by Maria Luis
Casting a quick glance at the other officer, whose head was bobbing as though he’d passed out at his desk, I drew my attention back to Asher’s workspace. Papers were stacked orderly in manila folders. Post-it sticky notes lined the right edge of the desk—across them all, he’d scrawled phone numbers and names of people I didn’t know.
As quietly as possible, I tried each desk drawer.
The bottom one was filled with nothing but excess computer paper and empty envelopes.
The chair across the room screeched back when I tugged on the second drawer’s handle, and I dropped my hand like I’d personally picked up a ball of flames. Clutched the lip of the desk as though I hadn’t just been snooping.
“You good?” the officer asked, strolling toward me. He had bloated features and an equally round gut. Something told me he rarely worked the streets anymore. He nodded toward his desk. “Can’t believe I fell asleep.”
My fingers dug into the wood. “I noticed.” I forced a casual smile. Act normal. “Long shift?”
His mouth melted into a grimace. “Didn’t even realize I slept straight through the end of it.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.” He cocked his head to the side. “You Asher’s girl?”
“What?”
“You dating Asher? He doesn’t bring anyone in here, ever. Straight to the interview rooms for civilians.” He paused and let his dark eyes rove over my face. “It’s protocol. Not bringing non-personnel in here, I mean.”
Palms turning slick, I shifted in the rolling chair. My heels dug into the ground, and I pulled myself forward. Hands moving forward, glossing under the desk until . . . My index finger brushed against cool metal. It felt like a latch, and one trace of it with my fingers proved that accurate. But it wasn’t—no, there was no way.
“Ma’am?”
My spine stiffened with the effort to not jolt at the sound of the officer’s voice. “We’re, umm . . .” Think! “We’re old friends. We go way back.” To, like, yesterday. I pushed down on the latch and sent up a silent prayer that I hadn’t just doomed myself. “I’m not his girl.”
Dark eyes didn’t move from my face. “Then why did he say he was about to put you over his lap?”
The second drawer, the one I’d wanted to open earlier, popped open. It extended no farther than an inch, maybe two, but holy crap, this was the moment. I tore my eyes away from the drawer and tried to look normal.
Act normal.
My heart, meanwhile, thundered in my chest like a stampede of elephants dancing on already-fractured ice.
“It’s an old joke,” I told the officer with a smooth smile. The same smile I used on my customers in Jackson Square. “Ash—Lincoln, he’s had a crush on me for years.”
The guy’s nose wrinkled as he shifted his gaze downward, over the top half of my body—which was all that was visible to him above the desk. “How old are you?”
Clearly, not old enough. “Thirty.” I lied, smiling wider, toothier, faker. “I’ve got a baby face. It’s the curse of all women in my family.”
His answer was nothing more than an incomprehensible mumble.
“What was that?” I itched to pop open the drawer fully. Patience was both my strongest suit and my biggest weakness. I was complicated like that. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch what you said.”
Digging into his back pocket, he pulled out his wallet and flipped it open. Five steps brought him to the far corner of the desk, and then he was palming a rectangular white card and sliding it over to me.
I picked it up, turned it over, and stared at the name printed in small, block font across the back: DT. SAMUEL LOCKAR. “Thank you?”
“In case you need anything.” He rapped his knuckles against the desk. “Lying won’t get you anywhere, miss.”
It was a struggle to swallow the sudden lump in my throat. “I didn’t lie.” Twenty-five to thirty was more like a dramatization, if anything.
“Yeah.” The detective didn’t sound like he believed me. “Let’s put it this way. Asher’s known to like ‘em younger. Just think about that before you keep up y’all’s . . . friendship.”
Lockar didn’t give me a chance to say anything else. He swept out of the office, gently shutting the door behind him. Leaving my breath somewhere over the Mississippi River because it surely wasn’t with me right now.
What in the hell did he mean? Asher liked them younger?
