“Not got a good feelin’ about this,” Mike murmured as he headed them back to the station.
“Nope,” Garrett agreed.
“We got dick,” Mike told him, something they knew.
“I wanna hit that house again later when he might be home,” Garrett replied.
“We can hit her hangouts in the meantime,” Mike said. “I’ll tell Dusty it’s gonna be a late one.”
They hit her hangouts, which were not surprisingly the perfect places to pick up the wrong guy.
This meant that no one said jack outside expressing their shock and sadness at the death of a sweet gal that everyone knew but no one knew who might want to kill her.
She also had not been to any of these hangouts the night before nor did any of the regulars know where she’d gone.
And at a quarter to eight, when they went back to Cutler’s, there was still no truck and no lights on in the house.
“We’ll try tomorrow,” Mike said.
“Right. Gotta get home so Cher can get to work and I can look after Ethan.”
Mike grinned at the windshield. “Domestic bliss already?”
“Don’t know, but you’ll be the second to know when I do.”
Mike chuckled.
They went back to the station, did what they had to do to end their days, and Garrett got to his place just in time for Cher to give him a kiss and rush out to work.
Taking one look at Ethan on his couch, he shrugged off his suit jacket and installed the Xbox.
Ethan went for it with some video game, but he did it jabbering to Garrett about his day. The sound of the TV and Ethan talking made his condo seem a lot less crappy-ass than it always did.
Garrett listened as he went for some food, finding he had more of it in his kitchen than he’d ever had in his life, including the part of his life that he shared with his ex-wife.
He made a sandwich.
And later, he and Ethan polished off one of the three bags of Oreos Cher had stocked, doing this while watching sports talk shows before they both hit the sack—Ethan, because he was a kid and was supposed to go to bed early; Garrett, because he’d been woken up early by a murder and was glad to put the day behind him.
But before he turned out the light, he made one call.
“Was pissed at you. Now pissed that I’m worried about you,” he told Ryker’s voicemail, then ordered, “Call me, Ryker.”
He hung up, hit the lights, and stretched out in bed.
He fell asleep.
Ryker did not call.
* * * * *
He approached the car.
It wasn’t a Fiesta.
It was a blue Equinox.
He didn’t want to approach, but his feet kept moving, taking him there.
He stopped outside the driver’s side door.
Shards of glass in her hair and on her clothing, sitting in a pool of her own blood, her top drenched with it.
Cher.
Garrett’s eyes shot open as his body jolted.
He stared at the dark, feeling cold because of the dream and the slick of sweat on his skin.
“Fuck,” he whispered, lifting his hands, pressing the pads of his palms to his eye sockets, forcing stars to shoot through his eyes in order to obliterate the residue of that dream. “Fuck,” he repeated.
He got it.
Finally, he got it. He understood.
His poison was different from Rocky’s.
He thought it was the same.
It wasn’t.
Now he understood.
He just had even less of a clue what to do about it.
But he knew who did.
* * * * *
Cher
At quarter to four in the morning, I let myself into Merry’s.
I shrugged off my jacket and silently put it and my purse on the dining room table.
The Xbox was not on the floor but in one of the shelves that had been empty, but now was not, under Merry’s TV.
My kid was sleeping on the couch.
It was a pullout that Merry had pulled out and put sheets and a thick blanket on.
But it was still a couch.
Something had to be done about that, but Ethan didn’t look uncomfortable.
He looked out.
Tomorrow.
I moved down the dark hall and saw Merry standing outside the door to his bedroom.
A near-to-four-in-the-morning welcome home.
Nice.
I said nothing.
He said nothing.
But when I got close enough, he hooked me with an arm around my waist and pulled me into his room.
The door catching barely made a noise.
Merry shuffled me back as I lifted my hands to his chest.
“Need to get my kid a bed, baby,” I whispered.
“I’ll talk to the guys. See what we can arrange for tomorrow.”
I nodded.
“Catch a killer?” I asked.
I saw his grin even in the dark.
“Not yet.”
My legs hit bed, then Merry and me hit bed, him on top.
His mouth went to my neck.
“You tired?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered.
His hand slid up my side, taking my shirt with it. “How tired?”
I shivered the good kind of shiver. “Not that tired.”
His hand slid over my ribs and started going up.
“Can you fuck quiet?” he asked.
My hands slid down his bare back until they encountered pajama bottoms.
Soft.
Flannel.
Nice.
“Absolutely,” I answered.
His mouth came to mine and I felt his smile before he kissed me.
We fucked hard. We fucked quick. It was great.