The Detective (4 page)

Half the restaurant gasped; the other half applauded and laughed. Including my date.

Standing over me, with her hands clamped over her mouth, Shannon’s eyes were dancing with amusement. As I hoisted myself up, using the barstool as leverage, she giggled. “I’m sorry. Are you OK?”

I was dripping.

The bartender’s mouth was gaping with horror as he thrust a white bar towel in my direction. “Man, I’m so sorry. That was a complete accident.”

I nodded and wrung beer out of the front of my fleece pullover. I took the towel and dried my hands. “It’s OK.”

Shannon offered her hands toward me. “What can I do?”

I jerked my thumb toward the door. “I live about five minutes from here. I’m going to run home and change.”

She reached for her black purse that was draped over her shoulder. “I’ll come with you.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I closed it and nodded instead. Truthfully, I didn’t want to leave her at the bar alone with the reaction she was getting out of every man in the room. Not that I was feeling territorial or anything. I pulled my keys out of my pocket. “You can ride with me.”

“OK. Let me settle my tab,” she said, turning back toward the bar.

The bartender held up his hand, shaking his head. “It’s on me. It’s the least I can do for all the trouble I caused.”

I wasn’t sure how paying for her drinks settled the score between us men, but I nodded my appreciation for the gesture none the less. I looked at Shannon. “Shall we?”

A smile crept across her face, and she looped her arm through mine. Had I not been soaked in booze, my chest would have puffed out with pride as every eye in the room watched us leave.

It was a short drive in a drizzling rain to my apartment, and Shannon’s perfume in the close proximity of my truck was making me a little dizzy. “Are you having a good trip?” I asked in an attempt to distract my wandering mind from the way her skirt was scrunched up under her thigh, showing a little more of her leg than she probably intended.
 

She brushed her hair back off her shoulder. “Yeah. I think my interview went pretty well this morning.”

“Oh, yeah. Who was it with?” I asked.

“Wake Up Wake County,” she answered.

I nodded. “Good luck with that.”

She smiled over at me, and I nearly drove into oncoming traffic.
 

We reached my apartment somehow in one piece, and she followed me up to the second floor. Once inside, I stripped off my pullover and walked toward the washer and dryer in the hallway. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be just a sec.”

She looked around my bare apartment. “Uh, OK.”
 

I had a recliner and an entertainment center that took up the whole wall. “I know it isn’t much.”

“No, it’s great,” she lied.

I chuckled and started the washer. I dropped the fleece into the machine and stripped off my t-shirt.

“Hey, is that a Glock 38?” she asked.

My mouth fell open as I turned toward her. She was walking over with her eyes on my sidearm. “Yeah. How did you know that?”

She opened her purse and produced a compact 9mm. “I carry the G43.”

My heart skipped a beat. “You carry?”

She nodded. “My daddy raised me to not leave home without it.”

“Let me see that thing.”

Like a pro, she dropped the magazine and cleared the chamber before handing it to me. I might have fallen in love with her right then. “Don’t worry, I have a permit,” she added quickly.

I chuckled as I handed the gun back to her. “I’m impressed.”

She smiled as she reloaded it and tucked it back into her purse. She looked back up at me, and I realized I was staring. “Are you going to get dressed?” she asked.

I considered the question for a moment too long, and she pointed down the hallway. “Clothes. Now.” She laughed and turned on her heel. “I’m hungry.”

I watched her walk to the recliner and sit down, crossing one long leg over the other.
Get a grip, Nate.
“Give me two minutes,” I said and walked down the hall.

After changing into a pair of jeans and a black shirt with an army green jacket, I came back to the living room to find that Shannon was gone. “Shannon?”
 

“In here,” she called from the spare room behind me.

I walked back to the second bedroom, which I had converted to a home office, and found her staring at my wall cork board that was plastered with photos of missing women and suspects. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her blatant snooping around my house.
 

As if reading my mind, she said, “I was looking for the bathroom. What is all this?”

I leaned against the door frame. “It’s a case I’ve been working on for a very long time.”

She tapped a photo in the center of the board. “I knew Leslie Bryson.”

