Under the Surface

by Anne Calhoun

  He raised an eyebrow in question.

  “My contractor,” she said. “I need him to replace the glass in my windows. I can’t live here forever.”

  “East Side guy?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  He cleared his throat. “A cop I know does renovation work on the side. I called him before you got up. He can install new glass Monday after work and he’ll keep it quiet. I just need to call him back to give him your approval.”

  Slowly she lowered the phone and tapped the screen to end the call. “Because you don’t want the whole East Side to know about the shooting.”

  “Until we have a better handle on the investigation, yes,” he said quietly.

  “How did you keep it out of the paper?” she asked. “Anybody with a police frequency app on their smartphone can monitor the radio.”

  “Do you have any idea how often we respond to a ‘shots fired’ call on the East Side? Multiple times a night,” he said. “No one’s going to pay any attention to what happened.”

  She rubbed her thumb across her iPhone as she considered his words. “And that’s why I’m here, not at Caleb’s office strategizing a lawsuit. Go ahead and call your friend.”

  He didn’t push, just wrung out the dishcloth and draped it over the faucet, then made the quick call. When he turned to face her again, she was still staring at him, that assessing look in her eyes.

  “You’re handling this much better than I am.”

  “I’ve known from the beginning who I am,” he said with a shrug.

  “Somebody shot at us last night!”

  Oh. That part of “this.” “Not my first time at that rodeo,” he said bluntly.

  Eve narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth. “About that—” she started.

  The doorbell rang. Eve looked at him. He waited, then his cell phone, clipped to his belt opposite his gun, buzzed. He flipped it open. “It’s them,” he said, but he still peered through the blinds before opening the door.

  “McCormick said you live on the most boring street in all of Lancaster,” Sorenson said as she slipped through the door, then nodded at Eve, hanging back by the dining room table. “I called in Carlucci to take over. He’s great at sitting on his rear end, and McCormick would rather be back on the street anyway. Ms. Webber.”

  “Detective,” Eve replied politely, then turned to Hawthorn. “Ian, you jerk. You are so on my shit list.”

  Her scathing glare slid right off the LT. “It was the right thing to do, Eve. We didn’t know what you could handle, and we never thought it would turn out like this.”

  Eve opened her mouth to argue, but Sorenson stepped past Hawthorn and drew Eve into the living room, quietly asking how she was feeling, if she needed anything from her apartment. Hawthorn looked at her, then at Matt, shook his head, but said nothing.

  Eve spoke from the dining room. “Ian, Detective Sorenson asked if I’d identify some people you’ve photographed with Lyle.”

  Matt recognized the technique. Start with something simple, giving names. Nothing incriminating or snitchy in that request, but it would make it harder for Eve to break the flow of the conversation if it took a more participatory turn.

  “We’d appreciate it,” Ian said gravely.

  “Do you want your brother here for this conversation?” Matt said. Because it was the right thing to do.

  Amusement flared in her eyes. “I think giving Caleb a couple of days to calm down is a good idea.”

  No one disagreed with that conclusion. Matt felt the vibe shift as Sorenson and Hawthorn incorporated this conversation into their judgment of Eve’s shrewdness. Hawthorn headed for the dining room and Sorenson sent him a look that read Damn, Dorchester. His return look conveyed See what I’ve been up against for the last two weeks?

  Hawthorn shifted a thick folder and a laptop to the table and began unwinding the power cord. “You’re well connected to the East Side. We usually have to piece together networks and relationships after several arrests, and information from East Side informants is sporadic.”

  “No matter what we do it doesn’t seem to improve,” Sorenson added as they seated themselves around the table.

  “Without backing from neighborhood leaders, you’re wasting your time,” Eve said. “The Eastern Precinct has a reputation for corruption. Why snitch when there’s a good chance nothing will come of it, and an even better chance of retaliation?”

  “Why did you come in?”

  “Because if we don’t work together, nothing will change,” she said precisely. “And because I take it personally when a drug dealer thinks I’ll be his shell company or whatever.”

