Chapter 94
Wade stays the night at my place, mostly because we’re both exhausted. We literally eat cold gourmet pizza from the takeout bags at three in the morning before we fall into bed. The last thing on my mind before darkness consumes me is the poem left in Ava Lloyd’s mouth, as if she were speaking to me.
Naked, he lies in the blinded room
Chain-smoking, cradled by drugs, by jazz
as never by any lover’s cradling flesh.
I wake to the alarm only a few hours later, and those words are still in my head, and with good reason. He used my name. Evan was right. He was speaking to me. The jazz poetry connection plays in my mind, and I wonder if my name is the root of his obsession.
Wade heads to the shower, and I pull on a robe, following him to the bathroom but forgetting about the toothbrush I’d been intending to put to use. Instead, I lean on the bathroom counter, my mind chasing empty circles for so long that Wade finishes his shower. I blink him into view as he wraps a towel around his waist.
“Why is he obsessed with me?”
“I was thinking about that in the shower. Could it be your name?”
“Yes,” I say, animated with the connected thought. “I had the same thought.” I deflate quickly. “But that feels too simple.”
“Simple to who? You and The Poet? Because I didn’t know jazz and poetry had a connection until I met you and you talked about your grandfather.”
My mind is still chasing those circles. “Jazz. Jazz. Jazz,” I murmur, and my eyes go wide. “Record stores and old jazz albums. What if he loves jazz and poetry like my grandfather? Maybe that’s what he’s telling me. God, I don’t want to think that he knows me well enough to know that. I’m praying he just connected my name to poetry.”
“Is that even possible?”
“It’s a possibility. Jazz poetry is a subgenre, so yes. It’s possible. I have to get the team checking with record stores.” I push off the counter and disappear into the bedroom, grabbing my phone to dial Chuck.
He answers on the first ring. “You’re really back.”
“I am,” I say, giving him directions and promising him chocolate, lots of it, soon.
The minute we hang up, I head to the shower myself. Not long later, I’m dressed in my standard uniform, guzzling coffee in the kitchen with Wade doing the same. “We should talk,” he says. “About us.”
“You’re my boss now.”
He arches a brow. “So I can sleep over, but we can’t talk about us? I’m not going to die on you, Sam.”
He hits ten nerves, all of them raw. “Neither of us can promise that, not in our jobs.”
“So if we sleep together and eat together and enjoy each other, but pretend we aren’t a couple, that somehow makes us immune to the pain if it happens?”
“This case has gotten personal, Wade. I shouldn’t have you staying here at all. What if he comes after you?”
“Then I kill him and this is over.”
Anger snaps inside me. “What if he kills you?”
He motions between us. “This exists. Pretending it doesn’t won’t make one of us dying easier. It makes living harder.”
There’s a knock on the door. Wade arches a brow. “Expecting someone?”
“No, but I never am. Wade, listen—”
“Save it.” He downs another swallow of coffee. “I need to get out of here.” He heads for the door.
I catch his arm and make my appeal. “Let’s just get through this case. Then we’ll figure it out. Please. Just be patient a little longer.”
He leans in and kisses me, but he says nothing. I’m not sure what to think about that, and when he walks around the island and heads toward the living room, regret settles hard in my belly. I don’t want to lose him, which is the entire point. The danger of him being close to me is real right now. Eager to reiterate that point, I quickly follow him, rounding the kitchen corner, but it’s too late to catch him. I’ve forgotten the knock and visitor, while Wade is already opening the door.
He steps back enough to allow Lang to enter the apartment, his detective uniform for the day a dark pair of blue jeans and a matching blue polo shirt. He smirks in Wade’s direction. “I guess I know who is back on overnight duty.”
He’s baiting Wade, but Wade isn’t a man to be baited. Wade just gives him a far too tolerant look.
My look is not tolerant at all. “What are you doing here, Lang?” I ask, folding my arms.
“I come bearing news.”
Wade lifts his hand in my direction. “Call me later.”
“You’re gonna want to hear this, too,” Lang says, shutting the door before Wade can escape, and then drops his bombshell. “They found Richard Williams dead last night.”
Richard Williams being the ex-con who killed my father. I swallow hard with a mental flash of my father’s face the moment that bullet hit his chest.
“Where?” I ask.
“A trailer park off Riverside,” Lang says. “He had a gun superglued to his hand and pills and money on the table. The first responders assume that the dumbass glued the gun to his hand to force himself to use it. He appears to have chickened out and taken pills instead. And then chickened out again. He called 911 to try to save himself, but it was too late. We’ll never know for sure.”
I inhale a hard-earned breath and let it slowly trickle from my lips. I expect to feel something life changing. I expect the ground to damn near quake under my feet, but it does not. It’s one of those ground zero moments again, where I wonder if I’m becoming too cold, too removed, too much like the killers I hunt. “It’s good news. Thanks for coming by.”
Wade steps in front of me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m perfect,” I say. “I’m motivated to do my job.”
He studies me for a long, intense moment and proves once again why I’ve never walked away from Wade by saying, “I understand. I’ll talk to you later.” He nods and turns to leave.
I catch his arm. “You know—”
“Many things,” he promises, his voice gentle with understanding that wasn’t present in the kitchen. And with that, he leaves me more determined than ever to catch The Poet before someone else I love ends up dead.
Chapter 95
Wade leaves. Lang doesn’t. And I know from his face that he’s going to try to start a deep conversation.