My ears perked up. “What?”

She nodded. “Yeah. We grew up together. Our dads still play golf sometimes. It’s a shame they never found out what happened to her.”

I blinked. “Seriously?”

She laughed. “Asheville isn’t Mayberry, but it certainly isn’t a metropolis either.” She pointed to all the different photos. “What does she have to do with all these other people? Are they missing too?”

I walked over behind her. “I’m pretty sure that all of these women were abducted and/or killed by the same person. I’m just having a hard time proving it.”

She turned to look at me with raised
 
eyebrows. “You think it might be a serial killer?”

“Could be,” I answered.

“Yikes,” she said. “I remember when Leslie disappeared like it was yesterday. It was so frightening. Stuff like that just doesn’t happen in Asheville, ya know?”

“So, you know her family?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah. I’ve known them almost my whole life.”

“That’s why I was in Asheville, Shannon. I wanted to talk to the family, but they wouldn’t see me.” I took a step toward her, an interrogation technique to induce stress. “Can you talk to them? Get them to meet with me?”

She sucked in a sharp breath and nodded slightly. “Yeah, I guess so.” She reached up and fingered the flap over my jacket pocket. Then she leaned in and cut her sultry eyes up at me. “Does that mean you’ll come back to Asheville?”

I gulped.
God, this woman is good.
I took a step back. “Yeah, absolutely.”

She giggled. “I’ll go see them when I get home tomorrow.” She nodded toward the door behind me. “Let’s go eat.”

We definitely needed to get out of my apartment before I, once again, disproved myself as a gentleman. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

“You wanna go back to that bar? Their food looked good,” she said as I followed her swaying hips down the hallway.

When we got to my front door, I held it open for her. “No. I wanna take you somewhere nice.”

And I did.

Two hours and a hundred dollars worth of steak and wine later, I drove her back to get her car at Bull City. I now knew how she got her job at the news station, why she thinks Legends of the Fall was the greatest movie ever made, and how she tells her daddy she’s a Republican but secretly votes Democrat. Aside from the fact that it was the first date I’d had in a really long time, it was surprisingly one of the best ones I’d had
ever
.

As we stood next to her car under the misty glow from the streetlight, her eyes popped open. “Oh! I almost forgot!” She reached into her bag and produced my watch.

I laughed. “I forgot about it too.”

Without hesitation, she pulled up my sleeve and draped it over my wrist. As she fastened the clasp she smiled. “I had a really nice time, Nathan.”

“I did too. Thanks for keeping my watch safe,” I said.

She chuckled, and her phone in her purse began to ring. She pulled it out and looked at it. “Oh my gosh. It’s the producer from Wake Up Wake County.”

I looked at my watch. It was almost eight at night. “Well, answer it. It’s got to be important if they’re calling this late.”

She was visibly shaking as she put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
 

Leaning back against my truck, I watched her face melt from excitement to devastation. My heart began to thump harder in my chest. We’d had a nice date, but I felt an emotionally supportive obligation coming on. And I’m pretty good at a lot of things, but emotional support isn’t one of them.

Slowly, she pulled her phone down and pressed the red button to end the call. She stared at it for a moment. “They decided to go with someone else.”

Damn.

I reached out and pulled her into my arms. “I’m sorry, Shannon.”

She laid her head on my chest and sniffed. I was startled by how good it felt when she put her arms around my waist. For a moment, I stroked her golden hair. Pulling back a tad, I looked down at her. “You OK?”

Mascara had streaked her cheeks, and without a thought in my thick skull, I swiped it away with my thumbs. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

My eyebrows scrunched together. “Sorry? For what?”

She gestured to her face. “I’m a mess.”

I laughed. “No, the morning we woke up in bed together you were a mess. A few tears is nothing!”

She laughed and buried her face in my chest again. “Oh god,” she groaned with embarrassment.

I slid my hands down her arms and took her hands. “I have an idea. Get back in my truck.”

She pulled back. Her face was pitiful. “Nathan, you really don’t have to try and cheer me up—”

I cut her off. “Shannon, get in the truck.”