I caught my wide-eyed expression in the black screen of the desktop computer. There was no way Lockar could mean . . . . I lifted my hand to trace my reflection in the screen. No way. I hadn’t gotten that sort of vibe from Asher at all.
And what do you really know about men?
Fuck.
I turned sharply from the computer and got down to business. This was not an opportunity I was going to lose out on. Snapping open the drawer, I gave the interior a cursory glance. Restaurant menus littered the space. I dove in a hand, shuffling through the folded pamphlets.
At the sound of a door slamming shut, my shoulders twitched and I held still.
My lungs seized a fistful of air I didn’t dare let out, and when three seconds passed with no one waltzing into this office, I went back to work.
There had to be something.
Why have a locked drawer if all you kept inside were takeout menus?
On a whim, I tried the other drawers again. They all popped open without trouble, which meant . . . Option Number Two it was, then. No way would a man like Lincoln Asher waste a drawer with a lock. I refused to believe it.
I shoved the menus aside, and if it weren’t for the fact that I was searching hard, I never would have noticed it.
Pressed up against the outer edge of the drawer, its cardboard backing facing me, a small, thin notepad caught my eye.
Among restaurant menus and receipts, it stuck out like a jaguar in an aquarium.
I flipped it over.
Names were scrawled down half its length, taking up perhaps four or five lines of the white-lined paper. There was no header at the top. Nothing to signify who these people were or why Asher had taken the time to document them all, and then shove it to where it wouldn’t be noticed. I skimmed the names, one by one, my heart hammering in my chest at the mere possibility that Asher might push open the door and catch me.
Josef Banterelli.
Ba-dump.
Micah Welsh.
Ba-dump.
Tom Townsend.
Ba-dump.
Zak Benson.
Ba-dump.
A familiar name on the last line stopped me cold.
Tabitha Thibadeaux.
And then, with a pained whine of dry hinges, the door swung open.
8
Avery
Asher kicked the door shut with his heel.
Under his right arm, he carried a set of folders—all of which he dropped on the desk, just beside my elbow. “Sorry you had to wait,” he said. “I had to pick up Casey’s report, and then one of my guys had a question.” He glanced up from the folders, in my direction. “You’d think they’ve never gone through Academy with some of the shit they like to bring to me.”
My smile was tight, and I was surprised I could even hear him over the persistent ringing in my ears. The metal rings of his notebook stabbed me in the butt as I shifted uncomfortably in the office chair. Was sitting on the notebook particularly savvy? Not even a little bit. But there’d been little time to do anything else, even unzip my backpack and thrust the notebook inside.
“I always thought that there are no stupid questions.”
Taking the seat opposite mine, Asher flipped open the top file. “There are stupid questions. The only people who say there aren’t have got too much heart.”
An interesting response.
I hummed a little in my throat, deliberating on my answer. There was no mistaking the way his blue eyes flashed hot at the noise, nor the way his fingers tightened around the pen he’d picked up in his left hand. Did I affect him t
he same way he did to me? I made the noise again, just to test him, and Asher didn’t disappoint. His gaze dropped to my mouth, his jaw visibly tightening as though he wanted nothing more than to throw the desk against the wall and sit me on his lap.
The look on Asher’s face . . . it was of a man restrained. My thighs clenched together at the realization, and I pinched my knee beneath the desk to break the spell of desire heating my core and curling my toes. It wasn’t why I was here.
Liar.
“Are you suggesting that you don’t have a heart?” I finally asked, leaning forward to prop my elbows on the desk. The notebook’s spiral rings went flat under my weight. Aw, crap. Swallowing, I added, “You don’t strike me as the cliché type, Sergeant.”
He cleared his throat. “Cliché?”
“Yeah.” I mimicked him, clearing my throat and dropping my voice by at least an octave. “Hello, I’m Lincoln Asher and you know what’s different about me? I’m heartless.” I watched his lips twitch, barely skimming the surface of a true smile but coming pretty damn close. “Fun fact,” I said in my normal pitch, “the only people who go around saying they’re lacking a heart are generally the folks who have actually got too much of one, but don’t want people to know they’re an inner softie.”
