“Wren helped us with an internal department issue a few years back. Sent Brian to work with us,” Rick explained.
That seemed too convenient for her taste. “I’m sure he did.”
“Maybe we should check inside?” Wren ended the comment by throwing her the look a teacher might give a naughty student. Not the sexy, grown-up-play way. No, the actual you’re-going-to-regret-this way.
Then there was the use of the word we. She ignored that, figuring there was no way to keep Wren out of her house at this point. Knowing him, he’d already been through and cataloged everything.
“I guess saying no would be futile.” She whispered the comment under her breath to Wren as soon as someone called the detective away.
Wren stared down at her. “You need to ask yourself if you feel better with me by your side or watching from a distance.”
That was easy—neither. “You’re being creepy again.”
“I fear that will be a reoccurring theme in our relationship.”
A few days ago that sort of statement might have sounded ominous. Now the way he talked started sounding normal to her. Except for one glaring thing. “Relationship?”
“Believe it or not.” He dipped his head as he lowered his voice. “I’ve seen more of you over the last few days than almost any other person I know.”
She couldn’t tell from his deep voice if he thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. It did confirm his “loner” personality in her mind. It fit with everything else she knew about him, which was not all that much. But the guy gave off a vibe and she was still trying to find the right word to describe it. Moody, maybe?
“You know that fact speaks to your weirdness, right?” she asked.
He exhaled. “At least around you I’ll never have to worry about my ego going out of control.”
“You strike me as the type who needs to be reined in.”
“Are you planning on reining me in, Emery?” He sounded amused by the thought.
She was too busy trying to ignore the sexual overtone. She knew she should end that. Give a good “that’s never going to happen” lecture and cut off any possibility of him getting the wrong idea.
Yeah, she didn’t feel like doing any of those things. “I don’t know yet.”
This time he let out a short humming noise. “I’m eager to see what you decide.”
That made two of them.
CHAPTER 11
Rather than really answer, Emery started moving. She walked down the sidewalk and up the stairs with Wren at her side. She didn’t need her keys, but couldn’t seem to let go of them. They jangled in her hand. She heard the noise in the background as her gaze scanned over every inch of the place. Soft yellow walls lined with photographs from the summer she spent traveling through Europe on a budget postgraduation. Her coffee mug still sitting on the kitchen counter. The calendar on the fridge.
It all looked to be in order. She turned to tell Wren and ran right into his chest.
He put his hands on her arms to steady her then dropped them just as fast. “You’re still jumpy.”
She was ten seconds away from leaping out of her skin. “Do you blame me?”
“It wasn’t an accusation.”
For some reason a lot of what he said sounded that way. She didn’t feel like fighting over something stupid, so she let that drop. She had bigger issues.
After a quick check to make sure no one was listening, she asked the question kicking around her brain. “The detective doesn’t know you’re Wren.”
“Almost no one does.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that . . . or about the severe frown he shot her. “Except me.”
“Trust me, you knowing surprises me as much as it surprises you.” He exhaled. “And I’d like to keep the circle small on who knows that detail.”
It kind of figured he thought of his real name as a detail. “Agreed.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
Now that was insulting. He acted like she couldn’t keep a secret or that she’d blackmail him with the information. Well, she might claim to do that just to poke at him, but she’d never actually divulge his secret. He went by a top-secret name and she figured he had a reason for that. Probably had something to do with being difficult and eccentric, but she’d still hold the confidence because it meant something that he’d shared with her. What, she wasn’t quite sure.
“Don’t touch anything.” She mostly meant the boxes stacked up next to her love seat. She knew he had to have noticed. The fact they said Tiffany Younger on the sides in thick black ink was a giveaway.
His gaze never left her face. “This isn’t my first crime scene.”
“Who says that sort of thing?” When she first met him she’d thought the way he put sentences together carried a message, telling her to be wary. Now she wondered if he truly believed normal people talked that way. “You do that on purpose, right?”
He frowned. “What?”
“You make a statement like that so that I’ll wonder if you’re a criminal or law enforcement of some type. You want to keep me guessing.”
Rick walked up behind Wren. “You think he’s a criminal?”
She had no idea what to think at this point. She just kept shaking the keys in her hand. “Is he?”
“Of course not.” The detective stared at her closed fist. “Didn’t Gavin introduce you two?”
Her hand stopped moving for a second and her stomach dropped. “What?”
“Explain what you mean by that,” Wren said at the same time.
“Before he died . . . well, he was understandably a mess,” Rick said. “Can’t blame him. Tiffany’s case has haunted me for years. Imagine what it does to a father.” He shook his head. “Anyway, his drinking kept getting worse, destroying his body faster than the cancer could at some points.”
“You gave him Wren’s name.” Wren didn’t sound too happy about that piece of information.
Rick must have picked up on the tone because he held up a hand in a placating gesture. “I mentioned that I knew a guy who might be able to help.”
