Murder Girl Read online

  Wordlessly Greg and I walk the hallway until we are outside of Laney’s place, ringing the bell. Laney opens the door almost instantly. Her blonde hair is tied back, her skin free of makeup. She looks younger than her twenty-six years, and her eyes are puffy as if she’s been crying. She glances at me and then at Greg. “Who is he?”

  “My partner. You can trust him.”

  “No. Not him. He can’t come in. Just you.”

  I glance at Greg and he nods, leaning on the wall. I enter the apartment foyer, a modern chandelier dangling above me that looks more like a wood sculpture than a light.

  Laney points to a doorway directly to the right, and I follow her into a small library where we settle into the two leather seats framed by bookshelves. “You got me out, didn’t you?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say honestly. “I did.”

  “I’d say I appreciate that, but we both know you did it to get me to talk. And I can’t talk to you.”

  “I can get you a deal. A good one. We don’t want you. You’re not the objective.”

  “How many names get me my freedom?”

  “I want them all.”

  “I won’t give them all to you.”

  “Then you won’t give me the most damning ones. And that doesn’t work for me.”

  “Then we’re at a stalemate.”

  I consider my options for all of two beats. “Give me more than names, then.”

  She laughs without humor and looks away. “I could. Oh God. I could tell you things you’d never believe.”

  “Try me.”

  “No.”

  “What kind of things? Let’s narrow the list and find you an opening. An escape from all this.”

  She looks at me. “Why would you help me? I know who you are. Your mother was a movie star. You understand these high-profile people. You know how much they need privacy and someone to trust.”

  “My mother’s fame controlled our lives when I was growing up. Which makes me understand what it’s like to be powerless in your own world. My mother felt trapped. She created her identity, but it held her prisoner. Like yours has you. I see you in her, not them in her.”

  “Did your mother find an escape?”

  “Only in death,” I say. “Don’t let that be you. I’ll protect you. I’ll make sure the information you give me doesn’t come from you.”

  “You can’t do that and get me a deal.”

  “I will. You have my word. But I need the information you share with me to be provable. It can’t be just words.”

  “How about murder by a very powerful man? Would that do it?”

  There is a chill in her voice that sends ice down my spine. “Do you have that proof I just mentioned?”

  “Yes. The problem is that this person will know it came from me.”

  “I won’t let that happen.”

  “He’ll know.” She stands up. “They’ll know. No. I can’t do this. I don’t want to die.”

  “Think about it. Trust me to protect you, because right now you’re going to jail, and you’re going to be old and gray when you get out. Do you really want that?”

  “Please go.”

  “If you have these secrets and they’re about someone powerful, you won’t be safe in jail. You won’t be safe anywhere unless you’re hidden.”

  I leave her there, but as I reach the front door, I feel her behind me. I don’t turn. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  I exit to the hallway and shut the door behind me. Greg pushes off the wall, and we head toward the elevator. We don’t speak until we are on the street. “Well?” he asks.

  I turn to face him. “I’m close to a breakthrough. I’m coming back in the morning.”

  “Define ‘breakthrough’?”

  “She says she can give us proof that one of her high-profile clients committed murder. And that’s just for starters.”

  I blink back to the present, my gaze on my now-empty coffee cup, remembering the most brutal part of my Laney experience: arriving at her apartment that next morning to her apparent refusal to open the door, only to later discover her hanging from a bedsheet in her closet. Murdered, I knew, but I couldn’t prove that based on the crime scene. I think back to Laney’s fear when she’d made me leave the night before. I don’t want to die, she’d said, with real terror in her voice. She was murdered.

  And in that moment, I have a revelation. If the murders I’m investigating tie back to Laney, and they seem to do just that, then could she be the common denominator we’ve been missing? Are the victims all names from or related to her client list, which she never got the chance to reveal before she died?

