“Because slicer, sterilizer and carver aren’t on the nose?”
“You gotta admit Scyther was on point, though.”
Linc made an unimpressed face. “It’s a’ight.”
Martin scoffed his displeasure at Linc’s refusal to acknowledge his brilliant mind.
Linc nodded at the pieces of evidence scattered on the table. “What we got?”
Martin’s eyes fell to the gleaming table. “Not much man. Even caught off guard, this guy is meticulous. Really good at cleaning up after himself. He didn’t leave a lick of evidence with Todd Lockwood, and what little he left, this time, is clean as a whistle. Virtually untraceable. No prints on the syringe he dropped. No shoe prints. No nothing.”
Only halfway listening, Linc reached for the Ziploc bag he’d been frowning down at for over a minute.
Martin slapped his hand, causing Linc to yank it back.
“Gloves,” Martin spat.
Grumbling every expletive he could think of, Linc snatched a pair of plastic gloves from the box on the end of the table. After yanking the gloves on, he lifted the plastic baggy that had caught his attention.
For over a minute, he squinted into the bag, turning it at all angles. Making a frustrated sound, he leaned down and flicked on the brightest light available, placing his elbows on the table. He brought the baggy under the yellow glare of the lamp so he could get a better look.
“The fuck is this?” Linc spat, twisting what looked to be a shard of plastic around. “Looks like… a cow print?” He lifted an eyebrow while looking up at Martin.
“Chipped nail polish.” Martin put Linc out of his confused misery. “We also found a torn piece of latex, presumably from a glove. Couldn’t lift a print, but it probably ripped from a fingernail popping through.”
“Eugene said the assailant couldn’t have been an inch over 5’6”, hundred twenty pounds. On top of that, they were wearing nail polish?” Linc pointed to the bag, and his heartbeat sped up. “So it is a woman.”
“Or a very tiny, very flamboyant man. Eugene’s girlfriend’s already confirmed the polish isn’t hers, so if we’re looking for a woman, that narrows our search down to about… oh… five hundred thousand people. Not including the flamboyant men.”
Linc squinted at the bag. “Who in their right mind wears cow print—” He couldn’t even finish his thought as his mind took over, making him shoot up from the table with such ferocity he nearly took it off its feet as he gave the edge of it all his weight.
When the table bobbed, Martin shot out of his stool and tumbled backward, momentarily worried that Linc would overturn that table, and it would land on top of him.
Only when the table was steady again did Martin relax. “Why must you always have your epiphanies when I’m on the other side of this two hundred pound table?”
Linc wasn’t listening, however, his eyes in a distant place. They danced back and forth as he seemed to go to silent war with the thoughts in his head. He frowned and looked down at the baggy, studying the chipped polish. He looked back up, letting his eyes disappear into another place again.
Then, he went for the door.
“Hey!” Martin reached through the air, knowing that would do nothing to stop Linc if he didn’t want to be stopped. He waggled his outstretched fingers. “I’m not done with that yet.”
With a growl that filled the room, Linc turned on his heel, stomped back toward the table and slammed down the baggy before jetting for the door.
—
“Veda, on behalf of every employee in this hospital will you please bend it back, or drop it low, or do whatever it takes to defuse that man? Ten employees have gotten written up this morning alone—Gage is on a rampage, and frankly we can’t take it anymore.”
“I can’t drop it low or bend it back for a man who’s not even in my bed.” The next morning at the hospital, Veda knew she must be breaking records from the sheer weight of the bags under her eyes. They were truly award winning.
“So he really just packed a bag and bounced?” Jake asked from where he leaned on the other side of the pharmacy window. “No wonder you both look like hell rising.”
“Maybe it’s better this way,” she mumbled, kicking the toe of her shoe on the floor. “Maybe I’m too fucked up to make a relationship work. If I set him free now, he might even still have a chance to fix things with Scarlett.”