  From the folder at his side Hawthorn pulled duplicates of the photographs decorating the bulletin board back at the precinct. “These are all individuals who’ve been seen with Murphy since he arrived. About half of them are in the system for one reason or another. We’d like your help with the other half.”

  She tucked her leg under her and sifted through the photos Hawthorn handed her. “Well, that’s me,” she said, pointing to the photograph of her with Lyle at Chat Noir.

  “Pretty fancy for a dealer,” Sorenson mused.

  “Lyle’s always been more uptown than East Side,” Eve said. “His mother, Dolores, grew up poor. Good people who live in poverty often have very rigid definitions of respectable. They want better than they had for their children. She didn’t want Lyle to have anything to do with Victor’s business, and used Victor’s money to make sure Lyle didn’t look like a corner kid. Perfect grammar and elocution, nice clothes. None of it kept Lyle from worshipping his father.”

  “Why did he approach you?” Hawthorn asked.

  “After what happened yesterday this seems impossible to understand, but we were friends. Caleb wouldn’t have anything to do with Lyle, but Lyle and I, we had things in common.” She stopped, as if she’d said something she regretted, or maybe just choosing her words.

  Hawthorn typed. Sorenson preferred the old-fashioned method of pen to paper, although come trial prep half her notes were doodles and oddly drawn little caricatures. Eve looked at the photo, tilting it under the overhead light to reduce the glare before setting it aside.

  “What did you have in common?” Matt asked in the silence.

  The answer to that question came far less readily, and with a look through her lashes he couldn’t read. She shifted in her chair, putting both feet flat on the floor, then crossing her legs as she chose her words. “Growing up with Caleb was difficult.”

  Sorenson gave an amused snort, and Eve cut her a glance.

  “Impossible to understand, right? He’s brilliant. You don’t get a full ride to Yale Law without genius IQ brains. He could have played pro basketball, and he’s a firstborn son in a family that’s got some pretty defined gender roles. I wasn’t him, which nobody expected of a girl, but I’m not my mother either. Lyle understood about not fitting in, especially after his father went to prison and his mother got even more religious and strict.”

  Her jaw tightened, then she shuffled through the stack of photographs again until she found pictures of a meeting deep in the East Side. “You probably have him in the system, but that’s Travis Jenkins. He was Lyle’s best friend back in the day, always ready to get dirty so Lyle could stay clean. He stayed around after Lyle left, but from what I hear he never made it to the Strykers’ inner circle. He’s a blabbermouth, always trying to look like he’s on the inside by showing off what he knows. But … Travis’s cousin Maria lives with one of the Stryker lieutenants, a guy who used to sing in my dad’s youth choir. Beautiful baritone. Dad was crushed when he lost him to the Strykers but he still baptized both of Maria’s kids eight, maybe ten years ago. Through Maria, Travis is probably Lyle’s source of street information.”

  Eve’s memory was nearly perfect, remembering names, relationships, connections forged in gangs or juvenile hall or after-school programs and church. Several hours later, Chinese takeout cartons and empty soda cans littered
the table and the sun was setting. They’d identified most of the individuals not in the system, and Eve was sitting cross-legged on a dining room chair, picking through a carton of cashew chicken.

  Sorenson sat back and dropped her pen on the legal pad brimming with notes. “It’s a great cover,” she said. “A business owned by a woman, targeting women, and highly visible on every social networking site. Bars don’t take in or deliver a measurable product, so the money’s hard to track.”

  “I’m practically perfect in every way,” Eve said lightly. “Do you really think he meant to kill me last night?”

  Matt shook his head. “Too amateurish. He meant to scare you. When a guy who’s come up in the Strykers decides he wants you dead, he’ll do it himself, and he’ll do it in one of those empty warehouses by the river, where no one will find the body until it starts to stink. I think he planned on you being the same as you were in high school. Alienated from your family. Maybe he asked around before he approached you, heard about how your family felt about Eye Candy, maybe even heard you were estranged for a while. He thought you’d be alone, afraid, easy to persuade. He wants to own you.”

