“Anything interesting in there?” I asked.
“The usual,” he said, around a sip of his own coffee. “Tax rates are on the rise. Some bastard is up for life without parole, and the humanitarians are causing a fuss about it. The PM is on holiday. Again.”
I smiled into my cup.
“Do you want me with you?” he asked, pushing his tablet aside to focus on me.
I could see the lingering hunger from last night in his eyes. He was remembering everything.
I couldn’t forget.
Offering an arched brow, I placed my coffee down on the table between us and said, “You should follow up with HEAT.”
The fact of the matter was I didn’t want him anywhere near Cawfield. Damon despised misogynistic men. And especially despised them if they were using that prejudice against me. At one time, I thought perhaps Carole Michaels had been an indomitable woman.
And then Rhys Kyle Weston had happened.
We all have baggage, Sport. Some of us just require a forklift to carry it around with us all day long.
I would never begrudge Damon his baggage as I was sure he would never begrudge me mine.
“I see,” he said, steadily.
“Damon,” I started.
“I know, love; I’m likely to pummel the little shit into next week. You don’t need that kind of spotlight on you right now.”
God, I loved this man.
“But do me a favour?” he asked. I looked at him warily. “Even if he isn’t the CIB traitor… make him bleed.”
A slow smile spread my lips wide. Making me remember last night vividly. Which wasn’t a welcome thought when thinking of putting Joe Cawfield through the wringer.
“That’s a favour I can gladly give you,” I said.
“Oh, I have other favours to ask, but we’ll leave them for later.”
He smirked at me. My body flushed hot.
Leaning forward, he whispered, “You were perfect last night.”
So were you, I wanted to say, but my mouth had gone dry.
He reached up and ran his thumb over my lips and then replaced them with his; kissing me soundly.
“Call me,” he said, standing up and addressing the dishes.
I pushed up from my seat and went to help.
“Go, love. Or you’ll be late.”
I checked my watch. Damn, breakfast and flirting with Damon had taken too long; I was almost too late. And there was no way I wanted to be late to this particular party.
I slipped into my jacket, feeling the loss of my gun and badge keenly, and swiped up my handbag, which now conveniently held a taser and a bottle of pepper spray. It felt like cheating, but facing off against Cawfield had me feeling antsy.
Was he or wasn’t he? It was too convenient and yet I couldn’t help thinking that was his plan.
A stupid plan; make us think he’d done it, but the clues were too easy, so we question their veracity.
Joe Cawfield might not have been the brightest bulb in the lighting shop, but he was a damn good cop, I admitted reluctantly.
So, what the hell was going on?
Chapter Twenty-Six
“You Can Pray To A Higher Being All You Like. But If You Don’t Get Off Your Own Arse, They’re Sure As Hell Not Gonna Help.”
Pierce had two cups of takeaway coffee in his police-issued sedan when I arrived. I paid the taxi driver, slipped out of the cab and walked to his passenger side. Damon had said to take the Q7. And as there were other suitably impressive expensive cars in the carpark at Les Mills, it wouldn’t have stood out. But I was an independent woman.
Well, I was out of bed, that is.
I forced the visceral images of last night to the back of my mind and swiped up the coffee Pierce had waiting for me.
“Where’s Hart?” I asked between sips.
“Well, hello, Lara. Yes, I’m quite fine this morning. Thank you for asking. How are you?”
I glanced over at him and groaned.
“You got some, didn’t you?”
He grinned unrepentantly at me. “And if I’m not mistaken, by the look of the glow to your entire being right now, so did you.”
I cringed internally.
“Ever wonder why we can’t seem to keep our conversations out of the gutter?” I asked him.
“You started it,” he said and downed the last of his coffee.
“I blame my dad,” I said, drinking mine more slowly. Pierce said nothing. I didn’t speak about my father. Ever. If I could help it. “He might have been a block of ice,” I went on, because in for a penny, in for a pound as they say, “but he knew how to be one of the boys.”