Jake tilted his head. “Now don’t stand there for one second and pretend you wouldn’t rip Scarlett’s eyeballs out if she even dared look in his direction. You love that man’s dirty underwear just as much as he loves yours. Your eyes are so pathetic and devastated right now I’m beginning to worry it’s catching. Thank God this glass is four inches thick. Your misery’s gotta be contagious.”
“Gage wants all of me, but I can never give him that. Every time I think I’ve let him in enough, he pushes for more. I’ll never be able to allow him to go as deep as he needs to.” Veda looked down the busy hallway, where the stares of her co-workers remained cold and judgmental. “Maybe loving him means letting him go. I’ll only hurt him, right?” She looked back at Jake. “A woman like me… there’s no way I can carry on a normal, functioning relationship. One way or another, everything dark in me is going to transfer right over to him.”
Jake frowned at her. “I’ve never met a person with so little self-awareness.” He leaned in closer to the microphone on the other side of the glass so she could hear him loud and clear. “Veda, you are a treasure.”
“I think you mean ‘predator’,” she corrected. “Luke Greer was right. I came here to make my enemies pay for what they did, but the only person paying is Gage. And now Luke. The only people paying are the ones who don’t deserve it.”
“But Todd did pay. And Eugene will pay. Eventually. They all will.” Jake raised his eyebrows. “Right?”
Veda took a deep breath, realizing that fact was the only thing left in the world to calm her. “Right. I just have to make sure Luke is in the clear first. I’m going to visit the madame he mentioned, Nikki. Find out if she can help make a connection between Eugene and Luke’s missing sister.” Veda’s eyes softened as she met Jake’s. “Luke relapsed because of me. He did the work to get clean, but because Eugene named him as a possible suspect, he lost out on a job opportunity and was so devastated he shot up again.”
Jake sighed. “You can’t blame yourself for that, Veda.”
Veda’s eyes moistened. “No?” she whispered. She continued before he could answer. “I refuse to allow anyone else to be hurt because of me. It’s bad enough I’ve already dragged you into the madness.”
“Oh, honey, madness is my middle name. If anybody’s corrupting anybody, it’ll be me, not you.”
Veda smiled, but she felt it ringing false.
Jake must’ve felt it too because he smashed his forehead against the glass. “Buck up, hun.”
“I miss Gage.” She pouted. “It’s only been one day, and I miss him like crazy. If he breaks up with me…” Just the thought made her chest swell. She couldn’t finish.
“He said he felt like you weren’t giving him enough of yourself, right? So why don’t you give him something? It doesn’t have to be everything. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be the truth. Just… give the man something.”
Veda thought about that, and just as a light bulb went off in her head, the drawn-out, high-pitched voice of one of the nurses stole her attention.
“Hiiiiiii, Linc.”
It stole Jake’s attention, too. He slammed into the divider, gluing his cheek to the glass as he tried to get a peek down the hallway.
“Did I just hear Linc?” Jake asked, already licking his lips in anticipation.
Veda chortled and turned to look. Sure enough, Linc was at the other end of the hall, making his way straight toward her. The determined glare in his green eyes stopped Veda’s heart cold, his demeanor even more serious and on edge than usual.
Still, the utterly unapproachable scowl on his face wasn’
t enough to sway his admirers, who all went out of their way to greet him with sultry voices and waggling fingers.
“I thought you said he already picked up the altered list?” Veda whispered to Jake, unable to keep the accusation out of her voice.
Still smashing his face against the glass, barely aware of her, Jake mumbled. “He did, girl. Hours ago. Said something about losing his badge too.” Jake gasped. “What’s he wearing? Are his arms showing? God, his arms. How tight are the jeans?”
Veda swallowed thickly. “Well, he’s looking at me like he got the original list. You know, the same list that set off alarm bells in your head the moment you saw it?” Veda couldn’t deny what she saw in Linc’s eyes as he dodged nurses and doctors left and right, all of whom had a smile and a warm good morning for him. Veda couldn’t help a smirk. “God, he can barely make it through the halls without the nurses climbing all over him.”