  “I am not for sale,” Eve said precisely.

  “Then he’ll steal you,” Matt said bluntly, trying to impress on her exactly how dangerous this was. “When I show up he thinks suddenly you’ve got someone in your life who doesn’t care if you’re a cocktail waitress or a bar owner, someone you can depend on.”

  “You,” she said.

  “Me,” he agreed, then stopped, because talking about the soft, secret thing growing between them in front of Hawthorn and Sorenson made his stomach clench.

  She knew it too. After another one of those unreadable looks through her lashes, she peered into the cashew chicken container, set it aside, and said, “What, exactly, are you proposing?”

  Hawthorn spoke up. “We give Murphy what he wants. We pull Detective Dorchester out, and put someone else in undercover to protect you. Or we wire up the bar and set up a surveillance operation.”

  “Absolutely not,” Eve said. “I’m not giving up that level of privacy.”

  “Natalie could take a long vacation,” Sorenson mused. “I could step in.”

  “Nat’s never taken more than a weekend off,” Eve said doubtfully. “Her whole family lives in Lancaster, both sides, four generations.”

  “You could fire her.”

  Eve scoffed. “She’s my best friend. If I fire her, everyone on the East Side will be talking about it. Look, if the point is for this to look totally natural, that’s not going to work. We’re working under the assumption Lyle is pissed that I’m dating ‘Chad,’” she said.

  “And?” Matt asked.

  “If I thought someone shot at me because of my choice in men, the last thing I’d do is fire him or break up with him, and everyone on the East Side knows it,” Eve said. “I’d get the biggest, gaudiest engagement ring I could find and set a wedding date.”

  Matt’s heart stopped dead in his chest. Could he put on the gold band sitting in his desk drawer for a fake marriage? To Eve?

  Jesus Christ. Caleb Webber would do his level best to slice off Matt’s balls and feed them to rabid, flea-ridden dogs if Matt’s crash-entry into Eve’s life resulted in a sham marriage.

  She gave him a glittery little smile. “Okay, maybe not a wedding date, but I wouldn’t break it off. Webbers don’t take intimidation well. We’ve had bricks thrown through the front window of the house and the church. When I was in the fifth grade Dad tossed two kids out of an after-school program. They stole our dog from the backyard, killed her, and left her body on the front porch. In honor of Goldie, we do not knuckle under to intimidation tactics. Lyle knows this. If I dump Chad because I’m spooked, he’s going to think I’ve lost my nerve, and I’m not a good front for him.”

  “Maybe Chad got spooked and ditched you,” Sorenson said dispassionately.

  Fuck that, because in this case, Chad Henderson was basically Matt Dorchester, and Matt didn’t spook. “If we keep going with this, then I stay undercover,” Matt said.

  “As my bartender or as my boyfriend?” Eve asked.

  “Both,” he said firmly, and hoped like hell he was doing the right thing.

  “Detective Dorchester,” Hawthorn began.

  “Sir, something about this has Lyle spooked. Maybe he’s getting pressure from higher up the food chain. We can’t leave her protected only by surveillance gear. Keeping me there full-time is a hell of a lot cheaper than detailing six officers round the clock to watch the bar.”

  Hawthorn leveled a look at Matt that had Sorenson tilting back in her chair to examine the ceiling and a tiny grin dancing around Eve’s mouth. “Your concern for the department’s budget,” he said, stressing the last word, “is duly noted, Detective. If Eve consents to your continued presence in her life, I agree.”

  Judging by the expression on Eve’s face, that was by no means a given. She picked up the takeout carton again, dug through it for a tiny piece of chicken, considered it, then put the carton back on the table. She sat in silence for a while, shuffling the photos together and aligning the edges, the careful, precise movements buying time to think things through. Pale pink stole into her cheeks, then she said, “Congratulations, Chad. You’ve got your job back.”

  Her tone walked a fine line between playful and mocking, and he knew that no matter how wholeheartedly Eve committed to making a dent in the East Side’s drug trade, getting manipulated into it didn’t sit well.