“I would have thought he’d want you to stay above all of that,” Pierce mused.
“How can I be a good cop if I can’t hold my own with the best of them?”
He looked at me then. “You were always going to be a cop?”
“From the day I was born.”
“Sex didn’t matter?”
“That is at least one thing my father believed in that I could stomach; the fact that I was a girl was irrelevant. Only success mattered.”
“And what if you didn’t want to be a cop?”
I stared at him. “Thank God I did, right?”
I offered a smile, and he slowly returned it. We both knew I’d been groomed for it. We both knew I hadn’t stood a chance.
But I hadn’t been lying just then. Thank God I did want to be a cop.
You can pray to a higher being all you like. But if you don’t get off your own arse, they’re sure as hell not gonna help.
Carl hadn’t believed in guardian angels or an omnipotent being watching over all of us. He’d believed in results. Rather like my father, actually. Maybe that was why I put up with Carl’s crap so readily because I’d learned to put up with my father’s.
I snorted into my cup. “So, where’s Hart again?” I asked.
“Not coming. He decided his presence would send the wrong message.”
“What, that the head of Central CIB thinks Cawfield is a rat?”
“Something like that.”
“And Cawfield won’t know that when he sees us?”
“He’s likely to think we’re on a crusade. The less this looks like an organised sting, the more likely Weston is to believe we haven’t a decent bead on him yet.”
I snorted again. That was unlikely. Weston was everywhere. And nowhere. Where the hell was the guy?
I looked up at the CCTV cameras along Victoria Street West. Even now, he could be watching us.
“Is the GPS tracker still active?”
“Yes,” Pierce said. “If we switch it off now, he’ll know we’re on to him.”
“So, what the fuck are we doing in your assigned vehicle?”
“This is a pool car. It’s not been assigned to anyone.”
I felt my cheeks pink. Of course, Pierce would have thought of that. He was a detective sergeant.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“Think nothing of it,” he said and opened his door.
The fact he’d let me off so easily told me he was unimpressed with my detecting skills.
I stifled the urge to groan and climbed out of the sedan. I needed to be switched on for what was coming next. Cawfield could be a slippery bastard when he wanted to. He could also be a shitty little sexist creep.
Either way, I had to do better.
I’m stretched pretty thin, love.
So was I, apparently.
We entered the gym with a couple of other people. Cawfield wasn’t here yet, but Pierce was pretty sure he’d stick to his usual routine. Neither of us was dressed for gyming it. But Pierce had at least brought a gym bag with him as if he intended to change in the locker room out back. We both paid for a single day membership and headed towards the lockers. Men were, of course, separated from women, but after Pierce cleared the male locker room, I slipped in and slid into a toilet stall.
Pierce placed himself by the door to the changing room an
d kept an eye on the gym itself every time the door was opened.
It wasn’t the best place to have it out with Cawfield. But at least in here, there were no cameras for Weston to hack into. Cawfield would be ours, in between the rush of men wanting to shower.
Fifteen minutes later, Joe Cawfield sauntered into the gym, acknowledging greetings, fist bumping fists when present with them, and offering the obligatory chin-lift men did in these sorts of circumstances. He pushed into the locker room to stow his gear, already dressed in workout clothes so not needing to change into them.
He spotted Pierce only when Pierce wanted him to spot him; at the precise moment Pierce placed an ‘Out of Order’ sign on the outside of the door and then locked it.
I stepped out of the toilet stall a second later and watched Cawfield’s hands fist. I didn’t think he was about to fist bump me.
“What the fuck is this?” he demanded.
“This,” Pierce said, “is a little meeting out of view of prying eyes.”
“What prying eyes?”
“Can the bullshit, Cawfield,” I said. “We know what you’ve been doing.”
He sneered at me. “Fucking your mother six ways to Sunday, Keen?” he drawled, smiling creepily at me.
For a CIB detective, he could be an idiot. It took more than words to get to me.
