“Brayden.”
The young cop stopped. He glanced at Stride, then headed across the room toward Cat. He made sure no one else was in earshot around them, but he also kept a safe distance, which matched the distance that she saw in his eyes.
“I can’t talk, Cat,” he said in a clipped voice. “I have to help Stride with the security cameras.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, are you going to tell me if you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” Brayden replied. “You don’t need to be concerned. They patched me up and gave me an aspirin. That’s all I needed.”
Cat stood up from the window seat, and Brayden jumped backward as if she’d stepped out of the infectious disease ward. She kept her voice low. “I want to talk about what happened between us.”
“Not now.”
“Why, is this conversation going to take long, Brayden? I’m not an idiot. Obviously, you’re going to tell me it was a mistake, a moment of weakness, you never should have let it happen. Right? How hard is that to say?”
“Cat, please.”
“I know you liked it. I could feel it.”
“Later. We’ll talk about this later.”
“Does Stride know?” she asked. “Did you tell him?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m not going to tell him, either, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not going to get you fired.”
“I’m not worried about that,” he replied.
“Are you still my babysitter? Or did you make up an excuse to get out of it?”
Brayden took a step closer. His strength gave out a kind of aura that wrapped itself around her. “Stride gave me a chance to bail on this assignment. I said no, I wanted to keep going.”
“Because you want to be with me?”
He ran his hands back through his hair and left it messy. He had the look of a man desperately searching for control. She’d seen that look on men’s faces before, and they never found what they wanted. “Because I want to keep you safe. But there have to be ground rules, Cat. What happened between us can’t happen again. If you can’t accept that, then I’ll ask someone else to take over. You’re right, the kiss was a mistake. A huge mistake. That’s just reality. My job is to protect you, and I can’t do that if I lose my focus.”
“Do I make you lose your focus, Brayden?”
He didn’t answer, but she stared into his eyes and saw what she was looking for. He wanted her. Then he shook himself and broke the spell.
“I have to go,” he said.
Colleen Hunt was so caught up in the sketch she was drawing that she didn’t hear the knocking on her apartment door. When it stopped, and then started again, she finally looked up. The knock wasn’t the big, confident pounding that Curt usually made when he came to pick her up. This was a nervous little scratching, like a stray dog begging to be let in out of the cold.
She put her sketch pad on the coffee table and went to the door, swaying a little as she did. Her feet were bare on the linoleum. She wore a knee length yellow wrap dress with a lily of the valley design. She was smoking her second joint, which gave her dreamy, staring eyes and a wicked little smile. Curt said she was at her prettiest when she had a post-weed glow. Colleen liked the confident feeling it gave her, as if she could get whatever she wanted. Her artwork was best when she was high, too.
“Who is it?” she asked.
A panicked, barely audible voice hissed back. “It’s Wyatt.”
Colleen hesitated, then opened the door a few inches. “What are you doing here?”
“Can I come in?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Please, Colleen.”
“I think you should go. I know you’re a perv, Wyatt.”
“Oh, man, not you, too. I’m not! I didn’t do anything! The police searched my apartment, and they’re trying to arrest me. A friend called from Va Bene. The cops are over there. Hoops, too. And there’s a squad car across the street from the building. I had to sneak in through the back. I don’t even want to go upstairs to my place, because someone might be inside. Just a few minutes? Please, Colleen, I need to think!”
She sighed and opened the door wider, and Wyatt came inside like a freight train careening off the tracks. He went to the blinds and peered outside, then backed away from the window. He sat down on the sofa but didn’t stay there for more than a few seconds before he stood up again. He slipped his orange bandanna off his head and twisted it nervously between his hands.
“Jeez, Wyatt, chill,” Colleen told him. She walked to the sofa and plucked her joint out of a heavy glass ashtray she’d sculpted in high school. “You want a puff? You need to relax.”
He sat down again. “No. I can’t do that now. I told you what’s going on! It’s nuts! I don’t know what to do!”
“Talk to the police,” Colleen replied.
“And tell them what? Do you know what they think I did? They think I shot a cop!”
“Did you?”
“No! I swear, no! I don’t understand why any of this is happening to me!”
Colleen sat down next to him on the sofa. Wyatt was a wreck. She handed him a tissue to wipe his eyes and blow the snot from his nose. He hadn’t showered, and he smelled. His sunburnt cheeks looked extra-pink, and she could see all of the tiny blood vessels. He tugged on his dreadlocks as if he were about to wrap the ropes around his throat. She smiled an airy, weedy smile at him, and her dark eyes sucked him in and calmed him down. She put a hand on his knee.
“Listen, Wyatt. There’s no use pretending. I saw your pervy pics.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Amazon box you keep you under your bed. Cat and I went into your apartment. She found the box where you keep your stash, the one with all the pics. The evidence was all there. All the times you followed her. All the times you hung around outside her window. All those pictures you took of her naked. It was really creepy. And the gun, too. It was in the box. Is that the gun you shot the cop with?”
“I didn’t do that! I don’t even own a gun!”
“Well, what do you want me to say? We saw it, Wyatt.”
“It’s not mine!” he insisted. “There’s no box! I don’t have any box under my bed. There are no pics, no gun. This is a nightmare. Jesus!”
Colleen sucked in smoke from the joint between her fingers, and closed her eyes. “You’re so tense. Come on, relax. Get high with me.”
“Are you crazy? Not now!”
“Get high with me, and then we can fuck.”
“What? What about Curt?”
“Oh, who cares about Curt? I broke it off with him.”
“You did? When? Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t need him anymore. Come on, I’m horny, let’s do it. I know that’s what you want.”
“You. Are. Nuts. I swear. You’re out of your mind. I never should have listened to you. I wish you’d never told me about Cat.”
“Me?” Colleen asked, as the corner of her lips bent curiously upward. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“What am I—” Wyatt began, his face a mask of incomprehension. “Come on, Colleen. This was all you. You told me about this incredible girl who was on the cover of People and how I should try to meet her. You said you and Curt could work it out for me.”
Colleen blinked, and each blink felt slow in front of her eyes. “Wow, is that the story you’re going to tell the police? Because they really aren’t going to believe that.”
“It’s not a story. It’s the truth!”
She shook her head carefully back and forth. “That’s not how I remember it. I remember you had a copy of that magazine in your apartment, and you were going on and on to me about how amazing this girl was and how you absolutely had to meet her. Honestly, it was a little weird, Wyatt. It felt a little off.”