“He hasn’t been seen with a woman in five years. They all want to be the owner of the magical pussy that saves him.” Jake said. “These nurses would murder you in cold blood for a shot at that dick.”
Veda’s spine straightened as the stern line between Linc’s eyebrows grew deeper. The unwavering look he gave her, even as her fellow employees literally clawed at him, was enough to bring Veda to her toes. She lifted her head, higher with each step he grew nearer until she was craning her neck up at him.
His shadow loomed deep as he came to a stop in front of her, legs planted wide, head tilted.
Had he always been this massive?
Veda couldn’t break her gaze from his green orbs, noticing how they had shards of gold up close. Every nurse that passed her had a new level of disdain in their eyes. The whispers about what a tramp Veda was came through louder than ever.
If Linc heard them too, he didn’t show it.
Instead, he reached out and clasped Veda’s arms.
Nurses gasped. Doctors tripped over their feet. A chart clattered to the ground in the distance.
But as her heartbeat tripled, her eyes widened, and she finished coming to the very tips of her toes, feeling the warm zap shooting through her as Linc’s fingers trailed down her arms, Veda couldn’t make herself care about any of it. She’d neglected to put on a long sleeve shirt under her scrub top that morning, so she felt every inch of the burning trail his callused fingers left, cooled down only by the ring on his left finger. His eyes never moved from hers as he stroked her arms, all the way down until just the tips of her fingers remained in his hold.
He lowered his eyes, cradling her fingers in his palms as gently as a newborn baby. The line between his brows deepened as he stroked the beds of his thumbs over her zebra-print nails. His lips pulled tight.
“Zebras,” his deep voice rang out.
“Zebras,” she confirmed, voice low and shaky.
Jake knocked on the glass. “I like Zebras.”
Linc lifted his eyes back to Veda. They’d grown a darker green, harder at the core. “How long have they been zebras?”
Veda’s entire world ground to a halt. She tried to open her mouth to answer, but only a sputter came out. After her fight with Gage, she’d only been able to calm herself down by doing her nails. She’d spent hours just painting them. They’d gone from cow print, to hot pink, to chevron stripes, to jet-black until she’d finally landed on zebra print.
When the silence went on a touch too long, Jake knocked on the glass. “I’ve been vomiting in my mouth over that awful zebra-print manicure for at least three weeks, Detective Hill. I try to tell her that it’s gaudy, but she refuses to hear it.” Jake batted his lashes. “Detective, will you please tell her that zebra print is gaudy?”
Veda nodded sharply, croaking. “Sounds about right. Yep. Three weeks.”
When Linc’s eyes fell back to her nails, Veda shot Jake a look of silent thanks, still recovering from the screaming halt every muscle in her body had come to at Linc’s question.
Linc’s eyes narrowed, squinting, then they fell back to her hands.
Veda held her breath.
Still running the beds of his fingers over her nails, his voice lowered. “I dropped my badge in Eugene’s room yesterday.” His eyes revisited hers. “After that kid charged in.”
Veda’s heart nearly climbed out of her throat, momentarily stealing her words. “I’m real sorry to hear that.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Any idea what might’ve happened to it?”
“Nope,” Veda chirped.
Jake knocked. “Did you try lost and found, like I said earlier? Second floor?”
Linc gave Jake a cursory glance but didn’t respond. His eyes crept back to Veda.
Veda had no idea what she was seeing in his gaze.
Copping one more feel of the smooth polymer covering her nails, Linc dropped her hands and turned away, moving down the hall.
Veda was speechless. She heard the sound of Jake’s cheek squeaking against the glass as he tried to watch Linc go.
“What the hell was that?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know, but I think you just saved my life.” She looked at him. “How did you know to lie about the cow print?”
Jake shrugged. “I’ve never seen that man give any woman in this hospital a second glance, let alone touch one. I knew something had to be up. Either he wanted to fuck you, or he was onto you. Looks like it was the latter.” His voice grew suggestive as he wagged his eyebrows. “Or maybe both.”