“Who could do what, exactly?” It struck her that for a guy who supposedly lived in the shadows a lot of people sure seemed to seek him out. Fake name or not, she’d bet he hated that.
“Fix things.” The detective looked from her to Wren. “Look, I’m not sure if Wren takes on cases like this, and I know I should have asked first. I just wanted to give the guy something.”
“It’s fine.” Without breaking eye contact with Rick, Wren put his hand over hers and the annoying jingling stopped. “It also explains why the name Wren was in that file.”
She slipped her hand out from under his and shoved the keys in her pocket. “Like so much else with you, it feels convenient.”
Wren gave the detective a man-to-man look. “She thinks Wren is dangerous and that, by extension, so am I.”
Rick shrugged. “That’s probably fair.”
Anxious to break the tension rumbling around inside her, Emery started walking. She pivoted around the police officer standing in the middle of her family room and kept going. At the far end of the room she turned the corner and looked into the small alcove that housed her bed. Covers thrown over the pillows, which passed as her way of making the bed. Some clothes stacked on the windowsill. Nothing weird, which was a relief.
She heard the click of footsteps against her hardwood floor a beat too late. She swung around, but Wren was already there, staring at the partial wall directly across from her bed.
“Well, damn. That’s impressive.” He had his hands on his hips and his focus centered on her private work.
Her gaze followed his. She didn’t really need to study anything. She knew every inch of the handmade mosaic. The photos of Tiffany. The newspaper clippings. Her notes. She’d taped it all up there. Stared at it every night before she went to bed. Never let the case move even an inch out of her mind.
Rick traced his fingers over the lines of handwr
itten notes before facing her again. “You promised me you would stop doing this and leave the investigating to the police.”
“You retired.” She’d trusted him to see it through. He cared, followed the case until he suffered a heart attack and had to back down. Even now he tracked clues, but it wasn’t enough. Too much time had passed without any new leads.
“This isn’t your job. It’s not really Wren’s or his company’s either, but I would feel better with his people, led by Brian, digging around than with you doing it.”
Wren dropped his hands to his sides. “I agree and we’ll take care of it.”
“Do you need to talk to Wren first?” the detective asked.
Wren nodded. “We’re good.”
She tried to take in the concern in their voices and the looks of horror on their faces. Their worry moved through the room and wrapped around her. She expected the reaction from one of them, but not both.
She looked at Wren. Really looked, trying to read him. “You’re stepping in?”
“Believe it or not, the idea of someone snatching young women off the street is pretty disturbing to me.”
She had no idea what to say to that. What he said sounded decent and genuine, but she couldn’t shake the fear that letting go of any part of her personal quest meant letting go of Tiffany.
All those memories of racing home from school only to pick up the phone and talk to Tiffany again. The back and forth to each other’s houses. Them playing while their parents sat around the family room and did whatever grown-ups did back then. Talking about boys and what a loser their biology teacher was. When she closed her eyes and concentrated, Emery could still hear her cousin’s voice. Faint but there. She couldn’t remember much about her mother other than her face and how quiet she was. How she could blend into the background and never contradicted her father. But Tiffany’s memory lingered.
“Is anything missing in here?” Rick asked.
Emery shook her head and answered without really thinking. “Not that I can tell. I can go through the boxes and make sure it’s all there.”
Not that it would matter. She’d committed most of the Tiffany files to memory. Tiny details, big items. What people said. She was the foremost expert on Tiffany, something Emery never wanted to be.
He let out a frustrated huffing sound. “It’s odd since we saw the surveillance video. Someone was in there and ran when Wren’s people flushed them out.”
The words clicked together in Emery’s head. “Video?”
The detective talked right over her. “Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?”
Wren picked that moment to shift. He stopped staring at her wall and put his back to it. “She can stay with me.”
“No.” She almost screamed the answer because it struck her as a terrible idea. Her common sense tended to fizzle with him around. There, in the small apartment—yeah, terrible idea. “I’m fine.”
“My money is on Brian to win this debate.”
She refused to take that bet. “Wait—”
“The police are going to want to talk to you. I’ll see if I can cut down on some of that, but you both have my number.” Rick shook Wren’s hand then looked at her. “Be safe, Emery.”
She continued to stare at Wren. It was just the two of them . . . in her bedroom.
“What?” he asked.
“You need to tell him.” She knew he liked secrecy, but she didn’t. The idea of living that way made her head spin.
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Why?”
“I get you have this need for anonymity, but he’s a retired detective.” She sighed. “If you’re going to work on this case you’ll be talking to him. I’ll be talking with him. When we’re all together I could slip up.”
“Is that a warning?” Wren kept on staring and his voice stayed flat.
This wasn’t about winning or scoring points. “I’m really just being practical.”
After a few seconds he nodded. “If the need arises, I’ll fill him in.”
The importance of his words hit her head-on. “That’s a big deal to you, right? Conceding that?”