She smiled and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “OK.”

Twenty minutes later, we were back at my apartment. “Follow me,” I instructed, walking down the hallway toward my room.

She hesitated at the front door. “Not to sound rude or anything, but if you’re trying to be seductive, it isn’t working.”

I laughed and turned back around. “Come on.”

Obediently, she followed me to my room. I pulled open a dresser drawer and found a black and red NC State University sweatshirt and a pair of drawstring pants. I held them out for her.

“What is this?” She was eyeing me with clear skepticism.

“You don’t have anywhere to be tonight, do you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Well, no—”

I pushed the sweats against her chest. “Change.”

Before leaving my room for her to change clothes, I grabbed my comforter and pillows off my bed. Puzzled, she watched me without saying a word. When I left the room, I closed the door behind me.
 

In the living room, I moved the recliner out of the way and arranged the bedding on the floor. “I’ve got to buy a damn couch,” I muttered as I walked to the kitchen. I grabbed the carton of ice cream in my freezer and two spoons before walking back to the living room. My feet froze before the rest of my body when I saw Shannon standing in the center of the room wearing my clothes. I nearly toppled over. She giggled and looked down at her outfit. “It’s a little big,” she said.

“I think it’s perfect” slipped out before I could stop myself.
 

“What are you doing, Nathan?” She looked down at the pallet I’d made on the floor.

I stepped toward the entertainment center and searched my movie shelves. “I couldn’t exactly send you off to a hotel all depressed about the job.” I peeked back over my shoulder at her. “I don’t know you that well. You could jump out the window for all I know.”

She laughed and rolled her eyes.

Turning back to my DVD collection, I kept looking till I found what I was searching for. I turned back around with the ice cream in one hand and Legends of the Fall in the other. “Well, I can’t make them hire you,” I said. “But I do have Brad Pitt and Moose Tracks.”

Without a word, she flung her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder. “Thank you, Nathan.”

I hooked my arm around her waist and pulled her close. Unable to resist, I kissed the bend of her neck. “You’re welcome.”

Once again, I woke up with Shannon Green. Only this time, we were on the floor of my living room and both fully dressed. She didn’t look like something out of a horror movie and I didn’t have a hangover. It was kinda nice. My back, however, reminded me that I was no longer sixteen and that sleeping on floors probably wasn’t the best idea. I groaned and arched my back off the floor to stretch the angry muscles.

“Morning,” Shannon said, propping her head up in her hand.

“Morning.”
 

“We camped out in your living room.”

I laughed. “Yes, we did.” I looked over at her. She was pretty cute in the morning when she hadn’t passed out drunk the night before. “You feeling better?”

She sighed and smiled. “Yeah. Thanks for cheering me up.”

Next to me on the floor, my phone was blinking with messages as usual. There was a text message from Reese on the screen.
Another 10-65 last night. You’d better get your ass to the office.

I sighed and put the phone back down before rolling toward Shannon. “What time do you have to get on the road?”

She glanced at the clock on the entertainment center. “I’ve got to check out of my hotel at eleven.”

I grinned. “That sounds familiar.”

“Yeah, I guess the tables are turned this weekend.” She pointed at me. “Including my car was left at a bar last night. I’m going to need a ride.”

Dramatically, I rolled my eyes. “God, you’re needy!”

“Hey!” She poked me in the stomach, and I grabbed her by the finger.

And that was all it took.

Somehow I’d managed to keep my damn hands to myself and be an upstanding guy all night long, but one poke to the bellybutton was like pressing the NOS injector on a hotrod.
 

I guess Shannon Green wasn’t a one-night stand after all.
 

FIVE

LATER—MUCH LATER—at her car, I kissed Shannon goodbye with a promise I’d call. I was almost certain I’d keep it too, then I headed to the office. Lieutenant Carr’s truck was in its spot next to the sheriff’s. I almost turned around and drove back home.

Marge was at the front desk. “Morning Detective,” she said, lowering her reading glasses to look at me.

“It’s Saturday, Marge. Shouldn’t you be off today?”