  My gaze lifts and lands at the front of the diner, where I find Greg standing in the doorway. With broad shoulders and standing six feet four inches, he consumes the entire archway. His jeans, boots, and burnt-orange Texas Longhorns shirt are all throwbacks from his college days in Austin. He scans the diner, but he misses me, which allows me to watch him, study him for telltale signs of his mood, his state of mind. He runs fingers through his full, curly dark-brown hair, which he does often, before walking to the hostess stand and, proving he’s in his comfort zone, grants the woman a charming grin.

  It’s all a part of his teddy-bear quality that earns him immediate favor, even trust, from strangers. He earned my trust, and I’d planned to knock sense into him, not second-guess his character. Until this moment and two profoundly fucked-up realizations: I still believe Laney was murdered to shut her up, and the only person I told that she was about to talk was Greg.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I wave at Greg, and the moment his eyes land on me, he grins a familiar grin and heads in my direction, his stride long, his presence somehow big yet unintimidating. He winks at a woman giving him the eye, his demeanor friendly, not arrogant, and it’s not long before he slides into the booth in front of me. “Lilah-fucking-Love.” And damn. He feels like friendship and warmth, like hot chocolate on a cold night with your favorite blanket wrapped around you. Safe. Comfortable.

  So comfortable that I give him a middle finger and use it to point to his face. “Still clean as a baby’s butt. Does that mean you showered for me, too?”

  “I smell like fresh-baked cookies, and I know how much you like fresh-baked cookies. Want to come over here and find out?” Of course, I’d never smell his cookies, and he knows it, and the invitation is quickly withdrawn anyway. He reaches for my cup, contempt in his blue eyes when he finds it empty. “None of my cookies for you.”

  Rose is beside us instantly, filling our cups, and Greg has her smiling in about thirty seconds flat. He’s just one of those huggable people, while I’m one of those punch-you-in-the-face kind of people, a contrast that worked for us as partners. However, we are not wholly opposites. His sweet tooth is the size of mine, and clearly leaning on this knowledge, he takes it upon himself to assume lunch is a sugar high. “We’ll take two of those mammoth cinnamon rolls I saw at one of the front tables,” he says to Rose, and she’s barely left the table by the time he’s dumping sugar in his cup. “You really are a bitch,” he says nonchalantly. “You know that, right?”

  “Practice makes perfect.”

  “God, I miss your smart-ass remarks, woman.” He sips his coffee. “Damn, I needed this.”

  “Up late last night with Misty? Or that Romano woman at the party the other night who you were cuddling up to?”

  “Olivia Mason is not a Romano, thus the name Mason.”

  “She’s niece to the Romano brother general believed to be their pack leader.”

  “Stepniece, and I’ve been around the block, Lilah. I know dirty. She’s not dirty.”

  “Are you?”

  He gives a humorless laugh. “You think I’m dirty now? Is that how this plays out now? You’re the good guy and I’m the bad guy?”

  “Nelson Moser’s a dirty cop. You worked with him before you got suspended.”

  “Exactly. He got me suspended.”

  “He got you the jo
b at Blink Security.”

  “We talked about this. I know it could be a setup of some sort, but I have to pay the bills. And so far, all I’ve gotten out of this is a good job and fucking fantastic pay.”

  “Maybe he wants you out of the picture. Maybe he hopes you’ll quit the force.”

  “Then he got what he wanted. I quit this morning.”

  I blanch, a rare reaction for me. “What?”

  “You heard me. I quit. I called in this morning and gave my notice. I’m working full-time for Blink now and making four times the money.”

  “It’s not about the money to you. You loved your job.”

  “Loving it wasn’t enough apparently, and being broke and unappreciated really loses its appeal fast.”

  I narrow my eyes on him. “There’s more to this. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Like there was more to you leaving for LA?”

  “I was suffocating.”