  After what happened earlier in the afternoon, getting called “Chad” didn’t sit well with him.

  “You fired him?” Sorenson asked.

  “Right after he called 911,” she said lightly.

  A broad grin spread across Sorenson’s face, marking the moment Eve went from other to ally. Even Hawthorn looked mildly amused as he said, “Thanks, Eve.”

  They could laugh at his expense, but this was no joke. His father’s words echoed in his ears. Emotion shows weakness, Matthew. Control your only strength, your only friend. You do the right thing for the people who trust and depend on you.

  On the East Side bad things happened to people who cooperated with the police. Especially bad, brutal things happened to women. He was now Eve’s first line of defense against Lyle Murphy or the Strykers or whoever was after her.

  Back to the bag. And cold showers.

  “Okay,” Hawthorn said, gathering up the photographs and closing his laptop. “For the time being, Matt stays undercover at Eye Candy. We wait for the next move and take it from there.”

  She stood to the side as Matt closed and locked the door, double-checking the locks and chain more than was actually necessary. When he turned around, he found her leaning against the wall not twelve inches from him. Her feet were bare, and wavy strands escaped from her ponytail, gently brushing her flushed cheeks. The skin of her throat and collarbone gleamed with a thin film of moisture, and he flashed back to watching pink infuse her face and neck as she tipped over the edge into orgasm.

  He had to get new AC in this house.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Uh-oh,” Eve said. “I’ve seen that look before.”

  “What look?” he replied. He’d learned to control his face from a very early age but controlling anything around Eve wasn’t going well.

  “It’s Sunday night. We’re here until Tuesday, alone in your house, with nothing to do except stay out of sight. It’s the perfect setup for thirty-six hours of adult fun with chocolate syrup and whipped cream and whatever else you have at hand, but that look that says as much as you want to do this, you’re not going to,” she said dryly. “I’m very familiar with that look.”

  Shoulders square, hands loose at his sides, he looked her right in the eye. “You’re right. I’m not,” he said.

  She absently tugged her hair loose from the rubber band, gently massaging her scalp and sending the now-dry strands tumbling into her face. “So you want to start pretending we don’t send
up sparks every time we look at each other?” she asked as she tamed the glimmering black mass and secured it with the rubber band.

  For the first time in their relationship the circumstances were clearly defined, objectives identified. Protect her while they took down Murphy. Keep her physically and emotionally whole, so when this was over, she could walk away unscathed. People, especially women, got attached when they had sex. Denying what he wanted was best for her.

  But he couldn’t lie to her. When the job called for half-truths and misdirection, he’d done it; but not anymore, not with her cooperation, not with her in his house. “No,” he said quietly. “That’s not what I want.”

  “That’s why you should do it. You want to.”

  “What about after?” he said as he shoved his keys into his pocket.

  “Matt, I’m not thinking more than about thirty seconds ahead right now.”

  “One of us should.”

  She laughed, and again the sound was somewhere between playful and mocking. “Very mature of you,” she said. “Very protective. But you’re thinking too far ahead. Up until 2:30 a.m. Sunday morning we were the textbook example of sudden, explosive sexual chemistry. If we get very proper and formal with each other, it’s going to look odd. To make this thing work we need to act like we can’t get enough of each other, like the sex just gets better and better every time we do it, and we’re doing it every chance we get.”

  In other words, like they were a new couple falling madly, totally, completely in love.

  Her words spawned a whole medley of full-color, tantalizing images in his brain—sex in her bed, in the office, in the storeroom, all the time in the world to do everything he imagined and come up with a dozen new ideas—and the ache under his ribs intensified. His pulse sped up, sending adrenaline into his veins. With the sharpened senses came awareness. He felt vulnerable. Eve’s crackling, live-wire energy exposed bruised places he’d kept hidden. He felt, and sex would only make it worse.

  His father’s shadowbox of medals and ribbons caught his eye, triggering his father’s voice in his memory. Emotions create weakness. Weakness puts you and your team at risk. “So we keep acting.” As he spoke he brushed past her, down the hallway and into his bedroom.