“The biggest.”
She didn’t know what to say to that so she jumped to the other topic on her mind. “You’ve been to crime scenes. You know the detectives.”
“Yes.” He drew out the word until it lasted for three syllables.
“You have people watching me and there’s apparently a tape, which we’re going to talk about at some point.” She tried to put it all together in her mind and make the idea of this stranger swooping in make sense. “Now you’re going to step up and work the case, fix it all somehow.”
Police continued to walk around the family room area just on the other side of the wall. She could hear Rick’s voice and someone else’s as they talked. Every light was on in the apartment and every nerve in her body kept pinging, but all she could see was the man in front of her. The one who confused her when they first met and continued to confuse her, but in a very different way now.
“Do you still think I’m a killer?” he asked.
She didn’t. She hadn’t since she talked to the senator. Something about the way people in power knew Wren and talked about him with admiration rather than fear had her opinion morphing. But that didn’t mean she understood him. Trouble was, she was starting to want to. “I can’t get a handle on what you are.”
“Someone who wants to help you.”
“When people say that, I get nervous.” A lot of well-meaning people had messed up cases she’d worked on. They got the facts wrong or came up with wild theories. She waded through all of that noise at work. She hated that the cycle now repeated in her private life.
“Isn’t giving people closure, assisting them through this process, what you do for a living?”
It was as if he read her mind, which was truly annoying. The one defense she had against this guy was to lock him out of her thoughts. That and fake outrage, but it was getting harder to hold on to that. “Don’t be logical.”
“Sorry.” He smiled as he moved in closer. “Are you really okay? Seeing the police cars had to be a shock.”
“I will be once I know why you have me under surveillance. No bat this time. Just a simple question.” It really wasn’t an accusation. More of a curiosity, which was so unlike her. She came out fighting. With him, she relished the verbal battle but couldn’t seem to maintain her outrage.
“Because you were trying to find me and I didn’t know why. It started out for my protection.” He took another step, closed the gap between them. “Now it’s for yours.”
They stood at the end of her bed, in the small space between the mattress and the wall. She should guide them back into the family room. Keep them well away from this part of the apartment.
She moved in closer. “Stop it. I’m not kidding.”
“What are you referring to exactly?”
That was a great question. “Whatever is happening here. The bold way you burst into my life.”
“Actually, you tracked me down.”
They stood just inches apart. Without thinking she rested her hand against his chest again, loving the stretch of his muscles under her palm just as much this time. “Don’t change the subject.”
He slipped his hand over hers and slowly massaged her skin with his thumb. A gentle back and forth that had her mesmerized as she looked up into those green eyes.
“I would point out that if not for my men, the person who broke in here still could have been in your place when you got home.” His voice dipped lower. “I can’t tolerate that.”
She tried to gasp in more air, to get her lungs to function, but she felt winded and a little dizzy. “Don’t try to scare me either.”
“I’m trying to get you to be practical. Speaking of that, I can put you in a hotel.”
She leaned in until her lips hovered over his. “I can put me in a hotel.”
He lifted his other hand and tucked her hair behind her ear. Let his
palm skim over the side of her head. “It wasn’t a comment on your financial stability.”
She struggled to keep up with the conversation while her heartbeat galloped in her chest. “Yeah, I know.” Her breaths came out in pants now. “I really just want to be in my own house.”
“Then my people aren’t moving.”
“I . . .” This close the brightness of his eyes stunned her. The shade came close to that of newly mowed grass in summer. So clear. So unblinking. “Okay.”
His eyebrows lifted. “I expected a fight on that.”
She couldn’t raise any anger. Her thoughts were jumbled. Trying to process it all at once with so little space to think—Wren having her followed, someone in her house, her whole life getting turned upside down—sucked the life out of her. “I want to say it’s because I’m not a martyr and not stupid, but I fear the real answer is that I’m too exhausted to go to battle with you.”
“That’s almost disappointing.” His fingertips skimmed over her shoulder.
The whole touching-her-but-not-enough thing started a revving deep in her stomach. Not that she wanted him to stop. Chalk it up to adrenaline, emotional upheaval or too much caffeine. Something inside her kept changing the more time she spent with him.
But she wasn’t a pushover, and he needed to know that. “At some point we are going to have a long discussion about boundaries.”
“That’s more like the answer I expect from you.” He gave her arm a squeeze. “But must we?”
He was right there. All compelling and tall and kissable.
Yeah, that couldn’t happen. She backed up as she inhaled nice and deep. Tried to force the smart, defense-oriented part of her brain to click into action. “I’m sure tonight was some weird fluke thing. Mistaken identity or whatever.”
“The lock wasn’t broken.”
Her insides froze. “Your point?”
“I was just making a comment.” He straightened his tie. “Now I’ll go.”
A change came over him. She watched it happen but couldn’t really say what shifted. He didn’t get taller, because that just seemed silly, but he suddenly took up more space.
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