  His eyes meet mine, a cutting understanding in their depths that sends a razor blade of unease slicing down my spine. And for the first time ever, I consider Greg might know more than I think he knows about me and the reasons I left. “So,” he adds, “there’s more. You tell me your more and I’ll tell you mine. Or”—he pauses for obvious effect—“we can just settle on that we both needed to move on.”

  Our cinnamon rolls appear on the table in front of us, and after a brief conversation with Rose, we’re alone again, an awkward pause between us that isn’t us. We aren’t awkward. Greg picks up a fork. “Sugar makes it all better.” He eats a forkful and gives a moan. “Holy fuck. Set aside your pissy mood a minute and just take a bite.”

  I grimace but pick up my fork and dig in and do as ordered, mimicking him with a moan. “Sugar does make it better.”

  He laughs, and we both tear into another bite and another, that awkwardness fading into the comfort of silence we’ve always shared. “So. Did you call me over here this morning to lecture me on good vs. evil or just to see my pretty, clean-shaven face?”

  I want to talk about Laney. I want to trust him just like old times. But I am reminded of something my father says often: You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results. I trusted Greg. Laney died. “I was worried about you,” I say, and that’s the truth. I was. I am.

  He narrows his eyes on me. “And what else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Bullshit. Talk to me. Is it your family? Your case? Kane?” He holds up a hand. “Not that I’m assuming a set of balls is your problem.”

  “Well actually, on that, I was wrong and you were right. Someone with a set of balls usually is my problem. Which is why me and Moser don’t get along.”

  “Right. You kneed him to his knees.”

  I laugh. “It was fucking beautiful, too.”

  “Damn, I wish I could have seen that.” He scoops up icing with his finger and licks it off before adding, “You know how to bust some balls. Like mine, the first time we met. Oh fuck. You called me a ‘wimp-ass baby.’”

  I give him a disbelieving look. “You threw up at the crime scene and contaminated evidence.”

  “I didn’t contaminate evidence. And the damn eyes were missing. I still have nightmares about that scene. Sick fuck. I was wishing the death penalty still existed when we arrested that bastard.” He gives me a keen eye. “And you didn’t even act affected.”

  “I have a place I put things. You know that.”

  “Yeah, I know, and it’s kind of scary sometimes. But you catch bad guys. We did good things together.”

  “Yes,” I say, and seeing an opening, I take it. “And you want to know part of the reason I left? Part of my more?” I don’t wait for him to reply. “Two of three of our last cases went unsolved. I felt stale. Like I’d lost my touch.”

  “Are you fucking with me, Lilah? We had a bad streak that had nothing to do with us. We had a cold case that should never have been reopened, and our call-girl case ended in suicide.” He starts lightly running his pinkie finger over the table. It’s his nervous twitch, his tell. Wherever that pinkie is, if he’s nervous, it will move.

  “Laney was the call girl,” I say. “And you know I never believed she killed herself.”

  “The evidence said she did.”

  “She didn’t want to die, and what’s pathetic is that when she did, a whole lot of people breathed a little easier.”

  “On that you won’t get an argument from me. That case was the window to enough dirt to funk up a hell of a lot of people. We would have needed a task force to manage the funk, it would have reeked so badly.”

  His cell phone buzzes and he digs it from his pocket. “And that would be Misty,” he says, reading the text message without replying. “She has some tour staff she wants me to meet.” He sets his phone down on the table, his attention on me. “Apparently, at least one woman misses me when I’m gone.”

  “I missed you,” I say, and it’s not untrue, which is why the sledgehammer of doubt about him is pounding on me so damn hard.

  “We’ve talked, what? Two times since you left?”

  “Three. And that’s only because I really like you.”

  “Fuck, Lilah. I’d hate to be hated by you. And that’s for real.” He tosses money on the table. “It’s on me. I got a big payday this week. And damn it feels good not to be the broke one of the two of us.”

  “How big a payday? Because I have plans to buy a pie I need to pay for, too.”