“You got stats to back you up on this theory?” He set the pen down and met my gaze head-on. “Or are you just theorizin’?”
I offered a smile. “I’ve lived in the Quarter for over ten years. I know my fair share of heartless assholes.”
“And I don’t fit the mold?” He sounded pleasantly intrigued by the prospect. “And here I’ve been thinking all these years that I’m king of the heartless assholes around here. I’m a little ticked off that someone took my crown.”
His response made me choke out a surprised laugh. “Was that a joke?”
“What?” Dark brows rose high on his forehead. “Heartless assholes can’t be funny?”
“Not the king.”
“Ah,” Asher murmured, “but we’ve already agreed that I’ve been dethroned.”
He sure fit the mold for dethroned royalty. Messy hair, bright blue eyes that shone like topaz gems, and those scars that carved the side of his face. Something in his tone intrigued me more than even the scar. Leaning back in my chair, I gave him a slow once-over. “Looking at you, I’d be inclined to think of you as less like a king and more like the king’s executioner.”
If I weren’t studying him so acutely, I would have missed it—the smallest flare of his nostrils and the slight pull of his mouth into a harder, more uncompromising line.
Interesting.
Asher dropped his gaze to the folders before him. “Let’s get this done.”
For the next twenty or so minutes, he put me through the test.
Where were you walking when you stumbled upon the assault? Back to my apartment.
Did you utilize your stun gun before or after the perpetrator laid hands on you? After.
Did you recognize any of the perps as someone you may have had contact with before tonight? No, they were complete strangers.
With each new question, my hands grew damp and my stomach roiled at the memories. Memories of a younger me, a more innocent me—of groping hands and rickety beds that squeaked under heavy weights.
I’d always been resourceful, even at the age of thirteen when I’d found myself living on the streets with nowhere to go. And there’s something to be said about open-ended possibilities.
At any time, I could have filched a ticket for the MegaBus, Destination Unknown.
I used to sit by the bus stop, over on Elysian Fields and North Claiborne, with a fried chicken-wing restaurant at my back and concrete all around me. I used to walk there from the French Quarter, at least two miles there and back, and watch people come and go with their colorful suitcases and their laughter catching in the humid, Southern air. At any time, I could have snuck onboard. By the time anyone realized there was a stowaway, like some ruffian-kid out of an old-time movie, we would have been halfway to Alabama or maybe Texas or even Arkansas, depending on which MegaBus I took.
I never did get on that bus.
I never could leave this city, which has gifted me more bad memories than good.
“We’re all set.”
Hands clenched together in my lap, I put voice to the question burning on my tongue. “Do you like what you do?”
Asher’s face gave nothing away, as was the norm for him, I was beginning to see. “Excuse me?”
I nodded to him, and he’d have to be a fool not to realize that I was talking about the noticeable scars across his cheek. He bore his wounds for all to see; mine were secreted away in my heart. But for him, he could leave this job and do something else. I couldn’t leave being me, no matter how many new names I adopted.
“Do you like being a cop? That’s a better way to put it.”
Like a veil unraveled by a string, Asher’s blue eyes flicked away. “I’ve been on the job for over a decade.”
I’d wondered about his age. Aside from the faint lines that appeared by his eyes when he (rarely) smiled, Lincoln Asher could have been anywhere from mid-twenties to early-forties. But, as a cop, it made sense that he’d blend in.
I’ve been on the job for over a decade—I turned the words over in my head, pulling them apart and quickly dissecting them. “All right, Mr. Vague.” I waggled my brows, teasing him. “You do realize that’s not an answer, right? Being on the job and liking the job are two completely different things.”
Dropping a forearm to the desk, he leaned in. “Reverse the tables. Do you like reading cards out on the Square?”
