on it. But when we get these guys, and we will, we’ll need you to testify. And in order for you to testify, we need to keep you alive.”
“You really think they’re going to try to kill me?”
Double Shot to the Heart (Brewed Moon Book 2) Page 4
