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“She’s an exception to the rule. And I got entirely too comfortable spending time with that exception. She wasn’t sticky or annoying or weird, and as it turns out, I started to enjoy having her around.”
“And that’s a problem?”Because hell… I feel the same! “Why is she being punished for being cool?”
“It’s not about punishment. It’s about self-preservation.” Sitting tall in her chair, she reclines back and folds one knee over the other. “I realized, while Charlie was shouting at me and saying the things he was, that he was the be-all-and-end-all as far as access to that little girl went. He was in charge, and there was nothing,nothingI could do about that. What if I stay in this position and see her as often as I have for the last few months, but for another few years? We bond,” she answers before I can. “Maybe there’s love. There’s certainly protection from me, because there is no circumstance where I won’t keep her safe. Five years,” she presses. “Maybe even ten. And then Charlie and I have this fight? Or he gets a girlfriend, whowon’t be cool with him flirting with me the way he does. However it happens, we still end up where we are right now. But those years will have passed and this pain will be…” She sets a hand on her belly. “The pain will be so much worse.”
“You’re afraid of losing her later… so you throw her away now?”
“She’s still young enough that, in six months, she’ll forget I ever existed. She won’t know this pain, and she certainly won’t know the ache I feel every time I think of her. But if we have those ten years first?—”
“She’ll be fourteen years old and defiant if anyone attempts to keep you apart.” I sit forward and hold her stare. “In ten years, you will have created a bond nobody can break. The same way I’ll have a bond with her. And Aubs. None of us need to sleep with Charlie Fletcher to have access to his daughter, Fifi. But you seem pretty friggin’ keen to rob her of what could have been an amazing relationship with an even more amazing woman. She needs those in her life. After the shit her mother has pulled, Mia needs all the fierce female companionship she can get. You’re being a coward by running away now.”
“Coward…” She shrugs. “Cautious. Either way, it’s time to cut the cord and save us all while things are still fresh. I refuse to be the source of a little girl’s trauma the way my mother was for me.”
“You mean the way Jada is for Mia?” I glance over her shoulder and past the crowd still watching us. Though a few of them trail away. Then I look at the elevator as it opens and closes. A couple of detectives step out and head this way, oblivious to what will probably become a massacre once Fifi turns and sees what I see. “Don’t panic,” I sigh, peering up at the ceiling, if only to take the moment to collect myself. “And don’t make rash decisions while you’re angry. I’m not done with this conversation,” I speed up my words to beat the approach of Charlie and Archer. “I’ll stop treating you like crap, because friends champion friends, and if youreallywant that new job, then I suppose I can be happy for you.”
“Thank you.”
Her words are measured. Formal.
“I’m not done with this,” I repeat. “But for right now, I’d really like for younotto throw Detective Fletcher through the plate-glass window.”
With that, she jerks around and finds the detectives on the other side of the door. Fletch’s sheepish stare and Archer’s wary hesitation.
Lead my best friend to slaughter, or hold back a moment more?
“You can go,” I tell her. “Don’t stab him on the way past.”
She scoffs.
“I can be mad at him, and I can love him at the same time. I think you’ll come to find yourself capable of the same.”
“Doubtful.” She searches the duo, almost as though looking for Mia. But then she looks at the clock on my wall. I don’t have to be inside her mind to know she counts school hours.Mia’s not here. She’s not coming today. “It’s for the best,” she sighs, standing and circling the chair almost as though preparing to push it closer to my desk. “Maybe you and I can hang out before Friday. Or after New York, once you’re back.” She lowers her voice, and with it, her eyes. “Because I need you, too.If you need my help making arrangements for your trip, you know where to find me. And if, after Friday, you find yourself melting down and needing a statement for the press, or a dressmaker for an event…” She smiles. It’s soft and sad and sweet, but then it’s gone the moment Archer pushes the door open. “Well, ditto. You know how to contact me.”
“Ms. Fifi.” Archer holds the door for his partner, tipping his chin as Fletch walks in and Fifi wanders out. “Good to see you.”
“And you, Detective Malone.” She doesn’t look at Fletch. She doesn’t say hello or even allow him the chance to see her pretty eyes. “I’ll be in my office,” she announces for me. “Working with Callen. Be sure to come down at some point today to speak with her, since you’re heading out tomorrow.”
“Yep.”I mean… I probably won’t. “Detectives.” I bring my attention to Archer as the door swings shut, and he takes the seat Fifi was in only moments ago. “You left extremely early this morning.”
“Caught a case.” He tosses his phone on my desk, screen-side up, so I catch pictures of a dead Detective Wright.
“Wait.” Panic slams into my veins as I hurriedly grab the phone to study the images. Thoughts of Fletch and Fifi, even Callen and the fools dispersing now that Fifi has left my office, all evaporate from my mind. Because something so much worse enters. “Another cop is dead?” Snarling, I bring my focus up. “Another one?!”
“Not just any cop,” Fletch sighs. “And not any random bullets. This is Mercer’s partner, and he’s riddled with the same armor-piercing rounds Mercer was. We expect you’ll find two of them in his torso once he’s on your table.”
“But you’ve already left the scene?” I grab at my top drawer and tear it open to collect my phone. Keys. A Xanax, maybe. “Why’d you leave the scene and not wait for me to arrive?”
“Because we know enough about this one to know we don’t need an M.E. on scene.”
“But you?—”
“You still get to cut him open,” Archer inserts. “He belongs to the George Stanley. But we know how he died, and we’ve documented the scene appropriately. Bringing him here makes your job easier, and having you on the street helps nothing.”
“So he’s already here?” Temper alights in my belly. Because I know I don’t have to be on a crime scene to do my job. It’s been said in the past, the fact that I’m on the streets with my dead bodies as much as I am, is considered abnormal. But to see the scene first, before a body is interrupted, before death is tidied up… these things matter to me. “Is there a reason you’ve interfered with my processes, Detective?”
“Expediency.” He sits back, lifting one leg and resting his ankle on the opposite knee. “It was unnecessary. And filling the streets with cops while this guy is free would be dumb.”
“You wouldn’t be filling it with cops! You’re filling it with medical examiners.”