I could give him the lie or I could give him some semblance of the truth and hope for a smidgeon of it in return. I went for the latter: “It pays the bills.” And gets me much-needed information. “But, no, it’s not a long-term career for me. You won’t see me out there in thirty years still catering to folks who refuse to see what’s directly in front of them already.”
Nothing in Asher’s face registered shock, but instinctually, I got the feeling he hadn’t expected for me to pull the blunt act. His fingers drummed a monotonous beat on the desk. “Working for the NOPD keeps me focused,” he said after a long pause. “If I had the opportunity to do something else, I’d honestly be lost.”
“I would be a veterinarian.”
Dammit.
Asher’s left brow arched high at my unintended confession. “You can’t now?”
Not without a high school or a vet degree. Not with a fake name. Not when your stepfather still liked to wax on about his poor dead wife and the stepdaughter who’d turned up dead after killing herself.
“Nah,” I murmured, my tone casually dismissive. And then I spun the lie I’d repeated to myself for years now: “It would be fun, but it’s hard work. I’m much more suited to reading cards. I can go down to the square whenever I want. There are no rules, no high expectations.”
For a moment, he said nothing and the air seemed to shrivel in the silence. Then, “We’re all set here . . . unless you’ve got a question for me about the report?”
My toes curled in my shoes. Right.
“No questions.” I hastily stood, then, remembering the spiral-bound notebook on the chair, collapsed back down. “Actually, I have one.” My fingers snaked under my butt as Asher watched me from across the desk, his expression all but reading, Get to it already. “I’m a little hungry. Maybe it’s the adrenaline calming down, I don’t know.”
Slowly, a smile pulled at his firm mouth. “Are you asking me out to dinner?”
It seems that I am.
Snagging my backpack strap, I drew the bag between my legs and made a show of ducking my head, feigning a bashfulness that wasn’t at all me, and drew the zipper tags apart. “Maybe I am.” Right butt cheek lifted ever-so-slightly, I pulled the notebook from its place and inched it to home base. Slowly. Slowly. Slowwwllyyyy. “It’s a little late for dinner but maybe some beignets?” I lifted my chin to
peer at him from behind the curtain of my dark hair. “Café du Monde is so romantic at this time of night.”
For the first time in my life, I fluttered my lashes.
Asher sat back in his chair, his crisp uniform shirt pulling tight across his broad chest. Under the office lights, his NOPD sergeant’s badge shined like a beacon of trustworthiness.
The notebook currently dropping into my backpack said otherwise.
Because now that I’d had time to think about it, I recognized the two top names from a recent spread in The Times-Picayune. The obituary section, in particular.
Both Josef Banterelli and Micah Welsh were dead.
Slit throats.
Bodies bobbing in the Mississippi River in the early morning hours.
“Beignets it is.” Asher flashed me a quick, almost-missed-it grin. “Why don’t you wait for me in the hallway? I’ll wrap this up and then we can go.”
“You got it.” I saluted him with fake confidence and hightailed it to the door. The moment I burst free, I pressed my back against the neighboring wall and filled my lungs with oxygen.
It was just a notebook. Nothing more. And yet I felt as though I’d stolen contraband from a drug lord.
Maybe that’s because Asher sort of looks like a drug lord.
Albeit a sexy one.
With the visual of his shiny fleur-de-lis NOPD badge in the forefront of my mind, I tightened my hold on the strap of my backpack and waited for him to emerge from the office.
A casual sharing of powdered donuts had never hurt anyone, and no matter how touristy the restaurant, Café du Monde had been a local favorite of mine since I was a young girl. Before Momma was brutally murdered and my life upended for reasons I still didn’t know.
“Ready to go?”
Like I’d been caught with drugs myself, my butt cheeks clenched together, and my heart went into triple-time as Asher stepped out and then slid the door closed behind him.
“Yup!” The way I popped my P was not suspicious at all . . . not. I stifled an awkward laugh and tried again. “I’m starved.”