“Wouldn’t put it past you to be into necrophilia,” I muttered, leaning back against a locker and letting him see the disgust I was feeling.
“You fucking bitch,” he said, taking a step toward me.
Pierce stepped between us.
“Joe,” he snapped. “This is serious. We’ve got some questions we want you to answer.”
“What questions? Is Hart in on this? And I’m not answering a bloody thing with that bitch standing there.”
“Sit down, Joe. Now!” Pierce all but shouted.
Someone knocked on the door to the locker room.
“Use the ladies’,” Pierce called out.
Indistinct muttering could be heard, but they didn’t press the issue. We didn’t have long, though, before Management came to see what was happening, and they had a key to the door.
“It’s like this,” Pierce started. “We know you logged into the GPS system to trace Keen’s whereabouts. We want to know why.”
Pierce was going for the tried and true, shoot straight from the hip approach to interrogating your suspect. I preferred the more subtle approach; trip them up into confessing.
But Pierce’s way could also work, and we were short on time.
“What login?” Cawfield said, looking confused and not just a little worried. I narrowed my eyes. “And why would I want to trace Keen’s movements?”
“You know why, Joe,” Pierce said softly. “You’ve had a hard-on for Detective Keen since she started in CIB. We’ve seen the photos you’ve kept hidden in the back of your locker at work.”
I looked at Pierce sharply; I didn’t know a thing about any photos.
“Oh, those,” Cawfield said, laughing awkwardly. “Just a hobby.”
“There were over three dozen in there.”
What. The. Fuck?
Cawfield looked at me and then away again.
“So, I fancy her. It’s not a crime.”
It was also the first time Cawfield had ever admitted such, despite the fact he’d propositioned me on several occasions. Was it convenient to use that as an excuse now? Or was he crumbling under the photos accusation as any halfway decent cop would?
“And then there’s Sweet Hell,” Pierce went on.
Cawfield paled and sat down.
“It was damn convenient that you got in there without having to fork over the hefty admission fee.”
“I was sponsored.”
“By Weston.”
“I didn’t know it was him when he approached me.”
“You went after Damon Michaels like a heat-seeking missile,” Pierce accused.
“I was looking out for Keen.”
“The subject of your photography obsession.”
“I said I wanted to fuck her already.”
“I think the words you used were ‘fancied her’ but let’s not quibble.” Pierce sighed. “I’ve gotta be honest with you, Joe. You’ve not exactly acted like a man courting a woman.”
Cawfield wouldn’t look at me. “Keen’s not the courting type. She’s the fucking type. That’s what Michaels does, isn’t it, Keen?” He still wasn’t looking at me.
“He’s a hundred times the man you are, shithead,” I said steadily.
He offered me a glare and then remembered he wasn’t looking at me.
I stepped forward. Pierce met my gaze with a warning look of his own. I ignored him, the clock was ticking, and if Weston was manipulating Cawfield, we needed to find his trigger. At the very least, we needed to try to break the PSYOPS training.
“So, when you thought about fucking me, Joe,” I said softly. “How was it going to go? Hot and fast or slow and steady?”
“I said fuck not love, you dumb cunt.”
I could see Pierce fisting his hands, but he held back. I’d hit a button. Maybe not a trigger, but Cawfield had reacted. With crassness, but still… he’d reacted.
He was now looking directly at me.
“So, hard and heavy,” I said, moving closer. My hand was wrapped around the pepper spray inside my purse. I kept Cawfield’s eyes on my face by licking my lips suggestively. “In the locker room at CIB?”
He said nothing but didn’t look away again. “Over the hood of my car?”
Still nothing but I got a twitch above his eyebrow.
“Your car maybe?” Nothing. “No.” I circled him. “Definitely a car, though.” I stopped in front of him again. “What did he promise you? That he’d get rid of Damon and you could fuck me all you liked?”
“Who?”
