Querulous disapproval stiffened his shoulders and tightened his expression. "This is an extremely peculiar conversation."
"You started it."
His sigh held a note of frustration. "Fair enough. Yes, I have experience. For Christ's sake, Gaby, I'm thirty-two. It'd be more than odd for me to be a virgin."
She supposed that made her more than odd.
He must've realized the same. "I didn't mean… Look… Surely you've learned enough about sex from television and music to know how most men operate."
"I'd say you were unlike most men." She could be a master of understatement. "But it's a moot point anyway. I've never owned a TV and I've never been a fan of music."
He did another double take. "You've never owned a television?"
"No. When I lived in foster homes, they had them, but I wasn't exactly invited to curl up with the others at family time." And it was safer to keep to herself.
Luther sat very still, just looking at her, enrapt. His hand lifted and he touched her hair. In a benign voice laced with tenderness, he whispered, "You keep cutting little pieces out of me, Gaby, and you don't even need that machete you carry to do it."
An alien sensation unfurled in her belly. It left her unsettled, even a little shaken. She slapped his hand away. "Keep your mitts to yourself, cop."
Rather than take offense, he smiled. "I gather the subject of sex is over."
"You got another subject?" Night air settled over her, cooling her overheated skin. In the playground behind them, the crickets came out to sing in tandem with other insects. The night should have been peaceful, but Gaby knew too much to ever be fooled. "Because if not, I should get going."
"Where?"
She had no idea. "Away from you." That'd be the first priority.
"Fine." He let out an aggrieved breath and, all business, settled back into the bench. "What do you know about cancer?"
The question hit Gaby like a cruel blow, deadening her wits.
"Well, well," Luther murmured, "there's an honest reaction for a change. I take you've known someone with cancer?"
For lack of a better response, she said, "What's it to you?"
"The man who was murdered—"
"Yeah, you told me." She didn't want or need to hear the lurid details again. "He had cancer."
"He more than had it. He was eaten up with it."
Gaby eyed him. "Listen, Detective. I'll admit the whole sex talk thing was interesting. Maybe even a little educational. But now you're just boring me." She did not want to talk about cancer.
"Boring or not, I expect an answer."
She could see that he did. Even a good guy like Luther Cross couldn't be dissuaded from his course, especially not when he thought he had just cause for a interrogation. What that cause might be, Gaby couldn't guess.
Deciding it'd be best for her to give him what he wanted so she could then seek solace away from him, she nodded. "Sure. I know cancer."
Brows coming together, Luther frowned at her. "You say that like it's a living thing, an acquaintance you've made."
"And you think it isn't? Trust me, cancer is very alive—alive enough to massacre without mercy."
Laying his arm along the back of the bench, Luther studied her for several terse moments before drawing some conclusion. "Convince me that it's alive."
"Do your own damn research."
"I'd rather get your perceptions. Or can't you back up that statement with explanations?"
Gaby snorted at the challenge, but she wouldn't back down. She finished off her Coke, crushed the can in one fist, and tossed it a few feet away to an overflowing trash receptacle.
"Good shot."
"Thanks." She sprawled out further. "The docs have fancier names for it, but when you break it all down, cancer is nothing more than rebel cells. Real ass kickers with the ability to populate out of control."
"Metastasize."
She shrugged. "Call it what you want. I call it a siege, a long-term, decimating invasion that lasts until death."
"Sounds right to me," Luther agreed.
In acknowledgment to the detestable topic, Gaby's voice went low and cold. "Normal cells have a life span. The old die off to make room for the new. But cancer isn't normal. It gets stronger, jacking up into great ranks, invading and wreaking havoc. Cancer's a son of a bitch, robbing from normal tissue until body parts, and eventually the body, dies from deprivation."
Luther kept a close watch on her as she spoke.
"Occasionally cancer shows mercy and snuffs away life before people realize what's happened. It spares them the excruciating, violent process." Her muscles tightened. "But most times it lacks any humanity at all, slowly and methodically eating away at sanity and strength."
Luther stroked her hair, the side of her throat. She flinched away, but of course that didn't stop him.
Memories had her breathing hard and fast even as it dropped her voice to near nonexistence. "Cancer rots organs and bores holes in the brain until disillusionment takes over. Where a good soul used to be, cancer leaves behind a shell."
In the far reaches of her consciousness, she felt Luther's caring touch. "You've put an awful lot of study into this, Gaby Cody."
"No," she whispered back. "I haven't studied it." She fixed her gaze on him instead of the abominable images from the past. "I lived it."
Apprehension cleared his face of all other expressions. "You've had cancer?"
Misleading him hadn't been her intent. "Worse." It would have been so much easier if she'd been the one wasting away. And more appropriate. "He was a very good man who I cared about."
"A friend?"
"Sort of." They hadn't been friendly in the typical way. They didn't share chitchat or have dinner out. Father had been a mentor, guiding and counseling her, often serving as her conscience, her parental influence, and her only confessor.
Strangers strolled by, rambunctious with too much drink. A woman's stagnant perfume hung in the air, and a man laughed too loudly at nothing at all.
"He was a very good person." Gaby waited until the strangers had passed. "Cancer killed him."
"I'm sorry."
"Why? You didn't even know him."
Again, Luther teased his fingers through her hair. "I get the feeling there haven't been many people you've cared about. Losing someone is always hard, but doubly so if you don't have anyone else."
Like a scalding cauldron, emotions tried to bubble up and over. But therein lay weakness and lack of caution. Careful, Gaby, she warned herself. Don't let a simple dose of concern turn you all mushy and talkative.
To free her hair from Luther's fingers, she slouched sideways into her seat and turned her face away. "Anyway," she said, "cancer's not contagious, but it sure as hell affects everyone who comes into contact with it. I was just one of millions who got to know it on an intimate level."
The silence that fell between them helped amplify the night sounds. Somewhere down the street, a fight broke out. A bottle broke. Loud music competed with rank cursing. Running footsteps retreated.
Into the stillness came the rustle of Luther moving closer. "You cut your hair, didn't you?"
At a loss how to deal with him, Gaby chose mockery. "Now see how observant you are? Nothing gets by you."
"It's a lot shorter and not all that even. Anyone could figure out that you cut it yourself."
"Few enough people even look at me, Detective, and no one else would pay any attention to my stupid hair." She barely paid any attention to it.
"Why did you cut it?"
"Would you want long hair hanging down your neck and getting in your face with the temps we've had?"
His gaze slipped over her, warm and tactile. A second later, his thumb followed the same path. "That blood I saw on you… you have a mark here now." His thumb brushed the spot. "It wasn't there before. Is that from the cut that made you bleed?"