Jake continued on, regaling Veda with all the filthy things he’d do to Lincoln Hill, but it was a distant echo to Veda. Her stunned eyes had returned to Linc who turned a corner at the end of the hall and shot her another look over his shoulder before disappearing out of sight.
Her stomach was at her feet because for the first time since the night of her epic failure with Eugene Masterson, Veda knew how she’d acquired that annoying chip in her cow-print manicure, and why there had been a hole in the pointer finger of her gloves after she’d made her escape from his apartment.
Her nail polish had chipped at the crime scene.
Her eyes slammed shut, and she took a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.
She never thought she’d be thankful for Gage walking out on her the night before, until that moment. At that moment, she knew she owed Gage her life.
If he hadn’t left her, she wouldn’t have painted her nails as a way to distract herself. To calm her heart and her mind. If he hadn’t left, that cow-print manicure would still be on her nails, and clearly, Lincoln Hill’s handcuffs slapped snuggly around her wrists.
“You know, Linc touching you like that is going to make you public enemy number one around here right?” Jake joked. He chuckled. “On the other hand, I guess you kind of already are.”
Veda went to respond, but the words got trapped in her throat when she turned and caught sight of Gage standing at the opposite end of the hall. He watched her with heated eyes, arms crossed tight, head cocked back, and nostrils flared.
Veda’s heart churned to a stop.
How long had he been standing there?
How much had he seen?
Had he seen Linc touching her?
Gage smiled, but she knew what his genuine smiles looked like, and that wasn’t it. No, this smile was tight, with an unquestionable anger bubbling beneath the surface.
He’d definitely seen the exchange with Linc. His blazing eyes left no question to that fact.
He broke their gaze with a shake of his head, scratching his eyebrow. His hand fell to cover his mouth as he disappeared down the hall and out of sight.
“Shit. I gotta go,” Veda mumbled to Jake, hurrying away from the glass without saying goodbye.
—
As she raced through the halls after Gage, Veda couldn’t decide what was scarier. Almost being caught red handed by Lincoln Hill, or the poisonous looks she received from every woman in the hallway because—in the midst of almost catching her red handed—Linc had taken her hands in his. They still tingled
from where his callused fingers had irritated her smooth skin.
In her rush chasing after Gage, Veda caught an elbow to the arm. She seethed but didn’t slow her stride. It was a hospital setting, after all. Run-ins were inevitable. The lives of their patients were on the line constantly, so Veda rarely took offense when she caught an elbow to the shoulder or was almost mowed down by doctors and nurses running to help a patient.
Today, however, it was becoming a bit too much. The shoulders were blowing against her with a little too much “love”. She knew every shoulder she caught was thanks to Linc, but as she hurried to her destination, she couldn’t make herself worry about it.
She passed the empty desk of Gage’s secretary, relieved when she saw the sign that said she was on a bathroom break.
Veda entered his office without knocking.
It was as if he’d been expecting her to arrive because he sat facing the door, leaning on the edge of the brown leather love seat in the middle of his office. Another love seat faced it, with a coffee table in the middle. His desk sat in the far corner, flanked by wall-to-wall windows.
Veda closed the door behind her, leaning against the cool wood. She planted her fingers on it, letting it soothe her palms and the heat in her heart.
The same heat flew from his eyes, moving across the room and enveloping her in flames.
In a navy suit, soft pink shirt and fuchsia tie, he looked absolutely edible. Coupled with the fact that the night before had been the first night she’d slept without him in her bed, it took everything she had not to cross that room and kiss him.
Somehow, she knew that wouldn’t go over well.
He kept his head down, avoiding her eyes, crossing and uncrossing his brown leather dress shoes. His knees bobbed. His lips remained tight, along with the air in the room.
Silence. Nothing but the sound of the bustling hospital on the other side of the door.
His aroma floated across the room and surrounded her, but instead of comforting her, like it always did, it made her stomach turn.
All she could think about was what she would do if she lost it. His scent. The scent that had magical powers over her body.
Tingle (Revenge Book 2) Page 12