“Maybe he promised you Damon’s HEAT truck. Did you want to fuck me on the back seat of Damon’s HEAT truck, Joe?”
He abruptly stood up and stepped towards me. I pulled the pepper spray out but held off using it for now.
“Weston uses hypnosis, Joe,” I whispered. “Did you know that?”
He blinked at me. The rest of the locker room was forgotten.
“Maybe you can’t help wanting to fuck me, but you really don’t want to so your mind is rebelling; fighting your body — what a quandary. You don’t know whether to fuck me or frame me for something. Get rid of me from CIB. I’m not one of the boys. Not really. Good for fucking but not for working with, is that it?”
“Daddy’s little girl,” he growled, glaring at me.
“You don’t want to fuck me, do you, Joe?” I said.
He stepped closer. Not too close, but close enough to make my heart beat faster. I noticed Pierce step closer too, in my periphery. But Cawfield didn’t. He was too focused on me. On this. This confrontation we should have had months ago.
“I want to stick it to you so badly, Keen,” he growled. “To wipe that smug look off your face when I make you swallow it all down. I want to rip your clothes off like the whore you are. I want to make you gag on it. I want to hold you down and fuck you in that fucker’s car. I want the smell of sex to permeate through the upholstery. I want him to find us. Me with my cock shoved down your throat. You with your skin pink from being spanked so hard you jizzed all over his precious little HEAT truck. I want him to know that I can take what’s his and he can do fuck all about it. I want to fuck with you both. How’d you like that, you fucking whore?”
I blinked. Pierce let out a muttered oath. And then Cawfield stepped back and said, “You’re a right bitch, you know that? Go fuck yourself, Detective.”
It seemed slightly out of whack with the reality we’d just witnessed. As if he were suddenly a different person.
I could feel my fingers shake around the pepper spray can. I could hear my breaths saw in and out of my mouth.
Cawfield was a dick. But this?
I looked at Pierce.
> “Jesus fucking Christ, Joe,” he muttered. “What the fuck am I to do with that?”
“What?” Cawfield snapped. “You know she can be a bitch too, don’t deny it.”
“But, Joe? Rip her clothes off? Make her gag? In Michaels’ fucking ute? Jesus, I have to write this up, and you know it.”
“What are you talking about?” He looked confused. And worried. Like he’d looked confused and worried when we’d initially cornered him.
When he’d been ranting his fantasies to me, he hadn’t looked the slightest bit confused and worried.
I stepped forward. Cawfield watched me warily.
“You just told us what you wanted to do to me,” I said. “And it involved humiliation, rape, exhibitionism, and getting back at Damon for unknown reasons.”
“Why the fuck would I be concerned with that wanker?”
“That’s what you take from what Keen just said?” Pierce demanded.
“I didn’t say any of that other shit!” Cawfield shouted.
Pierce stilled. I stilled.
Someone banged on the door to the locker room.
“Go away!” Pierce shouted.
“This is Management. I’m opening up the door.”
The lock clicked, and a spotty faced teenager stared at us, shifting slightly from foot to foot.
“Girls aren’t allowed in here,” he mumbled.
Pierce flashed his badge. “CIB business. We won’t be long.” He closed the door in the kid’s face. “That was lucky,” he said. “Thought we’d have to deal with Conan the Barbarian or something.”
None of us smiled at the joke.
I stared at Cawfield.
“Joe,” I said. “What do you remember saying to me?”
“Fuck you, Keen.”
“It’s important.”
“Everything is fucking important to you — Hart’s little golden girl. Shit, Carl thought the sun shone out of your arse. No one got a look in when you turned up.”
“You failed the sergeant’s exam all on your own, Joe,” Pierce told him.
“Fuck you, too, Sarge.”
“What do you remember saying, Joe?” I pressed.
He stared at me. Something must have clicked in that thick skull of his.
“I…,” he said. He blinked. Shook his head. And then let out a snarl and fisted his hands again.
A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four Page 23