  “Big enough for pie,” he says, tossing a fifty on the table and picking up the twenty. “When are you leaving?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Does that mean your case hasn’t closed or home is calling you back?”

  “The only thing calling me is that pie I ordered. It’s the only thing in this town I can’t live without. And maybe these cinnamon rolls, too.”

  “I hear that New York City case you were asking me about is ready to close, right along with the East Hampton case. That Woods character is your guy, right?”

  My eyes narrow on him. “You hear a lot for a guy who resigned.”

  “I’m still connected. So yeah. I hear things.”

  “From Moser?”

  “Yeah, but I called my ex-partner, the one who got shot before I landed Moser as a partner, and asked about the NYPD case for you.”

  “And?”

  “He heard the same about Woods being guilty, but he didn’t have anything else to add.” I grimace. He narrows his eyes on me. “You aren’t sold on Woods as the killer, are you?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You aren’t calling it done and over. And you haven’t packed up and left town again.”

  “My boss is making the call,” I say. “That’s the joy of the FBI. I don’t say when I come. I don’t say when I go.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Not really,” I say, downplaying it. “There’re more power plays in the FBI than with that Colin dude we arrested a few years back.”

  “Colin? Which one was he?”

  “That pimp we took down three times before he finally got fucked in jail instead of getting everyone else fucked.”

  He laughs. “Right. Fucking Colin.”

  Sensing his guard is down, I dive on past it. “Resigning won’t stop IA from looking into your case.”

  His glower is instant. “I didn’t do anything wrong, Lilah, if that’s what you’re getting at.” His phone buzzes again. He grabs it, and this time he types a reply before looking at me. “I need to go.”

  He starts to get up when a realization hits me. “Wait,” I belt out.

  He gives me a narrow-eyed look. “What?”

  I lean close to him. “The Romano chick. You were working on a Romano case when you were suspended. You’re using her to prove your innocence, aren’t you?”

  “I quit, Lilah. I’m not doing anything but getting off on living. And if that comes in the form of a hot Romano chick, so be it.”

  He looks me in th
e eyes when he says those words. He makes me believe him, but I don’t want to believe him. I don’t want Greg to be dirty. “I need to go, Lilah.” He stands up.

  “I’ll walk out with you,” I say, grabbing my briefcase and pushing to my feet.

  He walks on ahead of me, almost like he can’t get away fast enough, but I stay the course, on his heels with each immediate step of my own. He’s stalled at the bakery counter, which bottlenecks the door, a cluster of people blocking our exit. And that line ruins all interest I have in my to-go pie. We literally can’t get to the door, and Greg turns to face me. “You said a diner. Not a Black Friday fucking extravaganza.”

  It’s in that moment that a woman shoves through the bodies and steps between us. “Samantha?” I say of my brother’s prissy, rich bitch of a girlfriend, who just happens to be Kane’s fuck buddy.

  “Lilah,” she greets stiffly, and then, glancing at Greg, she asks, “Who are you?”

  “Lilah’s other brother,” Greg says.

  She frowns and glances at me. “You have two brothers?”

  “He’s a brother from another mother,” I say, and before she can ask what the hell that means, I look at Greg. “Samantha’s dating Andrew but fucking Kane.”

  Greg’s eyes go wide. “Really?”

  “Not really,” Samantha snaps, bristling, her arms folding in front of her and hoisting up the deep V of her black T-shirt. “I’m with Andrew now.”

  “Except for the other night,” I say to Greg. And then to her, “What are you doing here?”

  “Your brother likes the strawberry pie. It’s famous here, you know.”

  Greg chooses that moment to touch my shoulder and motion toward the door. “I’ll call you,” he says and turns away.

  “Wait,” I call after him, not even close to done with the bombshell or ten I’m thinking he has going on right now, but he’s already disappeared behind several big bodies.

  I take a step, but Samantha maneuvers in front of me. “I know you don’t believe this, Lilah,” she says, “but this thing with Andrew and me is real.”